A Fair-ly Pleasant Outing

I have professed my love for the North Dakota State Fair here before, and to this day it remains one of my favorite things on planet earth, even though I sadly haven't been in 3 years.  So when I heard that Brisbane has a similar event - and that there is a public holiday off work so people can go - I said "I totes gotta go to that".

This state fair-esque event is called Ekka or The Ekka, I haven't really figured out which is correct, nor what "Ekka" means.  To me it means gorging on deep fried foods:

   
Seeing livestock:

And wishing I wasn't to big/old/heavy for awesome carnival rides:

I planned every single little thing I wanted to do/see/experience/eat for our day at Ekka down to the minute (almost).  Why so anal, you ask?  Because at $26 per person admission, I ain't ever going again.  I love a fair - any fair, but not $26-per-person love.  That is insanity!  For comparison, an adult 1-day admission to the North Dakota State Fair (henceforth known as NDSF) costs $8.  One third! 

There are a few things that Ekka offers visitors that the NDSF does not:

1. Birthing animals

However many months it takes a sheep to gestate ago, they knocked up a bunch of sheep so they can give birth on display at Ekka.  I can imagine nothing more horrific for a birthing mother of any species, but man is it fun/gross entertainment!  They call it the Little Miracles Newborn Corner but I call it "What is that gross red sack hanging out of that sheep?"  We didn't see an actual birth but the little guy in this picture is probably less than an hour old.  Behind glass, for all the world to see, from the very moment he entered this world.

2. Fairy floss

"Fairy floss" is just another term for cotton candy.  While I think the Australian word is much, much better, I find the fact that it's pre-made in a bucket (a bucket for crying out loud), and not spun fresh on a cone is revolting.

3. Show bags

I had ever heard the term "show bag" before I got here, but it's apparently a huge part of an Australian childhood.  A show bag is a...bag...of crap, bought at events such as Ekka.  The week before Ekka the newspaper published a show bag guide, 4 whole pages, listing all the bags that were available for sale - literally hundreds at different price points - and the exact contents of each and their retail value.

The main ingredients in each bag were candy, dinky little toys, comic books and crap of that nature, hence why kids love them so much.  I was tempted to buy a candy or Oreo show bag, but I resisted the temptation since I had a bridesmaid to fit in to in a mere 2 months.

4. Carnies who are respectable people

I don't have a picture to back this one up, but the carnie situation in Australia is way, way different than anything I've ever seen at the NDSF.  The carnival workers operating the rides and games had - brace yourselves for a shock - teeth.

At the NDSF they have always been the skeeziest dregs of society, chain smoking, unbathed, foul mouthed no-doubt-about-it ex-convicts.  But here in Australia a lot of them were young Asian women with - I still can't believe it - a full set of teeth.  Unbelievable! 

5. Wood chopping competitions

This was so cool!  I had always seen wood chopping competitions on ESPN and that outdoors-y TV network in the US but I've never seen it done in real life.  Man, is it intense!  These guys are crazy buff and put so much muscle in to chop chop chopping various pieces of wood.

My hat is off to anybody who can chop through several logs in mere minutes, as I know it would take me untold hours and endless bitching to chop through even one.  I was scared they were going to chop their foot off with those crazy flying axes, but all limbs survived the day and I got to squeeze out a few semi-inappropriate lumberjack jokes.

As for similarities between Ekka and the NDSF, there were a disproportionate number of people of a wide girth, a.k.a. fatties, compared to what I see in everyday life but nowhere near as many as the NDSF.  Not even a tenth compared to the NDSF.

There was ample odor of animal dung, which didn't phase me at all.  When we were in the poultry barn (and you know how much worse poultry shit smells compared to other species, or at least you do now if you're city folk) Martin's eyes were burning and watering while I could literally hardly smell a thing.  I do not claim to be country folk but I have spent more time around the scents of the barnyard compared to most city people.  I'm going to admit it right here, right now: I love the smell of animal shit.

Ok, I don't love it, love it but it does bring back a lot of good childhood (and beyond) memories.  I love it in this type of fair setting, not in everyday life.  It doesn't phase me and is comforting.  So I love the smell of manure...sue me!

