Into the Hinterland (Jan. 28)

(View the best of my Springbrook Mountain photos here.)

This week was also the week that my roommate and I decided it was time to start traveling and seeing more of Australia. She had won a trip to Fraser Island through a raffle and I decided to go with her. We were both stoked about the trip, three days of serene beaches, beautiful rainforests and the opportunity to swim with wild dolphins just couldn’t be beat. We were scheduled to leave first thing Friday morning, but as we were packing on Thursday we got a call that the trip had been postponed because of a mechanical issue with the van that was supposed to drive us up there.

With our weekend suddenly open, we went about finding local trips that we could do and started planning out our remaining weekends to make sure we would have the opportunity to travel everywhere we wanted over the course of the semester. After flipping through all sorts of brochures, we found one company that offered all sorts of day trips and had a deal that gave us one free trip if we booked two others. We decided to do a trip into the hinterland and up to Springbrook Mountain that would let us see five waterfalls, the Natural Arch and Tropical Fruit World.

We booked our trip late Thursday night and had to be up first thing Friday morning to get picked up by the van with all the other travelers who would be joining us on the trip. Needless to say, we didn’t quite know what to expect. And we certainly wouldn’t have guessed the group we ended up with.

Because it was our understanding that we would be seeing five waterfalls and the Natural Arch, we dressed for a day of hiking. Our fellow travelers seemed to have missed the message. One older couple on the bus was dressed for a day of betting at the track complete with tasseled shoes on the guy and high heels on the lady. Other than that the rest of the 14-seater van was Asian (and non-English speaking) with the exception of one Australian couple who sat in the very back giggling about something for the entire ride (nobody dared look back for fear of getting a glimpse of what they were actually up to).

After a beautiful drive through the countryside, our first stop was Tropical Fruit World, which was actually much cooler than it sounds. The site was huge with over 20,000 fruit trees, but the small store where they sold the fruit looked surprisingly quaint. Our primary activity there was tasting all different kinds of fruit (I’d try to name them but most of them I couldn’t even pronounce at the time), most of which were quite delicious. They also made us avocado dip that they mixed together using some fruit sauces. I don’t usually like avocados, but it tasted AMAZING.

From there we headed into the hinterland where as far as we could see in every direction was amazing shades of green. We later learned that the hinterland is referred to as the green beyond the gold (Gold Coast) and it makes total sense. The area was so pretty. We drove up the mountain for a while before stopping at the trailhead for the Natural Arch.

The walk to the arch was truly breathtaking. We passed waterfall after waterfall while walking along a trail surrounded by some of the tallest moss-covered trees I’ve ever seen. The Natural Arch is supposed to be covered in glow worms visible by night, but since we were there in the morning we missed seeing them.

From there we stopped at several large waterfalls before eventually stopping for lunch at Springbrook Manor, a small estate hidden in the mountains. After lunch we saw even more waterfalls and went to “Best of All Lookout,” which was supposed to have absolutely amazing views of the coast, but the fog had beat us there so we didn’t end up seeing much.

On our way back we stopped at a fudge shop also hidden in the mountains before finally boarding the bus back home. I really enjoyed the trip because it was nice to see the rest of Australia, beyond the beach. When I had pictured the country, I had imagined lots of green everywhere and with this trip, it finally made an appearance. 

Cookie Dough Fail (Jan. 27)

(View the best of my Gold Coast photos here.)

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in our time here it’s that going to school in paradise is rough. Waking up at 6 a.m. for class with the sun already shining and the beach within sight, it takes infinite self-control to turn your back on paradise, trudge to the bus stop and head to class. That’s not to say that classes are boring, not by any means. But going to school in paradise is BRUTAL. Add to that the exhaustion that comes with lounging by the beach, the stress of working on your tan and the pressure of soaking up every perfect second and by the end of the week we are completely wiped out.

Last week we survived off Lamington cake to get through the exhaustion, but this week we needed a bit more of a kick. So Thursday night as we tried figure out what would get the weekend started off right, we decided that a solid night of sushi would do the trick. After bumbling around Broadbeach trying to follow the little blue dot on my iPhone and get it to line up with the red pin that signaled our arrival, we finally found it. Ordinarily being the only people in a sushi restaurant would’ve been a bad sign, but most of the restaurants close earlier here so as we slipped in at 9 they were about ready to close.

But as we gorged on sushi it became clear that it was going to take more to beat the exhaustion. So we decided our next step was to find cookie dough and eat it on the beach. Seemed like a fairly simple plan.

But no.

We walk across the street to Woolworths, the local grocery store, and walk straight to the first frozen food section in sight. No luck. We move on to the next one. Aisle by aisle we go through failing to find cookie dough.  Finally we found a woman who worked there and asked if she could direct us to the cookie dough. We might as well have been speaking Swahili. We repeated it a second time and after going through a series of the most confused facial expressions I’ve ever seen, she offered to direct us to another guy who worked there who was apparently the Frozen Section Expert. We repeated the question to him and he looked similarly confused, but assured us that their store didn’t carry it, whatever that crazy foreign item called cookie dough was. We left the store defeated.

And then inspiration struck again.

Around the corner from Woolworth’s was Max Brenner’s aka Chocolate Heaven. As we walked in the hard part became figuring out exactly what we wanted. Brownies or cookies, chocolate soufflé or chocolate and banana pizza, pots of melted chocolate or strawberry fondue. The choices were endless.  Two of us went with the chocolate soufflé while roomie #3 tried out the brownie. It was all rich chocolate deliciousness, just what we needed to finish off the week (or start the weekend, depending on how you look at it).

