8/29 - Great Ocean Road

Tuesday, I hit the Great Ocean Road, which hugs the coast west of Melbourne towards Adelaide. The bus tour was pleasant enough, but things turned really spectactular at the end, when we hit the stretch the 12 Apostles and London Bridge. You kind of forget everything else when you hit the stretch between those big boys.

The 12 Apostles

London Bridge

8/29 - Melbourne

Hello from Melbourne:

Alyson and I parted ways with Alissa and Danielle in New Zealand after a stunning Milford Sound trip. We took a bus from Te Anau, NZ across the southern part of the South Island to Dunedin. I jumped off at Oamaru to try to see some penguins, leaving a very jealous Alyson on the bus to Christchurch. I did manage to see about 10 very rare yellow-eyed penguins, and I also saw quite a few of the populous blue penguins. After a night in Oamaru, I bussed to Christchurch, from which I flew to Sydney and stayed for the night. Really, the only reason I flew to Sydney was so that I could fly back on Emirates, which was way nicer than Virgin Blue (a bare bones carrier).

You can catch all of my New Zealand pictures at this flickr page:

http://flickr.com/photos/31905988@N00/

In Sydney, I randomly ran into Perth-based EAPSI-ite Adam, so we shared a drink at the nearby Scubar. The next night, I flew back to Brisbane, where I packed up all of my stuff, said goodbye (again) to all of my friends at UQ, and realized that my crappy house had no power (which made it quite hard to pack). The next day, since I had an afternoon to kill, I went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where I saw a million koalas, fed kangaroos, and saw emus, wombats, and cassowaries.

I then flew to Melbourne, where I am being graciously hosted by Alivisatos alumnus and friend Udo Sebastian Bach. Yesterday, I met up with my sister's labmate, Carmen, who is in town for a conference, and we experienced the unique thrill of going to an Aussie Rules Football game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. I also ate kangaroo for the first time, and of course it tasted a lot like beef. I gave a talk today in Udo's department at Monash University and then met up with fellow EAPSI-ite Rhesa. After dining at the Retro in bohemian Fitzroy, we headed to this seriously hidden, back-alley bar called the Croft Institute (eye-washes in the bathroom!), which is decorated as a chemistry lab and has astroturf in its gymnasium-like third-floor bar.

Tomorrow I head out to the Great Ocean Road, and then Wednesday I head back to Sydney for a few days.

I'll try to post photos and internet access permits. Check out the New Zealand ones for now.

New Zealand

Hi from Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand.

I flew into Christchurch on Thursday, the 17th, and hooked up with my friends Alyssa, Alyson, and Danielle. From there, we drove our rental car to Arthur's Pass (the highest town in NZ). The next morning, we hiked a torturous path up into the snowy peaks, and then later we drove to Franz Josef on the west coast. On Saturday, we took a guided walk of the Franz Josef glacier, which moves about 1 m per day and actually touches the rainforest. After a half day walk, we drove to Wanaka, stopping at Lake Hawea to watch New Zealand play Australia in Rugby Union. At the ski resort town of Wanaka, we decided to do all of our adventure stuff. I snowboarded on Sunday at Treble Cone, which got its best snow in 10 years. We met up afterwards and drove to Queenstown. Queenstown is known for adrenaline junkies who do stuff like skydiving, jetboating, bungy jumping, etc. But since we got all of that out of our system in Wanaka, our Queenstown experience is limited to hanging out in the hostel and writing in this blog from an internet cafe.

We're on our way to Te Anau to catch the glow worms and take a cruise at Doubtful Sound. From there, Alyson and I will take a long bus ride up the coast back to Christchurch, where we have catch our flights back to Australia on the 24th.

more pictures later. In the meantime, check out my flickr page (apocow username) for Whitsunday pics.

Whitsunday Islands

Quick post from the road:

On Saturday, I started a 2-day, 2-night cruise on the catamaran Wings in the Whitsunday Islands. We stopped at various diving/snorkelling spots around the islands to swim in the friging reefs. These spots included Luncheon Bay and Blue Pearl Bay off of Hook Island and Hayman Island, respectively. We also stopped at Whitehaven Beach, which is supposedly one of the best beaches in the world.