Ekka was awesome, and I loved every minute of it.  But I won't be back, for a few reasons: 1) The ridiculous admission price, and similarly ridiculous price of, well, everything there. 2) When I have a mid-week public holiday I damn well am going to spend it in bed and on the couch. 3) It's no NDSF.  It tries, and it almost succeeds, but it fails.  Ekka is no glorious, glorious NDSF.

I will leave you with some pictures of ducks with hilarious feather hats:

How hilarious and awesome are those?!

Fun with Groupon

Australia, like the rest of the western world, has embraced Groupon and its many, many copycats.  Being an avid user of daily deals sites in Edinburgh out of necessity (when I was a po' grad student) I brought that habit with me to Brisbane.  I found a day tour of the nearby Mount Tamborine and was sold by the words "wine tasting included".

The day started us off at a historical village, which had old timey homes and shops staged as they were "back in the day" (1920's I think).  There were also plenty of old timey cars, which confirmed my suspicion that this is the most perfect place on earth for my dad.  Or any dad, really.  It was a place for dads.  The highlight for me was this sign nearby, outside of the village:

Honey Boo Boo has apparently made her way Down Under.

Then we got to Tamborine Mountain, which we have visited briefly before, and did some jungle walking to this amazing waterfall, Curtis Falls:

We then stopped at a little tourist mountain town for lunch.  It reminded me of Nimbin, without all the dirty, dirty hippies and availability of drugs for purchase.  The idea was the same, though: Rope in the day trippers and take their dolla dolla billz.

There were a million and one fudge shops in town (I shan't complain about that!) and this one had booze-inside-of-fudge.  Sounds like something I'd love, eh?  Well, no.  Bleh, not at all.  I hate sweets and booze together.  It's just an unholy union.  Sweets?  Good.  Booze?  Great.  Booze-in-sweets?  Nasty crap.  I showed the utmost restraint and bought a single piece of fudge to share - Jaffa flavoured (British spelling there because I don't imagine Americans will know what that is, those poor, poor bastards). 

After lunch we had the option to visit a glow worm cave.  Glow Worm, you say?

No, not that kind.  This kind:

Real bugs glow worms.  I had no idea these were a real thing until I moved to Australia.  Apparently they are quite endangered because of loss of habitat, so the cave we went into is an artificial habitat that grows glow worms to release them into the wild.  The ones we saw weren't on a string like this, but plastered all over the cave ceiling and walls.  It was pitch black in there and looked like a starry night sky.  Nature = very cool.

Once we put in our concerned-about-nature time it was time for our wine tasting.  Woo hoo!  Booze without sweets!  There's not much I can say besides Wine Kicks Ass, and we enjoyed tasting several different kinds that are grown right on site.  However I did learn one very disturbing fact during our wine tasting: Bailey's Irish Creme, perfect coffee mixer, breakfast of champions, is made of like half raw eggs.  Raw eggs.  Half.  Eew.  Keep that shit refrigerated, people.  I had no idea.

Sneaky geniuses they are, they fed us a little booze for free then took us to a bar with infinite booze available for purchase.  The guise was "look at these beautiful views off the mountain" (which it was) but this bar had one interesting catch: It used to be owned by Mel Gibson.  Crazy, Jew-hating, drunk driving Mel Gibson.  I often forget that he is Australian as I don't think I've ever heard him speak with an Aussie accent.  I feel the same way about Julian Assange, but mainly because I've never heard him speak.  Clandestine Australians are all around you, people, so hide yo' kids!

The Passion of the Douche hasn't lived at this place since his Mad Max days, but I think it rides on that legacy quite a bit.  The indoor bar area used to be his indoor pool:

Speaking of Mad Max, I've never seen it.  It's set in a post-apocalyptic time so I am guaranteed to like it.  This is just one of several Australian movies that I've never seen but really, really need to if I ever hope to fit in here.  The other movies include Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert (from what I understand an Aussie version of To Wong Foo, which happens to be one of my favorite movies ever) and The Castle, which my boss quotes from weekly.  Feel free to leave me names of other Aussie films I shouldn't miss!

The other Groupon-esque deal that I took advantage of was nothing short of an epic, epic fail.  Entirely my fault, not the fault of the deal site or the business.  I'm embarrassed to even admit this, but I feel like I have two choices: Make light of the situation or feel like a complete jackass.  Since I have some wine in me (to recover from the following incident), I shall choose the former.

