melbourne

so here was are in melbourne. thank you everyone for telling us what an amazing city this is because it really is. as for an update on sams mouth, she is doing fine. i quick trip to the dentist told us that it was a freak thing that happened. she is almost done taking her weeks worth of drugs and everything is clearing up nicely.

i have to say that she wouldnt be doing so well if we werent staying in the best place ever. our boy bori, that we met on the whitsundays sailing trip, has been the best host ever. we arrived at his house with only 1 day notice and are camping out here for the following 11 days. now that is a great guy to let strangers into his house for more than a week. but we love him for it. he been letting up hang around his house, watch his tv and eat his food. the thing is, is that when we called bori, he had just been recovering from a nose and throat operation, so we arrived and the poor guy had been on the couch for the past 6 days and here we come trudging thru his house with out packs and our dirty clothes. but he has been the best about it. driving us around town and cooking us dinner.

we are going into the city today to buy some tickets to a show, anyone we can get for 1/2 off, so we can do something different tonight. all we have been doing is sitting in front of the tv and going to bed at 10. quite sad if you ask me. well, ill update you all later to let you know what show we went to.

oh, is the bird flew epidemic just as big in the states as it is in australia?

So, you want to travel the world?

The next time someone tells me their grand plans to travel the world, I'm going to look them square in the eye and ask them if they're ready for their health to go to shit. Because it will. Backpackers have more health problems than anyone I've ever known. I had a lovely time joining the "health has gone to shit" backpacker group last night when Jen and I took a trip to the 24 hour medical center. Fortunately, we got there at 11:15 and prices shoot up at 11:00. After 30 minutes of waivering between thinking I had to see the doctor and I could wait, my name was called, and I decided I had to see the doctor. Turns out I've been blessed with an infection in my mouth, an $80 doctor bill, a $50 pharmacy bill, and I have to see a dentist. I suppose I can't complain too much about the cost. It would have been heaps more in the states. This was all just dandy considering it was 6 hours before our flight to Melbourne. Anything to make a flight more enjoyable. But we've made it to Melbourne, and my painkillers are working. Now we're off to find some soup and go to good ol' Boris's place (we'll be sickies together). Boris you are our saviour.

On a brighter note, Melbourne seems like a lovely city, and Jen's head is pretty much back to normal. Also, I think things must start going up from here. I'm holding onto the idea that we're going to get to New Zealand and be perfectly healthy little bunnies.

Wallaby family

Wallaby family
Originally uploaded by Sam+Jen.

Quick Update

First off, we just posted a couple hundred new photos. You should all go take a look and see what you could be doing instead of working. I garuantee it will make you want to quit, no matter how much you like your job. There's a link to our photo page on the side.

We did a 3 day sailing trip around the Whitsundays, which is a cluster of 70 islands, a week ago. My first 3 hours on the boat I spent clutching the side and cursing myself for getting on a boat for that long of a time. I thought for sure I'd spend most of the time with my head over the side. But alas, I was okay. We stopped for a snorkel and after that I was just dandy. I was however as conservative as can be with the goon at night. The last thing I wanted to experience was a combination sea-sickness-hang-0ver. That would be bad news. The trip was great. We had clear weather, pretty snorkeling and made some great friends. The trip concluded with an after party at the trashiest bar in Airlie Beach, Magnums. It was Wet T-shirt night if that gives you any clue.

**Fun fact: Australia has these crazy ants with green butts that are filled with citric acid. We licked their bums and tasted it ourselves. They'll bite you, which doesn't hurt too much, but then they'll squirt citric acid over the bite. So mean.

We've spent the last week at Mission Beach recovering from the sailing trip. Jen's body recovered quickly, but her head just didn't get the concept. 5 days later and it still thinks it's asea. To the doctor we went. The doctor she got was much better than mine. He actually seemed to know what's wrong, and she should be on the road to recovery. As a result of her continued sea-sickness we got 5 days lazing in the rainforest poolside. Life as a backpacker is hard. We did have one outing to the Bicton Hill walking track. It was a short walk, only 3.9 km, but it was well worth it. We spotted a cassowary about 1 km in. I'll post a picture of a cassowary, but I can tell you it's sort of like a cross between a turkey and an emu, but more like the emu. They can stand as tall as us and the grown ups have a crazy blue and red neck. When we saw it, we couldn't remember what all the signs told us to do. We froze, took some pictures and decided to walk to the beginning of the track and read the sign. It's a good thing we did. Apparently they can be pretty aggressive towards people if they feel at all threatened. Good decision made on our part. We ended up seeing an adolescent cassowary and another adult cassowary back at the hostel too. They are pretty crazy. Jen also saw a family of wallabies early this morning. While I'm sad that I didn't get to see the wallabies, I was pretty content in my sleeping bag.

And now we're off to Cairns. We'll only be there 2 days, but people say that'll be more than enough. On the 20th we're flying to Melbourne. We have another WWOOF host outside of Melbourne, we'll go to Melbourne for 6 days and stay with a new friend from the sailing trip, and then we're off to New Zealand.

