Viva, BrisVegas

G'day everyone:

I landed in Brisbane, capital city of the state of Queensland, this afternoon after a few days spent in Surfers Paradise. So far, I am pleasantly surprised with how much I like the city. I was slightly worried that I wouldn't enjoy things much here, given Brisbane's nickname, BrisVegas, earned through the city's fondness for highrises and a dash of glitz (including a man-made beach in the city centre). But there is much more to Brisbane than all of that, including some gorgeous colonial buildings, a lovely river that snakes its way through the city and some excellent parks. I'll write more about Brisie, another of its nicknames, once I have seen the city a bit more.

But first, I have plans to tell you about Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise. That entry (and, God willing, pictures if I can find an Internet cafe that will let me upload them) are to make their appearance in the blogosphere tomorrow. Ciao!

Is it nice outside?

After two hours on a train, eight hours on the bus and a heck of a lot of waiting in between, Matt and I pull into Coffs Harbour in the wee morning hours on May 4, groggy and disoriented. The seats on the bus were a lot more cushy than the sandstone we slept on the night before, but it still wasn't like curling up in bed, you know?

Thankfully, we luck out at the hostel yet again and get our own eight-man dorm to the two of us. We crash into our beds like two tonnes of bricks and sleep straight until noon. We awake to a stunningly beautiful day -- 27 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. What else is there to do but head to the beach on a day like this?

Coffs Harbour is home to four beaches that stretch the entire length of the city for miles and miles. We make our way to Jetty Beach on the marina and are surprised to find ourselves practically alone except for a couple of families and some swimmers in the bay. Something about Coffs Harbour is magically relaxing and we settle in for an afternoon of lazing about and walking by the water.

Just a few hundred feet from Jetty Beach lies Muttonbird Island, a small nature sanctuary where one particular species of bird (the Muttonbird) comes to mate in the thousands each May. We approach Muttonbird Island to see if we can do some exploring on the trails but are deterred by fences and warning signs all around the entrance. It seems a sly group of foxes has been wreaking havoc on the island, killing muttonbirds for prey. The city has decided to shut down the island completely for 10 days to poison all the foxes and there's no way we can enter. We're out of luck this time.

But our efforts to get out and see the wildlife don't go unrewarded. Coffs Harbour is home to an amazing array of plants and animals. Over the next three days we see giant pelicans, thousands of sand crabs, two stingrays, schools of tropical fish, a jellyfish and plenty of birds.

Friday night is "punch night" at the hostel. Guests pay $7 for all-you-can-drink "punch", which is really just a slightly foul mix of cheap wine, vodka, and orange juice. But damn, two glasses of the stuff and you've got the giggles. Three or four (or more) glasses of it plus the addition of a drinking game, and you've got the perfect recipe for a hangover. Yes, Saturday morning is a little bit rough.

Still, I wake up eager to get outside and make the best of the day. I rush to the window and wonder aloud, "Is it nice outside?" Matt just laughs and says, "Yeah, of course it is. It's gorgeous."

I realize afterward what a silly question it was. We're in Coffs Harbour. There's no need to ask such questions here.

We borrow a free canoe from the hostel and head up Coffs Creek after breakfast. Once again, we are practically the only ones on the water. Where is everyone? For a town of 65,000 people, Coffs Harbour feels a good deal smaller. Three or four hours go by as we paddle our way up the creek toward the city centre and then all the way back down again right to the ocean.

We opt out of a night on the town and stay at the hostel for a few card games before heading to bed. It's our last night in a proper bed before it's back out to camp for the next week and we had best enjoy it. That Australian ground out there can be awfully hard.

A-camping we will go

Wow, what a busy couple of weeks it has been.

I left Sydney in a flurry of activity a week ago, working almost every day the week before I left. I only finished my last shift on May 1 a couple of hours before jumping on a train to the Blue Mountains.

Faithful readers among you will recall that I've already been to the Blue Mountains back in March but I decided to go again with my new travelling buddy Matt who ended up in the same dorm as me for a few days back in Sydney. Matt has a tent and really wanted to camp in the mountains for a night or two before heading back north and he asked me to join in. Why not? Travelling is all about going with the flow, or so I'm learning.

