A wild [insert name of potentially lethal animal here] appears!!

So, anyone who knows me will also know that I am scared of just about everything that life throws at me. Being in Australia has not helped this fact, since all of the wildlife is absurdly different to the way it is back home. Don't get me wrong, some of it is beautiful and amazing, but, as predicted, I am constantly terrified of everything around me.

I'll start with some of the nice stuff. For example, the birds here are beautiful! There are wild parrots all over the place, and each one seems to have a different, but equally amazing pattern. What with Wollongong being a seaside town, there are obviously seagulls, but their beaks and legs seem to be much more of a vibrant red colour than the ones back home. There are even a few pelacans who swim around the harbour on a regular basis (pretty much all the time, I see them every time I'm there). Even the ducks look different (they have really thin necks, and really big heads... I always think it looks like the head should fall off).

No matter what they look like, the birds seem to have confidence in excess. It takes a lot to make some of them fly away. The parrots are pretty playful and just fly around you (or maybe that's just me..?). There are cockatoos everywhere, and one of them even came and landed on my balcony while I was studying out there one time (I almost pooped my pants). They're a lot bigger close up, and it looked angry so I gave it an orange but it wouldn't go away. I resorted to shouting at it through the fly guard so that it couldn't get me.

The cockatoo that landed on my balcony and scared me so much

It's spring over in Australia at the moment, which of course means that all of the chicks are hatching. There are a few families of ducks that live on campus, and there are road signs to tell drivers to watch out for crossing ducklings. The parent ducks can actually be pretty hostile (I've had one hiss and charge at me as I walked past). Apparently a big thing over here is the danger of swooping magpies. I've been told that if you walk under a tree that has a magpie nest in it, then mama magpie will swoop down at you and try to peck your eyes out! There was a warning email telling us to avoid a certain part of campus that magpies are known to nest in, and I've not quite mustered up the courage to walk past there yet. There is a wikipedia article which makes the whole affair sound terrifying ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Magpie ) and the magpies are huge over here, so I don't think I'll be taking my chances any time soon.

Recently there has been a chicken wondering around the uni campus and around our accommodation. No one knows where it came from, and one day I wasn't concentrating on where I was going and ran into it at the top of my stairwell. I was so shocked when I saw it that I actually yelled (it probably sounded something like "ARRRGHHGHHAAAAHHHWWOOOAAHHAH"). I had no idea what I should do with it, so eventually I went to get Tash who helped me shoo it down the stairs.

As for the aquatic life over here, I find it fascinating. One day, Charlie and I were walking through campus. She looked into one of the many ponds and just said "WHAT THE F*** IS THAT?!" When we went to look a little bit closer, we saw that there were dozens of eels in the water along with a heap of small fish. I remember being shocked that something which is so "exotic" to us could be in suck close proximity to us the whole time and we hadn't noticed. Another time, I was walking to class and noticed a tortoise on the side of the foot path. I sat there for about five minutes just watching it poke its head in and out of its shell, and was devastated when I realised that I'd forgotten my camera (not left the house without it since to avoid other similar happenings). And when Charlie, Amanda, Debs and I were checking out the rock pools on the beach, we saw some red lump and couldn't decide was it was, so of course we poked it with a stick to find that it was an octopus!! That was probably my favourite find of the trip so far! It's not all fun and games though, because as summer goes on, there is more and more likelihood of jellyfish being in the water. No one has ever died from the sting of a blue bottle jellyfish in Australia, but I've heard the sting hurts like hell.

I haven't seen many reptiles apart from small brown lizards while I've been here, I saw a pretty big one today though and managed to get a picture before it scurried away. Wherever I go though there are warning signs about brown snakes and black snakes and other assorted dangerous snakes. I'm kind of curious to see one, but would probably be petrified if I did.

I haven't really seen anything in terms of wild mammals apart from the possums that live around campus. The Australians hate them and consider them to be vermin, but I think they're adorable and stroke them whenever they come down. The cutest thing was that when we first arrived in the country, one of them had just had a baby, and would come down with the baby on its back. There are, of course, the kangaroos and koala bears over here, but we don't see much of them in Wollongong, and the only experience we've had with them are in zoos. We did see a few wild roos on the road trip, but not for very long.

So I've talked about birds, fish, reptiles and mammals, so it is inevitably time to talk about creepy crawlies. After all the scare stories I was told before I came here, I am VERY relieved to say that I have had very little contact with spiders of any kind. When I first got here, I would check under my duvet and under the toilet seat for any that might have been under there, but after about a month I realised that I was just being silly, and that doing these things was probably not necessary... A small spider did land on me the other day when I was taking a walk, and I didn't crap my pants when I saw it, so I'm probably getting closer to being over my phobia. 

