Homeward Bound

The last couple weeks have been filled with wonder and intrigue. Let me go back to four Mondays ago. This day was a glorious day for me, as it marked the end of finals. I was in a state of utter bliss. This was bittersweet as it marked the end of my time in Perth, but also the beginning of my “legendary” trip.
I have become acutely aware that I need to learn how to differentiate my academic life from all other aspects of life. As I have done every semester, I allowed my study stress to take over my life and was becoming increasingly irritable and eating a diet guaranteed to cause malnutrition and gastric unpleasantness. And, as always, the moment I finished my finals I felt human again and returned to a state of normality. I actively celebrated my newly acquired freedom with friends and began the process of packing for my trip and saying bye to all I had met in Joondalup.
During this week in the student village there was a sense of bottled angst-filled pressure building up in the village. This was due mostly to the fact that the majority of the students had finished their exams and found that they could not celebrate on account of a noise ordinance being instituted which threatened expulsion from the village for offenders. Some of my friends and I dealt with this by stealth bombing friends (and unlucky bystanders) with water balloons. This proved to be heaps of fun, but did result in some bruised egos. I mostly found myself filling my days with preparation for travel and my nights with fraternizing with friends knowing the end was drawing ever nearer. Friday was definitely the hardest day we all had. This day marked the majority of us leaving. But luckily I was on my way to three weeks of blissful travelling. I was travelling with Raney and Georg, and would be meeting up with Caitlin (Missouri), Heidi (Finland), and Charlotte (France) in Sydney.
I would like to take this moment to talk about my friend Georg. Georg has this fascinating habit of quoting verbatim phrases from television shows constantly with little to know explanation given to their source. His current line of choice was “It is gonna be legendary” used when describing our trip. I had no clue to the source of this phrase but later found that it originated from “How I Met Your Mother.” This habit became a little unnerving when he kept comparing “Lost” (a show which involves a plane crashing into an island) to our upcoming plane ride. It should also be noted that Georg, an Austrian, had taken to using a surprisingly passable Scottish accent, which he picked up from the character Desmond from “Lost.”
Georg had convinced Supan, a mutual acquaintance of ours to drop us off at the airport in the morning. We spent the night before being rather worried that he would not take us. We had noticed that he was spending the night at several of the parties around the area. We asked his friends if he was still planning on taking us and they replied that he was. He showed up on time in the morning but it became apparent that he had thought our trip was in the PM rather than the AM. It was disturbingly easy to board the plane. I was a tad bit taken aback by the fact that absolutely no identification was asked of me at any point to get my ticket and also that security only took 10 minutes. We flew from the Perth airport at 9:05 am and arrived in Brisbane at 2:30 local time.
It was slightly unnerving set ting foot in Brisbane, for several reasons. Firstly, I was struck with the same feeling of being a stranger in a strange land that I had felt when I first came to Perth. Coming to Brisbane I realized that over the last five months I had begun to think of Perth as home. I had gotten so use to all its odd eccentricities that I had stopped noticing them. I asked Georg and Raney about this and they fully agreed with me. Brisbane is definitely vastly different place from Perth as will be explained soon.
There was I believe that there was a certain degree of cockiness amongst us as we entered Brisbane. We had just spent the last five months in Perth and felt that we had become fully accustomed to the ways of Australia. This attitude led us to the feeling that we could be somewhat critical of the other states as we travelled. We no longer felt like the ignorant foreigners commenting on the inadequacies of a culture, but felt that we were seasoned residents who had earned the right to comment on the inadequacies of inferior cities within the country. At least this was how we rationalized our open dislike for much of Brisbane. To begin with we had booked a hostel that turned out to be roughly an hour outside of town. The hostel itself had an odd atmosphere that we were not all too keen on. There was a sense from the other backpackers that we were intruders on some club. When we walked into the common room we would notice that the conversations would abruptly stop and we would receive annoyed looks. It may not have helped that Georg had taken to claiming to be from Charlotte North Carolina after everyone started mistaking his accent for an American one, and then proceeded to make commentary about Europe around Europeans, or referring to Germans as “the diseased.”
