So my next adventure started that Friday, June third. This time our group was a little bigger, made up of Kyle, Olivia, Isa, Kyle, and Marcus. Friday morning we left Brisbane, and flew to Melbourne. Our flight was delayed, but other than that the trip to the hostel went fairly smoothly. We were a little bit out of the city, which was a little disappointing, but it was really nice, so that was okay. We also got a deal at a local burger place, which was really good. That night we just hung out in the hostel, because we had a pretty early morning Saturday.

Saturday was our only full day in Melbourne, and we decided to go on a tour of the Great Ocean Road. The Great Ocean Road is a really long, windy road that goes right along the southern coast of Australia. The day was spent mostly on the bus, but we saw wild koalas and parrots, and got to feed some of the birds, and they came down and sat on our arms and shoulders. That was pretty cool. There were so many unique houses along the road, there was one in particular that was pointed out to us, and it was called the post house, because there was a bridge type walkway too it, and the whole house was built on top of post, about 50 feet high. We stopped for lunch in some small town, and then continued on our way. The last sight we saw on the tour was the 12 Apostles. There are actually 14, and they were originally called something to do with pigs that I can’t remember, but now they’re called the 12 Apostles. Anyways, they were pretty amazing. They are these rock pillar island type things that are standing off the southern coast. They are there because the softer sandstone around them has eroded, leaving just the limestone pillars. We stopped in one place to see them from the mainland, and then went to a second place where you could go down to the beach level around them. That was pretty cool. After a few hour bus ride back to our hostel, we went to bed pretty early, because Sunday was yet again an early morning.

Sunday we ventured to the outback. We had a flight from Melbourne to Alice Springs, which was delayed because we flew Tiger, and we got there around mid-day. Alice Springs is a nice place, but there isn’t a whole lot to do. We got lunch at a little café, where I had a Kangaroo burger. It was pretty good, except for the fact that they put raspberries and blueberries on it. That day/night we just hung out around the hostel, and got ready for our journey into the desert that started Monday, yet again really early.

Monday we got up while it was still dark, for like the third day in a row, and checked out of the hostel, and got on a bus. I went back to sleep. When I woke up we were in the dessert in the middle of nowhere, and we had stopped at a gas station/convenience store. This was some of the only civilization we would see that day. We drove for a few more hours, stopping to take pictures of camels and other assorted desert life on the way. We stopped at a cattle station for a break, and here we could have gotten camel rides if we wanted, but I passed. We had lunch on the bus right after that, and then we arrived at King’s Canyon. We took a four hour hike around the canyon, which was pretty amazing. There was a water hole that we could swim at, and out of the 24 people on our tour, Marcus, Kyle, Kyle, Olivia, one other guy, and I were the only ones to go swimming, because the water was around 55 degrees Farenheit (13 Celsius). Quite cold. Also, right outside the lake was a baby poisonous snake. I forgot exactly what kind it was, but at full size it was deadly. So we looked at it for a little bit, and then finished up our hike, and hopped back onto the bus. The bus took us to another place of civilization for a quick break, and then we continued on to our campsite for the night. When we got there, it was already dark, so we had to find firewood and start the fire in the dark. We had pasta and curry chicken for dinner, which was surprisingly good. We slept in “swags,” which are kind of like big cases for sleeping bags with a mattress in them. We went to bed soon after that, thinking that we were going to get rained on a little bit overnight, but nothing much.

We woke up Tuesday cold and wet. It had rained all night, and since there were no tents to be found, all of our stuff was wet. It had never rained very hard, but it had rained most of the night. So we slowly got up, made breakfast, packed up, and then took off to find a place to dry our stuff out. We went to the campground we were staying at the next night, as it had some covering. We hung our stuff up, and then continued out on our way to Uluru. We drove a lap around Uluru, and our tour guide, Huss, told us all kinds of stories about the Aborigine’s and their beliefs, and other information about the history of the rock. We went out to a lookout point and got to take pictures of it, but since we were coming back on Wednesday, we didn’t spend too much time there. Most of Tuesday was spent at Kata Tjuta. Kata Tjuta is another rock structure, and is actually connected to Uluru underground. Kata Tjuta is a series of 36 dome structures in 38 square kilometers. We hiked through here for about four hours, but since it was still raining, it was a little bit of a struggle. We had to cross through streams and climb up pretty steep, slippery rocks. It was really amazing though, because all of these rocks each had their own series of waterfalls running down them. Huss has been guiding tours through the Outback for eight years, and he said that he had never seen it like that before, and it was something he had always been waiting for. After this hike, we went back to Uluru, to look at the waterfalls coming off of it. They were also pretty spectacular. We only spent a few minutes there, as everyone was getting tired, wet, and cold. We went back to the campground, where some of us ran to the dryers to try to dry out a sleeping bag to have something warm to sleep in. Since I did that, I missed out on dinner, but I wasn’t alone. We decided to go to a pub down the street for dinner. We got there after they stopped serving dinner, so we all just got pre-cooked meat pies and chips, which were surprisingly good again. We went back and slept on the bus, as all of the ground was wet from the constant rain all day.

