Waiting and No Waves

Melbourne's beaches are fairly sheltered as compared to Sydney's so there is no real waves to had here. Which is too bad, as we are going to be here for a few more days before we get our wheels.

After weighing a variety of options, we have decided to buy an '86 Toyota Camry wagon with 270,000 kms on it, for the affordable price of $1500. Which isn't too bad split three ways . The only hitch in the plan is that they needed the car until Monday - they being Graham and Anne, a Scottish couple in their sixties - so we are hanging out at St. Kilda's Beach House, a hostel near the water, until Monday. In terms of transferring the vehicle into our name, Australia has a fairly easy system to navigate. The rego, registration and third-party insurance, is easily transferable from one owner to the next, so the our vehicle will be legal until August, which will be a nice selling feature once we try to sell it in about a month.

So what have we been doing in Melbourne? Primarily catching up on sleep. But yesterday we did head down to the beach to see if we could get a look at the fairy penguins. Jordache had taken an early morning walk down the beach and had learned where the penguins usually come in at dusk. So, around 8:30 PM we headed down to the beach as the sun set with our cameras in hand. At the end of a pier there was outcropping of rocks, and it was here that the additional walkways had been built up around the rocks to afford walkers the vantage point to see the birds without scrambling over the rocks. The sun had set by the time we made our way to the end of the pier, and we thought we may have been too late.

There were about four or five Melburnians in fluorescent vests on the Penguin Patrol, making sure that no one used the flash on their cameras or tried to pick up a penguin. One of them told us that with the full moon, the penguins might elect to stay out all night for the good fishing. We waited for a few more minutes and eventually saw a light "V" cutting through the water at what seemed to be about 10 km/hr and up onto the shore came the unmistakable shape of a fairy penguin. The Penguin Patrol were more than happy to use their flashlights to highlight it with red beams as it slowly waddled its way toward the rocks and then disappeared into a crevice. We saw a few more roosting in the rocks after that, but given the dark lighting pictures were pretty difficult and we headed back after about twenty minutes of penguin watching.

Dumb Marsupials

If you are following the updates on this blog with rapt attention, hopefully this one doesn't disappoint. I mean, it probably will, so maybe you should lower your expectations. I am sitting in an internet kiosk in Melbourne with time to spare on the clock, so I thought I should tell you all a little bit about what I have learned about kangaroos.

Kangaroos are so numerous in the outback that they are seen as pests, and most vehicles, regardless of their size, have a large winch bar on their fronts. It is a bit odd to see a sedan with a bull bar, but this is to protect the vehicle from the kangas that often step onto the road. A local we were talking to said they have no road sense whatsoever, and judging by the innumerable skeletons in the ditches, I would have to agree with him. We actually didn't see any kangaroos ourselves, as it is the wet season right now, but when the dry season hits, the ditches get twice as much water from the road run-off, and that is when the kangaroos come in droves to some of the only greenery in the Outback. And again begin bouncing off the fronts of the locals speeding vehicles.

A Whirlwind through the Interior

So, the last couple of days have been pretty busy - we flew out of Sydney yesterday into Alice Springs and rented a car and headed down to Ayers Rock (now known more commonly by its aboriginal name, Uluru). We saw the Rock from fairly far away obviously, as it is sitting in the middle of a desert, and as we drove closer the size of it was nearly overwhelming. We dropped our bags at a 20-bed share hostel, and when I mean we I mean Jordache and me, as Kyle's bag had not made the connection through Melbourne. We headed into the park and then set up at an outlook after making a circuit around the Rock to watch its colours and contours shift as the sun went down.

We headed to bed fairly early with the intention of getting up to see the sunrise at the Rock, and we groggily pulled ourselves out of bed at 4:30 AM - or what we thought was 4:30 AM. The rest of the backpackers in the room must have been rather unimpressed, because we had forgotten to account for the time change from Sydney and it was actually 3:30 AM. We figured this out once we had checked out and loaded our things into the rental car, and by then we decided we might as well nap in the car at the lookout until the sunrise, which we did. I really can't say that it was worth it.

