Jesse and Michelle Living Down Under

27-May through 2-June: Alice to Adelaide

2009-06-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

View Alice to Adelaide in a larger map

Set out early from Alice towards Kings Canyon. We got there a bit after lunch and climbed up to the top of the canyon and did the rim walk...it was a pretty cool canyon. After the hike we had to drive a few more hours to get to Yulara which is the town near Uluru. We camped there and got rained on in our swags.

The next morning we were up early to see the sun rise on Uluru but it was cloudy and rainy so there wasn't much of a sunrise. They say less than 1% of visitors see Uluru in the rain so we're actually special. Did the hike around the base...its a huge rock! The base walk is about 10kms and it was cool to see it from a bunch of different angles. Then we went a bit down the road to Kata Tjuta which is one of the other rock formations and did a little hike. By this time the rain had picked up and was being wind blown into us so that it was actually painful...not the kind of weather you expect in the desert! After lunch the rain continued to dump and we eventually started to head back to the rock when there were a couple breaks in the sky. As we were just getting there a rainbow started to form and it ended up being perhaps the most intense rainbow I've ever seen directly over Uluru. It was amazing and lasted for about three minutes...our timing was incredibly lucky. Uluru also had hundreds of waterfalls cascading down from all the rainfall which was really cool...at this point I did feel special. For sunset the clouds broke up enough that we got some great red light on the rock. After diner and a campfire, another attempt at sleeping outside in a swag was thwarted in the middle of the night by rain.

On Friday it was quite a long drive from Yulara across the NT/South Australia border through the desert and not a whole lot else. We ended up in the later afternoon in Coober Pedy which is the opal mining capital of the world...more than 80% of the world's opals come from there. In the middle of the outback there it gets hot in the summer, like 120s and 130s at times so over half of the town is actually underground to keep cool. Coober Pedy translates from the local aboriginal language to something like "white man's hole in the ground." We stayed underground at this place which was quite a novelty. Had dinner and went to an underground pub for a few beers.

Saturday we spent a bit of the morning in Coober Pedy digging for opals. I came up empty but did find a piece of glass with some interesting color on it that I for a few brief moments thought was a black opal that would make me rich. Back on the road driving through a lot of empty terrain. Went by a former joint US/UK missile testing ground...I can see why they placed it there. Ended up in a little place a the foot of the Flinders mountain range called Quorn for the night.

Sunday was a pretty full day of hiking in the Flinders range which was great. In the morning we took a short hike to the Yourambulla caves which has a bunch of aboriginal artwork on the walls. After lunch we took a tough hike up a mountain called Ohlssen Bagge which is part of the Wilpena Pound. The Wilpena Pound is an area of land that is basically circled by mountain peaks all the way around. The views were great and of course the mountains are somewhat vertically challenged by the world's standards but they have a very craggy rugged look which fit perfectly with the bitter wind and cold we had at the top.

On Monday we took a morning hike in the Flinders to the top of a place called The Dutchman's Stern named because I guess it looks like the stern of a ship. Nice views from the top. After lunch we hit the road towards Adelaide taking the scenic way through the Clare Valley which is one of SA's big wine areas. It was a pretty drive and didn't take all that long to get into Adelaide. We went out for dinner and some drinks to celebrate the end of the trip.

Tuesday I spent the morning walking around Adelaide...its a very clean city with lots of gardens and parks. It has a bit of a sleepy feel to it also which I like. After seeing what I could in a few hours I got myself to the airport and onto my flight back to Sydney. 40 days blows by pretty quickly...it was a great trip!!

22-May through 26-May: Darwin to Alice Springs

2009-05-24T19:42:00.001-07:00

View Darwin to Alice in a larger map

Set off early on Friday morning for a three day drive along the Stuart Highway to get to Alice Springs in the middle of the desert. The drive goes along some of the most isolated, desolate road in Australia. First day we went to Katherine and went to Nitmiluk National Park in the afternoon. Took a boat across a croc infested river and then had a great hike into a falls and swimming hole. Even though it was like the kajillionth time I've done that in the last month, it doesn't get old! The water was frigid which felt great. Back at camp we were able to have a campfire and unlike at Kakadu it got nice and cold so I had a good night's sleep.

The next day started with a trip into a beautiful hot springs near Mataranka. The setting was spectacular and we had a really nice swim. It was very chilly out still early in the morning so the hot water was perfect. After the springs we had a long day of driving through not a lot. We stopped at a few roadhouses including a stop at Daly Waters which has a great little pub that claims it is Australia's most remote pub. Back into a swag sleeping under the starts at night which was great.

The next day was another long one of driving to get to Alice Springs. We had a stop at a place called the Devil's Marbles which is a huge area of spherical rocks that are perched atop one another in weird ways thanks to millions of year of erosion of the ground around them. We crossed the unofficial line that divides to the north the area that has wet and dry seasons and to the south is desert...and then a bit later we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn which is the official divider of the tropics and the semi-arid desert. Finally got into Alice in the evening and enjoyed a bit of the desert nightlife.

Two days "off" in Alice were relaxing and relatively uneventful. One highlight was I rented a bike and road around town a bit. Went to the "School of the Air" which is where "school" for hundreds of Aussies living in the most remote parts of the country happens. Its basically a TV studio and using webcams the teacher has class with his/her students who are scattered about. Pretty cool.

19-May through 21-May: Kakadu National Park

2009-05-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

View Kakadu in a larger map

Early start to head out of Darwin for a three day trip focused on Kakadu National Park. The first day we spent in the other parks in the area: Litchfield and Mary River. First stop in Litchfield National Park was Florence Falls where we had a nice swim. From there we went on to Buley Rock Holes which is basically a cascade of swimming holes. Another refreshing swim (we've left the hot/dry area for the hot/humid area so nice cold water to swim in is greatly appreciated). For the afternoon we drove to Mary River National Park where we took a boat trip on the Mary River. The trip was awesome...we saw a bunch of salties and freshies (crocs)...some really big ones too a 12 foot saltie! There was also abundant exotic birdlife and the river was quite swampy which when put all together kind of made me feel like I was taking a boat cruise through Jurassic Park. In the evening the dark gray clouds and humidity won out and it poured down rain.

The next morning we headed into Kakadu park where we did a hike up a rock hill that led to 360 degree views of the Kakadu flood plains which were pretty cool. Its the beginning of dry season (despite the previous night's rain) now so there was some water out there, but drying quickly. The main draw of the hike was the aboriginal rock art all over the place, some of which was thousands of years old! In the afternoon we went to Jim Jim Falls. Getting there involves driving down a narrow, rutted sand/dirt track that is semi-flooded out. It was quite a ride. Then a 1km scramble over some huge boulders to the beach where you swim through some rocks to get to the plunge pool. The water was freezing...we swam right under the falls which was coming down from 200 meters above. It was pretty cool!

The following morning we went to Gunlom falls which was a steep hike up to the top where there were swimming holes with amazing views out to the falls and the valley beyond. We swam in each of the pools which eventually led to a little waterfall up above. The next stop was a secluded little pool and falls which I don't think has a name. The water was again freezing which was again extremely refreshing. Then a long drive back into Darwin and a few beers to say goodbye to some new friends who were all parting ways.

7-May through 18-May: Broome to Darwin

2009-05-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

View Broome to Darwin in a larger map

The remaining time in Broome was great...had a few good meals at restaurants, spent some time at Cable Beach including a glorious sunset and went through a few museums dealing with Broome's pearling past. On Saturday morning we were up early to start the next leg of our tour to Darwin. This leg consisted of 8 nights of camping along an extremely isolated rugged dirt road: the Gibb River Road. We drove a few hours the first day to get out of the metropolis of Broome and made our first stop at Tunnel Creek National Park where we hiked through and along a creek that runs about a kilometer through a cave. The cave was used back in the day by an aboriginal outlaw to elude police for years (until his own gang eventually turned him in). Then on to Windjana Gorge for our first night's camp. We took a dusk/sunset hike into the gorge and saw a bunch of freshwater crocs and once it got dark you could shine your light over the river and see a bunch of glowing red croc eyes staring back at you. The gorge was a nice spot with huge rock walls towering into the sky on either side...pretty cool.

Up with the sun the next morning to continue along the Gibb River road. We had quite a number of river crossings today although none more than about two or so feet in depth. The major stop was to Bell's Gorge where we took a little hike to a waterfall with a swimming hole below. Had a nice refreshing swim (it was very hot out but the water was very "fresh" as they say). On for the night to Manning Gorge where we camped next to a huge Boab tree (an awesome type of tree found primarily in Madagascar as well as this part of Oz and a few other parts of Africa). I'll mention that camp life on this trip was awesome...delicious food and we were able to have campfires. Everyone sleeps in swags under the stars which is fantastic...I'm going to look into buying my own swag to take back to the US.

Up a bit before the sun today to get an early start on our hike through the Manning Gorge to Manning Falls. It starts with swimming across the Manning River to get to the trail...they had styrofoam boxes you could put your pack in to push across and keep dry (I left my big camera behind...didn't want to risk it!) Manning Falls was lovely, had a great swim and then warmed back up in the sun before hiking back out to the campground. Back on the road continuing east (I use the term road somewhat loosely. Its mostly red dirt, sometimes mixed with sand, there are constant stream/river crossings and there are basically no services...we've passed two very lonely roadhouses in about 500km and have passed maybe 7 or 8 cars per day on average). Quick stop at Galvan's Gorge for another swim under a waterfall...quite picturesque! Then found a nice spot to bush camp off the road near a creek. Had a great fire and some good food as always!

Tuesday was our last big driving day on the Gibb River Road. We drove through beautiful country where a large part of the movie "Australia" was filmed and had our biggest river crossing...the Pentecost River was probably 300 or 400 meters across. Our major stop for the day was Emma Gorge which was a smallish hike into a gorge with a beautiful waterfall and pool to swim in. (swimming beneath beautiful waterfalls doesn't get tiring!) The water was freezing which was pretty nice on a hot day. Afterwards we went to our stop for the night which was on a huge million acre cattle station. We had a makeshift baseball game in our campsite with a tennis ball, a shovel as the bat and chairs as bases. As the only American I tried to teach everyone the rules which went okay but we ignored some of the more "complex" ones (tagging up on a fly ball was wayyy too complicated so we ignored that one). The campground on the station had a bar which had a band playing that night so after dinner we spent the evening having some beers and dancing to some great Aussie bush music under the stars. It was a pretty great scene!

The next morning we started off by going to the Zebedee Hot Springs in the morning which was gorgeous. The day ended up being one of mechanical issues...we had to make a small detour into town to get a flat tire fixed and then we drove on to Purnululu National Park which is more commonly known as the Bungle Bungles. The road in is quite rough, the 50kms takes 3 hours on average. About halfway through the clutch on our truck gave out. So we camped off the road in what was really a gorgeous spot.

We woke up to a great sunrise and unfortunately the clutch didn't fix itself overnight but Luke, our awesome guide, somehow figured out how to shift without it, basically just muscling it into gear. First stop was to two little hikes: Piccaninny Gorge and Cathedral Gorge. The main feature is the huge "beehive" dome rock formations...these are sandstone that have been carved by wind and water over the years. Before lunch I did a helicopter flight over the Bungles which was awesome...really cool to get an aerial perspective on the park. In the afternoon we did another hike into Echidna Chasm which was incredible! It was this really narrow gorge cut through the rock...my photos don't do it justice unfortunately. Back to camp for dinner but not fire unfortunately because of a fire ban in the park. Big fan of the Bungle Bungles!

The following day was a long day of driving back up to Kununurra. A few of us had a nice run around the Lily Creek Lagoon at sunset...really pretty colors! The next morning we went to Lake Argyle which is the largest man made lake in Australia and had a boat ride around. We saw crocs (there are evidently 25,000 in the lake! yikes!), rock wallabies, lots of huge fish and some birds. In the afternoon we crossed over from Western Australia into the Northern Territory...the NT only instituted speed limits like 3 years ago and they're way higher than anywhere else in Australia. I also unfortunately found out that its the only place in Australia where you can still smoke in bars...gross. Had a nice sunset hike in Gregory National Park and then on to camp along the Victoria River for the night.

Our last day of the trip we woke up well before the sun which was painful. We stopped in Katharine National Park at Edith Falls for the usual: hike in to a waterfall with a swimming hole below. As the drive continued north to Darwin you could notice the increased humidity. In Darwin we all met up at the Mindel markets which they have twice per week along the beach with all sorts of food, art, music and fireworks. Then we went out to celebrate our last night and the end of the trip!

A link to a few more photos:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.1z0vj761&x=0&y=-9f3dyg&localeid=en_US

27-Apr through 6-May: Perth to Broome

2009-05-06T17:43:00.001-07:00

View Perth to Broome in a larger map

We were up early to start our trip up north to Broome. We met our guide and the others in our group. It was a lot of driving the first day to get out of the Perth area and into the bush. We stopped at Nambung National Park to see the pinnacle formations and continued the drive up along the coast. I managed to badly jam my finger playing footy at lunch which became a gruesome purple/black color. We stayed the night at a little place on the beach in the tiny town of Horrocks.