But Brisbane had some good qualities, unlike Joondalup, stores were open past five pm, and they had sushi that was not only edible, but cheap at that. I personally enjoyed the art museum in Brisbane which was a fun house of concept art of a mind bending nature. Things that stuck out in my mind were the dark room full of TV screens of people singing Michael Jackson songs in unison in at an almost comically poor level, the realistic wax sculpture of a middle aged woman in bed that was 10 times the size of a real woman, and the statue of a living statue. The statue of the living statue was great because you would go up to it fully expecting the guy to jump out at you, only to realise that it was indeed fake. But as stated before we had some annoyances with Brisbane, and for me the greatest of these was Surfers paradise.
I had been told by a few Australians that had visited America that Queensland was very similar to Florida. I chose not to fully believe this, even though both states are called “the sunshine state.” They were right. When taking the bus to Surfer’s Paradise started to get close to Surfer’s Brisbane I was struck by how similar the area was to Venice. The buildings, the people, the over population of palm trees all said Sarasota county to me. This was cause for much trepidation, especially as we got closer the landscape transformed to that of Tampa and finally Orlando, or rather Kissimee the trashier sister city of Orlando. I have some open hostilities to Florida (my state of residence) that I had hoped to escape by going to the other side of the world, but alas in Queensland you will find a tacky beachside city full of tanned tourists that looks almost identical to Florida. But I cannot say that I completely disliked the place. I did enjoy going to the bar that was made entirely out of ice.
We had one or two odd occurrences happen to us when in Brisbane. The first was when we got into a city bus because the train was down which was driven by a grey haired man who blared modern dance music throughout the bus whilst speeding. And we kept seeing the same homeless man that I had affectionately given the name of wino Santa, who had the peculiar habit of screaming at invisible people. The third was when we were walking on the bridge in Brisbane only to bump into Thomas from our Exmouth trip. He was travelling with his brother and cousin and we were all understandably surprise and of course pleased to see each other. We left Brisbane on Tuesday morning and made our way to Sydney.
Sydney is an all together different experience from any other part of Australia. Because it is so multi cultural it almost felt as though we had left Australia. We came across far more European accents then we did Australian. We stayed in the Blue Parrot Youth Hostel which is the best hostel I have ever been to. It was a breath of fresh air from the rather creepy one we had just left. Among other things (including the just generally amiable people) the hostel supplied free wireless internet. This was a far cry from the first conversation I had in an Australian youth hostel on my first night in Peth which went as follows: “Do you supply WIFI?” I had asked. “What?” the concierge replied, “WIFI” I said, I was met with a blank look “he means wireless internet” said a man standing next to me. “Ah, oh, no we don’t” said a bemused concierge.” So in some ways we had felt that we had returned to the creature comforts of home, but this was undercut by the feeling that we had also left some of the personality that was inherent in the “real” Australia.
On our first day our group of six did the most obvious thing we could think of, we went to the Opera House. The Opera house is a very weird building. A lot of its style comes with how poorly designed it truly was. When we took a tour of the Opera House I was shocked to see the original sketches that had won the competition for that Opera House’s design. They looked as though they had been scratched on the back of a napkin in a bar. They were just an assemblage of scratchy lines going in different directions. More shocking then this was the fact that they had not completed figuring out how they were going to build the Opera House even when they had already gone well under way into construction. Because of its design, neither the opera hall nor the symphony hall are full size, but medium size. The Opera House look quite different up close then it does from afar. The building is not actually white as one would be led to believe from pictures, it is an off yellow and made of thousands of small tiles. Also it looks quite a bit different when not viewed from its iconic angle. I must say though, I love the Opera House, not particularly for its aesthetic but for what is stands for. This like this should not exist. The Opera House is goes against all our expectations of buildings and how they are meant to be built. I applaud the city of Sydney for being willing to invest $30,000,000 into a building that’s design had much of the same visual style of a bored doodle. This is an odd building.
On a “Jesus Christ coincidences are a creepy thing” note; when touring the Opera House we watched a video explaining how the Opera House was being renovated under the guidance of its original Danish designer who was now 90 and had never actually seen his creation. “I bet he is going to snuff it” I said to Raney. “Jeez Ryan that is bad taste. Anyway people live to a hundred nowadays.” He died the next day.