In Brisbane there is a rock cliff that has been cleverly utilized by a company called Riverlife, which offers various outdoorsy activities like kayaking, stand-up paddle boarding, roller blading, rock climbing, etc.  I found a deal for $19 for an activity and browsing through their list of activities I found "abseiling", which is what the Australians call rappelling.  In any language, this means climbing your ass down a 90° rock wall.

My up-for-any-adventure Canadian friends were down for some reverse-mountain climbing, so we bought the deal.  "I will abseil," I said to myself.  "I will be active and outdoorsy."

Spoiler alert: I did not abseil.

The day started really great.  Sporty clothes!  Helmets!  A harness you wear like a diaper!  It was perfection.

Until it was my turn to go.  I was the third of the four of us to go down, and the two before me went like champs.  But I made one fatal, fatal mistake.  I looked down.

The hardest part of abseiling/rappelling is getting over the edge.  Mainly because it's awkward and there's no defined place to put your feet.  I was all hooked up, with my butt hanging over the edge of the 55 foot cliff, and I as I was searching for a place to put my feet I saw how far down 55 feet actually is.

And I freaked.

Well, I didn't.  My body did.  My legs started shaking so hard that one of the girls who went before me could see them shaking from below.  I don't know how my legs even kept me up at that point, they were not functioning at all.  I knew then that I couldn't do it.  I physically couldn't do it.

My heart was beating out of my chest, and my hearing was fading rapidly, even though the instructor, a hilarious Crocodile Dundee-esque caricature, was right beside me.  Here is a shot of me publicly making a fool of myself:

Had I been brave/stupid enough to follow through I suspect I would have lost consciousness.  Please keep in mind this abseiling business was all my idea in the first place.

I am so ashamed.

I got unhooked and got to a safe distance from the edge, but my legs took forever to recover from the shock.  I couldn't stand up without leaning on something for a long time.  Hours later I could still feel something off with my legs.  It was so embarrassing.  There were over 20 people abseiling that day, and some of them went down slowly, but none of them made a scene (like me) and none of them chickened out (like me).

I bring shame and dishonor upon my family.  But at least I didn't pay full price!

Signed,

Chicken Shit

A Whale of a Time

Who got a job and abandoned her blog?  That would be moi!

Apologies for sucking at keeping you up to date about my goings on, and I will be better in the future.  I spent the first month of my job absolutely slammed, but life is [back to] normal now so I should have the mental energy to write my thoughts on the interwebz.

First order of business: My job.  OMG, it's amazing.  Ah-may-zing.  It's like the job was tailor made for me.  It is so good!  And ::buffs nails on shirt:: I am good at it!  Two students have explicitly commented on how I'm doing a really good job in such a short amount of time and my boss has said the same.  I remain so grateful for this job and, really, errrything.

Now on to the good stuff!

When we did our tour of Fraser Island we met two girls on our tour whose story is remarkably similar to ours.  They moved to Australia for 2 years for work (at the 2 biggest competitors of Martin's company, no less) a month before we did.  Both are Canadian and I don't even need to explain my feelings about them.  I've never met a Canadian I didn't LOVE!

Many of our other tour mates were skanky 19-year-olds so I consider it fate that we were on the same tour.  Alas, our first Aussie friendship was born!  And most importantly, travel partners were found!

Shortly after we vetted each other as viable friends and not-serial-killers, one of the girls bought a car.  For us that means hitching rides to awesome destinations!  In the last month we have hit up several sweet destinations with the Canadians, in a car affectionately named Snowflake, that legit has this sticker on the back window:

First stop: Byron Bay, New South Wales:

As you can see, it is the most easterly point of the Australian mainland.  Take a good look at this picture because there wasn't many others taken that rainy, cold, miserable weekend.  We were lucky to get decent weather on our first afternoon so we were able to hike up to the famed lighthouse of Byron Bay:

The view from the lookout point was supposed to be ideal for spotting migrating whales but we saw no such thing.  The official whale season started early this year, end of May, but in the second week of June there were none to be seen from this aerial view.  No matter, we planned to take a whale watching boat tour later that weekend.

