Travel Blog: Australia - finally a place to call our own

21/5/13 - Melbourne

So, we have officially settled for a while here in Melbourne.  It feels like a whole different country to the rest of Australia we have seen so far, starting with the weather! Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have a cold glass of water from the tap rather than the usual luke warm, but it is absolutely freezing here now.  There is actually snow capped mountains a couple of hours away where people go skiing, which I definitely didn't expect of an Australian Winter.

Today, after living in hostels for a whole 4 months, we moved into an apartment and I can hardly contain my excitement. Obviously there are positives and negatives to hostel living; the main good point is the social side, and we have made almost all of our friends in our hostel room/bar/kitchen.  But I'm going to take this opportunity to list all the things I won't miss in a hurry:

• That one weirdo in your room (there's always one)
• Feeling like your bed has been placed slap bang in the middle of a hardcore dancefloor til 3am
• Sharing a kitchen with 200 backpackers. Enough said, uni was bad enough sharing with 4 or 5
• Drunken idiots, 24/7
• Drunken idiots, attempting to have sex in bunk beds
• Hungover idiots, and having to listen to them spew all day

I know that sounds like a lot of moaning, especially towards alcohol, but you really would be surprised at how many people in their mid 20's who just can't handle their drink! I thought I'd meet a lot of younger people in hostels, 18, 19 year olds' but most people have been my age or even a bit older. (Yay!) I just think it's a massive shame to go travelling, spend all your money going out at night then sleeping all day. And SO many people do that. Don't get me wrong I like to go out, I'm not boring, but I didn't come to the other side of the world to do what I can do at home. What's the point? I know if you're travelling alone drinking is the best way to make friends, but make those friends and then do something other than get drunk every night! There is so much to see and do over here and it really frustrates me when I see people wasting their time.

So we're moving onwards and upwards in the sleeping department.   It's a lovely cosy place, modern with a balcony and the most exciting thing, an oven to cook our food in! When an oven is exciting you know you've spent too long in a hostel.  The job front however is not moving anywhere, I'm still doing awful telesales and it's killing me. The last thing I came over here to do, was bother Aussies about switching electricity companies. But I know it's all part of the experience, having to do whatever means possible to earn money to stay travelling for longer. But seriously the amount of stress we are under in that job isn't really worth it, and we're a team made up of 75% backpackers. I'm 3 weeks in now and I think I deserve a medal.

SO that's enough moaning for one day :)

Hopefully my next post will be a bit cheerier, I'll have a well paid bar job and visiting interesting places on my days off. I'll feel like an actual grown up, living in the city in a nice apartment with my boyfriend.  When he's at work I'll have friends round and entertain, like working adults do. That is the plan!

See you there x

Travel Blog: Australia

3rd May 2013 - Melbourne

So here we are, and it is exactly how I imagined.  Except colder.  It feels like a completely different country, which for us Europeans, it is.  It was a 2 and a half hour flight from tropical Cairns in the North, to cool Melbourne in the South.  That is like us boarding a plane in the UK rain, to get to popular sunny destinations such as Spain or Greece.  So on arriving, it did feel like I was coming home.

This city really does resemble my hometown of Manchester.  There is a huge cafe and bar scene, and Melbourne also boasts the largest tram network in the world.  Add in the cooler weather, and you can see why it feels like Northern England.  There are also an abundance of Northerners here - we've met more in our first weeks here than in our entire trip so far.  So this is what conclusion I've come to - Northerners are drawn to Melbourne, for it's cool and quirky style, and Southerners are drawn to the expensive, egotistic Sydney.  One thing Melbourne has over Manchester is its array of culture. There is always something going on, and more often than not it is free.  We arrived in the middle of the International Comedy Festival, which had hundreds of shows around the city every single day.  There is a huge live music scene, especially where we're staying in St Kilda, every single bar has a live act almost every single night.  And I've already seen posters for more film and music festivals coming up for the next few months, so I'm pretty set for reviews! It is easy to see why it has been voted more than once, the most livable city in the world.

Except I'm not too happy about the fact that it is identical to home.  I didn't travel to the other side of the world to feel like I haven't gone anywhere.  But that's the smallest of my problems right now, Melbourne is a great city to settle in for a while.  I am dangerously low on cash, and it seems harder than ever to get a job. It feels like everyone in the world has read the article about this city being the best in the world, and in their millions have descended here.  Thousands of job seekers, all fighting over the small amount of jobs on offer at this time of year.  You know it's bad when all you have to choose from is door to door sales, or nude photography.  I tried one for a week and couldn't carry on; soon I'll have to try the other. (I wish I was joking).

