Can anyone tell me how it got to be October already? Because I have absolutely no idea how time is flying by so quickly down here. Spring Break is over, and now we only have a shade over two weeks of classes left this semester. Since I don’t have classes on Tuesdays, that means that I only have nine more days of class in Australia, which is a scary thought. As much for the fact that my time here is closer to ending (I literally just a couple seconds ago realized that I’ve been in this wonderful country for three months and a day, yet it feels like I just got here at most a month ago), as for all the assignments and papers that naturally come due at the same time at the end of semester. In less than a four weeks I’ll be all done with finals too (my last one is on 2nd Nov). But instead of dwelling on all that, how about some fun stuff, like spring break!
Last Sunday (the 26th of Sept) I flew up to the Whitsunday Coast, at a resort town called Airlie Beach (about a 12 hr drive north of Brisbane, 10 hrs south of Cairns). The first day I pretty much just bummed around the town all afternoon and evening, waiting for my friend Rich to arrive on a Greyhound bus late Sunday night. The beach at Airlie Beach itself isn’t all that great; it looks nice enough at high tide, but at low tide it’s an ugly, muddy, rocky harbour. But that’s why it’s not an attraction in and of itself, but rather the gateway to the amazingly beautiful Whitsunday Islands. But the weather couldn’t have been better the whole time we were in the Whitsundays, it was in the low 80s and brilliantly sunny every day. Quite the change from Melbourne in winter, hehe.
On Monday the 27th (which was my 21st birthday!) Rich & I went parasailing in the morning all over the bay, about 200 feet above the water. I’d never been parasailing before, and it was so much fun! We were up in the air for probably ten minutes or so, and towards the end of it they slowed the boat way down so that we’d gradually fall into the water. Once we’d been dunked a couple of times and were good and wet (and reminded of just how salty the ocean really is), they went back to full speed so that we went way up in the air again, but it was still nice and warm! And the views from up there were breathtaking, the aqua and turquoise water, islands visible in the distance, and the marina in one part of the harbour, it was incredibly pretty. We just took it easy in the afternoon, since we had two full day-trips ahead of us.
On Tuesday we took an Ocean Rafting trip (essentially this big unsinkable yellow raft that could hold 20-30 people), which took us on a cruise through the Whitsundays at around 30 knots or so. Our first stop was Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, and we got to climb up to a small peak to get a postcard-view of spectacular Hill Inlet, which is at the northern end of the beach. Then we went down to the beach for a nice lunch (included in the tour). Whitehaven Beach is 9 km (6 mi) long, and is made of the whitest sand I’ve seen in my life. It’s so white that it stays cool even on a hot day because it reflects so much sunlight. It’s 99% pure silica, so it squeaks when you walk on it, and it’s such pure silica that NASA used sand from that beach to make the lens for the Hubble Space Telescope! Also, if lightning were to ever strike the beach, it would turn that section of it to glass instantly, which is an amazing thought. Anyways I got trained to snorkel there (since I’d never been snorkelling in my life) before we went to a bay over by Hook Island to go snorkelling amongst the coral reef! It was so fun, and I got some great pictures too, using a one-time use disposable underwater camera I’d bought. I even bumped into the reef pretty good accidentally with my hip, as the tide was so low it was a little tough sometimes to swim around and avoid touching it.
Some of the coral was even poking above the surface of the water too. Then it was time to head back to Airlie Beach, but on the way back we saw a few dolphins (one of the rare species apparently, our guide said it was only the fourth time in his life he’d seen that kind of dolphin). For Wednesday we took another day tour with a different company. We got to cruise around a different part of the Whitsundays, a bit further south around Hamilton Island, before going up to Whitehaven Beach again. We got to spend a good deal more time there that day than on Tuesday, which was nice. It felt good just to lay in the sun listening to the gentle surf, even though my back got badly sunburnt. Oh well, it was worth it. 🙂 Then they took us snorkelling again, this time at two different places, so that was cool. And the bbq kebab lunch they had for us was amazing! We took the second trip out there because we wanted to spend as much time as possible at Whitehaven, and go snorkelling as much as we could, and it was definitely worth every penny.