On Monday, I returned to land, happy to be back in the world of hot showers that last longer than 30 seconds.

On Tuesday, I spontaneously drove up to Townsville and Magnetic Island (with a stop at the Big Mango in Bowen, QLD). I stayed in Magnetic Island, but I didn't get to see any koalas. I did, however, team up with some Welsh ecology grad students to win a $30 bar tab at our hostel's quiz night.

You can check out my flickr page for some pictures of past journeys. More to be posted later.

8/12 - On the Road (Whitsunday Islands)

So Thurday, 8/11, was my last day of work. We had a going away dinner with my lab, the big boss included, and had a great time. On Friday, I headed out to the Whitsunday Islands, which are on the bottom edge of the Great Barrier Reef. Since I'll be on the road for 3 straight weeks, I won't be able to post to my blog or upload pictures as frequently.

In the meantime, you can check out the rest of my Fraser Island trip pictures in random order (actually reverse... start from the end and go backwards) on my flickr website.

If you want to know where I am, here is the rest of my itinerary:

8/12 Whitsunday Islands
8/16 Brisbane
8/17 New Zealand, South Island
8/24 Sydney
8/25 Brisbane
8/26 Melbourne
8/30 Sydney
9/3 SYD->LAX->SFO->Berkeley

8/06 - Byron Bay

On my last weekend before my official program was over (8/5-8/6), I took off to Byron Bay, which is about a 3 hour drive south of Brisbane across the border to New South Wales. Even though the weather forecasts were ominous, I was determined to go because my labmates in Berkeley had told me that I would not be welcome back until I had learned to surf in Australia, and, well, Byron Bay is the place to learn to surf in Oz.

Byron Bay

So off I headed to this surfer's mecca/typical touristy beach town/hippie haven. Sounds like some places in California, huh? Exactly.

Remember how I told you that N. Stradbroke Island was the easternmost point of Australia? Well, that was just the Straddies' propaganda, because there are plenty of teeny islands east of that. And Cape Byron is the easternmost point of continental Australia. Being the first thing your spot when you travel westward to Australia, the lighthouse is the iconic image of Cape Byron. After an early morning bus ride from Brisbane, I decided to try to hike to the lighthouse before my surf lesson at 2 pm. The weather forecasts had said "Rain! Bad Rain! Don't even think about surfing!" But of course, the whole hike, I was hoping and praying that the beautiful sunny weather would continue.

Byron Bay lighthouse

And lo and behold, right as my surf lessons were about to start, it started pouring rain. Here are some pictures of surfers (not me) before it starting dumping.

Surfers in Byron Bay

But of course, the trusty instructors at Black Dog Surfing were like, "You're gonna get wet anyway, mate." And of course, they were right. There's not much else to do in Byron Bay when it's raining anyway, so you might as well go surfing. We got to wear wetsuits, and the water was actually warmer than the surface air -- the only problem being, well, you have to get out of the water sometime. So , in the end, it was a cold and rainy first surfing experience for me, which I guess is fitting since I learned how to snowboard in the rain. But the waves were perfect for learning -- small and glassy and arriving one after the other. I learned how to stand up on a surfboard, but only with the instructor pushing us. Catching a wave by yourself is pretty hard -- I tried, but with little success. I guess I'll just have to watch my copy of Step into Liquid to get my surfing thrills.

Anyway, after the surf lesson, I went back to my hostel, took a nice warm shower, and made myself some hot soup. This was my first experience at a YHA (Hostelling International), and even though it was clean, it lived up to the boring, regimented, barracks reputation I had been warned about (with an extra fee on top). Probably the most interesting experience I had there was watching an Adam Sandler football movie in the lounge with some British girls. Afterwards, I asked them if they knew what was going on during the scenes where they were playing American football. They had no idea, which was weird since that was the whole movie.

