2 Crazy Sheilas

Claire and I have arrived in Alice Springs starting our adventure around Australia but before I start writing about that I wanted to write about my trip to Tasmania last week.

My first day I arrived in Launceston at the top of Tasmania and walked around the quiet little town.  Things picked up the second day when my tour started at 9 in the morning.  In the blink of an eye I was off and our first stop was to Evercreech Forest Reserve where my group glimpsed the White Knights.  These ancient white gums peered down at us like little ants circling their bases. 

Next, we took a windy, rugged road through the mountains.  The sun beat in and I fell asleep.  When I opened my eyes we were rolling past still waters with over fifty black swans gliding along.  Past this inlet we reached the Bay of Fires on the Tasman Sea.  Along the white sand beach huge boulders stood still while the rising moon drove teal waves further in each time.  I climbed the rounded rocks, which were covered with lichens that turned them orange.  As the sun sank behind me the moon said hello J

From there our tour guide, Bruce, drove like a Mexican taxi driver to get us to our night stay and see the Little Blue Penguins.  We rushed past the still waters, the black swans saying goodbye.  The waters turned to mirrors and soon there were two skies.  Two full white moons kept popping up in each pool with pinks, purples, and blues for a backdrop.

We made it to see the Little Blue Penguins who were timid with the moon beaming down on them like some spotlight giving there location away to predators.  There weren’t many but one was so close I could have grabbed it and stashed it in my purse.

The next day we got up at the crack of dawn.  Wait.  Scratch that.  We got up BEFORE the crack of dawn.  After packing up we headed to the Bicheno Blowhole to watch the sun rise.  A sliver of gold began to appear behind the low pink clouds just beyond the water.  Slowly it emerged covering our happy faces in that golden light.  Equally exciting was the large rocks we walked out on where a hole in the farthest rock left a space for water to push through.  With each incoming wave huge spurts came out like a whale’s blowhole (hence the name).

We drove on as the sun came up, wiping away the frost and morning fog.  Our destination was through the Hazard Mountains to Wineglass Bay.  Twists and turns, roots, rocks, and man made stairs created our path.  We took pauses to catch our breath and enjoy the view, but the most spectacular layed at the height of our walk.  From the lookout our racing hearts and breath were stopped by the first glimpse of Wineglass Bay.

Wineglass Bay got its name from the harvesting and slaughtering of whales  whose blood  poured into the water turning it red.  Pretty gruesome way to get a name for such a beautiful place.  The brilliant blue water was rimmed with a white sand beach and all along the dark green mountains stood with their caps so high that small thin clouds hung below.  When we reached the beach I took off like a little kid, whipping off my shoes and socks.  We were the only visitors and we walked along watching the waves crash in.

The next morning we woke before the sun once again to check out a cave at low tide.  The opening of it swallowed us and beyond it the other opening  (ironically shaped like Tasmania) showed waves and a pink sky. 

My favorite place we stopped the last day was at a wildlife sanctuary where Bruce introduced us to two Tawny Frogmouth owls named Oscar and Kermit who opened their mouths when Bruce ran his fingers along the feathers  above their beaks, making them look like frogs.  Next we watched the Tasmanian Devils being fed  pieces of carcass with fur and bone.  The small black creatures devoured it all, their jaws almost as strong as a crocodile.  Many other critters were there including some Devils infected with the mouth cancer that is threatening to put them into extinction and a white parrot I had a nice conversation with.  But my favorite was the tall kangaroos and little wallabies.  We saw moms with babies in their pouch, sometimes a tail poking out.  And I even fed the Alpha male who was getting on in age (about 20).

We were dropped off in Hobart where I stayed my last two nights, eating great sea food and hanging out with people from all over the world.  Perfect way to end the trip J

Miranda

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Today I arrived in Alice Springs!! Right in the middle of Australia, the red center. Which really is red, as the dusty dirt is an orangish/red color! My friend from University in Melbourne, Danny picked up Miranda and I from the airport and kindly chauffeured us to out hostel. We then took a little break and had a quick nap before Danny came back and picked us up to show us around the city, including the tourist attraction, Anzac Hill.  Anzac Hill is basically a monument on the top of a foothill that overlooks the city of Alice Springs.

That is what I have done so far today, as I am back at the hostel and checking my email now. Later on Danny is going to pick us up from our hostel and we are going to go out to dinner and a few drinks. Not too many drinks though as our tour starts tomorrow at the early time of 5:45 a.m.! Tomorrow we head to Uluru, or Ayers Rock, and watch the sunset while camping and sleeping under the stars! We then wake to see the sunrise over Ayers Rock and after that I am not sure what is in store. I will keep you all posted!

~Claire

P.S. Hope you all enjoyed my New Zealand entry! More will come as I continue my travels!

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I just back from my twelve day trip to New Zealand’s South Island and I suppose its no better time to tell you all about it! But before I do that I thought I would add a little quote I saw in a hostel bathroom wall on my journey…..

