To the dolphins

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned an interview at a resort near Brisbane where I was attempting to get a waiter gig. After waiting for a week or so (and thinking that I wasn't going to get the job), the resort came through in the end. And so, I'm moving to Moreton Island on Monday to start the new job. I'm sincerely hoping that it goes well as the resort is more or less the only show on the island. It's not as though I'll have tons of other work options. But there are lots of cool things to do on Moreton: snorkelling, ocean kayaking, ATV-riding, feeding wild dolphins, and -- most enigmatically -- sand tobogganing. That last one will be a blast.

I don't expect to have frequent access to the Internet on the island, unless I somehow luck out and get a roommate with a laptop and a wireless connection. There are Internet kiosks at the resort but they charge something like $2 for 10 minutes. As if. So, if you don't hear from me for awhile you'll know why.

To the dolphins I go. . . .

Memories

June 27 is special for me.


It's a day I've been thinking about for years. And because I came to Oz this year, it's now twice as significant.


For one: today marks four months that I've been in Australia, having arrived on Feb. 27. It's amazing how quickly the time passes. I think most travellers can relate to the way your conception of time changes when you're away from home. In some ways, it's all one, big blur that has come and gone in a flash. In other ways, I feel it has been years since I last saw my family and friends in Canada. And since I ate poutine. (I just had to throw that in.)


For two: I graduated from high school on June 27, 1997 -- exactly 10 years ago today.


I can remember the day so clearly. It was only partly sunny. Not the perfect weather one would hope for on such a day, but at least it wasn't raining. I remember so many small details: the ceremony of going to pick up the rental car (a brand-new, hot-red Pontiac Sunfire coupe) from the dealer; the extra time I took showering, shaving, and getting dressed; driving to my best friend Kim's house to pick her up, as well as a couple of other friends; the way we drove down Albert Street and then around the block a couple of extra times before parking the rental car at the hotel.


Later on after the dinner and ceremony, we boarded yellow school buses and set off for the after-grad party at a local nightclub (it was terribly exciting for a bunch of underage kids to be partying in a nightclub, although we weren't allowed to drink alcohol. It was an event organized by the school, after all). We danced, we ate, we talked until dawn. A big group of us went for breakfast at an all-night diner. Everyone was in a terrific mood, despite the lack of sleep.


And then we went our separate ways, not knowing exactly what the future would bring or what we would make of our lives.


Some of us have moved to far-flung parts of the world. Some of us still live in Regina, Saskatchewan. Some of us went to university. Some of us didn't. Some of us are married with children. Some of us are single. One of us is sitting in a public library in Brisbane, Australia, typing a new entry for his blog (a word that didn't even exist on June 27, 1997).


Did I think this was what I would be doing 10 years from graduation day? Of course not. Although I had always dreamed of travel and had been to Europe my first time just a few months before grad, I had no ambition to live in Australia back then.


I think what strikes me most today is that I don't fundamentally feel any different than I did when I was 18. Sure, I'm a bit wiser to the world. I've gained confidence and life experience. I can be proud of several achievements while I try not to think about the failures.


Otherwise, I'm still that same kid who loves to have a laugh with friends; who loves food from all corners of the Earth; who sometimes takes life too seriously; who is more shy than he would like to be.


Just one question remains: where will I be on June 27, 2017?







A picture of my friend Tana Cameron and I on graduation day, June 27, 1997. Thanks for sending this to me recently as a surprise, Tana!

Still kickin'

I figure it is time to let all of you know that I am indeed alive and well on the other side of the world (or the same side of the world, depending on where you're sitting).

I have neither abandoned my dedication to the blog or forgotten to do updates. Basically, I have no good reason for the lack of posts, except I've been working an awful lot at all sorts of hours and any day of the week, I've no access to a computer at home, and usually have insufficient energy to get all creative.

But that will change soon. Tomorrow I have an interview at a place called Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort on Moreton Island, not far from Brisbane. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? If I get the job it is full-time, and I move to the island. So, I'm kind of hoping the interview goes well.

Coming soon: posts on Aussie-isms (I'm making a mental list) and the quirks and quarks of Queensland.

By the way, this picture -- from when Matt and I were camping in the absolute middle of nowhere one night and had little but hot dogs and bread to eat -- has nothing to do with what I'm writing about in this post. I just thought it had been far too long since I posted anything visual on the site.

Toodles.

Old man winter

It is 7 p.m. on the first day of winter in Australia.

