The Hungry Backpacker

Welcome to Bangkok!

2012-08-25T18:12:00.005-07:00

Leaving Australia after a year of living and working there was a weird feeling full of mixed emotions. Our plane flew right over the red centre reminding me of the amazing road trip we had taken through the Australian outback just a few months earlier. I have found Australia to be a country of great contradiction; the majority of its residents reside in comfortable leafy suburbs around the major cities and live life in their cars from drive through takeaway restaurants to sprawling shopping centres with anything they might want immediately accessible. In stark contrast other towns we drove through on our travels were 3 or 4 hours’ from any sign of civilisation and contained a pub, a post office and a general store. It was everything I’d expected it to be and a great shock all at the same time. what I had enjoyed greatly about our stay was the great earning potential we had found in Australia and we were leaving the country in a far better economic position than we had arrived in despite a 3 month road trip during which we earned nothing, spent thousands of dollars on petrol and lost out considerably when we were forced to sell our van for only 40% of what we had bought it for.

As we caught our last fleeting sights of the north west coast I tried to get myself into a different mindset; an Asian mindset. This was my first time visiting this exotic continent (and the fourth I can cross off my list) and I was unsure of what to expect. I hadn’t even been to a non-English speaking country since we had lived in France, and my French is passable so I was nervous about our ability to communicate with locals. This was made worse by constant stories of rip-offs and scams we could encounter on the streets of Bangkok. When we landed we were detained for over an hour by a gate change resulting in us disembarking away from the terminal and being transported by bus to immigration. The terminal building was surprisingly clean and attractive and immigration was pretty hassle free (although none of the pens intended for filling out the arrivals cards worked) we found our way to the airport express train station (by following English language signs) and boarded a train of the exact same design and furnishing as trains in the UK. The train deposited us at our stop of choice and we made our way the exit. As we walked onto the street the humidity finally hit us and we were heckled by a bunch of taxi drivers who wanted to drive us to the city for a flat fee (something to avoid as the metered rate in Bangkok is always a bargain) we followed the directions we had for our hostel, getting lost a few times and stopping to buy water at a 7-11 (there is a 7-11 every hundred meters in Bangkok) and finally found our way into a quiet residential neighbourhood with narrow alleyways and uneven streets. With a little help from a nice Thai guy who we were wary of due to the endless tales of scamming, we found the guest house and sunk into our beds for a much needed night’s sleep.

We had only booked the guest house for one night as it was easily accessible from the airport but far away from any of the sights of the city, so the next morning I tried to plan a route into the hub of the city. This proved challenging so we decided just to hail a taxi. One stopped immediately and despite some initial confusion about where we wanted to go, aggravated by neither of us speaking even vaguely the same language, and the driver having forgotten his reading glasses, we arrived in Banglamphu 25 minutes and 80 Baat (less than 3 dollars) later. We wandered away from the tourist ghetto of Khao San road and towards the slightly more tranquil riverside area, where our guide book indicated that there were a lot of reasonable places to stay. We came across one of the properties mentioned in the book, noticed that the prices were reasonable, and checked in. at this point we had been lugging backpacks around for a while and hadn’t eaten anything since the plane the night before so went on the search for food. We bought some bananas from a stand right outside our hotel and some mystery juice from a woman crushing an unrecognisable fruit at a stand on the corner of the road. We followed the river south hoping to find yummy eating spots and ended up in a university which we later discovered to be Thammasat. We continued following the river and unknowingly wandered through the amulet market, where a legion of discerning Thais were inspecting a wide variety of useless looking things with eyepieces and magnifying glasses. We stopped at a seemingly popular barbeque meat stand and bought some chicken skewers which were delicious. We meandered aimlessly and ended up at the Grand Palace, however lacked the energy or commitment to actually enter. We tried to relax in the park next to the palace but got sick of being harassed by people trying to provide unofficial and illegal tours of the grounds and decided to head back towards the hotel to search for sunglasses, as the sunlight was glaring and starting to give us headaches.

We made our way down a winding collection of alleyways (which I’m pretty sure I couldn’t find again if I tried) and somehow ended up on the road adjacent to Khao San, where there was no end of stands selling “Ray Bans” and “Oakleys” we found pairs that we liked, parted with the 300baht (10 dollars) we were asked for, being too lazy and frazzled to haggle, and avoided TukTuk drivers who wanted to take us on magical mystery tours of jewel shops and antiques dealers. We scurried back to our quiet little corner of the city and found a restaurant with an extensive cocktail menu and some adequate food options. After drinking a mango daiquiri I realised that it was almost entirely crushed ice and gave up on my attempt to avoid the drinking water. The food was uninspiring but the setting very relaxing and a combination of the previous day of travel, the lunchtime alcohol and the heat made us feel extremely lazy and relaxed. We decided to head for the river and cruise down to Chinatown on a passenger boat. After purchasing our tickets we realised we’d been ripped off, being sold tourist boat tickets for 10 times the price of the normal commuter ferry, but since it was still only a few dollars weren’t largely bothered. After seeing the commuter ferry we were glad we were on the spacious, uncrowded tourist boat as it was rammed with people and lacking in seating space. We enjoyed cruising down the river with a cooling breeze in our faces and were somewhat disappointed to have to disembark in Chinatown. We navigated the cramped alleyways watching a mainly native (bizarrely no one looked Chinese at all) crowd haggle and barter for a vast and somewhat strange selection of goods. When the people and lack of personal space became too much we headed back to the ferry terminal and returned to our hotel room, desperate to shower away the dirt and sweat of the day.

We had a relatively uneventful afternoon and evening which mainly consisted of drinking beer and cocktails in a variety of bars and having dinner in a very inauthentic restaurant with the largest, and most misspelt, menu we had ever seen. The vastness of the menu was accentuated when we realised that the menu that The BF was holding varied in many ways from my own. We went to bed quite early, worn out from the chaos and unfamiliarity of Bangkok.

The next morning we decided to throw ourselves into the deep end of city sightseeing and to visit The Grand Palace, stopping at a restaurant to have breakfast of a surprisingly delicious stuffed omelette. We arrived relatively early and were ushered into a room to cover up my immodest shoulders and legs. We spent a couple of hours wandering aimlessly around the beautiful temple and palace, admiring the craftsmanship and grandeur and watched the changing of the guards in a pretty courtyard. By this point I was swelteringly hot, swathed in what felt like many layers of robes so we left and headed back to the university area we had discovered the previous day. we took the opportunity to cool off and chill out by the river and watched a group of Thai girls wearing what looked like graduation robes and posing for pictures. After a stroll down a road that was described in my guidebook as “the Champs eleysees of Bangkok” and a few good photo opportunities we decided it was time for lunch and found a nice air conditioned place right next to the river. I thought it looked like a more authentic restaurant as everyone inside appeared to be Asian although once seated we realised that none of them were actually Thai. One couple spoke with strong American accents whilst another group was from Hong Kong and all were speaking English. Never mind! I ordered something described as spicy and found the mixture of herbs, chillies and peppercorns a little overwhelming, it definitely seemed authentic in flavour and The BF agreed that his stir-fry was the tastiest thing he had eaten since arriving.

It had got to the point in the day where a shower seemed necessary so we headed back to the hotel room to relax a little then spent a second lazy afternoon hanging out in bars with free Wi-Fi, uploading pictures for our friends and families and organising our finances and other exciting things. We took a tip to Khao San Road, the tourist ghetto and discovered that our skills of tout avoidance had improved considerably from the previous day. We nursed drinks at a busy bar and people watched, enjoying the chaos of the street outside. We had dinner in an awesome jungle style bar which seemed to specialise in Northern Thai cuisine. The food was amazing and we decided that eating-wise the day had been a great success. We returned to the hotel criminally early and planned events for the whole of the next day in an effort to ensure that we would get to see everything that we wanted to before the arrival of friends in the evening. We were planning on leaving Bangkok the next day and heading to a slightly less touristy spot.

Free with entry to the Grand Palace was a ticket for visiting a giant Teakwood mansion somewhere north of the neighbourhood we were staying. We decided we might as well check it out and set out early. It was already a swelteringly hot day and as we walked I dreaded having to cover up my legs and shoulders again to gain entry. The walk turned out to be much further than expected and when we finally made it we were shoved into a guided tour in a language we didn’t understand (either Thai, Korean or Chinese we deduced) with hundreds of school children and bus groups. We were the only white people in a sea of Asians and kids kept staring and pointing at us! The mansion itself was stunning and was obviously cleverly designed to be kept cool regardless of the temperature outside. The grounds were also beautifully maintained by a literal army of gardeners and we strolled through them towards the old elephant stables which now housed a museum on the subject of the relationship between Thai royalty and the animals. Leaving the grounds of the mansion we headed towards the river, past a very pretty flower market and took the ferry boat to Chinatown. We were excited to try some of the district’s famous street food but found the whole thing a little overwhelming and didn’t actually know what anything on sale was! All we had had for breakfast was some mystery baked items from a stall and we were reluctant to get the guidebook out in such a bustling area, so we found a reasonably priced restaurant with an English menu, specialising in something called fish balls and ate there. After the food we were less grumpy and headed towards the metro station. Just like the airport express the system was ridiculously efficient and clean and we found ourselves in Lumphini Park before we knew it. Exploring the park consisted of a lot of time sitting next to the lake, where we watched huge aquatic lizards climb out of the water and explore the banks. We had planned on renting a paddle boat and cruising around the lake, but the idea of peddling seemed unnecessarily difficult so we just relaxed and watched the world go by. .....

to be continued

Epic Aussi Adventure: The Great Ocean Road and Adelaide

2012-06-24T15:48:00.001-07:00

Today's Scenery:

Crazy Rock Formations on the Great Ocean Road

The great Ocean Road is a popular tourist drive in Victoria, which winds its way along the coast and through a number of small surfing villages and towns. It was constructed by returning WWI veterans in the memory of their fallen colleagues and meanders for over 200kms of slow but attractive shoreline. My advice for anyone planning on going there; bring a wind and waterproof jacket.

Cute Little Lighthouse

We started our great ocean road adventure in the town of Torquay where we had stayed the previous night after leaving Melbourne late in the day. Torquay seems to be almost entirely dedicated to surf culture and industry and is a short drive from the famous Bell’s Beach. Unfortunately the miserable, rainy weather that we encountered on our visit to this sacred surf mecca, coupled with it being a weekday in term time, resulted in us failing to see any spectacular surfing stunts from the handful of hard core enthusiasts on the water. We continued down the road to the extremely quaint split-point lighthouse in Aireys Inlet and braved the wind and rain to take a photo. It was at this point that the road became a lot more rustic and winding and our speed dropped considerably. We spent most of the morning negotiating sharp cliff top corners and wishing we were in a slightly smaller, more easily manoeuvrable vehicle.

The 12-ish Apostles

It was once we reached the shipwreck coast section of the drive that we realised what all the hype was about. The ferocious seas around this area have created a number of interesting and attractive rock formations, and suddenly there were scenic lookouts signposted every kilometre or so. Unfortunately this section was also horrifically touristy and swarming with Asian bus groups. With all the windy roads, and stopping to see the 12 apostles and other interestingly shaped rocks we had spent almost the entire day on what would normally have been a 3 hour journey so we stopped in the unexciting but relatively large town of Warrnambool for the night. In all honesty we were somewhat unimpressed by the great ocean road and didn’t feel that it lived up to the hype surrounding it. Maybe it was partially to do with the weather (although we have been assured that wind and rain is somewhat typical of this stretch of coast) but we felt there were just as stunning and far less touristy costal drives in Queensland and New South Wales.

ANZAC cookies

The next morning we realised that it was ANZAC day; a national holiday in remembrance of Australian and New Zealand servicemen who fought in the Battle of Gallipoli in WWI. We drove into our 4th state of the trip and headed towards South Australia’s second biggest City; Mount Gambier. Famous for extinct volcanos and great lakes we were somewhat surprised by the size of the city when we arrived. We quickly realised that if this was the second largest settlement in South Australia we were in for a boring drive to Adelaide. To break up the journey we visited the couple of the lakes and parks around Mount Gambier and had lunch in a pan-Asian takeaway restaurant with a baffling, seemingly never ending menu. Before leaving Gambier we bought ourselves some ANZAC cookies; the obligatory foodstuff of the aforementioned public holiday.

Turk meets some friendly German Ducks

The drive to Adelaide proved to be even more boring than we had expected with roads which stretched for hundreds of kilometres through nothingness. At one point, after I had just taken over the driving The BF whinged “That’s not fair, this is your second turn in the road, how come you get all the fun?” We broke up the journey by spending a night sleeping at a rest stop on the side of a road and when we eventually found civilisation the next day we were like caged animals escaping from captivity. We stopped in the town of Hahndorf, a traditionally German settlement 30kms from Adelaide, and had a fantastic time browsing shops full of cuckoo clocks, cured meats and tacky souvenirs. We decided to stay in Hahndorf the night, and headed to the Hahndorf resort, a very pretty tourist park with a large hotel as well as a number of extremely cute Bavarian style chalets and a far less fancy caravan park area. The resort had a number of friendly and tame resident ducks which delighted the BF no end (Ducks and Puppies are his joint favourite animals.) We headed to a pub for dinner and decided it would be wrong not to eat something vaguely German, so ordered schnitzels and beer, which actually ended up being one of the most reasonably priced meals of the trip thanks to a voucher from the resort.

Weird art in Adelaide

The next morning it was time to head into Adelaide itself, and we were again shocked by the size of South Australia’s capital city. We checked into our backpackers and went for an explore. We were meeting our friend Lauren, an Adelaide resident, for lunch but had arrived over an hour early so decided to check out the main shopping street alone. It turned out that this was plenty of time to get our bearings, as Adelaide city centre’s main shopping district seemed to consist of one long semi-pedestrianized street. We had a nice lunch and catch up with Lauren and made plans to meet up for drinks that evening. After she returned to work, the BF and I felt somewhat lost and decided that we should go and get haircuts as we were both starting to look a little scruffy. Wondering aimlessly though a mall we saw a sign reading “Men’s Haircuts $20, Women’s Haircuts $30” this seemed reasonable to us so we went inside and found a small Korean lady in a tiny hair studio. Her English wasn’t fantastic but her hairdressing was and despite her clearly not understanding what either of us actually wanted her to do with our hair we were happy with the eventual results. Scary moments included her grabbing the majority of my hair and chopping it off en masse far shorter than I had intended and the slightly bizarre shoulder massage which she included half way through the cut; maybe she’s found this helps her customers’ stress levels at the uncertainty of their future appearance. We maintained composure as we paid and left the shop and then broke into hysterical giggles ten meters from the door. Thank god neither of us is particularly vain!

