The End

This post is probably a couple of weeks late in coming, but I figured I should tie all loose ends together here, for my own sake, if not for anyone else's.

I've been back in Canada for three weeks and for the most part it's great to be home. I've done lots of Canadian things, like eating dinner at a curling club and drinking bad wine, or watching a hockey game and complaining about the weather.

Truth be told, the weather isn't really bugging me much at all. Vancouver did feel awfully chilly the first few days but thankfully my friend Meika had the warmest, awesomest duvet on the bed in her spare room. Now that I'm back home in Saskatchewan I've adopted the mindset of the locals regarding weather: 0 degrees is a warm day in March. But seriously, spring is most definitely coming to Regina. The snow is melting, the sun is shining, and the sparrows are making themselves known again.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my blog over the past year. I've started to really enjoy this whole blogging thing and might just start up another blog now that I'm home. I'll keep you posted on that once it's all set up and ready to go.

Long live Canada!

All roads lead to Bondi

Today is a pretty strange day for me. I woke up knowing it was my last full day in Australia but it still hasn't truly hit me that this amazing year is coming to an end. It won't really be real until I'm on that airplane tomorrow afternoon. How can a full year have passed?

The past few weeks have been full of mixed emotions as I get ready to go back home. There have been long, pleasant days spent at the beach and there've been cool, rainy days spent contemplating my options in Canada over a cup of coffee. As it stands, I'm heading back to Saskatchewan for at least the next six months. And I'm OK with that. It's been years since I've spent more than a few weeks at a time in my home province and I miss the place. Spring is just around the corner and it's pure magic when the snow begins to melt on the Prairies.

It was cloudy when I got up today and I spent most of the morning packing and trying to get organized. (Note: trying to put all of your personal belongings into one large duffel bag after a year abroad is not a fun task.) Then suddenly the sun came out after lunch and I knew there was something I just had to do. I grabbed my towel and my Mp3 player and jumped on the bus to Bondi Beach.

Bondi was the first beach I visited in Australia and now it's also the last (for now). As the bus rolled through various neighbourhoods I was struck once again by Sydney's diversity. Sydney is beautiful beaches, charming buildings, winding leafy streets, a gorgeous harbour, and a relaxed (yet gigantic) seaside town. It's also gleaming ugly office towers, hustle bustle, and occasionally rather ordinary. Just when you think you understand Sydney it throws another curve ball at you. And that's what makes you love the place all the more.

The bus ended up taking me to a part of Bondi that I'd never been to before. Strolling down a sidestreet to the beach, I felt as though I was in some sleepy town, not in a city of 4.5 million people. So this is why people love living in Bondi so much. Granted, Bondi does not always reflect the reality of living in Australia. But it's certainly a big part of what lures people to the island continent's shores. One dip in the waters, and you're hooked.

Before I left the beach I took my final swim in Bondi's blue waters and soaked up a few more rays. There's just no way I'm going home without that killer tan.

See ya soon, my fellow Canucks.

The countdown

It's a big no-no in journalism circles to start any piece of writing with a cliche. But I've done it before and I'll do it again. Bloody rules be damned.

And so: all good things must come to an end. How's that for insight?

I'm referring, of course, to my time in the Land Down Under. In just 12 more days I'll be jumping on an airplane to Fiji. Three days after that I'll board another plane for Vancouver. Then 14 hours later I'll find myself back in the homeland: Vive le Canada.

I have very mixed feelings about leaving Australia and going back home. I have to admit I've fallen in love with Sydney. It's the most beautiful city I've ever visited, I think. I could see myself living here. Besides, I've been in Australia for almost a full year and there are still so many sights I didn't get to see.

On the other hand, I miss many things about Canada too. It'll be so great to see all the people I love back home again. Reuniting, catching up and trading tales should take at least a few weeks. And another thing, it'll be nice to be around people who talk "normal" all the time. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the way Australians speak. In fact, I've picked up dozens of great words over here. It just gets tiring being the "one with the accent" after awhile. Such is the life of the immigrant, I guess.

Speaking of, I feel this year has taught me a new appreciation for what an immigrant goes through when moving from one country to another. Immigrants deserve a lot of compassion and respect, especially those who don't speak the language of their new country.

As per usual, I'm almost out of time on this internet cafe computer. (God, will it be nice to use a computer at home for as long as I like again!)

I'll have a few more reflections on my trip in the coming days.

That's all for now.

Toodles.

In with the new

Time for my first big post of 2008. I've been woefully neglectful of the blog lately and I feel slightly out of practice. But it was Christmas then New Year's and I've been doing a lot of travelling around.

