What the Devil?

This weekend was a whirlwind tour of Tasmania as my time in the land of OZ winds down so much faster than I would like. Next week is my last week of classes and I can hardly believe it! But first, Tassie.

Tassie has a culture of its own, even more personal and laid back than mainland Australia. The size of South Carolina but the population of less the half of Charlotte (500,000), the island’s natural beauty remains intact and flourishing as ever. And of course it is home of the Tasmanian devil, the inspiration for the Looney Toons character Taz. Devils have the strongest jaws per pound of any animal as they chew straight through the bones of their prey. And yes, they do sound as crazy as Taz.

I got up early on Friday morning after a fun night at UNSW’s Oktoberfest for our 7am flight to Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. Charlie, Eddie, and I wasted no time in getting to the famous Port Arthur, Australia’s largest and most advanced convict settlement from when Australia was used as England’s prison. The highlight of Port Arthur was definitely the late night ghost tour. We were guided around by a Port Arthur historian between the cell blocks, the warden’s house, into the solitary confinement chamber, and ended at the lunatic ward that had to be built because of the number of prisoners who went insane during their time at the prison. The prison was completely silent and the inmates never saw each others' faces. They spent 23 hours of the day confined to their cells and the guards used sign language to communicate in front of the prisoners so that the prison could remain completely silent. We heard stories of ghost sightings of the daughters of the doctor and the only prisoner who committed suicide. After an eerie night, we made our way up to Strahan, Tasmania’s original seaport.

In Strahan we took a boat cruise down the Gordon River. The boat took us out to the Hell’s Gate, the riverheads going out into the Pacific Ocean, and then inland to a nature walk. We saw some of the oldest trees in the world, preserved in Tasmania’s temperate rainforest. We drank the freshwater straight off the top of the river as the brackish saltwater from the ocean rested below. That night in Strahan we made it to a local pub to watch the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup between France and Wales. Wales took the lead and beat France by just one point in an 8 to 9 match se they went on to face New Zealand in the finals. (Spoiler alert: New Zealand won the final.)

Next stop was Cradle Mountain. The drive from Strahan to Cradle Mountain was like going from summer to the heart of winter in about an hour. We got caught in a blizzard, sleet and snow coming down out of nowhere. Not what I had packed for in May when getting ready for Australia in the spring. We shacked up in a log cabin just outside of Cradle Mountain National Park. The next morning the blizzard had passed and we actually set our eyes on Cradle Mountain, easily the most beautiful thing I saw in Tasmania. We hiked up a nearby mountain and around the Dove Lake getting amazing views from all around. On our walk we ran into a friendly pair of bankers. One was a Kenyan pastor visiting Australia for his first time out of Africa. His companion was a native Tassie professional tree climber. He has competed all over Australia climbing the tallest of trees. It was refreshing to catch up on all of the current events in Kenya and was interesting to compare tree-climbing equipment to rock climbing gear.

 

Our last stop was Launceston where we stayed at the Batman Inn (no joke). The inn was actually where the founders of Melbourne, Australia’s second biggest city, met to decide to settle the city (more on Melbourne next week!). It was fun to explore the city, wander through the parks and a along the harbour, seeing the boats going to and from the mainland. We even saw the Launceston Basin before flying back to Sydney to enjoy a bit more of the sun and beach I had been missing (and some classes too).

Spring Break: The Jucy Experience

It’s been a while. Over the past embarrassingly long time since I last blogged, so much has happened. I’ve been SCUBA diving and rock climbing all around Sydney. I’ve been camping in the Blue Mountains and waking up before sunrise early to see kangaroos. I’ve been meeting up with old friends from Australia, New Zealand, and the US. My parents came to visit for a wonderful long weekend when I got to show off the wonderful city of Australia to them. We saw a show at the legendary Opera House, we climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, we wandered through the Royal Botanic Gardens, we walked the beaches on the North Shore, and we saw Aussie furry friends at the Taronga Zoo.

Then came a week of “grueling” midterms, presentations, papers, and all of that school stuff I keep hearing about from friends back at Duke. And then before I knew it, it was Spring Break.