Wednesday we got to “sleep in” to quarter of seven. How nice of Huss to let us do that. We woke up, had breakfast, and took off for Uluru. When I had woken up, I had some pretty bad stomach pain, but didn’t think much of it, and when we got to Uluru we had the option of sitting in the Cultural Center, doing an eight km long walk, or a five and a half km short walk, both of which were just around the base. Since I wasn’t feeling well, I opted for the short walk. Pretty quickly it became apparent that I had made the right choice. The pain kept getting worse and worse, and twice I had to stop because it hurt so much. Then, about halfway through the walk, it just disappeared. I was glad it was gone, but kind of confused (I’ve felt fine since then). I didn’t get to take any pictures of Uluru, partly because it hurt too bad to look up for half of the walk, partly because I got water in my lens the day before, so they would’ve been blurry. After finishing the walk, and right as Huss met us at the end to pick us up, it started to rain again, another reason the short walk was the right choice. Huss took us back to the Cultural Center to wait for those who had chosen to do the long walk, where we waited for around a half hour. After they had finished, it was back on the bus, heading back to Alice Springs. I napped until lunch time, which was back at one of the cattle stations we had stopped at before. After lunch we had an on bus trivia competition, based on stuff Huss had told us about on the trip, and other random information. The team I was on came in second, but it didn’t really matter anyways, it was still fun. We arrived at our hostel around six, and at eight, Huss came back and we all had dinner together. Soon after that I went to bed, as I was exhausted.

Thursday we had no plans, and we were stuck in Alice Springs until Friday. Huss came back and drove Olivia, Isa, Kyle, and I to the Alice Springs Desert Park, where we spent most of the day. There were all kinds of exhibits on different wildlife of the desert and different habitats in the desert too. We stayed until around 4, after the birds of prey show, which was pretty impressive and cool. Thursday night was spent studying, as Olivia, Marcus, and I had an exam on Saturday. Friday we woke up, got a shuttle to the airport and flew to Melbourne. Marcus, Olivia, and I continued on to Brisbane, while Kyle, Kyle, and Isa stayed in Melbourne one more day. The three of us going to Brisbane hung out and studied in the airport for five hours, and then got back to campus around 10:30 I think. I stayed up and studied some more that night, but not too late.

So that’s it for my adventures in Australia, I have 12 days left in this amazing country. I have two finals left, and then I’m homebound. Don’t worry, there will be one final post, probably going up once I’m back in the USA.

So this is the first of two posts, probably both will end up going today, one may not be until tomorrow if I decide I don’t want to write anymore though. So, two weekends ago, Kyle, Olivia, and I went north to the Whitsunday Islands for the weekend. We flew up Friday, and we came back Monday afternoon. On Friday we left Brisbane sometime in the morning, took a train to the airport, and then waited for our flight. [Quick tangent on domestic flights in Australia. Security is a joke. People have gotten through with razors, scissors, and all kinds of other things. When you get there they ask if you have anything dangerous, and then you can just walk through the metal detectors and send your stuff through the machine, but no need to take off shoes/belts/jackets, just waltz through very quickly. Occasionally they scan your bags for traces of explosives, but that’s about it. They never check ID’s and only check boarding passes as you’re getting on the plane. Kinda crazy. And you only need to be there an hour before departure. Now back to the story.] So we fly in to the Procerpine Airport, which is only slightly bigger than the airport in Colebrook. One runway, one terminal, one security checkpoint, and one tiny food court. And when we were flying in, we took so many turns and adjustments I didn’t think we were going to ever land. After landing, we walked through the airport, and got on a bus to take us to our hostel. The bus ride was about half an hour, and once we got there, we checked in and then explored town. There were a bunch of little shops, but there were also a lot of empty buildings, which was kind of surprising. We went down and explored the beach as well, playing on playgrounds and skipping rocks too. That night the hostel played Slumdog Millionaire, and we watched that. It was surprisingly good.

