Fall Holiday

Spring Break...Fall Holiday...Autumn Break...Easter. Whatever you want to call it, we got two weeks off from our strenuous life here in Australia. It's not like Spring Break in the States, where everyone travels. Generally, people just go home or work. The international students are the ones who go crazy, as we should. Most people generally cruise the East Coast of Australia, though a few friends went to New Zealand and one to Western Australia. I traveled with two girls from UNI, Michelle and Jillian. We crammed a lot of crazy time in those two weeks, so here goes.

Cairns (photos)

We started by flying out of Sydney into Cairns, up towards the northeast coast of Australia. Cairns was recently hit by Cyclone Larry; some damage was still visible in some areas we traveled. The weather wasn't the best when we were there, but it was still my favourite big city that we visited. We stayed at a hostel called The Asylum. Nice name, eh? It wasn't the nicest in terms of looks, but we had the best time there - the people we awesome. We spent many four nights there and got to know a lot of them really well. There were people from all over the world: Germany, Ireland, Slovenia, England, France...but surprisingly we didn't see hardly any other Americans. That was fine with me though; I wanted to meet other international travelers anyway. At the Asylum, they have a tradition called "Mad Monday" where you pay $10 and get a t-shirt, free dinner, and free drinks at 3 bars. A grand time was had by all, as you'll be able to tell from the pictures.

>>Video: A dance contest at a bar we were at. The girl on the left is a pretty good dancer, but watch for the girl on the right who occassionally gets in the frame. What is she doing??

Another highlight was bungy jumping in the rainforest. I've been skydiving before - which was outstanding - and wanted to go again, but bungy jumping was a cheaper alternative. We drove out to the location settled in the middle of the rainforest in Cairns. It was amazing! When we first came in, there were signs pricing multiple jumps on the same day. I didn't understand why you'd want to go twice or more on the same day...until I jumped the first time. We climbed up the 50m structure and got all wrapped up. You wobble up to the edge and just fall forward. What a rush! It was so much fun, Jillian and I decided to go again - this time backwards. All in all, a fantastic time.

I've always wanted to go white water rafting. Well, we got the chance in Cairns. We rafted down the Tully River along with three Irish guys and our awesome guide, Fabio (yes, Fabio.) The Tully River is the better of the two that are in Cairns. It's a grade 4-5 (on a scale of 6) in terms of difficulty. This picture isn't of us; it's just a stock photo from the company. Actually, we don't have any pictures of the rafting trip because the Irish guys never emailed us the pictures like they said they would... Oh well. It was still a stellar trip. We started early in the morning, went down the river a bit - nothing too extreme on the first half. Right before lunch, we went right underneath a waterfall and sat there for a bit. It was awesome! Lunch was a traditional Aussie BBQ, then we headed back out. The latter half was outstanding; there was a part where we were going to intentionally fell out, and a part where we intentionally flipped over as well. Then Fabio led us into a part of the rapids where water was just pouring over all of us and in our boat. We waited there for other boats to pass for about 5 minutes. Jillian and I got the most soaked since we were in the front. At the end of the trip, we carried the rafts up and headed out. Exhausted, but well worth the trip.

Townsville - Magnetic Island (photos)

We hopped on a train and headed south to Townsville, the coastal town right by Magnetic Island. Townsville was a cool little place, but nothing too exciting to note. We stayed for a night then headed to Magnetic Island. On Magnetic Island, we were going to snorkel, but the weather was still a bit bad, and the water wasn't too clear. So we skipped that and decided to go horseback riding - again, something else I'd never done. (And again, this is a stock photo, as none of us took our cameras.) I rode a golden colored horse named "Honey." We walked and trotted through the bush of the island, and then emerged on a beautiful beach. A lot of people took their horses into the water to cool them off, but Honey stepped one foot in the water then turned back...I don't think she likes the water.
Before we all got in the water (or attempted to), we had to put stinger suits on (basically wetsuits). From November - April is prime marine stinger (jellyfish) season, and Queensland has a lot of jellies! We saw signs like these all over the place! The jellyfish up in Queensland are pretty bad. There's one called a box jellyfish - one jelly has enough venom to kill 60 adults. If you get stung enough, you will probably die anywhere from 30 seconds to 4 minutes after the sting. Those are pretty big and not as common. There's another kind called irukandji that are really really small (only 2.5 centimetres), but it can kill you as well. Bad news. So needless to say, stinger suits are important! As long as you have one on and the jellyfish doesn't touch your exposed skin, you'll be fine.

