Adelaide and the Gold Coast

So it's been a while since my last posting, and I know that if I were to put everything that I've done in the last two weeks into this blog... well it'd be awfuly long and very few of you would read it all. That said, here I go anyways.

My time in Adelaide was busy yet somehow very relaxing. Adelaide is a town on the southern coast of about one million, and so many small things about it reminded me of Austin. It holds a huge amount of festivals every year (I got to see their 'kite festival'), yet it's not a huge destination city. My uncle Frank took me out to the cliffs to show me his new model plane that he's been flying, equipped with a live-streaming video camera and matching headset. Maybe it's just me, but I thought that was a great way to get a good view of the coast.

One day we took a drive into the country where we stopped at a sleepy easter-weekend country market where I got the chance to hold a joey (baby kangaroo) among a few other animals. The animal care-taker wasn't letting just anybody hold the animals, but sufice it to say that she could tell I was from out of town. (I think me having a camera at a country version of a yard-sale might have been her first clue.) I got to see the beach, the mountain range, and even a short bushwalk to see a waterfall in the middle of the woods. Only thing was, there was no water. South Australia is the driest state on the driest continent, and right now they're experiencing their worst drought in ages.

Another notable event in Adelaide was my Auntie Suzzane's insistence that I see the movie 'Wolf Creek'. Knowing that I was going out into the outback to work for months on end, she thought this would be the perfect movie for me to watch. Yet she always said this while trying to hold back some laughter.. If you're unfamiliar with wolf creek let me just explain it this way. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" meets "Hostel" meets "Crocodile Dundee". My aunt has a very sick sense of humor.

A quick stop in Sydney to get my tax file number and then I was off to the Gold Coast.

The Gold Coast is the name for a strip of beach that goes for miles and miles and covers a few different small towns and one city called Surfer's Paradise. As the author Bill Bryson put it, this is Australia's Florida. If the city of Adelaide is a well kept secret out of the spotlight, then the Gold Coast is right on the other side of the spectrum. High rise hotels and residencial buildings guard the coast in a way reminisicnt of Miami. But enough of a geography lesson.. back to my trip.

My Auntie Joanne and Uncle Jeff have just built a BEAUTIFUL new home overlooking the water channel just a short drive inland from Surfer's Paradise. The house is incredible, the view is impressive, and the best part is that the neighbors are all close-knit as well. One evening a neighbor took me to see the an Aussie Rules Football game in downtown Brisbane (about 40 minutes north). I had my doubts that I would even understand the game, neverless enjoy it, but it turned out to be even better than rugby in my opinion.

Besides a Aussie Rules game I also had the chance to get on a wakeboard for my first time. This was a great opprotunity to show people just how easy it is for me to pick up new skills, namely the skill of holding on to a rope for half a second and then planting my face into the water. After fine tuning that trick to an art, I able to finally figure out how to stand up straight on the board. This, I found, made for an even more impressive fall.. again only seconds later. After a few encores I felt that people's patience was growing thin, and the sun was setting, so I got off and let the other neighborhood kids have a go. A bunch of d*m showoffs if you ask me.

One major roadblock to my understanding of my Australian heritage was the game of cricket. Oh cricket. Aussies seem to love their cricket in a fashion similar to that of vegemite. They take it as a national icon, but accept that you foreigners could never appreciate it like they do. And mostly they're right. Yet two days ago I found myself wrapped up in a backyard game of cricket. And while I still don't think I could ever sit in a stadium and watch the sport, I happily report that it's quite fun to play. It was close enough to baseball that I got really sad realizing that I won't be seeing a batting cage for at least another 8 months. :(

There is plenty more to share but I wanted to give y'all a quick snapshot.. I know it's been a while since my las tpost. I hope everything is going good back in the States, and I will be posting the address of the Gamboola Cattle Station here in the next few days. Thanks for the comments (please keep them p.c. tho), I really do appreciate hearing from y'all. Take care!

Station Work!

I've spent the last week looking into where I was going to travel next, revolving mostly around where the best casual jobs were. I had heard of a fruit picking industry in many places, but without my own transportation it seemed I was at risk of spending more money than I could earn in most places. I then started considering going to a 'jackaroo' school.. a 5-11 day course teaching travelers all the basic functions of a station worker and then helping them to find employment. Had done some research on these even before I came over to Oz, so I was pretty close to signing up for one up in Queensland that I could attend after I finished working at the easter show here in Sydney.

But..

Right as I'm in the middle of doing some more job searches yesterday, I get an email from the lady I sat next to on the plane from Honolulu to Guam, and then on to Cairns. She owns and runs a general store in a small town WAY OUT in the bush (about 3 hours inland from Cairns!) As the general store owner, she knows people from all around, and had promised to keep her eye open for any station work openings. Well yesterday she sent me a great one, a huge cattle station about 2 hours west of her had an opening for a stationhand! The people are supposed to be pretty nice, the pay is well, and my room and all meals are included. This is exactly the thing I came here looking for. The hard work and isolation will be pretty demanding at times I'm sure, and am I prepared competely for it?.. probably not.. but that's the point. I wanted something completly out of my comfort zone.. something very different. And this sounds exactly like what I was looking for. It's funny, but the quickest way of getting there will be to take a ride as a passenger of the MAIL PLANE that goes there weekly.

Being such a massive ranch I'm sure I'll be doing plenty of fence work, but there will be plenty of opprotunities to ride. From May - July the station will bring in 12 more men to help muster the cattle, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty with that as well. Mostly I have no idea what to expect, but I know enough to have jumped on the opprotunity and plan on starting in about 2 weeks.