Saturday morning was an early morning, as we were going on a tour that started at 8. We woke up and checked out of the hostel, and then hopped on a bus to the port our boat was departing from. After picking up some people on the way out, we got to a pontoon type thing at Horseshoe Reef, where we hung out for a few hours. We had lunch, and then there was a water slide, snorkeling, a semi-submersible boat, helicopter rides, and scuba diving for us to enjoy. Scuba diving was pretty cool, since I’m not certified I had to hold on to an instructor the whole time, but it was still fun and definitely worth it. Snorkeling was a little boring, similar to what we did at Heron Island, but we saw some cuttlefish which was pretty cool. After we left there, Olivia, Kyle, and I had a hostel booked on Long Island, which was more of a resort that just happened to have hostel style rooms for us. It was really nice, and we spent the night watching wild wallabies and weird birds cruise around on the beach.

Sunday was a pretty much free day on Long Island, and we had until 3:30 before our shuttle back to the mainland. We decided to go “bush walking,” which is basically hiking, but we only had flip flops, so it was quite the adventure. We were told that one particular path was the best as it would give us awesome views of the surrounding islands, so we decided to take that one. There was only one view, and it was pretty awesome. After that was finished, we got lunch, and just laid out on the beach waiting for the shuttle. The shuttle back was pretty uneventful, and Sunday night we checked back into our original hostel at Aerlie Beach. We got dinner at Subway by the beach, and just sat and chatted for a while before getting ice cream and heading back to the hostel.

Monday was our last day on our mini vacation, and we didn’t do too exciting. We woke up early, got on a shuttle bus back to the airport, and flew back to Brisbane. This Monday was the last week of classes, and it went pretty well. On Thursday we had our Farewell Dinner with all of the Dickinson kids, because our Director, Ann, had to go to Boston, so our last dinner had to be a little earlier than usual. It was a pretty fun night, we all went to the Regatta Hotel for dinner, and some of us hung out for a while afterwards. Abra, Olivia, Kyle, and I stayed longest and played trivia. We came in second to last, but we still got prizes. Friday starts the next and final trip, so I’ll leave you here for now.

Since my last post received a complaint about length, I’m going to try to make this one a bit longer. This past weekend Dickinson was nice enough to send us to Sydney. We flew out of Brisbane Friday morning, landing in Sydney around 10:30. Russ Alexander, one of Ann’s friends from Sydney who also runs abroad programs, picked us up from the airport and took us to the bus. The bus took us to our hotel for the weekend, which was probably the nicest place I will stay in Australia. It was a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment with full kitchen and living room on the 62^nd floor of the World Tower, and could be bought for about $1.5 million. It was nice. So we checked in, left our bags there, and then went to a park to have lunch. After lunch we walked a little bit of the cliffs of the shore, with Russ telling us about little bits of Sydney’s history along the way. After walking the cliffs, the bus took us back into the city where we continued walking (Ann calls the Sydney trip “fat camp” because we walk all the time) around the city, looking at historic buildings and museums. One place we went through was the botanical gardens. While there, Russ held out bread and got a Sulfur Crested Cockatoo to land on his arm. After that, if you just stood there holding out your hand like you had bread, another cockatoo would land on your arm, shoulder, or head. After the botanical gardens, we walked around the bay a little bit and down to the opera house. From there, we went back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.

We took the subway through the city to an area called The Rocks and went to a restaurant where you picked a cut of meat and grilled it yourself. It was pretty fun and interesting, and really good. After dinner we had a bar crawl, going to 5 different bars. We started in an old bar that had its own microbrewery, and ended up in a new more club like bar, with each bar having its own interesting atmosphere. One was a rooftop bar, really quiet with a good view, and another was in a crowded room with a live band made up of a guitarist and violinist. All in all it was a pretty fun night.

Saturday started earlier than some would have liked, and involved a lot more walking. We left the hotel around 9 and took a bus back to the cliffs, and walked the coastline again, this time seeing a lot of aboriginal rock carvings and different beaches, including the famous Bondi beach. After this walk, which ended around noon, we got on a bus to the Paddington St. market, where there were a lot of neat little things to buy, none of which I did. We had lunch there, and then walked back to the hotel, and we had free time for the afternoon, where I, and I’m pretty sure everyone else, napped. We had dinner that night in Darling Harbour, at a family style Malaysian restaurant. It was really good; we had a couple chicken dishes, a beef dish, and ice cream for dessert. After that we again had free time for the night, and I decided to spend it in the hotel hanging out with people, watching TV, and playing games.

