Monday, November 8, 2010

Making it to Woodford

Shortly after Parklife I put in with Dexter and another Dan to rent a car to drive down the great ocean road on the southern coast of Victoria.  There are a couple portions of the road where you are on the side of a sea cliff similar to the way the Trans Canada highway used to be coming into Golden.  Only instead of a mountain valley you would plummet straight into the southern sea.  We also managed to find some koala's, a few cool birds that landed on our car and the other Dan's first Kangaroo/wallaby ever!  I had fun on the roadtrip, good company goes a long way on the road, even though the weather was cold, windy and rainy.  The major highlight of the road is the 12 Apostles, there never really were 12 but somebody just figured it would be a good name.  The pictures we took were definitely no match for the brochures as we didn't have the helicopter angle they much all use.  The view point is actually in the middle of them, so you can't get them all in one picture.

After this trip I got my first taste of full on couch surfing, though since I didn't have any plans left for Melbourne I ended up bumming around their place for the most part, lucky for me they were really laid back and happy to let me help with errands and a bit of light gardening.  I took off for Sydney after a few days and then discovered that I didn't really have any plans for Sydney either so I ended up only staying a week.  The highlight of Sydney for me was getting to meet up again with other people I had met on my travels.  I met up with Arjen and Ankie who lived with Sharon and I in Karratha for two months for a drink the first day I got there.  This one drink turned into three or four and then dinner and a few more.  I decided that day you can determine how much you like people by how many rounds you end up having when you just meet up for a drink.  I also would have been really bored most the week were it not for another reunion with Cat who was looking for work in Sydney at the time and plans to stay there a while.  We went on a "free" walking tour of Sydney (not the whole city obviously just the center, the whole limits you would be hard pressed to walk in a week I think).  The tour was given by a University of Sydney Architecture student, reminds me of a Victoria tour guide I know, who founded the company with her boyfriend on the basis that people pay what they think the tour was worth at the end (kind of like a tip I suppose).  I felt like a super nerd when she showed us one of the sites where they filmed "The Matrix" and I was able to come up with the scene, almost immediately.  Hey, it's a good movie ok?  I also caught up with my friend Lewis who I met and worked with in Mooloolaba.  On Sunday we were hanging out at his place in Manly, and four sulphur crested cockatoos rocked up onto the balcony, while his roommate was sitting out there!  Turns out that they feed them, sunflower seeds, and the occasional treat of almonds.  Since they don't have any predators, and prefer not to hop down to the ground, they would rather eat right out of your hand, even if this means climbing onto your arm or up your shoulder.  I was pretty excited and impressed with all this, and amazed with how gently they would grasp your arm.  I had bare sleeves and didn't get a single scratch. 

The next day I took care of a lot of organizing and hopped an overnight bus up to Brisbane, apparently we had some mechanical troubles en route and almost got T-boned by a roadtrain when the bus stalled at an intersection.  I was of course sleeping soundly through all this and was blissfully ignorant of my possibly impending doom.  I also had a large layover so I didn't have to worry about the fact we were really late, it was just less time for me to kill when I did get to the destination.  From Brisbane I took a train out to one of the suburbs to meet up with my friend Chris again, I began and finished my time in Australia staying with him and have never had better hospitality.  I can only hope I get the chance to provide the same.

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