To preface this, you must first see this video of our luxury ride that took three friends and me on our 2000 km journey up the Aussie East Coast.

Gold Coast & Brisbane

Our trip started with a flight full of anticipation to the Gold Coast. As Johan, Victoria, and I said farewell to our home New South Wales and were welcomed into Queensland, we knew our trip had begun. After exploring the town, crashing on those wonderful auto deflating air mattresses, and picking up Tom, we made our way to the beach at Surfer’s Paradise (it’s Spring Break, what else would we do?).  After sufficiently feeling the hole in the o zone that sits right above Australia, we got on a train to Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city. Here we met up with Tori as she showed us around her tropical campus at the University of Queensland and showed us a night on the town. We mingled with locals, got called out by a crazy street performer, and were seriously tempted to jump into Brisbane’s very own beach. The next day we went straight downtown to pick up our beloved campervan: The Jucy.

Fraser Island

Before we knew it, we had filled up the tank, gotten groceries, driving on the left side of the road, and barreling out of Brisbane heading for Fraser Island, the world’s largest sand island. Without maps or much of a plane, we boarded an early morning ferry onto the island and just started walking. We quickly realized that Fraser was a lot bigger than we had anticipated (the main beach is 75 miles long). Thankfully, we met a friendly backpacker and ran into a kind truck driver who gave us a lift to the trailhead for the most beautiful lake on the island: Lake McKenzie. Without too much trouble and only one blood-chilling scream from Victoria as a goanna crossed our path, we arrived at the lake. After marveling at the beauty, swimming around in the fresh water (first “shower” of the trip!), and marveling at how white the sand was, we hiked on to the center of the Fraser. Before we knew it, the sun was quickly racing toward the horizon. We hiked as fast as we could back to the ferry station where there was a huge resort. Being college students living on a budget, we opted out of the fancy resort, jumped the fence, and set up camp just in time for sunset and an early bedtime.

Next thing I know, I’m woken by Victoria nudging me saying, “John, John, I think something is out there!” It’s 2:30am at this point so I sit up and listen and sure enough there was rustling just a few feet outside our tent. I figure it is just a rodent but seconds later, I see the shadow of a four legged animal cross right over the door to our tent. Wild dingoes were eating our food. At this point the whole tent wakes up as we try to get the dingoes away from our food while trying not to get eaten alive. The next morning we had quite a site of all of our wrappers and food torn apart. Plus side? They couldn’t get into our Nutella.

Whitsundays

After escaping our close encounter with Dingoes, we got back in our Jucy mobile and drove to the Whitsundays where we began a three-day journey aboard the 80-foot Broomstick. We sailed, slept, and ate on board for three days and two nights, leaving the boat to hike, snorkel, SCUBA dive, and enjoy the surrounding islands. This was the first time we had actually interacted with people outside our group of four and especially since there were only three other people on the boat whose first language was English, we managed to meet some really interesting people. The highlight of the sailing trip was definitely going to Whitehaven beach, a spectacular sight with some of the most dazzling pure white sand. We saw about 50 rays and reef sharks relaxing on the ocean floor in the land of paradise as we explored the area and some of the less frequented but equally beautiful beaches.

Daintree Rainforest & Cape Tribulation

By Wednesday we were back on land, adjusting to the fact that the floor ground was no longer swaying beneath us and that no more gourmet meals would magically appear. We continued our journey north to Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation. The Daintree is the largest forest on the continent and was quite a sight to see. We explored scenic paths through its swaps and rivers, seeing lizards and crazy trees along the way.

We pulled over to a beach near Cape Tribulation, named for the troubles it had given Australia’s first European discoverer, Captain James Cook. We quickly stumbled upon a massive stock of coconuts scattered around the high tide line of the beach and we all had the same idea: lunch! After hours of throwing, dropping, smashing, and cutting open gigantic coconuts, we had all had our share of coconut milk and meat. After lunch, we finally faced the reality that we had to return our van and with it our 8:30 bedtimes and 6:30am mornings in exchange for something more along the lines of a typical spring break in Australia: Cairns.