After a fruitless couple of hours looking for desperately needed new clothes we met up with Lauren and went for a drink or five and some dinner in the slightly overpriced Rundle Street area. We had been told that most of the pubs were situated the other side of Rundle Mall at Hindley Street but our local tour guides ensured us that these establishments were a lot less pleasant. When Lauren decided to head home we weren’t in the mood to hang out at our backpackers so found a tiny cinema hidden behind some pubs and watched the next movie starting (which turned out to be Hunger Games)

Enjoying some food and wine

The following day I awoke unreasonably early but decided to get a start on the day. after showering and dressing the BF was still fast asleep so I decided to check my emails and catch up on my correspondents. It was then that I found an email telling me that I had been granted my Canadian Working Holiday Visa; something I had been awaiting for months and which had been causing me endless amounts of stress! Elated, The BF and I headed into town and found a Taste of Australia food and wine festival being set up along the riverbanks. To kill some time we visited the Adelaide museum and had some lunch then headed to the festival and spent a happy day toasting our good news with many a glass of wine and a constant stream of delicious finger foods. Basically, we were in our element! It was a lovely sunny day and a combination of the setting, the wine and the relief at obtaining my visa made it one of the high points of the entire trip.

The next morning, however, was one of the BF’s low points as I dragged him out of bed with a horrific hangover to go on, of all things, a wine tasting tour. He succeeded in being sick on a bin as we prepared to leave but decided he would soldier on and come anyway as he had already paid for his ticket. Before getting to the serious business of wine we headed to the giant rocking horse, an Adelaide Hills landmark and then onto the whispering wall; a bizarre phenomenon in which a dam wall was found to have amazing acoustic properties resulting in a person standing a hundred meters away sounding like they are next to you. All this time the BF was complaining that he was dying and was going to be sick again but after a visit to our first winery, Jacob’s Creek, and a couple of sips of different wines he was miraculously cured. The rest of the day passed much like any wine tour should, with a brief stop for a BBQ lunch and concluded at Seppeltsfield winery, an establishment famous for its aged port. We all tried ports of various ages and were even allowed to smell a 100 year old variety! Heading back to our hostel in the Groovy Grape tour bus the BF and I agreed that we had been pleasantly surprised by Adelaide and its (mostly wine-based) charms, although neither of us would recommend it as a place to go to shop or get a haircut!

Turk Meets....A giant Lobster

Turk was licking his lips at the sight of this giant crustacean

Epic Aussi Adventure: Melbourne

2012-05-24T17:43:00.002-07:00

Today's Scenery:

Melbourne's Trams

Todays Travelling Track:

Coolio- Gangster's Paradise

Myself and the BF had both been enthusiastically looking forward to Melbourne for the whole trip. We had been told it was a city with a great vibe, an emphasis on food and drink, and a vibrant alternative culture, all of which are things which greatly appeal to us. The city definitely didn’t disappoint.

We were staying in St Kilda, a seaside suburb a few Kilometres outside of the city and a hub of backpacker activity. It seemed like a long time since we had been in real civilisation and relishing the prospect of an interesting, imaginative meal, we parked the van, dumped our things in our hostel and immediately headed out to lunch. We found Acland Street, which served as our base for the next few days. The street is a foodie’s paradise, chock-a-block with restaurants, cafes, bars and takeaways and is lively at all hours of the day and night. We had lunch in Fringe, a relaxed looking bar/restaurant with an innovative menu. I had an amazing duck gnocchi and, despite it being 11:30am, a pint of Heineken (and in Victoria a pint is actually a pint unlike other Australian states.) Giddy with happiness and beer we decided to explore St Kilda a little more and went to look at Luna Park, the famous old school theme park just off Acland Street. The Palais theatre opposite caught our eye and we noticed that British comedian Ross Noble was performing there that evening. We were in a somewhat impulsive mood and decided that we would go and buy tickets (we were also well ahead on budget as the previous week had proved to be very cheap indeed) but were told that tickets were far cheaper if paid for by cash, so we scurried off to an ATM. As we walked down the street a girl coming in the opposite direction caught my eye. I thought she seemed familiar but couldn’t quite place why. I realised she looked just like Claire, a girl who had worked with the BF on Hamilton Island…then I realised she was looking right back at us. It turned out it was in fact the actual Claire, not just a doppelganger. She had nothing to do that day and uttered the immortal words “let’s go for a drink and catch up!”

The Graffiti Lanes

We headed to Fitzroy Street (via an ATM and the Palais to get our tickets) which turned out to be a cheaper, less classy version of Acland street with all the same character and charm (I tend to quite like scummier areas as I spent 3 years as a student in Brighton and also find they are usually far kinder on the budget…) and to a café/bar called Banff. Drinks were ridiculously cheap (although the beer was New Zealand Gold, which no one had ever heard of) and the food menu was interesting and very reasonably priced. We ended up at Banff for the next 5 or 6 hours drinking beer and chatting to Claire, and later another friend Cindy who arrived just as Claire was leaving. We soon realised that the time on our Ross Noble tickets was fast approaching and Cindy decided to join us for the show, which I don’t really remember thanks to the beer. The BF assures me that I seemed to enjoy it at the time! The plan had been to head out for the night after the show, however as we sobered up and our hangovers started to kick in we decided that wasn’t such a good idea and headed back to our hostel instead. I spent the night feeling extremely ill and vowed that I would never drink New Zealand Gold again!

Coffee Art!

Over the next couple of days we explored the city and met up with other friends and family members of the BF. It seemed that everyone we knew in Australia had moved to Melbourne and we had no shortage of people to hang out with or things to do. We managed to largely avoid touristy activities (aside from going to the immigration museum which was really interesting) and instead spent the next few days in the manner we had become accustomed; eating nice food, drinking nice drinks and enjoying nice company. It was nice. We had a hilarious lunch in china town with our friend Sarah and experienced one of the angriest waitresses I’ve ever come across. She dropped everything onto the table from a height of at least 20cms and brought us about 14 sets of cutlery as if she was trying to convince us that we didn’t actually know how to use chopsticks. Later that day we headed to Chapel Street, another interesting hub and took advantage of happy hour at a number of pubs along the road, including one that we later realised was a gay bar, and a really cool hip hop club which played awesome 90s music!

After a few days in Melbourne our livers and wallets were suffering somewhat and it was definitely time to move on. We had found it to be the most liveable place we had visited and decided to make it our backup plan if we couldn’t find jobs in ski resorts. On our final morning we went for a slightly hung over breakfast on Acland Street one last time, got the van serviced (which seemed to take an age) and headed off towards the Great Ocean Road!

Epic Aussi Adventure: 'The Prom', Phillip Island and Puffing Billy

2012-05-17T16:35:00.000-07:00

Today's Scenery:

Wilson's Prom

Today's Travelling Track:

Walk off The Earth- Magic

Our decision to visit Wilson’s Prom was based mainly on my need to walk around a bit and blow off some steam, and also partially because it is the most southerly point on mainland Australia. As we headed towards it we realised we wouldn’t make it there before dark and decided to stop at the Wilson’s Prom YHA which was in the nearby village of Foster. This was one of the most bizarre hostels I have ever stayed it. Basically just a normal house, it was unmanned and to gain access you had to call the owner, who would then deal with your reservation over the phone, allocate you a room and give you the code to get into the door. Despite this slightly confusing and disorientating process, once inside it was like someone’s seaside holiday home and the size gave it a great community feel (I also enjoyed having power points, lights and warm showers since we had been sleeping in the van non-stop since Sydney)

The following morning we said goodbye to all our new friends and headed to the Prom (referring to it as ‘The Prom’ makes it sound like we were attending a coming of age school dance, but it’s just what the locals call it, honest!) After a fairly long drive into National Parkland, we arrived at the information centre, where maps were available and camping fees payable. Cue somewhat bizarre conversation with bored-seeming National Park worker (B.S.N.P.W)

Me: We’re just after an unpowered site for the night if possible?

B.S.N.P.W: (in mock British accent) an unpowered site? (Back to own accent) love it! So we just need a few details, obviously you’re from the UK? (Starts filling in registration forms)

Me: I am indeed

B.S.N.P.W: I’ve always wanted to go to England, but I’ve heard there’s not a lot of jobs there at the moment with the recession…is that true

Me: Not really, as long as you’re not too specific about what you want to do you can usually find something.

B.S.N.P.W: Oh ok, so the unemployment isn’t as bad as the news makes out?

Me: Well, I have a lot of friends who have been made redundant from jobs a couple of times already and are only my age.

B.S.N.P.W: Oh that’s such a sad story, don’t worry, you don’t have to pay anything for camping tonight. You should tell everyone that story!

Me: (somewhat confused) Urm, ok, thanks….

B.S.N.P.W: Well best of luck both of you in your search for a job

The BF: (mumbled so as not to show his Australian accent) Thanks…

So that was slightly strange and I felt somewhat guilty accepting a handout from someone who had somehow got the impression that we were destitute Brits who had come to Australia to seek our fortune but free camping is free camping so we let it slide.

The BF's pet Wombat

We spent the rest of that day happily tramping around hiking trails and taking in the views. We had realised early on that the hike to the actual most southerly point would take a couple of days, and there was no way to drive closer so we gave up on that idea and headed along a couple of beaches, through a gully which had been partially destroyed by floods and landslides and finally up a mountain to see some panoramas of the area. We returned to our (free) campsite, exhausted and hungry, only to find that the takeaway and general store had closed at 4pm. We were forced to eat our emergency packet food which was upsetting as we felt we deserved a good feast after all our walking, but the BF was rewarded later on when a wombat wondered right into our campsite. After a lot of photography, and demands to be allowed to cuddle it, or take it in the van with us, I managed to pull him away.

Penguins in their nesting box

The following day we headed towards Phillip Island. This was the part of the trip I had been excited about since we had started planning it. Penguins are my favourite animals, and although I prefer the big King and Emperor varieties, this would be my first chance to see the species in the wild. I remembered watching a documentary back in England about Phillip Island’s colony and had wanted to visit ever since. We bought our tickets for the penguin parade as soon as we got onto the island and headed to the main town of Cowes hoping for lunch, and to find a caravan park, before it was time to head over to the penguin beach. We were successful in both, finding a yummy gourmet burger bar and a campsite right in the town and after a bit of a relax, headed down to the Summerland Peninsula. We had read that there was a large colony of Seals off the shore here and that they were visible from the Nobbies (a rocky headland on the peninsula) however we were disappointed when we got there and realised that they were living on an island a couple of kilometres from the coast (unimpressive to people who have been spoilt by the San Francisco Sea lions…) we decided just to head to the Penguins early and were very happy we did so. There were already a lot of tourists there and the information centre was very interesting and taught us a lot about the little penguin species. There were also nesting boxes with peep holes in them, some of which contained extremely cute sleeping penguins.

Trust me, I checked...

Before we knew it we were allowed to go over to the viewing area and The BF and I secured a prime position on the concrete benches. I feel I was very well behaved and patient at this point (and the BF agreed) as we had to wait a whole hour for the sun to set on the beach. Finally, as darkness drew in, we saw one tiny little penguin arrive on the shore. He looked around nervously and scurried his way across the beach. After this all the birds came in groups, and most skittishly returned to the water 4 or 5 times, building up numbers and waiting for any imagined dangers to pass. Finally, they would decide it was appropriate, form a tight knit pack and charge across the beach at speed and into camouflage. We watched this for a while and then decided to explore the boardwalks around the area, where the penguins would hang around, grooming each other and chattering away. We got to see lots of them up extremely close and even saw one little guy collecting materials for his nest. After being slightly too ambitious, trying to pull a live branch off a sturdy looking bush, he knocked himself over onto his back and rolled around for a second before getting back to his feet and (I swear) looking very embarrassed. Finally, the volunteers ushered everyone off of the boardwalks and into the centre again. I was extremely happy and was only slightly disappointed that we weren’t able to take any photos of the penguins (although understood entirely why this was the case!)

Celebrating my victory!

The next morning we headed to the Phillip Island Circuit, where the Moto GP is held. We weren’t allowed on the circuit itself (which is reserved for Hot Laps and Track days) but we decided to go Go-Karting on the scale replica of the original track. When I was a teenager I used to go go-karting every weekend, but I was definitely out of practice and took a couple of laps to warm up. By the end I was having an amazing time though, and had allowed my competitive side to come out, which is why I was so disappointed when the session ended, just as I had managed to catch the BF and was about to overtake him. I was happy to discover that I had the best lap time of the day (although we were the first visitors, so really I only beat the BF….) but decided it was probably best to let the BF drive Turk just in case I decided to start accelerating into corners or overtaking fellow road users in dangerous places.

Puffing Billy

We headed off Philip Island to the Dandenong ranges and the town of Belgrave, to ride the Puffing Billy steam train. Our Sat Nav was being particularly annoying and at one point even tried to direct us onto a ferry (adding an hour onto our journey) just to find a suitable spot to do a U-turn. Later in the day it directed us to a field in the middle of nowhere claiming it was a caravan park. When we (miraculously!) arrived at the train we realised we were one of the select few passengers who were not off of the same Japanese tour bus. This was entertaining as everyone in the group seemed exceptionally excited about the journey. I wondered if they were from some kind of trainspotters association. The train was beautiful and we were allowed to sit on the window frames with our legs dangling outside the carriage as it chugged through the hills. My favourite part was a big wooden bridge it crossed, and all of the level crossings were fun, where photographers always gathered trying to get the perfect postcard shot. After a happy couple of hours and a meander around a lake whilst we waited for our return journey we headed for a caravan park and slept soundly, excited that the very next day we would be in Melbourne!

Turk Meets....Some Highland Cattle

Turk was feeling a little camera shy today, but he had a nice chat with these furry guys!

Epic Aussi Adventure: Canberra, The Snowy Mountains and the Victorian Alps

2012-05-12T15:17:00.001-07:00

Todays Scenery:

The view between parliament house and the ANZAC museum

Today's Travelling Track:

Rage Against the Machine- Killing in the Name of

Oh dear, I really have a lot of catching up to do on this blog. As I write this we are currently in Coober Pedy, an opal mining town in the middle of the desert, on our way up to Ayres Rock and Alice Springs and yet according to you guys we’ve only just left Sydney! My apologies, time to get myself organised and write some blog!!

The BF was extremely unenthusiastic about visiting Canberra. Despite my protests that it was the capital city of his country and should hold some kind of special place in his heart he was pretty determined that it was going to be boring and characterless and persuaded me that it wasn’t worth staying longer than one night. In all fairness he was probably right, I felt that we were able to see everything of interest in our short stay, however there were a lot of things I really liked about the city:
1. Everything was free- we went to parliament house, the royal mint, the ANZAC museum and drove around all of the embassies and we didn’t pay a cent for any of it. We also found free parking a 5 minute walk from the centre of the city.
2. Driving around was easy- the crazy spiralling circle design of the roads meant that none of them were ever at all congested or busy, they were however somewhat confusing
3. The food was excellent- we walked from our caravan park to Richmond, and found an array of reasonably priced Asian restaurants and pubs and had a fantastic Malaysian meal, the next day at lunchtime we went into the commercial centre and found an number of cafes and restaurants. We ate at a bustling bakery/takeaway/café which served amazing, simple food in massive portions at local bakery prices.
4. Everything was very clean and shiny- nothing really looked old or disused.
5. Some of the architecture was stunning- it may have cost a ridiculous amount to build, but parliament house is quite breathtaking and there are great views from it to the ANZAC museum and vice versa.

