Claire's Australian Adventure

As I sit here at Ursinus listening to Christmas music with my best friend typing away an essay next to me, I figured I’d finally get to around to writing about my final adventure in Australia. After finals were over and I hung out at JCU for almost a week, I headed down to Melbourne for a few days as a last hurrah in Australia. I had only heard great things about Melbourne so I was pretty excited to go visit. My friend Tom (and his parents) very nicely agreed to let me stay in their house for free during my visit because they live just outside the city. On Monday, I finished packing up everything and headed to the airport where I flew down to Sydney and then onto Melbourne. I got in pretty late on Monday because my flight was delayed so that night we just had dinner at Tom’s house and went to bed so we could get up early and have next day to do whatever we felt like doing.

On Monday Tom and I took the train into the centre of the city. Our first stop was Federation Square right next to Flinders Station (the train station). At Federation Square we went to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). They had a free exhibit called Screen Worlds about the evolution of the moving image (aka they had lots of stuff about TV, movies and video games). It was pretty cool and had a lot of interactive stuff. Before we left, Tom and I made this Matrix video:  http://www.acmi.net.au/timeslice/Timeslice.htm?file=ts-20111122-25b95f067c0a74ba3163149782659da1.flv (obviously we didn’t quite time it right but that’s ok it was still fun). From there we wandered up a little side alley that was full of amazing graffiti. One of the things Melbourne is famous for is all the awesome graffiti that’s all over. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the alleyway that my guidebook said to go to but that’s ok because I still saw some really cool artwork. Once we had admired the graffiti for a little bit, we wandered around and eventually made our way to the Aquarium. The Aquarium was really expensive so we decided to skip that and instead went and walked along the Yarra River at South Bank. South Bank is home to the Crown Casino and a bunch of very nice restaurants some of which are owned by celebrities. Just for fun, Tom and I stopped in the casino for a few minutes. I’d never gambled before in my life so I watched Tom play a couple rounds of roulette before joining in. I ended up winning $15!!

From the casino, Tom and I headed to the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, the Eureka Tower. It’s 300 metres high, 88 stories and an apartment building! We got to go up to the Skydeck for 360 views of Melbourne. Monday it was sunny and warm so we could see pretty far, it was really cool to see the city from all they way up there. After checking out Melbourne from the clouds, we wandered back to Flinders Street to catch a train home and relax for a bit. At night Tom drove us back into the city to meet up with Jackie and her aunt and cousins at St. Kilda’s Pier so that we could see penguins! We saw a few Little Penguins (or Fairy Penguins) at the break water at the pier which mad me super happy because I’d wanted to see the penguins since I got to Australia. Once we had our fill of the cute little penguins Tom and I headed back to his house for some dinner.

Wednesday, I headed into the city by myself to do some exploring and take pictures because Tom and I forgot to bring a camera the day before. My first stop was the alley with all the graffiti where I discovered there were also a few side alleys off the main one with graffiti as well. Wishing I had Jackie by my side to discuss all the art, I took heaps of pictures of everything. From there I wandered around the city a bit, down the river and back up the river to Federation Square where I hopped on a tram (an old school tram, like in San Francisco, not that I’ve ever been there…) and headed to the Melbourne Cricket Grounds (MCG). The MCG is where the AFL grand final is held every year and obviously various cricket matches are held there throughout the year. Lucky for me there was a random cricket game between Tasmania and someone else (possibly India?) that day. While I waited for my tour to start, I got to sit and watch the game for a little. Unfortunately I don’t understand the complex sport of cricket so it was a bit lost on me. The tour of the MCG was really cool, we got to stand on the field, see some of the behind the scenes things (practice wickets, the members only club, no locker rooms though since they were obviously in use) and heard a lot of stories about the history of the stadium. The tour lasted over an hour and after walking around the city all day, I was pretty tired so I decided to head back to Tom’s house. That night we took it easy considering how tired I was from my day of exploring and got ready to head out relatively early the next day to explore the Victorian country side.