“Like all great travelers I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen” (benjamin disreali)

So with that in mind bear with me, it was a twelve day trip and therefore I cannot tell you all the special details, but mostly just what I did while there. To give you all a little backround information, the South Island of New Zealand only has a total population of around a million people and is cut almost in two by a mountain range, the Southern Alps, going straight though the middle of the Island in a north-south direction.  This means that there are a lot of beautiful mountains with many lakes and river-systems along them.  To finally get to my journey I guess I’ll start off with day one.

Day 1: Today I arrived in Christchurch in the afternoon and went to my hostel (while narrowly missing an accident that would have been caused by an idiot young male driver)! It was a pretty lazy day, and as I literally did not go to bed the night before, in leu of packing, going out with friends and having to be at the airport early, I didn’t do much.  I walked around Christchurch a little bit and got some dinner, and then went to bed. 

Day2: Today was the start of my Connections tour around the South Island.  I had to get up REALLY early and board the bus with about 30 other student travelers.  We left Christchurch shortly after and headed toward our destination for the night, Lake Ohau.  On our way there we all got to know each other while snapping hundreds of pictures of the scenery.  When I say hundreds I really mean hundreds, as I think I have a picture of one mountain at all different angles! :) It was hard to control myself because the scenery of the South Island of New Zealand is amazing, more beautiful than I have seen in a long time, or ever for that matter! Okay back to the journey, we drove through many small towns and stopped at a lot of picturesque lakes set with a mountain backdrop with low-lying clouds. We got a really good view of New Zealands highest mountain, Mt Cook and took a lot of pictures of it! After a days drive and a lot of stops we finally arrived at our hotel, called Lake Ohau Lodge, which was literally in the middle of nowhere and at the banks of the huge Lake Ohau.  A few of us decided to take a dip in the outdoor hot tub and enjoy the scenery after dinner and before bed.

Day 3: After waking up before dawn, as the sun rises a bit late due to the very southern latitude of New Zealand, I grabbed brekky quick and headed to the coach for another day of traveling.  We travelled through the mountains and got to see many Lord of the Rings and Narnia sets for the movies, which many people were very excited for, except me, as I have never seen either of the movies!  We stopped for lunch at a fruit stand and I bought a kiwi from “kiwiland” and a lot of other fruit for snacks later on.  We then drove a bit while making a stop at the Mirror Lakes for a photo shoot and then traveled through the Homer Tunnel toward our destination on the Milford Sound.  

When we arrived we boarded our boat for our overnight cruise on the sound.  On our way out to the spot we were to stop for the night we watched the huge mountains (which were around 5000 feet tall) and admired the many waterfalls coming down from the snow capped peaks and into the water.  It was probably the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen and pictures really couldn’t do it justice, although I did take many!  With the mountains being so tall and the water so low, and clouds resting at the middle of the mountains, it really was a sight to see!  When moored I went kayaking with a few new friends, at which point I found out the Milford Sound is actually a fiord, meaning that it was carved out by glaciers in the last ice age, therefore a fiord. After kayaking I got to eat a really good dinner, play cards, and have a few drinks while getting to know the people on my trip. 

Day 4: The next morning the ship cruised the Milford Sound and out the the Tasman Sea, and back into the fiord to the wharf.  We hopped on the coach and headed east to the adrenaline mecca of the southern hemisphere, Queenstown! Once arriving I went to eat with a few friends and went out for a night on the town! We went to an ice bar, which was literally a bar made completely out of ice and we drank out of glasses made from ice as well! After our cold time at the ice bar we headed to another bar and decided to warm ourselves up with a flaming shot! After a really fun night on the town it was time to go to bed, as I had to prepare myself for my big day ahead!

Day 5: Today we got to decide what each of us wanted to do in the adrenaline mecca. Some people decided that they weren’t adventurous enough and decided to do a little shopping and lounging, while others decided to go hoarseback riding (really adrenaline pumping! ), hang gliding, sky diving, and my personal favorite, bungy jumping! I decided that since I was in the birthplace of bungy jumping, which was done by A.J. Hackett, what a better place to do it than in New Zealand, and why not the third highest bungy in the world, behind one in Asia and another in South Africa, with a height of 134 meters, the Nevis Bungy!! Just to give you all a perspective of the height, a normal bungy stands around 40-50 meters, so this one was almost three times as high! I found out that this bungy site was also the only in the world that was suspended on cables!  After getting in a gondola and being taken out the the ‘pod’ which was the bungy site suspended between two mountains and looking at the Nevis river my heart was really pumping! I think the bungy guys were aware of this as they were saying things to scare me, like telling me that my bungy was a little old and run down and they were praying that it had a few more jumps in it! They were not easy on my nerves let me tell you!  After waiting for everyone else to go, as they had people in our group jump by weight, from heaviest to lightest (me, which I will say that was the one and only time in my life where I really would have loved to be heavier) it was finally my turn. My heart was beating out of my chest and I was really scared. I shimmied up to the jump spot and immediately jumped and screamed my throat sore! I free-falled for what they say is about 8.5 seconds (it felt like 1 for me) and the bungy caught, thankfully, and they reeled me back in…all in one piece! It was the biggest rush of my life and I am SO glad that I did it, although once was enough for me for now!