The next day, I was torn between taking another surf lesson and trying to get to the rainforests. I really wanted to get better at surfing, but I had been told the rainforests and waterfalls around Byron Bay were really nice. For variety's sake, I ended up signing up for a bus tour of the rainforests... or so I thought. So the thing was that I didn't have a car, so I had to take a bus tour. The most popular and well-regarded tour was Jim's Alternative Tours, and I must say it earns every bit of its reputation. The best part of Jim's tour is his pimped out, rainbow colored bus that has a $20,000 sound system over which Jim plays a synchronized soundtrack to the whole tour. For example, he'll be passing by some hut, and say, "well, that hut used to be a buttery but then they turned it into a drug rehab center, and so-and-so the famous Aussie folk singer stayed their once and wrote this song about it..."

Anyway, as that statement implies, Jim's tour goes to several places in the area, the most notorious of which is Nimbin.

Nimbin Rocks in the background

Nimbin is this hippie little village where, um, certain types of weed aren't exactly legal, but they aren't really discouraged either. So the flowery streets of Nimbin have become a popular stop for party-happy backpackers.

Nimbin Hemp Embassy

Anyway, despite being offered many forms of cookies, etc, they weren't really my thing (honest, Mom and Dad), and neither was Nimbin, but it was interesting to see what the fuss was all about.

In the Nimbin museum

Freaky faces to scare the stoners

So anyway, after spending 2 hours in Nimbin, which was honestly an hour too long, we started our thumpin' bus and headed out to the mountains. As we got to some rolling hills and straightaway stretches of highway, Jim explained to us that, this was where the people who had the "cookies" started to feel the effects and get very paranoid. With the hilly, narrow highway, people often mistook the ride for a rollercoaster ride. So, just to play along, Jim liked to put on the scary Pink Floyd track, "One of These Days (I'm going to cut you into little pieces)," and take the bus over the hills as fast as possible. This was probably the highlight of my entire weekend. Check out a video of it here [5.4 Mb .mov, Quicktime required]. Anyway, it was pretty freaky, but exactly as Jim predicted, the song ended exactly as we reached the end of the highway, kind of like the whole Dark Side of the Moon vs. Wizard of Oz coincidence.

On the other side of the rainbow, er, hills, Jim happened to have a friend named Paul Recher. Paul is this American ex-pat, who, having been a stamp-collecting fiend as a child, now collected and planted every kind of exotic fruit plant he could find. And so began Paul's Exotic Fruit Garden.

Paul Recher's Exotic Fruit Garden

The unique part of this tour is that Paul actually takes you through his garden, and he'll say stuff like, "This is a sweet lime tree. It's like a lemon without the acid." And then he'll pull a few sweet limes off the tree, cut 'em up and throw them at you to try. And then we'll move on to the next tree.

Cracking and chowing down on free macadamia nuts

So we ended up congregating in Paul's lake-side deck and munched on macadamia nuts that Paul had collected from his trees. Paul also has a eucalyptus sanctuary for koalas on his property.

Paul Recher's junk heap "art installation"

The final part of the tour was the rainforests. It ended up being more or less a drive through the forests with a short stop, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Our bus wound our way up and up through windy, muddy roads until we got to the top of Minyon Falls, which drops over 100 meters down into the dense canopy of the rainforest below. There's no way I could capture the awesome extent of that in a picture, unfortunately, but here' s the top of the falls.

The top of Minyon Falls

Anyway, after that, it was a sleepy bus ride back to Byron Bay. Except for some story about how Jim once used his bus to ferry hundreds of naked women up to the forest for some protest picture. And then, Jim heard one of the passengers complain that she hadn't seen a kangaroo in Australia yet (I hadn't either). So we pulled over onto a golf course at dusk, and lo and behold, I saw my first wallaby hopping across a green.

Later that night, I took a Greyhound bus through the glitzy Gold Coast back to Brisbane, sleeping contently knowing that I had learned to surf, seen the rainforest, and spotted my first marsupial in the "wild."