So Canberra was a pleasant surprise for both of us but not the sort of place really worthy of a proper holiday.

Lake Jindabyne

Returning to New South Wales we decided to check out a few of Australia’s ski resorts. We are planning on spending a few months in this area after our road trip is over. We drove to Jindabyne, a pretty little town on a very attractive lake. Obviously since we were visiting in the spring it was far quieter than it would be in the midst of the winter season but a few of the shops and restaurants were still open and we spent a happy afternoon browsing a variety of snowboarding gear and meandering around the lake. The next morning we drove up to the resorts of Perisher Blue and Thredbo to see the actual skiing areas, although it’s very hard to visualise how they will look in snow. The drives themselves convinced us that ideally we’d like to find a resort with staff accommodation next to the slopes; Jindabyne was over 40km from both and we could imagine the roads to be difficult in snow. After a stunning but scary drive on an extremely narrow road which wound through the ranges (and upon which motorcyclists and trucks decided it was appropriate to charge around blind, narrow corners at about 150km/h) we arrived in the town of Mansfield. The next morning we drove up to Mount Buller and did our final ski resort town inspection.

At this point I had started to go a little bit crazy, even though we’d visited lots of mountains we hadn’t really had time to explore any of them properly or let off any steam. Now, whilst the BF can quite happily spend a whole (non-hung-over) day lounging around in bed, I am the kind of person who would get bored of this relatively quickly and need to go for a walk or a run or a cycle ride, all of which were great activities to do in the towns we were passing through. We decided to head down to Wilson’s Promontory to spend a couple of days hiking around and to expel some of my hyperactivity. After another beautiful but scary mountain road we ended up in the town of Healesville, where the BF told me there was a famous wildlife sanctuary. After the tense, winding road I had become restless and annoying (I am as bad as a child, honestly) and we decided to stop for some lunch. When I suggested an upmarket winery the BF was surprisingly enthusiastic- I think the idea of forcing some alcohol on me was appealing as it was likely to calm me down…

The Innocent Bystander turned out to be one of the most confusing places I have ever entered, with an artisan bakery, cheese tasting, wine tasting and restaurant all in one building. Lines of people snaked in various directions and the smells of all the delicious food wafted around temptingly. The building was like a giant converted warehouse with open kitchens all down one side and decking with extra seating on the other. Eventually we located a waiter who spent some time using a piece of space-aged high tech equipment to find us an empty table (which ended up being the one literally in front of him). The food was quite pricey but we decided to share one of their gourmet pizzas and a serve of homemade fries and even managed to steer ourselves away from our usual carnivorous leanings and order an entirely vegetarian pizza, with pumpkin, goats cheese and pinenuts. With a glass of sparkly wine in my hand and chaos all around me I finally managed to calm down. The food was amazing, and due to the waiter making an error and bringing us the wrong pizza (resulting in us waiting about 3 minutes longer than we should have done) we ended up only paying for the chips and wine. Good result in my eyes. So if you’re ever in Healesville go to Innocent Bystander, I promise you won’t regret it!

Turk Visits....Poop Fell On Me Creek

Turk had a little giggle at this hillariously edited sign

Epic Aussi Adventure: Sydney and Around

2012-04-20T17:10:00.001-07:00

Today's Scenery:

The Opera House and Harbour Bridge

Today's Travelling Track

MGMT- Weekend Wars

Here’s the thing about Sydney, and I’m not saying I don’t like it, or didn’t enjoy my stay there, but I feel its slightly missing something. Don’t ask me what or how this could be changed, but there’s a definite lack of the je ne sais quoi that makes my favourite cities feel different, special and generally nice places to be. Maybe it’s the age of the place, or the sheer number of tourists and backpackers compared to full-blooded Sydneysiders. Whatever it is I found I was looking for something more during my whole stay. Despite this I had a great time there and spent a good few days wondering around its streets, parks, malls, gardens and shops. The following are some of my highlights

1. Chinatown: Sydney’s Chinatown is probably the best I’ve visited, although it has grown into more of an Asiatown with restaurants of every cuisine you could imagine from the continent. Myself and the BF spent decent chunks of two different days meandering around its streets looking at the culinary delights on offer. As backpackers our favourite place was the food court in the mall above paddy’s market; almost a microcosm of the streets around it offered sushi bars, Thai noodle carts, yum cha and dim sum and everything else under the (land of the rising) sun. All the food we sampled there came in huge portions and was tasty and reasonably priced. A lot of Chinatowns are rundown streets in the bad end of town, but here in Sydney it’s an affluent area full of life and colour. It’s nice to see and almost gives you a feel for what classier districts of Asian cities might be like.

Cool statue we saw on tour

2. Free walking tour: For the first time in Australia we managed to find a free city walking tour. Whilst backpacking around Europe, free tours like this one had been our favourite pastime and were generally the first thing we would do in any city. Sydney’s offering took us around all of the walkable sights, although it lacked kooky fun elements of tours we took elsewhere; in Berlin our tour guide was an opera enthusiast, and treated us to a rendition of one of his favourite songs outside the venue which was hosting a performance of the play from which it came that evening; in Prague our slightly mental Czech guide told us stories of ghosts who wander the city streets and took us to a piece of modern art which was a mechanical representation of a man peeing. If you text a certain number your message would be spelt out by his urine stream. Despite no urinating statues, or opera renditions the tour gave us some great photo opportunities and helped us to get our bearings for the rest of our stay

Old Skool rides at Luna Parl

3. Self-directed wandering. The BF and I try and use public transport as little as possible. We had a couple of days in Sydney where we just walked with some vague eventual goals and points of interest along the way. We walked from kings cross to the fish market. We were too late for the auctions themselves and yet too early for lunch so we had an oyster each and returned to the city, passing the lovely Darling Harbour area. On another occasion we walked from our hostel into Woolloomooloo and then around the bay into the botanic gardens, after exploring them for a while we headed to the opera house, and then decided to just do the whole tourist route and traversed the Harbour Bridge. We visited Luna Park which felt like a slice of 50s seaside entertainment aside from all the One Direction merchandise everywhere (we think they were playing a gig there that night.) It is the opportunity for this aimless meandering which is the most enjoyable aspect of stops in cities and it makes me sad how many people miss out by taking busses and trains everywhere.

Showbags!

4. The Royal Easter Show: ever since I arrived in Australia the BF has been telling me that I HAVE TO go to a show. It seems these shows are the highlight of any Australian child’s year. The Sydney Royal Easter Show is the biggest of these shows, which seem to have originated as an agricultural event designed for showing your best animals and developed into a crazy mixture of Carnival, food festival, Outback performance and children’s toy shop. Show bags seem to be a large focus; these are packs of merchandise put together by a startling array of companies and sold for extortionate amounts. They’re sold in show bag halls, where kids run riot trying to decide which is the best combination of bags to buy to ensure the most chocolate and yet also the coolest toys and gadgets. We walked through arts and craft tents showing off the countries best photographers, sculptors, cake decorators, embroiderers and everything else imaginable. We filled up on free samples in the gourmet food tents and watched a particularly bizarre wood chopping competition.

woodchop

In the largest stadium the evening’s entertainment included rodeo, country music, motocross (unfortunately cancelled due to rain) and finally an amazing fireworks display, set to aboriginal music and complimented by lasers. It was a pretty cool day, but I left just wondering how much money the average Australian family would spend at such a show, especially considering the number of pricey show bags dangling from the back of each pushchair and up the length of each mother’s arms.

Bondi Beach

5. The beaches: On one afternoon whilst in Sydney we took the famous Manly Ferry from central quay to the buzzing suburb of Manly. We had been told that half of the fun of visiting was the journey, as the ferry offers views to rival all the luxury bay cruises operating around the area for a fraction of the price. True to form, we found Manly itself busy and unoriginal. Bondi Beach, on the other hand, pleasantly surprised us and despite a cold snap which had arrived overnight, we explored some costal walkways and then enjoyed some food and drink in one of a plethora of cool, gourmet cafes. In fact the BF and I both agreed that it was the only area of Sydney that we could actually see ourselves being able to happily spend an extended amount of time in.

6. The Blue Mountains: on leaving Sydney we headed to the Blue Mountains and spent a couple of days there. Despite the suddenly arctic temperatures (it was getting down to 5 degrees at night) we had a fantastic time and enjoyed a very long and somewhat challenging hike down a steep staircase under the three sisters and around the valley below. Later on that day we went mountain biking around some fire trails and awoke the next morning very sore and tired. The natural beauty of this area makes it a great city break, although we found it slightly touristy around the three sisters themselves, where parking costs were even steeper than in Sydney’s CBD.

The Three Sisters

Our experience in Sydney was also marred by a couple of minor details. Firstly we were there over the public holiday of Easter and staying in Kings Cross we found the area almost intimidatingly busy, this made driving around and parking very difficult and deterred us from visiting any of the bars, clubs or nightclubs in the area (the term meat market can be accurately applied to the streets of king’s cross on a weekend) Secondly the staff at our hostel, whilst very nice and friendly, were lacking in organisational skills and didn’t have much knowledge of the area. When we signed up for a pub crawl on the Monday it was cancelled due to lack of promotion and no one thought to let us know that it wasn’t going ahead. A lot of our fellow guests were staying at the hostel long term and didn’t seem interested in meeting new people or making us feel welcome. Nonetheless we did enjoy our stay and came away with some great memories, and even better photos!

Turk Visits....Bathurst Race Track

Turk lived out a lifetime dream of racing around Mount Panorama in Bathurst!

Epic Aussi Adventure: Learning to Surf, Newcastle and the Hunter Valley

2012-04-08T15:20:00.001-07:00

Today's Scenery:

Newcastle at Sunset

Today's Travelling Track:

Beach Boys- I Get Around

Spot x is an awesome place to visit even if you aren’t interested in learning to surf. Situated on a fantastic, deserted beach and aimed at backpackers it is a great place to waste a few days. The all-inclusive meals package is also amazing and I would have happily stayed there just to lie on the beach and eat. The camp is extremely relaxed and uncomplicated; I’m sure if we had wanted to we could have stayed for twice as long as we paid for, attending meals and surf lessons and nobody would really have noticed. Unfortunately, what myself and the BF learnt from our stay at Spot X is that surfing isn’t really for us, I will sum up why with a list of pros and cons.

Cons

· Surfboards are harder to carry than snowboards
· The hardest part is actually getting out to the right spot in the water, you spent most of your time battling past waves which break on your head and send you flying backwards, making your last 5 minutes of struggle pointless
· When you finally make it to the right place to catch some waves, the monster waves which crashed down on you as you struggled deeper into the sea invariably disappear and are replaced by an entirely calm and flat expanse of water with nothing remotely surfable
· So as not to offend anyone else, you then have to wait your turn with the other 50 surfers wanting to rip it up.
· When a wave finally comes, and it is finally your turn you then have to hit it in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, with exactly the right speed. If you don’t you will either end up popping up in the calm water behind the wave, feeling and looking like an idiot, or nose diving into the swell, just as it breaks and wiping out so hard that you lose track of where your board is, and swallow half of the ocean. You then have to repeat the previous steps.
· This all results in actually catching a wave correctly about once every half an hour, making it somewhat difficult to actually progress
· When you do actually catch a wave correctly, you then have to pop up perfectly, with your feet in the correct position and immediately attempt to turn if you actually want to get anywhere at all.

· After a couple of hours of all this, your knees, toes, fingers, elbows and any other part of your body in contact with the board will be covered in a painful, ugly rash. You are also likely to have swallowed a decent amount of salt water, and have water stuck in your ears. Even if you remembered to apply sun cream, it will have washed off and you will probably be sun burnt

Pros

· You look pretty cool
· It is quite fun when you actually catch a wave

· Once you make it past the waves, it’s pretty relaxing sitting on your surfboard out back, and the BF even caught sight of a sea turtle at one point.

I think I’ll stick to snow.

We spent 3 days at Spot X, with surf lessons at 7am and spent the rest of our time eating, lazing in the sun, reading and relaxing. We also had a very entertaining Saturday night, when the staff organised drinking games and got everyone involved. The fellow campers were all really friendly and there was a definite community vibe that we enjoyed greatly our whole stay.

Painted Rocks at Port Macquarie

Moving on and back into the real world, we headed south along the coast and stopped late afternoon in a town called Port Macquarie. It was nice to see the seaside without beaches to make a change and the bay was framed with large rocks, which had been painted by different people in a variety of fun and inventive ways. As we meandered along the front looking at the rocks, we saw a pod of dolphins swimming in the sea, just a few meters away from us. The lack of reaction from the fishermen, tourists and locals alike assured us that this was a somewhat common sight. We spent the night free camping at a rest stop and headed towards Newcastle the next morning. We definitely arrived in this city from the wrong angle, and were grumpy because unleaded fuel was proving very difficult to find in New South Wales (where apparently they are phasing it out in favour of bio-ethanol which we can’t use in Turk.) The main strip of pedestrianized city centre was a bit of a dump, and somewhat deserted as Newcastle is a university town, and its students were on Easter Break. In search of food we wondered onto Darby street, a far more lively hub of restaurants and cafes and finally started to warm to the city.

Stockton Bight

We decided to stay in a caravan park to save some money and drove around to Stockton, a charming little seaside town just two minutes on passenger ferry from Newcastle itself. Our second first impression of Newcastle was much better from the water and the ferry deposited us onto the wharf, where there was a brewery and lots of expensive looking restaurants and a historical walk, marked by plaques started nearby. We enjoyed a locally brewed, alcoholic ginger beer and then headed off on the walk. We found ourselves liking Newcastle more and more with its pretty Victorian buildings and naturally beautiful headlands and beaches. We ended up on Newcastle beach as the sun set and watched the surfers catch their last few waves as the sky turned pink. We ended up back on Darby Street and had a fantastically priced curry for dinner, then returned to Stockton via the ferry.

Stockton is most famous for the Stockton Bight; a 32km stretch of sand dunes which look a lot like a miniature dessert. We tried to visit them the following morning; however they seemed quite difficult to actually access. We ended up driving all the way to Anna Bay, where the dunes end and went for a little walk around them. They were really quite spectacular!

Amazing food at Mojo's

We headed into the Hunter Valley; New South Wales most extensive Wine country. Following the instruction of our guidebook we headed to Mojo’s on Wilderness, a deli and fine dining restaurant owned by a Michelin starred chef. Surprisingly the deli was very reasonably priced and served us the best meal I have had in Australia so far on a tray whilst we sat on beanbags in the grounds. Extremely happy and full, we headed to our hostel, The Hunter Valley YHA, probably the only budget accommodation for a 100km radius. Despite booking and paying for the cheapest beds possible in an 8 bed dorm, we were moved into a 4 bed dorm of which we were the sole occupants for our entire stay. The owner was very friendly and helpful and arranged for us to go on a wine tour the next morning. The tour was fantastic value for money, and for only $45 dollars each we visited 3 different wineries (with extensive free tastings,) as well as an olive shop with a variety of gourmet spreads and sauces, a chocolate shop which gave us a sample of each of its most popular products, a dairy with some of the tastiest cheeses I have ever come across, and finally the blue tongue brewery where the BF and I shared a tasting paddle of their different brews. The next morning, successfully sobered up after all of the wine, we drove around all of the shops again, also visiting a gourmet smokehouse, and collected up supplies for the best picnic lunch EVER! We drove up to a lookout point in the hills above the valley and ate the delicious food with a great view. After a short walk we left the hunter valley, extremely satisfied. It’s an amazing place to visit if you like food or wine and doesn’t have to be as expensive as you would think!

