I wanted to see the outback....

So this has been quite an eventful week.

When I last left you I was leaving to call my host for the next 2 days down in Brisbane. They weren't there. So I was forced to wander around the city for about 2 more hours with my massive pack on before they finally picked up the phone. I took the bus down and when I got there I had a bit of a surprise. Now, I know that people who do couch surfing are a certain type, not too reserved, almost a bit hippyish. Well, I guess these people took that to the next level. The house had 15 people staying in it while I was there. 10 permanent residents and 5 couch surfers (one of whom had been there for 3 months - so the line between permanent and non was a little blurry). And apparently this was one of the slow times, they said that at one point in time, in addition to paying permanent residents they had 28 couch surfers staying. Well, I set my stuff down on my matress (the one right near the door, that didn't lock and the window beside was smashed out) and set about trying to find someone who lived there. It turned out that they were all really great people (although involved in perhaps a few too many illegal things), and there was even a zoologist that lived there that told me all about the various things that can sting and bite you in Australia. After talking with them for a few hours I decided that I would head out to the city and do some site seeing, making sure to take all my important and expensive things with me - not that the people that lived there would take them, but I couldn't be so sure of the dozens of people that were coming and going constantly.

Brisbane is a cool city, its got some nice architecture and a bit to do if your a tourist. I ended up just wandering around for a few hours and visiting the botanical gardens to see if there were any bats. There weren't but there were tons of water dragon lizards and tons and tons of people. I went back to my "house" and they were beginning to make supper. The tradition in that house, since there are so many people, that you pitch in a couple bucks and they will make up some food for you. Well that night the resident Italian, who also happened to be a professional chef, was making roast pork and lamb with yam and beans. Surprising classy in a house that I wasn't certain if it was owned or a squat.

The next day a few people were heading down to the coast to do some surfing. I tagged along with them and we went do about 15 minutes past surfers paradise to a less populated beach. I didn't go surfing, there was only 1 board and I didn't want to go out on my own with no practice. I did however go swimming, and I have never swam in such massive waves (small by aussie standards, massive for lake erie standards), the entire time keeping an ever vigilant eye for sharks.

After the beach we went to a night market, pretty interesting, but nothing too exciting. The best thing was that the food there was actually of a reasonable price, unlike the rest of Australia.

The next day I was picked up by my next hosts, a couple that lived in about 10 minutes from where I was staying the night before. They brought me back to their apartment, where I dropped my stuff and we headed out to the Belgian Beer Club where one of my hosts lab partners was celebrating his successful completion of his PhD. Now remember how I just said that Australian food is expensive? Well while there I got a pint of Hoegaarden or however you spell it. Normally a decently expensive beer, well apparently its half price in Canada cause mine came to $15. For one pint. It was an enjoyable night, there was a great deal of drinking (apparently no one else was disturbed by the pricing there - I stuck to my single pint) and things were moved to a different bar, or at least attempted, as no one would let them in cause they were too drunk. So I left with my hosts and went to sleep.

The next day they both had to either work or go to school, so I headed out to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary on my own. An interesting little place, not too big, but containing essentially only Australia animals. I got to see my first Koalas, wombats, dingos, tasmanian devils, and I think very briefly my first Echidna. No platypus though, however I was able to feed some kangaroos and hold a koala.



Thats night we went out and had a bbq at Kangaroo point and then went outdoor rock climbing up the cliff face there. I have never been rock climbing before, and I have quite a strong fear of heights, so I was a little apprehensive. But I tried, twice. It looks significantly easier while on the ground, looking at the bumps in the rocks you picture that the hand and foot holds are a good 20 cm, but when you get up there, you have about enough space to slip your finger tips in and thats it. The first time I went up I got about halfway. About 15 feet up. Not very impressive at all, but it seemed much higher than it actually was while I was up there. The second time I decided to be slightly more risky and but some more faith in the rope holding me up and I was able to make it all the way up to the top. It was incredibly fun, even if I was quite bad at it and frightened, and the view off across the Brisbane river to the city centre was great.



