Easter on Fraser Island

Due to a lack of vacation days during our (ahem, Martin's) first year of work, we really have to utilize any and all long weekends for travel. Lucky for us, Australians actually care about time off at Easter (more so than Americans, but less than Norwegians), which has resulted in an extra long weekend with Good Friday and Easter Monday being public holidays. We seized this opportunity to travel to Fraser Island, just off the coast about 5 hours north of Brisbane.

Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world (remember the second?), and when they say it's made of sand, they mean it. There are no roads throughout the island, just bumpy, bumpy sand paths. The island contains "rainforests, eucalyptus woodland, mangrove forests, wallum and peat swamps, sand dunes and coastal heaths" - all sprouting out of the sand.

I had this vacation booked before we even got on Australian soil. In fact I had the whole thing planned before our visas were even granted! I am an eager beaver. Eager to see this country with the time and money we have available.

To get to Fraser Island you first need to make your way to the mainland that's closest to the island, then take a ferry over. The town closest to the island is called Hervey Bay, but make no mistake, it is pronounced Harvey Bay. I made a fool of myself plenty before learning that fact, so I'm warning you in advance. You can fly from Brisbane to this area but at $200 per person air travel was a bit rich for my blood. So what's the next best option?

Greyhound, baby! Nothing but the fanciest for us.

Two things of note: One, that big grill on the front of the bus. Martin told me it was to deflect kangaroos that get hit on the road. I don't know if this is true or not but kangaroos do get hit by cars frequently. That makes me sad, especially since I have yet to see a 'roo. Second thing: Check out the final destination of this bus. Cairns, 1,058 miles (1,750 km) from Brisbane! That's over 30 hours of Greyhound bus sitting! Hoooooly crap.

There's lots of stops along the way so most (or all) people don't travel that far or take the whole journey in one fell swoop. Still, that is a long way. Our 5 hour, 15 minute journey was surprisingly pleasant and arrived right on time. So far I am down with the 'hound.

There are several departures from Brisbane per day, and we decided to take the earliest one so we could have the whole afternoon to see Harvey Bay (we wouldn't get to the island until the next day).

Big mistake. Biiiiiig mistake.

It was Good Friday, which despite being a "public holiday" shouldn't mean much in a town that exists solely to cater to tourists. Not for Hervey Bay, though. Oh no, it was completely shut down and deserted. Well, it wasn't entirely a ghost town as there were other tourists like ourselves walking around wondering "Why am I wasting my time with this town?"

We sat down for lunch at a restaurant that is, most of the time, sea side. At 2 p.m., though, it's more like a you-can-kinda-see-the-ocean-from-here restaurant. The tide was way, WAY out.

It's not like you can be mad about this because then you'd have to be mad at the moon. And then you'd just be a crazy person. This allowed you to walk way, way far out (half a football field I'd reckon) and see some coral-like plant life that normally would be buried under many feet of water:

There's only so much ocean looking one can take before it's time to move on. So we headed out farther into town in search of alcoholic refreshment. Our "sea side" restaurant didn't have a liquor license. If they did, we would've stayed all afternoon to see if the tide ever came back in.

So we find a pub, have a seat and order some beers. We are told, soup nazi-style, "No beer for you!" Why? Because it is Good Friday. Because JESUS, that's why.

Actually, you can get beer, you just need to order a meal to go with it. Not an appetizer, not a side dish (this was explicit), but a meal. Why? I already told you, BECAUSE JESUS!

WTF, we have stepped into the Twilight Zone with a façade of the dullest town ever. So we order nachos to go along with our beers, roughly 10 minutes after we just ate lunch. Nachos are considered a meal, you see, so sayeth the Lord.

We eat our nachos (not bad, by the way, and I know bad nachos after years of living in Norway) and drink our beer. We leave after one round because I don't know if we'd have to order another meal to get a second round of drinks, or what Jesus's policy is on that. Kidding aside, it is the state or the city council's policy, and I deem it a shitty one. Hervey Bay will forever be considered Dullsville in my mind because Good Friday was too precious to cater to tourists, the one and only reason it exists.

Maybe it's a lovely place to be when things are actually, uhh, open, but from my vast experience with boredom in Hervey Bay I cannot recommend this destination. Unsurprisingly (and not uncharacteristically, I must add), we spend the afternoon napping, but this time for lack of anything better to do. Our 7:20 a.m. departure out of town couldn't come fast enough.