Turk Meets...A Giant Banana:

Turk gets one of his 5 a day!

Epic Aussi Adventure:Brisbane, Nimbin and Byron Bay

2012-04-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

Today's Scenery:

the rolling countryside of NSW

Today's Travelling Track:

Shaggy- Boombastic (Old Skool!!!)

I know, I know, it’s been weeks since my last blog post. The problem is that this area of Australia seems to sell itself as an area in which it is best to do very little, which I’ve been enjoying immensely.

Our stay in Brisbane was all business, business, business. We took Turk to get his wheels aligned and had booked him in for a service. We were driving down a busy road when The BF went to change gears and the clutch went all the way to the floor and stopped engaging the gearbox. Somehow we crawled over two lanes of traffic with the momentum we still had left and came to a stop on the hard shoulder. We called Traveller’s Autobarn who told us the name of a garage to take it to- coincidentally the same place that was due to carry out our service the next day, and transferred us to the roadside recovery service that we had been given as part of the package when we bought Turk. We discovered we were only covered for 10km of free towing, and we were 12km from the garage, so we did have to pay an excess (only $55) but we were extremely glad at this point that we had bought our van from Traveller’s Autobarn. After a terrifying journey in the tow truck, with an entirely insane driver who almost never looked at the road and instead was constantly fiddling with his phone, radio or GPS, we got to the mechanics to find they had stayed open to receive us but were essentially closed for the day so we wouldn’t know anything until the following morning. It transpired that we needed a new clutch slave and master (this is all like a foreign language to me so I have no idea what it means) and that it was going to cost us about five hundred dollars for the parts, labour and aforementioned service combined. Unfortunately we had just passed the 5000km point on our journey and were therefore not covered by warranty anymore, but we decided to think positively that at least it had happened when we were in a big city, not miles from anywhere where the cost of a tow truck could have amounted to thousands. During the rest of our stay we fitted a new radio and speakers into Turk, and a new headlamp which worked for about 10 minutes, and took the opportunity to do some general organising, the details of which I will not bore you with.

On our final day we spent a lovely afternoon wondering around Brisbane city itself. We parked for free in Fortitude Valley and had a great time poking around the weird little shops and restaurants. We had lunch at an amazing taqueria called Mad Mex and then followed the Brisbane river all the way into the city. Again wondering aimlessly we found ourselves in an amazing little Asian bakery in a mall off of Queen’s street and bought a variety of delicious pastries for breakfast the next day.

On to state number 2!

We headed for Nimbin, a hippy New South Wales town, a couple of hours inland. Just before the state border we stopped at Coolangatta and had some amazing, reasonably priced sushi. I was amazed with how much the scenery changed as we headed deeper into the second state I’ve visited in Australia. It even looked a little like old south Wales; rolling hills, windy country roads and greenery everywhere. We found Nimbin itself a little disappointing. I guess it was a little too authentically hippy for our tastes, what we were expecting was San Francisco style ‘hippy chic’. We stayed at Rainbow Retreat, essentially a field with a few semi-permanent looking shacks, some of which had whole families residing within. The next morning we got slightly lost attempting to find protestor falls- an area which tree huggers had famously saved from logging. We realised we’d inadvertently managed to travel most of the way to Byron Bay along a series of terrifying unsealed roads and decided to give up on hippy culture for the time being and embrace surf culture in the beautiful seaside town. We drove right up to the beach and researched where to stay. We decided upon The Arts Factory just outside town and were very pleased with our decision when we found a bright, fun hostel-cum-campsite situated on the grounds of a Brewery and art house cinema.

Cockatoo Paul making fire!

We spent our first evening at The Arts Factory making the most of the brewery’s $3 beer happy hour. The beer made onsite was delicious; probably the best I’ve tasted in Australia so far. Afterwards the hostel was holding a trivia night; we were paired with a few other backpackers and miraculously came first, winning over 20 dollars each. We spent an enjoyable and slightly tipsy evening chatting to our teammates, and really felt the community feel of a backpackers for the first time on our trip. The next day we explored Byron’s shops and cafes. The weather was somewhat unpredictable, raining on and off but simultaneously remaining bright and sunny. We enjoyed a precipitation-free hour on the beach before becoming peckish and finding an amazing Portuguese chicken kiosk hidden in some back lanes. Returning to our hostel we went on an interesting and informative bush tucker tour given by a slightly crazy guy known as cockatoo Paul, due to his pet bird, Mr Pickles, who came everywhere on his shoulder. We watched an awesome German film in the cinema and had a pretty relaxed evening and early night.

Next time: Spot X surf camp, Port Macquarie, Newcastle and Hunter Valley

Turk Visits... The Beach (Again...We think he's becoming a beach bum)

Parking right in front of the beach in Byron Bay

Epic Aussi Adventure: Airlie Beach & The Sunshine Coast

2012-03-22T15:36:00.002-07:00

Today's Scenery:

The beautiful Tin Can Bay

Today's Travelling Track:

My Chemical Romance- Famous Last Words

St Paddy's Day Breakfast

The rain is chasing us. Of that I am certain. Who knew Australia could be so very rainy? We aren’t even in the tropics anymore and still the bad weather continues. We’ve had some periods of sun however. In fact when we first arrived in Airlie Beach (which is where I left you in my last blog) it was a beautiful day, sunny, hot and calm. We stayed at the Base hostel, but in Turk. There seems to be a fair few hostels in Australia which will actually charge you less than most official campsites and allow you to camp on their premises, and use all the facilities available to their guests. This suits us perfectly; as the bed in Turk is far more comfortable than any hostel bed I have ever come across.

Airlie beach is a place which is really only good for two things: partying and relaxing. Once the rain started again we decided there was really no point trying to relax and got down to the partying.

St Paddy's Day Party Crew

We attended a St Paddy’s Day Eve party at The Down Under Bar, thinking it might be fun, however there were a couple of large functions being held there and everyone already knew each other making it a somewhat cliquey and insular event. The next day (the actual day of all things Irish) the rain was torrential (the Irish probably felt at home) we went around a few of the bars to see which were getting involved, had massive “Irish” breakfasts, acquired some comical green hats and commenced with the drinking. The Irish bar, Paddy’s Shenanigans, was extremely unfortunate in that its beer taps had frozen overnight and they had only bottles on offer which meant (shock horror!) no Guinness. They were really quiet until mid-afternoon when the aforementioned equipment finally thawed. It was then that we bumped into an actual Irish, who we knew slightly through a friend. He succeeded in collecting every other true emerald isle native and dragged everyone back to his house for a party. We had a great evening but retired to Turk early as we hoped to cover a substantial distance the next day.

As predicted, the next day we travelled a few hundred kilometres south in an effort to escape the rain. This was ground we had covered previously, and the stretch of road from Mackay to Rockhampton is famously boring anyway. We did stop just north of Rockhampton for an hour to visit the Capricorn caves, a stunning underground formation, which can be entered only as part of a guided tour. Finally, after a whole day of driving in varying degrees of rain, we stopped for the night at a free camping area, and hoped the weather would finally improve the next day. We awoke to cloudy skies, but no actual rain, and felt that this was good enough.

We drove down to Tin Can Bay, a pretty little coastal town. We stayed at a caravan park in a small cabin (all of our electrical appliances were low on juice) spent the evening on boring housekeeping type tasks and awoke early the next morning to go and watch the dolphin feedings. The volunteers in this town have been performing this task for over thirty years, for the rare wild Indo-Pacific species which inhabits the nearby waters. We arrived at 7am, and joined a handful of people awaiting the arrival of the guests of honour. The feeding was supposed to commence at 8am but that hour came and went and there were no dolphins to be seen. More and more people arrived and finally, at 9am, Mystique swum right into the bay and up to the water’s edge. He was checked for any fresh wounds by the experts (his body was covered in scars from previous shark attacks and other incidents) and we were allowed to feed him two fish each.

Mystique

It was a lovely thing to do and definitely made me think about the intelligence of these creatures; after all Mystique had over 30 humans waiting for him to arrive for two hours just so that they could give him food!

We drove over to Rainbow Beach. The sun was actually shining (and had been intermittently since the previous afternoon and our arrival in Tin Can Bay) so we walked over some sand dunes and across a few kilometres of beach to get a good look at the multi-coloured cliffs which give the area its name. It was great to finally feel sunshine on our skin again! We drove to Noosa and were there by the early afternoon. All of the nice hostels seemed to be full so we checked into Nomads, which was advertised as a party hostel and booked surf lessons for the next day. Not in the mood for a party we decided to go for a walk and ended up on a walk through the Noosa Headlands National Park which we probably shouldn’t have attempted wearing flip flops/ thongs. When we got back to civilisation we had some dinner at the Hog’s Breath Café (there aren’t a lot of budget eating options in Noosa) and returned to Turk to get some rest ready to start our surfing careers the following morning.

We were raring and ready to go at 9am when the surf company’s van pulled in to pick us up. We went to the main surf beach, where the waves seemed comfortingly small, and spent what felt like an age being told about rip tides, sharks, life guards and all manner of other safety information. We practiced positioning and technique on dry land and were finally allowed into the water, first just to ride a wave into the shore in a push up type position, and finally popping up to standing. My first attempt at standing I forgot which foot was which and went in goofy which really didn’t help matters, after a few attempts though, I was up and riding the waves like a pro. I found that paddling before standing really made me feel stable. At one point I even turned accidently! The instructor made us have a rest and when we returned to the water the waves seemed bigger and the tide was further out. I totally forgot how I had been doing it before and started failing to stand all over again. As the lesson ended, the first drops started to fall and we decided it was time to leave Noosa. The weather forecast called for lots more rain and we had seen quite enough of that already!

Next time: Brisbane Fun, Car problems and more of the wet stuff.

Turk Visits.....The Beach

Turk felt like some sun and a dip in the Sea

Epic Aussi Adventure: Cairns, Kuranda and South

2012-03-15T23:48:00.003-07:00

Today's Scenery:

Barron Falls Near Kuranda

Today's Travelling Track:

Grouplove- Naked Kids

Oh hello readers, how nice to bump into you here! Shame about all this rain isn’t it? Let’s hope it lets up soon. Cairns seems like a perfectly nice city. In fact it’s a backpacker haven with extremely cheap dorm rooms, meal deals on at every restaurant, a plethora of pubs, clubs and bars and loads of stuff to do. Unfortunately few of these activities are entertaining and enjoyable in non-stop torrential rain, which is what we were greeted with and what persisted for our entire stay. The city wasn’t without its good news and high points though.

The BF tucks into epic amounts of food

1. Turk had developed a bizarre screeching sound when we started him. This was particularly prominent when it rained. We took him to the Cairns branch of Travellers Autobarn, where they directed us to a mechanic who fixed it in about 30 seconds and charged us nothing.
2. The night markets were an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours, even though most of the stuff for sale was junk. At least it was interesting junk. The food court there is a backpacker’s dream where seafood and a variety of Asian cuisines are available on heaping plates in a buffet style manner.
3. Most of the backpacker’s hostels offer free meals with a stay.
4. The Asian influence seems to be strong in Cairns which gave some sections of town a very multicultural feel.

Aside from that I don’t feel we really got to see the city at its best. The hostel we chose to stay at had a lot of long term residents who were strange and somewhat haughty, the rain stopped us from sitting on the beach or relaxing on the esplanade and we weren’t really in the mood to party, knowing that St Patrick’s day was imminent.

Cool quote on a Kuranda toilet floor!

On the way out of cairns, after a particularly stressful morning in which I had to visit a variety of places to obtain an Australian police check and traffic history for my next Canadian visa, we stopped at the Kuranda Skytrain for a trip up what was essentially a ski gondola, over the rainforest to the town of Kuranda in the Atherton Tablelands. Suddenly it was like the stars aligned. The rain stopped and the scenery relieved any tension from my body. The Skytrain had 2 stops before the eventual disembarking, one at a peak offering a jungle boardwalk and the other at the spectacular Barron Falls, at their best of the year due to all of the rain. Kuranda itself was also exactly the kind of place me and the BF had been looking for. A hippy haven full of markets and weird little shops, it was like a neighbourhood of San Francisco in the rainforest. We meandered around; looking at jewellery, clothes and anything else that caught our eyes and grabbed lunch at a German-themed-and-run BBQ shack which was particularly kooky and fun. We did a rainforest walk, of which there were a few around the town, and reluctantly hopped on the Skytrain to return to Turk and the real world.

Big spider!

We drove until we were just outside of Mission Beach and stayed at a free rest stop for the night. It rained sporadically, but the next morning the weather was clement, and we decided to head back into Mission Beach and go on some walks. We headed up the Bicton Hill track, which offered stunning views of the whole mission beach area, on the walk we spotted another cassowary (although from a far safer distance!) and lots of big spiders and bugs. The walk took us an hour or so and as we got back to the bottom of the hill it started to rain. We assessed our options. We had wanted to drive up to Wallaman falls, 40km off of the Bruce highway and spend the night there, at a national parks campsite, however the description of a windy, ‘mostly sealed’ road put us off somewhat, especially considering the weather, so we decided to just drive to Townsville and take the opportunity to charge the laptop. This proved difficult and we were told off by 2 different establishments for using their power. Eventually we found a shopping centre which happened to be below a library which had free Wi-Fi and accessible power points. It’s always difficult when camping to keep phones and laptops charged.

We drove a few kilometres south of Townsville and spent the night at another free rest stop in a town called Home Hill. Previously we tried to stop elsewhere and realised we had found a mosquito haven and had to drive to escape the buzzing insects!
In the next instalment: St Paddy’s Day at Airlie Beach

Turk Meets... A Cassowary (just like the Hungry Backpacker and the BF)

Don't get too close Turk!

Epic Aussi Adventure: The Daintree and everything else North of Cairns

2012-03-13T16:12:00.005-07:00

Typical Scenery:

Rainforest!

Today's Travelling Track:

The Wombats - Techno Fan

Dear readers, I have decided to stop labelling each post by day. I feel this is confusing and difficult. I will henceforth label posts according to locations covered since the previous post, I hope this will not prove too difficult for you chronologically, my apologies if it does. I would like to further extend my apologies regarding the amount of time it has been since my last post. You poor things, you must be on the edge of your collective seats. Anywho, now that’s out the way, we can begin!

When I last left you we were in mission beach planning on sticking around a couple of days and going on some hikes. Unfortunately the weather had other plans and we decided a beach resort wasn’t really the place to be in torrential rain. We headed north with no real plans. As we drove, the weather improved and I noticed on the map a site known as the boulders which looked like a good place to stop for lunch. We grabbed some food in nearby Babinda, a cute country village with one bakery, a Spar and little else. We ate, and then went for a walk around the trails which had stunning scenery.

