The home straight, then straight home

Well, after almost a month of being home I  have finally gotten around to writing my final blog entry. Previously, I had just 'Lived below the line' for a week... Nothing interesting really happened in the time between that glorious McDonalds after a week of near starvation and the end of my exams. There were a few legendary nights out, the details of which cannot be broadcast over the internet, and a lovely cruise around the Sydney Harbour with free alcohol (you can all guess how that went).

Here is a picture from fairly early on in the night when we still looked nice

The reason the last part of my time at the University of Wollongong is nothing to write home about was because of the fourty page thesis I had to write on my semester long research project, on top of other lab reports from other subjects and my job... There simply wasn't any time for adventure!

But after my first exam, I had a bit of time to relax before my second, so my mum and sister came to visit! I had cunningly told them that I would not get up at 3am to pick them up from the airport (a two hour train ride away from Wollongong), and that they should get the train wake me up when they got to the gong. When the day came, I borrowed a car, downed some coffee, and surprised them in the arrivals terminal. It made the reunion so much sweeter! I took a day off to show them around the main sites of Sydney and, naturally, got all the touristy shots...

Then after my last exam, my family and I flew up to Cairns to see the great barrier reef. Wow. I have never seen anything like it! Even after more than a month, I still haven't found the words to describe it, so some pictures will have to do

  

The thing I'm holding in the top right is a sea cucumber. As you can tell from my facial expression, they are bloooooody barmy! Also notice Nemo in the bottom left. From Cairns, we hired a car and slowly made our way down the Queensland coast towards Brisbane. I can't be bothered to write (and you probably can't be bothered to read) every little detail, so highlights include...

• Visiting the waterfall that the Herbal Essences advert was filmed at (because we're worth it)

   

• Kissing some birds 

   

• Sailing in the Whitsunday islands (where my sister saw a turtle... so jealous)

• Finally holding a koala (I got over my grudge against one trying to claw me to death)

• Watching the sun set over Captain Cooks first landing point in 1770 (bizarrely and unimaginatively the year of landing AND name of place)

• Brisbane's south bank, which had a man made beach next to the river

Travelling with my family... Yes, there were some minor dramas and differences of opinions, but I still had a great time (I wouldn't do it again though, sorry ladies). It was definitely great to see them again after such a long time, and I enjoyed showing them my way of travelling (even if they didn't appreciate it at times!). Once I was back in Wollongong, I had two days to start saying my goodbyes and to see as many people as I could before I left the country. The flight home was torturous. They kept giving me free vodka and playing films that would make me cry. Hell, with that much vodka in me, I was crying at the films that were't supposed to make me cry! Nevertheless, it went fairly quickly, and before I knew it, I was back home with my dad, his wife, her child and MY DOG! HOORAY! I missed my dog a lot.

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So, predictably, since I've been back a lot of people have asked me how it feels to be back after such a long time. I don't know if everyone has had this feeling, but quite frankly, I've just not had the time for it to be weird to be back! I started a full time job four days after landing back in Blighty. When I've seen people, it's been like I never left, and I've just generally been ridiculously busy. 

Do I think I've changed? Yes, but not in a bad way at all. After having only 30kg to transport my life half way across the world, I feel a lot less materialistic. I keep finding bits of tat around my room that I definitely will never need. I've become more accepting of more different people, more liberal on a lot of issues, and a lot more laid back (before I left, I was the UK's biggest stress pot). I really hope these new qualities can last!

Someone told me the other day that they viewed me as a yes-man. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, it's someone who just says 'yes' to every offer they receive. Looking back on my year, I now know where they are coming from. I think it's a great way to be, and a great way to be perceived, and I think that one of the reasons that my year was so fantastic was because of this 'yes-man' attitude, so my first piece of advice for anyone who is going travelling is to always say 'yes.' Answer 'yes' to every offer and you will, I guarantee it, love your trip.

My second piece of advice is to always have a positive attitude, and to find the best in every situation. Sure, at one point of the year I was at rock bottom, in debt to two different banks with four accounts, my parents, 

and my friends, [warning, this was caused by too much saying yes] but I knew I'd be all right eventually. And yeah, I stayed in some pretty horrible conditions over the year (namely Tony's house in Wakerie) but I looked past it and accepted that finding a dead mouse in the toilet was just normal in a house like this.

Do I miss Australia? Of course I do, it was my home from home for a year, but as much as I miss the places and the people, I'm starting a new, exciting chapter in my life that I'm very much looking forward to, and in my eyes, it's a good thing to not dwell and to always be moving forward in life.