The next day, Jillian and I decided to rent scooters and tool around the island for the day. Again, something I've wanted to do, but never done. Honestly, this was probably the cheapest thing we did throughout our trip ($30AUD for the whole day + free petrol), but it was one of the most fun. I finally got to drive on the left side of the road, go through a roundabout, and see some cool stuff on the island. Not to mention Jillian and I took some awesome photos with our bikes. Look out Jillian! After a fun day, we hopped on the ferry and went back to Townsville to meet Michelle at the train station. Bad news there - our train wasn't coming. Cyclone Monica hit in Cairns and flooded some of the track. Looks like we're staying in Townsville another night. No worries, we had a grand time anyway. We took the train the next day out to Hervey Bay.

>>Video: Jillian trying to use some playground equipment that's clearly designed for kids
>>Video: Rock wallabies

Hervey Bay - Fraser Island (photos)

The distance from Townsville to Hervey Bay is pretty long, so we originally planned to stop along the way at a city called Rockhampton. But since we lost a day, we decided just to trek right on through to Hervey Bay. That may have been a mistake. We departed Townsville and 3:55 PM, and traveled overnight, arriving in Rockhampton at 4:40 AM. Then we waited for 2 more hours for our train from Rockhampton to Maryborough West. That ride lasted another 5 hours. Once we arrived there, we took a bus for 45 minutes to Hervey Bay. When all was said and done, we'd been traveling for almost 24 hours in the worst economy seating known to man. I made this video the train while we were in Cairns, but it was basically the same conditions riding economy class to Hervey Bay - cramped seats and screaming children. For anyone reading this who may be using the train system in Australia to travel a somewhat long distance - do yourself a favor and pay the extra couple bucks it costs for Business Class. It's not that much more expensive, but I guarantee you'll be glad you did. I even snuck in for a bit, but got kicked out because I was sitting in someone else's seat. Oh well, I tried.

>>Video: On the train in Cairns, me describing my personal hell.

Anyways, Hervey Bay was another excellent little coastal town. We booked our trip for Fraser Island when we arrived and headed out the next morning. Fraser Island was probably my favorite place we visited. The entire island is made up of sand. It has more sand than the Sahara desert! This is because the sand extends down into the ocean that surrounds it. Since every other island I've been on was fairly small, I was amazed at how big the surface area of the island was. We took a short guided tour, then the real fun began... We rented a Jeep and got to drive around on the beach and inland on the island. Renting a car, I felt so...adult. We drove on the beach mostly, and visited a cool shipwreck with a long history that I won't bore you with. We also saw Indian Head for a short bit - it had spectacular views, but we couldn't stay long because the tide was coming in, and you can't drive on the beach during high tide. We had to book it back to our accomodation before the water swept us away, since it'd be dark soon as well. The next morning, Jillian and I woke up before sunset and drove on the beach, heading back to Indian Head. In a word, it was absolutely breathtaking. The sunrise was gorgeous, and we were the only people out on the beach. There were no tracks in front of us, just the tracks we left behind us. We never made it to Indian Head because we underestimated how long of a trip it was, and we still had to go pick up Michelle and head in to Lake McKenzie before returning the car at 11:30. So we started to head inland and let me tell you, driving inland is nothing compared to the beach. The beach is smooth and flat, inland is hilly and uneven. The fastest we went was 30 kph. I got a good feel for it and we made good time, but after we had driven inland for 1 hour and realized it was another 10k to Lake McKenzie, we realized we wouldn't have time to go and get the car back in time. Damn. Still a bouncy, rough, and fun trip on Fraser.

Fraser Island is also famous for its dingo population. It has the purest dingoes in all of Australia, and encounters with them are not uncommon. Even though dingoes look like dogs, they are not tame, and there are strict fines for feeding them or even trying to pet them. We thought we'd at least get to see a dingo, but no luck. No dingoes were to be found. However, we did see plenty of signs like these that we got a laugh out of.

Brisbane

We headed on to our final destination, Brisbane. It was probably my least favorite place we visited - rather boring. I thought the hostel we stayed at would be more fun than it was. We went to Dreamworld for a day, a theme park. It was built up to be more than it really was. We had a really fun time, but I wouldn't suggest going there. Nothing else really of note happened in Brisbane. At this point, we were all ready to be back in Newcastle.

All in all, a fantastic two weeks that I'll never forget.

>>Random video: My musical cupboard. I took a card that my friend Alex gave me that played a song when you opened it and rigged it to my cupboard in the kitchen.