Spent Christmas in Sydney . . . my first beach Christmas. It was really cool and really odd celebrating in the middle of summer. Unfortunately, Sydney's weather didn't cooperate too well for the event. It was a cool 20 degrees on Christmas Day and overcast. It made beach picnicking a little less fun, to be sure.

However, the weather has turned right around since then. It's been sunny almost every day for the last couple of weeks and the mercury even hit a scorching 42 degrees in Melbourne on New Year's Eve.

Speaking of Melbourne, I finally made it to Australia's second-most famous city. People have long been telling me how fantastic Melbourne is. Let's just say it was good to see it in person and I'm glad I went . . . but I won't be rushing back any time soon. Melbourne just didn't do it for me. Sure there are plenty of nice restaurants, some gorgeous old buildings and shopping, shopping, shopping and shopping.

But I'm a beach/sun/outdoor lover. Melbourne's few beaches are fairly small, lack surf and aren't close to the city. I could care less if a city has a Prada or Louis Vuitton or whatever outlet.
Sydney has all of those things PLUS a stunningly beautiful harbour, amazing beaches and better weather on the whole. Even Brisbane's city centre and river is prettier than Melbourne's, if you ask me. Melbournians will hate me for saying all of this (they are fiercely proud of their city) but it's just how I honestly feel (please no hate mail or at least no letter bombs).

The Great Ocean Road, an ocean highway near Melbourne, was totally beautiful. There is town after town and beach after beach. My sister (who just finished a two-week holiday in Australia from her job in Korea) and I both tried surfing for the first time. We had a blast, even if we are fairly crappy surfers. We also saw a humongous wild koala next to the highway right after the surfing lesson. Got some excellent photos of him . . . what a cute critter.

I'm now in Hobart, capital city of Tasmania (yes, Tasmania is a real place and it's part of Australia). It's very pretty here and also full of historic buildings, a beautiful harbour/port and friendly people. I dare say (cautiously) that I like it better than Melbourne.

All the best to all my friends and readers (if I still have any) for a healthy, happy 2008.

Photo voila

Here we go now with some pictures. Crossing fingers that this is going to work.

A beautiful swimming hole in Litchfield National Park, two hours from Darwin. This was the perfect way to cool off on a muggy Northern Territory day.

Me after my first day on the job at the concrete factory (looks more like I was working with Avian Flu-infected birds or something like that, doesn't it?)

A humungous termite mound in Litchfield National Park. There are gazillions of termites in the NT. In one field near this spot there were hundreds of other mounds. Really amazing to see.

The best for last: a big crocodile goes in for the "kill", snapping raw pork off the line. We saw about seven other crocs on the tour as well as endangered sea eagles.

An all-too-brief hello

My lack of blog posting over the last month is absolutely disgraceful. I know. But maybe you'll forgive me once you realize I've been working 55-60 hours per week and have had no internet access anywhere near home! It's been a struggle just to respond to emails, let alone getting all fancy in the blogosphere.

This is going to be short, even though I have a lot of things to tell you. I've seen dozens of lizards, eaten ridiculously fresh mangoes, swam beneath waterfalls and witnessed live crocodiles in a river. Australia's Northern Territory is sure different from the likes of Sydney or Brisbane. It's beautiful yet dangerous; civilized yet wild.

Here are a few pics. The first was from my first day on the job at the concrete factory, where I was responsible for dealing with the pigments used to die concrete blocks. Thankfully, I only had to do this for the first 3-4 days.

And now it's time for some croc action. These suckers are real, wild and will chomp your arm off. Fortunately you view them from a safe distance on the upper-deck of a riverboat. Pretty amazing to see their size and behaviour up close.

OK, and scrap the pics. I just went through the trouble of uploading a whole bunch and now Blogger won't let me post them here for some strange reason. It's always something. . . . Pics will be posted next time then, for sure!

I fly down to Sydney early Friday morning on a red-eye from Darwin. It feels neither like December or anything like Christmas with the current weather (sunny and +34 C . . . this is the lovely thing about Darwin. The weather is exactly the same every day: hot, sunny, with the chance of an afternoon or morning thunderstorm. Very predictable and such).

I must jet but another post, and the pics, coming soon.

Bright red: the colour of money

Hello once again:

I've got to make this very quick but I thought I should give an update. It seems I will not, repeat N-O-T, become a jackaroo after all. Bit of a long story, but I got a bad feeling when the woman from the backpacker job centre called and said she couldn't get a hold of the ranch but she'd keep trying. Then she said if this doesn't work out she could give me a 2-week gig at a national park as a gardener. Sounds all right . . . but 2 weeks?