Swimming in the creek at the Boulders

We noticed locals were bathing in the creek at certain spots and decided to get involved. The water was cold but we felt like real explorers swimming in a river! There were signs explaining which parts of the creek were safe and which were dangerous and we stuck to the safe parts, warnings told us that the waterfalls further downstream had claimed a number of lives. The weather took a turn for the worse and we hit the road. When we got to Cairns we realised we really weren’t in a city mood and decided to keep going, all the way up to the Daintree rainforest. The road north of Cairns followed the coast and the sun decided to peek its head out to make this section of the journey extremely beautiful. It was at this part of the journey that the sign graffiti started;” Falling rocks” was edited to say “Falling in love rocks” and “One lane” became “One Planet”. This kind of thing continued all the way up to Cape Tribulation. We crossed the ferry over to the Daintree rainforest and negotiated some windy roads and scary looking bridges. The scenery was incredible, just like pictures of the amazon and the signs warned constantly of cassowaries (huge Australian wild flightless birds) after about 40 minutes we reached PK’s Jungle Village, where we were allowed to park and camp in Turk for an extremely reasonable price. There were also cabins and dorms for those without their own accommodation. The jungle bar was playing Bob Marley and the sun was shining on the tropical swimming pool. It looked like paradise. We parked up, went for a swim and an explore and then the rain started. We hid out at the jungle bar with beer and pizza and retired to Turk during a break in the storm.

Clever Sign Graffiti

The next morning it was still raining and I felt somewhat disheartened. I wanted to go for epic jungle hikes through the wilderness. After breakfast the rain died down a little and we headed for the Dubuji boardwalk. We wandered happily through the dense rainforest pointing out vines, spiders, birds and other “rainforresty things” as I happily meandered over a bridge, staring at a flower to my left the BF stopped me and told me to walk backwards slowly. As I did I realised there were two fully grown Cassowaries and a baby less than 3 meters away on my right. We backed off and watched them from afar. Very cool. Since we were in a walking mood, and the sun had decided to make an appearance, we headed to cape tribulation itself, via the beach, however a few hundred meters into our walk we found our path blocked by a large creek. Deciding it was sensible to avoid the crocodiles and jellyfish advertised, we backtracked, and walked to the cape on the road instead. The cape itself was pretty unexciting and covered in tourists. We were starving at this point and saw signs to a bistro a couple of kilometres further down the road. We set off and were pleasantly surprised to find a YHA resort with a beachfront bar and bistro serving some fantastic food for cheap prices. I had a smoked salmon wrap and the BF had a duck salad. We were really slumming it in the jungle as you can tell. Just as we arrived back at PKs it started to rain. The rest of the evening was mostly uneventful. We used the internet, watched some movies, and generally hung out in Turk. As we were at our most relaxed we heard an extremely loud noise and the van shook violently. Thinking it may be an animal, or a coconut falling onto our roof we investigated and found that a tree had fallen just onto the side of Turk. We were lucky that a vine had stopped it from going through the window and it had basically just missed us. Freaky!

Croc Attack Show

The rest of the night passed without incidence, apart from much more rain and the next morning we packed up and headed off. On the way back to the ferry crossing we stopped at the Marrdja boardwalk, which was much the same as the Dubuji but with less cassowaries, and then at the Daintree discovery centre. Maybe it just proves that we are philistines but aside from climbing up the tower to see above the rainforest canopy myself and the BF found it somewhat boring, although we appreciated all of the conservation efforts detailed and were happy to have paid a somewhat steep admission free if it went towards similar projects. We had a cup of Daintree tea and left on the ferry.

We drove to Hartley’s crocodile adventures, a fantastic zoo 40km north of Cairns. I was starving hungry and immediately tucked into salt and pepper crocodile which tasted surprisingly similar to chicken (doesn’t everything??) we went on a boat cruise around a lagoon and the enthusiastic guide fed crocodiles in the lagoon with a stick from the side of the boat. He supplemented this with frequent ‘dad jokes’, usually related to crocodiles and a lot of teasing and humour based on the nationalities of the tourists on board. The highlight of Hartley’s was the Croc Attack show, in which an experienced guide explained all about crocodile attacks and on many occasions became dangerously close to becoming a victim of one himself as he waded around in a pond with an angry croc trying to get it to show a variety of instincts and behaviours. Afterwards the BF and I were very glad that we decided against swimming across the creek the previous day. We saw some of the obligatory Australian marsupials and got back on the road to Cairns

We are currently still in Cairns, so I will update further once we leave, the weather has been somewhat disappointing so there hasn’t been a lot to report here so far but you never know what the future might hold!

Turk Meets: A Drunken Tree

Turk was a litte disguntled to have this tree stumble onto him during the night

Epic Aussie Adventure: Day 5 and 6

2012-03-09T14:00:00.002-08:00

Best signpost of the last 24 hours:

Speeding has killed Cassowaries

Today's Travellling Track:

Eliza Doolittle- Moneybox

I don’t know if you, my loyal readers have been awaiting the return of the Epic Aussie Adventure ™ quite as much as I have but if somehow you bizarrely have then today is your lucky day. My employment on Hamilton Island ended on March 7th and therefore we have severed all ties, packed up our apartment and are now officially ON THE ROAD. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of freedom when you realise that everything you own is packed into a van, you have no obligations, no job prospects and are basically able to do whatever you like. To celebrate this freedom we had a suitably drunken and disorderly farewell in Airlie Beach (a town where every day is like a weekend; I would hate to see how packed the clubs are during peak season considering the mayhem that was a random, off-peak Wednesday) and spent much of the next day recovering. In case anyone is interested, the following are my top hangover banishing techniques:
1. Water. An obvious one I know but the classics are always best
2. Bacon and eggs. Not sure why but they make a massive difference
3. Naps. Don’t be tempted to lie in all day- it will make you feel worse, just find time for the occasional catnap.
4. Keep busy. Doing nothing just helps you to focus on how awful you feel.
5. Swimming. The cold water does wonders.
6. Time. Just remember it will all be over soon.

Anyway, after we felt human enough to proceed we hit the open road and headed north on the Bruce Highway. Due to the organisational structure of Australia it’s pretty difficult to get lost on a long distance journey. It seems to me that basically there is one long highway and anywhere you may want to visit is off of it somewhere. We’ve barely been off of Bruce since Brisbane! This part of the journey has already proved more interesting than the last section of the previous one where there was occasionally nothing to see for over 200kms. Yesterday we passed through Bowen, Home Hill and Ayr, all decent sized towns, as well as a handful of smaller villages and hamlets. We noticed that the scenery became increasingly more tropical as we travelled- the trees were more exotic, the land was greener and the air was muggy. We camped overnight at Alligator Creek Campsite in Bowling Green Bay National Park. These National Park’s campsites are pretty prolific and, despite being relatively unpredictable in terms of what facilities may exist, have a standardised (and extremely reasonable) pricing system. Our favourite aspect of the campsite was all of the wildlife- turkeys, wallabies and mosquitos (the least favourable of the 3) being the most prolific. Noticing that our phones had no signal we felt like true explorers! Still suffering slightly from the excesses of the previous night, we whipped up some pasta and retired to Turk’s extremely comfortable interior. During the night a rain storm hit and The BF was happy to find that his previous waterproofing attempts had been a complete success!

Bowling green bay national park is only about 30 minutes’ drive from Townsville, so this morning we headed in to check out the regional capital of north Queensland. We were pleasantly surprised by what we found. A lot of the guide books we had read described it as somewhat characterless but I thought it looked like a bit of a frontier town. I could almost imagine cowboys strolling out of the pubs and restaurants in the place of the tourists searching for cheap scuba diving and the bleached blonde locals pushing babies in strollers. We drove to the strand; a marina area right on the beach with all the facilities backpackers in a van would want- toilets, showers, picnic tables, BBQs, even a pool! It’s a shame we weren’t allowed to camp there as it would have been perfect. The BF has a friend who lives near Townsville, so we went to visit him. I was having a particularly bad-with-directions day, which for me means I can no longer tell my left from right or follow a simple map, since I’m always pretty lost. I think that by the time we eventually found our way to the random suburb the BF was very close to murdering me.

The rest of the day was somewhat uneventful. We made it to mission beach (as planned) just before 6pm and I was particularly entertained on the road here by signs explaining the dangers of colliding with cassowaries (large native Australian birds) tomorrow we are going to go for a hike to hopefully see some in the wild. We chose to stay in a backpacker’s hostel today to charge up electrical devices, have a shower and use laundry facilities. Tomorrow we may move on or remain somewhere around the area! Stay tuned…

Turk Visits....A Mango Themed Double Feature:

The Big Mango

Frosty Mango

50 Things to do Before you Die 3: Australia Day Pool Party

2012-03-03T02:30:00.002-08:00

The BF gets Nationalistic

Australia day is held each year in the midst of the Australian summer; Christmas and New Years have become fleeting memories and the nationalistic antipodeans want an excuse to enjoy the weather and celebrate what really makes their nation great! Therefore they join together around pools, on beaches and in parks and grill a variety of meats whilst wearing as few clothes as possible. The garments they do wear are generally adorned with either the Australian flag or some combination of green and gold. Beer is usually involved and the soundtrack is generally a music countdown known as “The Triple J Hottest 100”- a selection of the best songs of the previous year as chosen by the radio station JJJ. My memories of Australia days around the world are some of my most cherished.

Traditional Aussie Day food, drink and costume

As a Non- Australian the idea of The First Fleet arriving on the shores of what is now New South Wales in 1787 isn’t a particularly important piece of historical trivia, but it isn’t for the Australians either so that’s ok! What is important to most residents is that it is a day when they can exploit the idea of a national pride, which almost borders on jingoism, as an excuse to act in a way that confirms every stereotype that the rest of the world has about them. And it’s bloody good fun. If you are lucky enough to be in Australia on an Australia day I urge you to get involved in some kind of celebration. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of freedom you will get whilst bobbing up and down in a pool at 10am with music blaring, a bottle of Pure Blonde in your hand and the smell of sausages in the air whilst the unrelenting sun beats down upon you. The locals will offer you drinks, food and conversation and you’re likely to meet a variety of other travellers who have been invited to celebrate in a similar fashion despite national background. Maybe it’s not the best thing for Australian unity (the Native Aboriginals see it as a day of mourning) but as a Brit I have never felt so involved in an event or occasion which by definition essentially excludes me. It is displays of national pride like this which make me wish that my fellow countrymen were not only capable of patriotism at times when sport is involved. Maybe some Australians are only attractive bimbos who are only interested in keeping beers cold and getting a tan, but at least they seem to be proud of it!!

50 Things to do Before You Die 2: Oktoberfest

2012-03-02T04:32:00.000-08:00

The magnificent Lowenbrau tent

There is nothing quite like Oktoberfest. It’s like a music festival in which the headlining act is beer. Munich itself is well worth a visit even in quieter months but during September and early October it truly comes alive. Despite the less than tropical temperatures every campsite becomes full of revellers. So full that tents are pitched almost on top of other tents. We returned to our camping spot one night, rather worse for wear, only to find that a group of kiwi travellers had pitched their own tents in a circle around ours, making it impossible for us to open or enter our dwelling without trampling all over delicate canvas and possibly possessions!

The mayhem of the campsites, however, is nothing compared to that of the beer halls. Vast Bavarian women battle their way through the hordes with 20 jumbo-sized glasses in their arms, inebriated octogenarians wearing lederhosen dance nimbly on tables with paralytic Australian backpackers and Asian couples armed with multiple cameras watch on with bemusement.

The BF worries that he may have shrunk

Be warned, the beer served at Oktoberfest comes in one size and one size only- huge. It is strong too; often up to 7 or 8% ABV, almost making it worth the 9 euro you will pay for it (essentially 10 euro as you will never, ever receive your change!) It’s all worth it though to mingle with travellers from every country you can imagine and really soak up the atmosphere. Try a massive pretzel or a meter long bratwurst hotdog (everything at Oktoberfest seems to be huge) you never know it may alleviate the unavoidable hangover you’ll no doubt be suffering the next day. My main piece of Oktoberfest advice is ‘get involved!’ Dance to the band, chat to the strangers and sing along to the covers of songs you know. Trust me, the memories you actually have, you will treasure!

50 Things to do before you die 1: La Tomatina

2012-02-27T17:02:00.000-08:00

Bunol the night before

I remember watching scenes of La Tomatina on television as a kid. A massive tomato fight orchestrated by hundreds of people of every nationality in a usually sleepy Spanish town. I thought it looked amazing and always wanted to go. In 2009 I did. La Tomatina is a once in a lifetime experience; once you’ve done it once you probably won’t want to go back. Not that I’m saying it isn’t fun, in fact the problem is more that it’s a little too much fun. We arrived the night before and discovered how far the Spanish entrepreneurial spirit will go. On every corner of every street from the train station up to the town were makeshift bars and pubs. Anyone with a vehicle and patio furniture seemed to have purchased as much beer as possible and got down to the serious business of selling it. Just outside of town a massive rave commenced at 2am (the time when a night out commences for the Spanish) and charged 20 euros for entry.

Ready for the tomatoes

Once all our money was gone we found a place to chill out and waited for the morning. As it came, so did the people, in their thousands. Everywhere you looked were organised tour groups in branded shirts, Australian men dressed in ludicrous costumes and wobbly looking Canadians downing whole boxes of warm wine.

here they come....

A massive pole in the centre of the town is covered in fat, a massive ham hung from the top and thus the fun begins. For what feels like hours a mosh pit forms within a 10m radius from the pole. Hundreds of people attempt to climb to the summit and secure the ham. Maybe someone succeeds, but much hilarity will ensue before that happens. Finally a succession of massive trucks drive right into the already packed town square and dump tones and tones of tomatoes into the crown. Chaos ensues. Tomato everywhere. Huge water guns spraying with excessive force. The heat, the smell, the sound. Before you know it the streets are knee deep in water and tomato juice. People are diving into it, swimming around. And suddenly it’s all over. A mass migration begins towards a river on the outskirts of town where revellers assess their war wounds, attempt to cover up any body parts revealed by torn clothing and make a fruitless effort to clean the rotten tomato from their skin and hair.

The Exodus

Locals are in the streets offering hose-downs, some for money, others for free, many just to the attractive females. The migration switches directions towards the train station. There are stalls on either sides of the streets selling food, drink and clothes. The line for the train is jaw-dropping. Eventually we make it through the gates and onto a train. The train is air conditioned and everyone is soaking wet. People get turned away for being without a t shirt or shoes, or being too caked in tomato. The train smells like rotting fruit and everyone is shivering. It takes what seems like hours to leave the station and even longer to get back to Valencia. Some people complain, others sleep, most sit in silence. We agree that it was amazing, but that we will probably never do it again.

50 Things to do Before you Die

2012-02-27T15:54:00.002-08:00

I’ve recently been reading lonely planet’s 1000 ultimate experiences;an awesome book which has resulted in me deciding to become a millionaire so I can afford to travel the world forevermore and tick off each and every suggestion that they make. You may have noticed that I’m a fan of the concept of lists. I enjoy the way they bring order to chaos and can be followed in a linear order and struck off as you go. For this reason I have written my own list- 50 things to do before you die. Most of these things I have done myself, and want others to experience whilst a few of these things I have not done, but want to!