Next morning we were up and out before the sunrise...the sunrise over the desert was gorgeous. We headed to Kalbarri National Park where we did two smallish hikes: Z-Bend Gorge and Nature's Window. The gorge there was great and the color contrast between the red rock and blue sky was awesome. After lunch we were back on the road passing through some pretty empty space on the way to the Shark Bay area. First stop was Hamelin Pool which contains one of the very few, and the only visible, colonies of stromatolites in the world. Stromatolites were the first living thing on the earth to use photosynthesis. Starting 3.5 billion years ago and lasting about 2 billion years, stromatolites breathed oxygen into the atmosphere changing it from no oxygen to ~20% and making it possible for humans to eventually come along. Pretty important little guys! A gorgeous sunset over the ocean (so good to be on a west coast!) and then a BBQ at our stop for the night in Denham in the "Shark Bay" area.

We woke up early the next morning (a theme for the trip) to drive to Monkey Mia in Shark Bay where every morning, a group of up to twelve wild dolphins swim up to shore and are fed (I was initially concerned about this because it doesn't sound very environmentally responsible, but on further research they actually do a great job. For example, they only feed the dolphins about 10% of their daily food need so the dolphins still fish and teach their young to fish like normal). Had some great views of the dolphins close up, it was really cool. Afterwards went out for a quick kayak in the water before we drove on, making a stop at Shell Beach, which, as the name implies, is a beach of only small shells, no sand. After this we hit the road for a looong drive through the middle of nowhere up to Coral Bay. We managed to keep ourselves entertained pretty well on the bus and spent a small bit of time down on the beach at night before calling it a day.

The next day we spent almost the whole day at Coral Bay. Coral Bay has spectacular turquoise water and i went for a very long walk along the beach and up into the sand dunes for views of the bay. After hanging out on the beach a bit, we then made the short drive up north to Exmouth, at the northern tip of the Ningaloo Marine Park. Exmouth was originally built by the U.S. military as a communications center in the 60s I believe to monitor movements out in the ocean. The Aussie military now has a base their but its become mainly a tourist town.

Next morning up early to take a boat out on the reef. After a snorkel we went past the breakers to snorkel with whale sharks, the purpose of the trip. Whale sharks are the largest fish in the sea...they can get up to 18 meters (~60 feet). Every year they swim through the Ningaloo reef to feed on algae so they run these trips using a spotter plane in the air to find and locate them. We snorkeled with a ~8 meter (a little under 30 feet) whale shark for a few hours. Even through this was a "small" whale shark, it was huge and impressive! Really amazing to be in the water with something so gigantic (and thankfully completely indifferent to snorkelers!)

Up early the next morning for the long drive inland to Karijini National Park. It was 8 hours of drive time through almost completely empty land. At the end of the drive we climbed into the Hamersley mountains ranges and into the park. We camped and about half of us slept outside in swags under the stars. It was awesome! The stars were unreal.

The next morning we set out to explore some of Karijini and went to Dales Gorge. We descended into the gorge and walked the length of it. The views were spectacular and we went to three different pools for swims during the hike. First to Circular Pool, then to Fortescue Falls and then to Fern Pool, which is the most sacred aboriginal site in the area. All three spots were gorgeous, it was really an unreal hike and I had numerous "Australia" moments throughout the day where the surrounds were just so uniquely Australian. When we got back to camp a few of us went for another short sunset hike into Joffres Gorge, near our camp. Another lovely spot...then BBQ for dinner to end a fantastic day and another night out under the stars.

The next day was another full one of hiking through Karijini's gorges. First through Weano Gorge which led to a small abseil down a rock face to get to Handrail Pool. We took a swim through the pool to the narrow gorge that continued on to the other side which led to a ~40 foot waterfall into a pool below. You could keep going at that point only if you were fully equipped to abseil down/climb up tall rock faces which we weren't unfortunately. After lunch we went across to Hancock Gorge where we hiked along rock ledges and through pools. As the hike continued the gorge got narrower and narrower until we got to the portion named the "Spider-Walk" because its so narrow you can press your hands and feet against each wall of the gorge and hold yourself up off the ground. It was awesome...very reminiscent of the Virgin River hike in Zion Park in Utah. The Spider-Walk opened into a small area called Kermit's Pool. Not many swimmers there because the water was frigid and it was getting late in the day. We climbed back out and up from the gorge back to camp. A great camping dinner from the BBQ and a great sleep under the stars (another really cold night...very happy to have my super warm sleeping bag!)

The next day we drove away from Karijini back to the coast and through Port Headland to a huge cattle station where we slept for the night. The following day was the final push to Broome...we stopped at 80 mile beach which is the longest beach in Australia (its actually about 90 miles long). We finally got to Broome in the afternoon and it seems to be a lovely little town. Really cute streets with shops and pubs and restaurants and we're staying right near the beach which is fantastic. The beach is named Cable Beach because its where the telegraph line connecting Australia with Asia (at the end of the 19th century) came ashore.

A link to a few more photos for Perth to Broome:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.aduyczpl&x=0&y=-tnn53x&localeid=en_US

24-Apr through 26-Apr: South of Perth

2009-05-06T17:33:00.000-07:00

View South of Perth in a larger map

Michelle and I flew early in the morning to Perth, on the west coast. We rented a car and drove south along the coast passing through a number of beach towns on our way towards the Margaret River wine area. We wine tasted at a few vineyards...it was a very laid back wine scene which I liked. We stayed the night in Margaret River (the town). The special thing about the Margaret River wine region is besides making great wines, its right on the coast so people can surf and wine taste the same day - a perfect combination for Aussies!

The next day we continued down the coast to Cape Leeuwin lighthouse which is the point where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meet. The area also has an abundance of amazing caves with huge stalactites and stalagmites. We did a walk through the largest one-Jewel Cave. I expected it to be a bit hokey but it was actually a really cool spot. Afterwards we continued south into the "tall trees" of the south coast-huge forests of gum trees. A couple of the huge trees in the area you can climb and we went up a 75 meter tree. Spikes stick out from the tree and you just climb from rung to rung 250 feet into the air. No harness-if you slip you pretty much die, it was really scary. Its the kind of thing that would never exist in the US for liability reasons! A few more scenic drives in the forests and out to the coast and then to Walpole for the night.

The next day we went in the morning to the "Tall Trees Walk" which is a platform elevated 40 meters in the air through the canopy of some of these huge gum trees. It was a really interesting perspective to get on a forest! From there we started the long drive back to Perth with a few stops on the way. That night in Perth we met up with Molsen, a friend from college. After dinner Michelle had to leave for the airport to go back to Sydney and Molsen and I got ready for the next part of the adventure...

Weeks ending 23-April: Great Barrier Reef

2009-04-22T19:12:00.000-07:00

View Whitsundays/Heron Island in a larger map

We got up early on Friday, Good Friday i guess, to start our holiday up to Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef for Michelle's Easter break from school. We flew through Brisbane to a small industrial town, Gladstone, which is the launching point out to Heron Island, about 70km off the mainland. Heron Island is coral cay, an island created over kajillions of years of waves crashing into the reef, wearing it down and creating sand that builds up and forms an island. We took the helicopter out there to get views of the reef from the air which was pretty awesome, even though it wasn't the sunniest of days. We saw turtles and rays from the air amongst other things.

We spent 4 nights on the island and it really was a magical kind of spot. From the resort you can wade out into the water (gorgeous turquoise blue/green water i might add) and go snorkeling on the reef or at low tide can go out on a reef walk to see all the marine life. Two or three times a day from the resort they have snorkel and dive boat trips. These boats take you to spots on the edge of the Heron reef or to the edge of one of the other nearby reefs where the sights are usually even more spectacular than what you see on top of the reef.

Our first fully day out we saw a nice sunrise and saw a few reef sharks swimming in the water before breakfast...a perfect motivator to get in the water and do a bit of snorkeling on the reef followed by a "research walk" which is a tour of the Univ. of QLD research station with which the resort shares the island. In the afternoon we took the snorkel boat out and saw amazing fish and corals and our first sighting of sea turtles in the water.

Our second day we took the snorkel boat out in the morning and in the afternoon at low tide went on a guided reef walk where we learned about lots of the marine life living on top of the reef. The following day had much anticipation, apprehension and excitement associated with it because it was the day we took our scuba class and then went out onto the reef for two dives. My initial impulse from breathing through a regulator was to panic that i wasn't getting enough O2, but luckily we were in the resort pool so i survived it and quickly got used to it. We went out and as non-certified divers we did a relatively shallow dive of a little more than 12 meters (about 40 feet)...it was kind of freaky descending and continually equalizing the pressure in your head but once we got down there it was easy to forget to be scared because it was such an underwater paradise! the color of the coral and the fish was awesome...really felt like we were in Finding Nemo. By the second dive we were old pros...we saw turtles and reef sharks (from a distance that felt appropriately safe). We both really had a good time with the diving and i'd love to try it more in the future.

Our last halfday on the island was a rainy one and I think we both felt like we did everything we wanted to on the island so we were both excited to take the boat back to the mainland so we could continue on to new parts of the trip. We stayed that night in Rockhampton (not an overly nice place) and continued the drive the next day up to Airlie Beach. On the way into town we took a detour to a waterfall where we found the road flooded out. We made it to the waterfall after wading through the river over the road and a short walk. Airlie Beach was immediately a lovely little place, despite the deluge of rain we were having. We drove around a bit and saw some of the area but mostly hoped that going to bed would bring us better weather in the morning.

We weren't disappointed...we woke up to a gorgeous sunrise. The views from our motel out over the water were fantastic...we took a little run down near the water and then went to do a short hike to the top of Mt. Rooper which is a viewpoint out to the Whitsunday islands. We came back to the B&B in airlie where we were staying that night and it was possibly the cutest place i've ever stayed. The views out over the water were even better than from the previous night's place. And breakfast in the morning was amazing...the fruit plate we had to start had fruits i've literally never even heard of before.

That next morning we went down to the marina to start our sailing trip for the next three days out in the Whitsundays.

View Whitsunday sail in a larger map

There were 18 of us on the boat, the Alexander Stewart which was about 75 feet long, along with the captain, the deckhand and the assistant deckhand/chef. We sailed out through gorgeous blue water and went to a couple snorkel spots that first day. Everyone said the waters were much clearer than they had been in recent weeks and we certainly agreed. The coral and the sea life didn't disappoint. We were treated to a spectacular sunset that night and sleeping on the boat, while not the best night of sleep i've ever had, was actually pretty nice.

The 2nd day of our sail we moored off of Whitsunday island, the biggest of the 74 islands that make up the Whitsundays and did a little bushwalk up to a viewpoint over Whitehaven Beach which is supposed to be one of the top beaches in the world. The spot was incredible...the sand is completely white (so white that it doesn't got hot from the sun in fact) and the water is a mixture of blues and greens that were striking. We went down to the beach for a few hours (I felt like i was in one of those corona commercials) before heading back to the boat. We stopped for another snorkel before we got to our mooring for the night. Another amazing sunset (its almost tedious to have to write that so many times). Quick sidenote about food: it was actually quite good. We had great fish the first night and lasagna the second night, breakfasts always had cut up fresh tropical fruits and we had big tasty lunches and "afternoon tea" which was a nice afternoon snack at that time between lunch and dinner when i always get hungry.

The 3rd and final day we spent some time on a coral cay snorkeling around and relaxing before making a lunch stop and heading back to Airlie. It was an amazing trip with perfect weather...couldn't have asked for a better time. That evening we had dinner in town and met up with our fellow sailing mates at a pub in town for a couple drinks.

The next day, our last of the vacation sadly, we got up early and did a halfday kayaking trip out to an island from Shute Harbor (10 mins away from Airlie)...it felt good to paddle and actually get a little exercise after 3 days of being on the ship. The kayak was a perfect length, just a few hours out on the water so we came back and did a short jet-ski out on the water (trying to pack in every last little bit of fun before vacation was over!). We had lunch in town and then hung out in the Airlie lagoon (a manmade huge lagoon that you can swim in since swimming in the water isn't advisable because of marine stingers) until we had to get to the airport for our flight back. Awesome trip, we definitely packed in as much as we could!

Check out more photos from the trip here, the very last one might be my favorite...its a sure sign that you're in a really really cool location:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.46cidi6x&x=0&y=f1uznm&localeid=en_US

Through 07-Apr: Socceroos and Broken Hill

2009-04-06T23:01:00.000-07:00

Wednesday we went out to Olympic Park to watch the Australian soccer team play a World Cup qualifying match against Uzbekistan. The Socceroos, as they are known (seriously) would for all intents and purposes clinch a spot in South Africa in 2010 with a win so people were pretty geared up for the game. It was a good one, the crowd was rowdy and alive and after a scoreless first half, Australia scored two goals midway through the second half and won two-nil. The experience has officially made me a Socceroos fan (I mean come on, with a name like that how can you not be a fan??)

Saturday morning we flew to Broken Hill. Broken Hill is all the way west in NSW right near the border with South Australia and it is definitely what you would call the outback. The town itself has about 20,000 people but the moment you drive past town, the roads turn to red dirt and you feel like you are literally in the middle of nowhere (which is kind of true). Broken Hill became a town back in the day when large mineral deposits, primarily silver, were discovered...not sure there is much other reason the town would have existed!

View Larger Map

First we went to the Royal Flying Doctor Service base and museum. The RFDS flies doctors to the middle of nowhere outback from their bases when people who live out there get sick or injured. Not much other way to treat people who live hundreds of miles from a town. After getting into town and walking around a bit, we drove out to the "Sculpture Symposium" about 15km out of town. It's a great spot to watch the sunset as its up on a hill with views of the outback in all directions and as the sun sets, the colors of the sculptures change.