It was a different experience this time around out in the wild. We got to Katoomba about 8 p.m. so decided just to check into a hostel for the night as it was likely not too brilliant to try pitching a tent in the dark. We settled on a hostel near the train station. My guess is they don't do much business there in these months. The woman at the front desk seemed literally surprised to see us. Oh, and she put is in a 12-bed dorm out back behind the main building. Matt and I were amused to find out we were the only guys staying in the room when we opened the door. We laughed and began to think of it as "the servants' quarters." The foam mattresses on the beds were only about 2 inches thick so we weren't too far off in our estimation of the place. Thank God we were able to stack two mattresses together from the empty beds.

Early on the next morning we got up, showered, ate our breakfast of leftover pizza and headed for the grocery store. I guess we'd become a bit too accustomed to leisurely mornings in Sydney as by the time we were actually ready to start our hike it was almost 11 a.m. Would we make it to Mount Solitary, our destination, by nightfall? Gulp.

We made it, but not without a pretty massive amount of effort. About four hours later we found ourselves on the mountain but nowhere near a good campsite. Let's just say the Blue Mountains are a very rocky place. After climbing nearly straight upwards over rocks and with heavy packs attached to our backs we decided to head back down for some level ground.

It was a good call. A perfect campsite was waiting for us where we quickly set up the tent and got all organized before the sun went down. We scavenged for twigs, bark, and sticks to help make a fire and (miraculously) got one going as we dined on a "gourmet" meal of salami, day old bread, peanut butter and apples. I wasn't acting food editor at the North Shore News for nothing, baby.

The next day was just as killer in terms of exercise as the first one, and maybe more so. A full five hours lapsed as we snaked through valleys, over the site of a landslide and past waterfalls. It was a bit of a cruel joke to learn that we had to climb the Giant Stairway to get back to our starting point. More than 500 stairs awaited us as we climbed to the top, sweating and muttering under our breath most of the way.

A two-hour train ride took us back to Sydney where we picked up the rest of our luggage at the hostel, showered, and readied for the eight-hour bus ride ahead that night. It wasn't the most comfortable way of travel after a long hard day like that but those bus seats felt a good deal more cushy than the bed of solid rock back on Mount Solitary.

On Friday morning at 6:20 a.m. we pulled into beautiful Coffs Harbour, 500 km to the north of Sydney, from where I'm typing this blog entry now. But I'll save those details for the next time. Plus, some great photos to come!

So much to say, so little time

Hi everyone:

My apologies for being a bit absent in cyberspace the last while. It's been a very busy week or so. I've so so much to tell you but haven't yet had a chance. Internet in the hostel costs $2/30 mins. at the moment. Was camping in the Blue Mountains earlier this week. . . now am in Coffs Harbour with new-found friend Matt from Minnesota. We're going to travel together for a few weeks before he goes back to the USA. Coffs Harbour is really beautiful! Pics and all the details are to come soon. Now am off for a bit of canoeing down the creek! Cheers.

A taste of local culture -- part 2

So, Tuesday brought kangaroo on a plate and Wednesday brought Anzac Day, a unique Aussie/Kiwi memorial to veterans, fallen soldiers and military combat.

I had absolutley no idea what Anzac meant when I arrived in Australia. It sounds a bit like the name of an insurance firm. However, in my first week in Sydney I discovered the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park, a small but beautiful stone structure that is the perfect spot for a moment or two of quiet reflection. Anzac -- the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps --is what they call soldiers down here.

Anzac Day happens each year on April 25 to mark the anniversary of the first major military action seen by the Aussie/Kiwi troops in the First World War. There are Anzac Day parades, dinners, luncheons and the like. I have to say that for a day that marks many awful, sombre events, Anzac Day was fairly fun and festive, in a tempered sort of way. This is due largely to the afore-mentioned parades but also to a wonderful game called Two-up.

I was vaguely aware of a form of gambling that is only legal to play on Anzac Day between certain hours, having seen something about it on the news a couple of days ago. Yesterday, while strolling down the street in Kings Cross, I came across a circle of people gathered on a street corner. A pile of gravel was scattered on the ground and a few different men were taking turns tossing two coins into the air. "Heads!" and "A head and a tail!" would yell the man in the centre of the circle. After each coin toss, more and more bets were placed. Guys would throw down $20, $40 or even $100 while declaring their intention to back heads or tails and calling on others to match their bets.

