Australia - Fraser Island - Mehron Gets Off Her Plane and Into Our 4WD

After oodles of anticipation, my next travel buddy Mehron finally arrived in Brisbane this week. Like myself, Mehron has abandoned her responsibilities and opted to saunter around the world for a year. She just left a bit later than I did, which in the long run was probably very clever, since I will ultimately return to Canada in the dead of winter, while she will return home just in time for summer. Mehron 1, Holly -1.

Having come directly from Hawaii, she is finding Australia a little bit cool. Our 20-25 degree days and 10 degree nights would seem frosty compared to the paradise islands. Confession: I am wearing a sweater right now - the mornings are on the cool side and my house is made of cardboard. So I can't give her too much of a hard time over it.

Her first incredibly jetlagged day or so in Brisbane was spent on the important tourist landmarks of our neighbourhood. Namely, the wicked Cold Rock ice creamery (actual word) and the scuzzy Stafford City shopping mall. And both lived up to their descriptions. Cold Rock is the ultimate DQ blizzard - they use hard ice cream and mash in whole mini chocolate bars and other toppings according to your wishes. Stafford is the Westgate mall of Australia, complete with senior citizens, multiple dollar stores, a dodgy food court and sleazy clientele. If only it wasn't also the location of the only banks within walking distance of my house...

These fascinating experiences were leading up to the big event of her week in Brisbane: our roadtrip to Fraser Island on the weekend (for people who enjoy trivia, Fraser is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the largest sand island in the world). On Friday night, Mehr and I put our lives in the hands of Mick and our giant 4WD rental that made pick-up trucks look like delicate flowers. We drove out to Samford to meet up with his brother and sister, Jordan and Alisa, and headed out at the absurdly early hour of 4:45am the next day.



The tides north of Noosa and on Fraser Island were against us from the start, with high tide being between noon and two p.m., making beach driving impossible during the bulk of the normal hours of the day.



Mick took us up the northern beaches of Cooloola in Great Sandy National Park (very fitting name). After a missed turn or two, we did eventually make it to Rainbow Beach and Inskip Point to board the incredibly overpriced six minute ferry across to the island. On the way, everyone was trying to come up with clever ways to play on how my last name was the same as the name of the island or somehow make a joke at my expense. This was the best they came up with: "Hey, your last name is Fraser. That's the island's name". Good effort, team, but no dice.

We then spent Saturday and Sunday exploring the island by doing a whole lot of driving and a whole lot of loud-and-not-necessarily-in-tune singing along to the music blasting from our speakers. No wonder the dingos stayed away from us.



Other stunning sights seen include the Eastern beach, the Southern Lakes (Birrabeen and Mackenzie were tops), Happy Valley (actual name), the sandblows (massive sand dunes), the Cathedrals (sand formations resembling steeples?), the coloured sands, the Maheno shipwreck (beached in 1935, once carried 500 passengers), Indian Head, and the Champagne Pools.



The driving was great for the most part. We did reach one impasse when we encountered a tree that had fallen across the road, but our lovely rental towed it aside with relative ease.



There was also an incident when I was not reminded by the driver to roll up my window before crashing through a big beach creek... a significant splash and a lot of laughter at my expense ensued. Moreover, the only time we got bogged was when our car boarded the ferry on the way home. The ship drifted too parallel with the shoreline while loading cars with strong winds and waves and the docking end was more than a little mired for a couple of minutes. All in all, a fantastic weekend.

Australia - The Cultural Edition

Since the thrills of my travel lifestyle have ebbed significantly this past month, I present to you a few cultural observations gleaned from my daily neighbourhood strolls, my watching of the four channels on our television, my kitchen endeavours, and my perusal of Australian news media.

In the News

Last week, there were two major stories competing for the public's attention. The first was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's release of the new Federal Budget, which amounted to a $58 BILLION deficit. The second was renewed allegations against a retired Rugby League star named Matthew Johns who was involved in a group sex scandal seven years ago in New Zealand. Guess which one got the most coverage? I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with Batthew Pohns.

Lingo

"To Glass": a common Australian verb denoting the action of attacking another person, generally in the face, with a broken beer bottle (see Winnipeg Handshake). Most commonly associated with (though not limited to) the geographical area of the Gold Coast. (Yes, this terrible phenomenon happens often enough that they developed a verb to describe it. It's almost a weekly event on the news.)

Lax TV standards

I am constantly amazed at what they can get away with on television here. Two and a Half Men is on every night for instance. And the other day I heard the news anchor make the following comment on air: "that would really be a pain in the bum". I cannot imagine Peter Mansbridge or Kevin Newman ever saying that in Canada. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The commercials like to toe the line. Here are two run of the mill examples (for the more risque, google the Red Bull nude beach or Advanced Medical Institute bedroom cop ads):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNKS3S5h8yQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frP3RqaCHAI&feature=related

Food

1) Like New Zealand, the most common type of cheese in the grocery store is "Tasty" (actual cheese variety name). It's a bit like medium cheddar. Notably one brand of Tasty cheese is produced by the company Coon Cheese. That's how P.C. they are around here.

2) While you may be familiar with Australians' affinity for the infamous Vegemite, you may not be aware that they also have pumpkin on the brain. To be fair, their pumpkin is not the same as the giant orange North American Jack O' Lantern pumpkins. It's a bit closer to a butternut squash. But it's used as commonly as carrots or potatoes. Pumpkin scones, roast pumpkin, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin curry, and so on and so on. And yet, no pumpkin pie.