Bright and early Saturday morning we are picked up by bus at our hostel (hey, Australia is expensive and I'm unemployed, no judging) and pick up others on our way to the ferry that will take us to Fraser Island. Freedom from this town is imminent! I haven't felt this way since high school.

On the ferry over we are warned, warned and warned again about the HuGe RiSk that dingoes present to humans.

From what I could tell there was a 99.9% chance that dingoes were going to EAT MY BODY AND SOUL, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. Note the first one says negative dingo encounters are expected especially over Easter weekend. Yep, we're screwed! Though I'd much rather get mauled by a dingo than stay in Hervey Bay!

As soon as we get to the island we hit the ground running with the tour I booked. This being a sand island the only vehicles allowed on to it are 4x4's. You have 2 options for seeing the island: Take a tour in somebody else's 4x4 or bring your own, get stuck frequently in the sand paths and have to dig yourself out. We chose the former. Gladly.

Look at this tour "bus" (more like a tank), including me for scale:

That thing is a beast! It tore through deep, uneven sand like a hot knife through butter (though very bumpily). We were delayed by a half hour that day because some rinky dink Mercedes "4x4" kept getting stuck on one of the paths, disrupting all traffic behind it. The jerks in that Merc had 50 annoyed people stuck behind them, shooting daggers with their eyes and laughing that they sent a fluffy little bunny to do an ox's job. See why we chose a tour instead of going it alone? This is what the "roads" looked like:

This shot actually looks quite smooth and bump-free. Trust me, it wasn't.

Our first stop that day was Basin Lake:

It's a freshwater lake (one of many), that you aren't allowed to swim in. You used to be able to but so much sunscreen washed off into the lake that it was killing off the wildlife. Oops. And who would want to kill off this little guy?

Adorbs!

We spent a good chunk of that day hiking through the forest, seeing nifty sights like this:

After a picnic lunch and more jungle walkin' we arrived at our leisurely afternoon destination, Lake McKenzie:

Another fresh water lake, and this time you can swim in it! The water was crystal clear (at least in the shallow parts) and we spent several hours lounging on our beach towels, swimming and eating cookies provided by our tour.

If you found this blog post by Googling "Cool Dingo tours" I must advise you: The cookies alone are worth choosing this tour over others. Christ on a bike, they were good! Totally worth getting diabetes for.

The next day was another early one, especially for Martin who was feeling a bit rough after a long night at the local Dingo Bar with his newly made BFF. There's no rest for the wicked, though, we had a lot of ground to cover today!

It was pouring rain when we got up which, surprisingly enough, flattened the roads down and made our drive much, MUCH smoother. It only ever seemed to rain while we were inside the bus and not outside exploring so we really got the best of both worlds.

Our first stop was a lookout point to the sand blows, an area of forest that is being overtaken by sand blown inland from the beach.

This huge chunk of forest was just being buried by sand, more and more each year. The picture doesn't seem like it but it was actually pretty cool and sand dune-y. Also cool, near the lookout point:

Eek! We saw quite a few gigantic spiders chilling in their gigantic webs. We were always a safe distance from them, though, thankfully, as they were freaking huge and scary.

We then headed to 75 Mile Beach, which is the beach that runs along the eastern coast of the island (along the Pacific Ocean) but is a highway. A real, functional highway of just beach:

There's tons of different sites along the beach highway so we spent the rest of the day driving down it, stopping at the cool things to see, my favorite being Eli Creek:

Eli Creek is a freshwater creek that varies in depth and has crystal clear water that you can swim in. It reminds me of a natural "lazy river" floating pool that you find at water parks. The ocean is right next door but it is not recommended to swim in since there are jellyfish, sharks (srsly) and very huge waves and dangerously strong currents. So people who value their lives and limbs swim here instead.

Then we went to the Maheno ship wreck.

"The most photographed piece of rust in the world." About three-fourths of the wreck is buried under the sand. She used to be a luxury ship, but she ain't any more! I never understood why ships are referred to as "she"...

Throughout the day Martin had been drooling over the little single-engine airplanes that were flying overhead. Word on the street is that they take off and land right on the beach highway, among the traffic. As soon as the pilot came on to our bus to offer a 15-minute tourist flight for $70 a head I knew I couldn't fight it. We had to go, according to Martin.

