Sydney Synopsis

This shall be the final post before I head into the OUTBACK: the arid, deserty center of this empty continent. So I shall be back in a week, Internet!

SYDNEY. WOAH. This is a really beautiful, varying, clean, bright city. It has icons like the opera house (!!!) and the harbor bridge, but it also has tons of winding streets and wharfs, botanical gardens, beaches, there's SO MUCH here. Also, there are people running truly everywhere you look at all times of the day, which is really awesome. So here's how I experienced it!

Thursday morning after the Vegemite torture breakfast we went on a cruise of the harbor. This was a pretty sweet cruise, because they gave us tea and snacks! And one of the snacks was a Tim Tam, so we did the Tim Tam Slam! It's a form of Aussie induction where you bite the ends off of a Tim Tam chocolate cookie and suck a beverage through it. This results in a gooey mess. I got the very gooiest of messes by slamming hot tea, which not only dissolved the cookie but melted it instantly. But now I'm a proper native. Hooray!

Slammin it.

The harbor cruise was awesome, there's so much to the harbor! It dips in and out, has skyscrapers, the opera house, rocks and forests, lighthouses, and then at the very end, the nicest homes I have ever seen, all crowded on cliff faces to get the perfect view of the water. They were so beautiful. We also met cool people on the ship, like Ryan, who we sang to for his 35th birthday! He was a handicapped Sydney native who thinks Obama is a great guy and was so fun to talk to. We met a couple from England who loved to talk about our flight here, and another Sydney woman who wanted to hear about our trip thus far. It was a top notch morning on the harbor. Then we grabbed lunch at a deli on Circular Quay and ate it in a nearby square with tons of seagulls. Nathan and I did some cool dancing that a lot of people stopped and watched. Then I fed seagulls bits of cookie and they swarmed. 

Next was Bondi beach! One of the most famous beaches in the world, and it's right on Sydney harbor. We took a ride on a bendy bus to the beach [the ride actually made one of our girls sick, it was rough]. Then none of us had towels to lay out on, so despite the barely 60s temperatures, we got in our suits sprinted for the water. It would be pretty wimpy  to go to Bondi beach and not splash around a bit. First thing, we ran in a bit and got absolutely clobbered by a wave. All of us were just rocked. So we went out a bit farther and again were totally demolished. We had to go REALLY far our before we could avoid the watery turmoil, but once we were there we had an awesome time splish-slpashing and whatnot. We body surfed a tad and felt pretty tubular. Then the life savers [Australian life guards] came to the shore with a megaphone and informed us we were in a dangerous current area and could we please go between the red and yellow swimming area flags. We swam in and looked for the flags- they were at least a hundred and fifty yards down the beach, we had never been anywhere close. We had been completely oblivious tourists swimming in the part of the beach reserved for surfers because of the strong current and large waves. We decided it'd be good to take a break from swimming and walk down the beach. There are amazing murals down the left side of the beach with kiddie pools and rocks jutting into the waves. The rocks have a bunch of nooks and crannies so that when waves wash over them they fill with the clear water and look really neat. We met a native girl named Georgie [who Scott later certified as a total babe] and her ity bity dog Poppy. The others talked to Georgie while I followed Poppy around the rocks. He liked to fall into the pools of water, and I liked to cherish him. That was basically it for Bondi! It was gorgeous, and probably the best beach ever when it's warmer and the lifesavers don't think you're stupid.

Next was dinner back at the hostel. They made us sausage on the barbie! Finally something America taught me about Australia is right. Not only that, we got to try kangaroo! It was delicious! I don't know what deer tastes like, but my comrades all said it tasted like that. Vegemite, a Tim Tam slam, and kangaroo all in one day, I'm practically a citizen now. We all hung out and watched the lights from the roof for a while before I passed out [accidentally] for a little bit, all tuckered out from being so Australian all day. But when I woke up, the group was coming upstairs to hang out in the TV room where we met a guy from Vancouver! Vancouver was watching American Horror Story which played in the background while we talked with him and which scared the living daylights out of me. Jeepers. Around 1:30 it was clearly time to go get pancakes. I had to go in my pjs because my room key opens my room about 15% of the time. It was a little brisk out. But walking around the city of Sydney in pajamas is pretty neat in my book, and the pancakes were nuts. Becca and I literally had walnuts on ours, with grilled banana, chocolate ice cream, and chocolate sauce. They were all that decedent. So that was a great wrap up to day 10!

