Follow the Yellow Brick Road...: July 2008

dockers vs. north melbourne kangaroos

swan valley wine tour

Well here i am at 849 Britton Ave and its time to wrap up this bloggage. On my way home i traveled for a little over a week, going to the great barrier reef and sydney. but first here is a summary of my fun and busy yet bittersweet last week in freo:
-at some point my friend chris and i were interviewed for an article on our exploits with the yankaroos footy program we were in, since we took the most active roles in coordinating practices and such. if you havent read it yet here it is: http://www.nd.edu.au/news/fremantle/yankeroos_learn_aussie_rules.shtml
--friday we went out in freo one last time, hitting all of our favorite spots; bar orient for reggae night and shannon's birthday, Newport for the hard rock girls band, and then Metros for one last time at a typical aussie dance club.
--saturday chris and i got free tickets to another Dockers game from Tony the head of the Yankaroos program in thanks for putting in all the work we did throughout the semester. it was my 4th AFL game and we finally got to see a Dockers victory, only their 2nd on the year. that night we went to northbridge (perth's bar district) one last time, actually went to Mustang Bar, an American themed bar, that we had never been to before but it was still a good time and full of aussies. i walked back to the train by myself and took some pics of all our favorite night spots.
--sunday got up early and went on a wine tour of the swan valley with eddie, trish, and kate. it was rainy and chilly but we were in a bus so it was a really good time and we all learned a lot about wine, which we knew nothing about although we had been drinking lots of it since being in australia. if you were unaware, australia is very well known for its wines, being on par with california and italy; the swan river is the one that goes through perth and freo so not surprisingly the swan valley wine region is only about 20 minutes outside of the city. we went to 5 wineries i think and got to sample about 6-9 wines at each place. the first place, sandalford, was founded in 1840! the coolest thing there was that they had a $90 bottle of port and we went in a store room full of barrels of this port. there was $40,000 worth of the port in each barrel so all together the room was worth over $3 million! all the vineyards had really old grape vines, some being over 60 yrs old. we also got to go to a brewery and a chocolate factory.
-throughout the week the goodbyes had to begin; people began leaving wednesday i think. also i had to knock out my final 3 exams (2 the previous week), one each tuesday, wednesday, and friday.
-wednesday i went into Perth to have one last lunch with sara by her work, it was weird knowing we would probably never see each other again. later on everyone went to Orient for one last karaoke night (which happened every wed). it was great as usual, and us four guys from Port Lodge got to sing the last song. We belted out Piano man and all the 50 or so other study abroad kids put their arms around each other and sang along. it was a good way to go out.

so finally we can get to the bit about traveling, i realize i've written a lot already so i will try and leave out the useless details that i usually include in these blogs. anyways after my last exam friday afternoon i packed up, had a great spaghetti dinner cooked by my friend ashley in the P&O (other dorm), said bye to all the kids over there, then grabbed my bags to leave Port Lodge. a few of us were all taking the shuttle together and as they had been doing throughout the week, everyone gathered at the door to see us off. it was sad to go but it was cool to know that i had made so many new friends over the semester. tears were even shed but haha they were not by me or for me. flew out of Perth that night, watching the Perth-area lights fade away, replaced by the blackness of the outback was a moment full of meloncholy. arrived in Cairns 5am or so, Julie, Mandy and I got to the hostel around 8:30 after waiting for a shuttle (ok so maybe i will include useless details). walked around Cairns. its pronounced Cannes, same as the town in france. it is on the east coast and in far north of the state of Queensland. it was pretty small but it really just used as a staging ground for tours of the great barrier. great warm weather even though it was winter (close to the equator) after being in the more southern Perth on the west coast. we walked under trees full of hundreds of big fruit bats, which was neat cuz they were awake and climing around the tops of the trees.went to info center for a map and advice, rented a car, and headed up to the Daintree Rainforest around 12pm. The Daintree Rainforest is a World Heritage-listed natural site, is home to the highest concentration of ancient plant species in the world, and is the oldest rainforest on earth at over 135 million years old. the drive up into the rainforest took us along a beautiful road; alternating between steep rainforest and sheer cliffs on our left and the ocean on our right, it was just awesome. it reminded me of a prettier/more exotic drive along the california coast even though i had never been to california at that point. we had a few mix CDs of the Australian music that we liked and listened to them, together the drive and the music made the three of us really happy and excited for our travels, as opposed to sad about leaving WA. we stopped off at a lookout to enjoy the view further and saw people hang gliding pushing off the cliff.. looked crazy dangerous. we finally got up into the actual rainforest and took a short hike to Mossman Gorge. we saw brush turkeys and a neon blue butterfly along the way. the gorge was cool, there was a river with a lot of huge rocks, it kind of reminded me of big rivers in the Smokey Mountains. so harkening back to vacations down there i got the girls to join me in some creek-hopping. we got in at this wide, still part where it was about 8-10 feet deep. the water was freezing cold just like the smokeys but you got used to it. i swam upstream to some rapids, climbed over some rocks and got to a part that was kind of like a slide. it looked kinda dangerous and the girls were to scared but i jumped in and was wooshed downstream. it was great i did a few more times after battling my way back upstream and got mandy to do it too. we drove further north and soon the canopy enveloped the road. we crossed the Daintree River on a ferry, apparently there are two 10 foot crocs that live in that area but we didnt see them. got to another lookout, this time looking out across the whole rainforest to the ocean. our last stop was at a fruit ice cream stand that made its own ice cream from its own home grown fruit, it was really good we got 4 flavors in 1 cup: coconut, black sapote, yellow sapote, and wattleseed, all tropical fruits. i drove back to the hostel in Cairns after that, about a 2 hour drive as the sun set, after dinner i went to bed early.