Yeah, no.  Remember that rainy/cold/miserable part?  That prevented us from going on a whale watching tour.  Or a sea kayaking trip.  Or doing almost every freaking thing outside of cooking in our apartment.  However there was one activity we were able to participate in despite the crappy weather.  Hippie watching!

Second stop, Nimbin, New South Wales

The history of the town of Nimbin is an interesting one.  Back in the 60's (or whenever) there was a hippie dippy music festival in the area.  Then the hippies never left.  The end.

It's an hour and a half drive from Byron Bay, up unmarked mountain roads.  It's a pretty big tourist attraction, especially for those who appreciate herb.  Nimbin is a great place to acquire herb, if you so choose.  Martin was offered some weed from a friendly fellow on the street, to which he replied "Nah, I'm good."  So we did not bring home any smokeable souvenirs.

I found this sign outside of a convenience store particularly hilarious:

In this town, whoever came up with that sign is nothing short of a marketing genius!  Our day trip to Nimbin only reinforced my hatred of/complete jealously of the hippie lifestyle.

Third stop: Springbrook National Park

Quite near Lamington National Park, where we had gone before, is another national park called Springbrook National Park.  The Canadian girls and I (not Martin, he was in far more exotic locations at the time) took a short hike to the Natural Arch, which is basically a river that has broken through the ground and formed a waterfall.

To see scenic mountain views, we had a multitude of lookout points to choose from, and decided we only needed to see one.  We decided to go to the one that was literally called Best of All Lookout because with a name like that, how could others compete?  What an amazing choice we made:

"An impressive outlook", "Best of All" my ass!  You couldn't see 10 feet!  It was actually hard to look at because it was so bright and overbearing.  We had a good chuckle about it and high tailed it out of there because it was freezing!  Probably 40 degrees, because this lookout was literally in the clouds.  You could tell it was wet up there 24/7 because every surface of the forest was covered in moss.

It was the wildest and coolest forest I have ever seen, so the bust of a lookout was totally worth the trip for the cool forest.  I entertained myself by telling passersby on the trail "Best of All my ass".  

Keeping it classy, as always.

Fourth stop: Darwin, Northern Territories

For 2 weeks, Martin was in Darwin for work.  I really, really, really (really, really) wanted to go but the only weekend he was up there was a weekend I had to work.  Oh the trials and tribulations of being employed.

We're both hoping he goes back again sometime, because that place sounds downright awesome.  He saw crocks at a crocodile park:

Took a tour in an amphibious bus, that could both drive on land and float on water:

And, of course, drank copious amounts of alcohol with his colleagues.  Which segues nicely to my next point.

Fifth stop: Ernst & Young Winter Ball

I had never had access to a free photo booth before, much less after a few bottles of wine.  Holy crap was it fun!  I see why people have them at their wedding!

Additionally, I had never been to a corporate event before.  In Norway, spouses weren't ever invited.  Here in Oz, if your spouse pays, they can come. It was so worth it!  There was a mechanical bull (did not try) and an adult-sized bouncy house (did try; kicked ass).  Martin even rented a tux!  It felt like prom all over again.  Really awesome; I can't wait to go again next year.  I'm glad it only happens once per year because my liver will need that long to regenerate.

A few pre-ball sunset shots of our fine city:

Sixth stop: Whale watching

My previous attempts at whale watching have been thwarted by weather not once, not twice, but three times before (in Hawaii, Scotland and Byron Bay)!  I thought I was cursed and destined never to see a whale, and a faulty boat engine on this tour damn near solidified that fact.  However the engine was replaced and we were off to the open ocean to search for whales, glorious whales!

  
It was amazing.  Nay, totally amazing.  By law, we couldn't get too close to the whales but if they came close to us, well, you can't very well stop nature.

At first we found a pod of 2 whales that didn't do much besides come up to breathe (and shoot water out of their blow holes) every 5 minutes.  Don't get me wrong, it was still cool though.  Then in the distance we saw a pair of whales jumping their entire bodies out of the water (called breaching) so we went and chased them.  By the time we got closer they weren't as active with the acrobatics, but they did flash us their tails a bunch of times as they dove downwards.