Day 11! Was feared for a few days previous because Geyer warned us it was his day. He got us to the opera house, the barracks, the cathedral, and the parliament building all in one day! But first Becca, Sarah and I went for a sunrise run over the harbor bridge, a solid idea, the sunrise was phenomenal. First things first: my love, the Sydney Opera House. I'm notorious in our team for being infatuated with it, when we first got in the city and could see it I couldn't stop saying "woah, there it is, we're really here, the opera house, wowowowowow" and so on. So it was a big deal to tour it. We all wandered around outside before the tour and I snapped some sweet pics. And I found a bird! Then we met our absolutely adorable tour guide who took us through the lobbies and theaters. She was so quick witted and cute. We learned a lot of the history of the opera house. For example, it was designed by a Danish architect. The shells are ribbed so they're structurally sound. It took 7 years and 102 million dollars to complete it. All the money was raised by a state sponsored lottery. The shells are covered in Swedish white and cream tiles. It is just an amazing thing, and so beautiful.

Look at that thing.

My bird friend.

Look at that lush carpeting

Check out those Swedish tiles

Next we went to the barracks. Australia began as a prison colony, and Sydney housed some of the first convict residents. They lived in the Barracks, which is now a neat museum for us to enjoy! They had so much to look at, all in this tiny 3 story place. Some things I learned: they had 2 identical outfits for the whole year. Their only personal space was a hammock. They could get sent to the colony for totally crap reasons like 14 years for "making a noise." One little 9 year old Patrick was sent from England, away from his parents, for 7 years because he stole a pocket watch. Come on England. Anyways, it was totally awesome.

Colonist tools

The EIGHT MONTH boat trip to Sydney. I struggled with 17 hours.

The original treadmill was a cruel punishment for bad convicts that ground wheat! Now it's just a punishment for normal people.

Living quarters for the first "Australians"

Us really enjoying being convicts. Pooped.

Convict Sydney!

Next we had 15 minutes to run around Hyde park like little dogs and look at the cathedral. We looked for about a minute and then passed out on some grass.

#catholic. Actually Australia is only 3% religious, they're pretty indifferent to churches.

Hyde park, pretty beautiful 

Then it was time for the parliament of New South Wales! I don't know if I've mentioned it, but Australia has 6 states and two territories, and Sydney is the capital of the state New South Wales. When we were in Melbourne we were in the state Victoria. Anyways, we went through security and into the large old building, which actually used to be Sydney Hospital in the original colony. We had separate tours of their two legislative houses, the lower and the upper house. From what I understand [limited because its complex and I fell asleep during the lower house discussion, the benches were really comfy] the lower house gets bills first and  the members are selected by smaller electorates, like our HoR. Then bills go to the upper house which amends, passes, or denies bills, and members are chosen by the whole state. Australia has an unlimited number of parties, which is sort of neat. Both houses have a titled bailiff sort of role who keeps order in the room. He is the Serjeant-at-Arms in the lower house and he carries around a mace, while the upper house has an Usher of the Black Rod, who carries a fancy black rod. Those were the coolest jobs. We saw many fancy rooms with fancy chairs, plus the awesome library.

The lower house, with Nathan as prime minister.

The upper house! And our tour guide who was a total thug.

The crest of New South Wales. Not even parliament knows why the lions toenails are blue. I like his face.

The lower house crest. I like this lions face.