After my eventful afternoon I got together with my friends and we decided to go out to celebrate our last night in Queenstown and our crazy adventures of the day!

Day 6: Today we packed up our bags, boarded the coach, and headed for Fox Glacier.  We drove through the gorgeous Lake Wanaka area and headed for the Westland National Park, which was the home to the two largest glaciers in New Zealand, Fox glacier and Franz Joseph glacier.  It was a long day and we didn’t get to the 8-house town of Fox Glacier until nightfall where we had a group dinner and went of a glow-worm night hike. The hike through the dark temperate rainforest was nothing but soothing as our tour guide kept jumping out of dark bushes and scaring the beejesus out of me! Finally, after being scared WAY too many times, we arrived at a tree trunk that was covered with glow worms! It was as if the fallen over tree had stars on the root system, it was really cool! They were really small and had different values of light, so it really was as if you were looking at a starry night sky!  After admiring the glow worms we stayed in the forest for a little while to tell scary stories and then we headed off to bed.  

Day 7: Today was another early one as I had to get up before dawn and head to the base of the Fox Glacier for a hike up it.  A group of about eight of us hiked through the temperate rainforest for around an hour because the face of the glacier was too unsteady and steep to hike right up on it, so we went around the corner to start the actual glacier hike up at a steady spot.  The hike in the rainforest was really tiring and really beautiful, with glacial streams and waterfalls all along the trail.  When we finally arrived at the point of the glacier we strapped on ice picks to our boots and headed out on the glacier.  It was really amazing to be hiking on a glacier, with the guide carving out steps for us as we went along and took tons of pictures.  The ice on the glacier was really deep blue, which was unexpected, and lines of glacier mud ran though it.  We learned that the glacier mud was a really rare type of mud and it was sold to high-end spas in Europe, Southeast Asia and the U.S. for mud baths and mud treatments for thousands of dollars for minimal amounts. After hearing that I rubbed some on my hand, and then wondered why is was so amazing? Anyway the hike took us though tunnels and up glacial walls and all around the uniquely shaped glacier.  Once we spent two hours slipping and sliding on the ice it was time to head back down the glacier and mountain and board the coach, after lunch of course!

On our way back to the north-eastern coast of New Zealand we made a stop in Hotitika at a jade factory, which we found out to be a legendary stone to the native New Zealand people, the Moari’s, and admired the stone carvings and the process of making jade jewelry and art.  This night brought us to a large sheep farm in the middle of nowhere named Flock Hill Station.  We arrived late, ate dinner immediately, and lounged in front of the big wood-fire for a long time before heading off to bed. 

Day 8: This morning I was treated to a really good breakfast and then got to watch a sheep-herding show!!! I was a little bored with the whole farm scene being that I’ve grown up in it, but many others found it to be really interesting…where at which point I liked the sheep dogs the most ! After watching the sheep-dogs herd sheep we got into the coach and headed for Christchurch for the night.  When arriving in Christchurch we had a free afternoon and did a little walking around and shopping and headed out on the town for the night.

Day 9: Today we said goodbye to the 7 day tour people where our group was cut in half and the we headed to the small port town of Kaikoura, which means seafood in Maori I learned. In Kaikoura we went to a winery set in the mountains and overlooking the Pacific Ocean where we took part in a wine tasting and a tour.  After which we went on a long hike along the egde of a mountainous peninsula and got to see some really amazing views, including a rocky beach at the end which was home to a pack of sea loins and seals. The afternoon spent in Kaikoura was really relaxing and picturesque, but it was time to hop back in the coach and head to our destination for the night, Nelson.  When we arrived in Nelson I was really tired from the long hike and ate dinner and went to bed.

Day 10: Today was a free day, and a Sunday, in Nelson and raining cats and dogs.  I headed to the city center only to find the small town to be deserted, possibly due to the rain and it being a Sunday, so I found a coffee shop/internet place and had a relaxing coffee and checked my email before heading back to the hotel.  When I got back to the hotel I sat with a few others on the tour and watched the All Blacks, New Zealands national rugby team, play England. The relaxing day was much needed and really liked by me, and a lot others. Dinner and bed was the only thing that made up the rest of my day in rainy Nelson.

Day 11: Today was the last day of the tour for me and it headed from Nelson to the North Island into Wellington aboard a ferry.  It was raining still and the three hour ferry ride was therefore a boring one as standing outside and enjoying the scenery was out of the question for me.  Although inside was a little amusing as I watched many people on my tour become seasick and run to the bathrooms! I know, I know you all are probably thinking I’m a mean person, but hey I was bored and seeing as I don’t get seasick it was a little amusing!  When we arrived in Wellington I decided to go with a group of friends to the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand for the afternoon.  It was a really interesting place and I learned a lot about the country and history of New Zealand, like that the kiwifruit is not actualy native to NZ, it was brought over by the Chinese and they didn’t even call it kiwifruit, but the name was changed and made the national fruit of New Zealand somewhere in history! 

After the museum I went to dinner with the group and said my goodbyes and headed back to my hostel and went to bed as my flight had me arriving at the airport at 4 am the next morning.

Day 12: Today I left New Zealand with many great memories and headed back to Melbourne. 