It's dang hard to get a picture of a whale, since they come up unexpectedly and in different places.  We were lucky to have gotten the shots we did!  Right now the whales (humpbacks, by the way) are traveling north to give birth in the warm waters of the Whitsundays.  Later this year they'll be migrating back south with their babies, so I totes plan to go again so I can spot some adorable whale babies!

Stay tuned for more travel updates brought to you by Mike Hunt!

Weekending

While on the bus back from our weekend in Fraser Island, I was reading the in"flight" magazine (yes, Greyhound has that!) and saw an ad for a Holiday & Travel Show that was coming up.  As if that doesn't sound awesome enough, entrance to this fair was free!

As we are here, a gazillion miles from everybody and everything, for pretty much the sole purpose of traveling, of course we couldn't miss it!  New Zealand being a main travel priority, it was lucky for us that Australia's neighbors to the east had monopolized roughly half of the convention center.  This pretty much solidified our dream of renting a camper van and driving our way around the south island (Did you know NZ is made up of 2 islands?  I didn't until shockingly recently).  The south island is also home to the wine regions of New Zealand, so I call dibs right now on not driving the van.  When we save up the vacation time to pull this off it's going to be awesome!

The convention center that housed the travel fair is conveniently located next to the most reasonably priced movie theater in town.  I was so excited to kill two birds with one stone that day, the other bird being none other than glorious, fabulous, amazingly awesome:

Ever the moody 16-year-old at heart, there was no way I was missing the cinematic re-release of Titanic!  I was pleased to learn that Junior Mints, my movie theater snack of choice, exist here so I stocked up on some mildly overpriced ones from a convenience store to avoid paying the insanely overpriced movie theater price.  Pain in my arse alert: this theater only accepted cash so we had to haul ass outside to find an ATM to get cash before we can get our tickets.  What century is this again?

Ok, cash acquired, Junior Mints safely hidden in an obscure pocket in my purse.  Let's do this thing!  Until I saw it: SOLD OUT plastered in cold, cruel letters across the beautiful, nubile faces of Kate and Leo.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyy, God, why me?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I told you I was a moody 16-year-old.  And overly emotional to boot!  

It seemed to be the last day it was playing in theaters here, so it was that day or never.  The mere thought of missing it on the big screen put a lump in my throat, and I needed to save all my emotion for the part of the movie where the old couple is laying in bed waiting to die.  I cannot miss this movie!

Thankfully there were other theaters in town showing it later that day, and I gladly paid a shit ton more money to see it elsewhere.  That theater sold out, I think, because it was so cheap.  The important thing is I got to see Titanic.  I would sell a freakin' kidney before I missed it.

Clearly, I really am 16.

Unsurprisingly, I really, really enjoyed it.  Way more so than my moody, overly emotional 16-year-old self who saw it the first time.  I noticed things I hadn't noticed the first time around and the sadness and tragedy struck me way, way more this time around.  I got a kick out of the fact that I originally saw it in the theater with the OMG LOVE OF MY LYFE I AM GOING TO MARRY HIM!!!1!! and did this time around as well.  I just hope they re-release it in another 15 years so I can see it with whoever is the current love of my life at that time.  Only time will tell who the lucky fella will be!

One last thing I will say about this glorious, ridiculous film: Jezebel, my main news source, did a hilarious review of the movie, which can be found here.  I implore you to read it; it is hilarious!  It's the funniest non-Tina Fey thing I have ever read.  And that's saying something.  I've read it like 10 times and it truly added to my enjoyment of the film.  Hilarious!

Before we even arrived in Australia we heard about Steam Train Sunday, a nerd-rific event where nerds join together and revel in their nerd-ery by riding in an old timey steam train.  Ever the huge nerd, Martin thought this would be awesome, so we went off the rails on the nerd train.

It was built in 1907 or thereabouts and the queen of England rode in it at some point before she was queen.  I really didn't catch the details because I spent the entire ride IMing on my phone with a friend in the U.S. who just had a baby.  For some reason the horrors of child birth interested me more than this ride, but it gave Martin a proper nerd-gasm. 

Australia has a pretty sizable Greek population (and this is before their economy went tits up) and every year Brisbane has a huge Greek festival.  The main selling point for our attendance was some previously un-heard of confectionery called honey puffs.