It's really the simplest of games. If you bet heads and two heads are thrown, you win. If two tails land on the ground, you lose. That's it. But the energy these guys brought to game was pretty fun to watch. Eventually people just walking by on the street would stop and throw down a bit of cash to try their chance. A couple of the guys, who had clearly played this game before, made a small fortune. I was tempted to play but not being much of a gambler (read: I be po') I held back and let the other guys lose their money.

Last but not least, I made more travel plans yesterday. I am now the proud owner of a bus pass from Sydney to Cairns, a city at the far northeastern end of Australia. I have six months to use the pass and can hop on and off the bus as many times as I like en route. The first leg of the journey begins next week when I leave Sydney on May 1 for Coffs Harbour, a coastal resort town about 500 kilometres to the north. Can't wait!

A taste of local culture

Boy, do I feel Australian these last couple of days.

After a fairly uninteresting and uninspiring couple of weeks spent mostly working and saving money (you'll notice I haven't written much lately on the blog), I turned up to weekly Tuesday job at the Wine and Food Society of New South Wales. The society is a bit like a secret society in that you'd never know it existed unless you were a member or, as the case may be, a waiter who serves its members. It's definitely been one of my most interesting jobs so far. The club has been around since 1939, meeting every Tuesday for a celebration of food and drink in a heritage house just next to Sydney's Harbour Bridge. Membership is only open to men so it's a bit of an "old boys' club" and I mean that literally as the average age of the members must be 60.

Perhaps the best part of the job is that I, as a waiter, get to sample a bit of the wine and eat the same meal as the members once I'm done serving. This is a huge bonus on a backpacker's budget. So far the food has been very tasty but mostly predictable (roasts, stews and the like). Well, yesterday I was in for a surprise as the day's featured entree was none other than kangaroo. At first I thought the chefs were pulling my leg when I asked what the meat was. Oh, how gullible they think we travellers are! But, in fact, they were quite serious about the matter.

So how did it taste? A lot like beef, to tell the truth. So much so that if they had told me it was roast beef I would have believed them. Still, it was an experience and I felt slightly squeamish the first couple of bites. Is it wrong that I've now eaten kangaroo but have not yet seen one in Australia? The ironies of life.

I have more to say on Anzac Day (a public holiday held today) but have run out of time. I'll save that for tomorrow's entry.

Just a few pictures

I'm short on words today so I've opted to just post a few pics of things I've seen in the past few weeks or so. Enjoy.

One of the big trees that line the street in front of my hostel. If you look closely you'll see that the bark is patchy and two different colours, kind of like camoflouge. Hence, I call these army trees. It's a technical term.

A parrot flew into the kitchen at the hostel this morning! At first I thought he was someone's pet but I guess he just came on inside. The kitchen has large doors opening onto a courtyard so it musn't have been too hard for him to get in.

Couldn't believe the wild colours on him.

A gigantic, old fig tree I discovered next to an old church in a a part of Sydney called Newtown. Newtown is actually quite an old town, most of the buildings dating from the 1850s or so. The tree is about the same age. Amazing root structure, isn't it?

A view toward downtown Sydney from Watson's Bay. I spent a day at the beach out there last week. Very nice and relaxing place.

An interesting angle of the roof at Sydney's Opera House. As you can see, the roof is actually made up of hundreds of thousands of tiles that were shipped from Sweden when they were constructing the building.

More wild birds! These huge cockatoos just roam the park, not too far from where the bats hang out in the trees. They are pretty tame and will even let you get nice and close for a picture.

Da-na-na-na-na-na-BATMAN!

OK. Here they are. The bat pics. You can stop pressuring me to upload them now. God.

