TASMANIA!

Tasmania. What could I possible say about Tasmania to do it justice? It is simply beautiful. Tasmania is a not-too-little island located off the Southern Coast of Australia, straight down the Bass Straight from Melbourne. It is its own state, and is the place where the population of Australia began as its isolation attracted the location for many prisons to be built for English convicts.

Tasmania is very different from the rest of Australia. It's geography is supposedly a combination between England and New Zealand, although I wouldn't know since I've been to neither. We splurged a bit during this leg of the trip and decided to go on a 3-day tour throughout the "wild" west coast of Tasmania. Could possibly be the best part of Australia, in my opinion.

On the tour, we went on a lot of hikes. We toured many waterfalls and temperation rainforests. We also got to play on some sand dunes for awhile, which was fun, but... didn't compare to Namibia. We also went on a 4-hr. hike around Cradle Mtn. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy up there, but still beautiful nonetheless.

One of the best part of the tour was getting to know all the random people in our group. We had people from Switzerland, Slovokia, Germany, Denmark, Japan, England, etc. I felt pretty uneducated to only know how to speak Enligh, as the perfect English spoken by most of our tourmates was their second, or ever third language.

I don't know what else to say about Tasmania, because words just can't do it justice. Look at the pictures, and you will begin to understand! :)

Victoria, Australia

Moving on from Sydney, we first made a stop in Australia's national capitol city, Canberra. We checked into a hostel for the night and after an accidental 2 hr bus ride (don't ask, trains are much easier), we made it to the Old Parliament building for a quick 45 minute tour before it closed. Since the town closes down at 5, we basically didn't have much else to do for the night. We walked around to see some of the monuments and other Australia history, which was an important thing to witness. We also walked by what we presumed to be an aboriginal protest against the Australia government - interesting.

After our quick stop in Canberra, we made like a baby and head out (thanks Tara), down to the state of Victoria. When I arrived in Melbourne, I immediately knew that I was going to love this place. The first night we spent in a hostel and were initially disappointed to find out that the only thing available was an 8 bed dorm. Much to our dismay, it ended up being one of the best nights we had during our entire trip. We stayed with a group of 5 Germans, who were the coolest people ever! We spent the entire night (literally) with them down in the bar and talked about all the cultural differences and our different experiences and takes on Australia. We were sad to leave them in the morning, but not too sad cuz we were excited to go and stay with my roommate's aunt.

When we met the Ferguson's (my roommate's aunt's family), we immediately fell in love with their family. We felt so comfortable there, and had a lot of fun hanging out with their son Dave, who is our age. Dave and his friend Chris introduced us to Melbourne by taking us out for Thai food in Chinatown, and showing us the local casino which shoots up huge balls of fire every hour, on the hour.

Coincidentally, the Australian Open happened to be taking place in Melbourne while we were there. Because I'm cheap, I didn't pay to go, but merely enjoyed seeing the action of watching the games on the big screen in federation square and around the quarts. Tara however bought a ticket and got to see Andy Roddick and Serena Williams play!

We also went on a spectacular world renowned drive known as the GREAT OCEAN ROAD. The road curves along Australia's south coast and is very similar to what you would see near Cannon Beach, Oregon. There are many rock formations out in the water, the famous ones known as the 12 Apostles, the London Bride, and Loch Ard Gorge (a famous shipwreck where 2 of 50 passengers survived by climbing up the cliffs to safety).

We also went to Phillip Island, which is known for its area of burrows in which penguins come ashore every night. That's right, I got to see penguins swim in from the ocean in their natural habitat. Why, I even got to see a few mate, and well, "Penguins are noisy lovers". It was a very awesome thing to experience. I'm talking about the penguins in general here. Moving on...

Other cool things we did in Melboure were go up the Realto Rower to the observation deck (too bad it was a bit cloudy), browse through the Queen Victoria Markets, walk inside St. Paul's Cathederal, visit the local icons such as the Arts Centre and the Yarra River, go the the Hard Rock Cafe (yeah I even got a shirt!) and we even ran into our German friends on the city circle's free tram! Talk about random!!

