JUDGEFEST

Prepare for the longest spring break update post EVER.

Friday:

Camille, Christine and I trekked downtown to attempt to find bugspray before camping, and somehow ended up getting sushi and hitting up a chocolate cafe and entering a food coma?  Oops.  We got all packed up at home, and took the tram to the bus terminal, at which point we discovered we had no idea how to get to the bus to Avalon Airport (ghetto airport in the boonies of Melbourne).  After milling around and finally finding the bus, we realized we totally would have had enough time to get food, but failed b/c we didn't know what time the bus left *aw*.

We rode the bus for about an hour to get to Avalon, got prepped for our flight, and then....arrived in Brisbane.  Our flight landed around 11 p.m., and we were scheduled to get picked up from the Brisbane transit center at 6:00 a.m., meaning we needed to leave at 5:00 a.m.....hmmmm......that wouldn't have been a problem except...we had nowhere to stay....so we decided to sleep at the airport!  This would have been a good plan except we had no sleeping bags, and all the good sleeping chairs were taken.  We ended up finding an alcove near one of the baggage carousels, and putting down our jackets and whatnot in an attempt to make a cave-nest?  Somehow in our tired delirium, we decided that we were going to form a band, and that our name was going to be the Ghetto Cave Kittens.  Don't ask....we have all the song titles for our album entitled Judgefest.  Pick it up, it's gonna go platinum.

During the night, we realized our cave was not prime sleeping territory, as apparently the floor-waxing zamboni things were kept right near our cave, so they were constantly driving in and out of our territory.  That combined with the fact that they plunged the temperature to approximately 2 degrees led to us each getting about 15 minutes of sleep each.

Getting up the next morning to go hiking/camping was....NOT fun.

Saturday:

We arrive at the Brisbane transit center after a very grumpy cab ride, get grumpier that we have to eat McDonald's for breakfast since it's the only thing open, and get picked up for our Moreton Island adventure.  Moreton Island is this gorgeous place just off the coast where we stayed for 2 days.  We took a ferry to get out there (while dodging rain >.<) and saw wild dolphins and sea turtles in the water!!  That was pretty awesome, I gotta say.

Upon arriving at Moreton, we met up with some other girls who were going to be in our tour group (SUPER-annoying) and got dragged out in the sun for some sand tobogganing.  It's probably the most entertaining activity I've done in a LONG time.  They took us out to what is called a sand-blow, which is a MASSIVE sand dune that was formed by beach sand getting pushed across the island by the wind.  We were handed what were essentially planks of wood by the staff and told to lie face down and...GO.  This hill was so steep that from a foot back from the edge, you couldn't see over the side, so it was kind of freaky, but once you got moving, it was SUCH good fun.  I can definitely see why the Aussies do it, but it is definitely an activity that was thought up in the midst of being super-bored and in the desert.  The only thing that sucked was climbing back up the hill afterwards *quad pain*

We then headed over to this lighthouse on the island, where the view was amazing, then hiked down to this completely deserted beach where we played in the water and saw some sea turtles and whatnot :D  After dinner, it was a full moon out, so we trekked out to the beach and watched the moon rise, which was so beautiful.  I HIGHLY recommend checking out Moreton Island.  It's quite possibly one of the most amazing places on earth.

Sunday:

We woke up and had breakfast and whatnot, and then headed out to the beach for some snorkeling.  There are 5-6 barges off the coast that sunk a while back, so it makes for some great diving.  Camille, Christine, and I suited up and swam out to the wrecks.  We saw some really cool schools of fish and stuff, and then I heard this screaming coming from in front of me, and see Christine frantically swimming towards me and hear people yelling "SHARK!"  I definitely thought a Great White was about to come and eat me, but it was just a carpet shark, about 5 feet long, just cruising through the water.  It was super-cool to swim with :D

We finally came back in after snorkeling for lunch, and to get back in the 4WD to head back to the ferry.  On the way to the ferry though, we saw a young dolphin literally about 30 feet off the shore just cruising around, so we slowed down to watch it for a bit, which was amazing.

After making our way back into Brisbane, we met up with this girl named Nancy who was also on EAP from UCSD.  She graciously agreed to house us during our adventures and took us around downtown Brisbane that night, where we chilled at a pub and discovered that Queensland is pretty much a ZOO in terms of wildlife.  It is packed with possums (they're way cuter than the American ones), lorikeets, cockatoos, HUUUUGE spiders, and other creatures....

Monday:

We were going to try to head out to Fraser Island, but realized we had no camping supplies, and no idea how to get there (great start, right?)  We set out to get groceries, and figure out how to get to Fraser, but somehow ended up going to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary?  It was SO cute.  I got to hold a baby koala!  Then I ended up taking an inappropriate picture where I'm about to chomp on it's head....the keepers were like "erm...we'll be taking that back now..."  I also discovered that emus are the scariest animals ALIVE, and kangaroos are just as adorable in person as they seem in pictures :D  After Lone Pine, we hit up an internet cafe to figure out Fraser details, only to discover that Fraser was....really far away, and pretty much inaccessible to us...so we instead decided to...RENT A CAR!

Mmmmmm.....Koala.....

LOOK!  A ROO!

Tuesday:

The morning consisted of Camille freaking out to discover an Australian possum on the table eating her pastry....gotta love Brisbane...we then gorged on chocolate chip pancakes, and headed out to pick up our ride, which we sadly discovered 

was.....a red Ford Festiva (soon to be called a Fiesta).  

