Pratting Around the World

Kelly meets the animals

this was my big day of fun. i love playing with animals. they’re so funny. and fluffy. this was the cleland sanctuary.

the koalas were having a fight.

fluffster

this old guy, Teddy, is about fifteen years old. he was super fluffy and loved being hand-fed delicious eucalyptus leaves. what a lazy, cuddly champ.

kangaroo, one of the best fluffy animals ever. so much softer and friendlier than i thought.

there were about 60 photos of the roos, but we edited for the blog.

a wallaby with her baby hanging out in the pouch. the pouch is more like a slit than a pocket; when the little guy would hide, you couldn’t notice him at all or even see the pouch.

wombat. awkward but fluffy animal.

porcipine.

Adelaide and around

As well as relaxing on the porch with a few beers and a flygun, we did manage to see a little bit of the surrounding areas.

the mighty town of strathalbyn – really cool little australian town

a beach just outside adelaide

adelaide at night

south australia has some great wines so we all went winetasting for the day

wirra wirra winery, my pick, had a great cabernet savignon

after a hard day of winetasting, we had to relax with a cold beer from the local microbrewery

Christmas on the farm – Adelaide

the idea of spending christmas in some skanky hostel, eating kelly’s famous grilled cheeses sounded great so when some friends (bev and ross) invited us to spend christmas with them on their cherry farm around adelaide, i was grilled cheese-less. (kelly: this is an example of british humor that i dont really get).

the 10 hour overnight bus from melbourne to adelaide was a taster for travelling round asia.

Bev and ross.

nothing like heading straight for the cherry groves for some picking after an overnight busride! the bucket belt made me feel like a real professional.

good cherries – best in south australia. Was great to have our own supply of apples, pears and cherries to feast on. we even went to the farmer’s market to help sell the produce. hudson helped by eating the apples for free in front of customers.

my mom sent us a care package. bev wanted me to wait for christmas to open it(thinking it would be full of presents), but i couldn’t wait. we got amazing U.S. luxuries like conditioner, shampoo and undies. thanks mom!

Christmas eve in the local. A great night which ended with nasty shots around the kitchen table - bevs idea, yet she only had a couple, smart girl

last call on christmas eve

ross cooked us some lamb on the grill for our christmas dinner. we also had grilled prawns, summer salads and loads of chocolate. and cherries. a traditional australian christmas dinner, i guess. very tasty.

relaxing in the fields where loads of kangaroos hang out. the dog kept chasing them; she actually got close at one point but the kangaroo just hopped off

see the wild roos hiding in the forest?

the farmhouse

can you see the kangaroo? i can’t, but hudson can!

we had a great time on the farm. cheers bev for fattening us up before asia and for the 7 hour game of trivial pursuit. cheers ross for all the beers (at all times of the day) and giving us a cool farm experience. (kelly: and cheers bev for taking us to see the animals and for your great music selection. and cheers ross for schooling us on farm life and how to eat like real aussies).

Melbourne

We flew into Melbourne from the Gold Coast on a hot, hot day. Melbourne is an amazing city. It is very walkable and the trams are a novel way to get around.

the city was full of beautiful architecture and hidden lanes and arcades. It took me an entire afternoon of wandering around to find all of the  concealed fashion boutiques and galleries that I had read about. The layout of the city was fun to figure out and I felt at ease after just a couple days.

The MCG (melbourne cricket ground) was home to the very first test match. this huge stadium holds 100,000 people and plays host to aussie rules football matches and cricket matches.

Melbourne has some amazing markets. the day markets are huge and full of rows upon rows of fresh produce. We bought some fruit and had to take it straight to the face. Although we went to several markets, the Queen Victoria was definitely the best.

We also headed there our first night in Melbourne for the Queen Victoria night market. this market was a bit  upscale and very green feeling; the best part was the food. i had the best fish sandwich i’ve ever eaten from a carribean foodstand.

we were really excited about st. kilda’s, but it turned out to be a bust.

hudson was dying to go to the television and film museum. the history of film exhibit was fun – i found my long-lost pal Mario on original nintendo.

Whilst i was absorbing all the intellectual side of the history of film and televisin, kelly was busying herself by finding secret blocks full of mushrooms and flowers on mario, she was also very proud by the fact that she remembered where all of the secret tubes were.

Melbourne is very proud of its dingy bus station corner

Gold Coast

After Brisbane we bused it to the Gold Coast – miles and miles of the world’s most beautiful beaches between sydney and brisbane. our first stop was the infamous Byron Bay. Byron Bay was a mix of old-school beach town and tacky stores/crazy bars. It was definitely great to see, but as you might imagine, this beach attracts loads of backpackers. even though we are travelling with backpacks, i’ve got to make a distinction between us and the scrubby, grotty kids that make hostels nasty.

although the main byron bay beach was what you expect (big, beautiful, but totally cramped and cheesy), we found a beautiful beach near our hostel that was basically empty and so lovely. it went on for miles and you had to access it through a 10 minutes sandy forest walk.

after seeing such an iconic beach town, we hopped over to a quieter town – Palm Beach.

the “resort” we stayed in was amazing, especially after hostel life. the pool was beautiful and there was a lake out back. the beach of palm beach was really nice – a wide beach with a mix of hotels and beachhouses. there was also a pretty estuary, although we spent most of our time at the pool – it was so nice to stay in one place for a week.