$70 is hard enough to swallow, but $140? Not going to happen. She who does not work does not go on wildly expensive tourist flights, either. So I convinced him to go without me. It worked out really well because the plane could only fit 7 passengers and 6 of our other bus mates wanted to go. Perfect! I didn't want to take up the seat of someone who really wanted to go (I was very meh about the experience, regardless of price). And even more perfect: Since Martin was going up solo he got to sit right next to the pilot!

There is nothing in this world that Martin loves more than aeroplanes and flying. He said "That pilot has the best job in the world" approximately 200 times. It wasn't until much later that he found this article, detailing how one of these little planes flipped over upon landing. There easily could've been deaths! Scary. Oh, and the planes totally do take off and land right on the beach highway!

Here are some aerial shots he took:

We were reunited just up the road at the Pinnacles Coloured Sands, which I can only assume are rock, otherwise the wind coming off the ocean would blow them away.

Then we hiked up this little mountain, Indian Head, where you can supposedly sometimes see sharks out in the water.

No sharks were spotted off the top that day. Disappointment, disappointment.

And finally the Champagne Pools which, false advertising alert, are not made of champagne but sea water that is trapped behind the rock wall once the tide goes down.

The rocks protect you from the treturous sea that lies behind, and the jellyfish and sharks don't make it over, so you can swim here.

Speaking of jellyfish, we saw a few dead/dried up ones along the beach.

But sadly this is the closest we came to deadly wildlife. This means we saw no dingoes. I was all but promised to be attacked by one, damn it, I want my money back! I'm not surprised, though, since we were always in a big group or in our huge, loud truck. People who camp on their own are probably the lucky ducks who get to be mauled by them.

This concludes our jam packed 2-day tour of Fraser Island. That evening it was time for us to return to my worst nightmare: Hervey Bay. We had one more night there before our return bus back to Brisbane the next day, on Easter Monday.

It wasn't as bad as Good Friday, but it wasn't good, either. Now before the Hervey Bay tourist board comes banging down my door I will defend them by saying this: It is a huge starting point for whale watching tours and it is months until whale season begins.

Still, I bet few people in this world have been so happy to see a Greyhound bus pull up to take them far, far away!

Norsk Mat - Norwegian Food - Part 3

Hey, remember Norway?

Now that we've been Down Under for 7 whole weeks I figure I should revisit my Scando-culinary adventures since I was so adamant about photographing our food while we were there. Feast your eyes and stomach on my previous entries here and here.


Dish 1: Fårikål

Oh man, this picture does not look appetizing. But trust me: It is. Fårikål, pronounced four-E-coal, literally means "lamb in cabbage" and to me it is the quintessential Norwegian dish.

The beauty of fårikål is its simplicity. The only ingredients are lamb meat, cabbage and whole black peppercorns cooked for hours and hours in water. After that amount of time the meat is falling off the bone, and the flavors meld together to make a super tasty, super easy, super cheap (cooks for hours = use cheap meat) meal.

I do have one complaint about it, though: Eating around those black peppercorns is fraught with danger. Have you ever bit down on one before? I imagine it's similar to chomping down on a stone that's been infested with ants. It ain't pleasant. Luckily I'm not the first one to have felt this way so butchers now sell tea bags full of peppercorns, to keep the flavor intact while removing the danger of them floating around and getting into the good stuff. Norwegian ingenuity where it counts!

I implore you to make fårikål at home. It is, in my opinion, Norway's crowning culinary glory.

Dish 2: RisengrynsgrøtHow does thick rice pudding covered in butter, sugar and cinnamon sound to you? Delish, right? Well how about for dinner? Eeeew, gag me!

Risengrynsgrøt literally means "rice grain porridge" but I always just call it risengrøt. Not sure how ignorant I sound by calling it that.

I don't know how a rich, sweet dessert-like dish turned into a meal for Norwegians, but somehow, somewhere it did. Don't get me wrong, it's delicious, but too much is definitely not a good thing and a meal-sized portion is way too much of a good thing.

There is a similar dish called rømmegrøt, which is sour cream porridge, again served with butter, sugar and cinnamon. Just thinking about that version puts me into a diabetic coma. Again, it's very tasty but not large quantities- or meal appropriate. Everybody makes it from a package (or buys it pre-made) nowadays so it's surprisingly difficult to find a Norwegian recipe for it, so here you have it from the good old Sons of Norway.

Dish 3: KlumperKlumper literally means clumps. Clumps!

Um, appetizing...