Next morning we drove out to Silverton, which is an essentially abandoned mining town about 25km from Broken Hill. There are some old buildings from the mining boom days and you kind of feel like you've just traveled into the 19th century. After seeing Silverton we went to the Daydream mine nearby where you can take a tour that goes down into the silver mines that used to be so active and productive a hundred or so years ago. It was a pretty fascinating tour and somewhat shocking to try and imagine working down there in such horrible conditions.

We headed back to Broken Hill and went to a few of the art galleries in town (they have a relatively large art scene) before heading up to the top of the Broken Hill mine that kind of towers over the town. We saw the Miners Memorial which is for all of the miners who have died in the area, and then stayed and watched the sunset and had dinner overlooking town. Up early the next morning for our flight back to Sydney to conclude our quick trip into the outback.

Friday is the beginning of Michelle's Easter break so we'll be heading up to the Great barrier reef to do some diving and sailing so stay tuned for that...

Through 31-Mar: NSW and QLD roadtrip

2009-04-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

My good friend from high school, Mackenzie, along with two of her friends, Jo and Brooke, arrived on St. Patty’s day for a two week trip. After showing them the sights in Sydney for a few days (including the beach walk from Coogee to Bondi, the Taronga Zoo and a few Irish pubs in the Rocks) we set off on a bit of a road trip up the coast from Sydney.

View Larger Map

To the 4 girls I was roadtripping with I became known as “Driver!!” barked in a commanding tone followed by some order like “get me my brekky!” We went through the Hunter Valley for a bit of wine tasting and then out to the coast through Coffs Harbour and up to Byron Bay.

Byron is one of those spots that everyone seems to love so expectations were high and I have to say that Byron lived up to, and probably surpassed, those expectations. It was such an eclectic beach town with all sorts of people: hippies, surfers, families, you name it. We spent a couple days on the beach, hiking around Cape Byron and having some good meals/drinks in the restaurants/bars. It’s the kind of spot I could pretty easily spend more time.

From Byron, Michelle had to return to Sydney to continue in her academic pursuits so the 4 of us continued on through the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise, through Brisbane and up to Noosa where we stayed for a few days. (Surfers Paradise has a great name, but is a god-awful eyesore of a spot. Developers have completely ruined what would otherwise be a beautiful location by developing huge condo towers all along the Gold Coast and completely reshaping the atmosphere of what was once a sleepy beach town. To steal a description from Mackenzie: “if you like booze cruises, foam parties and amusement parks, you would like this town.”) Noosa, on the other hand, was great. The first day from Noosa we took a full day tour of Fraser Island. Fraser Island is a special habitat…it’s the largest sand island in the world and the only sand island on top of which is a tropical rainforest. We spent the day being driven in a 4x4 along the beaches and through the rainforest in the middle of the island. Fraser is known for its fabulous fresh water lakes, one of which we got to have a little swim in. We saw a couple of dingoes, a freshwater eel and plenty of ancient foliage that kind of makes you feel like a velociraptor might appear over the hill at any moment. It was cool.

The following day we spent some time hiking in Noosa National Park looking for koalas (unsuccessfully) but it was gorgeous nonetheless. The towns in the Noosa area I found extremely appealing and I had the feeling they’re the kind of places where everyone who lives there is just very happy and content with life.

From Noosa we drove back down south through Brisbane where we dropped Brooke at the airport (and then there were three) and continued on to Mt. Warning National Park just back across the Queensland border into New South Wales. The next day we set out early to hike to the top of Mt. Warning which gave us gorgeous 360 degree views including out to the ocean, Byron Bay and inland to the rainforests. Mt. Warning is usually the first spot on the Australian continent to get sunlight in the morning (we didn’t quite make it up there for sunrise though).

After descending back down to the car we drove north once again back to Brisbane where we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening seeing a bit of the city. We had to get up at 3:30 the next morning for our insanely early flight back to Sydney so pretty much laid low for the whole day back in the apartment in Sydney. We did make it out for a rugby league match at the Sydney Football Stadium between Sydney and some other part of Sydney (which I couldn’t quite make sense of). One of the Sydney teams won, and the other one lost. (I still don’t get most of the finer points of the game but it was fun to hear the crowd get so animated over things that completely escaped me). The next few days we had great weather and spent time at a few Sydney beaches including Coogee, Manly and Bondi. We spent an evening in the “cross” which always leads to some good stories, most of which aren’t suitable for sharing here! Jo left on Monday and Mackenzie left on Tuesday and after having nearly two weeks of perfect weather for this group of visitors, Tuesday was a rainy, windy, stormy day so they timed things just about perfectly. Now that they’ve all left it’s quieter in the apartment and the estrogen levels have subsided significantly! Mackenzie wrote a blog of her trip which I think she has now updated, so check it out for more details.

Weeks ending 15-Mar: Far North Queensland

2009-03-16T02:23:00.000-07:00

The biggest news of the last few weeks is that I resigned from my job at GSJBW. I decided it was time to have a chance to really travel the country before we have to head back to the U.S. for Michelle to start her medical residency. This is the beginning of the second week of my current “retirement” and it still hasn’t completely sunken in what it means…I still feel like I’m just on a vacation and will have to go back to work soon enough. The morning after my last day at work a friend from high school (Aaron) arrived to Sydney. He arrived on Sydney’s Mardi Gras day which is a big crazy day with a parade that goes down the street onto which our balcony has a view. So we had a little party to watch the parade which was quite festive and a tad rowdy.

We were planning on flying up to Queensland and camping on Fraser Island starting Monday. It was only when I called the company who was organizing our camping gear to ask if we needed to bring sleeping bags did I find out a category 5 cyclone, Cyclone Hamish, was off the coast of Queensland and its projected path sent it right through Fraser Island. This cyclone was stronger than Hurricane Katrina with winds up to 160 mph so needless to say they had evacuated the island along with many other areas in coastal Queensland in advance of the storm. Camping in a category 5 storm probably wouldn’t have been that much fun so we went to plan Bravo and flew much further north in Queensland up to Cairns for a few days.

View Larger Map

We drove through Daintree National Park, across the Daintree River on a ferry and along Cape Tribulation. It being the end of summer in a tropical rainforest it was Hot and Humid! The rainforest was pretty fascinating…you could just tell you were in an other-worldly type of place. We took a boat cruise on the Daintree River and saw a big crocodile swimming along, as well as snakes in the trees and a bright green frog.

We stayed in Port Douglas which is a really quaint little town on the coast. From there we took a day long boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to snorkel. The Great Barrier Reef is something I feel like you hear about all your life and how amazing it is, so expectations get built up pretty high, but I have to say, being out there snorkeling around on the reef did not disappoint in the least bit. It was absolutely spectacular! We saw bright fish of every color you could imagine swimming all around, the reef was gorgeous and we saw a sea turtle too! Really cool and makes me really excited for when we go back up to a different part of the reef in April to go scuba diving.

We had to wear full body “stinger” suits when we were in the water because it’s the time of year jellyfish are around and you don’t want to get stung because it’s evidently not pleasant.

Back in Sydney we showed Aaron the sights, went to the beach, etc. He left yesterday and tomorrow morning our next guests arrive so more fun to be had.

Weeks ending 22-Feb

2009-02-21T17:41:00.000-08:00

Nothing all that interesting to share from the last two weeks. Michelle and her mom got back from Queensland and the outback, spent a day and a half back in Sydney and then jetted off to Thailand where they still are for another week. So I’ve been flying solo once again. I’ve included a couple videos below from old things since I don’t have anything else exciting to share right now.

Two videos from Tasmania of a bunch of Tasmanian Devils at feeding time. I think it was a delicious wallaby carcass they were fighting over. I particularly like the one who keeps scratching at the other dude’s face:

And this is from sometime in October when we went to an Australia vs. New Zealand rugby match. The Haka is a traditional Maori dance and I have to say I don’t know much else about it, except that its kind of scary. These are some New Zealand supporters outside the stadium before the match:

And this is the New Zealand team right before the start of the match doing the Haka with the Aussies looking on. I think its kind of silly that the aussies just stand there watching…they should pull out their diggery doos and play a tune or something as a rebuttal.

Weeks ending 08-Feb: Great Ocean Road

2009-02-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 26th was Australia Day down here (which commemorates the day the first settlers arrived) so we had a three day weekend. We were supposed to fly Friday morning to Melbourne and I was going to work from there for the day but our flight was cancelled so we got on an afternoon flight which got us in in the early evening. Friday night we went to see the Australian Open…we saw Jelena Dokic play in the first match (she's an adopted aussie so the crowd was really into it…she ended up winning) and then saw Federer play Marat Safin in the second match. Federer won pretty easily but the third set went to a tie breaker and there was some good action so it was a good match to see.

Saturday we got up early and rented our car and drove south and west of the city down to the coast. Some really nice beaches along the drive during the day but the real highlight of the road is the "12 Apostles." The 12 apostles are rock formations out in the ocean right along the coast…really a pretty scene, especially at sunset when we were there.

Sunday we kept driving west (it was a cracker of a day as the aussies would say!) along the coast. The water was a pretty striking blue. We ended the night across the state line in south australia (melbs is in victoria) and stayed in a dumpy little town called Mount Gambier. Monday we drove back to Melbs via the inland route…it entailed a lot of driving in the middle of nowhere. I kind of like that and australia has a lot of it out on the open road. You pass a tiny little town every once in a while and when you go through these towns you kind of feel like you've gone back in time to the 1950s or something. Anyways, we stopped off in Geelong (which is a neighboring city to Melbourne and the second largest city in Victoria) before getting to the airport and saw their Australia day festivities on the waterfront…kind of a fun scene. Got our flight back to Sydney and made it in record time from wheels down in Sydney to the head hitting the pillow at home (something like 40 minutes…couldn’t get that kind of time coming back from newark!)

Some more pics from the Great Ocean Road:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.bypllilt&x=0&y=th1db5&localeid=en_US

And a map of our approximate route:

View Larger Map

The week sped by pretty quickly and we went the following weekend up to the Blue Mountains, about 2 hours west of Sydney. We’d gone to the area before, way back in August, but this time we stayed at this cute out of the way spa type place. It was a fantastic setting, you felt like there was nothing around. We did a few short hikes and took the “zig-zag” railroad, which was an old railroad that literally zig-zagged its way up and down the mountain back in the day. We spent most of the day hanging out at our cabin though where there was a pool and tennis court. And in the evening we BBQed and sat out on the deck…it was the perfect way to end a hot summer day…I really couldn’t imagine a more relaxing spot.

Sunday we hung out in the morning and headed back towards the city in the afternoon stopping at a few lookouts and viewpoints. We saw a bit of the Chinese new years parade that evening which was kind of fun. Monday, Michelle’s mom arrived in town. I managed to get out of work at reasonable times for most of the week so Monday night we saw an opera in the opera house (while it was cool to do, it confirms the fact that I don’t really care that much about opera). Tuesday night we ended up going back to the open air cinema and saw Vicki Christina Barcelona which was fun. And Wednesday night we went out for dinner at Philip’s Foote which is the grill your own steak place we’d been to before. It was quite a fun week! Michelle and Suzy left on Thursday up to Queensland so I was pretty low key for the rest of the week and the weekend.

Weeks ending 18-Jan: Mt. Kozzie

2009-02-07T21:14:00.000-08:00

View Larger Map

Coming back to work from vacation in New zealand was extremely painful but thankfully we came back mid-week so the next weekend came pretty quickly. We went up to the only alpine area in Australia, Kosciuszko (my phonetic spelling: kozzie-osco) national park in the "snowy mountains." Mt. Kosciuszko (referred to by everyone as kozzie) is 7300 feet high which is the highest point on the Australian continent...its one of the seven summits so many of the best mountain climbers in the world have summitted it to complete the highest peaks on all seven continents. To summit kozzie, however, you follow a well maintained path to the top of the mountain. I'm guessing it’s a tad easier than everest. We drove most of the way there friday night then saturday went into the park and did the hike up kozzie. It was a beautiful sunny day and you could look out and see a long ways. The views were very pretty, but i imagine its even prettier in the winter when there's more snow on the ground. We stayed that night in Thredbo village, which is the main ski area in Australia. I think the skiing would be pretty weak, but the village itself was great...it was a gorgeous sunny evening and we enjoyed a few drinks out on some sunny patios. Sunday we frolicked in a park for a while, threw a frisbee around, but had to get on the road (it was a little over 5 hour drive back to sydney). A fun place to go, but kind of a long drive for a short weekend.

During the week on wednesday night we went to the "open air cinema" at mrs. macquarie's point in the domain. During the summer each night, they play a different movie on this screen they have set up in the harbour with views of the city, bridge and opera house behind. Its a spectacular spot, literally probably the very best spot in Sydney. We had a perfect warm evening and saw "Role Models" with Paul Rudd which we were both highly entertained by. Friday night we had a big night out and hit some of the iconic bars in Sydney. We started at the opera bar which is right in front of the opera house on the water. From there went to the ivy (anyone here will tell you that any night out in sydney usually includes a stop at the ivy) and then to cargo bar (which is the bar they always went to in the real world). It was a fun night and kind of nice to be in the city on a weekend for a change. Sunday we made it out to the beach for a bit…went to a beach a little further out from the city (Cronulla) to try something new. And for dinner we went to a burger place that had REALLY good burgers, like I haven’t had a good burger since I’ve come to Australia but this was a good American burger. It was really exciting for me (gotta take pleasure in the little things).