I know this entry was huge, and probably boring as my typing skills are lack today due to the fact that I am tired and getting ready to leave Melbourne, but my trip was outstanding. Overall, my time in New Zealand was amazing and I saw and did many things that I have never done before.  I met a lot of really cool people and plan to keep in touch with many of them and I am so happy that I got to experience New Zealand. It was one of my favorite trips and now I cannot wait to get to traveling aroung Australia, which by the way starts tomorrow!!

Tomorrow Miranda and I leave for Alice Springs and head though the outback up to Darwin Australia.  Between here we are doing a tour through a student travel agency and stopping and Ayers Rocks and Katherines Gourge, which I am really looking forward to.  After that we are heading over to Cairnes and going down the coast towards Sydney.  Then we are heading to Fiji for some time and at that point Miranda is heading home and I am off to Hawaii and L.A. before heading home.  I am completely exstatic about my travels ahead and will keep you all informed on what I am doing and my time here in Australia.

WOW this entry is huge!!! Sorry about that I hope you all didn’t get too bored reading about my New Zealand trip, as there is much more to say about it.

I am going to be putting my pictures up on facebook and I will post the links on here so you all can have a visual of my travels and the people and places a met and saw along the way! I hope all is well in the states and I will be filling you all in on my travels and be seeing you in August!

~Claire

         

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Sorry I haven’t written in so so so long, I’ve been really with the end of semester finals. But my last one is tomorrow and then its off to New Zealand for 10 days! I’ll be sure to let you all know about my trip, until then I better get back to studying!

~Claire

p.s. I heard about all the rain that Wisconsin is getting, stay dry friends and family

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It’s been a while since I wrote last but this past weekend makes up for it. Friday morning (and we’re talking before the sun has come up which isn’t usual for me) Claire, I, and our friends Nichole, Matt, and Brenna got up early and caught our 6:00 a.m. flight to Sydney. I was lucky enough to get a window seat and watch as the sun came up slowly over the clouds turning them from dark, blue and gray to that pearly white.

Once we landed, grabbed our bags, and caught a train into the city we headed off to find our hostel. It was my first time staying in a hostel and if I were to be honest I was a little nervous that we’d end up with bed bugs or some other horror story. We didn’t take much time to look around as our new roomates, a couple cute guys from England, were still asleep. So instead we headed off to find the Sydney Opera House.

To get there we went through The Royal Botanic Gardens which might sound dull but was the complete opposite. Once past the iron gates there were numerous statues, fountains, streams, spiders (for those of you who know me I’m sure you know these were not my favorite) and plants of all sorts. But the most surprising feature was the Flying Foxes (also known as Fruit Bats) that were flying around in daylight and hanging in huge gangs in the trees. We made our way out of the gardens and as we turned the corner caught our first glimpse of the Sydney Opera House. After taking many pictures, which we referred to as the “Mom Pictures” since that’s who would appreciate them most, we decided to take a tour of the huge famous building.

Inside we learned about the unique construction of the Opera House which was supposed to take three years and seven million dollars but instead took over a decade and cost 102 million dollars! We were able to see where many performers have come from all over the world to get the unique acoustic sounds and even saw ballet performers rehearsing.

After the Sydney Opera House we took a ferry ride as the sun set behind the Harbour Bridge and sail boats passed by lazily. After this we went up the Sydney Tower and looked out at the entire city lit up in the dark. The lights looked liked a blanket of stars going on forever.

Our second day started out early on a tour to the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. We stopped, first at the ANZ Stadium where the 2000 Olympics were held and then at the Scenic World where you could explore the Blue Mountains. Much of it reminded me of the Dells in Wisconsin with ferns and rocks everywhere but it was still interesting as Claire and I took the steepest train down to the bottom.

The big attraction of the area is three rocks called The Three Sisters. In an aboriginal story the rocks are believed to be three sisters turned to stone by their father with his kangaroo bone wand to protect them from a monster called the Bunyip. After the father turned them to stone he turned himself into a lyrebird but lost his wand and spent the rest of his time digging in the ground for it.

Next we went on a little hike on a path that Charles Darwin took in 1836. We had an AMAZING view of bluffs and Wentworth Waterfall. The Blue Mountains we learned appear blue because of the vapor given off by the eucalyptus leaves. On the way back us girls took a wrong turn but luckily our tour guide got us back on track and were able to go on to see some kangaroos in a campsite that were literally only a couple feet away from us. After taking some long naps on the bus on the ride back to Sydney we all went out for some drinks and fun in the city. When we asked the person behind the desk at our hostel where a bottle shop was she told us to go down a nearby street which ended up to be filled with homeless people settling into their makeshift beds. We quickly got out of there and went on with our night.