And I am wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

The patio door to the balcony is wide open and other guests at the hostel are outside eating their dinner on picnic tables. This, my fellow Canadians, is simply not fair, is it?

At least it's almost summer in the northern hemisphere. That ought to be some consolation.

It's been good fun listening to certain Aussies chatter about the "cold" lately. Last week a girl I worked with told me she has been just freezing at night and always wears two jumpers (sweaters) at home. I told her I've still been sleeping with just a bedsheet and the window partly open.

Even funnier, the other day a radio announcer expressed concern when he saw a young woman walking down the street in the early morning with long, wet hair. She was sure to catch a terrible cold, he said. It was +15 degrees outside.

Everything, including what constitutes hot and cold weather, is truly relative.

Why the Aussies even bother with following traditional European seasons is a bit of a mystery to me. There are really only two seasons Down Under as far as I can tell: warm and hot. You'll notice that seasons don't start and end on the same day as they do in North America. The first day of autumn was on March 1. Winter (as mentioned) started today. I can only guess that spring will come on Sept. 1 and summer on Dec. 1. I haven't yet figured out why this is.

* * *
I've happily finished a string of five shifts at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre today. It's not the worst place I've ever worked, but it's surely the most humongous. The centre's entire floor area is equal to the size of 462 full-sized tennis courts, according to its website.

This week's massive convention was the Australian Tourism Exchange, where tourism industry professionals from around the country and overseas descended on Brisbane to explore all manners of tourist activities in Oz. On Monday we did a cocktail party for 2,300 guests. On Tuesday and Wednesday we did sit-down lunches for 1,500-1,700 people. Yesterday and today we did buffet lunches for 1,200-1,400. If you think setting 170 tables of 10 with silverware, plates, glassware, wine and soft drinks is a good time, think again.

The sheer size of events at the convention centre makes it an impersonal, factory-like place to work (this despite the centre's motto: "Making Events Personal"). You are issued a uniform when you sign-in for work (amazing they don't also issue you a computer chip for tracking your identity and location). After you've changed, you are corralled into gigantic service elevators and taken up to the function rooms when work is to begin. You are "briefed" on the day's function and a roll-call is taken. Supervisors are called "captains" and they frequently shout out orders for the remainder of the shift. The best (only?) course of action is to submit obediently to their wishes and prepare to roll with the punches. It is the closest I've come to being in the military yet.

Perhaps that isn't a fair thing to say. The people in charge at the convention centre are actually quite nice, given the circumstances. Still, I simply cannot imagine working at these sort of massive functions for the rest of my life. It just isn't for me.

* * *

News bulletin: I am soon to see real live koalas, kangaroos and platypuses. Brisbane's Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is not too far from where I'm staying and it does seem worth a visit. I had hoped to see some cuddly critters in the wild (this is why I avoided going to Sydney's zoos). But the koala sanctuary is wilderness-like and lets you see all sorts of animals in one place. Plus, I simply can't wait any longer! Will take plenty of pics, to be sure.

Foiled again

Today I've yet again been thwarted by technology in my neverending quest to upload pictures to Picasa (Google's photo manager) and use them on my blog. This is an ongoing issue for me. Either I can't find a suitable Internet cafe with the right computers and software, or my own laptop gives up the ghost, or my camera software acts up, or I forget one crucial element at the hostel, or. . . . Sometimes you just have to long for the days when you took a roll of 24 pictures to Superstore, popped it in an envelope, and picked your fully developed pictures up after lunch (doubles, of course!).

Griping aside, I've had a very active week in Brisbane, mostly spent working all over the place. I got a call from a hospitality agency Monday morning, asking me to come in for an interview on Tuesday. I jumped at the chance given that money matters have been at the forefront of my mind lately. Australia has turned out to be slightly more expensive than I'd hoped and the money always leaves the wallet faster than expected when travelling. Mix that in with "little" concerns like student loan and credit card payments to worry about back in Canada, and you've got one willing worker on your hands.

The interview went well and I was given orientation and a shift right afterwards. I do think it helps that the manager who interviewed me and does much of the scheduling is a Canadian woman from Ontario who seems to have taken a liking to me, in a patriotic sort of way.

On Wednesday morning I was sleeping soundly in bed when the guy who runs the job club at the hostel came into my room and asked if anyone wanted to work today . . . like, now (this seems fairly typical of him). I didn't exactly want to work. But hey, I got's bills to pay, don't I? So I uprooted myself from the bed and made my way to reception. The job in question was unloading a shipping container for 6 hours at $18/hour, or so we were told.