These go by many different names in Norway. The more I Google the more I realize that the word klumper is actually not one of those names, so can I only assume it's just my in-laws that call them that? Or perhaps I am mistaking it with komper, which is one of the actual names used for them. Hey, I never claimed to be fluent (or even marginally competent) in the language.

Another name they go by is rasperballer which - I shit you not - means "grating the balls" according to Google Translate. Which is actually a pretty accurate, albeit disturbing name. These things (I won't even bother trying to use a name from now on) are grated potatoes mixed with flour to hold them together, then boiled. On their own they're pretty meh but it's the accoutrements that really make them special:

Melted butter and bacon!

What a glorious, glorious combination! Somewhere in the history of Norwegian cuisine hot dogs have also become a side dish, and I've always seen them served on the side of these things. Anything smothered in melted butter and bacon gets an A+ from me, and these balls of many names are no exception.

Dish 4: MakrellThese are mackrel. Nothing to really expand on here, except that these were caught in the ocean just out of town and given to us by a neighbor. Yay for being a localvore!

The reason I wanted to bring them up is to tell the tale about Norwegian children eating makrell i tomat saus (mackrel in tomato sauce) as a sandwich topping. Considering the fact that canned tuna is a pretty normal sandwich topping, it doesn't really seem all that interesting. Except the mackrels in Norwegian kids lunch boxes aren't finely shredded, unidentifiable pieces of meat like tuna is. They are nearly whole, sardine-looking, identifiable fish. In thick tomato sauce. That smells like cat food met death on a hot tin roof. And kids love it!

Nowdays you can find it in stores, but kids in Norway just don't grow up with peanut butter the way I did. Because of this, many find peanut butter vile. And that's just insanity because everybody knows PB&J is the ultimate sandwich combo. They also love leverpostei on their sandwiches, which is liver pâté. Spreadable, ground up liver as a sandwich topping. And kids love it!

Norwegian kids get fish and pâté. American kids get high fructose corn syrup in a jar. Think that has anything to do with the difference in obesity rates between the two countries?

[editor's note: After consultation with my mother-in-law I was indeed wrong about klumper vs. komper. I don't know where I got the idea that they were called klumps. She would also like the world to know that she makes her sour cream porridge from scratch. She's the Norwegian Martha Stewart, I'm telling ya!]

What We've Been Up To Lately

Martin now spends his Monday to Fridays at his job while I spend mine diligently trying to acquire one. Because of this, any stuff we do now has to be done on the weekends, which means this post will contain a few weekends worth of goings on.

Martin was - sound the nerd alert - dying to go to the local planetarium. There was a show playing called "Are We Alone in the Universe?" which, alien invasion movie loving me, thought hell yes. Also, it was narrated by Harrison Ford which, hot old dude loving me thought hell yes times two.

And I had never been to a planetarium before! I found that fact worthy of an exclamation point, not sure if you did. I enjoyed the show, except I really think they oversold it on the title. There was little mention of outerworldly life, much less sweet battle scenes with laser guns...not that I was expecting them or anything.

We saw this life sized space suit, which was cool and really gigantic. Lack of laser guns notwithstanding the show was very good and succeeded in making me feel small and insignificant in the universe. It gave me hope for our species that lots of people brought their kids to the show, rather than the midnight showing of Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed (citation).

The planetarium is on Mount Coot-tha, right next to a botanic garden so we swung through there while waiting for the show to start. While viewing various exotic plant species (riveting indeed) we stumbled upon this adorable, gigantic lizard. It was like a foot long!

This is as close as it let me get before it bolted. We also saw a few gnarly looking six-legged spiders but they didn't photograph well. I don't know if they were hiding legs or if they weren't spiders or what was going on with the odd (even) number of legs, but they appeared to only have 6, and there was no way either of us were going close enough to really inspect.

That week, his mere third week of work, Martin went on a business trip. That makes it sound fancier than it probably was but he had to go work elsewhere, to Bundaberg, Queensland to be exact. It is the very same Bundaberg of rum and ginger beer fame that I mentioned in the Straddie camping post. One evening he and his team got to see recently hatched baby turtles, which I am super jealous of. He said they are surprisingly strong and that 90% of them get eaten when they're tiny, which is possibly the saddest thing I have ever heard. They are so adorable!

The next weekend we really didn't have anything in mind to do so like any self-respecting Brisbanite we spent the day chilling here:

South Bank is an area of Brisbane with lots to see and do and eat. Eat, you say? I'm there. The main attraction for most is the man-made beach, which has real sand and salt water and, notably different from the nearby Brisbane River, is not disgusting or infested with sharks. It is a really neat part of town and booming on the weekends when the weather is nice, but not annoyingly so. It's an awesome people watching locale.