Our last day in Sydney started off slow but by afternoon it picked up when we climbed up one of the Pylon’s from the Harbour Bridge to get an amazing view of the Sydney Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, and the many ships passing by. Later on we took one of those ferries to the Aquarium which was one of my favorite activities. It had all sorts of aquatic animals from a lazy crocodile to sharks to seals. There were sea horses, octopus, lionfish, HUGE CRABS and colorful coral. There were sea snakes and frogs. But the best were the underground grass tunnels where sharks, rays, and sea turtles swam over our heads. We sat at the last tank and just stared for what seemed like forever as the brightest little fish swam past among the sharks. All of this watching fish made us hungry so we walked around the harbor to find a great seafood place to enjoy our last night in Sydney. It was a great weekend that went way too fast but Claire and I are planning on returning this winter (your summer).

-Miranda

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Guess what??? I spent the weekend in Sydney!!!!

So if any of you had read my previous post I’m sure you know by now that I spent my weekend in Sydney.  I can’t even to begin to explain the fun that I had and my love for the city.  Apart from it being my first time in New South Wales, and Sydney at that, it was also my first time staying in a hostel.  When I thought of staying in a hostel I thought of the horror movie, Hostel, when a few students go to stay in one and dont come out.  I’m glad to say that I did come out alive, with good regards to the place I stayed and even better of the people I met while staying there.  There were people staying there from all over the world, but mostly Europe. I can’t wait to meet other cool travelers on my other stays in future travels!

Okay so I guess you all want to know what I did on my weekend, well you asked for it….brace yourselves this might get long!

Friday morning (approximately 4 a.m.) the five of us got into the taxi to make it to the airport in time for our 6 a.m. flight to Sydney.  With tired eyes and messy hair we arrived at 7:30 a.m. and headed straight to the Harbour City Backpackers Hostel to drop off our backpacks and head out to the city and see some sights.  We all decided right away that we wanted to go straight to the city center (a.k.a. The Rocks district) and see the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.  To get to the harbour we walked through the Botanical Gardens in the middle of the city.  I couldn’t believe the beauty of the gardens, all the exotic plants and animals, especially the fruit bats, which are also called flying foxes. There were literally thousands of them in the trees hanging upside down, flying around and making noises.  Let me tell you I have never seen a bat any bigger in my life, they were like small airplanes (okay I may be exaggerating a little bit), but I did feel like I was on the set of Jurassic Park! It was amazing to see bats that size and in that number.  I read a little later that day how they were actually more of a pest animal because there are so many living in the gardens, and that they are ruining the plant life in the garden, but garden officials can’t seem to get rid of them.  I guess they keep coming back because of the safe habitat and abundance of food.  Well I’ll tell you it was an amazing site!  I also got to see a lot of cool plants and some of the biggest spiders in my life in the garden (some things I saw I liked more than others, eh hem, the spiders were not my favorite)!  Other than that it was an amazing garden and I was very impressed with it.

After the garden we headed to the Opera House.  I was ecstatic when I first saw the Opera House.  I was such a wierd feeling to be seeing something that I have seen to many times in pictures and on TV shows, but to be looking at it in person was awesome! After about a thousand pictures from every angle we decided to take a tour of the building, which I was skepitcal about at first, but so glad I did it in the end.  I learned to much about the building that I didn’t know before, like that the building was designed by a Danish man named Jorn Utzon in 1960, in which his winning design was part of a contest.  I also learned that his design of the Opera House broke many of the contests rules and that it was a late entry, so it was thrown out.  But because of a guest celebrity judge who insisted on looking at the thrown out designs (due to his lateness to the judging of the some 200 designs) he picked Utzons design as the winning one.  Utzons design was really cool because it mirrored a lot of the shipping industry that surrounded it in the harbour, such as the peaks of the Opera House, if you look at it from the inside it looks like the hull of a ship, and the front windows which are representative of a captains room in a ship.  Wow I sound like a boring history freak huh, sorry, I just thought it was cool!  All in all it was an awesome tour and I can’t wait to go back to Sydney before my departure back to the States and go to a show there. 

After the Opera House tour we decided to go on a cruise around the harbour, which was perfect timing because we got to see all of the Sydney skyline, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge at sunset!  It was a nice day, but it wasn’t over! We then went and had a few drinks before going to the Sydney Sky Tower to see the whole city from 80-90 some stories at night.  We got some really cool views and pictures of the city we had just looked at from the harbour.  After that it was getting pretty late and being that we had been awake since 4 a.m. and had to be awake and ready to go to the Blue Mountains the next day at 8 a.m. we decided to head back to the hostel and call it a night!

8 a.m. came pretty quick and before I knew it I was jumping on a bus and heading east to the Blue Mountains.  The name is due to the blue color of them, which is due to the vapor given off by all of the Eucalyptus trees.  I was impressed to see that they were actualy quite blue! On our way to the mountains we stopped at the Sydney Olympic Park, where the Olympics were help in 2000 (I think).  It was cool to see a place where such big games took place at and see the grandeur of it all.  After our quick stop it was straight to the Blue Mountains.  No offense to Aussies but their mountains are a little more like our foothills or bluffs if you ask me, but hey this is coming from a girl who goes to the rockies every year!  The touristy part of the Blue Mountains are a rock formation called The Three Sisters.  It was pretty cool because the name was given after an old Aboriginal Legend.  It was said that there was a man who was an Aboriginal wizard with three daughters who lived in the mountains, and there was a beast called a bunyip that lived at the bottom.  So every time the father left his daughters he hid them behind a rock wall and told them not to leave.  One day his daughters were messing around and a rock slipped and fell to the bottom of the mountain which woke up the bunyip and came after the girls.  The father heard the rock slip and ran to find the bunyip cornering his three daughters so he used his magic stick to turn his daughters into rocks, for the meantime, to save them.  At this point the bunyip went after the father where he turned himself into a bird, flew away into a cave and waited there until the bunyip went back to sleep.  When he came out he realized that he had lost his magic stick and couldn’t turn himself or his daughters back.  It is said that there is a lyrebird (the fathers bird of choice) still at the bottom looking and pecking at the ground looking for his magic stick to this day!  It was pretty cool because we did see a lyrebird at the bottom of the mountain!!