A few more pics from Kozzie:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.5k30pw2x&x=0&y=-hjinpa&localeid=en_US

Week ending 06-Jan: New Zealand

2009-01-19T01:52:00.000-08:00

We're back from a 2 week trip to New Zealand and I've finally finished sorting through the heaps and heaps of pictures that we took while over there (I’ve managed to pick 150 photos out of the 1200 I took, link at the bottom). It was a fantastic trip and New Zealand is a beautiful country.

View Larger Map

We left Sydney on xmas eve and arrived into Auckland just before midnight. We woke up on christmas morning to a warm and pretty sunny summer day. We had christmas breakfast at one of the few cafes that was open on Auckland's harbour (which is a nice harbour, but I don't think its really any match against Sydney's). After walking around the city for a bit, it was time to get out into the country (we didn't come to NZ to visit the cities). We didn't have very set plans so we drove east of the city out on the coromandel peninsula along the coast, stopping for little walks and at viewpoints. We ended up making it a pretty long day of driving and ended up in Waitomo at a little place that is a hobbit hole. It has the round doors and windows and is kind of buried in the ground. It was a really cute place and felt right to be staying in a hobbit hole in NZ. The next morning we went blackwater rafting in these gloworm caves…it consisted of abseiling way down into this cave where there are hundreds of gloworms which in the otherwise pitch blackness look like little lights all over the ceiling of the caves (glow worms are larvae of insects who glow because of some chemical reaction or something). We then did a zipline in the pretty much pitch blackness and then jumped into this river that flows through the caves and tubed through these caves. Eventually we climbed out by climbing up these waterfalls back to the outside world. It was quite a unique experience. That afternoon we drove down to Tongariro national park which is an alpine setting that has three major volcanoes: Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, and Tongariro (good luck pronouncing any of them).

The next day we set out on an extremely long and exhausting one day hike that crosses between and around and up some of these peaks. The hike is 18.5km but we (and by we I mean I) decided to add a sidetrip up to the top of mt. ngauruhoe which was mt. doom in lord of the rings. The sidetrip up the volcano was incredibly steep up scree which meant for each step you took, you slid 80% of the way back down which made it incredibly exhausting. Michelle was not happy about the sidetrip which she continues to point out to me now…I was somewhat enjoying the irony of taking this incredibly difficult and somewhat painful scramble up this volcano since it was mt. doom…mt. doom is supposed to be painful! This irony was not in the least bit enjoyed by Michelle, however. The total distance we hiked was probably about 25km which is around 15 miles and the change in elevation from low point to high point on the hike was over 5000 feet. What really killed us though was that we had to jog/run the last 4 or 5kms in order to catch our shuttle bus that was leaving at a certain time (in the end we just barely did make the bus). I've never been as sore from a hike as I was from this…walking, especially walking downhill, for the next 3 or 4 days was quite painful. Even with the clouds at the top of mt. ngauruhoe the views were great and the scenery along the whole trek was geologically fascinating.

The next day we drove down to Wellington, the capital of NZ where we were catching the ferry down to the south island. We had a few hours to explore Wellington and in that short time I had a very positive impression of the city…it’s a good size, right on the water with good views and seems like its got a good selection of restaurants/bars etc. The ferry ride takes about 3 hours…the first hour is getting out of the port of Wellington, the middle hour in the open sea and the last hour is coming through the Queen Charlotte Sound into Picton on the south island. Quite a pretty boat ride.

Next day was a lot of driving…started the morning driving through wine country, to Nelson Lakes National Park and then out to the coast (the west coast which is along the Tasman Sea) and down along the coast and up into the mountains to the Franz Josef Glacier. When we arrived in the evening the few clouds that had been lingering during the day cleared out and we were left with a perfect evening (and daylight in NZ this time of the year lasts until past 10pm). We ended up taking a 40 minute helicopter ride up over the Franz Josef Glacier, along the mountains of the southern alps as they are called (Mt. Cook is the highest peak in Australasia at about 12,300 feet) and over the Fox Glacier and back into town. We landed high up on the Fox Glacier and got out and walked around a bit. It was a stunning flight with perhaps the best views I've ever had.

The following day we did some hikes around the glaciers before driving over the Haast Pass and stayed right near Mt. Aspiring National Park (I can only say the scenery was gorgeous so many times so I'm going to stop).

The next day was New Years Eve and we got on the road for Queenstown, which is the undisputed adrenaline capital of New Zealand and quite possibly the world. After poking around town a bit we drove out to the Kawarau Gorge which is the site of the world's first commerical bungy jump operation. We were both nervous about it, but knew it had to be done. The nerves from when they were attaching the cords to our feet to when we jumped were pretty severe. We jumped in tandem which in some ways made it easier, because when the guy counted down from 5 we knew we had to jump (if one person jumped and the other didn't, it would make for an awkward plunge). So we jumped and I just remember thinking how fast we were heading down and then the next thing I remember was bouncing back up and I was soaking wet above the waist. I don't remember being in the water but they dipped us. It was quite a thrilling jump actually but we were both excited to have it done so we could focus on enjoying new years eve! We were pretty low key and ended up watching the fireworks over the lake at midnight (amidst an incredibly rowdy bunch of drunkards!).

New years day we got up and went jet boating at the shotover canyon just outside of Queenstown. Jet boating, in this context, means riding in an extremely expensive speed boat that is designed to run in extremely shallow depths and can turn on a dime. This allows them to run these boats in tiny little narrow canyons where they drive right for the canyon wall and then turn out of the way at the last minute and also allows them to do 360 spins. It was actually pretty fun, we both had a good ride.

After jet-boating we drove south towards the Milford Sound. The last part of the drive, from Te Anu to Milford Sound had spectacular scenery (the drive is part of a world heritage area). To get to Milford Sound you pass through this extremely steep narrow tunnel that goes downhill through mountain rock for over a kilometer…when you emerge on the other side you're surrounded by huge rock walls with waterfalls cascading down all over the place. The next day we were supposed to go kayaking in the sound but the weather didn't cooperate. It was pounding down rain, windy and quite cold. It rains almost every day in Milford sound but they cancelled the trip because the wind and temperature they said would have made it extremely difficult to stay warm out on the water. And I believed that…we went out on a boat cruise through the sound instead and the wind was quite impressive. Scenery was fantastic though, boating through high fjords with literally thousands of waterfalls coming down all over the place. It was a pretty unique setting.

From Milford Sound we drove back towards Queenstown and then up the east side of the "southern alps" to a sheep farm where we stayed near Mt. Cook. The following day we headed into Mt. Cook National Park to do some hiking and exploring. We went on a boat trip on the terminal lake of the Tasman glacier (it’s a glacial lake where chunks of the glacier break off and form icebergs in the lake). We puttered around up to a bunch of the icebergs and were right on the other side of one when a big piece crashed down into the water (we couldn't see it, but you couldn't certainly hear it!).

After the boating we did a few little hikes around, but the weather was off and on rainy and the low clouds were limiting the views so we weren't feeling overly motivated. Also, during one of the hikes the sole of one of my hiking boots peeled off which rendered my boots essentially useless (I left them behind in NZ which was quite emotional for me). After dinner, the sky started clearing until nearly all of the clouds had cleared off and we were left with perfect views of Mt. Cook which held out during the entire sunset. It was quite a sight.

The next day we drove from Mt. Cook to Dunedin (the 4th largest city in NZ where we were to fly out of) taking the scenic way. In the evening we went out on the Otago peninsula which besides being quite scenic has a bunch of wildlife including yellow eyed penguins (a very rare type of penguin), albatross, sea lions, seals, etc. We went to this beach where you're most likely to see the penguins, but had no luck. It was still a nice place to be at dusk.

The following day was supposed to be our last in NZ…after seeing a bit of Dunedin we went back out to the peninsula and did a couple little hikes along the coast. We drove to the airport and while waiting at the gate for our flight found it was cancelled. Dunedin is not a big airport and there aren't many flights per day so we were able to get re-routed through Christchurch and would get back to Sydney the following evening (I wasn't too broken up about having the vacation extended by a day). Christchurch ended up being a really nice little city. We walked around a bunch the following morning, through the gardens and their central square. Getting back to Sydney it was hot and somewhat crowded, its always tough getting back from vacation. But flying into sydney was a much better feeling than it always was flying back into newark after vacation…the colors are just a little brighter in sydney or something. Going to work was quite painful for the rest of the week, but thankfully it was only 3 days so I survived!

A link to more photos from the trip:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.7hs3lq21&x=0&y=-99lubi&localeid=en_US

Week ending 21-Dec

2008-12-21T23:31:00.000-08:00

Michelle arrived back to Australia on Thursday morning which was very exciting!! In some ways 5 and a half weeks flew by but in some ways it felt like she'd been gone for ages! Work has been slowing down a bit leading into the holidays so I was able to see her for lunch and dinner on Thursday and then we got an early start to the weekend on Friday. We went to this restaurant in the Rocks called Phillip's Foote where you pick your own cut of meat and take it to the grill and BBQ it yourself…its kind of a fun concept (although it might just be their scheme to save on labor costs). Afterwards we saw the movie "Australia" which was kind of fun because of all the pretty outback scenes, but ultimately was a chick-flick love story. Entertaining enough though.

Saturday we made a revolutionary step in the world of the virtual power hour, v-power hour (copyright 2008). Eric Lee, in Chicago having just finished finals along with some of his friends there, and Michelle and I in Sydney, over video g-chat doing power hour (we flirted with the idea of extending to the century) to an hour long video of 80s tv show theme song intros. It was an epic event and one that we hope to repeat and expand on soon.

After a brief recovery Saturday afternoon, Michelle and I went out to "Carols in the Domain" which is a sydney christmas hallmark event. The domain is a big public park that is right next to the CBD and almost right up on the harbor and the event has probably around 20,000 (I'm guessing at the number, but it was a lot) people in attendance. People gather during the day and bring picnics etc and then in the evening various australian singers and choirs and groups sing carols on the stage while the throngs of people in attendance (many intoxicated) hold up candles and sing along. (giving that many open flames to drunk people can't be a good idea…) But it’s quite the feel good event that makes you think peace on earth can't be that far out of reach. On a sidenote, there is absolutely no political correctness here when it comes to talking about christmas/the holidays. You don't say happy holidays here, you say happy christmas and there is no mention of hanukkah whatsoever. Quite a contrast to new york.

Sunday michelle and I made christmas since we're going to be away on the 25th. We decorated the fake palm-like tree we have on our balcony and had a lovely pancake breakfast and opened a few presents. It was a very nice christmas morning.

In the afternoon we did one of our "urban" hikes around watson's bay to vaucluse. It was a really nice 9k walk that started on the pacific and went up to the south head and then along the harbour a bit…it was a gorgeous summer day (totally felt like Christmas…right). To wrap up our pseudo-christmas day we watched "fred claus" which was entertaining and anything with vince vaughn I enjoy.

View Larger Map

A link for more pics from our little hike:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.2y3a2kwh&x=0&y=-iwsu87&localeid=en_US

Week ending 14-Dec

2008-12-14T02:05:00.000-08:00

We kicked the weekend off to an early start Friday afternoon with our desk’s Christmas lunch (would have been holiday lunch in new york, but things are a little less PC here). Having lunch in Australia is often a fairly drawn out affair and this was no exception. The food portion of the afternoon led into the drinks-focused portion of the afternoon/evening. Most of us didn’t leave our “lunch” until 8 or 9 in the evening. It was a fun one, things got pretty rowdy towards the end.

Saturday I had to sleep it off all morning but by the time I emerged from my second nap of the day in the mid afternoon it had become a perfect sunny warm day. I met up with a buddy and we had a very late brunch (I don’t know if you can still call it that at 4pm?) and then went to a friend’s housewarming party in Darling Point. Darling Point is a quiet little suburb right up on the harbor and this apartment was a classic Sydney place with huge windows all along the side that open up onto the back patio/side patio area that has so many tropical plants you could kind of feel like you’re in the jungle (well, not really, but it was cool). We ended up staying there for quite a while and had a good time, made a few new friends, had a few good Australian beers, all in all a lovely evening.

Sunday I woke up early to blazing sunshine and a brilliantly blue sky. I caught the bus out to Bondi Beach which is the beginning of a 12km “cliff walk” that goes along a few beaches. Michelle and I had done a portion of the walk before, but that was during the winter and I wanted to come back and do the whole thing on a beautiful summer day. The weather was great, had a few clouds start to roll in towards the end, but for the most part it was perfect. And the water along the beaches here is just so stunningly blue/green. I took a bunch of pictures, here are a few along with a link for more. (although at some point I guess all the pictures look kind of the same because its just beach after beach!)

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.49ni37v5&x=0&y=-8w1lh7&localeid=en_US

View Larger Map

Starting in Bondi you then hit Tamarama Beach, Bronte Beach, Clovelly is a little teeny beach, Coogee Beach and ends at Maroubra Beach where I caught a bus back to my place. Hung out at home for the rest of the evening, had a little spaghetti and watched a movie. Another lovely summer weekend in Sydney. And my last one as a bachelor because Michelle gets back on Thursday!

Week ending 07-Dec: Surfing

2008-12-06T21:42:00.000-08:00

Great weekend this weekend, which was accommodated largely by the great weather we had. Thursday night was a GSJBW holiday party for the securities division (which I’m technically not in but they still invite us to their party thankfully) and its clients. The location of the party was really quite stunning, down right on the harbor in the royal botanic gardens. It was outside but underneath these huge tents. I didn’t have my camera with me but I’ve taken a picture of the exact view before:

Kind of an iconic Sydney view I’d have to say. Party was fun, even though it was 98% people I didn’t know (mostly clients of the firm). And one of the drinks they were serving was this frozen mango and champagne drink which might have been the most delicious beverage I’ve ever had. Danger was it didn’t taste like it had any alcohol…you know how that story goes.

