Heading Home

Well, my time in Australia has come to an end. It has all been so much more amazing than I imagined it would be. I am really going to miss being so close to the beach, living with people from 3 different continents, but most importantly I will miss all of the wonderful friends that I've made here.

I'm not looking forward to the next 24 hours, which is pretty much exactly how long I will be traveling to get back to Indiana. After that though, it will be nice to be back home with family and friends from home close by...and even though they are playing so terribly this year, I'll be happy to get to some Reds games in the near future. Maybe they can put something together over the next few months with me back in town. It'll be nice to enjoy some warm weather as well!

And it's never too early to look ahead to where my next travels may take me. A potential trip to Germany in two years is on the horizon, then maybe I'll take advantage of a couple of invitations to Brazil and relatively soon I will definitely be back in Australia.

I can't say enough about how much I have enjoyed the past five and a half months in Australia. It has been, by far, the most enjoyable experience of my life.

Road Trip

My last trip in Australia took place with my two best mates, Dom and Harry. The best part about this trip was that we had no specific plans as to where we had to go. We only knew that we were picking up the rental car in Sydney and had to return it in Melbourne four days later. We had a general idea of what we wanted to do, but had nothing planned as far as where we were staying each night and that was great because it gave us the flexibility to just go with the flow and depending on how a certain place was we could spend more or less time there.

So we left a rainy and cold Sydney behind on June 26 and set off on our road trip. We headed for Canberra, Australia’s capital city, first and when we got there about 3.5 hours later the temperature had dropped by about 7 or 8 degrees Celsius. Well, there really wasn’t too much to see in Canberra, as expected, but we still needed to get out of the car and move around a bit, so what better to do than throw the Frisbee around? The location we picked could have been better because the place we chose was very wet and muddy. Anyway, we had a fun time with that as usual even though our hands were freezing. After awhile, we experienced an extremely hilarious occurrence with a local man walking his dog, but I won’t get into the details because it’s only that funny to the three of us, but yes it really is funny, mate! J

That wasn’t the end of the laughter in Canberra because not long after that hilarious guy, I attempted to make some sort of spectacular catch or something and ended up sliding across the mud and falling right on my ass, drenching my jeans, shoes and my left arm. It was quite hilarious, and all I remember is slipping and then getting up and laughing hysterically along with the guys. It was funny at the time, but what wasn’t funny was that those were the only pair of jeans I brought with me and now they were wet and muddy and the same goes for my shoes.

Well after the Frisbee, we went and bought some groceries for the next couple of days and then got back on the road and drove to Wagga Wagga! Now, it’s not pronounced like it looks. Just like Lake Wabby actually is pronounced like Wobby, Wagga Wagga is pronounced like Wogga Wogga. There really wasn’t much reason for us to go to Wagga Wagga other than to say that we’ve been in Wagga Wagga. However, when we got there around 8 pm or so, we spotted a huge open field in a park that was perfect for some Frisbee and boomerang. It was quite dark and I nearly lost my boomerang twice, but we still had a lot of fun. I got frustrated after throwing Frisbee for awhile because my right arm started hurting to where I really couldn’t throw well anymore. However, this gave me an excellent opportunity to work on my left-handed throwing skills and it paid off handsomely. Although I am still much better with my right hand, I am now competent with my left, too!

Well after I lost my boomerang for the last time and we all walked around for about 20 minutes, some skaters who were doing their thing in a nearby skate park started chatting with Dom and after Harry and I found my boomerang we joined them. These guys were pretty young, yet very nice and they directed us to a beach where we would be able to set up our tent and camp out for the night. They also told us where the movies were in case we wanted to check that out….easy answer. We finally got those guys to stop talking and we made our way to the beach. After passing a few “shops with postcards, churches and (stuff),” we found this beach. We checked it out and thought it was perfect, however, it soon started raining and after scaring away a possum and, unintentionally, a guy in his car, we ended up just chatting in the car for hours and then just sleeping in the car. That ended up being one of the worst nights of sleep I’ve had in awhile, but nevertheless it was free.

It rained all that night and we were up pretty early the next day. After a quick stop at Macker’s (McDonald’s) for breakfast we set our sights for Melbourne. On the way, we stopped for some boomerang in a random field and savored the little bit of sunshine that we had seen in awhile. The boomeranging was fun, however, I was the only one to throw it and then catch it. Don’t think I’m awesome or anything because it was far from ideal. As it came back it went way over my head and I had to run after it real far and then got lucky to catch it. Anyway, we finally made our way back towards Melbourne and poor Dom had to drive most of the rest of the way in rain and heavy winds.

When we got to Melbourne, we found a parking spot and went out to explore a little bit, but it was rainy and cold and sucked, so we got back in the car and decided to head on to Geelong, where we had arranged accommodation at a hostel. It took us awhile to get out of Melbourne, but the guys finally navigated me out of there and we made it to Geelong. The place we stayed was a bit dodgy, but after sleeping in the car the night before we were looking forward to a night sleeping in beds. However, that wouldn’t come until we had a few drinks downstairs at the pub. It was quite an interesting place. It was one guy’s birthday and he was just out of control. Then there was another guy, we’ll call him Fonzi, he took the longest to shoot each pool shot that I have ever seen in my life. After Dom went 1-1 in pool games and we all reeked of smoke, we went outside to get some fresh air before heading to bed.