After seeing the Three Sisters we went on a hike to see a really cool waterfall and took the trail of a few famous explorers, including Charles Darwin!  The waterfall was probably the biggest I have ever seen and I was very impressed with it and the trail! After getting back to the bus we headed back to Sydney, with a kangaroo site stop.  When we got back we decided to go out on the town! We went out at Darlight Harbour to a few bars with some of our hostel roomates and had a really good (and late) night!

After recovering from our night on the town, by sleeping in, we headed to the Harbour Brigde Pylon lookout.  The Pylon lookout is at the top of one of the brick columns of the bridge.  From the top we got an aerial view of the whole harbour, including the Opera House, famous Luna amusement park, and the city center.  It was pretty cool because we learned a little of the history of the bridge and got some really great views as well.  After that it was off to lunch at a rooftop bar and then some mingling and meandering through the city to the ferry.  We took the ferry over to Darling Harbour to go to the Sydney Aquarium.  The aquarium was a pretty cool place, with lots of Great Barrier Reef fish (wish has me exicted to go in a month or two) and from Antarctica and other places in the southern hemisphere.  We went to the aquarium later in the day on a Sunday night so we were almost the only ones there which was really nice! I think we hung out in the shark pool tunnels for about 45 minutes!  Seeing so many fish got us all thinking of fish for dinner so we headed to a resturant along Darling Harbour and had a good last meal in Sydney.  We then headed back to out hostel to pack up and get a good four hours of sleep before the taxi arrived at 4:30 a.m. to get us on our 6 a.m. flight back to Melbourne!  We got back to Melbourne reluctantly (classes were not the first thing I wanted to do when I got back from a weekend of little sleep and lots os activities) and back to the real world. 

Although at the end of my weeked I was as grumpy as can be due to little sleep and the weighing thought of classes all day I can still say that it was a great, amazing, awesome weekend and I wouldn’t change a thing! One thing that I am happy about is that I will be going back to Sydney in a matter of months to do the things I didn’t have time to on my short weekend! It is said that people of Sydney and Melbourne have a rivalry as to which city is better and I can honestly say that I love both cities and if I could be in two places at once…well you get it

Anyway its the big birthday week for Chisholm residents, I think theres about 7 birthdays this week, so we’re heading into the city for taco’s and half price cocktails to celebrate! I’m going to take advantage of tonight because after that I have to get into my school work, as I only have three more weeks of class left then its on to New Zealand and all around Aussie!

If your eyes hurt because you’ve been staring at the computer screen for a lengthy time now you can’t say I didn’t warn you! I will write again when I do more fun things! Until then hope all is well!!

~Claire

P.S. Will put up pictures of all of my adventures when I figure out how!

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Hi all!

So you all probably think I’ve fallen off the face of the earth since I haven’t written in so long but I am alive! I’ve been pretty busy actually, which may be why I haven’t found time to write! Anyway, life in OZ has still been great, and full of fun times with new friends and old (eh hem Miranda). Between papers and biology labs I’ve been having a good time.

The other week it was Nathional Netherland Day, or as the Dutch call it, Queensday….OR as I like to call it, Orange Day (because orange is Hollands national color) and a few of us decided to join Shoes and K in their celebrations. Shoes, K, Anne, Jane (an Aussie friend) and I rounded up all the orange clothes we could find and headed into the city to start the celebrations. We had a lot of fun drinking dutch beer, eating dutch food, and watching dutch clog dancing (which by chance Shoes and K said they have never seen oddly enough). Let me tell you I thought that being from Wisconsin I knew how to party but boy was I wrong, the group at the venue were party animals! I could have sworn it was Octoberfest in LaCrosse! All in all I had a really good time!

Last weekend, starting with Thursday, Miranda and Jane and I headed into the city and had our favorite $10 Pot (which is a half pint of beer) and Parmas at Father Flanagans for dinner and headed back to college for a little get together with some friends.  We wanted to keep our night a little quiet as the next night was the Chisholm Suitcase Ball!