1. La Tomatina
2. Oktoberfest
3. Australia Day pool party
4. Christmas in the snow
5. Ride powder
6. Go surfing
7. Go skydiving
8. Go bungee jumping
9. Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef
10. Work abroad
11. Eat something weird (Snails, Crocodile, Bugs etc)
12. Play pub golf
13. Visit Dracula’s castle
14. Multiple day Music festival
15. Sing karaoke
16. Fall in love
17. Ride a snowmobile
18. Ride a jet ski
19. Ride a motorbike
20. Sleep under the stars
21. Have a crappy job
22. Learn to play an instrument
23. Learn to speak a language
24. Go on an epic road trip
25. Shower beer
26. Be poor
27. Have a sleepover/ pyjama party
28. Go white water rafting
29. Go whale spotting
30. Go swimming in really cold water
31. Pride festivals
32. Visit Vegas
33. Buffet challenge
34. Ride a scary rollercoaster
35. Go fishing
36. Go Downhill Mountain Biking
37. Cheese rolling
38. Go to Africa
39. Backpack around India
40. The Inca trail
41. See giant pandas in China
42. See emperor penguins
43. See the northern lights
44. Go on a shopping spree
45. San Francisco
46. Food van party
47. Get dragged into a street show
48. Throw a massive party
49. Full moon party
50. Look back with no regrets

Watch out for a detailed post on each of the experiences I have partaken in!

Backpacker gear and gadgets

2012-02-24T23:53:00.002-08:00

There is an art to the skill of packing for a trip. If there wasn’t then excess baggage fairs wouldn’t exist. It’s difficult to toe the line between bringing everything that you need and travelling as lightly as possible. I’m going to share with you a few gadgets that will enable you to travel in comfort and style, without spending your whole time struggling to lug your bag around.

1. The bag itself- the bag that you chose is a key piece of equipment which could make or break any trip. For any extended trip, a backpack is the only way to go. Wheeled cases may seem easy, but they are really only practical if you aren’t intending to walk up any stairs, or over any uneven surfaces. The wheels themselves also increase your bag’s overall weight. When buying a backpack you need to think a lot about what size and style you would like. Take your own strength into consideration. The BF has an 85 litre and he can barely lift it when it is full. However, if you’re planning on bringing a lot of bulky items a smaller 55 or 60 litre bag will not be big enough. Never buy a bag you haven't tried on first. Comfort is top priority! Avoid cheap supermarket brands or choosing based on colours or patterns. Additionally, many bags are gendered and will be ergonomically designed to fit either a female or male body shape, so take this into consideration. Below are a few reasonably priced, good quality examples.

2. An MP3 player- sometimes travelling is really, really boring. It can also be loud. I find that an MP3 player is a must have travel tool. It’s never a good idea, however, to carry anything too expensive. Touch screen devices are easily damageable and first choice for thieves. When I’m travelling I carry an iPod shuffle (fantastic for the gym), or a second hand iPod classic.

These are durable, have decent battery life and I wouldn’t be too devastated if someone stole them. It’s easy to forget, but Apple is not the only company making mp3 players.Some of the offerings from other companies include similar specs for a far lower price.

3.A reusable water bottle and/or a camelbak- bottled water is more expensive than petrol, so a good money saving tip is to rely on tap water wherever possible. Obviously there are some countries in the world where this is inadvisable, however it is almost always cheaper to buy large bottles of water and use them to fill your drinking device of choice. Camelbaks and other bladders are great for hiking, biking, jogging, skiing and any other time when drinking with your hands free may be required. Most good backpacks are compatible with these hydration systems.

4.What’s the point in seeing everything the world has to offer if you aren’t capturing it? Trust me, if you set off on your trip without a camera you will be very disappointed. I am far from a camera expert, so I am not going to give advice here on what kind of camera to buy. Just pick something that you are able to operate and isn’t too big and heavy to lug around. I have a Panasonic Lumix FP1 which does everything that I could ask for.

5.Sleeping bag- even if you don’t plan on camping at any point, a sleeping bag is always a good idea. Some hostels don’t supply bedding and you might find yourself on a cold overnight train or boat. Synthetic sleeping bags tend to be cheaper than those containing duck down, but the natural alternative will be lighter and more compact.

6.Travel towel- normal towels are extremely bulky and difficult to fit into bags. I would recommend investing in a lightweight travel towel. This is the one that I have and it is one of the best purchases I have ever made!

7.Plug adaptors- don’t forget that your electrical items will need a plug adaptor before they can be used abroad. If you plan on travelling for any length of time I would suggest getting a worldwide to worldwide adaptor, as you will pick up devices from countries along the way. Trust me, it is annoying having multiple adaptors, or buying an adaptor for just one appliance. Often worldwide-worldwide devices are quite bulky and I have known some to fall out of walls repeatedly. This Micropix adaptor has received very good reviews and is a reasonable price. Additionally it can be used to charge compatible devices via USB cable

8. Kindle or e-book reader- if, like me, one of your favourite parts of travelling is getting time to read a good book then the kindle will change your life as much as it has changed mine. When I was backpacking around Europe I had space for only one book in my bag at a time and, whilst many hostels have book swaps, I still found that I was spending a lot of money on books only to abandon them when finished. Kindles are tiny, light and have space for hundreds of books. The battery life is incredible and unlike laptops and most other entertainment devices the screen is specially designed to eliminate glare. I have however found them to be a little delicate (I received mine for Christmas and have already broken one screen and been sent a replacement!) the devices have Wi-Fi so new books can be downloaded anywhere with a network, and any books written before 1923 are completely free due to copyright expiration!

9. Small speakers- ok, so this isn’t exactly a must-have, cant-live-without item, but it is always nice to have a small, compact speaker for social occasions. I’ve used mine whilst building jumps in back-country areas of ski resorts, for relaxing in front of the fire whilst camping in forests and on secluded beaches with a couple of beers to start the party early! The X-Mini is by far the best of its kind that I have found. The BF and I have even been using it as a stereo system in Turk and it has done an amazing job of being heard over the sound of the road. It also has a good battery life and decent sound quality. These are amazing value for money and I would recommend them to anyone!

10. Netbook- Again, not top priority, but a computer is a great travel research tool and netbooks are made for people on the go. Smaller and lighter than a conventional laptop, netbooks generally have very good battery life and every feature a person on the road would need. Ok, so the screens are too small for group movie nights, but by being both inexpensive, simple and small, they are the perfect travel companion. Check out the whole of Amazon's range right here.

So there you have it, my suggestions for the best backpacker gadgets and gear. Hope that you find it useful!

Why I want to be a Canadian

2012-02-23T22:38:00.002-08:00

Now, as you’ve probably gathered from reading this blog, I’ve done my fair share of travelling. True, I’ve still only explored 3 of the 6 continents available but I think it would be fair to allow myself a little moment of arrogance and admit that I think I have a decent idea of what else is out there in the world, and what opportunities are available. Who knows, maybe I’ll fall in love with some exotic little Asian island or sprawling African metropolis later in life, but right now the only country for me is Canada. A lot of people have asked me a simple question- why?

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

My daily commute

1. As a snowboarder, there’s a glaringly obvious element of Canadian life which appeals to me. The snow. Snow was the reason I first visited, the reason I loved it and the reason that I returned. Not only do I love the white stuff as a surface on which to glide, it is also stunningly beautiful and makes the world look magical in a way that no other weather will. There’s a reason why most Christmas cards show snowy, festive landscapes! Even after spending six months of my life trudging to work at 5:30am with powder to my knees I still love snow….it must be serious! Additionally, the whole ski resort lifestyle has so much going for it. It’s active, sociable, stylish and as a local you can enjoy feeling superior to all the newbies and tourists who have no idea what they’re doing. I do, however, wonder if I would feel the same way about my country of choice if I’d only ever visited the cities.

Hiking the chief, Squamish

2. Canada boasts some of the most stunning landscapes one could ever wish to see. True there are a lot of very boring flat parts, but there’s no one there anyway so who cares? Towering mountain ranges sink into deep blue lakes and oceans and everywhere you look you see green. Or white, depending on the time of year. The most astounding thing about Canada’s beauty is that it’s all natural. A lot of their main tourists destinations are not huge man made monoliths (ignoring the CN tower…) or even ancient ruins and artefacts, instead it is just what has always been there. And I think that’s pretty cool

3. What is the purpose of nature and beauty if there is no one there to see it? And how do you see it without ruining it? Well, according to Canada you get out there and you get involved! It seems to be the norm there to spend the majority of your free time hiking, biking, skiing or snowboarding. The lifestyle is just so healthy! Of course, I’m not claiming that there are no fat Canadians but the amount of children and young adults you see out enjoying the countryside far surpasses anything I’ve seen in the UK, Australia or anywhere else I’ve visited. I was never an ‘outdoorsy’ child but whilst in Canada I became an avid hiker and spent many days cycling around breathtaking lakes and along nature trails hoping to spot native wildlife.

a seamless intermingling of two cultures

4. Racism is an unavoidable part of life and something that exists everywhere in the world. People just find difference too hard to look past. However you rarely hear of racist incidences occurring in Canada. This is surprising considering that in the 2006 census only 18.4% of people classified themselves as being 100% Canadian (in contrast, in the most recent census of the UK over 80% of people identified themselves as White British) Obviously there are a large amount of minorities in Canada. This gives the country a very multi-cultural feel. All of the large cities that I have visited have been an amazing hodgepodge of identities and cultures, meaning that there’s usually something for everyone.

a standard canadian night out- ski gear and shots

5. Lowering the tone of this blog post somewhat I would like to state for the record that, from my experience, Canadians know how to party. Maybe it is because I have spent most of my time there in resorts and tourist traps but having fun and letting loose seem to be an important aspect of Canadian life. There is a big emphasis on live music and the atmosphere in most bars is extremely social. When we visited a pub in the middle of nowhere on Vancouver Island we found ourselves dragged into a karaoke night full of locals insistent on buying us drinks and getting us onto the stage. Clubs tend to be eclectic and play a wide range of music styles. Additionally a night out in Canada is comparatively cheaper than I’ve experienced in Australia, the UK and Western Europe.

6. In fact, the cost of most things in Canada is extremely reasonable. I found that my living costs there were far lower than any of the other countries I have resided (France, UK, Australia)

A friendly local!

7. Finally, Canada is a backpackers dream because of the endless travel opportunities. The USA and Latin America are both accessible reasonably easily and cheaply and Canada itself has so much land to explore. It’s almost like the country was designed for adventure travellers, with culture, natural beauty, friendly helpful people, an emphasis on fun and recreation and so many outdoor sporting opportunities.

So, there you have it. Why I love Canada. But despite all the thought and effort I have put into writing this post I still don’t feel like I’ve really managed to put my finger on it. Maybe you’ll just have to go there and check it out for yourself!!

some (possibly) useful items:

Recipes on the Road: Spaghetti Bolognese and Chilli

2012-02-21T00:11:00.000-08:00

I’ve already mentioned once or twice that I love food. Now, I’m no professional chef (although the BF is) but I’ve been cooking since I was in my early teens and I find it to be a great way to relax and have fun. Lots of people who have eaten my cooking enjoy my recipes and say things like “I wish I could cook like you” I find this amusing because when I took Food Technology (essentially cooking) at school my teachers despaired of how useless I was. What I am good at is experimenting, combining flavours and textures in classic ways which anyone can enjoy. What I am REALLY bad at is anything fiddley or complex. You won’t find any roux based sauces or delicate presentation tips on these pages; the food that I cook is simple, tasty and can be made by absolutely anyone. I will post new recipes whenever I have time here, give them a go and don’t be afraid to change things or experiment. I’ve honed these meals to suit my tastebuds so do the same and tailor something special just for yours!

Today I’m going to share with you my recipes for Chilli and Spaghetti Bolognese. I am posting these together because they use a lot of the same ingredients and back when I was a poor student I used to buy vast amounts of mince when it was on special offer and cook up huge batches of both on the same day. They would then be frozen and available for dinners whenever I was running low on money or just had a craving for something tasty! The recipe that these were developed from were actually originally in the weightwatchers pure points cookbook, however they have been adapted so much now that they are barely recognisable and definitely no longer low in calories!

Generally the pure points cookbook is actually a really good recipe book which details how to cook almost every basic dish you can imagine with a low fat spin. I’d suggest it as a great first recipe book for any health conscious teens just learning how to make food.

Often whilst travelling, measuring devices are an expense than backpackers cannot afford either cost or space-wise and I’m therefore going to give some of my portion amounts in more estimable units than pounds or millilitres, in most cases accuracy isn’t that important as seasoning should always be to taste. I will give amounts in grams if it will be sold by the gram (e.g. meat)

Spaghetti Bolognese (makes 6-8 serves)

Ingredients :

500g minced beef (although also nice with lamb where available)
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
4 or 5 small mushrooms or 2 large mushrooms
1 carrot
Two dessert spoons dried (or fresh where available) basil
1 tin of chopped tomatoes (if unavailable use peeled tomatoes or even fresh; fresh will require an increase in cooking time by an hour or so)
1 beef stock cube
A squirt of tomato puree/ ketchup
4 glugs of red wine
Water
Salt and pepper
Dried pasta of your choice (I suggest spaghetti or linguini)
Parmesan cheese to serve

Method:

select the largest pan that you have, Slice all vegetables as small as you can. Feel free to add any other vegetables you have available. The more vegetables you have the more serves you will get out of this recipe and the longer you let the dish simmer for the less noticeable the vegetables will be. I often add a few fresh tomatoes, a stick of celery or green peppers. Sautee the onion and garlic in oil until they become clear and soft. Add the mince, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook until all the mince is brown. Add all other vegetables and basil and cook for a few minutes more, stirring constantly. Add the chopped tomatoes, stock cube and tomato puree/ketchup and stir, then slowly introduce water and wine a little at a time. Leave to simmer, stirring every 10 minutes or so and adding more water or wine if the pan is boiling dry. After 40 minutes taste and add more salt, pepper, basil and wine to taste. Keep simmering for as long as you are able to, adding more wine or water to taste as the liquid in the pan boils off. 20 minutes before you wish to eat, bring the pan back to the boil stirring constantly until desired consistency is obtained. Bring a separate pan of water to the boil simultaneously. Add the dried pasta and follow packet instructions for cooking times. Drain pasta and serve when it is at desired softness. Add Bolognese sauce and parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and basil to taste. this recipe is all about tasting and adapting as you go. You should end up with a very rich tasty sauce which you will be proud of.

Give it a twist: add a handful of chopped sundried tomatoes and 2 finely chopped Birdseye chillies

Make it decadent: use grated mature cheddar cheese instead of parmesan and substitute all water for wine to make your dish even richer!