I don't know exactly what they are, but they are deep fried and doughy looking, which is my definition of a Must Try food item.  There's Greek traditional costumes and dancing but from what I could tell, filling your face with Greek delicacies was the main event.  Fine by me!  Martin, and a surprising number of other people, enjoyed these tiny marinated octopusses (octopi?).

Martin attended a game of Aussie Rules Football, which is its own sport, with [male] colleagues one weekend.  There are no pictures because we just bought a really, really nice camera and no way in HELL was I letting him take it to a booze soaked sporting event.  So expect better blog pictures in the future!

"Aussie rules", as it is commonly known, is more similar to rugby than it is to football/soccer.  This is my extent of knowledge on the subject.  They have got some weird sports down here, let me tell you what, with their love of Aussie rules, cricket and some sport called "netball" which, as far as I can tell, involves throwing a volleyball through a basketball hoop that is missing its back board.

I have no freaking clue what any of these sports are, and they interest me as much as sports I am more familiar with (read: less than 0%) so I will stick to events that revolve primarily around deep fried food items.  

Employed at Last

Attention angry mobs of unemployed Australians:

I TOOK ONE OF YOUR JOBS!

There really aren't herds of unemployed Australians, so I don't feel bad for making that joke.  Who's laughing about shipping away their prisoners now, huh, UK?

Yes, folks, I have gained employment.  And as an added bonus: It's in my chosen field and utilizes my Master's Degree!

I am so, so pleased and eternally grateful.

I am a temporary resident of Australia, and it seemed like I was only getting nibbles of interest from applications for temporary jobs.  So, I focused my search exclusively on temporary jobs at the three universities in town.

I won't mention which university I will be working at, or my exact job title, lest my superiors find this blog and witness my affinity for using words like "barftastic" and "craptacular" and immediately render me unemployable.  But you better trust and believe, this job is the bomb.  Dot com.

I'm a little hesitant to admit just how many jobs I applied to and interviewed for in total, in case it makes me look like a neo maxi zoom dweebie for not being able to get a job immediately in a good economy.  In my defence, though, I was being very picky, and had a quite narrow job search.  Gaining employment after ten weeks + 1 day after landing in this country (where I have no education or work experience and zero contacts) isn't too shabby, right?

Like I eluded to earlier it's a temp job, for one year.  I will be covering for someone out on maternity leave.  I want to start that fetus a college fund or something because if it wasn't for his/her existence I would not have this amazing job opportunity.  I love that frickin' fetus.  I wish it all the best in its birth and subsequent life.

This job really came up at the perfect time.  I was starting to panic big time about my situation (Did I go to grad school for nothing?  Will I have to dance for dollars to pay my student loans?  Are there even BBW strippers?)  Also, the stupid TV network stopped playing Jeopardy! every day which was my main intellectual outlet.  It's sad but true.  Home girl needs to get out of the house!

(Side note: I cannot deal with Alex Trebek sans moustache.  Grow it back, dude, you're killing me!)

I would like to take this opportunity to send out boat loads of good karma to the other people who applied/interviewed for this job but lost out to me.  I know that awful, crushing feeling of getting your hopes shattered but I'm sure there's something just as awesome out there waiting for you somewhere else.  You never know, you might wind up on an exotic new continent, working the job of your dreams with the most supportive partner ever in the near future.  You'd be lucky to be as fortunate as I.

For the past few weeks I had "upgraded" my status from Job Searching to Officially Unemployed.  I won't start the job for a few more weeks, so in the meantime I'm not sure what I'll identify myself as.  I can tell you one thing I won't identify with, though!  Desperate and poor.

Because poverty doesn't look good on me.

A Labour Free Weekend in the Rainforest

Another long weekend, another opportunity to travel somewhere fab!

This time it was Labour Day (yes, with a U) which is celebrated on May 1 in most of the world and the first Monday in September in the USA.  For whatever reason it's celebrated the first Monday in May down here.  Whatever, a day off is awesome regardless of when it is (says she who is unemployed)!

Queensland, the state in which Brisbane and we reside, is huge and there's lots to explore within it so yet again we stayed within the state.  Australia is made up of 6 states, 1 territory that looks just like a state, several territories nobody seems to know/care about and one Washington, DC-esque I-don't-fully-understand-what-this-is area.  One of these days we'll branch out and see some place else besides the Sunshine State, but for now we stay in our own back yard, this time in Lamington National Park.