There are some pretty crazy bug here though, for example, there was a green thing on the wall of our stairwell that didn't move for about a week, about the length of you average MP3 player. I always dodged around it, and one time I came close to poking it with a stick, but I couldn't bring myself to do it, and I was scared that it would eat me (obviously an irrational fear because it obviously wouldn't have eaten me...), and then one day it just wasn't there anymore.

When we were in Nimbin, us Europeans had our first experience with fireflies. They looked so beautiful as they danced around the forest. Hamish even managed to catch one so that we could have a look at one up close, and seeing its back end light up like that was just bizarre. There are also lots of dragonflies around the Gong. I've seen them before in England, but not as big as these ones, and the other day I was lucky enough to find one that was just sitting on a flower, resting. It didn't seem too bothered that I was coming closer, and it sat there and posed for about five minutes while I took photos of it. Then of course there are the many multitudes of different bees, moths, butterflies, ants (I saw a massive flying ant land on my window and start chowing down on a bug it had caught which was about the same size as it), and other mini monsters that live around Australia, but I'll write some more about them once I've seen a little more of them.

In other news, I finally decided where I'm going to WWOOF! I'm going to live in the "Earthship" for a week and help make the final touches and help out with the farm animals. Below is a link to their website, and if you get a chance you should look around it and have a read of what they're all about, because I found it really interesting.

http://homepages.callplus.net.nz/~b.gubb/

I can't wait for uni to be over, and for the three month break to get here. Plans so far are to go to NZ from 20th Nov, work on that farm for a week, meet up with the Norwegians/whoever else is there at the time to explore the country for the remainder of my three weeks there, fly back to Melbourne on 20th Dec, be in Albury for Christmas (at Flic's house) and in Sydney for New Year's Eve! From there I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, but I'm sure I'll figure it out :)

Spring Break (part 5)

Sorry for putting this last instalment of the trip off for so long, had a few deadlines... At the end of the last blog, we'd just been out to Cheeky Monkeys for our last night in Byron Bay. We woke up on the Thursday and had heard that the weather was going to be rubbish, but that it would be great on the Friday. We made a unanimous decision to leave Byron on the Thursday and get to Hamish's house, spend Friday on the beach, and be back in Sydney by Saturday. We managed to tear ourselves away from Byron, bid it fair well, and were soon on the highway... but made a McDonald's stop less than 10 minutes into the journey.

The day was long, especially if you were a driver. It mostly consisted of long straight roads with nothing but fields and petrol stations dotted along the way, but a couple of hours in, things got tense. My van was in desperate need of petrol, so I pulled in to a filling station, hoping that the others would follow... they didn't. We saw the boys' and Amanda's van zoom off into the distance and leave us in their dust cloud. Luckily, Matt's van needed petrol as well and pulled in at the same petrol stop, so at least we weren't alone.

We called the others to let them know what had happened, and set off again. They must have gotten quite ahead of us because no matter how fast Matt and I drove, we couldn't catch up. We decided to take it a little easier (after all, those vans were definitely not designed to go any faster than about 5 kph) and stick to the speed limit. A few kilometres later we passed another petrol station and I saw 2 camper vans, but by the time I'd clocked who it was we were well past it! At this point, Matt and I started to have some fun and we decided to overtake each other every time we got to an overtaking lane, which seemed to pass the time fairly efficiently.

A little later on we decided to take a rest, and told Matt, but he missed the turn off, so now we were separated as well. We continued on, and the weather decided to take a turn for the worst. It started to rain, and the wind got very, VERY strong. Driving became hard, and I really did think the van was going to blow over at one point. On top of this, the sun was rapidly setting and plunging the roads into darkness. I'm never taking street lights for granted again. Meanwhile, we found that we had overtaken Matt while they were resting, so given the harsh weather conditions and the fact that Matt had the satnav, we decided to make sure we got back together and met up in the next Woolworths. We told Amanda and the boys what we were doing, and waited at the exit of the car park for them to catch up, and when they did we got back onto the road and were all together again! The weather had died down a bit by this point, so I wasn't so afraid of being responsible for the deaths of two Norwegians.

It was getting close to 9pm when we finally arrived at Hamish's house. It was great to be under a proper roof and for once, and it was fair to say that we needed a bit of a drink! We partied the night away...