Thank you so much for reading this post, and any other posts you may have read. I means a lot to me that you want to know what I'm up to! Keep tuned for more posts from me in the future, whenever and wherever they may come from.

Year in Australia, over and out.

Live below the line - the aftermath

So as you may or may not know, I recently spent five days 'living below the poverty line.' According to the Oaktree foundation, people who live in extreme poverty in Australia have only $2 per day to survive which has to pay for food, drinks, a place to stay, electricity, education - and many other things people like us just take for granted. Luckily for me, and the other people taking the challenge, we had $2 per day for food and drink, and our accommodation and other expenses didn't come into the equation.

Despite this, it was still hard. I ate a lot of rice, drank a lot of water, and as my house mates can tell you, I really, really missed having cups of tea! The experience has taught me how difficult it can be to have no choice about what to eat, and how having to survive on very repetitive meals can drive a person insane, especially when we're used to having such varied diets - I'm glad it was only for five days!

The food I bought for the week which came to $9 - I later got some sweet chilli sauce for $1

I'd say the hardest part wasn't a constant feeling of hunger, but a constant feeling of being unfulfilled. Living off a diet of carbohydrates is by no means satisfying, and my body was craving nutrients, so as a result I ate, and ate, and ate until I could physically eat no more.


There were many temptations along the way... All I wanted was a sprinkle of salt on my rice. I started thinking things like "no one will know!" ... but I would know, and I'd feel far too guilty to justify the slight improvement to my meal. The challenge got harder as the week progressed, and some people cracked under the pressure, but most of us stayed strong.

I had this meal probably 7 times over five days Not fun!

We held loads of fundraising events in the lead up to, and during the week to try and raise as much money as we could. Having things like bake sales and barbecues and not being able to eat anything is murderous! But it all paid off... Before the week started, Casey panicked in an interview and said that the Kooloobong team could raise $5000 ... We all thought she was crazy, but the kindness and generosity of our friends, family and the public was overwhelming, and we raised OVER five thousand dollars! This is enough to fund twenty full scholarships for children in Papua New Guinea, and help them break out of the poverty cycle.

Of course, we went to pig out at McDonalds as soon as the event was over

The amount of money we raised also managed to attract the attention of a local news broadcaster who interviewed us after the event - and this interview can by found by following the link below...

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/05/17/3505023.htm 

I'm fantastically proud of the amount of money raised by team KB. I would also like to say a special thank you to Miss Casey Madigan for her manegerial point of view, and for remaining a constant ray of sunshine, optimism, and source of laughter throughout the week even though she was going through the challenge herself :)

Begging for Beggars

Hello everyone! So every year since I started university I've done something that involved raising money for charity. In my first year, I had a great time treasure hunting around Europe for Sheffield RAG with four amazing people, having the best time, and got barked at by French dogs and whipped by a stripper.

Last year, I hitch hiked to Krakow, Poland via Slovenia with Todd and Steph on Bummit - we experienced eastern European chavs throwing rocks at us, and all had an absolute roller coaster of emotions - but at the end of the day I still had an amazing time and would do it again in an instant.

This year, though, I will be "living below the line" between 7th and 11th May - which means living below the national poverty line (that's just $2 per day) to raise awareness of the extreme poverty that goes on in the world. The money raised for this will go towards building schools, finding teachers and providing scholarships for children in Papua New Guinea, one of the southern hemisphere's most poverty stricken countries. I was inspired by a dear friend of mine, Helen Pitman, who went through the ordeal last year, and was further encouraged by several other Kooloobong residents taking part.

Anyone who knows me knows I like my food, and I like a lot of it, so this will definitely not be as much of a treat as my previous charity experiences! So PLEASE sponsor me for this. Maybe you will spend $5 (about £3.50) on charity this week instead of booze. My target is AU$400, which is about £260 - no easy feat with the amount of time I've given myself!

You can sponsor me by clicking the above image ...

... or following this link: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/danjenks

Much love! x

Reggie's Last Stand

Friday the thirteenth of April 2012 saw the passing of a close companion to many. Most of the people in Kooloobong will be able to tell you a story about how they felt unsafe whilst inside of him. We've had a lot of ups and down - sometimes we hated you, sometimes we loved you, but you were always there, and you will remain in our memories forever. This is the story of Reginald's departure from this world.

