Australia Adventures Part 1

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Australia. There will not be enough words or pages or meanings to describe it. If I describe every detail it will not give reason enough to not go there yourself. I'm from Canada, big open spaces, friendly people, bears in the backyard (or at least eating our smores leftovers in the night while camping) so I'm no stranger to those things - it's the kangaroos, everywhere, more popular than cats - a whole street of little old cat-ladies who all let their cats loose at once wouldn't compare to the population of kangaroos in australia. It's the can-do attitude of people, the eating of seafood every night, the number of times we said 'oh that's close on the map, we'll just pop over there quickly and check it out - and ended up driving for four hours only to reach a sign saying "45 kilometers from this point" and then another sign after that. We're not the worst map readers ever (my dad might argue this) it's simply that Australia is SO big. A synopsis of the trip before I began, because I'll be writing this for days I'm quite sure.

The trip started actually, in Singapore, two days of electronics happiness for Dzl and I, running around, stuffing ourselves with brilliant Asian food and buying every shiny object in sight. We flew to Brisbane, exhausted from the humidity of Singapore, which is mild at this time of year but still a surprise to us, coming from crisp and cool Denmark. Brisbane was sunny and beautiful for the all of one hour we drove through it on our way to Noosa. In Noosa, there were endless roundabouts that drove us crazy and even caused us to be late for the main event, my sister's wedding to her truly wonderful now-husband. Moving on, we went to Bundaberg, our favorite of all the places we visited, simple, beautiful, great climate, and Gary and Jenny, my sister's new parents in law, the absolute epitome of Australian friendly lovely people who were kind enough to feed us amazing food and show us around. Back on the road, four people in a car for two 6-8 hour trips, we finally arrived in Cairns where I enjoyed being seasick (dramatically so) while trying to dive the Great Barrier Reef. I don't think I recovered until we set down in Darwin and were hit by the heat there, an average of 37 degrees, hitting 39 and that was at 10p.m. Here we explored, played "outback", were very nearly the dumb tourists running out of gas in the middle of the desert and had some incredible experiences, ending it all with a visit to some crocodiles. Finally we had one last night in Brisbane with my parents and it was wonderful - flying out the next day.

So if that's all you have time to read, or all you're prepared to read, thank you for reading! But here I go, as much for my own sake of record keeping as for yours - describing the trip in detail.

Noosa

In Noosa we stayed at a private home, it was fantastic - a bit out of the way and oh let me back up on that point. My mom and I, (more so her) have been planning this trip for literally months, about 5 of them. So we had hotels, flights, cars, itineraries, everything booked and thankfully, organized by Tripit (Thank you tripit!) and somehow throughout all of this, the endless Skype chats, the card payments, everything, we managed to forget to organized what happened when Dzl and I arrived by bus from Brisbane to Noosa, and then somehow met with my parents and got to the rental house. We forgot so much that we forgot times, who would meet who, where and everything else. A small detail in the larger picture, but it made for a fun arrival. We had a bus pick us up at Brisbane airport and take us to Noosa. The driver asked where our final destination was and instead of driving us to the central bus depot, drove us instead to an area closer to our 'home' for the week. From there we could take a taxi and drop the price of the taxi by about $10. Nice and thoughtful of him. We realized at this point that we hadn't made arrangements with my parents, only a loosely worded "you can pick us up in Noosa when the bus drops us off" with the general idea that it would take us to central station. So we texted. We called. We hoped. We tried finding the residence phone number. No luck. We asked visitor information, really no help. So then we finally got the taxi and got to the home. We were met by a lovely couple who I thought were the owners but seemed not to know much and it turned out they were other renters. They said my parents had left 10 minutes before to go pick me up. So, in my 'flying pyjamas' which is like a crazy hobo outfit that I wear on long flights to keep me warm and comfy, I hopped back into the cab and went to Noosa central. $50 later, I met my parents, waiting patiently at Noosa central and entirely unsure of when or if I'd turn up. So we made our way back to the house - which was an adventure in itself; a continued theme throughout Noosa as my parents navigated through endless roundabouts by landmarks 'go straight through at the gas station!' 'go to the right, no the other right, at the palm tree' - keeping in mind, there are two problems with that one - Australia is a right hand drive, thus making everything backwards in the driver's mind, and b)there are endless palm trees.