Fraser Island (and other heaps of new reading material)

Fraser Island is one of those places that everyone says you have to go to. So, we were hesitant about going to Fraser Island, but we got sucked into. We just finished a self-drive 4WD tour of the island with a group of 11. They company basically gave us a car without almost no instruction on how to drive it and waved us off. We wrote down our drivers license number, but they never even checked to see if we actually had one. Right... they're crazy. Once we were on the island we learned that Koala, the company we went through, had the most accidents of any self-drive company. Great. We also learned that because of all the accidents, self-drive tours would no longer be legal after this year. Alrighty. Good thing we squeezed it in. Just in time.

Fraser Island was truly amazing. We didn't roll our truck over. Perhaps that had something to do with Jen and I not driving... Fortunately, we'll never know. We had one great experienced driver in our group, Shep, who absolutely saved our asses time and time again. The entire island is sand and the inland road were crazy! Everywhere you'd go, someone was bound to get stuck in front of you. Everyone is a good sport on the island though. You can always find groups of people pushing cars out of the holes they've dug. There was one particular group, nicknamed the Crazy Asians, that were truly crazy and helped everyone. You see, you're not supposed to pull anybody with your truck or you'll lose your bond. These guys were pulling everybody and you found them pushing their truck time and time again. The best part was watching them all pile back into the moving truck, sort of like a reverse clown car. Good fun. The lucky bums we are, we only got stuck a few times and were able to get ourselves out without much trouble.

The lakes on Fraser Island were beautiful. I've never seen anything like them. Completely clear water and white sand. If you couldn't see the other side, it'd look like a brochure of Hawaii or the Carribean. Just amazing. We could have swam in them for days.

We camped on the beach at night, which had its ups and downs. You couldn't pee alone, because of fear of dingos. Lots of stories of dingos biting your bum and such. The first night of camping was great. We camped with two other trucks, drank ourselves silly and slept like babies. The second night was a different story. The day was a bit more exhausting and it was incredibly windy. This meant that the spaghetti we cooked had a crunch to it and it was impossible to keep the sand out of our tents. All night long the tent was blowing up against us and sending the sand inside flying around. Nothing like a thin coat of sand all over your body when you wake up. Had we known that it was going to be like that, we might have waited to drink ourselves silly on the second night.

Overall the trip was wonderful and our group was amazing. We made it out alive and without a single fight, which is a lot more than the other groups. And next on the agenda is a Whitsundays sailing trip for 3 days and 2 nights. It'll be a nice change of pace. Instead of cooking crunchy spaghetti and doing dishes in the sea, somebody will give us food and clean up after us. Wonderful, just what I need.

Hope all is well in the states. We'd love to hear what everybody is up to these days. Jump in a pile of leaves for us.

brian diggin right in

brian diggin right in
Originally uploaded by Sam+Jen.

This guy was a master. The sheep were pissed, but I'm sure after a few days (which they spent angrily "bah"ing at us) they'll be happy. As long as they don't sunburn...

work in progress

work in progress
Originally uploaded by Sam+Jen.

Those stones are heavier than they look. The wall when it was finished looked amazing. We'll be charging a very large fee to build walls like this when we get back to the states.

Stone walls and sheepies

Our hosts at Gypsy Acres, Michael and Renate, were amazing. They were both hippies working on their land, smoking and being happy as can be. Our work was to build a stone wall, not an easy task. We spent our days lugging huge rocks and shovelling dirt. You should see our arms now, they are amazing.

Our other task, which happened by pure chance was to help with the shearing of the sheep. Now, this is something we'd been wanting to do. Big stars have gone next to all of the WWOOF hosts that have sheep. Gypsy Acres didn't even mention their sheep in their listing, so it must have been in the stars. Renate, who is a crazy German woman with bucketloads of stories, has all of their animals named and calls the sheeps sheepies, which is great fun. Sheep shearing day is a big big deal, even though there are only 21 sheepies. They get rounded up and put in a blocked offpart of the paddock to wait for their haircuts. Jen and Michael had the mad jobs of catching the sheep and getting them to Brian, the shearer. Let me tell you, this is no easy task. Michael was doing some tumbling, there was some mild tackling and everybody's hands were well moisturized with lanolin. My job was the gate keeper to make sure only one sheep got out and not the whole flock. My other exciting job was to sort all of the dirty wool out of the clean wool. Nasty, nasty, nasty. I now have a wonderful appreciation for the wool I knit with. This was one of coolest experiences thus far.

In conclusion, the names of the animals I can remember: Phillip- green frog who lives in a pipe and really loves a good scratch on the head, Tony- toad that lives outside the studio, Rulla- wonderful dog that happens to be half dingo, Puglsy- a skittish cat that is afraid of people (thank god), the Kenny family- family of magpies that are always around, Henrietta and Maggie- chooks that weren't terribly exciting, and the sheepies: Fritz, Fat Freddy, Gertrude, Lisa, Alex, Maxell, Matthew and anybody else I would have to consult with Renate as Michael can't really get them straight.