We had a great day planned. We would head to the seaside town of Kiama (about half an hour south of Wollongong), have a look around, take touristy pictures of the blowhole, pump up the tunes in the van and then move on to the descriptively named Seven Mile Beach. After a shaky start (we had to jump the battery)  we got to Kiama while singing along to many classics courtesy of Beyonce, Shania, Skaira and S Club. 

We lined up along the railings at the blowhole to take touristy pictures (I'm such a tourist that I took pictures of people taking pictures...).

A quick pit stop in Woolworths to grab some lunch, and we were on our way to seven mile beach. About half way there, I started to hear a rattling sound every time I used the accelerator (which, coincidentally, was a lot since I was driving) and that the temperature had sky rocketed. I pulled over next to some B&B and realised that the van was full of smoke and that we should get out. Luckily the woman who owned the B&B was lovely and let us chill out in the gardens to give the van some time to cool down. It definitely wasn't the worst place to break down in the world - such nice views!

A while later, we went back to Reggie to see how he was doing. After looking in the radiator, we saw that we needed to fill it up as all the coolant seemed to have disappeared, but when we filled it to the top, we could see that the water level was dropping quickly. So something in the coolant system was leaking (great news considering we bought a new radiator only three months ago). This didn't quite explain why the engine wouldn't start, though. We decided that we should get it towed to a mechanic, and see what they thought. When the tow truck arrived, I described the situation, and he said it sounded like a blown head gasket. Replacing one of those is a big job - definitely not worth replacing, and so we just called up a scrap yard.

When we got there, we were welcomed by a pack of men smoking and drinking beer in a shed full of spare parts. We unloaded the van, filled out the paperwork, and I asked about the money situation. The alpha male of the group said that on the phone, I implied that I just wanted to drop off the van and didn't want anything for it. I feel like this was categorically incorrect, but once he had the van, he had the power, and we couldn't afford to tow it to any other scrap yards because there wasn't one for miles. And so, the van was legally stolen from us. It actually was daylight robbery. 

As the sun set over Wollongong, so did it set on our hopes and dreams of freedom, convenient transport and not having to rely on the extremely unreliable free shuttle bus. Reggie managed to get us all the way back from Adelaide, and for me, anything after that was an added bonus. He will be missed by many, and remembered by all as one hell of a great van.

Long overdue update

So, about two months ago, Matt, Amanda and I arrived back to Wollongong (after a treacherous drive down a mountain with very sharp turns in the dark while it was raining and foggy) where we were greeted by a small gathering of the people who also lived here last session and had come back for more. We spent a few hours regaling them with our tales of radiators replacement, beach house borrowing and koala encounters before we all went back to our new rooms and tried to settle in.

So this semester, I've been pretty broke, and so it hasn't been too eventful. Here is a quick run down of some of the major occurrences

• We went to a pool party where I almost gave Charlie concussion, but she was fine

• Noor made a surprise reappearance and announced that he'd be here for at least one more semester

• I've been going to the beach A LOT, but forgot to moisturise my forehead, so it peeled

• I decided to take on a research project that dominates the latter end of my week

• KB residents went on a pub crawl where everyone had to wear orange and I got kicked by a member of the bar staff in one of the pubs

• We had a formal dinner with a 50's theme

• I saw The Blanks (Ted from Scrubs' band!) at Unibar - they were awesome

• I got a job as a dish pig / kitchen hand. I regularly come home with blisters from over-chopping
• I had to use my first two weeks' wages paying for the fine I got for driving an unregistered vehicle...
• I have a new found love of my friends' band The Omissions 

• I became one of the members of the 4am club (where we stay up until 4am watching movies and being nuisances) but I may have to retire soon, it's making me late for all my classes
• We discovered the magic of 24 hour shops such as K-Mart and McDonnalds

• I've embarrassed myself singing along to Beyonce a lot of times
• We ate pancakes IN A FORT!

• I beat Amanda in a sumo wrestling challenge. She never even had a chance (I let her win one round so that we could have a longer go...)

That's all I can think of for now. Next week is the Easter break, but I don't have anything planned yet - maybe something exciting will happen, maybe not, but it all depends on when I'm working - hopefully a few days in Canberra/Sydney are on the cards :)

Cultural capital, country's capital and back to The Gong

At around six o'clock in the evening on a Thursday, we arrived at an empty shell of a house with missing floorboards, dust sheets up everywhere and a half complete circuit board.Why were we in this house, you might ask - were we squatting? No. We had, in fact, been invited to stay here.