Without hesitation, I can definitely say that Melbourne is my favorite city in Australia. If I were to live there (and I'm not saying I'm thinking about it), that is where I would want to be. It's a liveable city, there's lots of sporting activities, the weather is a bit more liveable, and there are lots of fun and different cultural things to do. And it's got that nice small town in a city feeling I like. I'll admit that the people there may have had an influence on this affair.

SYDNEY, Australia

After a restless overnighter on countylink's wonderful train system, we arrived back into Sydney for a week to explore the area! We stayed with my friend Shell from camp in a suburban area called Lakemba, which has a huge Lebanese influence. Trust me, Australia is the last place I expected to see a woman dressed in robes with a veil only revealing her eyes, but I did.

We spent most of the week seeing the touristy, "hey I'm in Sydney" sites. One of my favorite things we did was tour the Sydney Opera House (which is amazing), and walk across the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which was also amazing (I love walking across bridges). My camera had a long, hard day. One of the funniest moment was during lunch when Tara had a seagull divebomb and steal a piece of chicken from her sandwich, when only moments later my friend Shell had her ENTIRE PANINI lifted out of her hands by a swarm of seagulls. The entire time I was sitting in the middle laughing at them, when all of a sudden a seagull decided to leave me a nice little present and poop on my shoulder. What a wonderful souvenir.

From Sydney, we also took the train into the Blue Mountains, which is incredible (I'm branching out from the word amazing here). There are 3 huge rock pillars called the 3 Sisters which have an aboriginal story behind them which you can look up yourself if you are interested. Tara and I spent a night up there and walked to the 3 sisters lookout to see the sunrise. I felt more peaceful than I had in yonks.

We also celebrated my 22nd birthday in Sydney. We went to the world famous Bondi Beach, which surprised me when we walked in cuz the water was colder than Lake Superior in June. Yikes. But, the air temp was fairly nice (about 85-90), which made the water bearable. I was only sad that I didn't have a boogie board! The waves were awesome! For dinner, we went out to a place called Pancakes on the Rocks where I had Banana Pancakes (no Jack Johnson though, sad), and a Banana Daiquiri (can you tell that I like bananas), and it was great. We finished off the evening by walking around the harbor and taking lots of pictures of the opera house and harbor bridge at night. What could be better?

I must say, that as cool as it was to see the opera house and the harbor bridge and ride the ferries, Sydney was definitely my least favorite place in Australia. Besides the icons, its just like any other city - big, overcrowded, and smelly - and I'm not a city girl. Everything we did in Sydney was fun and incredible, but I wasn't hesitant to move on from the chaos.

Queensland, Australia

After only being in Australia for two days, we boarded a train and headed up north to the sunshine state of Queensland. The weather is much nicer up here, and I have a red belly to show for it. We spent New Years on the Gold Coast, which is very similar to the Miami, FL area. It was hard to believe that it was New Year's - I spent the day going to a rainforest and swimming in the ocean, only to commence the night by watching fireworks in the park. It felt more like the forth of July! It was a lot of fun though.

After being at the Gold Coast for New Year's, we headed up to Brisbane. Highlights included riding the city cat ferry along the Brisbane river, going up to Mt. Coot-tha to enjoy the city's views at night, and visiting Steve Irwin's famous Australia Zoo! It's been a lot of fun, and I think the best part about it has been the generosity we've received from the Earle's, and getting to know a bit of the real Australia, behind the borders of tourism.

While in Queensland, we also took a plane up to Cairns for four days, which is situated in tropical north Queensland, just inland from the Great Barrier Reef. It was very hot and muggy up there, and our hostel was a bit, well, nasty, but we had a great time. I got to visit TWO world heritage sites - snorkeling in the the Great Barrier Reef via a restored sail ship, and the rainforest, which I viewed from a gondala ride and a scenic train ride! Going to the reef was deffinitely the best part of being up in Cairns. This was something that I had wanted to do my entire life, and I finally did! Although, one day simply was not enough to satisfy me. Now that I have seen it, I only yearn to go back and see more and more and more. But money doesn't grow on trees....

Well, our time in Queensland is nearly up, and later this afternoon we take a train back down to New South Wales to spend a week in Sydney. I have had a great time here and and am kind of sad to leave, but I need to keep my eyes opened to the future to see all the wonderful things still ahead in Australia!