Chilli (makes 4-8 serves)

Ingredients:

500g minced beef
1 onion
1 clove garlic
4 or 5 small mushrooms or 2 large mushrooms
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
Fresh chilli peppers
Chilli powder
Teaspoon of Cumin
Tin of sweet corn
Tin of kidney beans
Tin of chopped tomatoes
1 beef stock cube
A squirt of tomato puree/ ketchup
4 glugs of red wine
Water
Salt and pepper

Chillies and chilli powder:

I haven’t given quantities above because everyone has very different thresholds regarding spiciness. Also chilli powder differs greatly everywhere in the world. If you love your food spicy then buy a hot chilli powder as well as two or three small hot chillies such as Birdseye or Habanero. If you have a more delicate mouth, just purchase mild chili powder, start off using a tablespoon or so and then add more to taste. Cumin gives dishes that classic Mexican flavour but is not always available.

Method:

Again, select the largest pan possible, and slice all your vegetables. I often add carrots or courgette/zucchini to the ingredients above. Sautee the onion, fresh chillies (if you’re using them) and garlic in oil until they become clear and soft. Add the mince, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook until all the mince is brown. Add chilli powder to taste and as instructed on the packet. Add cumin. Stir until spices are evenly distributed. Add mushrooms, peppers and any other fresh vegetables and cook until they begin to soften. Add beef stock cube, tin of tomatoes, tomato puree/ketchup, and red wine and fill the pan with water. Bring to the boil stirring constantly and then leave to simmer, adding water as the level in the pan starts to drop. Stir occasionally. After an hour or so, taste and add more chilli powder, salt or pepper as desired. If you find it is too spicy, add more tomato puree/ketchup and/or another stock cube. Keep simmering for as long as you are able to, adding more water as the liquid in the pan boils off. 20 minutes before you wish to eat, add the kidney beans and sweet corn and bring the pan back to the boil stirring constantly until desired consistency is obtained.

Serving suggestions:

Chili is very versatile and can be served in a number of ways. If you want a simple option just use plain boiled rice or a crispy baked potato. Chilli is also delicious served over chips/fries or as an ultimate nacho platter with tortilla chips, cheese, salsa and guacamole. It is also deliciously warming and hearty in a bowl as a soup with crusty bread, if you wish to serve it like this then do not boil off as much water and allow it to have more of a liquid consistency. If you find your chilli too spicy then a good dollop of soured cream or crème fraiche will make it far more bearable. Grated cheese and green onions are other common accompaniments.

Happy cooking and feel free to post anything you add or change from these recipes and how it tasted!

How to get skinny

2012-02-17T21:57:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I LOVE food. I've never been a person who would be described as fat, probably because I live a pretty active life most of the time, but I tend to have a lot of weight fluctuations. At my heaviest I've been up to about 10 stone 3 pounds (143lbs or 64kg). This doesn't sound like a lot, but considering I'm only 5"2 (157cm) it is enough to make me appear on the chubby side and affect the way I dress and see myself. At the moment however I'm probably the skinniest and lightest I've been since I was about 12. I'm now down to 9 stone 2 (128lbs or 58kg) and have fallen 2 dress sizes. I know this doesn't sound particularly drastic especially when it happened over a period of at least 4 or 5 months but what is important is that I lost this weight without a large amount of effort and definitely without any structured diet.
I'm not going to claim in this post that I have any amazing diet secrets or guaranteed program you should follow, however I have looked back at my lifestyle and seen what may have caused my weight fluctuations. Due to the frequency of big changes in a backpacker's life its easy to pinpoint when and where I must have been going wrong. I also have a few little tricks up my sleeve which help me. Sorry if none of this helps you, but I swear by all of it!

The number one and absolutely most important factor in weight gain (in my experience) is alcohol. It’s not surprising either. Even a neat shot of a pure clear spirit such as vodka can contain as much as 100 calories (dependant on alcohol percentage) whilst just one pint of cider or beer often provides over 250! What’s also important to remember is that these are empty calories with no nutritional benefit- skipping dinner to make up for alcohol consumption is a BAD idea and if done regularly could lead to malnutrition. When I was living in Canada last summer I was eating relatively healthily and was being quite restrained with portion sizes. I was working two jobs, both of which were physically demanding and spent my free time hiking, biking and running. Despite this I was still overweight and was not happy with the shape of my body. My problem at this point must have been my alcohol consumption. I partied a few nights a week and tended to socialise in bars and pubs where alcohol is always part of the equation. If you can't figure out why you're not losing weight despite eating sensibly and partaking in regular exercise have a look at how much you're drinking. It may surprise you!

Having an active job has definitely made a big difference to my weight as well. When I first arrived on Hamilton Island I was working at the bakery, mainly standing in an air conditioned shop and serving customers. After a while I started job sharing at a busy fish and chip shop. Now I spent my days running around cooking and prepping food in a stuffy kitchen with a number of deep fat fryers keeping the temperatures well above 35 degrees! I noticed that the pounds started to fall off me, and even more so when I stopped working at the bakery altogether and became full time cook for the fish and chip shop. This role involves a LOT of heavy lifting, carrying and quick movement. If you don't fancy structured exercise and are in a position where it is possible, maybe consider a career change. If this isn't an option consider walking or cycling to work. Look at your body like a machine; it uses a certain amount of energy a day. If you are putting on weight, it is probably because you're giving your body more energy (food) than it can use. You have 2 options; increase the amount of energy it uses (through exercise) or decrease the amount of energy you're giving it. It’s as simple as that.

I've found that it works for me to give myself very specific rules which I am never allowed to break. I realised that whilst I worked I was snacking on deep fried food. Just telling myself to do it less didn't seem to help. Instead I decided my new year's resolution was no deep fried food whilst at work. Period. I have also banned myself from any snacking, and am only allowed to consume fruit aside from my 3 meals a day. It's easy to tell yourself that one chip or one cookie won't make a lot of difference but if you're allowing yourself these things 10 times a day then the calories will add up!

To stop myself from craving unhealthy foods too much I give myself "treat days” when I’m allowed eat certain things. Whilst working at the bakery I started "sweet treat Sunday"- allowing myself to have a cake, pie or something chocolaty only once a week on a Sunday. I similarly allow myself only 2 days a week when I can consume alcohol. I find it hard to resist a beer after a hard day's work, but, like everything else, one beer a day can add up. This way I really think about which 2 days of the week I want to have a drink and control my beer drinking much better. Similarly I allow myself treat weeks, when all other rules are off and I can do whatever I like. These should really not be too frequent and I always give myself a pre-defined period and a date when the treat week is over. I would say 4 or 5 treat weeks a year shouldn't affect your overall weight too much and can then cover important events like Birthdays, Christmas and other holidays.

I've already spoken a bit about skipping meals and only eating three set meals a day. I feel this is really key to controlling weight. Don't think that skipping meals will help you lose weight. It just makes your body go into starvation mode and convert whatever you next consume into fat instead of muscle. Even if you don't think you're hungry make sure you eat 3 meals a day. Make sure two of them are on the smaller side too. A good healthy cereal is a good start to the day and a sandwich should really be plenty for lunch. Think about your day and what you will eat in the morning or the night before. Plan what time you will eat what. This way you won't leave eating until you're starving hungry and end up eating twice as much as you planned. Sometimes this is hard to fit in with work but whenever it is possible try it. It will not only help you control your weight it generally makes you feel a lot healthier and happier. I found I had a lot of control over my weight when I was working long hours at a theme park and dinner was not provided. On my days off I would cook myself meals for the rest of the week and freeze them. I would then wake up in the morning, eat a bowl of cereal, make a sandwich for lunch and get a frozen meal out for dinner. I had complete control over what I was eating and living this way is much cheaper than buying packaged meals or takeaways.
Now as I've already mentioned I love food and therefore the earlier option of cutting back on the energy you give your body isn’t appealing to me. I have to make a conscious effort to control my portion sizes but aside from that the actual food I eat is rarely low in calories. I love meat and cheese and feel that most food benefits from generous helpings of sauces and dressings. I get great pleasure from anything involving pasta or bread both of which are full of carbohydrates. I think diets like Atkins where carbs are outlawed would be completely impossible to stick to and aren't actually at all good for you. Carbs give you long term energy and keep you healthy. Because I'm not willing to compromise on the amount of calories I feed my body I like to control the amount of calories that my body uses. Here's a secret about exercise; when you're out of shape you will not enjoy it. If you need a little motivation try starting off with easy relaxing exercise- walking, swimming or relaxation based classes like yoga all have benefits. They will not, however, burn very many calories. I've been exercising regularly now since I was 18 and I really honestly do love it. The feeling after a good exercise session is totally addictive. My personal activity of choice is running. Yes, it's hard when you're doing it but the feeling of accomplishment and adrenaline when you're finished makes it all worthwhile. I find I have to distract myself whilst running. If I'm in a gym I listen to comedy podcasts. I don't find music alone requires adequate concentration. Some treadmills have games on them which I love; others have TV screens which is also helpful. I find running outdoors to be more enjoyable but there are a lot of variables. Here in Australia it's often much too hot to keep running for long before getting dehydrated and sunburnt. Hills have to be the right gradient to keep me motivated too. If they're too steep I find myself walking half of the time. I loved running in Canada where I had a set loop which I ran around. I knew the distance and the direction and that kept me motivated until the end. I'm a very competitive person and I find running against myself really good fun- on a treadmill I try to run 0.5km/h faster than I did the day before, or 1km further, when road running I time myself and try and beat previous times. If running isn't your thing find something that you love. Some people love being part of a team, others love to dance, even cleaning can be really good exercise if you're a bit of a neat freak. Just remember whatever you're doing will of course seem hard at first if you're out of shape. Get through that period and just keep going. I'll bet that soon you will love the feeling of accomplishment you get.

So, like I said, this is how I got skinny. I know some people have real willpower issues and I can understand that but if you really want things to be different then it's always possible. You just have to be willing to change your life a little and make things happen. Lots of people claim not to exercise because they don't have the time but I was still managing to go running at least 3 times a week whilst also working 70 physically demanding hours. Other people claim not to have the energy, but once you start exercising you'll find it actually gives you MORE energy, and makes you feel a lot happier! Give it a go, what have you got to lose??

Hamilton Island Highlights

2012-02-16T23:41:00.000-08:00

I recently realised how weird this blog actually is. The journey I have written about so far is considered, by most Australians, to be one of the most barren and uninteresting parts of their country. On the flip side I have been living on one of the premiere domestic tourist destinations and have said nothing positive about it at all. Its true that the grass is always greener. Whilst I can see that living on a tropical island on the Great Barrier Reef is an enviable situation to be in, I have a confession to make: for the last couple of months I've been totally sick of it. This is for a number of reasons.

1. I came here to make money and then save it. This is not an easy place to save. Everything costs money. A lot of it.
2. Staff are somewhat limited on what they can and can't do here. However they also have a lot of benefits that guests don't
3. When you're working the tropical temperatures are less bearable that when you're lazing about on a beach or by a pool. Also the air con hasn't worked in our staff housing since November.
4. Due to the afformentioned money making, I have been working A LOT. This has given me a lot less time to enjoy the touristy side of things.
5. Imagine living in a place with one general store, one phamacist, one pub, one night club and one takeaway restaurant. The choice is somewhat limited.

However I have to look at the last 6 months from an outsiders perspective and remember all the amazing things I've done and seen. So here it is. I'm going to pretend for a moment I haven't become jaded and bored by this bubble, and tell you all about my Hamilton Island Highlights.

When we first arrived at Hamilton Island I remember writing myself a mental list of all of the different things I wanted to do whilst here. Our first couple of days were packed full of company inductions, which were designed to not only get us ready for working here, but also for living here and of course spending all our money here. I've worked for a number of companies that do the same thing; basically they want to pay you, and then get that money right back into their own pockets. Fair enough (Whistler Blackcomb well and truely succeeded in this aim, here I feel like I've had the last laugh, I'm definitely leaving with more money than I came with!) Anyway, I said I was going to pretend I hadn't been jaded, so I'll get back on point. In the induction they made us as a group list all the activities that were available to guests on Hamilton Island. We were all pretty excited by the idea of going to the reef to snorkel with the fish and see all the amazing colourful coral. We were given training forms to fill out and told that when our forms were completed and handed in we would all recieve a discount coupon for a visit to the reef.

Our first visit to the reef was with a company called Fantasea, who also run all of the ferries to the mainland. They have a floating pontoon at Hardy Reef which they call Reefworld. For extortionate amounts of money you can stay the night at reefworld, fly to or from there by helicopter and have scuba diving lessons. I would suggest that none of these options are really worth the price you will pay for them, and all can be done much cheaper elsewhere. Included in the price of the Reefworld experience is a free lunch, snorkelling equipement, a tour in a makeshift submarine, entry to an observation room and a few other things. Now I'm a pretty adventurous person, but the one thing that does scare me is claustrophobic situations, and snorkelling is one of those things that tends to trigger my claustrophobia. I'm usually happily snorkelling along, feeling fine, and then I get water in my tube and end up panicking and thrashing about. I've never really seen the appeal of the whole thing. Until now. Getting to see all the beautiful colourful fish darting around you as you swim along is really something I think everyone should experience, and it makes the whole harrowing breathing underwater ordeal worthwhile

Myself and The BF. Literally swimming with the fishes

Aside from this, and if we hadn't secured our tickets for just $50 thanks to our vouchers I wouldn't call the reefworld experience great value for money. I would instead reccomend Cruise Indigo's Day Sail and Snorkel. Instead of taking you out on to the reef, the snorkelling is done at Chalkies beach, adjacent to the famous Whitehaven Beach. I actually felt that this area was far more beautiful and unspoilt that Hardy reef- the coral was more colourful and the fish seemed somehow less aloof (yes, I am aware I am a crazy person, but the fish at reefworld seemed like they were celebrity fish who didn't have time for the little people, whist the ones here seemed to interact a lot more with you as you swam with them) I even followed a blue tang as it reenacted the scene from finding nemo where Dory shoots Marlin suspicious looks over her shoulders as he trails her. Pretty cool. As well as the snorkelling being superior on the Cruise indigo trip, the amazing On the Edge catameran far outranks the boring Fantasea ferry as a travel vessel. I also thought the lunch offered on On the Edge was better although I know most people aren't quite as obsessed with eating as I am. As if that wasn't enough, after the snorkelling, sailing and eating, you even get to visit Whitehaven Beach itself which is considered amongst the best beaches in the world by whichever people decide that kind of thing. So, Hamilton Island Highlight number 1: Swimming with the Fishes and sailing on the wonderful On The Edge.

Staying with the theme of sea based fun, another of my highlights is thanks to Hamilton Island Dinghy Hire and their range of motorised craft. Myself and the BF celebrated our third anniversary during our stay here, and decided to rent a motorised boat for the day. We were given a very thorough safety breifing, shown how to operate our boat and sent on our way. I would reccomend it greatly as a fun day's activity and the shop also rents fishing and snorkelling gear if you are that way inclined. We just used the boat to cruise around nearby islands and sip champagne on secluded beaches! Don't expect to be able to go too far or too fast though. The Dinghys are very slow and there are strict rules on how far you are allowed to travel in them.