Overnight Wednesday night Rich & I took a Greyhound bus up to Cairns. We had planned on renting a car and driving up there, but the rental agencies in Airlie Beach told us they required a minimum 3-day rental, and if we were gonna leave the car in Cairns, they’d charge an additional $300 relocation fee. That was totally ridiculous ($500-600 total just to rent a car for one day’s drive), so we just took the bus instead. We of course didn’t get much sleep on the bus, so the next day in Cairns we were just kinda tired, so we didn’t do much. We met up with some of Rich’s friends who were on vacation in Cairns, and went to see “Dodgeball,” in addition to bumming around the city a little bit.
Friday the four of us (me, Rich, and his two friends Lee & Uriah — I was the only one not from UW-Eau Claire, but it was cool hanging out with a bunch of fellow Wisconsinites in Australia!) rented a car and drove all around the Atherton Tablelands, a region with some beautiful countryside a little southwest of Cairns. It felt so good to drive again, I guess I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. We stopped to see a couple of enormous fig trees, several waterfalls, and we swam in Lake Eacham in Crater Lakes National Park (it felt good to swim in freshwater again for a change!). The lakes still seemed so much like northern Minnesota or Wisconsin, it really felt like home. And it was humorous to notice how just about every lake in Australia is made into a national park since lakes are so rare here. I drove about half the time, and I got used to driving on the left side of the road really quickly actually. It wasn’t until late afternoon on a little country road that I had the obligatory “wrong side of the road” incident. Fortunately I managed to avoid the oncoming van in plenty of time, hehe.
On Saturday morning it was time for me to fly back to Melbourne (and for Rich and his friends to fly back to Brisbane), and when I got back I had the lovely task of finishing research and starting writing for a 2000-word essay that was due on Monday for my Climate Change class (I’d meant to get a start on it the week before spring break, but procrastination took over, hehe). The first part of this week was really busy with assignments due (and a test in Fluid Dynamics yesterday on Wednesday), but the last part of this week has been a nice breather again, before I dive right back into lots of assignments next week. Seriously, I didn’t have all that much homework the first 10 weeks of uni, and now in these last three weeks it seems like everything’s due.
Some big news here in Australia are the national elections that are coming up this Saturday, October 9th. The incumbent Prime Minister is John Howard of the Liberal Party, a staunch ally of the US who is seeking his fourth term. The challenger is Mark Latham of the Labor Party. The top two issues seem to be terrorism (in particular since the Australian embassy in Jakarta was bombed three or four weeks ago or so), and the economy (which has been going very well the last 8 years during Howard’s administration), both of which favour Howard. And another issue that just popped up this week was Tasmanian forests, which now also favours Howard after Latham announced his policy (essentially banning logging). But still the polls this week show that it’s a very tight race, with Howard up 52-48%. It’s been interesting following the campaign down here, and the general public is a bit more interested in what happens since voting is mandatory here (if you don’t vote you get fined $50). Also, you don’t vote for a specific person, you vote for a party (and hence all the candidates from that party running for office. And voting is on a preference system, meaning you rank the parties 1-6 or however many there are. If over 50% of the ballots cast rank a particular party as #1, then they’re declared the winner. If not, then the #2 rank votes get added to each party’s pool, and then the #3 votes and so on, until one party reaches a total of at least 50% of the ballots cast in their column. I might be wrong, but at least that’s how I understand Australia’s confusing voting system. 🙂 And even though I’m way down in Australia, I’m still keeping up on the debates and campaign back home, and I’m also cheering on the Twins! The last couple of days, either during lab or between classes, I’ve snuck a peek online to check out the latest score updates (night games are on late morning/early afternoon here). I confess, I’m a hopeless sports addict, even when I’m on the other side of the world. Anyways, sorry about this post being horribly long, if you’re still reading at this point, you deserve a medal or something. Either that or a bag of TimTams. Mmmm, TimTams…. 🙂