So I went out and found my own dang job right here in Darwin. It's at a concrete block factory very near where I'm staying. I did my first day yesterday (1o hours!). It's hot, dusty and a bit boring but both the pay and hours are great, as in 50-60 hours per week. A large part of my day yesterday consisted of manning one of the cement mixers. Every 3-10 minutes a massive vat on a pulley comes over and dumps a whole lotta sand in the mixer. This was my cue to dump a 12 kilogram bag of bright red iron oxide pigment into the mixer. As a result, we get lovely bright-red bricks. The things you never thought about when you go to your local garden centre for pavers, eh?

By the time I got home I was ABSOLUTELY covered in bright red pigment myself. My face, arms, legs, clothes and even eyelids were a scary red colour. It took a lot of scrubbing to get off. I took a few pictures (not of me scrubbing but of when I got home), which I'll have to post as soon as possible.

So, I'm staying in Darwin for the month near to email, phones, computers, pubs, comfortable beds and all that good stuff.

Phew.

Survival of the fittest

I arrived in Darwin on Monday night after a three-hour flight from Cairns. As capital of Australia's Northern Territory, Darwin is the country's northernmost city. Keep in mind that north=hot and south=cold in the southern hemisphere. In other words, Darwin is a ridgy-didge stinker of a place. (That's Aussie for right effin' hot).

For example, it was +27 when I got out of bed this morning about 8 o'clock. And the humidity was somewhere around 92%. It's not so bad when you're still indoors with fans all around you and the choice of air-conditioning. It's just that as soon as you step outside you begin to sweat. Or at least I do anyway. "It's like having your own personal sauna," is how a woman I met yesterday put it.

I spent the first couple of days pounding the pavement and getting a feel for the city, as well as looking for a job. Yes, it's sadly that time again: time for Tyler to join the real world and work. My five weeks of jet-setting, sailing, scuba diving, four-wheel-driving and otherwise living as a hedonist have done a number on the bank account. Now it's time to recharge the funds, as it were.

Darwin is a pretty city. Lush flowers and gardens are practically everywhere. The water in the harbour has a beautiful teal colour to it, much like it does at the Great Barrier Reef. The city's architecture is also remarkable, for two main reasons. Number one: many of the buildings are bright and colourful with a "tropical" feel. This is a city that's not afraid to take a few risks when it comes to design. Take the parliament building, for example. Some critics have apparently dubbed it "the wedding cake." But I think it's beautiful. It's where the tropics meet British colonialism meet institutional poise. Or at least that's my take on things.

The second reason why Darwin's architecture impresses: very, very little of it dates before 1975. There is a fairly simple reason for this. On Christmas Eve 1974, a terrible cyclone gathered strength off the shores of Darwin. Then in the wee hours of Christmas Day, Cyclone Tracy hit ground and effectively destroyed Darwin. Something like 11,000 buildings were completely wiped out and 66 people killed. There are only a few buildings which survived, most of them of the stone and brick variety (which makes one question some of our "modern" building techniques, doesn't it?).

The result of this is that Darwin feels like a very young city when it is, in fact, well over 100 years old.

As for jobs: I was a bit worried when the first few places I called told me either that the position had already been filled or that they wanted to hire someone who lives permanently in Darwin (and not a backpacker who will surely run away to Sydney in a month's time . . . as I fully intend to do).

Then I found the Backpacker Job Centre in the heart of town. I was a bit skeptical about the centre, as we've all heard horror stories about employment centres that don't actually find people jobs but just take their money. Well, such was not the case this time.

Within 15 minutes of arriving and handing in my application, I was back out the door with a job. It wasn't quite what I had pictured, mind you.

That's right: I am now Australia's latest cattle station hand, also known as a "jackaroo" in these parts. This means that I have to move to a farm 150 km south of Darwin very soon. I will spend most of my time out under the harsh sun doing I don't quite know what. I will work six days per week and probably be dead tired on the seventh. But, and this is the good part, I don't have to pay anything for food or lodging and I'll be taking home a very decent rate of pay on top of that (similar to what one can earn with an arts degree back in Canada).

I'm slightly scared that this will turn out to be a horrific experience but then, hey, I've probably had worse jobs. The woman at the job centre assured me that I'll have a good time (she said she worked on cattle stations herself when she first came to Australia from New Zealand). Here's hoping she's right.

Oh, and don't expect to hear from me much until I'm back in civilzation. There will be no cell phone reception at the cattle station so no text messages or sudden calls from me. I also HIGHLY doubt that there will be an Internet connection anywhere near me. So no blogging, checking emails or (gasp) Facebook for the next while. This doesn't, of course, mean that you can't keep sending me emails. That way I'll feel extra loved and important when I finally get back online.