I loved getting the birds all riled up with snacks.

Brisbane

After touring round new zealand for 6 weeks, we headed back to australia and the first port of call was brisbane.

Brisbane’s very own version of the london eye

brisbane has some great parks and was lovely to walk around. we stayed at a hotel that was a pretty house with a huge verandah – very nice and worth the 15 min walk to the heart of the city.

the main shopping street in brisbane

kelly’s effort of making a plane from trash at the art gallery. Loads of school kids were in on this day and i think that kelly’s design was by far the best – well done kelly.
my plane wasn’t cool, but the exhibition was:

Relaxing by the river. After lying there for about half an hour i felt this pain on my leg. I was sure i had just been bitten by a spider. kelly, being her usual sympathetic self told me to stop being a big girl. kelly then felt the same pain and was convinced that we should call the paramedics as she was dying. Well, it turned out to be bulldog ants, who have the ability to give a violent sting.
kelly: paramedics not neccessary, but my sting did look a lot nastier than hudson’s.

one of my favorite parts of brisbane is the man-made beach in the middle of the city. it sounded horribly cheesy, so we had to check it out. surprisingly, the beach was really nice and perfect after walking around the city all day. we hadn’t expected much, so hudson had to run all the way back to the hotel to get our swimsuits, but i think it was definitely worth the run. the water was more like a pool, but with a sandy bottom and was built right by a canal. Don’t you always want to jump in a canal when you pass it on a hot day? the beach couldn’t have been in a better spot.

Blue Mountains, Katoomba

A day trip to the blue mountains just outside of Sydney. Our fieldtrip of fun with Scott started with a tasty brekky overlooking the mountains.

The three sisters: the legend is that they represent 3 aboriginal sisters who were turned to stone by their witch doctor father using his magic bone, to protect them from a Bunyip (a scary monster). He was then chased by the bunyip and turned himself into a lyre bird, but in the process he lost his bone, so he could not turn anyone back into their original form. The legend says that he is still searching……….
kelly: i like legends.

a walk through the kaoomba forest. there was random coal-mining debris left where they had last been used. kind of creepy, but it was a lot cooler than looking at the stuff in a museum or something. there was a mineshaft that was still open a bit so you could poke your head in; the air was freezing inside.

Worlds steepest train. Before it wasconverted to a tourist attraction it was used to transport coal up and down the mountain.
this train was pretty fun, but there was an awesome roller coaster track going all through the forest and coal mining refuge. it looked so so fun, but the idiots who built the track forgot to okay it with the government. such a waste.

After a killer of a walk, we ended up at the base of a waterfall. It was really cold but nice to chill out under.

yeah, this water was so cold it hurt. hudson jumped under the waterfall and I don’t know how he didn’t get knocked down.

bloody freezing

we stopped off at a chocolate cafe for some treats. brownie to the face.

sitting in front of palm beach. we actually drove on that thin strip to get to the soap opera beach. thanks for showing us around Scott.

Bondi beach

Bondi Beach is an iconic surf spot and only a twenty minute bus ride from Sydney. a total beach town and easy to walk around, Bondi has some nice boutiques and vintage stores. Scott, one of hudson’s pals, took us surfing one day and it wasn’t too horrible. we both managed to catch waves and stand up a bit, albeit awkwardly.

this huge cliff is part of a long walk from bondi to coogi beach; the walk covers several pretty beaches and coves as well as an old creepy graveyard where the tombstones look out onto the sea. the cliffs are about 100 feet high with waves crashing in the shallow water below. obviously I was just posing and not actually about to dive, but some tourist saw hudson taking a pic and starting shooting as well, thinking i was about to go over the edge.

there is this olympic-size pool right on the ocean; the waves actually flow into the pool as it’s salt water. why doesn’t every big ocean have a pool like this? and why isn’t there a diving board?

view from the cliffs

Sydney – part 1

We spent 2 weeks in sydney, touring round the city, beaching it up, going to the opera house, trying aussie beers at the beerfest and pratting around.

I thought sydney was pretty amazing. the city reminded me a lot of new york, except sydney has such a great harbour and is a lot greener. also, sydney seems a lot more enviromental without being forced and fake.

The architecture of the opera house was cool because it looked amazing from every angle. we decided to go to a show and see the inside. the show was okay – an all-women version of Taming of the Shrew with karaoke. i think seeing an opera would also be amazing.

hudson: nice hint 

The harbour bridge

Staying in Sydney is kind of like being in nyc – very expensive. In an attempt to stay within our budget, we tried out a few different hostels, each one with its own particularities or as lonely planet would put it,
“a lot of character.” This included everything from a reading lamp chained to the wall to a girl dressed as a boy that stole our cheese. one of my ultimate faves was some wasters that rummaged through our garbage searching for latenight snacks.

I took kelly to the beach where home and away is filmed (an aussie soap that heath ledger, danni minogue, isla fisher and guy pearce all made pre-hollywood appearances in). She wasnt impressed, until i made her watch it and she loved it.
kelly – aussie soaps aren’t crap like american ones. but going to that beach still wasn’t very cool.

this gross pic is for the didgerydoo being played in the background. when played correctly, they sound weird.