the next phase of the Cairns trip, our 3 day snorkeling cruise of the Great Barrier Reef, began with a 6:10 pick up from our hostel. there were 30 people on the cruise and surprisingly they were all scuba divers. there were also about 6 crew members so the boat was at capacity. we 3 were the only snorkelers but it didnt matter as we ended up seeing all the same stuff as them. it took 3 hours for the boat to get out to the reef, a VERY rough ride but we slept since we were exhausted. we did three dives a day, and were also fed 3 delicious meals by a chef. the first day we didnt see any of the big cool animals but i realized how huge the reef was.. the great barrier is the world's largets coral reef system, comprised of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands over an area of 133,000 sq miles. at the Ningaloo Reef we hit up over easter break back in march you could always see the bottom and you would just snorkel around coral formations no bigger than the size of a room. Here the coral stretched in every direction as far as you could see, and often as we crossed the chasm of open ocean between the boat and the reef the floor was too deep to see and the coral formations would rise out of the depths, who knows how many stories tall. the fish and coral were incredible but like i said we didnt see any of the big animals everyone comes to see. it was interesting to note that the biggest fish congregated underneath the boat, probably waiting for food scraps.

the second day our wakeup call came at 7:30am and we got into the water at a new dive site soon after, on our 3 dives that day we saw 2 sea turtles (got to swim with and all around one) and a stingray. we also got to lay out a bit that day, as it finally got a bit sunny. most of the rest of the time it was cloudy and really windy and a bit chilly. that night the girls taught me how to play rummy which was fun.

our third and final day on the reef started super early in order to fit 3 dives in before the journey back. we were in the water by 6:30 with the sun low on the horizon. our first dive of that day we saw a small white tipped reef shark, no more that 3 feet long. we had just gotten back on the boat and dried off and warmed up when we were informed that a whale had been spotted. so we jumped right back in and got to see a minke whale up close and personal, which was definitely the highlight of the cruise. all 30 of us were in the water holding on to a rope with just masks and snorkels on, and it would swim past us, back out into the depths, then back. it kept circling around us for a long time investigating, only about 30 feet away or so. it even swam right underneath us once. it looked exactly like a humpback whale but was only about 12 feet long--minkes are a smaller whale species. still it was awesome to be able to swim with a whale; one of the guys back at the dive shop said he has been working at Pro Dives for 8 years and diving his whole life and has never seen a whale. our last dive was a good one too.. the coral at that site was the most colorful and varied yet. we also saw another shark, which was surprisingly being chased by a larger fish, and saw the biggest fish we had seen yet, this 4 ft long parrot fish with a large boney protrusion on its head. it looked really old and moved really slow, so it looked like it was from the dinosaur times. on our way back in to the boat we also saw a line of 7 squid, i chased them and they changed all sorts of colors but never broke their perfect linear formation. after that it was another bumby 3 hour boat ride back into Cairns and they took us in a van over to the airport for free after we picked up our luggage from the dive shop.

---first lookout, right off the road