This area was converted from the grounds of the 1988 World Expo, which I'm wondering if that's where these weird things come from:

They totally reminded me of the electric fences in Jurassic Park that the dumb boy got electrocuted on. We spent the day eating fish and chips then just hanging out in the shade for hours (those weird fences really did serve a purpose) on our smart phones. Next time we'll know to bring a book. If you ever visit Brisbane this is definitely a must-go area to just bum around.

The weekend after that was a two-day-of-doing-stuff weekend, if taking public transit to a bar to drink beer is your idea of "doing stuff". But first: Pancakes!

Both Martin and I have tried to eat low carb/paleo/whole foods/primal or whatever it's called for severeal years now. Note I said tried, it's been with varying levels of devoutness for both of us. We make exceptions for things we just can't bear to part with, like fries and rice noodles in pho, but there are some things we just don't eat. Ever. Pancakes being at the very top of that list.

So imagine my excitement when I realized that almond meal (just finely ground almonds) can be used in place of flour for pretty much everything, and that I could easily access this magical powder at the grocery store! I could not wait to return to the world of pancake eating.

I whipped up a batch using an obscenely priced bag of almond flour, and they were definitely worth it. The last time I had pancakes was at least three years ago but I will not deprive myself of the magical stacks any longer. As is the tradition first we had pancakes, then we had beer.

Martin really wanted to check out the Breakfast Creek Hotel, which is an iconic booze establishment containing 5 bars under one "roof" (a lot of it was outdoors, and thankfully well shaded). It's located on Breakfast Creek, which is a silly and delicious name for a body of water if I do say so myself. It's located waaaaaaaaay out in the 'burbs so we navigated public transit to get there and marveled at the tranquility of life "so far from the city". That's in quotes because since we live in the tallest building town we rarely lost sight of the top of our building.

We came all this way just for a drinking establishment so we damn well better drink, we reckoned, so we paid $12.50 (a surprisingly reasonable sum) for this genius pitcher of beer:

The genius being the well in the middle which is filled with ice to keep the beer cold, and the cap on top to prevent the ice from spilling out during pouring. I can find no other word to describe it than 'genius', which I apologize for overusing, but damn that thing is genius. I hope whoever invented this is a rich, rich person.

The next day we attended the Enrich Brisbane fair, an event designed to expose attendees to the best of Brisbane's offerings of "life", food and wine. I couldn't pass up this event after we attended the Edinburgh Tesco Wine Fair last year, where we got got proper drunk on a Sunday afternoon sampling the various wines from throughout the world for one reasonable entry fee. As a bonus, Enrich had more than just wine, but beer and cider, too! Score!

The Brisbane event had booths dedicated to things other than alcohol - to which I say, WTF is the point? - but it was an entertaining afternoon none the less. We got there just in time to see the show I really wanted to see, called Travel Tips and Trips, featuring some minor Australian celebrities (including the wife of a gigantic NBA player and an actor from a film by the super famous Wear Sunscreen song guy). Martin got totally suckered in to spending way more than the budgeted $0.00, so we've got some South African-style beef jerky and a quarterly wine club to look forward to in our impoverished, destitute future.

We got tipsy by strategically hopping between servers who didn't recognize us, even if we had spent a good half hour talking to the server right next to them not too long before.

There are few things in this world I enjoy more than a good Sunday funday! Weekends in Brizzy are fun when you drag your arse out of bed and explore the place!

I'm filled with piss and vinegar. At first I was just filled with vinegar.

-Abe Simpson

Camping on Straddie

The first weekend after Martin started work some of his coworkers went on their annual camping trip, and we were graciously invited along. They had no idea if we were serial killers or not, so it was nice of them to invite us. This meant that Martin's first Friday, only his fifth day of work, he left the office before noon.

HOLLA at the Australian work ethic!

Our destination was Stradbroke Island, known by the locals who don't pronounce a full world unless they absolutely have to, as Straddie. It's not too far east of Brisbane, in the Pacific Ocean and is the second largest sand island on the planet. If you wish to learn which is the largest I suggest you stay tuned to this blog.