When we woke up the next morning, Tom suggested we head to the Healesville Sanctuary because we were going in that direction anyway and I love going to the zoo. Healesville was AWESOME. It looked pretty small on the map but it was a decent sized place and only had animals native to Australia. Healesville offers chances to interact with their animals (“magic moments”) and the first one I got to do was petting a dingo! The dingos were very friendly and loved to be petted. They were also very well trained. After we played with them for a little bit one of the dingos was instructed to stand up on rock and pose for pictures with all of us. He absolutely loved it and was very happy to have his picture taken. Once I had my fill of petting the dingos, we wandered around the park for a while and then headed to the Birds of Prey show. At the show they had some neat birds such as parrots, a buzzard and a huge wedge-tailed eagle that flew right over our heads and interacted with the show leaders. After the show we headed over to the kangaroo exhibit where I got to pet and feed a kangaroo. The kangaroo I hung out with was very friendly and loved being fed corn. He kept pawing at me to give him more when he hadn’t even finished the piece in his mouth! When I finished spoiling my ‘roo with treats, Tom and I headed back to his house so I could start packing up my stuff. That night Tom had a SCUBA diving course and his younger brother was out so his parents took me out for Thai food. Most interesting Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever had!

Friday I woke up at 4 am for my 7 am flight to Sydney and spent the day chasing daylight on my way back to America. I left Sydney at noon on the 25^th and landed in LAX at 6:30 am still on the 25^th.  Eventually, I made it back home and on Sunday hitched a ride down to PA to see everyone here!

It’s been an amazing journey but it’s great to be home and back with all my friends, even if they are stressed out about the end of the semester crunch.

Last weekend after classes ended, 9 of us roadtripped about 4 hours north to a city called Cairns. Saturday night we stayed at the world famous (ok, maybe not really world famous but Dave and Matty insisted that we stay there at least one night) Giligan’s hostel. It was huge and really nice. Unfortunately they didn’t have any 10 person dorms available so we got split up into two 6 person rooms but neither of our rooms had anyone else check in so we could still all hangout in the rooms and not be bothering anyone. Sunday afternoon, Jackie and 3 others went skydiving while the rest of us hung out by the pool and walked around downtown Cairns.

Sunday and Monday we stayed a different hostel and on Sunday the hostel had advertised a Halloween party with live music and a free BBQ. However, it was not quite the experience we were expecting. The live bands turned out to be metal and Metallica cover bands and every time we asked when the BBQ was the time got later and later until eventually it was from about 7:15-8 pm (we’d originally been told it would start at about 5 pm). On Monday, Dave, Hannah, Matty and Liss woke up at 4:30am and drove an hour to south to climb the tallest mountain in Queensland (Mt. Bartle Frere). After asking around about the hike on Sunday, they packed their bags with a couple litres of water each, sandwiches, snacks and bug spray galore. The mountain is infamous for the leeches that drop from trees and stick on you. It’s also taken some people as long as two days to hike but for experienced hikers as little as ten hours. Around noon though we got a call saying that they had made it to the peak! Making it up in about 6 hours was quite an accomplishment and they had only encountered one leech.

While Dave and crew were hiking the mountain, the rest of us headed out to spend some time with the other IFSA-Butler students who are studying in Cairns. They live in an apartment/villa complex just minutes from the JCU Cairns campus on the outskirts of town (about a 45 minute bus ride). Their complex had two amazing pools, the one we hung out at and swam around in was actually a salt water pool! When the hikers made it back down the mountain and back to Cairns, they stopped at the store and picked up supplies for kangaroo tacos. Despite a long day, Dave and Matty took over the hostel’s kitchen and cooked us a delicious dinner.

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One month from tomorrow I will be home! :( I can’t believe how quickly this semester has gone, today is the start of the last week of classes followed by a study week (SWOT vac as it’s called, I think it stands for Study without teachers or something similar) and then two weeks of finals before I fly down down to Melbourne for a few days. It turns out that Jackie and I will be in Melbourne on the same days and flying out of Sydney to LAX on the same day. We just can’t be separated even when we don’t plan things together!

The last few weeks have been pretty low key, a lot of work to get done before the end of the semester. I made the soccer team as the starting left back and we started games the week after lecture recess (3 weeks ago). We only won one round robin game, tied 3 games and lost one but that got us third place (and I scored the only goal in our win!). On Tuesday night we had the semi-finals and finals. In the semi-final we went to double overtime and then to PK’s. I made my PK and after about 7 kickers Uni Hall ended up winning the shoot out! Later that night we played in the final game against our biggest rival (George Roberts Hall) and we beat them 3-0. So exciting to have all of Uni Hall out supporting us at the game and for us to play well and finally start scoring. The boys team also made it to the finals and they won on a penalty shoot out. Then this Friday night, Uni Hall had their Valedictory Ball to honour everyone graduating so it was a pretty great week to be a Dragon Slayer!