Sunday was a completely free day, and Kyle and I decided to wake up and go to mass at St. Mary’s cathedral, because it was a beautiful church from the outside, and it was only a couple blocks from our hotel. Unfortunately, there was a mix up in mass times and we missed it. We still got to go inside and check it out, and it was amazing. After that, Kyle and I just wandered the city looking for breakfast, going by Lamborghini and Bentley dealerships on the way. After we got breakfast around 11, we went down to the Opera House, where Dickinson had bought us tickets to a tour. The tour was pretty good; we got to go inside three of the theatres, but a lot of the information was given by video, which was a little lame, but still interesting. After that was over, we had a few more hours of free time before we had to fly back to Brisbane. A bunch of us went to Paddy’s Market in Chinatown, different than the Paddington St. Market, where they had everything dirt cheap. They had “replica” MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and soccer jerseys for $5-$15. I only bought one, restraining myself greatly because I didn’t have a lot of cash on me, and needed to buy other things. After that, we flew safely back to Brisbane, and got ready for a regular school week. This Friday I leave to go to the Whitsunday Islands in North Queensland, in the Great Barrier Reef. I’ll again try to post after that, but I only have two weeks of class left and its starting to get a little busy, so we’ll have to wait and see about that.

So, it’s been a while since my last post. But, before a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t done that much. Mostly I just did school work, went to school, and hung out. Not all that different from back home, so I didn’t feel the need to write about it. Then came Easter break, and then I got really busy for a couple weeks.

On April 20^th, my Dad and Christine landed in Sydney, and then traveled up to Brisbane on the 23^rd. That night, we went to a Queensland Reds rugby game. The Reds won, beating their rivals the New South Wales Waratahs. The next morning was Easter, so we woke up and went to mass at St. Stephens in Brisbane. That afternoon we walked around South Bank, an area of Brisbane that has a lot of shops, and on the weekend, a market type thing. On Monday, we toured around the UQ campus, and took the CityCat ferry around the city. We ended up having dinner at the Bavarian Biergarten, and then I was left at King’s to get ready for my trip to the reef.

Monday night at 11 I got on a bus with a group of people from my Marine Science class to head about 7 hours north to Heron Island. The ride was kind of miserable, as I couldn’t sleep that well. We arrived at the ferry dock at 7 a.m., and then had to wait 4 hours for our ferry. The ferry ride out to the island was pretty rough, most people felt nauseous at one point, and I’d guess almost half of the passengers got sick. Needless to say, when we arrived at the island everyone was pretty happy. The island is really small, only 800 meters long and 300 meters wide, and the only things on the island are the research station we were at and a resort. We were there from Tuesday until Saturday. While there we had to perform a pretty basic research assignment, and create a 5 minute presentation about it. Other than that, we had pretty much free time. The food was amazing, and the weather was pretty good. It was windy the entire time we were there, so we didn’t get to take a boat out to deeper waters to snorkel, but we still got to snorkel around the shallow waters a lot. We saw sea turtles, sharks, rays, all kinds of fish, cone snails, coral, and all kinds of other stuff. At night we went out to the beach, and because there was nothing out there we could see a lot of stars. Maybe the most I’ve ever been able to see at once. It was crazy. Once Saturday came around, we got back on the ferry to head back to the mainland. The ride back was much calmer, with nobody getting sick. After another not awesome 7 hour bus ride, we got back to Brisbane around midnight.

Also on Saturday, Amy, Lenaya, and my Aunt Eleanor arrived in Brisbane. So on Sunday, I woke up and went into the city to meet up with them and my Dad and Christine. We went into the Queen Street mall for breakfast, and then walked over to Riverside to get the CityCat back to King’s. I showed them around King’s and UQ, and then we went back to the hotel. We didn’t do too much the rest of that day, just hung out and chatted. On Monday, my Dad and Christine flew back home, and Amy, Lenaya, Aunt Eleanor, and I, went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I had been before, but they hadn’t, and it was fun to see all of the animals again. I had to write a paper Monday night, and they went to bed early because they had to get up early on Tuesday. I had regular school on Tuesday, but met back up with Amy and Lenaya for dinner. We went to JoJo’s on Queen Street, which was really good. After dinner I said bye to them, as they left to go to the Whitsunday’s for a few days before Sydney. This past week I was back into regular school mode. This week I’m going to be busy doing work, and this weekend I’m going to an AFL game. Then I only have 3 weeks of class left. It’s crazy how fast the semester has gone by, and how much I still have to do before going home. I have Sydney, Melbourne, Ayer’s Rock, and the Whitsunday’s to visit before heading home. I’ll try to post about all of them as soon as I’m back, but I’m going to be busy so I can’t make any promises!