It was great to get a shower at the hostel and sleep in that bed, so we were nice and refreshed for Day 3 in which our plan was to venture along the Great Ocean Road. It turned out to provide some spectacular scenery as you might expect. We stopped at a few different places along the way, a waterfall called Carisbrook Falls, and the Otways National Park, where we spotted a koala up in a tree and quickly stopped and got out to take photos of the little guy. This was especially welcoming because we had seen so many signs warning us to be on the lookout for all sorts of animals crossing the road, but we hadn't seen any of them until this koala. After that we saw about 5 more as we left the Otways, so that was really awesome. We also saw tons of enormous cows. I mean these things were so fat, they must have all been pregnant or something. Anyway, we must have spent too much time stopping at these other places because it was dark by the time we got to the 12 Apostles, a series of rock formations that stick up out of the water, of which there are now only 6 left. Our original plan was to do the entire Great Ocean Road in one day and then head up north to Grampians National Park, however we decided our time would be much better spent on the Great Ocean Road, so we proceeded to drive along to the end of the Great Ocean Road to a town called Port Fairy and search for a place to camp and then we would drive back along the Great Ocean Road the next day on our way back to Melbourne. But first, as we were leaving the 12 Apostles, we came across our first wild kangaroo sighting. I was driving and eating a muesli bar when I spotted the roos in the road ahead, but my mouth was full so I just made some strange noise to get the guys’ attention and then flashed the headlights so we could see them better and finally I got the word “kangaroos” out of my mouth. I quickly stopped along the side of the road and Dom jumped out hoping to get some photos, but the roos were long gone by then.

So we continued on toward Port Fairy, stopped on the way to get stunned at Hungry Jack’s and when we finally did get to Port Fairy we stopped at the first beach we could find and threw some Frisbee, then moved along to look for a good place to camp. We found one that we thought would be nice, but it had a funny smell and then we found a sign that said there was a $200 fine for camping at that spot, so that one was out of the question. Finally, we found a place that Harry called “paradise”. It had a huge dry area that we thought would be ideal for some Frisbee in the morning and a nice place out of sight from the road where we could set up the tent. After getting set up there it was time to relax, have some beers and chill out on the rocks on the beach. I think we all agree that that night was the most fun we had on the trip. Just sitting around talking with the guys out on the beach was great.

The next morning it was time to head back towards Melbourne and catch the things that that we missed on the Great Ocean Road. It turned out that we missed the best things, like the Bay of Islands, London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge and we got to see the 12 Apostles a little better, although it was raining again and was so cold. The Bay of Islands is just like the name suggests, a bay cut out of the land with a lot of rock islands around in it. It was actually almost more interesting to see than the 12 Apostles because there was a large bay cut out along with rock formations sticking up out of the water. London Bridge was a long rock jutting out with an archway underneath it, however, in 1990 the archway collapsed leaving just an island off of the coast. It was really interesting that when it collapsed there were actually people stuck out on the island that had to be rescued by a helicopter. Loch Ard Gorge is famous because it is the site of a famous shipwreck that claimed the lives of 52 people and only had 2 survivors. There were a few caves and places where water flowed under the rocks and back out to where you could see it. Pretty interesting stuff!

Eventually, we made our way back to Melbourne, but not before we stopped in a small town called Anglesea to see some wild kangaroos at a place that was recommended by our trusty Lonely Planet manual. It did not lie, because we saw heaps of kangaroos out on the golf course just munching away at the grass. It was almost too easy to see them that it felt like a zoo or something, but they are not in any way there at the golf course against their will, so we decided that it definitely counts as seeing wild kangaroos.

We made arrangements to stay in a hostel in downtown Melbourne for night #4, since it would be cool to explore the city and also our flight was from Melbourne the next day anyway. Not surprisingly, we started off the next day with some Frisbee in the park, followed by a ride on the free tram around the city. We got off at some point and just walked around the rest of the time looking at whatever we could see. The only sort of famous thing that I knew anything about is Rod Laver Arena, where the Australian Open tennis tournament is played. Harry says that they also have swimming and some other Olympic events there as well. But it was nice to just explore around Melbourne, which is a very beautiful city with a variety of different styles of buildings which we all really liked.

Finally, it was time for us to take the rental car back and then get to the bus station to head to the airport. Everything from then on went very smoothly, until we got to Sydney, where we missed our bus from the airport by about 30 seconds. So we had to wait an hour for the next bus, so what better to do than eat up all the extra food we had left, which consisted of cheese, bread and wine…no joke! So that’s what we did for the next hour or so, sat and ate cheese sandwiches and drank wine at the bus stop. A fitting end to a wonderful road trip. The only bad thing that came about from this trip was that I got a pretty nasty head cold, which is no wonder at all considering my feet were wet half of the time and we slept outside twice. It was well worth it though!

Like any time that you spend five days with the same two people there are lots of inside jokes and silly things that happen that are only funny to those who experienced them and that is so true for our trip. It’s awesome, because those are things that the three of us will always share together. That is the kind of stuff that I will really miss when I go back home, just spending time with these guys and having no worries about anything else that is going on. These times are a big reason why I came to Australia and I’m so glad that I was able to share it with such great guys like Harry and Dom.