We navigated ourselves via taxi and a coworkers borrowed-from-parents car to the coast and, this being an island, had to take a 45 minute ferry to get there. The ferry was pretty similar to the Moss to Horten ferry which Martin's parents house looks right onto. And like the Moss to Horten ferry, they should just build a freaking bridge already.

Once we got to the camp site we pitched our tent (we were living rough, you see) and took a leisurely 2 minute stroll to this:

The ocean! We could hear the waves beating the whole time. It was awesome. We didn't dive in immediately since it was getting dark quickly. It's crazy how early it gets dark in this country/hemisphere. By 7 p.m. it's pitch black.

As Martin and his coworkers headed into town to pick up dinner and drinkin' supplies I stayed back with his manager's two kids, aged 9 and 6. Please note I had met these kids just prior to boarding the ferry, so I had known them and their father (and they, me) for roughly 1.5 hours.

HOLLA at Australians still having faith in humanity!

The kids were dying to go down to the beach and "catch crabs" and I couldn't very well win this battle of wits so I agreed, even though "catching crabs" is usually something I work to avoid. Here is one such caught crab:

All over the beach were patches of these teeny tiny balls of sand, which the kids informed me were made by the crabs digging. Or something. They are 6 and 9, I get my nature knowledge from David Attenborough, not them.

They were a hoot, though, I really liked those kids. Watching them run around the camp site and beach reminded me of my own gleeful youth camping at Icelandic State Park and swimming at Renwick Dam. This is my second mention of that glorious place, and I hope to work it in to most, if not all, of future posts.

Here are several caught crabs in a pan because, you know, you want sand insects on something that touches your food (no permission was sought or granted to put them in there):

The crabs were super teeny tiny, probably about the size of a cricket. There were frogs of that size on the beach, also, and they were so cute! I'll throw a picture of one of those on here. It's appropriate since 95% of Friday night was focused on tent pitching, food grilling and wildlife, and the animals were the most blog-worthy part:

Saturday we were up earlier than I think I've ever been on a Saturday, the clock was actually a.m.! I'm surprised we didn't get smoked out of our tent by sun and heat, as one usually does, but after a night of nothing but a thick sleeping bag between you and the uneven, hard ground you're ready to get up and start your day.

First we slipped, then we slapped, then we slopped. This is how Aussies remind each other to wear sunscreen and not get skin cancer and die. I'm a huge fan of this method so I slip, slapped, slopped - a lot. Then we went to the beach!

The water was great. So green! So wavey! Some of the waves were huge. Well, huge by my frame of reference (♥Renwick Dam♥).

See those 2 flags in the picture above? You're supposed to swim between them, so Pamela Anderson can see you and rescue you in slow motion if need be. The swimming area wasn't huge but there were people swimming/surfing outside of the lines. Those people flirt with danger. I bet they don't slip slap slop.

By 11 a.m. everybody was making their way back to their camp site to escape the midday sun. We had snatched up the one little patch of available shade on the beach but with the sun overhead, that was long gone. It was time to seek shelter. And booze.

Someone (not me, I swear) had the brilliant idea of cracking open a bottle of wine at 11 a.m. Who am I to say no to this? So we spent the rest of that afternoon - and evening - doing this:

Bundaberg is a town a few hours north of here in the state of Queensland, and the Bundaberg company makes rum and ginger beer, both of which are delicious. I had never even heard of ginger beer until I moved to the UK and I'm not sure if it's because I live in a bubble or if it doesn't exist in the U.S. It's kind of like root beer, but gingery. I love it. If you have never tried ginger beer, hunt it down and try it. Delish.

We planned an actual meal for that evening, and walked less than 10 minutes through this gorgeous sunset to the restaurant:

Martin's company *may* have sponsored our drinks during this meal. Group morale or team building or some such thing. This company is clearly too big to remain sober. As is often the case in situations like this I wound up with a bottle of wine in my purse as we left. That poor thing didn't last a half an hour.

We finished off the evening uneventfully, since we had been drinking for roughly 12 hours. So we hit the hay to sleep it off. Until a screeching kookaburra woke us up before dawn. It must've been right outside the tent because it was SO loud. Have a listen, and imagine waking up to that. In the pouring rain.

Ugh. Bird aside, nothing sucks worse than being in a tent in the rain.

It pissed down on us, which meant we had to pack up our tent and belongings (such as beach towels that sat outside all night) soaking wet. It suuuuucked.