Cairns

We quickly got settled in to the waterfront hostel, our new temporary home, and started meeting people from all over the world, including a few people who lived right down the hall in Sydney. We decided the Cairns Zoo was a must, who wouldn’t want to feed kangaroos and hold a koala (SO fuzzy)?

On Friday night I got entered into a dance off at one of the classic Cairns bars as part of a fun pub crawl that got us connected to a bunch of other backpackers to share stories with. We spent all day Saturday walking around the town and to Trinity Beach, running into some friendly wild kangaroos along the way. On Sunday morning, we took a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to do some of the best SCUBA diving of my life. There were so many fish with such vibrant colors happily swimming around everywhere. I even found a little Nemo staring right at me from his little piece of coral.

Monday was our last day in Cairns, so we took it easy, right? Of course not! We went all out with the “Extreme” white water rafting on the Tully River. We had an amazing guide who made it his goal to throw us out of the raft as many times as he possibly could. Not only did we paddle our hearts out, almost have our faces smashed into boulders, and go down crazy rapids, we also jumped off of cliffs, dropped down waterfalls, and swam through rapids. It was the perfect end to an amazing trip.

Boats, Cliffs, and Sharks

All is well in the land down under. My classes are all sorted out, I’ve got my running route around town all figured out (I ran down Australia street this morning), and I’m starting to pick up on some of the Aussie lingo. Here are some of the highlights of last week:

Wednesday: Sydney Harbor Cruise

On Wednesday night, a group of Australians and international students flocked to King’s Street Wharf to board a 3-floor cruise ship. I met people from all over the world and enjoyed the view of the skyline. We went under the famous Harbor Bridge to see more of the city lit up at night. But nothing rivaled the view of the illuminated Opera House against the black sky and the skyline. Well, nothing other than the free food.

Friday: Bondi Beach

After finishing class at 11am I went with Tom, Lucy, and Ross to Bondi Beach, the biggest beach in Sydney. After taking two busses, we arrived at our destination and the sight didn’t let us down. We relaxed on the beach, enjoying the view, the sand, and the sunlight until sunset. After the beach, we wandered around the town of Bondi until we stumbled upon an awesome Thai restaurant where we feasted until we couldn’t eat anymore.

Saturday: SCUBA Diving

I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning to go SCUBA diving with Sydney Dive Academy and some friends I had met at UNSW (another university in Sydney). After wet suiting up, we dove off the shore at a place called Botany Bay. Our dive was part of PADI’s initiative Project Aware in which we cleaned up the reef and then logged our findings to help stop future ocean pollution. In addition to the reef, some really cool fish, a crazy looking crab, and a shark, I also spotted a full sized orange traffic cone wedged between some rocks down in the reef. I pulled it out and brought it up to the surface to throw it out. There was a news team at the dive site reporting on Project Aware so who knows, maybe my traffic cone and I made it into the Sydney Morning Herald. After more than an hour under the water, we called it a day and went back to Coogee beach for some R&R.

Sunday: Rock Climbing

Last week I joined SURMC (Sydney University Rockclimbing and Mountaineering Club). So on Sunday morning I met up with 12 other club members to set out for Palm Beach, a rock face right by the beach that looks out onto the ocean. Unfortunately, it was raining and climbing wet rock is never fun. Instead, we drove out to the biggest rock climbing gym in Sydney. I had a lot of fun meeting other climbers from Sydney, Sweden, and Venezuela and being the only American for once. The rating system is completely different in Australia so it was a bit of a struggle to adjust to that but once I got the hang of it, I was top roping and sport climbing just like back at home. We climbed until we couldn’t climb anymore, and then some (my forearms are so sore today it hurts to type). But I had a great time and will hopefully get to climb outside on the beach sometime soon.

PS I love the University of Sydney, it's hard not to with sights like this.