Then we had dinner at a tiny cafe that was just completely overwhelmed by our rowdy group of 16. The poor waiters were French so an even worse accent barrier than normal was presented. They were super nice though and we had a great time. I ate a lot of lettuce. After dinner we watched lights from the roof and a few of us went to a backpackers night club [drinking age is 18 here, so we can all go out and party]. The club was called the Scary Canary, and is awesome because there are more people from other countries than Aussies really, so you meet all types! I talked to Aussies, dudes from Stockholm, some Amsterdam people, and someone from somewhere in Brazil. My favorite were by far the three Irish guys I met. YEAH IRISH! I told them I'm an Irish dancer and it turns out one of them came to Sydney with Riverdance, he was a backup dancer for the show! It was so incredible! They had pretty dorky non-irish dance moves and were personally offended when I told them I don't drink alcohol. I talked to them  most of the night, It was great!

 

So now it's day 12 and our last day in Sydney. It's going to be a lot of walking in parks, some hammocking, some shopping, and an early sleep so that we can arise for our flight! Tomorrow I head into the outback, beginning at the world's largest monolith, Uluru [Ayers Rock to the non Aborigines]. Then my life will be sleeping in a canvas sack known as a swag, under the stars with whatever critters scuttle around the desert. We'll see Uluru, Kata Tjuta, the city of Alice Sprigs, a big cattle ranch, and Kakadu national park. We shall end in Darwin, a city on the northern coast. That my friends, is where I shall blog again! Thanks for reading, wish me luck!

Here's a Tasmanian Devil to tide you over.

Blue Mountain Morning, Sydney Sunset

WOW.

Day 9 has been a miracle of a day. My favorite by far. Mountains and the city in the same day, thank you Australia for being everything anyone could want. We woke up in the Blue Mountains YHA for a  lovely breakfast of cheese, French bread, fruit, and tim tams, which is supposedly a very Australian thing to do. Whatever you say Dr. Geyer! We apparently have to do a tim tam slam before we leave in order to be truly Australian: bite off the ends of the cookie and drink a beverage through the cookie, then consume the resulting mushy chocolatey mess. It sounds much less scary than the name suggests, so I'm stoked! Anyways, this incredible day:

We went to Scenic World, the company that facilitates hiking around the Three Sisters, this giant rock formation of three spires at Echo Point in the Blue Mountains. They're named for an Aboriginal legend about three sisters of the Katoomba tribe who were in love with three brothers of an enemy tribe, and when battle ensued between the tribes, a witchdoctor turned them to stone to protect them. He intended to turn them back after the battle but was killed, so the three still stand there overlooking the valley. They're really incredible looking, giant and solid. If I had to have sisters, I'd pick them, they look really tough, like they'd beat up anyone who picks on me. We hiked to the best lookout points to gaze upon endless trees and ridges of mountains that extended forever. The three sisters were side by side on their rock platform, holding their own next to the massive mountains. Then we did one of the coolest things I've ever done: descended the Grand Stairway. This thing is 900 steps that go down to the base of one of the sisters, winds around the three and down Into the valley. It is absolutely insane, beautiful, and slightly frightening. But the views distract you from that sufficiently. It was so fun to do it with my teammates too. There were even a few places where I could [probably against some rules] clamber up onto giant rocks and improvise the stairway. It was enormous. Then there was a couple more miles of hiking before we arrived at the railway deep in the valley. This is not just a railcar, but the steepest railway in the world, making an ascent at 53 degrees. That didn't sound too steep to me before hand, but WOW. From the bottom looking up the track, it looked straight up- like we were at Busch Gardens about to ride the Griffon backwards. That was a really fun ride as we were dragged by our lap-bars up the mountains back to the Scenic World gift shop. So the Blue Mountains definitely made an impression on me.