On another note, I've noticed another milestone - I've been away for exactly six months now.  It feels about six days!  I'm definitely having a bit of a low point, having no money to do anything at all, just jobhunting every single day.  There's still so much I want to do - need to see - before I go home.  So now I just have to focus on getting a full time job for a few months so we can get travelling again.

So I'm off to apply for a few more jobs.
Check back soon to see what I am doing for money, and realise that it's not all 'living the dream'...

Travel Blog: Australia

12/4/13 - Cairns - Melbourne

Today we are getting on an aeroplane for the first time in a while.  As finding work in Cairns is proving impossible, we have decided to fly down to Melbourne and try there.  Even though I am very excited to visit this city - I've heard many people say it's their favourite place in the whole of Australia - part of me doesn't want to leave this East coast trip behind.  It feels like the past few weeks have just been a holiday, and now we have to go back to the big city life and work all the time.  And I know this is the point, after all I am on a working holiday visa...but when the holidays have been this good, it makes it a lot harder to go back to work.  But we really haven't got a choice, considering our bank balance.  

It is strange how the different places in Australia can be so completely different.  The big cities can be just as big and daunting as any of the largest European ones, but go just a tiny bit outside of them and it will be incredibly rural and the people will be a lot more chilled out.  This is why there is a part of me that doesn't want to go back to the big city life; I was really enjoying the tiny coastal towns, and the relaxed vibe up the East coast.  I haven't worn make up in a good few weeks, and surprisingly I like it.  (I can't remember the last day at home I didn't put on any make up at all).  I know for a fact I will have to wear it again in Melbourne, and start planning my outfits to be more trendy, because that's just the way it is.  And I just can't be bothered!

But it is time for a new adventure....we have felt a bit lost in Cairns.  It was the finish point for us and all of our friends we had made along the way.  Now we are the only ones left; everyone has travelled to other places or different countries altogether, a few have gone home.  We needed a destination for a new adventure, now the East coast route is officially over. Melbourne it is!

Travel Blog: Australia

9/3/13 - Tablelands Waterfalls

Cairns has so much to see in its region, there's just too much to choose from; Cape Tribulation, Daintree Rainforest, crocodile cruises, rainforest villages, the list goes on.  Of course I'd like to do them all, the only thing stopping me is my budget. We have been job hunting in Cairns but it doesn't seem like there are many jobs around at all.  Granted it is a very small city, and for some reason it feels like all the backpackers in Australia have suddenly gathered here looking for a job.  So as I'm very low on money, I had to do the cheapest tour I could find, which was a tour of the surrounding countryside and waterfalls in the Atherton Tablelands.

And of course, it didn't disappoint!  Walking through millions of years old lush rainforests - which are exactly the same rainforests that dinosaurs walked through - to get to huge, gushing waterfalls which we could take a dip in....I'm not sure how that could disappoint to be honest! One of the waterfalls, Milla Milla Falls is so beautiful that film crews are often there, filming advertisements for shampoo etc.

Although the water was very VERY cold, it was lovely and refreshing.  Another part of the tour took us to places looking for a unique Australian animal, the platypus.  Unfortunately the platypus spotting was unsuccessful, which doesn't surprise me as all Australian wildlife seem to hide from me.  The waterfalls were the highlight of the day though, and the landscapes I will never forget.

Travel Blog: Australia

30/3/13 - The Great Barrier Reef!!

So today we set out on a boat from Cairns, to see one of the natural wonders of the world, The Great Barrier Reef.  And not only were we going to snorkel, we were going to try scuba diving for the first time.  I'm not going to lie I was pretty scared! But there were lots of people doing their first intro dive, and we were going down only 2 people to 1 instructor so it seemed quite safe.

Last night we watched 'Finding Nemo' to get even more excited, so we would have been very disappointed if we didn't find a nemo fish!  Luckily we found quite a few, and they are so tiny.  They also never ever leave that anemone plant!  