I ended up going to sleep incredibly early Friday night because I was completely exhausted so I woke up a little after 6am Saturday and it was a perfect and gorgeous morning. Warm, blue sky, sunny, the works. I had booked myself into a surfing lesson for that morning so I took the ferry over to Manly Beach and got geared up.

View Larger Map

There were probably about 20 of us in the lesson and 5 instructors. They told us little bits of wisdom while we were on the beach and then we’d go into the water to try it out. Then we’d come back to the beach to get a bit more wisdom and try the next step. So after a few iterations we were in the water, trying to catch waves and stand ourselves up. It is way harder than it seems like it should be! Towards the end I did manage to stand myself up a couple of times, albeit very briefly. At the very end of the class, after going through a number of repetitions I felt like I knew what I had to do but at that point I was pretty physically exhausted from battling the ocean for a few hours that it was hard to actually do it anymore. All in all, it was tough, but I did stand up which was my goal going in and it was so so fun! I’m excited to get back out there and do it again. I had someone take a picture of me on my best wave when I stood up as you can see below.

Alright, just kidding, not yet, but give me a few years maybe? No, probably not then either. Oh well. To complement my very Australian morning I BBQed kangaroo in the late afternoon for lunch/dinner. Surfing and BBQing kangaroo…I don’t know if you can get much more Australian, right?

Sunday I skyped for a good bit with my parents, sister, bro-in-law and nephew who are all currently in Colorado. Super sad that I couldn’t be with them but skype is a great thing when you’re halfway around the world. In the afternoon I went to the Sydney Observatory where they used to study astronomy back in the day but now is a museum. Lots of interesting stuff about the constellations in the southern hemisphere that you don’t necessarily learn much about in the u.s. Also walked around “the rocks” which is a neighborhood kind of near the foot of the harbor bridge…it’s got a quaint, old timey kind of feel with lots of little pubs and shops. I’m putting that on my list of areas of the city I’d like to spend a little more time. Otherwise BBQed a bit for dinner and am crashing extremely early tonight…I think my body is still tired from surfing!

A chair christmas tree in the rocks!

The Sydney Observatory

Week ending 30-Nov

2008-11-30T01:58:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving was of course this week and it was very sad to not be able to celebrate in the usual way! No turkey for me but I did manage to get away from the office for dinner and had a relatively American-ish meal in honor of the day: a burger and a beer. Not your typical Thanksgiving food but it did the job as well as it could. Friday night was our firmwide end of the year/holiday party. It was at the overseas passenger terminal which is down on the harbor right across from the opera house. It was a pretty cool spot actually and after torrential downpours all day the weather actually let up a bit and we had a nice night. Otherwise another pretty chilled out weekend. Sunday was a gorgeous day (the first weekend day that was nice in a couple weeks) and I had been thinking about going and taking a surfing lesson but I ended up having to go to work for a few hours which kind of killed that plan. Maybe I’ll get out there next weekend.

Now its time for the second installment of “A day in the life of Jesse, Australia-style.” I put up a few photos a couple months back of our apartment before we got furniture but now that we’ve been furnished for a good two months I decided its time to take a few more photos of our place when it’s not completely bare. Follow the link for the photos (and descriptions).

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.6ert4h49&x=0&y=9wwmes&localeid=en_US

Week ending 23-Nov

2008-11-23T01:33:00.000-08:00

We had yet another weekend in Sydney where the weather did not cooperate. Friday was a gorgeous perfect day and Monday is forecast to be a gorgeous perfect day, but Saturday and Sunday were cool, cloudy and rainy. Awesome. Pretty low key weekend overall…I went out with some work colleagues Friday after work and Saturday night a friend had a Thanksgiving party (a Thanksgiving party without any Thanksgiving food though) that was fun.

Since its another slow news week here, I’m going to bring the first installment (probably first out of one) of “A day in the life of jesse, Australia-style.” This week’s installment is my morning walk to work so you can see the sights I see each morning as I head to the office. It’s a lovely 20 to 25 minute walk to start the day (unless its raining in which case I take the bus). Pictures are in the link and in case you don’t want to follow the link, I’ve put a couple of the views from my office below. Not a bad view right? Its funny how quickly you can get used to something like that and start taking it for granted!

View Larger Map

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.4pm0qlll&x=0&y=m0202e&localeid=en_US

Week ending 16-Nov

2008-11-16T00:41:00.000-08:00

Pretty uneventful week and weekend here in Sydney. I survived the workweek without all that much interesting to report. Friday I went out after work and found this great outdoor bar right in the CBD that was completely packed…pretty interesting crowd. The sky of course decided to open up and we had a booming thunderstorm which isn’t the best thing to have when you’re at an outdoor bar. Saturday night I met up with a friend and went to a pretty out of the way pub in a suburb outside the main part of the city. Definitely had more of a “local” type feel as opposed to pubs in Sydney where you get all different kinds of people from all over the place. Sunday was a day of errands and chores, but I managed to skype with my adorable nephew Kai who is speaking fairly coherently now and knows who his Uncle Jesse is. He gave me a “fist-bump” over skype. And michelle happens to be in Durango visiting my sister and Tod this weekend, so it was fun to get to skype with a group of some of my favorite people all at once, but I was extremely jealous that they were all together without me! Skype is a pretty great technology…to be able to have such great quality video from literally halfway around the globe for free isn’t bad. If any of you are on skype and want to skype it up, let me know!

Week ending 09-Nov: Golfing in the southern highlands

2008-11-11T03:53:00.000-08:00

It was an eventful week last week in Australia (and the world I suppose). Tuesday was Melbourne Cup day which is the "race that stops a nation" I believe they say. It’s another horse race, the culminating event of the spring carnival and it’s a public holiday in the state of Victoria (where Melbourne is) and in other parts of the country businesses close down and people generally take the day off. So everyone dispersed from work mid-morning…lots of people went to the big track in Sydney where they were having a huge event and watching the race on giant screens, but I decided I'd had enough horse racing recently and wasn't particularly in the mood for a boozy Tuesday afternoon. I just find it interesting how into horse racing everyone here is!

Wednesday was of course the day of the U.S. election down here. Results started coming in around 11am and we had the tvs in our office on cnn all day. I don't think anyone really did much work because everyone was so into the election. In our department of 80 or so people, I'd guess there would have been maybe 5 or 6 that weren't backing Obama (telling about what the rest of the world thinks even if the U.S. is pretty evenly split). It was so exciting to see the outcome and I thought Obama's speech was incredibly powerful and moving. I met up with a few of my American friends in the afternoon and we did a little celebrating…it was a great afternoon!

Saturday Michelle abandoned me by flying back to the U.S. for almost 6 weeks. It was very sad having her leave, but I've been doing the best I can to cope. I've decided the best way to not let myself fall into a depression is be as social as I can (which often is not my first instinct, haha). So Saturday night I had a couple drinks with a friend from work who almost convinced me to stay out for a big night which would have been disastrous because I had to get up at the crack of dawn Sunday morning.

Sunday we had a big golf day/BBQ for work…we drove down to this country club in the "southern highlands" about 2 hours south/southwest of Sydney. I had to get up before 6am which was painful, but it was a great day so was worth it. Golfing was extremely fun and we played an "ambrose" style of scoring which means you're playing with a partner and you each hit from the same spot and take the best shot out of the two of you (and then both hit from that spot again). The format meant that when I was able to hit some decent shots it was good but all the times I was wide left or wide right or in the drink or whatever, my partner was able to carry the team (and thankfully my partner was a very good golfer). I played better than I expected and it was a gorgeous course and great day so was really fun. Makes me want to play golf every once in a while. After golfing we went to Mike's farmhouse (Mike is my boss) for the BBQ. He has a ton of land in the southern highlands and they raise horses (he stays in Sydney during the week and is only down there on weekends). A bunch of others from work who didn't golf met up and we had a great time…nice change of scenery from the city just being out in the middle of nowhere pretty much under the blue sky and sun with some food and grog. Overall it was a fantastic Sunday.

Week ending 02-Nov: Derby Day

2008-11-03T19:36:00.000-08:00

Michelle and I flew to Melbourne (pronounced by aussies mel-bin) early Friday morning so we could be around for the first couple days of the melbourne cup carnival, which is the country's biggest horse racing event of the year (and they take their horse racing very seriously!). The carnival goes from Saturday through Tuesday, with the Melbourne Cup race held on Tuesday afternoon. While that race is the biggest single race, Derby Day, on Saturday, is evidently the rowdiest, most fun day of the carnival to attend. We left Sydney at a time when the street outside our apartment was literally swarming with people who were just coming out of bars and clubs ending their nights as we headed to the airport to start our day (the fact that I couldn't imagine being out till that time and had absolutely zero desire to be so made me feel old). We got to Melbourne and I found my way up to our office there…a much smaller office than Sydney but pretty nice actually. Michelle and I meandered around the CBD a bit at lunchtime Friday and then in the evening before having dinner…the city definitely gives a different vibe than Sydney, a little more laid-back perhaps. Architecturally Melbourne has a bit more of a European flavor, but it doesn't have the iconic landmarks that Sydney has (the harbor, the opera house, the bridge). Melbourne does have a much more lively CBD, whereas Sydney's CBD largely shuts down in the evening after work, in Melbourne's there are bars and restaurants that attract crowds much later into the evening.

Saturday we got up and after having breakfast (have I mentioned that Australia in general doesn't seem to really be into the breakfast/brunch scene like the U.S. does…you can get eggs and toast in a restaurant but that's generally the only breakfast option) we headed off to the race track. The train station was packed with people getting on these trains, but luckily they had it pretty well planned so there were trains running like every 4 minutes so it didn't take long. The racetrack was much bigger and grander than Sydney's (where we were a couple weeks back) and the scene was similarly amped up…just thousands and thousands of people there to party and watch the races…guys in suits and ties (often crazy and colorful) and girls in dresses and with either some ridiculous hat or hair piece of some sort. I don't quite understand why it is that people do that for these type of events, but I find it extremely entertaining! We stayed at the races for the better part of the day, wandering the grounds, seeing the races, etc. It was cloudy for most of the day but the sun came out in the late afternoon which was nice. After a long nap, we woke up and it kind of felt like a new day which was a little bit trippy…we headed back out to do a bit more exploring of some of the outer neighborhoods north of the city and to have dinner. We ended up in the italian area of town on a street that is just lined with italian restaurants…reminds me of little italy in NYC in that at each restaurant you have someone out on the street trying to talk you into coming into their restaurant to eat. We found a place that was a little less pushy and had a nice dinner.

Sunday we headed south to the "southbank" neighborhood, had brunch and walked along the

river a bit before heading out on what turned out to be a journey of epic proportions to the beachside suburb of St. Kilda. The walk was longer than we had thought and it ended up being a hot and muggy day so we were pretty drained by the time we got there. We walked around a bit, saw the market, went to the amusement park (although none of the rides were enticing enough to go on) and saw the little harbour which was very pretty. But we were pretty much done for and couldn't stay outside much longer (for those of you who know michelle, you know she really doesn't function well in the heat). By that time we pretty much had to head back into the city and get our things together to get out to the airport for our flight back. It was a fun weekend and I liked Melbourne a lot, but I have to say I'm glad to be in Sydney…you just can't beat the sheer beauty of Sydney's harbour (although its probably not fair to judge Melbourne on a little less than 3 days there but oh well, I just did).

Some more pics:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.7kk2zuk1&x=0&y=tjfolp&localeid=en_US

Now its time to count down the days to the election!

Week ending 26-Oct: The Beach and Rugby

2008-10-27T03:10:00.000-07:00

Had a slightly more stable week at work this past week, although we've still been working hard to get this trade over the line with, as of yet, nothing to show for it. Still working on it. The weekend was pretty relaxed…Saturday we spent most of the day at the beach at Manly just a short ferry ride on the other side of the harbour. It’s a beautiful beach and we were planning on venturing out and trying surfing, but the water is still freezing cold so would have required a wetsuit. We decided we'll wait on the surfing until the water warms up a bit. But it was very relaxing just lounging around and the people watching there was second to none.

On the ferry back from Manly

Sunday we did a bunch of little chores that we'd been putting off for a while so actually got quite a bit of stuff done, most notably we booked our trip to New Zealand at xmas/new years time…very exciting! Haven't completely figured out all the details, but we have plane tix and a rental car and a decent idea of where we want to go and what we want to see. More on that to come of course. We also managed to take advantage of technology and had a nice long skype with my sister and brother-in-law and my little nephew Kai who is adorable. He demonstrated his incredible intelligence by being able to point to his nose, eyes and ears (and when he was asked to point to Uncle Jesse's nose he pointed to my nose on the computer screen…not bad!) We also watched a great classic (?) australian movie: Priscilla Queen of the Desert. It’s a movie about drag queens travelling from Sydney into the middle of the outback to perform a show…pretty random, but kind of hilarious and fun to see some of the places in the "bush" that we're planning to get to eventually.

We capped the weekend off by going to a rugby match at the Sydney Football Stadium (which conveniently is walking distance from our apartment) on Sunday night. The Rugby League World Cup is I believe an annual event that is played between the big rugby playing countries who take turns hosting the event. This year Australia is the host and we caught Australia's opening match played against New Zealand (who is of course Australia's big rival). The rivalry is pretty intense and by the end of the match the rowdiness was pretty elevated. Everyone will be glad to know that fans at Australian sporting events do "the wave" almost exactly as fans in the U.S. do. Except this version involved throwing things in the air in addition to standing up and throwing your arms in the air and it seemed to gain a crazy sort of intensity as it went around a few times. I guess that's the Aussie version. Anyways, Australia won and it was a fun game to go to.

