The Global Guy

Mom has come and gone. It was a nice 10 day visit, but it’s time to get back into the traveling routine again. I met her Christmas-eve morning at the Sydney airport, but it took quite a while. Apparently the airline had lost her luggage, so I spent almost two hours in the arrival area trying to figure out what had happened. Luckily Qantas agreed to have the luggage delivered to our hotel in Canberra the next morning. Once that was settled, we rented a car and started out on the drive to Canberra. Mom wanted to go to Christmas Eve mass, so we found the local Catholic church after a couple of wrong attempts. We nearly had to have services with Methodists!The next day we were invited for Christmas dinner with some friends of friends, and spent a great afternoon drinking beer and talking about just about everything.

We spent the next day doing all the tourist things in Canberra…the war memorial (amazing), the botanical gardens (Mom loved them) and the Telestra tower (yawn). That evening we headed down to the ski-town of Thredbo. The next day Mom wandered around town, and I decided to take the challenge of hiking up Australia’s highest mountain. I had heard it was an easy stroll, but I was disappointed with just how easy it really was. There was a steel grated sidewalk all the way up to the top, supposedly for plant conservation, but I suspect it was to make the mountain as accessible to as many people as possible. At the very least I can say I’ve now got bagged one of the seven summits!

The next day we drove down to Melbourne on one of the most fun roads I’ve ever been on! Lots of twisty spots thru green lush forests. We stopped in the town of Healsville on the way so we could see a wildlife rehab center. We weren’t really in the right place to see ‘roos in the wild, so this was Mom’s chance to get to see them. Once we hit Melbourne we started exploring the Queen Victoria’s market almost immediately. I got to be Mom’s pack mule thru the day, but she made up for it by taking us out to dinner that night. It was her first experience with Thai food, and I think she really enjoyed it.

The next day we headed to Sydney for New Year’s eve. We spent the day wandering around, checking out the opera house and the bridge. That night we saw the works at Darling Harbor, and then headed to bed right after midnight. Mom left the next day, and while I was sorry to see her leave, I was glad to get back to my travels again.

I spent three and a half days exploring Byron Bay recently. It’s a small town that lives on it’s counterculture. Wandering the streets at night you pick up a huge smell of incense and pot smoke in the air. It’s got much more than that actually…the people are friendly, the surfing is decent, and there is some surprisingly good diving. I booked a two dive trip to an area called Julien Rocks. At first it seemed disappointing…cold water, lousy visibility, and no coral. Then, I started looking around and noticing the size of some of the critters out there. There were HUGE rays, turtles, Wollongong sharks, and other big fish. It wasn’t the best diving I’ve ever done, but it was in my top 10 dives.

Anyway I’m in Sydney now, killing time for Mom to arrive in the morning. I’ve decided that taking the bus in 1st world countries is asking for misery. It’s so much easier to pay a little more and get to your destination 10 times faster, and without the disadvantage of fat smelly people.

On the way to Fraser Island, driving with the Dutch girls, we had the most astounding meeting. We were packing up to leave our hostel where we’d stayed for one night. Suddenly the door opens, and Dar Gibson from the pole walks in. He stared at me, and I stared at him, not quite believing what we’re seeing. All of a sudden we realized that yes, it was really our buddy from the pole, and just started cracking up. We ended up going to grab some breakfast and chatting, but we didn’t have much time since I had to leave with the girls pretty quickly. Talk about a one in a million chance!

Well, Fraser Island was the cheapest and one of the best tours I’ve done so far. For $125 Australian, we got the use of a 4X4 Land Rover, all the camping gear, permits, and everything else to spend three days and two nights on the island. Basically, Fraser is the largest sand island in the world. Sounds boring, right? Not at all. It’s had time to develop an amazing ecosystem with the clearest freshwater lake I’ve ever seen. It’s got it all…great swimming, beautiful forest hiking, sand dunes, sharks, saltwater swimming, and the only true dingos left in the wild.

Day 1: The morning started at 5:45 am with an orientation from the company we were renting the Land Rover from. We packed up all the food and supplies, and headed off for the ferry to the island. We decided to start out heading for Lake Mackenzie, but first we had to get the hang of driving on deep sand. The road went thru a forest for a while,with lots of roots and branches in the road. The poor girls that were with us kept wishing that they had sports bras instead of bikini tops on…the roads were so bumpy that they were really not enjoying the ride. Of course us guys just sat back, grinned and enjoyed the view.When we got to the lake, we were all impressed with how clear the water was. I’d have killed for snorkeling gear! Myself and one of the girls tried to swim all the way across the lake, but gave up about halfway across because we knew that we still had a lot to see, and not much time. We drove along the beach for a while to our campsite at Indian Head on the north end of the island. That night we saw wild dingos and brumbies (horses) both wandering around the campsite.

Day 2: We woke up with the sun at about 5:15 am. We wandered over to a beach near the camp called the champagne pools. Last night we’d gone up to the cliffs overlooking this beach where we saw sharks and huge manta rays in the water. We’d been warned not to swim in the ocean, except for very specific places because of these sharks. The champagne pools however were a protected area where the sharks didn’t like to intrude into. It was amazing looking…the waves were crashing over rocks, exploding in the morning air! After playing in the water for a while we packed up and headed down the beach to check out the old wreck of the Maheno. This ship was driven ashore during a storm back in 1935. It had been sold for scrap, and was being towed to Japan when the storm hit, and the two rope snapped. It’s now buried 5 decks deep in the sand, and is one of the more unusual attractions on the island. After getting our fill of photos, we headed down to Eli creek for lunch and floating down the river. After lunch we wandered down to an area called Rainbow Valley for some hiking along the sand dunes. We stopped by town for ice and some more supplies, and then camped on the beach, spending the evening goofing around and playing drinking games.

Day 3: We started out heading for Lake Wabby, known as the disappearing lake. The lake is bordered on one side by a huge sand dune that is slowly moving into the lake bed. In another hundred years or so, the dune will have filled the lake in completely. Lake Wabby is also one of the more difficult lakes to visit on the island. We had to hike thru the woods for about 40 minutes way, but the weather was perfect and there were hardly any mossies. On the return trip, we skipped the forest and hiked down the dunes. It was fun and pretty, but my calves complained about it the next day. Finally we headed to Lake Boomangin, which is a shallow clay lined lake that has water that has been stained a reddish colors by the tea trees along the shores. Perfectly safe to swim in, but it was really strange to look at. Suddenly someone looked at their watch, and we realized we were late for the ferry. We were officially two hours away from the dock, and only had 90 minutes to get there. Luckily traffic was completely non-existent, and we just barely made it.