Happy New Year!

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Alright, it's 2008 and we are now on to another continent, but first I'll go back and finish up with Australia.

After our Fraser Island trip we had another day in Noosa which we spent mainly in Noosa National Park. This was a pretty large area of rainforest with many walking trails through it. This was supposed to be one of the best places to see Koalas in the wild, but we had no luck. We spent a lot of time walking around in some thick, vine-covered rainforest that was very full of birds and the noises of many other animals. We saw what was either a possum or something else that I forget the name of that looks like a possum but with no hair on its tail. This was pretty cool. After a long day of hiking, and enduring some pouring rain while out of the forest, we enjoyed a nice sunset over the river by our hostel and had a relaxing night.

The next morning we took our last Australian bus ride down into Brisbane. We stayed at a hostel that was likely the dirtiest that we've seen. We shared our room with a couple guys who appeared to be living there and their stuff was all over the place, including home-made clothes lines crossing the room with all their clothes drying on them. The kitchen was full of flies and even lizards and nothing in the hostel looked as though it had been cleaned in a long time. Some of the toilets and showers were out of order and the "working" ones all had their quirks, but we didn't spend much time in the hostel so it was manageable. Brisbane is a decent sized city so we got in a lot of walking in our couple days there. We did somewhat of the normal city tour for us - saw the local museum, went to the coolest church I've seen outside of Europe, checked out the art galleries, wandered along the river through parks, etc. There was some cool stuff in the city, but the people seemed a little less open and happy than in other cities. On our last day in the city we took the bus out to the Lone Pine Koala sanctuary which was pretty sweet. There were tons of koalas, kangaroos, birds and reptiles. The kangaroos get almost all of their food from tourists who buy it and then feed it to them so they are used to being touched by tourists and I got to hang out in the middle of groups of them and pet them. I even got to pet a koala and hold one (for extra money). This really rounded out our wildlife experiences in Australia. We then headed back to get our stuff and head to the airport. We got on our plane just before midnight, the year changed over, then a couple minutes later we took off and flew back into the year 2007 before getting another new years. Weird.

Overall, Australia was fun, but more so as a tourist place to visit, rather than a culture to sink into. They have a lot more money and a lot more people there than in New Zealand, and the attitudes of people reflect this. The idea of the Australian rugged man (like Crocodile Dundee) is just in the background of the lives of most Australians, somewhat how the cowboy image is present in America. Alright, we're off to see more of Bangkok now, so I'll get some pictures up from the end of Australia sometime soon.

Sah-wah Dee-krahp!

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Comments

[Karen Motenko-Neal]

Insightful
Your comments are, to me, poignant and insightful. Happy New Year, Paul. May your days be filled with satisfying experiences. Love, Karen