Keen on Sydney

I made it through the first week! I already feel so comfortable with Sydney but I know there is SO much more to explore. Here are some of the highlights of my first week in Australia:

1)   Monday: Night out at Side Bar on George Street. For some Australians, every night is a time to enjoy each others company and many take advantage of the opportunity to go out dancing, even on a Monday night. While I doubt I’m going to be a frequent Monday night partier, it was a great experience to get out of the house and explore the downtown nightlife in a new city. With almost 5 million people in the city, Sydney is by far the biggest city I’ve spent any real time in. So wandering around a city that never sleeps with new friends and “heaps” of new Aussies was a fun way to spend one of my first nights in town.

2)   Tuesday: Dinner in Chinatown. Like any major city, Sydney has quite an impressive Chinatown. On Tuesday night, I ventured back into the city to explore the famed cuisine off Hay Street. After a violinist serenaded my group with Jingle Bells (yes, in the middle of July), we stumbled upon an underground Chinese food court. We each ordered from a different one of the 15 greasy Chinese restaurants and came together to enjoy our feast.

3)   Wednesday: Salsa dancing at Coogee Beach. After class on Wednesday I jumped on the 370 bus that took me from my doorstep to Coogee beach. At the beach, I met up with my friends Charlie and Jimmy from Duke and had $5 steaks (bargain!) at a restaurant on the beach. After enjoying our juicy steaks (meat here is infinitely better than in Kenya, even if the cheapest option is still 5 times as expensive), we went upstairs for Wednesday night salsa dancing. Because we came late and had no idea what we were doing, one of the two salsa instructors left the main group to teach the silly Americans how to dance (we needed it). By the end of the night we were all pros (sort of…) and had a lot of fun making fools of ourselves.

4)   Thursday: Experimental and Behavioral Economics. I’m an Economics and Psychology double major so when I found a class called Experimental and Behavioral Economics in the University of Sydney’s course catalogue, I jumped right on it. My first lecture did not disappoint. Similar to my first lecture with Dan Ariely (a behavioral economist at Duke), money was involved. The difference was that Dan took student’s money, while my professor in Sydney paid me money (one whole Australian dollar, it bought me a tenth of my lunch!). We played economic games, some of which supported standard economic theory while others refuted it. 

5)   Friday: Shopping at Paddy’s Market. At the end of the day on Friday, I took a stroll past Broadway, down George Street, and past Central Station to Paddy’s market. Imagine a collection of all of the street vendors and fresh produce sellers that you would expect to be selling their goods on sidewalks, and put them all together in one humongous market. That’s Paddy’s market. Not only is it an awesome sight to see, but it also has food for a somewhat reasonable price. I bought everything from eggs to socks to an unidentified Australian vegetable and called the trip a success.

6)   Saturday: Hiking through the Blue Mountains. I woke up early on Saturday morning to catch a bus and a train out to the Blue Mountains, a set of magnificent mountains about 100km west of downtown Sydney. Traveling with UNSW students, I hiked for the better part of the day past the famous Three Sisters rock formation and a lot of fun bouldering rocks. It was refreshing to get outside the city and appreciate some of Australia’s nature, especially as I think of all of my friends at Duke starting PWILD staff training. The Blue Mountains are not quite Pisgah, but they made for an awesome day trip.

7)   Sunday: Rest.  Today I did absolutely nothing. I went to a free barbeque, did my laundry, and relaxed. School hasn’t picked up too much so I am just enjoying being able to sit in my Eno hammock, read my book, and settle in to this new place called Sydney.

Welcome to the Land Down Under

Quick side note/recap: last week I came down with a pretty unenjoyable case of malaria. All of the fun symptoms: vomiting, joint and muscle pain, splitting headaches, fever, loss of appetite, and just general feeling of pain and discomfort. Thankfully I had a great doctor, got shots and medications, and was feeling better after about a week (so just a few days ago). On to Australia!