Cast your mind back to the last time I was in Melbourne. A kind lady called Sara cooked dinner for Charlie and I, and told me to give her a call if I was ever in Melbourne again. Well, I gave her a call, but unfortunately her spare room was full. She tried her sister's house, but that was full as well. As a last resort, she said that we could stay in her son's house, which was being renovated (hence missing floorboards, etc.). So we arrived and settled ourselves in on the sofa beds in the dusty lounge rooms - but it was like heaven compared to sleeping in the van!

The next day, I left the other two to their own business, as I was on a mission to buy some nice clothes (everything I'd taken with me had been practically ruined over the month we'd been on the road). While I did this I took the time to look at some more of the street art, and sample the city's "best coffee" (it wasn't all that). That evening, we took the tram down to St Kilda, which had been advertised to us as one of Melbourne's trendy streets with some nice bars, but in reality it was actually the place where all the prostitutes hang out (I didn't actually notice any, I was too busy trying $5 mystery cocktails and shisha pipes).

On Saturday, we went to visit Sara (it was the least we could do since she did find us somewhere to stay). She told me that she'd be with a client in her home office (she's a big-shot lawyer) so we could just walk in, make ourselves at home and help ourselves to anything in the kitchen. Her house was big and full of leather bound books - Matt and I were very jealous. After guiltily gobbling down some cereal, we didn't really know what to do apart from sit there playing with the dog in hushed tones until Sara was finished with her client, after which she almost force fed us and drowned us in cups of tea. After we'd been speaking for a while, Sara popped out of the room and returned with a key dangling from her finger and said "by the way, we have a beach house about an hour south from here if you want to stay there for a few days?!" We were all taken aback and didn't really know what to say. Being the polite, British idiots that we are, all we could do was repeatedly say thank you over and over again. Not only did she give us access to her beach house, but she then went out and bought bags and bags of food for us to eat while we were there.

The plan for the next few days was to drive down to Philip island to see the penguin parade, then stay at the beach house in Mount Eliza for a couple of nights. We ended up leaving too late to make it to the penguin parade, so went straight to the beach house with the intention to see the penguins the following night. We never made it due to poor weather, and we just spent two days at Mount Eliza mainly playing jigsaw puzzles (Amanda and I had a race to see who could finish one first, but I did the gentlemanly thing and let her win ;) ), eating, reading and watching movies.

On our return to Melbourne, we took Sara's dog Bonnie for a walk to the war memorial, which was closed by the time we got there, but to be honest I didn't mind so much because I've really missed walking dogs!! It was also a big novelty to have a dog that fetches sticks instead of just chewing them and growling when you try to get it back. After one final night at David's house, we set off for the capital of Australia - Canberra.

It's a long drive from Melbourne to Canberra - especially when you take the long route. We did pass a cafe on the way that served excellent tea and scones, though. I'd say it made it worth it. Luckily, petrol prices had dropped by 10c per litre since we last drove anywhere. Unluckily, every time we needed to buy more petrol we were away from all civilisation, so petrol costed about 10c per litre more than everywhere else in Australia, so we ended up paying normal prices. It's still cheaper than England though. At around 11pm, we arrived at Katy's house in Canberra (I lived with Katy last semester in Wollongong) and after a quick catch up we all passed out.

In the morning, Katy took us on a whistle stop tour of the city which involved seeing old parliament house, new parliament house, the aboriginal embassy, the war memorial, and the memorial fountain (from afar). It was all very pretty, but it was a very strange city. Most cities are built as people start to live there, but I got the feeling that Canberra was built before anyone moved there. A lot of people say that it was purpose built to be the capital, and you can see why. A lot of people also hate Julia Gillard (the Australian prime minister), but when we went to see her in parliament she seemed nice enough and quite charismatic. She does keep trying to enforce silly policies though (for example, a huge carbon tax, even though one of Australia's biggest exports is coal).

The next day, we went to Questacon, the Australian science museum (come on, we do biology, chemistry and physics - we couldn't resist) where we found out that Matt has the taste buds of a non-taster but the habits of a super-taster, I have the taste buds of a super-taster and the habits of a non-taster, and Amanda was patronised by a member of staff while she assembled a model of the human body ("Do you know what the gall bladder does? Erm.. yeah I think that's right...").

We were pretty keen to sample the night life in Canberra, but apparently because uni hadn't started yet, then it would have been rubbish. Maybe one day we'll be back, but for now, it was time to come back to Wollongong. I had a great three months travelling around and living out of a very small back pack. There were high points and low points, times when I was frustrated, but also moments that I never wanted to end. I met some amazingly generous, kind, interesting and funny people along the way, as well as a few weirdos, but I'd do it all again in an instant. Most of all, this summer has inspired me to try to be that person who takes in random travellers and treats them like royalty, as so many people have done for me. A huge thank you!