We took a tour of the rain forest that I did not know existed in the Blue Mountains, only 45 minutes outside the city. These were quite breathtaking rock faces home to a vast array of unique creatures and flora. Our tour guide was an Aussie who bore a striking resemblance to Tom Baker (of Doctor Who fame) in both appearance and mannerisms. The area had been used as a coal mines 60 years ago and had no return almost entirely to its original state. I rather felt that I had walked onto the set of Jurassic Park when we were there; the whole area had a primeval feeling.
We spent a good amount of time during our 6 days in Sydney exploring museums and the different areas of the city. Our trip was unfortunately met by grey weather but I all and all we really enjoyed ourselves. Georg and I hit as many shops as we could look for didgeridoos to play to get our fix. We were quite happy to see Aborigines busking at the harbour in traditional garb and wielding didges. As we watched them a middle aged white man walked by muttering under his breath; “getting back at whitey by taking his money.”
On the 1st Georg Raney and I left for New Zealand. We landed in Christchurch at midnight Tuesday and had an interesting event happen shortly after arriving at the hostel. We were all starving and went into town to get food. For an international hub Christchurch proved to be surprisingly small and only offered a one 24 hour convenience store as a source of sustenance in the wee hours of the morning. We loaded up on junk food and sat outside in the completely empty town center to consume our nourishments. As we sat outside reflecting on the fact that this was the first place we felt safe in after leaving Perth a random man road up to us on a bicycle. “Want to by some pot?” he inquired. “No”
I said. “Well what would you like” he said and then proceeded to list off some contraband goods. I tried a different tactic “Sorry we have no money” I said. He looked down at my half eaten chocolate bar. “I’ll take chocolate” he said. “Sorry no” I said. He looked at us as though we were completely insane and biked off. We decided to leave Christchurch first thing in the morning.
That morning we rented a car and made our way to Dunedin, a 6 hour drive from where we Christchurch. The ride took a little longer as we spent 2 hours getting lost. We were driving on the east coast of the south island which is devoid of most of the mountains, fjords, and glaciers famed by the west coast. We spent most of the day driving on farm roads with sheep as far as the eye could see. In our guide book I we discovered that in Dunedin there was a hostel named “Hogwartz,” so of course we had to go there. When we got to Dunedin at 6:30 pm we found that most of the town was closed, including Hogwartz. Georg made the executive decision to drive on till we would hopefully find a hostel of motel. At 11:30 we drove through an area that was just populated enough to be considered a town. There were two motels, one of which read “No Vacancy,” so we chose the other motel. The place bore an unnerving resemblance to Baits motel (minus an eerie building on a hill) which I commented on to the lack of amusement of my friends.
We really lucked out with our room. It was fully furnished with four beds, a kitchen, milk, and a nice bathroom. This was our first taste of private living accommodations in a week, and was markedly nicer than our former accommodations at the student village. Splitting the price three ways we ended up paying the same amount as staying at a youth hostel.
New Zealanders are different from their cousins to the North. The accent is an odd combination of an Australian and Scottish accent. I like the accent but it is the first accent that I have ever truly had trouble understanding. They have a strange way of pronouncing “i’s” as “u’s,” putting –as at the end of words, and saying “bru” (as in brother) at the end of sentences. But beyond the accent there is an odd way in which you really feel that you are in a foreign country here. Even in Australia, with all its eccentricities, I still was able to create a semblance of the place feeling like home. This could be attributable to the fact that as we were road tripping rather than staying in one location, it was impossible for me to come to terms with my surroundings or try to grasp the culture. But nothing really prepares you for the vast array of stunning scenery that fills the country.