Now here’s some more Aussie slang that I’ve learned the past few months, I’m sure that I am missing some because now it just seems natural to use these words:

Agro - Aggravated

Windscreen - Windshield (such as on a car)

Air Con - Air conditioning

Puffed - Tired, out of breath (usually used when working out)

Un-Co - Uncoordinated

Pike - To flake out on someone or ditch someone

Rubber - Eraser

Strappings - Tapings (such as in sports, if I were to need my ankled taped, here they would say “I need my ankle strapped”)

Footy - This one is tricky, it can either stand for AFL (Australian Football League) or Rugby, it depends on the person. But it doesn’t stand for soccer!

Scrathies - Scratch off lottery tickets

Pokies - Gambling machines

Chips - French fries

Breakie - Breakfast

Jug - Pitcher (such as a pitcher of water)

Fortnight - Not quite slang but I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone say fortnight back home so we were a little surprised when our friends would say they get paid every fortnight or our rooms get cleaned every fortnight

Dunny/Toilets - Bathroom (No one says bathroom here, you always asked where the toilets are)

Chemist - Pharmacy

Car park - Parking lot

Queue - Line

Fair dinkum - Hard to explain but it would be the equivalent of someone saying something along the lines of “legit” or “true story”

Torch - Flashlight

As Jackie and I noticed, Australians really like to shorten words or phrases (ie: Maccas, Agro, Breakie). A popular way to make a comparison or say something was really fun is not actually finish the comparison but to just end the sentence at as. For example instead of saying “I was as sick as a dog last week”, I would say “I was sick as last week” or another popular one is to just say “good as”, for example “Dinner was good as tonight”. It took us a while to get used to that because it seemed so strange to just end the phrase at the word “as” but it’s easier than trying to find something to make a comparison to!

Update: Along with adding “u”s to words (labour, neighbour) and switching “er” to “re” (metre, centre), Aussie’s also change “z” to “s”. For example: realize is spelled realise, recognize is spelled recognise. Lots of subtle differences!

This past week was lecture recess (aka spring break) for just about every uni in Australia. One of the places a few of my friends and I had been wanting to go to was Whitsundays. They are 74 islands a few hours south of Townsville with beautiful beaches and clear blue water. So a few weeks ago we stopped in at the student travel agency on campus and got some great deals on a sailing trip and accommodation for the week.

On Friday (the 23^rd) after class was done, Sarah, Jackie, Molly and I got on a bus and headed 4 hours south to Airlie Beach. We had to be on the boat early Saturday morning so we spent the night just hanging out at the hostel where we were staying.

Bright and early Saturday morning we got up, checked out of the hostel and hopped on the shuttle bus down to the marina. Around 8 am we boarded the Camira and set sail for the day. Lucky for us, we were some of the first people on the boat so we got to sit up front and have great views of the islands we were sailing around. In the morning we sailed out to Daydream Island (a privately owned island and resort), between North and South Molle Island and then up to Hook Island where we got to go snorkelling off the coast. Molly and I got stinger suits (even though it’s not jellyfish season) to keep us warm and noodles to keep us afloat. The water was a perfect clear blue and the fish and coral were very colourful. At one point a whole school of little fish converged right underneath us, it was so cool to be surrounded by them! We probably spend about 45 minutes to an hour snorkelling and splashing around before we had to get back on the boat.

After snorkelling, we sailed around Whitsunday Island to the world famous Whitehaven beach. It was absolutely beautiful and breathe taking. Whitsunday Island is a natural preserve so no one lives on the island and the land there is in its original condition. The sand at Whitehaven is white silica so it doesn’t get hot (shoes weren’t needed)! To get on the beach they chartered us from the Camira on a smaller boat to shore. We got to spend about an hour on the beach. While on the beach we lay in the soft, cool sand and soaked up some rays before burying Jackie in the sand for a little bit. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay there forever as we would have liked and eventually had to go back to the Camira for a barbeque lunch (Australians sure do love sausages, I can’t tell you how many I’ve had since coming here!)

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Despite Australia being an English speaking country there are many noticeable differences in language and grammar. It took us a while to get used to the everyday vocabulary of our fellow uni students but now we have it down pretty well.

Now I’ll teach you all a quick lesson in Aussie grammar and slang. One noticeable difference is the adding of letters so that they are spelled the British way. For example: color is spelled colour and fetal is spelled foetal. Also, any word that ends in -er back home ends in -re here (ie: center is spelled centre and fiber is spelled fibre). They also tend to shorten words and add an “o” or just add an “o” in general, especially for names. For example: Arvo means afternoon and Sean and Rob are called Seano and Robo.

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