We have been doing nothing but beaches so far and I was feeling very bored with the idea of exploring yet another amazingly beautiful tropical beach.  What else is there in Australia?  I asked myself.  Hinterlands is the answer to that question.  Hinterlands, from what I can ascertain, means Not Beach.  Or, if you want to get all scientific, the area behind a coast.  Somewhere between the ocean and the classic Aussie outback.  Basically, the bush.

This being a national park there is very limited choices for where to stay, so we had a whopping 2 options.  I briefly considered camping but it is now autumn here in the southern hemisphere, so in the mountains it can get legit cold at night.  Tenting in our paltry camping gear is not recommended at this time of year, so O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat it is!

We rented a car, declined the extra $20 per day insurance (this information will come in handy later) and drove there bright and early Saturday morning.  Along the way Martin noticed something dead in the ditch.  Something big.  Could it be the elusive kangaroo that we have been dying to see?  I could not live with myself not knowing, so we swung the car around to have another look.

Dang, it's too far from the road to get a good look, and there's too much traffic on the road to pull over and see.  If we are to solve this case there's only one way to do it, and that's get out of the car, run down the ditch and have a look for ourselves.  All this for the slight possibility of seeing a dead kangaroo!  Psycho?  Totally.  Am I psycho enough to go for it?  You betcha!

WARNING: This picture, being roadkill, isn't pretty.  If you've got a super weak stomach I suggest you scroll past this picture without looking at it.  But really, it's not bad.
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I'm giving you a chance to bail if you want.

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I'm warning you.

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Last chance!

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Ok, here it is, a dead marsupial - that is missing its head:

What. The. Hell. Happened to that things head?!  It was gone, literally gone.  Not picked clean by predators, not detached from its body.  It was GONE!

O
M
G

So creepy!  Where did the head go?!  I stuck around for a picture and then high tailed it out of there.  I had a ways to get back to the car and this thing had gone reverse Lord of the Flies so I was not about to stick around and gawk.

I'm not entirely sure if this thing actually was a kangaroo, though.  The legs and tail make me think yes, but it was a strange medium size and there are other small kangaroo-looking marsupials that live in this area.  I got a kick out of being able to tell my first kangaroo experience story via decapitated roadkill, but honestly I question if this was a kangaroo at all.

But why did it have no head?  Another question to haunt me for all of my days.

We continued up the twisty, scenic mountain road to get to our resort.  We stopped at an alpaca farm along the way, which made me realize I don't know if it's pronounced al-pack-uh or al-pock-uh.  I thought they were lamas at first, so it's a good thing I don't hold a degree in mammalian biology.

As we got to the resort Martin (the driver) was gawking at the flora and fauna and promptly ran our car right in to a pole.

Oops.

"Ran in to" makes it sound a lot worse than it was.  He idled into it, so it was a slight love tap at the very most.  We had to ask ourselves if it had really even happened.  So we got out to check the bumper/headlight and found this gigantic, huge scratch along the side of the bumper:

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.  Remember how I mentioned earlier we declined the $20 extra per day insurance?  This is the part of the story where that becomes important.  Had we sprung for the extra insurance our liability would be max $300, regardless of how much damage we did to the car.  Without it, as we were, our liability could be as high as $3,000.  Before we picked up the car we did a quick glance around it, nothing too thorough, and hadn't noticed it then.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

We did our best to buff out the damage with a freaking sock soaked in bottled water, which - if you can believe it - did jack shit.  There was nothing we could do about it now but kick back, try to relax and hope that scratch was there before we got the car.  Also on the docket: Try and save as much money as possible at this ungodly expensive place in case we have to shell out thousands in rental car repairs.

As I mentioned in my Asia travel blog, Martin is a huge bird nerd.  This place is renowned for its bird life so you can about imagine the exciting times that lie ahead of us on this trip!  One such bird-centric activity was a Birds of Prey show, which featured various types of raptors (these not these, unfortunately).  I did the show for Martin's sake but it was actually really interesting!  Check out this awesome barn owl picture Martin caught with his iPhone:

This owl flew right by my head and it was completely silent.  Crazy cool.  I have never seen an owl in the wild before (is that weird?) or a lot of the birds featured in the show.  A lot of them had been injured and rehabilitated and are a threatened species, so I didn't feel too bad about them having to live in captivity.  Though it's not like I've ever met a zoo I didn't love.