We decided to just....not plan where we were going, and just drive off, so we just vaguely headed north without really knowing where we were going, which turned out to be REALLY fun.  It took us a bit to figure out the whole.....steering wheel on the wrong side, paired with driving on the wrong side, but we didn't wreck!

We discovered this town called Mooloolaba which we thought was HILARIOUS so we opted to camp there for the night.  We first were really ghetto and wandered into Starbucks to get some hot water to cook our instant noodles, which we got some very strange looks for....but finally found a campground where we proceeded attempt to camp, which went well....until we took out the tent....

We found as we were unpacking the tent that we had the tent, and the cover....but no pegs or poles....so in essence we had a giant....sheet.  Crap.  We first attempted to tie the tent to a tree, which involved me stepping in my friend's hands and balancing while tying up said tent....which led to us creating a sort of fabric...shack.  EPIC fail

Eventually these guys took pity on us and let us use some rope to create a more functional tent, which helped, and we were successfully able to sleep, except for the whole.....random wild turkeys moving around in the morning.....weird.

"where....ARE....we?"

"um.....do you girls need some help?"

Wednesday:

We awoke in Mooloolaba and continued our trek north, and managed to pass through Noosa (nice beaches), which was kind of like a version of Newport Beach (nice, but super-rich), but didn't see anything worth stopping for.

When we arrived in this place called Tin Can Bay, we were super-bored at first, UNTIL we saw a random soldier with an assault rifle walking across the street....we immediately did a u-turn in the middle of the street to take pictures of the random camouflaged soldiers with rifles set up around the street.  Apparently Tin Can Bay is the most likely site for Australian invasion?....

We later hit up Rainbow Beach and chilled in the sand for a while before heading out to Hervey Bay for the night.  We were once again stuck without a place to stay, so when we couldn't find a campground, we decided to get a motel room, except we didn't want to pay for 4 people.  Being the ghetto cave kittens that we were, we opted to park on the street, drop Nancy and Christine at the corner, and send Camille in to pay for the room for "two" people.  We then had to have Nancy and Christine wait at the beach until the coast was clear of the manager for them to come into the room.  Yay for motel smuggling!

Thursday:

We kept moving north, and were DETERMINED to see a wild kangaroo, since we kept passing so many roo-crossing signs on the highway, and our patience was rewarded as we rounded a bend and saw the fleeting shape of a HUGE grey kangaroo dashing across the road!

Hoooooray!  After that, we arrived at the odd town of 1770.  Yes, the town is a number.  But we got out and walked down to the beach which was SO beautiful.  The current from the ocean was pulling a steady stream of waves into the bay, and there were all these awesome tidepools and stuff that we went exploring.  I felt like such a little kid digging for crabs and looking for fish in the pools.

Afterwards we kept heading north and randomly arrived in Bundaberg, and somehow stumlbed across this place where you can watch baby sea turtles hatch?  We braved the rain, and for 8$, got to march out onto the beach around a bunch of turtle nests.  It was the end of the season, so they said we probably wouldn't see anything, but that they'd dig up a nest anyway.  Our guide found EIGHT baby loggerhead turtles that hadn't managed to dig their way out of the nest that were still alive!!  We then got to stand on the beach with our flashlights and watch these newly born baby turtles walk down to the ocean!  I had 8 turtles walk through my legs towards the water, got to hold one and feel it swimming in my hand, and felt one get washed onto my foot as it attempted to get into the water.  It was probably one of the coolest moments of my life!

That night we decided to just drive straight through back to Brisbane, so we took shifts driving throughout the night.  The bad part came when monsoon-style rain started coming down.  There is a really high flood risk in Queensland, so we were genuinely concerned that our little Fiesta was going to get washed away :/  However, we passed the Star Wars rain (it was coming horizontally, so it looked like we were flying in hyperspace) and arrived in Brisbane around 4:30 a.m.

Friday:

Christine, Camille and I dropped Nancy off in Brisbane, and headed off back south to check out the Gold Coast.  We drove around Surfer's Paradise for a while which, had it not been overcast, would have been awesome.  The rain from the north had followed us down south, so that part kind of sucked.  We discovered on our way out, however, this club called Dracula's, which apparently hosts a vampire-rock-opera?!  We slammed on the breaks and turned in, hoping to get a ticket, but they were sold out.  We were vampire rock rejects :(

We then made our way south to Byron Bay, which also would have been cool if the sun was out, but it was raining :(  We again had to smuggle Camille into a tourist motel cabin thing, which was actually pretty creepy and I was convinced some horror movie was about to begin there....

Saturday: 

We made our way back to Brisbane, met back up with Nancy, and then sulked about having to return the Fiesta.  We had bonded with our chariot so much :(  After that we just explored more of Brisbane with Nancy, and I am now seriously debating moving out of the states and settling in Brisbane.  It was such a beautiful city.  The river is amazing and taking the ferry every day would make me so happy.  The only downside is I'd have skin cancer by....tomorrow.  Stupid Aussie sun....We then just wandered down to a movie theater to watch that Dr. Seuss movie that is out (don't judge me, it was funny), and passed out.

Other than that, I returned to Melbourne this afternoon, and am now needing to pull my life together (laundry, hmwk, DIET).  I ate such crap for 10 days that I now feel the need to do a detox fast.  Bleh.  Thank god for kickboxing tomorrow.

Spring break was awesome, Australia is awesome. 

END