Goodbye to Oz

**Journal written several days ago**

Our final day of nearly two years in Oz has arrived. While the primary purpose of the Australian adventure was to do the post-grad thing, the best times were spent making new friends (wink, wink Rani) and exploring this great continent (and its diminutive, yet beautiful, neighbor to the east). Australia has an abundance of natural offerings to keep any avid outdoors (wo)man salivating. In our short time here we only got to see a bit (bloody work and Uni!) of the total, but it was all fantastic….driving in the Outback, Fraser Island, Great Ocean Road, Sydney in general, the Blue Mountains, The Great Divide, Carnavon Gorge, many trips to the beach, kangaroos, wombats, flying foxes, emus, Tazzie devils, and the rest of the Aussie animal cast. We had a blast (and look forward to coming back) connecting to the culture, learned some new words, still don’t understand footy, already miss the coffee (and the weather too), fell in love with huge furry bats, and have already begun planning a reunion tour.

Sydney is a great city…brilliantly multi-cultural, clean, not too overcrowed and chock a block with coves, blue waters, excellent places to eat, and a laid back atmosphere in a big city. As with any city, Sydney does have its drawbacks (which are easy to overlook when sipping a flat white at a chic little café with the smell of frangipani in the air gazing out on the harbour on a 25C and sunny day). City transport is a bit crap and leaves you wondering why you didn’t just walk to work as the train plugs along at 5k/hour waiting for congestion to clear up ahead. Prices can be intimidating especially when you are paying $4 for 200ml of soft drink up in Balmain. And finally, perhaps most difficult for a USAer to adjust to, no 24 hour shopping and very limited late night shopping (basically, only on Thursdays till 9pm)…no grocery shopping at 1am on a Tuesday! Taken as a whole, Sydney is a very livable/loveable city and its no wonder the real estate prices are as insanely expensive as they are!

During our time in this part of the world, we also managed to throw in an 11 day caravan trip all around New Zealand’s south island. All up, NZ was incredible…pristine lakes, creaking glaciers, penguins, seals, mountain parrots, etc. Milford Sound (actually, all of Fjordlands National Park) was truly indescribable.

Exploring the park, you really have to pinch yourself as a reminder that you are not unconscious and wandering around in a dreamy place in your head. The visuals from all angles are truly spectacular and the park is so well taken care of (no trash, minimum man-made interference) that you easily slip into a connection with the environment around you. Rozita and I both agreed that NZ was one of the best (if not the best) naturally-focused trips we have been on thus far…and we only did the south island!!



STATISTICS (Travel officially begins tomorrow)

• Rozita steps taken = 0
  
• Flights taken = 0
  
• Trains rides taken = 0
  
• Times lost = 0
  
• Total instances of diarrhea = 0
  
• Total number of requests for pictures with Daniel = 0
  
• Total megabytes of pictures taken = 0
  

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