For a few bucks you could buy a tray of bird food and feed some of the local "wild" bird life, who were so tame they'd eat right out of your hands.  So of course we had to do that.

Bright and early the next morning (6:45 a.m. to be horrifyingly exact) we participated in our third bird-related activity in a 12-hour period and went on a guided bird walk around the resort grounds.  It wasn't really bird watching (or "birding" as it's called by the elderly nerds who love to do it) but we did look at birds, feed birds, and learn about birds for an hour.  It was edge of your seat entertainment, for sure.

It's worth a mention here that this resort was, surprising to me, actually not filled exclusively with old people.  There were young couples like ourselves, families with kids and of course, plenty of blue hairs.  Besides bird stuff, a major draw of the resort is access to hiking trails so nature lovers, as well as the geriatric infirm, can find something to love here.

Before embarking on a hiking trip of our own we had breakfast, where I had my first encounter with an Australian delicacy:

What is Vegemite, you ask?  Well, it's like Marmite, if that helps you any, which British people love.  And I have roughly zero idea what both of them really are.  The interwebz tell me that Vegemite is a "dark brown food paste" (yum yum!) made from yeast extract.  Marmite seems to be no different.  It is the waste product left over from brewing beer.  Now that's good eatin'!

These packages are super shallow and contain very little Vegemite so my fat Nutella-eating ass grabbed 2 so I could slather it on my bread real nice and thick.  Yeah, big mistake.  This stuff is salty.  Like, gag-me-with-a-spoon salty.  Once I scraped 99% of it off it was ready to eat and palatable.  To make it really delicious I think you need to use the old trick my dad does with peanut butter on toast: Add 75% butter, 25% spread for a perfect ratio.  Also, like peanut butter and various Norwegian sandwich toppings, it is important to grow up with it so you think it's ZOMG so delicious even when it really isn't.

After breakfast (and maaaaaybe a post-breakfast nap) we headed out into the forest for a day of hiking.  Before we even got off the main road, look what we ran into!

A big-ass snake!  I only screamed a little bit and that's because I was excited to see it, not because I was scared.  It didn't move the whole time we watched it so I thought it could be dead, but it wasn't.  It was just sunning itself.  This thing wasn't even in the forest, so imagine the creepy crawly stuff that actually lies within!

After a not long and certainly not strenuous hike we came upon this awesome sight:

Moran Falls, which as you can see is very pretty.  I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a waterfall this big in real life before.

We then hiked up a huge incline to Moonlight Crag, where there is a lookout point onto a [former] volcanic valley.

This hike was not so easy, it actually sucked really, really bad, especially because the whole trail was out in the blazing sun with no canopy to keep you in cool shade.  Views were beautiful but I recommend you have at least some modicum of physical fitness before embarking on this hike.  And not be a super lazy complainer, such as myself.

On the way back home we ran into some pademelons, which are adorable little marsupials that look like mini kangaroos.  After seeing the size of those, and the size of the roadkill dead in the ditch, I'm pretty sure what I saw dead was, in fact, a kangaroo.  So I will tell my grandchildren about my first run in with a kangaroo in Australia, and I will traumatize them mercilessly, like I will no doubt have done already to their parents.

We debated about coming clean to the car rental company, about the huge scratch on the front bumper.  No way in hell were we going to mention the run in with the pole, but ultimately we decided to come clean about what we found.  If we were going to have to pay up big time we'd rather know about it immediately, rather than wait by the phone endlessly for weeks, or worse yet notice a huge charge on our credit card.

So we confess the gigantic scratch on the front bumper that we may or may not have caused and await our punishment.  The car rental guy picks up the paperwork - which we had with us all along - and points out the clearly marked area of the car that indicates the scratch was there before we got the car.  We're off the hook!  Our finances won't be ruined by a hideous blue Ford Taurus after all!

The perfect resolution to a perfect weekend getaway.