We had our first experience with New Zealand’s epic landscape when travelling to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is in the heart of the Fjordlands, an area on the west coast of the south island that is covered in mountains, glaciers, and, of course, fjords. As we drove towards Milford we started seeing mountains of a progressively grander scale. This led to an amusing driving style, as we kept seeing greater and greater mountains which we had to stop at and take photos of. Eventually the landscape hit a breathtaking level of grandness that we felt could not possibly be surpassed. I had Georg stop the car so I could go out and walk on the snow (in my flip-flops) as I had not seen snow in four years. Raney and I walked out to the mountain Georg stayed behind and struck up a conversation with a Scottish gentleman. “It is pretty beautiful” Georg remarked. “Just wait” replied the Scotsman. We discovered what the he was talking about when we passed through an unlit tunnel and came out to see a mass of stunning mountains that were so breathtaking that I find it hard to describe. The only way I can describe it is to say that you get the sense that Peter Jackson had to tone down the locations when he used them in Lord of the Rings.
Milford is located in the middle of nowhere at and comes to an abrupt dead end the moment you eventfully see any signs of humanity. We drove to the only hotel in Milford, where we were met by a surly old lady who told us in a rather patronizing manner that the hotel was fully booked and that Milford sound was part of “world heritage.” She suggested that we try the backpackers with the words “where you belong” being strongly hinted at. The backpackers proved to be a charming place (albeit on the expensive side). We were lucky to find that our roommates (despite being strung out hippies and hitchhikers) were not the uptight and uncomfortable sort we had grown accustomed to.
The next morning we took a ferry tour through Milford and were in even more awe of its grandeur. Despite the fact that it was freezing cold outside with heavy wind we stood in the front of the ship to take in as much of our surroundings as we could. It had rained earlier that morning which made the fjords look that much more beautiful as water cascaded down them. We were made even colder when the boat went under a waterfall soaking us to the bone.
We eventually took leave of Milford Sound and made our way to Queenstown, a 6 hour drive away. Queenstown is the only relatively major tourist hub of the south island. Its major attractions are of the thrill seeking sort. You cannot go anywhere in Queenstown without being seeing signs for skydiving, bungy jumping, off road four wheeling, and jet boating. Unfortunately I had booked both the skydiving and bungy jumping for Auckland, thinking that we would not be stopping in Queenstown. Of Queenstown’s big attractions is the world’s highest bungy jump, with a free fall of eight seconds.
When we got to the motel Georg asked the gentleman at the front desk “So do you know of any places here where we can take a Lord of the Rings tour?” The man looked slightly weary of this question and said (pointing at a wall of pamphlets) “well you can take one of ‘these’ tours” he said discouragingly, “but the will just take you out into a bunch of hills and show you what it looked like when Peter Jackson mixed it all together to look the way it did in the movie.” “If you want to have a really good time and still see a Lord of the Rings site I would recommend this jet boating trip.” As he started giving his pitch I began to read the front page article of the news paper they were selling. It read; “A Jet Boats Fatal Left Turn: if Only They Had Turned Right.” Georg booked us for the next morning. Raney decided that she needed to catch up on her sleep so left us to trip on our own the next morning.
The most terrifying part of the whole trip was the drive there. The location is located on the other side of an array of mountains with very vertical cliff edges. The road was just barely large enough for one car which made it all that much scarier when people would pass us and vis versa. Our driver was amiable though had a rather patronizing manner of talking to the Asian couple on the excursion that boarderd on racist. This was exemplified when he was telling the couple how much to the trip cost and he said “It is twenty DOLLA.” The boat ride itself was disappointingly short, though I immediately understood the headline of the aforementioned newspaper. We were sounded by jagged cliff faces and very narrow turns often with only a few inches of water underneath us.
We went to go get Raney and began our breakneck journey to the north island. We had roughly 12 hours of driving ahead of us a ferry ride to the north island at 1 pm. I never get car sick, but after 12 hours of the car going up and down, up and down, and no real breaks, I really began to feel ill. When we got into town it was 3am and no accommodations were open. Raney made the executive decision of taking the 4:30am ferry. We got in at 8:30am, found a hotel, and spent the rest of the day sleeping. We began travelling the next day to where Georg thought Hobbiton was (another filming location from the Lord of the Rings). Sadly the travel guide we were using was horribly inaccurate in its writing and we ended up on a dirt road in the middle of the countryside only to have the battery of our car die. We were in luck that by happenstance a local art exhibition was taking place just by where we broke down and we got the car jump started. We were also told how Hobbiton was located on the other side of the island. So we continued driving. We stopped for the day three hours south of Auckland and forty five minutes north of Hobbiton. This was the same day that I was meant to go bungy jumping, so Georg convinced me to reschedule my tri p for the next day... the same day as the skydiving.