Being as they want me to work for quite a long time (till around close to the time I'm currently scheduled to fly back to the States), I've decided to make sure and visit my Aunts before I go up to the bush. Last night I called my Aunt in Adelaide and booked a ticket over the phone Syd-Adelaide.. this morning, actually arrived here at 8am (12 hours after calling her). Next week I'll try to get up to the Gold Coast/ Brisbane area to see my other Aunt for about a week before finally going out to the station.

I had originally hoped to see my other cousins in Melbourne and some more of the country.. but this is one of the consequences of having a no plans trip. I knew I could never do EVERYTHING in 9-10 months, but wanted to take the best opprotunities I could as they came up. Wish me luck... and keep in mind, if i end up needing a doctor, they'll have to fly one in. Just like the weekly mail.

HOSTEL!

So I've finally done it, I took a train into the city and checked into a youth hostel downtown. As a member of the YHA, i'm staying at the Railroad Square YHA right next to central station. When I went to find my room (it's a 8 bed co-ed), I found it to be in an actual train car, positioned on the platform of central station. So when I look out one of the windows, I'm looking straight out onto the other platforms of one of the busiest stations in the city. Anyways, I just got a kick out of that...

http://studenttravel.about.com/od/sydneyhostels/ig/YHA-Railway-Square-Sydney/YHA-Railway-Square-Dorms.htm

I've always prided myself in growing the list of cities that I had personally explored, having wondered up and down the streets. D.C., New York, Sydney, Baltimore, London, Chicago all on it. However it soon became clear to me that there's a big difference between roaming a city by yourself for an afternoon, and actually trying to settle into the social scene. Staying out it in the suburbs was great as I got to spend a lot of time with my Nan who I never get to see, seeing as she lives half way across the world from Texas and all... but today marks my introduction into the actual backpacker culture that I flew all the way over here to find :)

This past week has been very productive, as I've broken through pretty much all the red tape that I needed to get past before being able to truly be a 'permenant resident' of Australia. My bank accounts, insurance, and citizenship documents are finally up to date, and I even have a job interview to work as an attendant for the 2 week Royal Easter Show coming up here in Sydney! (wish me luck). It's held at the Olympic Park area and is supposed to be a big deal... kinda like a state fair for the country. Forgive me if the whole documents and resident stuff seems a bit boring, but getting that all taken care of consumed much of my energy and travels over the past week. The rest of my energy went into trying desperatly to learn all the bloody lingo here in australia... anybody who thinks they speak english here are sadly mistaken...

G'day from Australia

So today is my third day here in the Sydney area, and so far everything is great! I had hoped to post a little more often between now and my previous update, but my Internet situation has been pretty precarious, even when I was in Chicago..

I'm paying here at an Internet cafe here at Cronulla Beach so I'll give y'all a few highlights:

In Chicago I had a chance to visit the Field museum, which had some world-class features including the famous SUE t-rex. Walked along Lakeshore Dr to see the famous 'bean' and skating rink, before heading to the top of the Sears tower. It was perfect timing because the sun set about 20 minutes into being up there, so we saw light, sunset, and the city by night all within one hour. Meg then treated me over to Gino's East Pizzeria where I had some awesome Chicago style deep dish pizza, before heading to the top of the Hancock Building to visit meg's friend who lives in a studio apartment up there. (The view sure beats the one I used to have in Jester...)

The "Eye Ball" was pretty amazing, of course the closest thing they played to country was 'save a horse, ride a cowboy', but none the less I had a great time there and at bars afterwards.

Jetting to Hawaii, i touched down in Honolulu and called up ol' Trey Mohle, who luckily was free for the evening to hang out. I actually got to hang out with an old family friend Elham and her fiance Jess as well.. (she was a next door neighbor back in 1990). So Elham, Jess, Trey, and I hit up some dinner on Waikiki beach, saw an amazing sunset, and then Trey took me back to the U.S. Marines base on the island that he's stationed at. When I think of 'barracks' i think of what I saw Forrest Gump sleep in, rows of bunkbeds in a big hall. No no.. Trey's 'barracks' are private apartments that again make my college living quarters go to shame.

After a morning of lounging on an INCREDIBLE beach on-base (I was the only one there!!), I was off for my marathon flights to Guam, to Cairns, and then finally Sydney..

Nan and Rod came to pick me up at the airport and took me on back to her house (where my mum grew up) so that I could settle in and recover from my jetlag. (This would be the morning of Friday the 7th) I did it with a little tv, a lot of sleep, and of course a little Vegemite. Apparently the small amount of Vegemite I like to put on my toast startles even my Nan... supposedly you're supposed to put it on a little more sparingly.. but of course that's never my style when it comes to food..

Yesterday I took a train into the city and hit up all of the touristy stops, walked the Harbour Bridge, toured the Opera House, had some coffee down at the Rocks, before taking a ferry over to Manly Beach. The ferry took me clear down and across the harbour, affording me an excellent view of the entire harbour. The evidence is all in my camera, but I don't have that on me, and I've yet to find a time-efficient way to upload the darned pictures online for y'all to see. After checking out the beach and talking to a few fellow backpackers, I then made my way (by ferry, train, and bus) to the famous Bondi Beach. It was packed, and in a single conversation I talked to people from Germany, Spain, Mexico, and Italy. They all seemed to like me plenty till I told them I was from the U.S.. which seemed to be quite a mood killer.

Today Nan, Rod, and I have come out to Cronulla Beach so that they could shop and that I could check out the beach. Each beach has it's own character, but I've quite enjoyed this one.. the shopping strip is full of little shops and cafes and plenty of people my age.

Well I just wanted to get a post out there since it's been a while from my last update.. but I hope everybody is doing fine.. and please send me some emails and comments to let me know how you all are doing as well

cheers