The Chisholm Suitcase Ball is an annual semester party where a suprise weekend get-away is drawn for.  Basically they draw your name out of a hat and if you win you have 20 minutes to pack your bag and you get swept away for a weekend vacation! Needless to say I didn’t win, nor did I expect to as I am usually unlucky when it comes to drawings and raffles and such. Another fun thing about the Chisholm Ball is that its a theme party. This year the theme was “A day at the races” (and by races they mean horse races, not nascar ). Unlike the States with horse racing, the women wear facinettes (feathery clips) in their hair, not hats, and I am proud to say that I made my own! The girls wore dresses and heels and the guys wore suits, and let me tell you the guys looked good, you know, after they washed years worth of dirt off of themselves and got a clean shave :)!  The venue was a really nice hotel and the open bar was a plus, for some anyway, as I am proud to say I may have been one of the few girls that could hold themselves together and not lose my dinner…. Anyway the night ended up being really nice and I had a really fun time!

Saturday night it was a friends birthday so a few of us headed to the party street in Melbourne, Brunswick street. We went to a pub that was playing 90’s music (think Ace of Base, Salt n Pepa kind of music) all night! I’ll tell you I now know what it feels like to say “Oh the good old days!” Anyway Miranda and I had a blast reliving the past with our new OZZY friends!

The rest of my weekend was pretty much spent recouperating and getting ready for the week ahead! So far this week I have gone to a few classes and had a few lattes, nothing special, and have been looking forward to my weekend trip to Sydney! Miranda, I and a few other Wisconsinites are heading out tomorrow (Friday) and coming back on Monday so I will tell you all about my trip upon my return. But I should really be going as I have to be awake in three hours to go to the airport for my exciting weekend!

Hope all has been well in the US!

~Claire

 

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Okay, so I didn’t go to Penguin Island to see Phillip, but I did go to Phillip Island to see the Penguins! I know I haven’t written in awhile but I really was just focusing on getting through my homework week!

 In the last entry I think that I said that I was going to go to a concert in St. Kilda, well lets just say that the time of it wasn’t very clear. We headed into the city (on SLOW public transportation) and then past it to the beach subard of St. Kilda to see a really good band play at a bar there. We all thought that they played at 8 o’clock, and when we got there we found that they actually didn’t play until 12:45 a.m., almost 45 minutes after the last tram heading back to campus was. Needless to say we didn’t get to see the band play…maybe next time? OF COURSE!

This last weekend was tons of fun, let me tell you! After I handed in my two huge papers on Friday, Miranda and I decided to go into the city and go out with a few European friends. We went to a bar called the Deck thats probably my favorite bar in the city. Its located on the top of a building thats in the middle of the city sky scrapers and it also had an amazing view of the Yarra River! Can’t wait to go another time, as every time I have gone thus far it has proved to be a blast! So after a fun Friday night out in the city with friends I had to get home and get ready for my day tour to Phillip Island!

Saturday we (Keesjan, Shoerd, Anne, Miranda, and I) booked a day trip to Phillip Island to see the penguins.  Before we could do that we made a few stops in Victoria.  We stopped at a place called Mauri Conservatory and got to see all kinds of Australian animals (such as Tasmanian Devils, Dingoes, Womabts, Wallabies, Koalas, Kangaroos, and even Alpacas and Emus!) and even got to feed a few. Amongst all of my animal encounters at the conservatory I did decide that I want to take a dingoe home with me, wombats are sleepy during the day, Aussie alpacas are crazy, and that kangaroos look great in shades! It was a really cool experience because we all got to see and pet most of the animals and get up close and personal My favorite part of the visit was feeding the wallabies and kangaroos, and even an albino kangaroo! It was really great to get so close to the kangaroos and pet, feed and accessorize them! After spending some quality time with some Australian animals we headed down the road and made a stop at a really beautiful beach.  The tour guide let us walk down the beach and he picked us up at the next stop, even though the Koolen 5 were a little late getting back (we had a little too much fun playing in the water and sand I guess).  You are all probably wondering who the Koolen 5 are, well obviously it represented the five of us that went on the trip! The tour guide gave us the nickname because the reservations for the trip were under Shoes’ (Sjoerd) last name, Koolen, and he suspected that we were going to be trouble, which was a valid suspicion ;), and gave us a name to be remembered by! It made for a good laugh! After the nice stroll on the beach we headed onto Phillip Island to watch the penguins come home from the ocean after a long day.

Once we got there the five of us walked down to the beach and parked ourselves in the front (with all the kids by the way ) to ensure we got the best view.  Apparently seeing penguins were a very big tourist attraction as there were hundreds of people there.  What it entails is watching the cute 33 cm (which I must add are WAY smaller that I had imagined) penguins come from the ocean just after sundown and waddle to thier burrows for the night.  It was really funny to see the penguins, which are only found in the southern hemisphere, come out of the water and weeble wabble their ways to their burrows.  The tour guide told us that they come out of the ocean and find thier burrows after dark because they are scared of predators and they head back to the ocean in the morning before sunrise. I also learned that the penguins burrows can be anywhere from a few meters from the ocean to kilometers away!  I couldnt imagine them waddling kilometers away from the ocean to get to their homes, it would take them forever! After watching the penguins head home for a little bit we decided it was time for us to do the same and make our way back to Melbourne!