That night when driving to a motel we were pulled over. This was a bit of a white knuckle moment, though we had not been driving at all over the speed limit or erratically. The officer asked us where we got the car and we explained that we got it from Jucy Rental. The officer then proceeded to go around the car on his knees checking the tires for us. “Pardon my French” he said “but Jucy is a crappy service.” “As dodgy as they come.” “They have been known to switch their tires around so that you can’t see how worn they are.” He then very kindly sent us on our way.
Hobbiton is an odd place. It is the only location in New Zealand that contains any remnants of a set from the shooting of The Lord of the Rings. As the name would imply the area is where the hobbit scenes from the opening of the first movie were shot. It is located in the middle of a sheep farm and contains 17 hobbit holes. The only reason these still exist is because bad weather prevented the crew from taking them all down. The owners of the land have set up a very lucrative tour of the area which is what the three of us went on. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone seeking to know more about the making of LOTR then any sane person should want to know. Our tour seemed to have a limitless knowledge of the film that took on an almost surreal nature. The tour was entertaining, albeit rather on the geeky side. At one point our tour guide told us of a seven foot tall German who came on the tour first thing in the morning dressed as Frodo. When the tour was over he was so emotional he almost broke into tears saying “this is my home!” “This is where I am meant to be!” The guides decided to let him stay for the day, during which he was found dancing around the “dancing tree” and hiding in the hobbit holes until at the end of the day he was eventually talked into leaving. At the end of the tour there was a sheep shearing demonstration in which we were shown exactly how sheep are sheared and were then given bottles of milk with which to feed the lambs.
I am noticing as I write that I keep starting each paragraph with something on the lines of “and from there we began driving to...” this is simply because we were pretty much driving all the time. And so from there we began our drive to Auckland. Georg was gunho on us going to the 95 mile island which got us lost in the middle of the country about an hour north of Auckland. We finally found backpackers at 11:30pm and got up the next morning for my bungy jump. We found ourselves stuck in traffic and then got ourselves completely lost going in a giant circle around the bridge. This was rather depressing as the weather was bad and it looked as though skydiving would be cancelled and on top of that I had now missed bungy jumping. But luckily the people at AJ Hackett were very understanding an allowed me to rebook the jump. I went to the bridge and got kitted up to jump. The people working at the site had a very morbid sense of humour and would answer questions about fatalities with responses like “well while it hasn’t happened yet here... there is a first time for everything.” So we were taken under the bridge to a secret lair of sort that was positioned in the middle of the bridge. The area was fully kitted out with a sound system, video cameras, and a motorised door. I was given the run down on safety, asked if I wanted to touch the water (to which I heartily said yes to), and told to jump on the count of five. It was so odd jumping like that. It was only when I was half way down that I realised “holy crap I am actually falling.” It was a very intense feeling. My hands grazed the water and I bounced several times before I pulled the release and was hoisted up. The guy running it asked me if I would like to go again for only $60 ($35 US), I said yes and he said “And this time you are going to do it backwards.” SO I found myself dangling backwards off the edge of the bridge being held by my guide. He said he would let go of the chord at the count of five. My jump went like this “five, four-““what the- AAHHHHHH!” This time my head went completely under.
We walked through Auckland for awhile and made our way back the backpackers to prepare for our flight to Melbourne in the morning. We woke up at 1am and got into Melbourne at 8:30am. We toured the city going to the Eureka Skyscraper, a film museum and finally going to see the film “Australia” (mostly so that we could say that we say “Australia” in Australia). The next day we toured the city some more. I was to leave for the Airport at 7pm. It was sad saying bye to Raney and Georg; I had done so much with them the last five months that is was unreal to think that it was all coming to an end. But to an end it came and now I am on an airplane somewhere over the Middle East, with about 30 hours till I get home.