This will probably be the last blog for a while, until something interesting happens in my life.. for now it's just normal university life, so until next time, thanks for reading!

Adelaide to Melbourne

On our way to Melbourne, we decided to take our time and drive along the scenic route. When we were with Marion she told us to go and see the Murray Bridge. Apparently it's spectacular and the water is super clear. I had my suspicions though, since when we were in Wakerie, the water had a distinct brown hue. Sure enough, when we were crossing the bridge the water was muddy brown, and the bridge wasn't even that impressive, it was just a bit long...

We drove along the coast through the Coorong National Park where there were lots of big birds, most of which we could identify thanks to the birds of prey show on Kangaroo Island (I do wonder if we would have even noticed them at all if we hadn't been to that show?). The highlight was seeing a bird trying to take off but being swept aside by the very strong wind, it was like something from a cartoon. We stopped for the night in a small town called Kingston SE, where we rummaged through the Aldi bins to find flavoured rice and spicy biscuits, walked along the very long pier, and played cards on our new camping chairs.

The next day we drove to Mount Gambier, which is an extinct volcano with a very blue lake in its crater (the blue lakes I saw in NZ were much more spectacular in my opinion, but Matt and Amanda seemed to be impressed). After this we drove over from South Australia to Victoria. At the state border, there was a sign that read: "DANGER! Do not bring any potatoes or potato farming equipment into Victoria!" I really didn't know what to make of it, and decided that it would be best not to tell anyone about all the dirty potato farming equipment that we had in the back.

We stayed the night in a very windy town called Portland. There wasn't exactly a buzzing night scene in Portland. We couldn't even find anywhere to get a coffee past 6pm, so we spent our evening watching Beyonce videos in McDonald's until they started cleaning up around us, at which point we went to KFC where we got free cups of tea because the tea machine was broken (best thing that could ever happen to three English travellers).

Next stop was a small town called Port Fairy, which had a lovely little cove with rock pools FULL of starfish, and an island with picturesque beaches and a lighthouse. We stayed here for a while before moving on to Tower Hill (with some minor driving drama in between that involved Amanda doing a U-turn on a highway and Matt being very stressed, while I was in the back, cool as a cucumber, not really paying much attention). Tower Hill is actually a series of craters from another old volcano, we climbed to the top to see a quite frankly boring and beige coloured landscape - the same view that we'd had for the majority of the drive, but from higher up.

Amanda looking at the bleak view from atop Tower Hill

Soon after Tower Hill we were finally onto the Great Ocean Road (after Amanda and I had visited Cheese World and got a lot of free cheese tasters of course). I'm not going to lie, for me the first half of the great ocean road wasn't all that I'd expected. The roads were pretty straight and it was littered with rock formations like caves, arches and stacks, and I feel like because I learnt how they were formed in school, it now takes a lot for one to impress me - there were, however, some beautiful beaches and there was a pretty cracking sunset at the end of the day. I would also like to point out that just before dinner, Matt and Amanda revealed their skills as bird charmers and literally had birds eating out of the palms of their hands. It was very surreal for me to watch, and very disappointing when I discovered that I was not some kind of bird whisperer too...

The following morning, the "great ocean road" took us away from the ocean and into a rainforest. This is where the drive got interesting with winding roads and steep hills, though Matt and I both thought that the drive would have been much better if the van had a manual gear box. We saw a sign for a lighthouse, so thought we'd check it out. It turns out that it was a ridiculous amount of money to go and see it so we didn't bother, but it was SO, SO, SO worth taking that turn because we had our first close encounter with wild koalas! There were about eight koalas in this one tree, and one of them was about half a metre away from me when I stretched my arm out towards it! I could have stayed there watching it not do anything (all they do is eat and sleep) for hours, but alas we moved on - if we hadn't we wouldn't have seen the unsuccessful attempt of a man llama trying to mount a lady llama next to a goat that thought it was a llama. Poor little guy.

After this, we stopped for lunch in a small beach town called Apollo bay, which had warm water but the sea was full of seaweed which made swimming difficult and unpleasant. From here, the view from the road really was amazing. The sky was bright blue, the ocean was even bluer, and it was right next to the meandering road. It was great fun to drive, going slightly too fast around the corners to see what the van could do (but mum and dad if you're reading this, I slowed right down, almost to a stop, for every corner). This brought us to the end of the great ocean road, and a couple of hours later we were in Melbourne!