Wish me luck!

P.S. I turn 29 in 10 days. I certainly never thought I'd be celebrating my birthday with a bunch of cows.

We found Nemo

Yes, my friends, it's true. I have literally taken the plunge and gone scuba diving for the first time in my life.

It wasn't really planned, it just sort of happened. I found myself in Cairns on Wednesday evening and was immediately bombarded with 10,000 different ways to go and see the Great Barrier Reef.

While the Reef is about 2,000 kilometres long, Cairns is probably the most popular base for visits and day-trips in all of Australia.

At first, I thought I might just pass on the Reef. I've already snorkelled in some pretty amazing places in Oz and have seen so many great things.

Wait a second: I can't come this far and be this close to one of the seven natural wonders of the world and not go and see it. Can I?

Then I started to think I'd just go and have a snorkel out at the Reef since I have neither my diver's certification or the $500 lying around to go and get it done at the moment.

Well, somehow I found a pretty sweet deal at the hostel I'm staying at. For $115 I got boat transfers to and from the Reef (two hours each way), lunch, two snorkels AND an introductory Scuba dive. Since it was going to cost $90 just to do the snorkelling, I thought why the hell not?

I didn't think too much about the dive until we got on the boat yesterday. That's when the instructor gave us a 45-minute safety talk, putting all sorts of frightening thoughts in the brain. "Remember, guys, the most important thing is to never come up to the surface too quickly. Or your lungs will explode."

Then he told us we'd be going as deep as 10 metres (more than 30 feet). Wowza, and I thought this was just for beginners.

I began to wonder if perhaps I shouldn't have given this a practice before coming out to open water where any number of things (sharks, jellyfish, coral) could slice, dice and have you for dinner.

But there was really no turning back at this point. That would have just been a wasted opportunity. The good thing is that the instructor gave us plenty of time to float on the surface and get used to breathing. It was very strange at first but then surprisingly easy once you calm down, relax and get used to all the bubbles surrounding you.

Then he took us one by one down a rope, making sure we were breathing properly and popping our ears as the pressure got too great.

And then away we went, swimming next to massive boulders of coral, spotting giant clams and basking in the warm, blue waters.

The highlight, of course, came when we discovered not one but two clown fish right on the ocean floor. That's right, we found Nemo! I certainly never expected that.

The dive only lasted about 15 minutes and then it was time to resurface (slowly!). I've never been so happy to breathe the good old-fashioned way in my life.

To be honest, the snorkelling is just as good on the Reef, as many of the sights are just a metre or two below the surface. I spent a good hour snorkelling at two different spots. I could have stayed even longer if they hadn't called us back to the boat.

I was exhausted by the end of the day. All that sun, salt air and water can really do a number on a person. Let's just say a three-hour nap was in order but at least I earned it.

I came, I saw, I dived.


P.S. I have to share this funny little story: I was listening to a local radio station on my first day in Cairns (remember this is pronounced "Cans" by the Aussies). The radio announcer started talking about a female bartender in Western Australia who was fined for crushing beer cans between her breasts. (I have no idea what possessed her to crush the cans in this way or why she was fined for doing it. We've all got to have a party trick, don't we?)

Anyway, the female announcer said she thought maybe they should give this sort of thing a try locally.

Says she: "We'll have them crushing cans with cans in Cairns while doing the can-can."

Priceless.

The value of a good bed

The value of a good bed is priceless, I have learned.

In the past eight months I have slept on everything from a bed of sandstone to a fluffy, luxurious hotel mattress. And let me tell you, when I now find a good bed, I know it.

This is why I've been so happy with the last two hostels I've stayed in: Scotty's Beach House at Mission Beach (click on the link) and The Serpent in Cairns. Both hostels have super, ultra comfy beds (for a hostel that is). And both hostels seem to actually care whether their guests are comfortable and having a good time. This is unfortunately rather rare in a hostel.

Scotty's was probably the best hostel I've stayed in on any continent or in any country. Not only were the beds good, the pool was big, deep and clean; there were plenty of couches, hammocks, and lounges to hang out on; and the kitchen and Internet rooms were open 24/7. Staff even show you to your room and make sure it's OK at check-in. I've never seen that before in a hostel. So, if you're ever in Mission Beach, Scotty's is most definitely the place to stay.

And if anyone tries to tell you that there's nothing to do in Mission Beach?

Well, they're right. That's kind of what makes lying in the hammock all day so much guilt-free fun.

I've finally made it to Cairns last night. Very nice so far! I must now get my bum off the chair in front of the computer and out onto the streets to explore.

Ciao.