The next day, as predicted by the weather forecast, was beautiful! We were down by the beach by 9am because we had to rush to tidy and get out of Hamish's house before his parents got back (it turns out they could tell we were there anyway...). We spent the day lazing around in the sun, eating barbecued food, playing ball games, and looking back on the amazing week we'd had. That night we went back to Ham's house and had one last party before we all got back to the Gong. That's what we thought at the time anyway...

The way a fridge should look!

On our ninth day we had to return our van back to the depot so we set off relatively early so that we'd be able to get them back on time. We waved them all goodbye as we handed over the keys. We were all so sad to have to go back to Wollongong, because that would mean that the trip was officially over, but then Hamish had a brainwave, and offered to let us all stay at his brother's house in Sydney. It was an offer we couldn't refuse since none of us were quite ready to go back home yet. We had one last party, wasted the girls' mascara on drawing facial hair on people, and I let Gus shave a downward pointing arrow into my chest hair. Silly me.

We stayed up until the early hours making the most of our last night (it had gone light by the time we went to bed), and just like that, it was all over. We returned home, sleep deprived and dirty after a week of not showering once. That night, once we were back home, we got the projector and had a slide show of all the pictures from the trip and enjoyed our last moments of spring break together.

Since then, it's just been back to boring uni, but there are only 2 weeks of lectures left, and after that 2 weeks of exams, and after that I'll be in New Zealand!! Really can't wait.. The Norwegians and some of the boys are going over now too, so it will be one big party all over again haha, I hope my liver's ready for it!

Spring Break! (part 4)

We woke up on the fifth day of our trip and it was finally time to visit Nimbin. Nimbin is a place about an hour inland from Byron Bay, and there's no two ways to say this... It's the marijuana capital of Australia. It is a place filled with hippies, happiness and hemp, and anyone who has done any travelling around New South Wales told us that we HAD to go there, so what choice did we have?

After a quick dip in the sea, we set off and within about an hour we'd arrived at our destination, and it was surreal to say the least. The buildings were old and rustic, built from wood, and painted with colourful patterns (kind of like it was the set of a western film, but the paintings were all aboriginally styled). Every man had a long, grey beard, and every woman had dreadlocks (I bet Torill felt right at home!). As we drove through the town's only shopping street everyone we saw just looked chilled out, lounging around and shunning their responsibilities. Basically, everybody looked high!

When we got out of the vans, it was more than a little bit weird. The first man we encountered approached us to sell us some weed. We were a little taken aback, since when was the last time someone came up to you on a main shopping street, with a police station 150m away, and offered to sell you drugs, without even lowering their voice?! Of course, we had to (when in Nimbin, do as Nimbin people do... sorry mum and dad!) so a couple of the boys went around the corner to do the deal, during which time at least three other people approached us to try and sell us some weed or some "cookies" if you get my drift. It was like when you go to a European beach resort and every other person tries to sell you something and give you some kind of cheap deal.

After this, we took the time to look around the shops and cafés. Everything that was sold in any of the shops was in some way related to marijuana! There was hemp clothing, hemp bags, hemp hats (basically anything that can be made from hemp), grinders, pipes, incense, bongs, fertiliser especially designed for growing weed, and keyrings, postcards and other memorabilia with cannabis leaves on them.

We also took a look around the Nimbin Museum. This was probably one of the coolest buildings I've ever been in. It was made up of seven rooms, each with a different theme, and each jam packed full of interesting objects and artefacts. There were painted VW camper vans, aboriginal paintings, a room like a cave, and a room with a TV where you could watch a documentary about the history of the town.

 

When we'd got to the end of the museum, Karina, Noor, Charlie and I turned around a corner and went into a bathroom that had been painted with bright colours and still had pots of flowers on the windowsill, etc. We were looking around going "ohhh this is nice!" and "I love it in here!" when suddenly we heard a voice from around the corner ... "That's just the toilet guys..." - it was the curator, who (quite rightly) laughed at us as we then shuffled out of the building...

At this point, we made our way out of town and to a camp site nearby which was, of course, called the Rainbow Retreat (what else would you call a camp site in a town full of hippies?!) which had a similar kind of look and feel as the main town, all of the buildings were painted with cool aboriginal designs. I felt like it was a very trusting kind of place... for example, there was a fridge full of beer and soda. If you wanted one, all you had to do was go to the fridge, put your money in the tub and take what you wanted, but there was no one there to make sure you paid and no cameras. I loved that kind of attitude and I wish the rest of the world was more like this.