The home itself was great, a huge backyard with a small lake and the most fantastic Kookaburra birds that came up to sit on the balcony and have breakfast with us. Each morning they joined us and waited, slightly impatiently for us to feed them. They seemed to like meat and here it is: an official apology if these birds do not eat meat and we have just released carnivorous Kookaburras on the continent of Australia. We even managed to spot our first kangaroos here, grazing in the garden at the crack of dawn. They paid us no heed whatsoever, yet managed to vanish in an instant (fast, fast creatures) if something in the woods spooked them.

I think the theme of Noosa could be called roundabouts and meatpies. We didn't do much there the first two days except navigate roundabouts in a hunt for meatpies. We had my sister and her wedding party over for lunch, we went over to theirs for dinner, there was lots of eating, and driving. We had a great night at Gary and Jenny's (the in-laws) having dinner, there were about 20 people present and Gary took Dzl and my dad out for a spin in the 'tinny' before everything kicked off. The "tinny" is a little metal speed boat that is ideal for fishing and is Gary's favorite hobby; now also my dad and Dzl's hobby as well. They managed to catch some crabs, though all were female and so they had to be thrown back, but not before Gary dropped one in the tinny to the horror of my dad and Dzl who were wearing bare feet in sandals; I'm happy to report that everyone came out alive, with all 10 toes.. The dinner was fabulous; Jenny amazed us with her cooking and we were introduced to the Australian food we've heard so much about. Lamb skewers, where the skewers are made from stalks of rosemary, steaks, huge, and tasty, giant prawns in lime and lemongrass sauces, avocados with the peels still on in salad, adding a surprising amount of contrast and color where none was anticipated. My mom made a discovery the day before: feeding the wedding party is an acrobatic feat of madness, danger with every dish, and survival of the hungriest. The men are young, strong, fit and hungry, and they devour everything. My mom's carefully prepared beautiful seafood pasta with cream sauce of the day before disappeared in a matter of minutes and so we found ourselves warning Jenny, who laughed, "I've raised three boys" she replied. Fair enough.

An early night led to an early morning as we all prepared for the wedding. We went to my sister's rental house to get ready; a place with an inground swimming pool and a view over the ocean. Not too shabby! All the girls were upstairs and the boys downstairs and we had our makeup and hair done (cheating, since Courtney's maid of honor is a hairdresser) and helped Courtney into her dress. Flying out the door, as weddings are always late, my sister managed to stuff herself in her gigantic (beautiful) dress into the SUV and her with the bridesmaids took off, leaving us in their dust. Herein was the problem - we didn't know where we were going. We were supposed to follow them but never got a chance to. No worries we thought, we've done our homework. We made our way to the surf club, hopped out the car, and couldn't find the wedding. "Where's the wedding?" "What wedding?" "Oh maybe try down there, there will be five roads, one of them will lead to a wedding I'm sure", again, visitor information, not so informative. Finally, after my mom having a near panic attack and us driving up and down the pedestrian filled tourist street, a kind man asked us a vital question "WHICH surf club is the wedding at?" there was more than one. All of our careful homework, visiting the site beforehand, discussing with my sister how pretty it was to be right on the ocean and not realizing we were talking about two different places... useless. We were 15 minutes late to walk the bride down the aisle. After receiving directions from the helpful gentleman "right at the first roundabout, left at the second roundabout, then straight through two roundabouts until you hit the big roundabout..." it was like a riddle. Furthermore we had no one's phone numbers and no one had ours, until thankfully, Gary called and helped us find our way and eventually, the wedding began.

That ... snafu... was luckily the only one as the rest of the event was amazing. A beautiful bride, led down the aisle by her father in his full Scottish regalia, being met by the most handsome husband one could ask for in a tailor made suit, with...get this... WHALES jumping in the background. After the wedding I made a point of going to my sister and saying "You bitch!" "What? why?" "You managed to get whales to jump at your wedding? Come on!" but there they were, right in the background of the ceremony, jumping happily, celebrating her beautiful wedding with everyone there. My dad, in typical dad fashion, was poking my mom and whispered loudly, "look! whales, can you see them, just there, whales are jumping!" to which my mom poked back, much harder I'm sure and hissed "this is your daughter's wedding, pay attention!" "but the whales!" it was perfect.

The wedding was small, only about 30 people; and thus very cosy. Dancing mainly comprised of the bridal party shaking their booty plus a beautiful father-daughter, mother-son dance, and many moving moments between people as they all shared in the atmosphere of love and happiness and proud parents and happy-tears friends.

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