Next was Sydney! I fell in love with Katoomba all over again as we drove through the bright, colorful streets toward Sydney. We entered he city limits shortly but the hub of the city was still so far- it's an expansive city. We unpacked at the Sydney Harbor YHA, a really cool youth hostel built Around the site of a demolished home from the neighborhood that used to stand here in The Rocks of Sydney Harbor. The halls of the hostel are all open air around this pit of the ruins. It's a really cool and beautiful place to stay, especially with the top floor roof/lounge with a view of the opera house and harbor bridge. It. Is. Incredible. We had some free time before dinner so a few of us explored the city! We checked out Australia Square, a bustling centerpiece to that area of town. Then we walked all he way down Pitt street to Circular Quay, a neat outdoor club scene. It also has another wonderful view of the opera house and bridge. We used one of the see-saws right on the wharf and that got pretty violent, little British boys pointed and laughed at us. There were a ton of colorful clubs and bars and restaurants there, not to mention the Sydney Vivid festival. They're having a festival all winter that's a celebration of lights and music, so at night all the skyscrapers, the opera house, and the bridge are lit up with bright changing colors. The opera house especially has crazy changing pictures all over it all night. So that was a sight to behold. Then we had dinner in the hostel,  the staff made burritos full of delicious veggies! It's a really awesome place to stay. Next, unfortunately we had to rush one of our girls to the emergency room, she slipped on he stairs and banged the back of her head resulting in a minor concussion. After that panic cleared there was much merriment and laughing and dancing on the rooftop with the perfect Sydney backdrop. So that was one insane first night in Sydney!

Now, morning of Thursday day 10, I did something really stupid [yet necessary], I tried Vegemite. It's concentrated yeast extract, born out of the need for more food issues during a war. Nothing delicious comes out of that. Anyways, I did it so now I'm pretty awesome. Here are pictures from these awesome days!

SCENIC WORLD

BAM three sisters

Blue mountains. Oh Australia.

Grand stairway. Enormous drop down into a valley off the railing to the right there

Giant tree, playing with the iPhone panorama 

Railway that looks like stairs it's so steep

GAH. That's the three sisters to the left, the end of the railway at the bottom.

Sydney harbor, nbd. This is on the roof of our hostel

 Harbor bridge and the The Rocks night  life

Sydney Vivid at NIGHT 

Don't want any part of that.

Hauling Booty under the Southern Sky

The days are running together quite a bit now, but it's just a soup of good conversation and amazing sights. 

Yesterday we woke up at the crack of dawn in Warrnambool to hit the road once more. We had our usual bakery breakfast which have quickly led each member of the team to discern their feelings about meat pies. A treasured favorite of Australians, these meat-and-veggie-filled pastries have either won the hearts of or thoroughly disgusted each person. I don't mind them personally, but some mornings I am really thankful I smuggled a supply of clif bars into the country. We had one stop before our long drive, a neat collapsed volcano site called Tower Hill. We entered through a steeply declining dirt road that passed through an enormous collection of kangaroos. That's right: I FINALLY SAW KANGAROOS. They're the Australian form of deer, they're so common and skiddish. We actually had to wait a time for them to clear the road, they were so content just hopping along in front of us. Then we got out and hiked up this very steep hill to find a spectacular view of the volcano turned crater turned lake, surrounding mountains and fog, plains, the sea, it was a lot. That was our only stop for that day, the rest was driving our two vans and a sedan to the next town on our scenic route to Sydney: Narranderra. This town was even smaller than Warrnambool [extremely impressive]. We ate dinner in an ex-servicemen club that was a little empty but served tasty grilled chicken! It was also one of the first times all 16 of us fit around one table. I talked to the sweet lady at the bar for a while, who emphasized the deadness of Narrandera and was just so kind.

That night back at the Fig Tree Motel there wasn't much to do but lose consciousness in preparation for waking up early this morning!