The camp site was very close to a little river, so Hamish and Aristo went for a little dip, looked (unsuccessfully) for platypuses and lobsters before we all sat around in a circle and sampled Nimbin's speciality. The rest of the evening was spent sitting around, eating, laughing, star gazing (the stars were AMAZING because there was almost no light pollution), and generally admiring nature. There was a forest right next to where we'd parked the vans, and when we looked in we could see little flashing lights. This was a first encounter for the English and the Norwegians with fireflies. It was beautiful. We stood there in silence surrounded by these little flashing lights, trying to take it all in. 

Once we were finished being amazed by small insects, we went back to camp and listened to Nimbin's local radio station. Funniest thing ever! The presenter would play half a song, read out something she'd randomly searched on Google, then play out the rest of the song. The things she was reading could not have been more random - mostly animal news. When she got to the big cat news, she growled... then there was silence for a few seconds... then she just started laughing, and so did we. We were all tired from the week of partying, so all went to bed at about 9.30 and dreamed about all the different animals we'd heard about on NIM-FM that night...

The next day we walked back into town to appreciate the wonderfulness that is Nimbin one last time... There was street art all over the place, and motivational messages like "remember that you're a spirit on a journey," "life is a dream, please don't wake up to a frightening nightmare," and "love is for real."

It's fair to say that we all had a great time in Nimbin. For me, it was not only because of the weed, but because there was a real sense of community, something that I've never really felt before. I also loved the spirituality and mentality of the town. Sure, they don't obey the government laws about marijuana, but they have their own laws which basically just involve being polite and courteous to each other (they had a Nimbin street code, which you'll be able to see some of if you click on the picture of me next to the car bonnet). There was no litter on the streets, everyone was polite and thoughtful, and what most appealed to me was that no one was in a hurry. The pace of life was slow and relaxed, which is exactly what I needed after having so many deadlines set in such a short period of time.

Eventually we managed to get back into the vans and drove back to Byron Bay. We ate, relaxed a little, then had another night out in Cheeky Monkeys. We made sure it was a good one, because it was our last night there! Thanks for being patient with all these posts! Hope you enjoyed reading this one as much as I enjoyed writing it :) 

Spring Break! (part 3)

After our first, very successful night in Byron Bay, I woke up super early (as in 6am early) because I needed to go to the toilet, but when I got back I couldn't open the door of the van to get back into bed! I assumed that Karina and Noor had just locked me out and didn't want to be woken up (what actually happened is that I was trying so hard not to wake them up that I didn't pull hard enough on the door to open it haha), so I decided to take a stroll to the beach and take some pictures of the rising sun. Turns out I was a little too late for that, but got some nice ones anyway...

After about half an hour of sitting by myself on the beach watching people walk their dogs, I got bored and went back to the vans... Still thinking that I was locked out, I just went to sleep on the grass near the vans (was I still drunk or something?) and a little later, I woke up to Amanda walking past just laughing at me haha.

When everyone else was awake, we went down to the beach again, buried Aristo in the sand, and went back to the boys' camp. On the way back, we climbed up one of the banana trees and chopped off a bunch. They're currently back at Kooloobong with us ripening up! After this, we sat around in the sun while Hamish gave us all a little concert with his accordion (an underrated instrument if you ask me). We soon decided that we should have a barbecue for Noor's birthday, so we went into town and bought the supplies and used the barbecues in the camp site. For any of the English reading, a barbecue in Australia is NOT as good as a barbecue back home! They all use hot plates instead of charcoal. Sure, they have the sun here, but there's nothing like the taste of a burger that's had a little too much time on the coals, even if it is pouring it down with rain.

The large knife you can see Aristo using to chop tomatoes is Eric's 'Gator' ... It's so multifunctional!

After the sun set, we did yet more lazing around until the sun set, and then started drinking again! We went to a place called Cheeky Monkeys - probably one of the best clubs I've ever been to! The inside is decorated like a rainforest, with wooden beams and crawler plants all over the walls, and stuffed rainforest animal toys scattered here and there. Instead of a dance floor, there were a series of metal benches to dance on (something I'd never seen before) so it was great to just have such a different experience of a night club!

Then, as always, we headed back to the camp site and had some more fun until the early hours. Those pictures were an attempt (and a bad one at that) to show the decor of the club and the multi-level-ness of the dance tables haha. I would start writing about the fifth and sixth days here, but there is A LOT  to write about for those two days so I will save them for a separate blog! Keep posted x

Spring Break! (part 2)

(This is a bit of a long one!!) After a very stressful first day, we woke up bright and early as the sun rose to expose the car park we'd spent the night sleeping in. Despite the setting, morale of the group was high, we all got up, had breakfast, took some pictures, had some laughs, and were on the road again by ten.