After the sunrise we were again on the road, heading back the way we came, but then took a 3 hour detour to see Kings Canyon, a gorge north of Uluru. We did the 6 km hike in the blazing heat (approximately 43 C) and then gratefully got back into our air-conditioned car and headed back to Alice Springs, where I am writing this now. The drive covered a lot of ground, but it went by quickly with the interesting scenery and the interesting roadkill (camels, cows and more kangaroos than you could count). The speed limit also helped limit the time on the road, with the limit being in some places as high as 130 km/hr, but we kept it under 160 km/hr to be safe.

Tomorrow we catch a flight to Melbourne where we will hopefully meet up with some cousins of Michelle Berkeley, buy our vehicle, ferry over to Tasmania and then head up the east coast after the island, surfing and camping as we go. We seemed to have gotten the tourist attractions out of the way early - The Sydney Opera House and Ayers Rock, and we are looking at just taking it easy for the next few weeks.

Sun and Surf

We pulled up to the Edmonton International Airport Tuesday morning courtesy of Josh Noble, and it was almost difficult to do, as the weather could almost have been described as "balmy." Rianne Nicolai and Kathryn Johannesen were checking in at the same time, though they were headed east to London as Jordache and I headed west to Sydney. Our flights was supposed to leave at 1:30 PM, but a two hour delay meant we had to practice our laissez faire attitude earlier than we had planned to. Our seven hour lay-over in San Francisco turned into a five-hour one, and at 10:30 PM we were headed over the Pacific on our 13 hour 47 minute flight.

Jordache and I arrived 8:00 AM yesterday in Sydney - so Thursday, as we are now in the future, eighteen hours in the future to be exact. After approximately 25 hours of travel, we pulled into the Bondi Junction bus stop where we met our cousin Kyle Mywaart who has been here for a week and a half already. With enough sleep to presumably get us through the day, we dropped off our bags at Kyle's hostel and hit the beach. After a few hours tackling the waves on Bondi Beach, we grabbed some pizza and picked up some groceries. Kyle is keeping a close eye on the budget, so we allowed him to point us towards the cheapest necessities.

We dropped off our groceries, grabbed some boogie boards and hit the beach again. After a few more hours, we now know why surfers and boarders call them "rash shirts." Our chests were rubbed raw, and sea water didn't exactly soothe the open sores. We got back to the hostel, burnt and bleeding, and crashed in our beds at 9 after a long day. Today was another packed day with sightseeing all over Sydney, but I will save those stories for the next post.

Itinerary in Brief

So, there is really no itinerary, making the title of this first blog a bit misleading. This is more of a general sketch of what my trip will look like, but don't be surprised if things change drastically from what I will lay out here.

Jordache and I leave for Sydney, Australia on the 19th of January. Our cousin Kyle Mywaart will be there to meet us and we will see what there is to see (I told you this was going to be vague). Jordache and I will at some point leave for New Zealand, and then we will go our separate ways as I head north into Southeast Asia. Thailand is a definite, and by April 25th I will have had to have found my way to Beijing, China where I will hopping aboard the Trans-Mongolian Express. This 21 day trip will take me out of China and into Mongolia, with the last destination being St. Petersburg, Russia. I will probably fly out of St. Petersburg into eastern Europe, probably Prague, and then probably head south to Greece. The word "probably" comes up often in my plan - as I use "plan" in the loosest sense possible.

There is one thing that is definite about this trip and that is the end date - I will be back no later than July 30th for my cousin Marion Fraser's wedding in Edmonton.

Feel free to follow along, and I will do my best to relay some interesting stories. I won't have a phone for the next six months so the best way to get in touch would be through the internet and all that it provides, such as email, facebook and the blog message board.

Nine days and counting.