Afterwards I headed out of Brisbane early in the morning for the 2 full day trip out to Broken hill, my adventure into the outback. On the bus ride up I met CJ from Pennslyvania who was planning on staying at the same hostel as I was. Broken hill itself was nothing too exciting, its the largest city for hours and hours around and its surrounded by near desert. We spent the first day exploring the city, visited the main mine that was the reason the city existed (200 billion dollars of material mined from it) and went up and down the streets. That night there was a dust storm, or what I thought was a dust storm. The power went out for a couple hours and the entire city shut down as we found out when we tried to get something to eat. Eventually it came on and we made some food back at the hostel. But the real dust storm was to happen the next day.

CJ and I decided to rent a car and head out to Silverton the next day. Silverton is a ghost town from the 1800s about 25km from Broken hill. Its got a few houses and a couple artist studios, and was the base for the Mad Max 1 and 2 movies. The only bar has Max's car out front in the parking lot. The town was really cool to wander around, it really felt like you were in the middle of nowhere. We spent a few hours there wandering around checking out the houses and digging for treasure. Well, that was more CJ, I went looking for kangaroos and found 2, which I chased around for a while trying to get some good pictures. We left Silverton and headed out to White Cliffs, an opal mining community 300 km away. We arrived into town with the gas light on riding on fumes, and filled it up in the only gas station in town. White Cliffs is, in my opinion, the closest I could get to an actual wild west frontier town. It had a single restaurant/store/gas station across from the only bar/hotel which is run by a man that serves as the bar tender, the man in charge of coordinating emergency plans, and the only pilot.

White cliffs is known for the fact that due to the intense heat in the summer the opal miners turned their old mines into houses. So many of the buildings are invisible except for a door in the side of a hill. Now, if there is anyone still with me, is where the story gets interesting. We were talking to some old opal miners on the outskirts of town, about 1 kilometer from our car. As we talked I saw that the sky behind their house was starting to get quite dark. We attempted to leave so that we could get back to our car before the storm came but, despite agreeing with us, they continued talking, this continued until the storm was essentially on top of us. CJ and I ran from the house and by the time we hit the road leading to town we couldn't see 10 feet in front of us. The wind was so strong that it was picking us small stones and smacking them into us, and the dust was getting into our eyes and mouths. At some point in time CJ turned around to get me and we passed each other without knowing it. Once I realized that I couldn't see CJ anymore I stopped at which point he came out of the dust and smashed into me. We continued to run down the road where CJ jumped over a fence which I didn't see and ran right into it, pulling it down with me. We made it back to the car, and eventually made it down to the local bar where we got a room for the night. Apparently the dust storm that we were caught in essentially the eye of out in the middle of nowhere, was the largest in living memory and the next day covered Sydney with a thick layer of dust. But in the meantime CJ and I spent an interesting night getting to experience what true outback life was actually like. We talked for a few hours to a local miner, who was undoubtedly the most racist man I have ever met. Who felt like the United states wasn't doing its duty to maintain the white man's supremacy. How could they do their duty? By nuking all of China, and Africa, thats what. He felt like Barack Obama (aka: Eric Cabana as he called him) needed to be shot. He didn't much like it when I told him that if I was in the US I would have voted for Barack. But luckily he was drunk so he soon forgot. Oh, and I forgot to mention, in the 70s he murdered someone. After this fella went to sleep and everyone could breath slightly easier, I got to talking to some of the others in the bar, and as it turned out they were all stuck in town too. We talked for an hours of two and I went to sleep in my dust covered bed.



The next day the skies cleared and we drove back to broken hill, where we relaxed for the rest of the day and I did some light sightseeing with a German couple from the Hostel (light sightseeing consists of walking 4 km to see a mosque that was actually closed, to do the 4 kms back). We watched some Mad Max and backed up our stuff to head out at 4 am that morning for the 19 hours of traveling back that I had to eventually make it to Wollongong.

And thats that. That was waaaaay too long. If you've made it through to the end, congrats, I wouldn't have. Tonight two of Teresa's friends are having a birthday party and its the last day before a week long holiday, so it should be a good night. Perhaps next post will either come sooner, and therefore less will have happened, or I'll edit slightly. We'll see. Next week is Tasmania.