This morning I had made plans to have a relaxing sleep-in and day with a little homework in between movies.  Lets just say I didn’t exactly get what I wanted, although in the end I would much prefer the day that I had. I was awoken at 9 am by my phone with a call from a friend (who is also the inter-college sport coordinator) asking me if I could play footy for the Chisholm girls team.  At first I was thinking no way, I’m just a spectator and would NEVER play, well needless to say she convinced me.  I have played sport for Chisholm already this semester against the other colleges (dorms as we call them) on campus and lets just say that Chisholm has the reputation for losing, which today was no exception as the girls lost 125 points to zero, sad huh! Anyway footy is a sport that is completely new to me and I was not looking forward to the tackling part, death was ringing in my ears, especially when I saw our competition, which consisted of the biggest and bulkiest girls (if you could call them girls) from the other college. I swear I thought I was going to die!  But in the end I learned that getting tackled was actually fun, and tackling other girls was even more fun!  I actually didn’t do so bad, for an international, as my Aussie teammates pointed out! I’ve got a few bumps and scrapes now and WOW am I sore, but we have another game next Sunday and I’m looking forward to it with all my tackling might!  I hate to say it but Australian Rules Football is really growing on me, almost to the point that its overcoming my love for American Football! I have probably made a few of you hate me now huh…well I’ll tell you, just watch a few games,  its very addicting and fun! Although you may need an Aussie to explain the rules, because at first it just looks like a mess!  Well I need to go ice some joints and cover a few wounds (just kidding) oh yeah, and send a few sorry letters to the girls of the other college for tackling them like no other! Haha, just kidding on that one too!

Will write more once I have more news, and I am sure I will because there is a huge Australian holiday on Friday, Anzac Day, and I dont have classes, so you know what that means….

Oh yeah I almost forgot, I heard from a little bird that its getting pretty nice over there in the US? Getting colder here….so enjoy your beautiful Spring days as it is Fall/Winter here now!

~Claire

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Yesterday Claire and I, along with our friends Keesjan, Anne, and Sjoerd, went on a day trip to Phillip Island to watch the Penguin Parade.  At our first stop along the way we got to get up close with some other awesome animals.  The first animal we saw was a baby wombat named Wilma.  Because wombats are nocturnal, Wilma just snoozed in our tour guide’s lap while we all got to pet her.  After feeding a koala and checking out a crocodile and tasmanian devil, we entered the best part of our tour.  Each of us grabbed a small container of food (okay so I grabbed two) and went into a pen where we got to feed wallabies, a sheep, a goat, alpaca, a mule, a miniature horse, and kangaroos!  We also got to get close to some koalas and emus and even pet a dingo.  The sheep, alpaca, and miniature horse were  pretty aggressive in trying to get food and the goat even got his head and horns stuck in the fence, but the best part was feeding the wallabies and kangaroos.  They would grasp our containers of food or our hands that they were eating from.  While feeding them we were allowed to pet them and check out their tails which are extremely muscular.  There was even an albino kangaroo!  All of this was a lot of fun, but the funniest part of our little experience was when our friend Keesjon (we call him K) started putting sunglasses of the kangaroos and wallabies.  The animals were so focused on eating they really didn’t seem to care.  Our entire tour group was laughing as we took pictures with animals wearing shades.

The first part of our trip was so much fun I probably could have been happy to end there but we went on to a beautiful beach.  We took a walk on the soft sand and dipped our feet in the cool water.  We goofed around, taking pictures and writing messages in the sand before heading back to our bus.  Next we went to The Nobbies where fur seals sometimes come.  We didn’t see any seals but we saw the beautiful black rocks around the water as the sun was heading down.

Our final stop was to the Penguin Parade.  We made our way down to the beach where a huge crowd of people gathered, waiting and watching to see the Little Penguins make their way from the water to their homes.  We sat front row and waited under the moon for the sun to go down completely behind us.  Soon there were little tiny penguins coming out of the water, getting nervous and running back, then coming out again..  Groups of them would come out together and begin their journey towards their little burrows.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures because the flash is said to blind them but on our way back to our bus we did get to see them up close under some of the walkway lights.  The day was sunny and warm.  I’d say it was one of my favorite trips that I’ve went on here.

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Hey all! Sorry I haven’t written in a few days I have been pretty busy with homework and papers, well school actually. To catch up on what I’ve been doing I guess Ill start with last weekend! Friday night was a pretty low-key one for me. A bunch of people from Chisholm College (my dormatory) went on a camping trip but I wasn’t feeling to well so I decided to have my own movie night and rest. Saturday night I went to another footy game, Essendon vs. Carlton. My friend Sam got tickets from a friend and we got to sit in the best seats in the house, right in the center line of the field and on the second deck, perfect! I don’t think we could have asked for better seats, although I was a bit dissapointed that I didn’t bring my camera, it would have opted for some great pics! As for the school week I have been catching up on some left behind homework in preparation for a big paper due next Friday!  Tomorrow (Friday) a group of us are going to a footy game in the city and Saturday I am going to a concert in St. Kilda (a subarb of Melbourne) so I’ll be sure to let you all know how my weekend pans out at a later date! Heard the weather was getting a little better in Wisconsin! Who Hoo!

All for now, will write again when I have more news
~Claire

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