A man picked myself and two other chaps from the hostel up close to 9 a.m. and away we went deep into the suburbs. It turns out we were actually headed to a home construction site where unloading a container would be just one of the things we did. Most of the morning was passed in the following manner: moving pieces of lumber from one side of the yard to another; moving pallets of bricks (one brick at a time) from one pile to another; picking up garbage all over the site; moving bits of scaffolding from in front of the house to the rear. Not the most exciting stuff but at least it was good for the physique and a warm, sunny day to be outside. Later in the afternoon we were required to unload blocks of sandstone tile from the shipping container, which wasn't as bad or heavy as I'd imagined.

All of this would have been just fine, except that the agency also called me on Wednesday morning to inform me that I had to report for work at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium that evening at 4:30 p.m. It was, after all, the day of the huge State of Origin rugby match, an annual competition between the states of Queensland and New South Wales. Think Labour Day Classic (a match between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers every September) for those familiar with the Canadian Football League. This was serious business.

Miraculously, I made it to the stadium at about 4:35, having only finished the construction gig at 3:30, and showering and changing in between. It was great to see the Aussies all riled up about the big game and helped abate my football homesickness a wee bit. However, serving 330 people pre-game dinner and post-game cocktails was not exactly a thrill a minute. The shift finished at midnight and I literally crashed into bed a few minutes later (thanks be to God that the stadium is only a five-minute walk from where I'm staying).

Lo and behold, Thursday morning rolled around quickly and guess what? I had to be at the construction site again at 7 a.m. Getting out of bed wasn't as tough as I'd imagined somehow. Probably because I was still on an adrenalin high from the previous day. The morning's work was deceptively easy as me and my two Italian coworkers, Mario and Alexandro, simply shuffled rubbish and lumber around the yard once again.

It was the afternoon that nearly killed us.

Out came giant slabs of granite tile from the shipping container. Each one required two men to carry them across the construction site, through the house, and up to the second-story master bedroom. Rinse and repeat. About 40 times. We made it through but not without a good amount of discomfort and some sore muscles.

Then the real challenge for the day came: two absolutely massive granite slabs the size of kitchen tabletops had to go the same route. This time six men were required to move each slab slowly up the stairs. One of the guys started calling us the Egyptian construction crew, so pyramid-esque was the fruit of our labour. I guess each slab must have weighed 700-800 pounds.

Thursday night I felt like the walking dead, as I shuffled about making dinner and trying to relax. I actually felt more tired after a two-hour nap than beforehand. Go figure.

Friday and Saturday were relatively normal days by comparison. Friday night's job was at the convention centre for the Brisbane Architecture Awards (another 570 people to wait on!). Finally, last night I was at The Gabba, Brisbane's cricket/Australian Rules Football ground. What a dream job in comparison. All that was required of me was to pour beer and the occassional spirit for four hours. It reminded me of my days as a popcorn jockey back at Cineplex Odeon Coronet Cinemas during high school.

Today is Sunday and, suitably, I have the day off. It's time for me to grab some groceries and lie in the sun a bit, ya think?

These are the things that I miss

I've been away from Canada almost three months now. They say this is about the time that you really begin to miss the comforts of home. I think they're right. Make no mistake, I'm having the time of my life in Australia. The weather in Brisbane has been astonishingly good since I arrived, reaching on average 26 0r 27 above each day. You can't help but go lay by the pool in this kind of weather. Brisbane's deep blue sky beckons you as soon as you lay eyes on it in the morning, and I'm developing a tan that shows just how weak I am against the sky's calls.

Still, these are some of the things that I miss from home, in no particular order:

- Barbecues with family and friends on May long weekend.
- big trays of veggies with homemade dip at said barbecues
- nachos from 7-11. They don't have them here. I've checked. Numerous times.
- good Ukrainian/Polish sausage. Australian sausage is crap. It's like giant, greasy, breakfast sausage, even at dinnertime. Ick.
- Going to Mosaic (Regina's big, three-day multicultural festival in June, which I've missed for years in a row now but anyway).
- POUTINE. Oh my God, I seriously don't know if I can go without poutine for nine more months. Please bring me a giant plate to the airport when I get back home!

There is a lot of food on that list, isn't there? Well, they say the way to a man's heart. . . .

A study in contrasts

This is a tale of two cities.

Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise are cities that sit not so far apart from each other on Australia's east coast. The first is a small, seaside resort town, perhaps not large enough to be called a city at all (in fact, many of Byron Bay's residents would likely shudder at the thought). Surfers Paradise, contrarily, is a small city made of big-city dreams.




For most backpackers and tourists, both cities are mandatory stops on the Australian tour. From the moment you arrive in Sydney, you encounter other travellers who've just come back from "Byron" or "Surfers", or who are heading there next week. Most of them will rave about the splendours of Byron in one sentence, turning their noses up at Surfers in the next. "Byron Bay is magic, it's so cool," they say, a dreamlike smile appearing on their faces. "Surfers? What a place. Full of nothing but highrises and noise."


It's true that Byron and Surfers couldn't be more different from each other, at least on the surface. Byron Bay found its way onto the world stage as a mecca for surfers back in the 1960s, its crashing waves some of the best in Australia (Yes, those are surfers swimming around near the rocks in the pic above). In the 70s, free-lovin' hippies found their way to Byron, bringing incense, chakra therapy, tie-dye and, of course, marijuana in their wake. In the '80s, backpackers discovered the town and scores of hostels were built as a result. Finally, the yuppies came to town in the 1990s, tearing down unsightly buildings and erecting villas, fine wine stores, and expensive clothing boutiques. At present, Byron is a slightly bizarre combination of all of these things, and then some.





Surfers Paradise, on the other hand, started its life as a sleepy, country town named Elston. Elston had little else going for it besides the fact that it's situated on a narrow peninsula of land and you are never more than two blocks from a beach almost anywhere you go. In 1925 the Surfers Paradise hotel opened as the area was becoming renowned as a tourist destination. In 1933, the town of Elston changed its name to match that of the hotel. And the rest, more or less, is history. A huge development boom in the '50s and '60s started the highrise craze, which continues to this day. Surfers is now home to the tallest residential tower in the world (the Q1), opened in 2005.




You might guess, based on these brief and probably vastly incomplete descriptions of each city, why some people would love Byron and hate Surfers. Byron, after all, is not marked by a single skyscraper or building over, say, five stories tall.

However, if you're more like me, you might wonder if perhaps there is something wrong with you. The problem, you see, is that I think there is really nothing special at all about Byron Bay.

Gasp! Allow me to explain, if you haven't fainted from shock. But where do I begin? Perhaps the first mark against Byron came when we checked in at our hostel, the Arts Factory Lodge, a sort-of hostel meets campground meets hippie commune. It is the most popular hostel in Byron and I have no idea why.

My friend Matt and I were camping at the Arts Factory campground. Great. Except that they demanded we pay $15 each per night for the pleasure of camping there in our one, puny tent. We stayed for three nights and even after 72 hours we couldn't figure out what we were paying for. Was it for the sprawling, rocky, dirt yard they call a campground? Was it for the inadequate and unclean toilets and showers? Perhaps the messy, unsightly kitchen and the spider webs that decorated the ceiling above the eating area? Oh wait, surely it was for the $5 beer available in the hostel's bar (the same beer is normally found for about $3.50 in Oz). Oh, and get this. The Arts Factory charges $30/night for one of their dorms. And here I thought this was a place run by hippies. Shouldn't they be charging more like $3 per night. Anyway, the hostel was a total dud.


The next problem? The damn prices in Byron Bay. Everywhere we went food, clothing and, as mentioned, housing were priced remarkably close to what you'd pay in Sydney. Heck, most of the eateries had a pretentious big-city air about them. Wasn't this supposed to be an idyllic seaside town?



I suppose much of Byron's charm comes from its beaches (they are beautiful, I concede) and the town's lax attitude toward recreational drug use. To be sure, the easy access to pot excites the 18- to 21-year-old set like little else. Maybe if I were a few years younger and hadn't just spent four years in too-cool-for-school-have-a-toke-man Vancouver, I too would have been more pumped. But I wasn't.



All I really wanted was a cheap beer and a decent shower.

So it was with happy hearts that Matt and I left Byron Bay last Saturday and headed for Surfers.

We located a hostel that was not only cheap ($20 per night with a coupon we found PLUS free drinks at the in-house bar) but had a pool, hot tub, arcade, free body boards (see photo for proof I used one) and cheap eats. I nearly thought we were in heaven for a few minutes.

Sure, Surfers verges on the tacky in many ways, with its neon shopping malls and souvenir shops lining the streets. However, the city is also home to spotlessly clean streets, some impressive architecture and miles and miles of golden beach.

It may not exactly be paradise, but take me to Surfers any day.

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!