The diving experience really was amazing.  It was quite hard to get the hang of breathing underwater, and it is so loud when you breathe out and all the bubbles appear from your face.  But as soon as I'd mastered it, I never wanted to come back up to the surface. It is like entering another world; the whole ocean and its family are suddenly there to play with.  The visibility is great, you can see deep and beyond, and the creatures we seen we could never begin to count.  Apart from millions of types of fish, of all colours imaginable, and lots of different types of multicoloured coral, we also saw an octopus and a turtle! He was just chilling on the floor.  Some people even saw reef sharks too.  Most places on the reef are actually quite shallow too, I imagined the reef life to begin quite deep but it's not the case at all.  When diving we only went around 6-7 metres deep, and we could have touched the coral and seabed if we wanted.  Huge fish and sharks are often in the shallow water just below the surface, and you can see lots of marine life from the boat.  At one point, we could even stand up on the sand in the middle of the ocean.[See 2nd photograph below] We must have spent hours snorkelling and investigating the underwater kingdom, and it just wasn't long enough.  There literally is so much to see on the Great Barrier Reef. It is so huge, that there are lots of different boats that go to lots of different reefs and cays daily.  If I had the money, I'd do them all!

In fact, I think I have got the diving bug.  I am really regretting not doing a PADI dive course in Koh Tao when I was there, as it's probably the cheapest in the world.

Travel Blog: Australia

28/3/13 - Magnetic Island

Magnetic Island is a really beautiful small island off the coast of Townsville, and our hostel was located right on the beach.  It was almost like a resort, if you ignore the part where there were 6 other Irish guys squashed into our non air conditioned room, and the kitchen was infested with huge ants.

Anyways, apart from relaxing and sunbathing in hammocks, there isn't a lot else to do here.  So we decided to go on a hike, as the island is half national park and has lots of wildlife (cough cough koalas!!) So we climbed one of the tracks, called The Forts, and although the views were very rewarding the koalas eluded me again. That's twice we've done a walk and been promised wild koala sightings, and I've been disappointed. However the rock wallabies almost made up for it; a wild colony of rock wallabies, obviously tamed for years, ate straight out of our hands! They were extremely cute and we even saw  little joeys close up popping out of their pouches.

And that's about it for Magnetic Island! We only stayed for 2 days anyway....our last stop, Cairns is next on the agenda. 

Travel blog: Australia

24/3/13 - Airlie Beach/Whitsunday islands

After all the rain recently, we were worried that our sailing trip was also going to get cancelled.  Lucky for us the weather was on our side (sort of) and off we went to live on a boat for 3 days.  A lot of boats that set out to the islands are big party boats - but I didn't really want that setting to see one of the most beautiful places on Earth. You can do a booze cruise anywhere, especially some of the holiday hotspots nearer to home.  I have not travelled to the other side of the world for a booze cruise!

We hopped aboard our boat, 'British Defender' but it wasn't all plain sailing...in fact we set off in very heavy rainfall and had to wear these lovely Paddington bear raincoats.

And as it was only a small sailing boat; 16 passengers and 3 crew, we all had to sit on deck and brave the weather.  Sailing was actually really fun, we got to help out grinding up the sails and swapping sides of the boat when the sail turned.  The boat at times was literally sailing horizontal to the water, and we had to hold on! Then we stopped for the day, and I followed the skipper's orders: Once anchored, get wankered!
OK, so I took it way too literal....

Moving on, the following day we sailed up to Whitsunday island, home to infamous Whitehaven beach. I have tried and failed to describe many beaches, so I'm going to give up.  There was lots of sand, and it was beautiful.  Bright, white silica sand - the whitest in the world.

It was here, on our walk to the lookout that the guide told us to lick ants' bums, as the Aborigines discovered they taste citrusy and added them to food.  I really wanted to try this delicacy, but I was just too hungover.

For the rest of the day we snorkelled in some of the best spots around the islands.  People back home always say to me watch out for the sharks, but it's the jellyfish you have to look out for here.  There are lots of different stingers in these waters, and one sting can kill you.  (Obviously very rare!) It's not even the big ones, it's tiny transparent stingers you can't even see.  So we just wear sexy stinger suits, and pray they won't sting our face, hands or feet!

Just when I started to get my sea-legs it was time to get back on land.  Our trip on the 'British Defender' was such a great experience, the crew were really fun and we met some cool people.  So glad it didn't get cancelled!