Cinema

While I generally associate Australian cinema with anything ever made by Baz Luhrmann, it turns out he is not the only Australian movie maker. Mick has been talking up a film called "The Castle" pretty much since the day I met him, but we never had any success in tracking it down. They didn't carry it in Halifax, Ottawa or Toronto. I thought it would be easier to find in Australia, but that was not the case. The first video shop didn't have it; the second had broken their copy. It wasn't available in stores. We missed catching it on tv twice in two months. It just seemed it wasn't meant to be. So we cheated and ordered it online and it arrived yesterday. After so much build up, you might expect disappointment with a film. But I have to say the movie was funny and very charming. It's a low budget movie about a family fighting airport bureaucracy to keep their home, packed full of Australianisms, and very enjoyable. I'd recommend you go rent it, but if you're in Canada, you're probably out of luck. I can't even buy a copy here to take home, since the DVD format isn't universal. Alas.

Music

I do highly recommend you download the Hamish and Andy podcasts, which ARE available in Canada.

And just in case you thought I was being paranoid about threats to my life in Australia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_TB6onHVE&feature=related

Australia - Sunshine Coast - Getting Bossed Around the Big Pineapple, the Glass House Mountains and on the Netball Court

This weekend, Mick's sister Alisa and their mom Karen invited me along for a day trip up to the Sunshine Coast. Of course, it turned out to be the one rainy day of the week, but it was pretty beautiful all the same. Our route was planned by the female voice of the GPS in the car, who I will refer to as 'Bossy', according to POI. Now I was not aware that POI was an acronym for more than one expression. And the only one I knew was Persons of Interest, i.e. criminal suspects. Turns out Bossy meant Points of Interests. In case you're curious about her name, Bossy didn't even trust us to follow traffic laws at roundabouts correctly. She was quite a micromanager.

We had breakfast in a town called Mooloolaba (yep, just trying pronouncing that one!) and it was a bit cool for Australia, but as I'm constantly told, it's almost *winter* now. Ah yes, winter. Perhaps I should have worn my jeans instead of my shorts today... no wait, it's still 22 degrees. Everyone keeps asking me if I've remembered to bring my jumper and my honest reply of puzzlement is always 'what for?'.

After breakfast we headed up to Noosa, which is a big holiday resort area for Australians. And tourists. But fewer than down on the Gold Coast. It's all relative when the bulk of international tourism is beach-oriented. That area has a really nice national park right on the headland of the coast where there's a river mouth going inland. But of course it was raining by then, so I had to settle for gelato instead of a 3km walk in the bush. Darn it.


We then went inland to the hinterland of the area and after driving up into mountains I seem to have missed on my way there, we arrived in Montville, a completely charming town nestled right onto the edge of the mountain with a truly panoramic and awesome view of the coastline. And thankfully by then the sun was peeking out so I could get a glimpse of how spectacular the area would be when bathed in sunshine as it usually would be.

I should also mention that on this outing I got to see the famous (infamous?) heritage site, the Giant Pineapple. It was especially pointed out to me on the drive. Apparently the owner didn't want it listed as a heritage site, and now he can't make any changes to it without lots of red tape etc. We also drove by the lovely Glass House Mountains again (en route to Australia Zoo), and just like Mick and his brother Jordan, Alisa and her mom were eager to tell me the cool story behind them. Which they all learn in primary school. And which none of them can remember. Thank heavens for Google, eh?

First story: Short English version. Captain Cook, the Colombus of the Southern Hemisphere, saw the mountains from his ship and remarked that their unique shapes made them look like the glass houses of his homeland in Yorkshire.

Second story: An Aboriginal legend. Each mountain represents a member of a family. The father Tibrogargan noticed a flood was coming and asked one son Coonowrin to help his pregnant mother Beerwah to safety. The son ran away to save himself and when dad found out, he was so angry that he smashed his son's head with a club, leaving the son with a terrible crook in his neck. The son tried to apologize and everyone wept at his cowardice, creating all the rivers and streams in the area. But the father wouldn't forgive him and turned his back on him forever. Which is why the father mountain faces away from the son mountain and the poor mom mountain is still pregnant (it takes awhile to give birth to a baby mountain...)

While Australia is certainly known for its sunshine and beaches, it's perhaps less famous for its enthusiasm for a sport called Netball. This past Sunday afternoon we received a phone call - one of Mick's friends was super short on people to play in a local netball league and wanted to know if we were up for it. I agreed on the basis that it was like a women's version of basketball (though what that meant, I had no idea) and had minimal rules. This was misleading representation. Netball resembles basketball in that it takes place with a ball on a court and the goal is to get the ball through hoops on posts. That is where the similarities end.

I had to remember more of what NOT to do than what to do during the game. You aren't allowed to dribble. You can't move when you have the ball. You can't hold the ball for more than three seconds. You can't pass across an entire third of the court. You can't wave your arms in front of someone unless you're more than a meter away from them. And there was no backboard on the net, so my crap aim was even crappier since I had no ricochet to back me up.

Unfortunately, most of these rules were not told to me before the game started and as a result, I had seven whistles on me in the first quarter alone, until I finally started clueing in to what I was doing wrong. There are assigned positions in this game, so I was the goalkeeper and thus not allowed to leave the third of the court at our end. Thankfully this kept me minimally responsible for the ball, since our team had a reasonably good offence which kept the ball at the other end of the court. Unfortunately, the other team's goalscorer (my nemesis) was a guy about a foot taller than me, so once I was back the required one meter in order to wave my arms in the hopes of nabbing the ball, my efforts were pretty futile. I did manage to swipe it once or twice on rebound. Oh well. We lost the game by ONE point, 21-20 in the last few minutes of play. Which actually wasn't too bad, since we were one person short and the other team had subs. Plus, our team had the Canadian handicap to make up for.