Week ending 19-Oct: Horse Racing at Randwick

2008-10-19T02:26:00.000-07:00

This past week was a pretty brutal one at work for me so I was feeling pretty exhausted this weekend. We still managed to make it out to the horse races during the day on Saturday at Randwick. Horse racing here is a big deal so this race is something lots of Sydneysiders attend and it was quite a scene. Everyone gets dressed up to the nines but in a very colorful way. Whereas I get mocked at work for wearing a turquoise shirt, the races were the perfect time for it. And women do wear either big gaudy hats or some big flower thing in the hair. The people watching was really quite spectacular, really makes me wish we had events like that in the U.S. where people get all dressed up and look silly. One of the more amusing things about the whole scene is there are really two distinct groups of people enjoying the event: youngerish people like us who go, have some drinks, maybe place some bets, but its essentially a big social scene and then older, wealthier people who go probably to watch the races and make big bets. These two groups are somewhat separated at the venue but since I got tickets from my boss, we were allowed into the “members” area to witness what its like for the latter group. Pretty interesting contrast…but I think we all had much more fun out with the riffraff. Michelle and I are going to “Derby Days” which is a big horse racing event in Melbourne in a couple weeks and I think the scene there is supposed to be even more over the top than at Randwick…Should be fun.

Other than that, I had a decent bit of work over the weekend but we also squeezed in a quick game of tennis Sunday morning which was nice. I caught up on as much sleep as I could so as to not start next week with a sleep deficit. Not sure I succeeded though.

A link to some more pictures from the race day:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.6h4n4pbp&x=0&y=-w927a5&localeid=en_US

Week ending 12-Oct

2008-10-12T00:14:00.000-07:00

This week was a short work week since we had Monday off and we had our IBD offsite starting Thursday night and all day Friday. Part of the offsite on Friday was “team building” which meant we went to the Paddington Bowling Club and did some lawn bowling. Lawn bowling is awesome…its just a bunch of people out on this well manicured grassy area bowling balls down trying to get as close to the target as possible. Very simple, but when you’re out on a beautiful day, with a little competition between co-workers and a beer in hand, it makes for an excellent afternoon. My team got to the finals actually, out of about 30 or so teams where we were defeated by the Kiwi team (which to everyone else on the team made losing that much worse evidently). I’m planning on bringing lawn bowling with me back to the US; quite a good time. The conference ended with the big party Friday night at this club in the CBD which was fun…we stayed out later than I usually do these days. Otherwise the weekend was pretty low key at home, lovely weather as always these days, went down to the pool for a bit and BBQed burgers for dinner. It was sad however, that this weekend was our 5 year Stanford reunion so all of our friends were out at Stanford which was quite a bummer to miss. But that’s the price of living in Australia I guess!

Week ending 05-Oct: Tasmania

2008-10-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

Michelle left for Tasmania Monday afternoon with two of her uni friends so I had to survive the week solo before joining up with them. They went into Launceston in the north and did a loop on the east coast of the state before getting to Hobart (the largest city in Tassie) Friday morning to get me from the airport. Tasmania, in general, is about as opposite of a large, crowded city as you can get. There was actually a little traffic getting out of Hobart, but once we got into the countryside, other people and other cars were few and far between. We went up to the top of Mt. Wellington, which overlooks the Hobart area to get a view…its up pretty high and a few flakes of snow were actually coming down…it was freezing cold! (which was even more shocking when compared to how warm Sydney was that morning when I left). From there we went out to Mt. Field National Park and did a little hike up into the forest to a couple of waterfalls. We wanted to go deeper into the park to explore a bit more but it was already pretty late in the day and the animals were out in large quantity all over the place so driving on the road became quite challenging to not hit wallabies and other things popping out in front of the car so we decided to turn back so as to not contribute to the roadkill tally. We did have a close call with a wallaby as we were getting close to our destination…the thing was out in the road and completely froze as we were coming towards it before hopping into our path as I was slamming on the brakes (thankfully everyone survived the incident completely unscathed).

After spending the night in Tarraleah in this somewhat random "resort" that kind of had a Dharma Initiative feel about it (a la Lost), we continued north towards Lake St. Clair in the southern end of Cradle Mountain/Lake St. Clair National Park. We had hopes of climbing up a couple of mountains in the park but it was way too early in the season and snows still made the trails impassable towards the top. So instead we did a long hike up to a small lake and then looped back along Lake St. Clair on the way back. The weather was completely schizophrenic, going from dumping rain, to sunny and back repeatedly. (On a sidenote, the one thing that we had shipped over that is still being held by Australian quartantine are my hiking boots…evidently they were caked with dirt so they're either going to be steam cleaned or "destroyed" to make sure some weird bacteria or germ isn't introduced into Australia. So I was unfortunately reduced to hiking in sneakers which held up very poorly to the rainy, wet, marshy conditions). Anyways, the hike was nice and the highlight was at the end when we made a little detour down to what is called "Platypus Bay" where we ended up seeing a platypus swimming through the water right in front of us! There was also the most amazing rainbow that went down into the lake with the strongest colors. Pretty awesome. From that area we drove north towards the Cradle Mountain part of the park, making a few stops for short walks along the way. Michelle also spotted an echidna on the side of the road which is her new favorite animal.

The next morning we got up early and set out on a hike around Dove Lake which is one of the lakes at the base of Cradle Mountain. The weather was again somewhat questionable so the top of the mountain wasn't quite out, but the views were still pretty great. Towards the end of the circuit we went up on a side trail that climbs up pretty high to a viewpoint looking down on a few lakes with the mountain in the distance. It was a straight uphill kind of thing but the views at the top were worth it. As we were about to head back down it started sleeting on us and the wind picked up so it was pretty cold and my sneakers were failing pretty significantly against the elements so it was a cold hike back to the visitor center. From there we went to this reserve for Tasmanian Devils. Tassie Devils have had a huge reduction in population over the recent few years largely due to a disease that is spreading rapidly through the population. There are a few private and government run institutes that are trying to preserve them but the way things are going they're running the risk of going extinct in the near future. It was fascinating to see the devils right there in front of you…we saw a few of them get a bit of wallaby meat and the ensuing fight went on for probably an hour, just a 4 way tug of war over this carcass. They were actually pretty cute little things though and I think are often misrepresented as ferocious nasty things that will attack humans even though its not true. As we were leaving, we could see off in the distance that Cradle Mountain had come completely out of the clouds so we drove back to Dove Lake so we could get the view of the whole mountain below the clouds. From there we drove north to the coast for a complete change of scenery and spent the night in Stanley on the coast in the northwest of the state.

The morning was clear with blue sky (it didn't last long) and we took advantage by hiking up "the Nut" which is a volcanic rock formation that juts out into the water from the coast. After making it back to the car just before a torrential downpour started, we headed back east along the coast. We stopped in rocky cape national park and did a few small walks along the coastline (which was stunning…the color of the water combined with the rocks jutting out was really beautiful). We stopped for lunch in the town of Penguin (no penguins that we could see on the beach though) and then eventually ended up back in Launceston that evening for our flight back to the mainland. It was a great trip…Tassie is quite a beautiful place and I'm glad we made it down there. I like being places where you can drive along the road and not pass another car for literally hours at a time…its quite a change from living in NYC or Sydney!

Link to a bunch of pictures below:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.7kp9s5bp&x=0&y=kve2l6&localeid=en_US

Week ending 28-Sep: Canberra

2008-09-30T04:46:00.000-07:00

We finally got our furniture this week! We had gotten so used to living in a virtually empty apartment it was almost shocking to have a couch, kitchen table, chairs, a real bed, etc. The quarantine/customs service here is evidently incredibly thorough about letting in things that might have little organisms or diseases on them or other things that they don't want finding their way to Australia. We ended up getting all of our stuff with the exception of my hiking boots which I bet were caked with dirt…those are either being "steam cleaned or destroyed." Hoping to avoid the latter, but I guess I'll find out. In any case, it feels so good to have a real apartment that is actually a liveable space, its quite a difference to how its been!

This weekend we set out on a roadtrip to Canberra, the national capital of Australia (Leah and Monica, two uni-friends, joined us for the trip). Canberra is a city that was plopped down when a dispute between Sydney and Melbourne over which city should be the national capital couldn't be decided. And it kind of gives off that vibe of being somewhat artificial and manufactured. I'm glad we went and saw it, but I can pretty safely say that I will not need to return to Canberra anytime soon. On Saturday we walked through the "parliamentary zone" which includes the new parliament building, the old parliament building, a few memorials, etc. We saw the red and green rooms which is where the House and Senate hold session which I thought was kind of cool to see. Overall the area is kind of like a toned down version of DC…it completely gives off the vibe of being a government center but it doesn't quite have the pomp and showiness that DC has. In the afternoon we went to Floriade, which is a month long festival of flowers. There were some really cool fields of brightly colored flowers…I think some people go there to spend the day, we feel like we covered it in about 30 minutes so its all relative but I thought it was cool. In the evening we went to a restaurant and sat outside and ate and had some wine…it was nice.

Sunday we had brunch outside (it was another gorgeous day) and then drove up to the top of this huge hill that overlooks the city and went up in the tower that gives you a view out around the area. And then we visited the Australian Institute of Sports which is where promising Aussie athletes go to train to hopefully compete in the olympics and one day make their country proud. The AIS has a huge sprawling campus and I imagine it was state of the art when it was built 20 years ago but the whole feel was a little weird, like they're so into making sure their athletes can compete on a global scale. Interesting to see. Afterwards we made the drive home, got a little lost on the way but finally made it back. A slightly random weekend, but fun…Bill Bryson's descriptions of the city are pretty right-on in my mind: it feels almost like a deserted city because there is never anyone around, no matter where you're driving the roads kind of circle around on themselves and you're going to get lost, I can't remember what else, but I found it amusing. Canberra is definitely not a place I would say anyone really needs to visit unless they've got a lot of time to spend in Australia. Some pictures are below along with links for some more (not the most spectacular collection of pictures I've ever taken, just to get everyone's expectations in line)

Floriade pics:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.54gml7fp&x=0&y=v0k1zt&localeid=en_US

Other Canberra pics:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.8hmpvycl&x=0&y=1issjn&localeid=en_US

Week ending 21-Sep: Bridge Run

2008-09-21T04:14:00.000-07:00

We finally got internet this week hence I’ve been able to put up some posts from the past few weeks. You really don’t appreciate having internet at home until you don’t have it. These Australians are charging us an arm and a leg, but its certainly worth it in my opinion.

Thursday night was a big night out after work because it was someone’s birthday. The celebration actually started with a lovely lunch down on this pier out on the water…it was a gorgeous day and felt like a very “Sydney” thing to do. Friday was pretty low key for us, BBQed at home and caught up on some sleep. Saturday was a spectacular day…it was warm and sunny and perfect. I had to go to work for a quick bit which actually wasn’t bad because it gave me a chance to stroll leisurely outside on the way there and enjoy the weather. When I got back I went down to our pool (finally we’re having weather that makes having a pool and garden area in our building worthwhile!) and had a little swim and read for a bit and kind of dozed in the sun. It was a very lazy Saturday morning/afternoon for me. Michelle, meanwhile, was off handing out “get out the vote” type fliers at this market and then out on the beach…she’s gotten fairly active in the group “Democrats Abroad” which is focusing on getting Americans living overseas registered and signed up for absentee ballots. Later that afternoon we went and saw Cirque Du Soleil which was pretty cool. They do some seriously amazing and crazy stuff. And Saturday night we had a big pasta dinner to carb-up for Sunday morning’s activities.

Sunday we got up early for the Bridge Run. There are four different races that happen, a marathon, half-marathon, 9K and like a 4K (we did the 9k). The race starts just north of the harbour, crosses over the bridge, does a circuit through the botanical gardens along the water and finishes at the opera house. We’d been training for a few weeks so I think we were both feeling pretty good about it, but our goal really was just to be able to run the whole way. We ended up running pretty well and did it in just over 50 minutes, which for us was very exciting. And it was a gorgeous day and just fun to be taking part in the event. We ran for GSJBW and they had a tent in the “recovery village” where you could get breakfast/water/juice so we sat around there and “recovered” for a bit before heading home. We were a little tired but had to enjoy the sun while we could so went to the pool for a dip and a little reading time. For the rest of the day we pretty much lounged around, napped a little, did some errands and went out for dinner. Overall an excellent weekend in the city! The feeling is just so different here when the weather is nice…can’t beat this place!

I was shooting these as i was running so a lot are kinda blurry:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.3e8t34x1&x=0&y=-vbzsps&localeid=en_US

Week ending 14-Sep: The Hunter Valley

2008-09-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

Spring finally arrived this week and I think the whole city was in a good mood because of it. Nothing but sunshine all week and it got progressively warmer so that by Friday it was in the mid 20s (70s). Lots of people did long lunches outside and I think everyone left work a little earlier Friday evening. Michelle and I had dinner at home on the BBQ and then went to our friend Erica’s apartment because it was her 30th birthday. But we didn’t stay out that long because Saturday morning we were getting up early, renting a car and going up to the Hunter Valley.