I'm just kidding. In fact, no one (except me, myself and Irene) has pressured me to put them up on the blog. I'm just excited about these pics. My mom reminded me the other day that there were a few bats in our neighbour's house in Lumsden (a small town outside Regina) when I was a little kid. I'd totally forgotten about that. But seeing the bats in Sydney still seems so exotic. I've never seen so many at once, especially not hanging in the trees of a public park. So have a look for yourself here:

As if that's not creepy! Especially with the grey cloud behind the bare branches of that tree. (The bats are the black things hanging off the trees that look a bit like big leaves themselves, FYI)

And here is a close-up I took with the zoom lens. You'll notice that they have reddish fur on them. Some people say they're not bats at all, as they're called "Flying Foxes." But my friend Wikipedia says that Flying Foxes are indeed bats, the largest bats in the world, in fact. They also eat only fruit so I don't think I need to cover my neck up when they're around.

And here is a lonely bat sailing through the sunny skies on Monday. I thought bats only came to life at night but they were making all kinds of noise when I visited on Monday morning. When I walked through the same park on Tuesday afternoon they were all sleeping and very, very quiet.

That's all he wrote for today.

Going batty

This entry to my blog was meant to be much more interesting than it is actually going to be. I'm just saying that as a warning. That's all.

First off, a Happy Easter to all. Hope the bunny was good to you.

I went to the Royal Botanic Gardens this morning, camera in hand, to take some pictures of the bats, as I promised that I would. I had no trouble finding them today. They were making lots of noise high in the treetops and a few of them would even get up and fly from tree to tree every once in awhile. It was so fun to watch.

Next I made my way to a nearby cafe where I've discovered they have free wireless internet (if you buy a coffee or something). What should follow is that I then uploaded pictures of the bats to the blog and we all get to ooh and ahh a bit.

But with technology being the great and terrible thing it is, that isn't going to happen today. It seems my new digital camera memory card is fussy and only likes pictures to be downloaded from the camera to my laptop, not from the card directly to the laptop itself. To do this, I need an extra connector cable, which is now resting quietly in the drawer next to my bed at the hostel. It figures, doesn't it? And so, more on bats is still to come!

So then, what else is there to talk about? Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban arrived in Sydney yesterday for a couple of days. Kidman is probably Australia's biggest international star and so she causes quite a stir when in town. Her arrival even made yesterday's nightly news.

The big gossip at the moment seems to be that Kidman is actually pregnant with her first child. This was reported yesterday in British tabloid News of the World, surely the most reputable name in news (ha!). Kidman's "people" have apparently denied the rumour ("As if she would confirm a pregnancy to News of the World," is what her publicist came back with, so says The New Zealand Herald). Ahh, such scandal. Eventually the truth will come out.

What Kidman is really here for anyway is to make a new movie. She will be the star of a movie called Australia, an epic drama set in (you guessed it) Australia. This film by director Baz Luhrmann has great promise, I think. Luhrmann directed Kidman in Moulin Rouge back in 2001 and didn't that turn out just fabulously? Besides the movie also stars another big Aussie star: Hugh Jackman. Set in the 1930s and 40s on the Outback, Australia promises plenty of glorious sunsets, dusty desert towns and "G'day mates" shouted by locals. With a big budget of AUD $130 million (about the same in Canadian dollars) it ought to be at least half decent. Shame that the same can't be said of John Travolta's Battlefield Earth, isn't it?

I had a friend of mine in Vancouver (Hi, Steven!) ask me in email the other day where on earth I find the time to write all the words for this blog. Well, let me just say that working for a newspaper teaches you a trick or two. It may not be glamorous and it may not pay well, but being a reporter teaches you this: a) to type as fast as hell, b) to churn the words out no matter how boring the subject matter or even how little you actually know about it, c) to make it seem like you know a lot and like in fact what you're writing about is really very interesting after all, now isn't that nice?

Next time there will be real pictures of real, creepy, live bats on this blog. You have my word on it.

Up to bat

Have I told you about the bats yet?

Oh, I must! Sydney is full of bats . . . big, black ones that swoop over your head at sunset on their way to . . . well, wherever it is that bats go to play.

I'm going to get some pictures and post them here and then you'll see what I mean. It's quite something to take in when you first see the bats coming. It's like Transylvania but hotter. Maybe it's the Romanian blood in me that finds this so fascinating (Transylvania is a region of Romania. You can put that in your useless trivia file.)

Anyway, more on bats to come.