After a solid two days of travel, a little more malaria, and a little less sleep than I was hoping for, I arrived in Sydney! I saw the sun rise over the harbor from the plane on Sunday morning and it was gorgeous. Before I knew it I was through customs and getting out of a cab being welcomed in to my new home, Sydney University Village. I was greeted by very friendly receptionist and taken to my apartment full of four sleeping (you would be asleep too on a Sunday morning at 8am) USyd students who are going to be my roommates for the next four months. I unpacked was just feeling settled (except for the whole lack of sheets, bedding, towels, cell phone, or money) when a friendly roommate named Victoria invited me to a free barbeque.

My room pre-bedding/anything

I’m always a fan of free food, and real hamburgers with lettuce and tomatoes after two months of ugali was nothing short of amazing. I met a bunch of friendly strangers from everywhere from London to Sydney to Davidson (less than an hour from my home in Charlotte). It was the largest gathering of white people (I’m tempted to call them mzungus) I had seen in one place in months which was quite a shock on my system. From lunch a group of friends decided to take off into the city and I said, “why not?” and joined them.

We walked right out of the Village onto Kings street, a Franklin Street-equivalent, but filled with Thai, Chinese, and Indian restaurants. Next thing I knew I was getting off a bus and walking right up to the Sydney Opera House, which was quite a site to see. I’m sure you know what it looks like from the harbor where all of the famous photos are taken from but head on from the land it reminded me of the pope’s hat/mitre. I’m looking forward to going back to be able to explore the inside of the building and hopefully even see an opera performed.

From the Opera House, still coming to terms with the fact that I was in the eastern hemisphere for the first time in my life, and in Australia for that matter, I was led on by new friendly guides through the Royal Botanic Gardens. We meandered through and into the heart of the city. Parts of the city make me feel like I’m in Manhattan because of the ginormous department stores, and other parts feel like San Francisco because of the urban rolling hills. 

Where the garden meets the city

After joining a couple of newlyweds for their wedding photo in the streets, we made our way to Chinatown for the food court with the “cheapest food in town.” Unfortunately that meant dinner for $8-10 as opposed to the normal $10-15. Sydney is expensive.

After a “cheap” but filling bowl of noodles we started walking back home when I realized that I still didn’t have any bedding and the thought of sleeping on the couch after sleeping on a plane for the previous two nights didn’t sound incredibly appealing. So, I stopped by the local K Mart and grabbed the essentials before it closed (read: bedding, towel, 5 boxes of cereal, and ice cream). I made it home at 10:30 and passed out after a successful day in Sydney.

Yesterday (Monday) was my first day of class, starting just about 24 hours after I stepped foot on Australian soil. The few classes I’ve had have gone well but I’m still doing a lot of drop/add, I’ll let you know about them when I get my schedule all finalized. Between classes I’ve been meeting new people, trying not to have a heart attack every time I see the price of an item (you know those bottles of Cokes your parents told you were a nickel growing up? Yeah, they’re $3.50 AUD here), getting a cell phone, and all of the general paperwork and chores normal people do during orientation week that I missed.

I like it here. I’ve got great roommates, a great location, I know I’ll be happy with my classes when I get them sorted out, a great city, amazingly nice people, and travel opportunities galore. It’s going to be a great semester.

The List

Things I’m going to miss

·      Chapati

·      My host family

·      Village Enterprise

·      Being able to set up my hammock in my back yard

·      Free time

·      Ugandan pineapple

·      Chai

·      8 hours of sleep every night

·      DukeEngagers

·      Club Westlife

·      My dogs

·      Pikipiki rides

·      Ugali

·      Less than $1 meals

·      Soy Tu Dueña

Things I’m not going to miss

·      Malaria

·      Gratuitous amounts of oil

·      Ugali

·      Bucket showers

·      Spontaneous blackouts

·      KISUMU, KISUMU, ARE YOU GOING TO KISUMU!?!?!

·      27 people matatu rides

·      Mosquito Nets

Things I’m looking forward to

·      Washing machines

·      The beach

·      Pancakes

·      Real showers

·      Sydney Opera House

·      WiFi

·      Duke friends

·      New friends

·      Being able to wear shorts

·      English

·      THE BEACH

An Internship in 8 Pictures

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