Thus day 8 began. We assembled at 7 to hit up a bakery [where 98% of us got the same chicken avacado cranberry sandwich, mostly for its non-pieness]. We then wandered around the 2 streets of Narrandera for a long while as Geyer sorted out our activities for the morning. He came out of a corner building with two people and 16 hats. These were distributed as we learned about Landmark, a crop and fertilizer company that is partners with  the American company that just hired one of our team members. Those two representatives took us to two different farms to question the farmers and ask about anything ranging from Australian farming practices to beliefs on gun rights [Australians have none]. We also got to pet a really sweet farm dog named Meg. Then we saw some irrigation practices, stopping at a river, a dam, and a weir. It was cool to see that these structures were so similar to ones in America, only this country [and many of the Asian countries it trades with] truly depends on its irrigation. Then it was driving driving driving until we arrived this evening in he slightly larger town of Katoomba. We're in the comfortable blue mountains youth hostel, where I'm currently falling asleep on a couch in the ballroom. The drive was similar to he hours the last two days, only tonight we drive longer into darkness, so I finally got to see the impressive collection of stars available to Southern Hemisphere gazers. I was also shocked by the number of visible stars. Even with so many cars around, it was a far more populated sky than I have found in Blacksburg. Just wait for the outback! We went to dinner [more Thai!] soon after arriving, and got to see the adorable mountain town of Katoomba. A classic mountain town, the shops here alternate between mountain gear and food, except being an Australian town all the food shops are Asian. The mountains that rule the town are the Blue Mountains, most famous for the Three Sisters, which we Well supposedly hike tomorrow morning! That'll be before we head off to Sydney finally, so day 9 should be a really excellent one. I'll keep you posted. 

Things different about Australia: the bathrooms have exclusively blowy hand dryers, no paper towels. There's a serious hostel and backpacking scene here, a really cool thing to have in most cities. There are sheep absolutely everywhere. They put butter on everything and serve it with French fries. Since their one and two dollars are coins, a wallet full of change could easily be over $10, which is always a really exciting discovery. Also an interesting note: because of the persistently luke-warm showers available at Nomads, I'm now accustomed to shower temperatures somewhere between painful and removing layers of skin. I wonder If this will persist. I'll Probably just let go of the necessity of showering entirely  in the outback. I just can't wait for that night sky!

Tune in next time for the first taste of Sydney and a report of the hikes of the Blue Mountains!

The views from tower hill

Up close with my first kangaroo buddies!

Mmmm Thai.

Sunday with the 12 Apostles

One last day in Melbourne yesterday, and it was a good one. A few of us hit Victoria Market early because we just couldn't get enough the day before. We had fruit for breakfast while we meandered through the isles, and I got a really sweet sweater. Perfect for how frigid and windy these days have been. Darn you Southern Hemisphere and your reversed seasons. Melbourne was supposed to be the coldest place we went so Ill adjust. Then we all went to the zoo! We saw so much: meerkats that ran around with their little tails up or sat Buddha style like they were on drugs,  lions, orangutans who did sweet flips and tossed frozen fruit at each other, mandrills [Rafikis] with their colorful butts, platypuses doing laps like champs, tons of snakes, giraffes invading each others personal space, baby elephants tossing dust all over the place, Tasmanian devils being the last of their species and having cute fangs, and so many more. By mix ups of who was exploring with who, basically everyone but me got to see the kangaroos. A couple people have even seen them in the wild already, so I'm still on a desperate hunt to view a roo. But you'll know when it finally happens.