The Hunter Valley is NSW’s wine region. We drove up and rented bikes and biked from vineyard to vineyard, doing some tastings along the way. The weather was perfect, cloudless and warm. The terrain was definitely not flat so biking was quite an effort. Each vineyard we’d get to and we’d both be dripping sweat, our hair all messed up, sucking wind and the other people there are in their khaki pants and polo shirts and all dressed up. But unlike how I think that would have gone over in somewhere like Napa, nobody here cared that we were somewhat disastrous. Regarding the wine, we’re not big wine people so all I can say is I liked some of them, but they don’t taste all that different from other wines I’ve had. The countryside was gorgeous, but I think I’ll be forever tainted by the wine region near Cape Town because I don’t see how anything could really compare with that on a scenic level. But it was really a perfect day and biking around to get from place to place was really enjoyable. And a very momentous occurrence for us in the afternoon was our first wild kangaroo sightings! One of the guys in the winery was telling us that there are kangaroo by the dozen out on the hillside usually in the afternoons and sure enough, when we left there on the hill were dozens and dozens of kangaroo. And eventually most of them hopped down towards a little pond to drink from…it was really exciting. And then pulling into the little road where we had to return the bikes, there in front of us were three kangaroo just watching us. We walked up a bit to them and then moved off over a hill a little, but when we got closer there were still there and ended up bounding up towards us. We both thought they were charging us but they stopped a little ways off, watched us a bit more and then left. In the evening we went to this brewery, the Bluetongue, where we had some of their local brews and then had dinner in the attached restaurant. We stayed the night in the little town nearby, but trying to not spend a fortune on the fancy hotels that they have there, we booked a place that’s part of a pub. It ended up being we were right above this pub that had live music going until past 2 in the morning…lesson learned, don’t stay in a pub hotel unless you want music blasting in your room into the night. Sunday we had breakfast at a place known for their champagnes and then did a little drive to Werakata National Park which is nearby. We drove on some very “unsealed” roads into the park, in the middle of some dense vegetation…walked around a bit, thought we were going to be lost in there forever, but eventually found our way out. Had lunch at another place (basically all we did was eat and drink for the whole weekend) and then got on the road back to the city. Very fun weekend, the Hunter Valley was great. I think we’re going to go back in a few months maybe for a daytrip when it’s more wine season because the grapes are about to start growing now, but really haven’t yet so we want to see it when everything is in its prime.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.a9d5ghk5&x=0&y=alkegx&localeid=en_US

Week ending 07-Sep

2008-09-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

The week started off stunningly, as if spring had finally arrived. Monday and Tuesday were cloudless with brilliant blue sky and sun and warmer than it had been, maybe around 70? The hopes that that was the end of “winter” here were dashed though Wednesday through the weekend: it was cloudy, gray, rainy, chilly and windy. Still, we’re hopeful that we’re almost through the 3 months of “bad” weather that Sydney has each year. So one of the key points of discussion at work this week regarded McCain’s choice of running mate…the Aussies I work with couldn’t get enough news about Palin, her love of guns, her love of moose (as a food), her daughter’s fiancé who loves to “shoot $hit,” and her general redneckish ways. All of them continue the streak of every single non-American I’ve ever talked to not liking Bush and the right wing. Its pretty fun (and also depressing) to discuss the situation…I liked the analysis that said Australia would be politically more like the US if Australia’s “middle” had the same level of population that our “middle” has. They’re just lucky enough to live in a place where the middle of their country is so inhospitable that basically no one can live there (but to be honest I can’t quite understand why anyone lives in say Oklahoma, Kansas, etc, right?). We’re all looking forward to the election…polls will start closing at Noon Wednesday here and there’s been talk of going to the pub to watch the results come in. Might be necessary.

Saturday was such a nasty day, it inspired to stay inside and read a good book (I’m reading Three Cups of Tea which I find captivating and inspiring but also makes me feel like I’m a terrible person who has done nothing good for the world, highly recommended though). Michelle has two papers due next week so she was planning to work on them but wasn’t able to motivate much on that front Saturday. After lounging through the day we went to this place for dinner where they actually have a theater above the restaurant so you go and see a movie either before or after eating. The theater is setup with all these pillows and low couches so you get to sprawl out while you watch the movie. And the restaurant is vegetarian and kind of spiritual in a way…I’m not really going to try and describe why that is because I’ll just sound like an idiot but it was delicious. It was a buffet with all these dishes made from things that I know very little about so we mostly didn’t know what we were eating at any given moment but it was all so tasty. Stopped at a pub on the way home and then rented a movie (it was quite the movie day) to watch when we got back. Pretty nice little Saturday, very low key.

Sunday was the first day it didn’t rain in a while so I spent most of the morning sitting out on the balcony reading my book while Michelle worked on her papers. Later in the afternoon we went for a run to Darling Harbour, our old stomping grounds, where they were having a sidewalk chalk festival. There were some cool drawings and things going on, but I think the deluge of rain the three previous days kind of put a damper on the festival which was unfortunate. All-in-all a pretty uneventful week without too much Australia excitement to report making this the kind of entry that you, the reader, might think “why did I just spend 2 minutes reading this worthless nonsense?” Sorry. We’ll try to do better. We did book a trip for next month to Tasmania though which we’re both very excited about. Michelle has spring break and will be going with a couple friends for a whole week and I’m going to make it down there for a 4-day weekend. Stay tuned.

Week ending 31-Aug: Palm Beach and Ku-ring-gai Chase Nat'l Park

2008-09-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

Friday night was low-key for us because we were getting up early the next morning so we just had dinner at a Thai place on Crown St (which is the main restaurant/bar street through our neighborhood). I branched out and tried something new and was punished for being adventurous…it wasn’t nearly as good as my usual Thai dishes. Lesson being of course don’t ever deviate from your norm. I won’t ever make that mistake again.

Saturday we went to the local Hertz and rented a little Toyota Yaris (?) which was a teeny little two door car. My experience driving on the left hand side of the road in South Africa earlier in the year turned out to pay dividends because it was way easier this time. While making turns Michelle had to constantly remind me to STAY LEFT but it wasn’t the panicked situation we had driving in Cape Town when I would be in the middle of making a turn and kind of freeze because I was so confused about which side of the road I should be on. (plus in Sydney you don’t feel like you’re going to get carjacked at every turn and you don’t feel like every other driver has a gun in the car that they could pull out and use on you at any moment…but I digress). Renting cars here is really cheap (relatively) which is an exciting discovery because now it feels like we can go anywhere without real limitations. So we drive up north over the Harbour Bridge and drove up along the coast to Palm Beach which is considered, I think, the northernmost beach of the Sydney area (it was probably an hour north or so). The beaches north of Palm Beach are part of the “Central Coast” which I believe is the central coast of NSW. Anyways, we walked out to the Barrenjoey head and up to a lighthouse. The land leading out to the head is very narrow, probably a few hundred feet wide so you look back and see the narrow strip of land with the ocean and the breakers on one side and the sheltered harbour on the other. And the land to the west is part of a national park, Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, which is lush forest and a pretty background. And that was our next destination so we drove back down south to where we could cut over and get to the park which is on the “West Head.” The park was great and we took a few little walks on the “tracks” (they don’t call them trails) to some viewpoints. After exploring the park a bit we started heading back to the city to return the car…quite a fun trip out of the city for the day, and so easy to do! The hardest part of driving was trying to get back to the rental car place which involved making a right turn off of Oxford Street which turns out is an impossible thing to do. Eventually we got the car back without problem.

Then later that night we went to see our second Aussie Rules Football game…the Swans (Sydney) were playing the Lions from somewhere, we actually don’t know…probably somewhere in Victoria or something. This game was played at the Sydney Cricket Ground which is in Centennial Park which is about a 15 minute walk from our apartment (as opposed to the first game at Olympic Park which is almost an hour train ride). SCG is a smaller stadium and I think much better really, the crowd seemed more into it and it just had a better vibe in general. The Swans won easily and I think the win puts them into the playoffs or something? We understand the basics of the game pretty well now but whenever the referees call penalties we have no idea what’s going on. Still need to try to read more about it. The basics are simple though: knock the living daylights out of the other team and while doing that try to kick the ball through the goalposts. Easy.

Sunday Michelle made me do yoga which I found extremely challenging and then we did our Sunday training run for the Bridge Run coming up. Then we had pancakes at home which were fantastic. Leah came over and we went to the Australia Museum where they were having a special exhibit on Aboriginal artwork which was pretty cool. The rest of the museum was about all the animals in Australia that can kill you. There are a lot. Pretty much pick a type of animal and the most poisonous of that animal lives in Australia. In the afternoon we had a few other friends come over to our apartment and we BBQed. It was rainy and not the warmest day but I just love BBQing…it was yet another experience that makes me really excited for winter to be over! We had a tamer BBQ menu this time rather than our kangaroo from last week…just teriyaki chicken and some grilled veggies. Maybe next week we’ll throw some shrimp on the Barbie!!

As always, a link to more of the pictures from the weekend’s events:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.211cit39&x=0&y=lfkbqg&localeid=en_US

Week ending 24-Aug: Blue Mountains Trip

2008-09-19T21:10:00.000-07:00

We’ve survived our first week in the new apartment and we both really do love it. Its in a great spot, very convenient to both work and uni (you don’t say school here, that’s what little kids go to), lots of restaurants and bars around and the apartment itself is just really nice. One whole wall is floor to ceiling windows which is great, except this being the winter it gets so cold in the apartment at night. The first night here we weren’t prepared for this, hadn’t figured out how to use the heat and only had a light blanket so we froze. But we’ve since started using the heat a little and got an extra comforter.

Work this week was relatively intense…I was at work till 1:30am Wednesday night (some things are constant at Goldman no matter where you are I guess!) and then Thursday night was another late evening. There were a bunch of people there late Thursday wrapping up a deal and around 11pm most people had wrapped things up and there was a huge surge to go out to the pub for a beer. I figured it would just be a drink or two, especially since people had been working so hard the past couple days but we ended up staying out till the bar closed (which thankfully is not 4am like it is in nyc). It was really fun, but the frustrating thing about it was the next day at work, I was feeling exhausted and run-down but it seemed like everyone else who had been out just as late as me and probably drinking more were not fazed in the least bit. I don’t know what it is but these Aussies are evidently super-human.

Friday night we began Michelle’s multi-day birthday celebration welcoming her to the ranks of 27 year olds. After work we went to the Orient Hotel in the Rocks for dinner. It was a great dinner and I ended up having kangaroo! It was quite good, it’s a lean meat, not really gamey at all. And the novelty of eating Kangaroo was fun. We also had a chocolate lava cake thing for desert that was so good. Then Saturday we took the train with two of our friends about two hours out of the city to Katoomba which is in the Blue Mountains. We did a little bush-walking out there, hiking down into a gorge that is a rain forest filled with eucalyptus amongst other types of trees. Very pretty, but very cold given its up in the “mountains” and it’s the middle of winter. After we had our fill of bush-walking we came back into Katoomba and had dinner and a few drinks before taking the train back to the city.

Sunday our BBQ finally arrived! We had to go on a mission to find a propane tank but finally got one and ended up BBQing at home for dinner. And what meat was the first to grace our new Aussie BBQ? Kangaroo of course! I’d heard that most aussies don’t actually eat kangaroo and its more a tourist thing, but they had ‘roo steaks and marinated ‘roo kebabs at the grocery store so maybe it is more of a normal thing to have? Not sure. But I really like it. Michelle I think liked it but is having a hard time getting over the mental component of eating kangaroo. I’m hoping she’ll come around. Next weekend I promised her we can do chicken or something a little more down the middle. Having the BBQ out on our balcony is another thing to add to the list of what is making me so excited for winter to be over. Grilling and then sitting outside having dinner on a warm evening is maybe my vision of heaven.

A few pictures from the Blue mountains and other things are below and a link to the whole gallery also.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.3ay09ikl&x=0&y=-vudzxy&localeid=en_US

Week ending 17-Aug

2008-09-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

The past week at work was fairly uneventful. Things are slower than they’ve been is what everyone is saying. We’ve watched a fair bit of Olympics during the day…all the swimming events are live for us around lunchtime so that’s been cool. Everyone at work bashes on Americans (usually for things we deserve to be bashed on) so they’ve anointed me as an honorary Canadian so that I won’t be offended (I’m not). Friday we celebrated one of the guys at work’s birthday from the previous weekend by getting a case of beer (which I think they call a slab) delivered in the afternoon. So once again, it was Friday afternoon and we were drinking beers in the office. And once again everyone assured me that this isn’t something that normally happens. I’m not sure what to believe because that’s now two consecutive Fridays. I’ll have to report back after next Friday. Anyways, after that a bunch of us went to a bar nearby for a few drinks. Michelle was with some of her school friends at our apartment and they were heading to a place in the Rocks so I rendezvous-ed with them…we went to a bar at the top of some hotel which had nice views of the harbour (although the views weren’t as nice as from my office) and then we ended up at some other huge bar nearby that had many floors and playing lots of different music and we stayed out for a while there.

Next day was fairly low key for us, we watched some Olympics and did some random errandy things. That night we went to the Aussie Rules match between the Sydney Swans and the Geelong Cats (Geelong is somewhere in Victoria I think). Mike, my boss at work has these season tickets and wasn’t going to be able to go so he gave them to me…he said I should go with someone who knows the rules so I could learn a little bit so of course I went with Michelle who happens to be an expert on Aussie rules (that’s of course a sarcastic statement). We had a great time at the game and we had read up a bit on wikipedia before going so we both had a pretty good understanding of the basics, but a lot of the calls made by the referees we had no idea what was going on. We pretty much cheered when the crowd cheered and booed when the crowd booed. It might take some more in depth reading to learn a bit more about the game. They play their games out at the stadium that was built for the Olympics in 2000…its this whole area of Olympic venues about a 45 minute train ride west of the city. The Swans got destroyed, Geelong is evidently like the unquestionably best team this year so Sydney didn’t have much of a chance.