Straddie being a popular weekend destination you have to book in advance the ferry that you are planning to take on and off the island. We had to pack up our tents and leave the camp site by 10 a.m. Our ferry wasn't booked until 2 p.m., which suuuuucked.

We killed some time at a snack bar that, I kid you not, was run by a 10 year old child. The service was about as reliable as one could expect from a 10 year old child, so that actually killed a lot of time. Then the highlight of the weekend happened. Scratch that, it could very well be the highlight of our entire life in Australia.

We drove down to the ferry port to see if we could get ourselves onto an earlier ferry. The dude directing traffic at the port is what I can only describe as THE quintessential crazy Outback Australian. And I do mean crazy. Maybe flamboyant is the word I'm searching for, but not in that way.

Martin whipped out his iPhone as we approached him because we knew this would be an encounter worthy of recording. We were not wrong.

Watch the video here (sorry, having problems getting an embed code to work).

I will transcribe the first half of the video for those who can't view it or don't understand what the hell he is saying. Crazy Australian dude will forever be known as Crikey Man, and is abbreviated as CM below. For reference he's checking with the boat to see if they've got room for 1 more car.

CM: I think they're full, just wait, just wait a second.

Coworker: We're small! We're tiny!

CM: *unintelligible* Just one bloody more! Crikey! Get us on, we're only small.

Coworker: We're the smallest car in the queue.

CM: [speaking into walkie talkie] They do have prawns, they do have prawns...beer and prawns, in the boot.

Coworker: Um....

Me: Rum.

Coworker: Shapes [shitty rip-off Cheez-Its]? Pringles? We have beer.

Me: I got rum.

Martin: Lots of rum.

Coworker: We do have rum.

CM: The captain likes rum. All captains like ruuuum.

Coworker: That's true.

CM: *unintelligible* Sorry girls. And boys...

The rest is him crushing our dreams, informing us that we were the first car that can't fit on to that ferry. So we had to wait another 2 hours to catch our regularly scheduled one. Le sigh.

Crikey Man reminded me of Steve Irwin, may he rest in peace, in his general over excitement and jovial attitude about life. But at least Steve Irwin had something worth being excited about, this guy was just directing traffic! He was awesome and I hope to meet many, many more crazy bastards like him.

Our wait for the ferry wasn't all bad. By this time the rain had stopped and the sun returned so we took out all of our tents and sleeping bags and anything that was soaked, laid them out, and let them dry. 2 hours in the midday Australian sun dried everything right up.

Martin's manager (the one crazy enough to trust me with his kids) had a super cool "camping trailer" that starts like this:

And folds out to this:

He had a ton of extra camping gear and was kind enough to give us a tent and four sleeping bags!

This means we're pretty much obligated to go camping again soon and utilize our new gear. Wherever shall we camp next?!

A Big Day for Adulthood

I'm often at odds with how old my birth certificate says I am and how old I actually feel. I can't truly know what it's like for others, but I assume they have a little light or bell inside of them that goes off one day and goes DING! Welcome to adulthood, your life insurance paperwork awaits you in the veranda. And from then on they feel like an adult.

I have never felt any such ding. And I don't know what a veranda is.

Living a nomadic lifestyle (in search of fun and adventure, mind you, not pemmican) makes the postponing of adulthood magnificently easy. You can't very well buy a house or have a baby when there's new places to see and dingy hostels to lower your standards to. Nor should you very well do those things when you just don't wanna.

Which is where I stand, pushing dangerously close to 30.

However! Adulthood does creep up on those who actively try to avoid, which brings me to today. A few things of rather adulty significance happened today, regardless of how hard I tried to fight them off.

Numero Uno: I cooked a meal in my very own crock pot, which I own and is mine

I mentioned my love and loss of a crock pot a few months ago when I was living in Norway. Martin got me a crock pot for my birthday (a huge surprise, as they were brand spankin' new to Norway and I didn't yet know they existed there). Very shortly after that we learned we were moving to Australia (yay!) so I knew I had to take the crock pot back to the store to be loved by somebody else (boo).

But I knew I'd fill that void with an Australian crock pot, which would no doubt be a fraction of the cost of its Norwegian cousin. And I did! As the lord sayeth, "and it was good". Here is the recipe I used to inaugurate my crock pot with, in case you are a low carb disciple, like to prepare meals ahead of time and wish to revel with me in nostalgia.