If you're after something more fast paced try the Jet Ski Safari. As a bit of an adrennalin junky, I don't think I could have lived it down if I lived on a luxury tropical island for 6 months without ever having tried jet-skiing...and it is just as exciting as it looks. The slightest of choppy waves make you feel like you have no control at all over the skis and our instructor urged us to go as fast as possible at all times, as this makes the crafts more stable. Hamilton Island Highlight number 2: Exploring the sea with motorised vehicles!

Obviously when most people think of a holiday on a tropical island they imagine sitting in the sun on a beach or by a pool. When we first arrived on Hamilton Island we were a bit disappointed with the size and quality of Catseye beach (which is really the only beach here for the tourists) and immedately tried to find other, more exclusive beaches. Coral Cove is a good 20 minute walk from anything else but offers a far better beach experience than catseye. There's hundreds of meters of white sand, fun rocks to clamber over and most importantly, there's noone else there!

Coral Cove- Worth the Walk!

If you weren't put off by the idea of walking to Coral Cove, there's a whole network of bushwalks available on Hamilton Island. I enjoyed the hike to passage peak but am very glad that we did it in september, when the temperatures were far more bearable than in horrifically humid wet season. If on the other hand, you can think of nothing worse than walking all the way to Coral Cove then the far more easily accessable Pool Bar might be more up your street. Is it a pool??? Is it a Bar??? it's both! You can relax at submerged bar stools with a nice cold can of beer or even bob up and down in the water with a cocktail during happy hour. And you don't even have to deal with the sand afterwards. Hamilton Island Highlight 3. Relaxing in the sun!

I am not a golfer. I've never golfed and I don't intend to. If you are a golfer then your Hamilton Island Highlight would probably be Dent, the island next to Hammo, which has been turned into a full golf course. I have visited Dent on two occasions and would greatly reccomend a trip even if, like me, you don't golf. Dent is extremly hilly, I would think this would be a drawback for golfing but what do I know? This hillyness (real word?) gives you the opportunity to take in some breathtaking views of the Whitsundays and beyond, and makes for a very challenging running course. Despite this, Dent Dash is one of my definite highlights of my Hamilton island stay. One Sunday a month, the sports centre charges $20 for transport there and back, as well as a free breakfast and the opportunity to stay for as long as it takes you to run, jog or walk the course. It is a total of 10.6km, although you are welcome to choose to just complete the 4.2km front nine or 6.4km back nine. If running isn't really your idea of fun then the $60 clubhouse 2 course lunch is another Dent highlight, and includes a tour of the island on golf buggies and lots of photo opportunities.

Hamilton Island Highlight 4: Dent Island

I am a person who very much sees eating and drinking as leisure activities. I often wish I could write them on job applications and surveys in the "interests and activities" column. Hamilton Island is a bit of a foodies dream. Unfortunately due to the afformentioned lack of funds I haven't been able to sample all of the Food and Beverage options on the island but those that I have tried have made me feel extreme gratitude for the existance of tastebuds. There is a real cocktail culture here, with Sails making a staggering array and Romano's having some very inventive monthly offerings. The nightly sunset cocktails is a must if only for the standard facebook profile pictures that it will produce. The best cocktails I have had here have actually been coffee based and so delicious that they fall somewhere between dessert and cocktail in a bizzare grey area. The Espresso Martini can be found at most restaurants here on Hammo and seems to involve espresso coffee, vanilla vodka and a lot of ice. The Affagato is stunningly simple consisting of just vanilla gelato, espresso and Frangelico.Yum!

Espresso Martini- Who knew coffee could be sooooooo good

Other personal food highlights include the massive pile of beef nachos at Sails, Romanos' seafood linguini of the day, yummy fruit smoothies at the Marina Deli, the innovative Brunch pizza at Manta Ray and the amazing Spicy Mussels at Mariners.Hamilton Island Highlight 5: stuffing myself silly!

My final Hamilton Island Highlight isn't actually on Hamilton Island at all. Bit silly really, but a lot of the best times I've spent whilst living here have been on day trips to the mainland and the nearby town of Airlie Beach. Airlie is a backpacker town through and through and very much makes money off hedonistic pleasures. Bars and tour desks line both sides of the main street and campervans with parking tickets litter the roads. Since I was a child I've always wanted to go skydiving, but have never before been able to justify the cost for just a few seconds of enjoyment. The combined forces of 3 months of saving safely in the bank, the amazing scenery of the great barrier reef and the relaxed yet impulsive atmosphere of Airlie finally convinced me to shell out the cash, and I'm so glad that it did!

My Skydive :o)

Aside from skydiving, Airlie is worth a visit just to sit at one of the pavement bars and watch all the different characters go past. From scruffy hippies with multi-coloured hair, to the local teenagers wearing scarily short hotpants and all carrying a skateboard, from drunken football teams on tour, to groups of confused looking Germans with matching backpacks and sunburns, I promise you won't be bored. My favourite shop in Airlie is the kooky little bead shop, where you can make your own jewelry from the startling array of trinkets, shells and charms available. I decorated my hat with beads there (or more accurately watched as The BF decorated my hat to my specifications- I'm not good with fiddly little things like beads) and it is my favourite item of clothing ever now.

Hamilton Island Highlight number 6: Airlie Beach day trips.

So there you have it. Maybe this old rock isn't so bad after all!

Epic Aussie Adventure: Day 4

2012-02-11T16:37:00.000-08:00

Location:

Airlie Beach

Today's Travelling Track:

Train- If It's Love

Hi! Turk here. Finally a rest and time to write my own blog entry. So I've made it all the way to Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays. I'm pretty impressed with myself to be honest, I'm nearly 20 and I didn't know I still had it in me, but after a couple of weeks rest I'll be ready and raring to go and see the rest of Australia. This last leg was pretty boring. We stopped briefly in Mckay, 100kms north of the lovely beach we slept on the night before. Mckay isn't really anything special, just a town with lots of malls from what I saw. The Hungry Backpacker and The BF went to some shops and bought some tools and stuff to fix my little aches and pains with, so hopefully i should be even more as good as new by the time they get back on the road. We then travelled the final 150km to Airlie Beach. The Hungry Backpacker and The BF ate some really yummy looking sushi and it was time for me to go to my new home for the next 3 weeks. More about that later.

A few people have been asking where I came from, and wanting to know a little more of my history so I thought i would talk a little bit about that. I don't remember much of my life before The Hungry Backpacker and The BF purchased me. I had been very ill before, after a previous trip with different owners and was sold to a company called Travellers Auto Barn. They diagnosed me with engine problems and gave me a transplant, they were looking for a donor from a tired old van in a scrapyard, but happily couldnt find one, so i was given a brand new reconditioned engine. They also had a carpenter go to work on me and fit me with a nice big bed, a pump sink and heaps of shelving and storage room. When they told me I had a new owner I was thrilled and left my home in Sydney to meet them in Brisbane where they were picking me up. In Brisbane i was fitted with more commodities. I was given a cooking stove, an Esky/coolbox, tables, chairs, a tent, sleeping bags, map books, crockery, cutlery, curtains and lots of other useful things. I was also given a roadworthy test, a guarantee that the company would pay at least 40% of my price if I was sold back to them within 6 months AND lots of different waranties. The Hungry Backpacker and The BF were even given a number to call 24-7 if I get ill again, as the company have trusted mechanics all over the place who will fix me, possibly even for free depending on what went wrong! Travellers Autobarn have lots of vans they can do this to, and they show them all on Cars 4 Backpackers. some are cheaper, some are more expensive, some are older, some are newer, some are bigger, some are smaller, so you have lots of choice. I was $6000 dollars which I think is a pretty good deal considering everything you get with me, so The BF and The Hungry Backpacker will definitely get at least $2,500 back when they try and sell me. They can also sell me privately if they think they can get more.

Enough about that, I'm going to get some shut-eye and enjoy my short holiday. The time will be over before I know it and the three of us will be back on the road again.

I visit.....My Holiday Home (episode 4)

Pretty sweet pad eh? And it's right by the sea!

Epic Aussie Adventure: Day 3

2012-02-09T23:34:00.000-08:00

Today's Scenery:

Beautiful Beaches and the Capricorn Coast

Current Location

Free campsite right on the beach. Score.

Today's Travelling Track:

Blink 182- The Party Song

Sooooo, turns out entry to the crocodile farm was $25 each so we decided to give that one a miss. Instead we spent the morning visiting Emu Park (not a park and there is no emus...do not be fooled!) and Yepoon (nice beach, apparently a good place to get sunburnt...) We then drove down the most boring stretch of highway ever- Bruce Highway from Rockhampton to Mackay. I particularly liked the signs on the road which read things like "No kids, you aren't nearly there yet!" and enjoyed the entrepunurial spirit of the few buisnesses that existed along the highway. They had used handmade signs to start teaser campaigns, starting with just a tempting "Nice cold ice cream" and then giving you more and more information every 100m or so until you realised their shop was actually 15km away, making you really want cold ice cream. Unfortunately not enough of these buisnesses supplied the most important of commodities- fuel. We spent a slightly nerve-wracking 20 minutes driving with the tank almost empty until we reached the first petrol station for 140km. The Lady inside cheerfully informed me that they weren't even open 24 hours, and if we'd arrived after 6 we would have been screwed!

We have this awesome camping book which came free with Turk. It's been very helpful so far and I'd reccomend everyone travelling oz should get one. It notes down all the free camping spots in australia, lists them by road and marks them on maps. The book is responsible for us spending 2 of the last 3 nights in entirely free accomodation and relative comfort. Thankyou free book and thankyou previous owners...

realisations of today:

1. Australians aren't very inventive when naming creeks. We have seen countless signs for __mile creek. Try harder guys.

2. The easiest way to save money when road tripping is to buy all supplies in normal supermarkets. That way you avoid eating at expensive roadside services or finding yourself caught without food in the middle of nowhere. we find bakery items are good, as well as nuts and fruit.

3. See above regarding the camping book.

4. Maybe we should plan our fuel stops better. We may have laughed at and mocked the BFs brother when he told us we would need to do this.

Not to break all of your hearts, but tomorrow we will return to Hamilton island for the final month of our employment there and Installments of The Epic Aussie Adventure™ will be put on hold for a while. No need to worry though, I promise I will keep posting Hungry Backpacker insights and we will get right back to these blogs when The Epic Aussie Adventure™ resumes.

Turk Visits.... The Beach (episode 3)

Even Turk needs chill out time, so when he found this picture perfect beach, and a small friend, he thought he'd stay put for a couple of hours and enjoy the scenery. A well deserved break if you ask me.

Epic Aussie Adventure, Day 2

2012-02-09T02:37:00.000-08:00

Highlight of the last 24 hours:

High Fiving a baby turtle who just emerged from his nest, before watching him and his mates run to the sea and off to freedom! :o)

Todays Travelling Track:

Panic at the Disco- Northern Downpour

Soooooo, I know you're all on the edge of your seats awaiting this next installment of The Epic Aussie Adventure™ so I won't be keeping you a minute longer. In fact today I'm braving great beasts (mozzies) and trecherous conditions (no lights) to come to you at all as the laptop was starting to die so I'm sitting outside next to a power point! Anyways, we've had a couple of negative realisations since my previous installment.

1. Petrol is expensive and Turk is thirsty. We've probably spent 200 dollars on drinks for him already.

2. Turk has a few holes in him. We learnt this during a massive rainstorm and had to cover him with a tarp in order for us to spend the night dry. Today we've bought sealing stuff and filled in most of the holes. Unfortunautely a lot of the leaking was coming from one of the sliding doors, which is currently jammed shut because the handle is broken so we couldnt do much about that.

3. The cable attached to the lever which opens the petrol tank has snapped, we had to jimmy open the cover with a knife to fill up.

Thats about it for the negatives and not too bad for a 19-year-old van, but watch this space. Whenever I buy 2nd hand cars I always think of the father in Matilda and wonder what dodgy tricks mechanics have pulled to make vehicles run perfectly for the first 200ks or so and then suddenly all these glaring flaws show up. At least i don't think anyone put sawdust in Turk's engine.

Best moments of the last 24 hours-

1. Mon Repos Turtle Rookery. For the low low price of 10 dollars we were priviledged to watch a whole nest of baby turtles hatch, help them find their way to the waters edge using torches (they navigate against the light on the horizon, but get sidetracked nowadays by bright lights from nearby towns and often get lost) and then watched a MASSIVE female turtle digging a nest and laying her eggs. Probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen and the little turtles were SO cute. Just like squirt!

2.Learning that the baby turtles were embarking on their own epic backpacking adventure. Aparently most just ride the waves wherever they take them and eventually travel all the way to South America. They chill out there for a few years until they're ready to return home to Australia and start their own families. Me and The BF think they are the world's original travellers and hippies. Far out dude....

3. Finding an awesome free camping spot last night whilst it was pooring with rain and getting a really really good night's sleep.

4. see today's "Turk Meets..."

5. Making it to Rockhampton, and celebrating being in the beef capital of Australia by buying and cooking some amazing steaks!

Tomorrow the plan is to visit a crocodile farm, ignore my multiple mozzie bites, and hold an intervention for turk regarding his drink problems. More to come, watch this space....

Turk Visits...Mystery Craters: A truely unique rock formation (episode 2)

We were lured off of the main road by a sign advertising these mystery craters, when we saw what looked like a makeshift themepark in someones back yard (with an admission price) we decided against it....

Epic Aussie Adventure, Day 1

2012-02-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

Current Scenery:

The Glasshouse Mountains

Current Transporation:

Turk The 1993 Mitsubish Express

Todays Travelling Track:

Jason Mraz- Dynamo of Violition

And we're off! The Epic Aussie Adventure™ has begun! Today began at 5:30am when the BF had a minor asthma attack and we had to drive to his parents house from our "camping" spot to secure some sweet steriody goodness to enable him to breathe again. The previous night we had met with some friends in Brisbane, gone to a bar called JoJos purely because I insisted it must be named after me. Turns out I may have been right because we were given free margheritas (they definitely gave them to me because I was the inspiration for the establishment's name, not because they had made them erroneously and we were the closest people to the bar). We then walked around for a while looking for sushi, and as we got hungrier our mission directive changed from very specific ("It must have a train; can't be too expensive; must be a proper sit down sushi restaurant and must have a fully stocked bar") to extremely vague ("I'll eat anything 'Asiany' right now") The high point of the takeaway chinese we settled on was when I asked if they had a bathroom and was told to "just go on the street" Luckily I didn't take this suggestion literally and instead successfully navigated my way to the nearest underground public toilet. Anywho, we decided to have a couple of drinks and therefore couldn't drive home, which is why we awoke on a street in outer Brisbane at 5:30am and started our day from there. As I type we are cruising down the Bruce highway in the rain, heading for Bundaburg, home of Australian rum and, more excitingly for us, the Mon Repos Turtle Rookery where we are going tonight to watch baby sea turtles struggle their way out of their shell-based homes and scurry across the beach into the sea and freedom. What a metaphor. I think i understand exactly how they feel!

Turk meets....A Giant Pineapple (episode 1)

Turk was stunned to find a pineapple bigger than him!

Thats all folks, more insights from the road tomorrow.