Sunday was moving day for us. We said goodbye to our temporary place in Darling Harbour and moved our junk to our new place in Surry Hills. Our temporary place was nice and served its purpose perfectly but it was really exciting to move to our permanent place. The area is just so much better, in many ways its like the west village of Sydney. Our place is of course pretty empty except for the few things we’ve bought of the last week or two since our furniture is still somewhere in the Pacific. Its kind of amusing to have all this empty space. So we walked around the ‘hood a bit looking for BBQs or outdoor furniture but we were unsuccessful on both counts. We went for a nice run from our place into the CBD to the opera house, through the botanical gardens and along the water and then looping back…it was such a nice place to run so convenient to our place! This is the first day of our training for the Bridge run we’re doing in a few weeks. We were supposed to start the training three weeks ago technically so hopefully we’ll be able to catch up. And then we had dinner at a nice little Indian place a block or two away…its great having good restaurants so close again!

City2Surf

2008-08-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

First week of work went well. Really its very similar to working in the new york office (no, the aussies don’t leave work at 5pm everyday to go to the pub. Well, aussies that work at goldman at least don’t do that). The people are pretty amusing, there are some good characters. We did go out for “welcome” drinks Wednesday night and then there was something they called a “beer trolley” on Friday afternoon, but I was continuously assured that that is a rare occurrence and only happened because they had just wrapped up 3 weeks of intense and constant work. All I can say is having a “beer trolley” would never happen in new york but it’s a wonderful concept.

Saturday we bought some essentials for our apartment that we can’t wait for from our ship that is still somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. We got an air mattress, a few kitchen items, a couple of camping chairs, sheets, and towels. Nothing exciting but a few things that we would really have a hard time surviving without for the next 8 weeks. After picking these things up we dropped them by the new place which I hadn’t seen since our initial viewing a few weeks ago. I love the place! I’m so excited to move in there (I do wish though we would have our furniture sooner!). I put a couple pictures in below of the place, but they don’t really tell the story properly. Once we actually move in i’ll put up more pictures that I think will do a better job of showing the place.

Sunday, we got up early to go participate in the City2Surf run which is a race from the city out to Bondi Beach. We had grand plans of training for 10 weeks leading up to it so we could run the whole 14K but the training program never really got off the ground. So we didn’t really delude ourselves into thinking we could run 8+ miles up and down big hills so we ended up walking the thing at a decent walking pace (a lot of people as it turns out walked it). They said 70,000 people took part…the crowds at the beginning were unbelievable! It was really fun though, they had a couple bands playing along the way and it was just fun for us to have a little sightseeing walk. The weather was great at the beginning of the day but started getting cloudy as we got to the finish and started raining a little after we had finished. To get back to the city, they were running extra buses so we figured it wouldn’t be a big deal…turns out the line to get on the bus stretched literally like a mile. It was the longest line I’ve ever seen (maybe an exaggeration) so after standing in it for 10 minutes and progressing maybe 3% of the way, we decided to walk back to Bondi Junction which is probably a couple miles from the beach to catch the train back to the city. With our tired and sore feet and legs it was a painful walk but was definitely the right choice. I put in a few pictures below from the race and a link to a few more.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.7h3z1dhh&x=0&y=nglhdk&localeid=en_US

Apartment Search

2008-08-03T03:51:00.000-07:00

Wednesday began the painful, annoying, depressing and frustrating apartment search (adjectives used based on my prior experiences in new york). We had a “relocation consultant” who was charged with helping us get a place and she had a number of places lined up to show us on Thursday but wanted me to go to a few on Wednesday that we wouldn’t be able to see Thursday. First place I saw was quite nice, on a street with a bunch of bars and restaurants, good sized on the 9th floor (level 9 as they say) with a huge balcony with a view of the whole neighborhood. The kind of place that in new york would be well out of my budget. Everyone had talked about how the rental market in Sydney is extremely tight and there are multiple applications for the same apartment so it ultimately comes down to who is most qualified financially and who the agent likes the best. So hunting for an apartment is somewhat like a job interview: you’re supposed to dress up a little bit and supposed to schmooze the agent and try to impress him/her so that he/she will pick you to get the place. So I did my best at that even though it seemed extremely silly but I didn’t want to miss out on this place because I didn’t laugh hard enough at this woman’s joke or something idiotic like that. So with an application in for that place (which I’ll call the original apartment) and looking promising we went out the next day with our consultant who showed us a number of places that were nice but overall none that competed with the original apartment until we got to the last place of the day. It was on a quiet street right off a bustling area of restaurants/bars/etc and was similarly sized to the original one. The balcony at this last place was definitely smaller, but still big enough for a grill, a table and a couple chairs (which lets be honest, is probably all we’ll need it for…I don’t see us having a huge party on our balcony given we still know about 2 other people on the entire continent). This balcony overlooked the apartment’s private sculptured courtyard with lawns and fountains and a large pool that overlooks the neighborhood below. To make a long story short, it was this courtyard and pool that put this place over the top for us…it’s the kind of place that if you saw in New York you’d think “what could that person possibly do to be able to afford this ridiculous apartment” because it would be WELL outside of affordable. But here in Sydney that apartment is slightly less than what we paid for our shoe-box sized place on Christopher St. Finally something about Sydney is actually cheaper than NYC! So we should be signing the lease in the next couple days and unless something goes catastrophically wrong the place will be ours (knock on wood). When we move from our hotel to our new place, we will get to live there essentially furniture free for 6 weeks before our stuff arrives on the ship. We plan on buying a grill, table for the balcony and two chairs (which we can use inside while we have no other furniture), a blowup mattress (that we will have for all of you, the readers, to use when you come and visit us) and a refrigerator (which unfortunately is not something that comes with most aussie apartments). So we’re thinking of it as urban-camping in our virtually empty apartment for 6 weeks…should be amusing. Our new mailing address, since I’m sure everyone has things piled up that you’re waiting to send us, is:

801/20 Pelican Street
Darlinghurst NSW 2010
Australia

(its somewhat unclear whether we’re in Darlinghurst or Surry Hills. I think technically we’re in Surry Hills but a lot of the paperwork I’ve seen has said Darlinghurst so I’m going with that)

(The 801 is the apartment number and putting it first is just another thing these crazy aussies do differently from us in the states)

In other goings on of the last few days, we went on a little harbour cruise and to the aquarium. The aquarium was awesome, with huge displays from various parts of the country. The shark tank you could walk in tubes that basically went directly through so you kind of felt like you were in there with them. And all the tropical north/barrier reef stuff was gorgeous and made us really excited to get up there and go scuba diving!

Today, Sunday, we took the ferry up to Manly up on the north harbour. We did a little hike from town up onto the cliffs and out to the north head. It was a gorgeous day and the views were pretty awesome. We got the ferry back to the city right near sunset time so we walked over to Mrs. Macquarie’s Point to watch the sunset over the opera house and bridge. A few photos are below and a link for a whole bunch more also. I’m starting back at work tomorrow…it feels so long since I’ve been at work, I’m a little nervous I’ve forgotten what its like to not be completely free to make my own schedule on a given day. I’m sure I’ll remember very very quickly.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.7j55uc9x&x=0&y=-5isqaa&localeid=en_US

After One Week in Sydney

2008-07-29T16:12:00.000-07:00

Saturday we set out to explore in depth a few of the neighborhoods in which we’re considering living. We walked through many of the streets, big and little, of Surry Hills, Darlinghurst and Paddington before taking the bus out to Coogee for our first trip to the beach. I think the debate about whether to live closer to the city or out at the beach had a decisive winner (closer to the city). It’s possible if we were making this decision during the non-winter season here it could have been different but the beach is far (relatively) from work and school and we would probably never want to go elsewhere on weekends. After doing the cliff walk along the ocean from Coogee to Bronte, we took the bus back to Surry Hills where we had dinner and found a bar to which the big rugby match (the Australians versus New Zealand…the Wallabies vs the All-Blacks). People got REALLY into it and it was fun to watch despite the fact that I have a very limited knowledge of rugby. It was also exciting to see what will hopefully be our new neighborhood in a couple weeks bustling at night. We had a very friendly New Zealander engage us in conversation after the match, of which 85% was him talking about how for a nation of 4 million people New Zealand is very good at sports (they lost that night to the Wallabies). I’m only guessing that’s what he was talking about for all that time based on the bits and pieces I was able to understand (add the heavy accent with a loud bar and my mild inability to hear and it creates a very large communication gap).

Sunday we took the ferry across the harbour to the Taronga Park Zoo. I’m not usually all that excited about seeing animals in zoos (yeah, sure it’s a lion and that’s cool, but its locked up in a cage so who really cares?) but it was awesome to see some of the animals there. I probably haven’t been as excited to be at a zoo since I was like 4 years old or something. I understand that kangaroo are the deer-equivalent of Australia (for those people who have lived in NYC all their lives, seeing a deer is not really that exciting when you grew up with them coming into your backyard) but seeing them (kangaroos) right there in front of you was pretty exciting in my opinion! (The zoo staff must think its hilarious how the foreigners go crazy for the ‘roos). The koalas were adorable, so were the wallabies, I couldn’t get Elaine from Seinfeld saying “maybe the dingo ate your baby” out of my head when we were seeing the dingos. Overall a great zoo with some really cool animals and the setting is spectacular, up on the north shore of the harbour with views back to the city. As we were leaving a huge storm that had been on the horizon for quite some time caught up and dumped rain with lightning and booming thunder so the trip back home was a wet one.

Monday we did the opera house tour. The opera house is definitely an interesting structure and the main music hall inside is pretty impressive. Afterwards we went to the harbour bridge pylon lookout. This isn’t the bridge climb where you go to the top of the arch but instead go up about half as far to the top of one of the pylons. The view is pretty good and its about 20 times less expensive than the bridge climb (which I was all about doing until I just found out they don’t let you take cameras with you to the top, they instead take pictures of you and you have to buy them at I’m sure outrageous prices…what a crock). In the afternoon it started raining for about the 87th consecutive day (okay, we’ve been here for 7 days and plenty of them had no rain but it sure does seem like it rains a lot for a place that claims to be having a massive drought) and the news reported that Sydney experienced its coldest day in 5 years. I continue to regret not realizing that Sydney does actually have a chilly winter season and shorts and flip flops do not suffice in the month of July here. My warmer clothes are currently on a ship somewhere in the middle of the Pacific and will arrive well after the end of the winter weather I’m pretty sure. The news showed tons of children in the outer Sydney suburbs playing in the “snow” that fell last night (actually just a big hail storm but it stuck around long enough for people to use their boogie boards to sled down it and have hail-ball fights). Not necessarily the image that comes to mind when I think of Australia but everyone says that by mid-August the weather will warm up and it will become the Australia I’ve had in my mind.

For a whole slew of photos from these events follow this link:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.5jebi891&x=0&y=-yav1n8&localeid=en_US

First Couple Days in Sydney

2008-07-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

just a quick post to say hello (or g'day i suppose) from down under. Its thursday afternoon here, we're on our 4th day in Sydney and so far i have to say its great. We arrived early monday morning after a 14 hour flight from SF (of which i slept 10.5 hours) to a sunny but chilly day (evidently winter in sydney does actually exist in some form). after getting ourselves to our temporary apartment in darling harbour (i'm embarassed to admit this but we both got excited when we found that we're like 2 or 3 blocks from the real world house and we're literally across the street from that bar they went to every single night) we set out to explore a bit of the city. we wandered around, as we passed people on the sidewalk we constantly tried to walk to the right as they tried to walk to the left so we now are constantly trying to remind ourselves to stay to the left. crossing streets is challenging because my brain can't deal with the fact that cars drive on the left so rather than just know i have to look in the opposite direction from normal, my brain short circuits and i try to look in all directions simultaneously which, sadly, is not humanly possible. i think i'm improving a bit in this category.

we've managed to accomplish a few basic tasks while a few others still elude us. we've managed to open a bank account, get cell phones and go grocery shopping. but cracking the public transit nut is still slightly beyond us. (how am i supposed to know how many sections my bus trip is going to cover? and what's the difference between a section and a zone anyways? and does the monorail actually serve any purpose or is it just there to confuse and distract you from the real means of public transportation? makes me really appreciate nyc transit at this point i have to say!)

on the cell phone note, since i now have a number here, you can all call me which i know you all have been dying to do. and i can receive calls for free so you should all feel free to call me anytime day or night (but keep in mind i haven't fully adjusted to the time zone change yet so i haven't really managed to stay up past 8pm but i'm up at 6am like clockwork each morning). We are 14 hours ahead of the east coast and 17 hours ahead of the west coast (and in case the only two people i know who don't live on the coasts can't do the interpolation themselves, we're 16 hours ahead of colorado and 15 hours ahead of chicago...you both know who you are). to dial from the US i believe it would be 011 61 4 02525134. if that doesn't work, let me know.

i've put up a few pictures from our first few days here...nothing really spectacular, just random shots from our wanderings around the city so no worries at all if you don't see them, but in case anyone is curious...

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.aq30535x&x=0&y=-vuc934&localeid=en_US

thats all for now...i plan to update here regularly but we'll see how well i manage to keep up with that!