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Rachel of Oz - Rachel Tannahill

Fleeing the Canadian winter!!!!!!!!

A year travelling in New Zealand/Australia... and insufficient contact with friends and family back home. I'm making up for that (hopefully) with this travel diary which I am composing more or less all at once. Yikes! What a task. Anyway, I started with a couple entries for the beginning of my trip (some are composed of bits of emails I've written) and some for my most recent adventures. As I have time, I will fill in the middle! If you don't feel like reading all my crap, at least click on the entries and check out the pics! Love you all,
Rachel

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Joined on: October 2nd 2004
Last Login: July 14th 2008

Blog Entries: 17
Photos: 94

TB Code: [blogger=758]
Status: BLOGGER

Blogs & Travel Journals

by Rachel of Oz, order by Date newest first.

By Rachel of Oz
October 13th 2004

Back to work :( Oceania » Australia » Victoria

In Echuca, Vic. Spent something like 10 hours on the bus getting to Melbourne and then had all day in the city to wait for my bus to Echuca. First impressions of Melbourne - FANTASTIC! So much going on! There's the fringe festival, an arts festival, something like 5 sports stadiums, and an outdoor music venue near the botanic gardens. Another place I wish I had more time to check out... I've got to return to Australia in the future when I'm rich. It was a shame saying goodbye to Paul after such a short time. I'd only known him for [View Full Entry]

By Rachel of Oz
October 3rd 2004

Mountains and Accordians Oceania » Australia » South Australia » Adelaide

Port Germein
Home of the longest wooden jetty in Australia (but not actually the longest.)

After Coober Pedy it was a lot more of nothing to see until the Flinders Ranges. We drove a couple hundred km into the Ranges and spent 45 minutes hiking to a great lookout point only for it to start raining buckets just as we got up there... so in the end we didn't see much unfortunately. It was a nice drive at any rate. To redeem the day we drove to Alligator Gorge in Mount Remarkable National Park (I love that name) and did a really cool hike there. We spent the night in Port Germein which is a tiny [View Full Entry]

Tadoo (That's how Aussie's pronounce tattoo)

By Rachel of Oz
September 29th 2004

Kanga'ruse' Oceania » Australia » South Australia » Outback

See all the Kangaroos?
No? Exactly.

I think the "kangaroo" might just be an elaborate hoax dreamed up to attract tourists to Australia. Or an urban myth. Indeed, when the first settlers wrote to home to England describing these creatures, everyone thought it was a joke and I'm inclined to feel the same way. These so called "kangaroos" are supposedly a pest, there are so many of them. "Don't drive through the outback at night" the natives warn "you'll be sure to hit a kangaroo". And then they turn to each other and snicker when you're not looking. I was positive we would see so many kangaroos [View Full Entry]

By Rachel of Oz
September 28th 2004

Caution: Cattle Keeping it Real Oceania » Australia » South Australia » Outback » Coober Pedy

Rachel Behind the Wheel
I couldn't pass up a crack at driving through Australia's outback! As you can see, I'm very at home on the road, especially on the left.

Bill Bryson says in Down Under that "the great virtue about driving through emptiness is that when you come to anything - anything at all - that might be called a diversion you get disproportionately excited." In my opinion, truer words have never been written. Jesse and I and our new English friend Paul (our third English friend named Paul actually) embarked on a four day drive through the Outback from Alice Springs to Adelaide today. Anytime we saw ANYTHING, including a passing car, a bird, a tree, and especially any and all roadsigns, we almost crapped ourselves with exc [View Full Entry]

By Rachel of Oz
September 27th 2004

Fun with Uluru Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory » Uluru

Mulga Bus and Uluru
The bus is the one with the snake on it.

Today we had the option of climbing Uluru or walking around it. There are signs everywhere strenuously requesting that you don't climb the rock (it's a bit offensive to stomp all over what the aboriginals consider a sacred object) and yet a steady stream of tourists can be seen moving up and down. It's actually quite a dangerous climb, a woman died yesterday and they landed a helicopter on the rock to collect her. That was also a deterent. In addition, you can see a visible scar up the side where everyone climbs which is kind of sad. Jesse and I [View Full Entry]

By Rachel of Oz
September 26th 2004

My REAL Birthday Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory » Uluru

Sunrise
Few people realise this, but there are actually two suns in Central Australia.

I considered today to be my real birthday since it's the 25th at home. We were up at 4:30am in order to watch the sun rise behind Uluru (Ayers Rock). It was stunning!! After that we did a long hike around Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) which was much easier than the King's Canyon walk but equally impressive. We also drove around Uluru and looked at some Aboriginal rock paintings and heard some Aboriginal stories and learned a bit about what the rock means to them and how they used it. (There are still aboriginals living near the rock but they no [View Full Entry]

By Rachel of Oz
September 25th 2004

Birthday in the Red Centre Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory

Camels
That's not me on the camel, but it's the one I rode.

This was a birthday unlike any other! Got up at 5:30am for our "life changing experience in central australia". Things were looking good (literally) when we met our cute tour guide Anthony who happened to have good taste in road trip music and had a Crocodile Hunteresque way of randomly screeching the van to a halt and running into the wilderness whenever he spotted a lizard. A camel ride early in the morning was also an unexpected treat! Then (after 6 hours of driving) came the three hour King's Canyon hike. It starts with "Heart Attack Hill" which [View Full Entry]

By Rachel of Oz
September 24th 2004

Middle of Nowhere Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory » Alice Springs

Jesse
When the airline loses your luggage, they cheer you up by making you sit around and fill out forms.

FLIES!! FLIES, FLIES, FLIES!!!!! I've discovered the real reason that nobody really lives in the outback. Forget about the lack of water and the extreme heat - the flies are enough to drive anyone completely insane! At least I have luggage. Jesse doesn't. Virgin Blue left his in Sydney. They didn't accidentally put it on the wrong place (which I could understand as mistakes happen); they didn't put it on ANY plane! Anyway, yeah it's really hot here. After walking around all day I feel pretty ill. Hopefully I'll be okay for the three day Uluru tour we're doing tomorrow. There [View Full Entry]

By Rachel of Oz
May 24th 2004

My Town, Sydney! Oceania » Australia » New South Wales » Sydney

Sydney Opera House
Framed by the Harbour Bridge

My first month in Sydney I hated it! Mainly I was just frustrated that I couldn’t find a job. Then I realized that’s just the way life is in a big city and once I found my niche I began to LOVE it! I started attending St. Paul’s, a Lutheran church in the city, and met heaps of people my age who were fun and helpful (I ended up living with many of them for short periods of time) and best of all they were actual aussies unlike the friends I made in New Zealand who were mostly travellers. I worked [View Full Entry]

By Rachel of Oz
January 31st 2004

Advance Australia Fair Oceania » Australia » Australian Capital Territory » Canberra

Canberra
View from the roof of Parliament House

After a week in Sydney of desperately searching for work - ANY WORK, I was offered a free ride to Canberra and decided to accept. Canberra gets a lot of bad reviews from backpackers mostly because of its lack of nightlife but that's not why I'm here so I figured I'd give it a chance. It's the nation's capital for heaven's sake! Gotta see it. On paper Canberra looks very straightforward, convenient, and easy to navigate because it's a planned city based on a series of circles. The sheer scale of the city (it's HUGE) makes it extremely difficult to get [View Full Entry]

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