After the zoo we went for lunch in a different district of Melbourne that had a high concentration of Lebanese, Turkish, and Afghani food/culture, plus a ton of hookah shops. We had Lebanese pizzas which were delicious. Then some free time until Sunday morning. A few of us took our hammocks to Uni Mel [Aussie for University of Melbourne] and strung them up, 5 of them on just a few trees. Well apparently no one here hammocks because we got so many hilarious reactions. One mom lifter her son over a hedge so he could get a look, some students asked what we were strung up in, and then what the word "hammock" meant. A police man asked if we were spending the night. No mr police man, just enjoying the fine winter day. Then we left to explore downtown a bit and get dinner in the Chinese district. Downtown was AWESOME. I love to bake so exploring  the zillions of bakeries was such a treat, we stopped in cute book stores, and saw a giant shopping center built totally around an old brick "lead pipe and shot factory", with a tower that went up at least 8 stories, the mall was built Around it entirely with a glass dome going up to enclose the factory tower. It was nuts. Then we walked along and ran into some super sweet dubstep dancers who had accumulated quite a crowd. They were awesome and really exemplified how young and artistic this city is. We had dinner in the Chinese district, which is funny because most signs and things in Australia are also Chinese anyways. So the Chinese district just smelled spicy and had less English. The restaurant we picked totally serendipitously was pretty high tech, we ordered [a ton of honey chicken] on an iPad and the servers wore sunglasses like they were in the secret service. Next we headed home after a little more walking around town for an early rising next day!

Which was today! We left Nomads at 7 am and set out for the Great Ocean Road, a route that traces the very edge of the continent on cliffs and beaches, showing the most breathtaking sights Australia has to offer [I hope, l'll die of asphyxiation if anything takes my breath away more]. Mom, Dad and Kevin, I got serious flashbacks of the Amalfi coast. We had a wonderful drive, going an hour along, stopping at an overlook, repeating, each time the view of ocean and cliffs getting more spectacular. The first stop as a tusk my Bells Beach where we all ran out and  then came springing back in as the rough waves gave chase. Still, over a hundred people were out surfing, now in the Winter months. What a gnarly population. Our next big stop was one of my main attractions to the whole trip, The 12 Apostles. So the coast of Australia is loaded with these things: great big stacks of limestone. What happens is the land juts out from everything beside it eroding, forming a sort of peninsula. Next, the current on either side cuts away a hole in the base, turning the peninsula into an archway. The arch grows until the remaining rock spanning the distance can't hold up, falling into the sea. That leave a big formation of limestone no longer connected to the land of the coast. The 12 Apostles is a really famous collection of these guys with awesome vantage points to take a good look. They're a absolutely wonderful, awe was actually inspired. The waves crashing on these enormous, lonely formations is so crazy to see. From there we stopped at many more overlooks. The fun part is that the place you park your car is pretty removed from the overlooks, so you take these trails through brush and grass to get to the platforms for taking pictures on the cliffs. It was so much fun exploring these paths and coming upon the sites. One of the best was this gorge where a ship wrecked. We were able to go down to the beach where the gorge walls went up so high on either side of us, and the waves crashed like they were angry against the walls, water funneled into these low "thunder caves," names for the sound the forceful waves made inside. The story is that only 2 out of 58 survived the wreck, a man and a woman, and he nursed her to health in an above ground cave there on the coast. It was a sight to behold. The rest of the lookouts were more views of the gorge, caves, and limestone formations standing in the waves of the coast. I don't remember seeing so many impressive sights all in one afternoon, I'll put pictures at the end!

Finally we arrived at dusk at a motel in Warrnambool and all went out for Thai food! Hooray! I believe we'll sleep early tonight because we have another 7 am departure tomorrow. We will drive to some tower place, explore that, then haul booty for 9 hours [!?] in the car to one more stop to sleep before driving the next day to the blue mountains for some hiking! Then Sydney for a while before heading into the outback! But I'll speak of ll this once it has happened, that's just the game plan. Alright [a million] pictures!

Meerkat selfie, he's up there being king of the rock

Tasmanian devil, these guys are extinct in the wild :(

Mmmm Lebanese lunch

Tori, me, and my awesome sweater at Bells Beach

THE TWELVE APOSTLES 

Holy smokes, the gorge of the ship wreck

Top is miscellaneous wow, bottom is "The Razorback," a sharp ridge of limestone left near the gorge

Girls being all cute and scenic

THUNDER CAVE

thanks everyone who has let me know they're reading, it's awesome to think you all are enjoying my adventure too! More to come!