Numero Dos: My grad school student loans came out of deferment

Which is code for, "pay up, bitches". I am not the first person on this planet to discover prolonging adolescence. My ancestors who came before me pretty much perfected it by attending grad school. However they had the good sense to go to an American university, where grad school takes two years (instead of one like I did) and where there's a decent chance of getting the school to fund some of their education. Not I, though. I prefer my schooling short, sweet and at an unfavorable exchange rate. Have you seen what the US dollar is compared to the pound? It basically means I get to pay double the sticker price.

So pay up I shall. Americans have the distinct privilege of paying for their higher education out the arse. Just because I jumped ship years ago doesn't mean the world of free universities (which is rapidly shrinking) is open to me. I am bound by the chains of the citizenship of my birth. Which brings me to the next step on the ladder to adulthood:

Numero Tres: I mailed my absentee ballot application

I voted! Well...I submitted the proper documentation so the County Auditor in the county where I last resided in the United States will send me an absentee ballot during the next general election.

Sadly, you don't get a sticker to wear on the day you do that.

Come the month or so prior to the U.S. presidential election I'll get a ballot in the mail so I can vote from abroad. Civic duty, future of the country and all that BS. I saw Obama - twice - when he was a freshman senator, did you know that? It remains one of my least dignified moments in the history of my life, to this day.

When you're pushing 30 with nothing "grown up" to show for it, you've accumulated an undignified moment or two in your day.

And, really, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I have some sleeping-until-noon to attend to.

A Place to Call Home

As I've mentioned, Martin's company put us up in a serviced apartment for 2 weeks while we found a place of our own. Alas, his expat contract isn't an expat contract at all, but rather a local contract with a few expat perks thrown in.

Because of our diligent apartment searching we moved in to our own permanent apartment 2 days before our 2-week freebie limit was up. We saved the company money! Where is my fruit basket?

The building we are in is actually still being built. The top floors (ahem, penthouses) are still being built but we on the ghetto 13th floor can't hear anything or really even notice. I won't give too many specifics on the building since I like to delude myself into thinking that this blog will one day be so popular that I will have "professional crazed fans" (a.k.a. stalkers). I will say this, though, it is the tallest building in Brisbane, which I find downright fancy.

This works out really, really well for me because I am quite possibly the worst navigator ever. Until I had my drivers license (age 14, holla!) I literally could not find my way anywhere outside of my hometown. Even today when I travel I rely entirely on others to get me around, which means I still know virtually nothing about the layout of Brisbane. Living in the tallest building in town, all I have to do is look up and head in that direction. WIN!

Here are the much anticipated photos that people have been asking for. The pictures are pretty crappy, I must warn you, but I hope the awesomeivity of the place shines through:

Living room (with a view of kitchen table at bottom right):

Bedroom:

Bathroom:

I don't know why Martin deemed it necessary to take a picture of the toilet and sink, rather than the sink and shower, but there you have it, a view of my crapper.

The kitchen:

I like this place a lot. It's quiet, it's shiny and new, and this is our view (albeit a little bit more obstructed than this):

However I do have one complaint. A "furnished apartment" to me means furnished with stuff I will actually use, not furnished with decorative bowls of plastic fruit - which is exactly what we got. This resulted in our recent epic journey to Ikea where obscene amounts of cash was dropped.

Instead of 10 decorative pillows on the bed, how about some actual bedding? Despite the appearance of the bed in the picture, it's bare and unusable underneath. Instead of not one but two decorative bowls of plastic fruit in the kitchen, how about a pot and pan? Furnished means move-in ready, yo. Not plastic fricking fruit.

I have a chip on my shoulder about that damn fruit. It's just so unnecessary.

Of course it ain't all bad, though, otherwise we wouldn't have locked ourselves into this place for a year. It does have a garbage chute which I am very much jazzed about. I've never seen one before! Exciting stuff for a small town girl! It's actually quite fun to use. The bed is the most awesome bed I have ever owned - not that I've ever owned a bed in the adult sense that you go to a store, buy a bed, bring it home and use it.

Now before you jump all over me, I've never claimed to be an adult. My name is Heidi, I'm almost 30 and I've never had a new mattress.

So this is our humble abode! It ain't cheap, but no places in Brisbane are. We pay by the week, which may sound like a system reserved for seedy motels but in reality it's just how things are done here. Every place we looked at listed the price per week. It has no parking space or balcony, which other places we looked at did. The location could not be better, right at the tip between the 3 districts of town we plan to spend the most time. It's all about priorities.

And our priority was frantically saying yes to the first suckers who would take us.