The day basically consisted of a lot of driving... We had a long way to go, and had to catch up on the lost hours from the day before so there's not much to write about here. We all had our radios in sync and were all singing along to classics such as "I want it that way" and "Moves like Jagger." We'd been told by our mate Woolies that we should check out the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, so when we got there at around 3pm it's fair to say that we were a little underwhelmed - it was just a big model banana that you could walk through with a restaurant and gift shop where you could buy many banana related products. There was also a banana plantation and a big slide, but you had to pay to go to them, so we didn't. Since we were there anyway, it would have been a shame not to buy some sort of banana paraphernalia, so a few of us bought banana splits and banana milkshakes and went back to the vans.

The ridiculousness of the banana theme park was soon out of our minds when we got back to the vans and discovered a leaking green liquid coming from Matt's van. After much deliberation, the leaking stopped and we decided that there was nothing to worry about (or at least nothing we could be bothered to worry about) and carried on. It was probably engine coolant, which is pretty bad... but we had no troubles for the rest of the journey so it can't have been that bad!

We drove more and more north, but soon discovered that a bridge further along the highway was closed due to a crash, so we called the other buys from our accommodation who were doing a similar road trip to see what they were doing. They told us to go to Jake's town (Jake is a close friend of Kooloobong, who used to live here, but doesn't any more, but is still around quite a lot anyway - he's the one that taught me to surf). We put the name of his town, Brooms Head, into the satnav and followed the directions it gave us. It directed us off the main highway and down some country roads, and I didn't mind as such, but people weren't very happy with the way that we were going, so we pulled over so we could discuss our next plan. We spent a few minutes bickering, some were saying "this isn't the right way" but of course Matt didn't know where he was, he was just doing what the GPS told him! Thankfully, a few minutes later Jake and the boys drove past, saw us and pulled over. We were now one big, happy family of fifteen and could make our way to Jake's place.

Obviously there was not enough room for fifteen of us in his house, so Jake showed us a camp site nearby where we parked our vans and settled for the night. We got there about an hour before the sun set, so we could really appreciate the area. The site and views were absolutely beautiful, kangaroos were hopping around casually, and the site had its own little beach. After two long days of stressful driving, a dip in a sea seemed like the best thing in the world to us, and so that's what we did. The water was so much warmer than it was down in Wollongong. Charlie even thought she saw a shark or a dolphin!

Shortly after the sun set, the rest of the boys joined us since they went shopping (and Eric bought a huge knife which he named "the gator" - good old peer pressure) and the partying soon began! The Norwegian girls had their first go at the goon bong, some were successful, some weren't so much, but we still had a great time even though there was a thunderstorm pouring down on us. All 15 of us somehow managed to squeeze into the boys' 5 man van and we spent the night drinking and merrymaking. A little later on though, Jake and Eric had a bit of a drunken argument, and Eric ended up kicking the door of a neighbouring van! Obviously the owner was not very pleased, and called the police. They arrived, but only told Eric to go to bed, and that they would come back to deal with it in the morning, so the night died down at this point and we all went to bed.

The next morning, Jake had gone, and I was awoken with a call from Jake telling me that his parents would cook some food for us if we got to his house, so we tidied up the mess we'd left in the pouring rain and got out of there as fast as we could before any other campers could get angry at us for keeping their children awake all night (woops!)

When we arrived at Jake's house, his parents were making pancakes, fruit salad, tea and coffee for us! They even let us use their shower! Almost all of the fruit in the fruit salad was home grown by Jake's family (made it extra tasty) and so were the coffee beans. I don't drink coffee so I can't tell you what it was like, but it sure smelt better than what I'm used to smelling :p

After we were all sufficiently stuffed and showered, we said a massive thank you for the generosity from Jake and his family and made our way to Byron Bay - at last! We had a look around the town, ate lunch (I had the most lush chicken burger), and found a camp site to park our vans. This site also had its own little beach so we went there until the sun set, and then headed back to the vans where we ate our tea and just chilled out together. We weren't going to drink that night, since we'd had such a hectic couple of days, but of course we ended up doing it in the end since it was Matt Barne's birthday! We started out at this place called the Beach Hotel, which played great music - a mix of eighties classics and modern dance tracks. This place closed at midnight though just as Matt's birthday ended, and Noor's birthday began! We bought Noor a couple of drinks (which he had to finish straight away since they were trying to get us out) and moved on to the next club - LaLa Land. It was crap. We went home less than half an hour after we got in. It was just too crowded and full of people who thought too much of themselves. After leaving here, we went back to our camp site and made our own party.

Our first day in Byron was great! The weather held out and everyone had a great night! There was more fun to follow - keep checking for more blog updates :) x