But despite Max Brenner’s ability to bring new meaning to our life, it didn’t make up for the entire country of Australia Not Having Cookie Dough. So we set to work figuring out how to assuage our cookie dough fix. One website alleged that we could find it in some stores while other sites claimed it really didn’t exist.

Two nights later we decided to investigate further. First, we went to the two other convenience stores by our apartment and came up with nothing. So then we decided to make the walk to Pacific Fair and see if the store there had any. By the time we got there it was 5:40 p.m. on a Saturday and they had just closed. Yes, another oddity of Australia. Nothing is open when you need it. So that was strike three. Cookie dough fail.

Week 2 of Classes & Australia Day (Jan. 24-30)

(View the best of my Gold Coast photos here.)

(one of my self portraits)

By the second week of classes I was finally beginning to manage the whole 6 a.m. wake up schedule and classes became even more enjoyable. For my photo class this week, our assignment was self-portraits, which I knew would be interesting. I bought a tripod in preparation and got my roommate to come with me so the wind on the beach wouldn’t blow over my camera. I don’t know that I’ve ever had to take self-portraits before and I’m quite thankful for that. It was a rather trying experience. In the end I was fairly pleased with how they came out, but it’s certainly not something I hope to do again.

(Sunset on Australia Day)

The second week of classes included Australia Day, a national holiday, and the equivalent to our 4^th of July. From what we could tell, the only acceptable way to celebrate was to go to the beach, which was packed, and drink for the entire day. The weather was perfect and once classes got out, the day went absolutely splendidly.

As the sun began to set, the sky became shades of pastels so I grabbed my camera and we decided to walk down to Surfer’s Paradise to see what the celebration looked like down there. I’m absolutely in love with the photos I got on our walk down, the water looked amazing and it was such a perfect sunset. By the time we got down to Surfer’s, the celebration was at a lull as people switched from beach party mode to bar party mode so we decided to find somewhere to eat. My roommate remembered seeing a good Italian restaurant down the street so we went in search of it. But what we found was so much better.

Pancakes in Paradise. With a huge ceramic stack of pancakes outside advertising endless pancakes for $10, we just had to check it out. My roommate got the endless pancakes while I went for the strawberry crepes and we were both quite pleased with our selections. I had left my bus card back at home so rather than pay our way back, we decided to walk back to Broadbeach.

It was certainly a memorable journey. Australians really love their country and never was this more evident than on Australia Day. As we walked home, cars driving by and people walking by were so excited to be celebrating the beginning of their country, their excitement was infectious. 

(someone enjoyed Australia Day)

Nights in Surfer's Paradise (Jan. 20)

(Surfer's Paradise at night)

Early into our first week of classes, my roommates and I decided that we were going to need a serious celebration after surviving our first week back at school. It wasn’t hard to decide that the best way to celebrate was with a Lamington cake and a night out in Surfer’s Paradise. We ended up holding off on the Lamington cake for fear that we wouldn’t make it into our dresses, but the night in Surfer’s was a success.

Surfer’s Paradise is the more touristy companion to Broadbeach, just a 30-minute walk up the shore, and the best of the clubs and bars are clumped together. On Thursday nights most of the bars have specials for “the ladies” and we were determined to take advantage of them. Once we were all ready to go, we hopped on a bus down to Surfer’s Paradise, but we mistakenly got off the bus too soon and were wandering down the street in the direction of the bars when we ran into two people standing on the corner. They were marketers for a club down the street and were letting the first 30 girls in for free and offering free drinks for as long as you could keep track of the free glass they gave you. Our first trip up to the bar we asked the bartender to make us his favorite drink, which was some concoction that include lots of pineapple juice and tasted amazing. We made several more trips for the same drink before moving on to the next bar, Shooters.

We spent several hours there as we danced the night away, and met some nice boys from Australia and Germany. After leaving the club, we stopped for pizza and water before hopping another bus and heading home for the night. The night was a blast and just the ending we needed to our first week of classes. 

First week at Bond University (Jan. 17-23)

(The view up the beach)

It required lots of help, but I finally got my schedule worked out at orientation and I was dreading the first week of classes. Yes, I had managed to keep my schedule to Mon.-Wed. and I was done fairly early most days, but my classes also started at 8 a.m. each day, forcing me to take a 7:15 bus to campus that required I be up by 6 a.m. I don’t think I could be any less of a morning person so the first week was pretty rough. But as much as I disliked my schedule, I thoroughly enjoyed my classes.

My first class of the week was my Web Design lecture where my professor was an absolute delight. She spoke to us like we were actual people, even admitting when her teaching method was making no sense to her. That class has me really looking forward to the rest of the semester as I work to get together an actual photo website.

The lecture for my Photography class was on Tuesday night and I was similarly impressed with our professor who seems so genuinely interested in seeing us all improve. Though it’s not a photojournalism class, I think it’ll be a nice change to be working on other types of photography. Our teacher has already mentioned a few exercises we’ll be doing to help our creativity, including locking ourselves in a bathroom and finding new ways to take creative photos of our surroundings… Should be interesting :) 

Wednesday was the first day of my Australian Media class, which fulfills my final journalism requirement for graduation and is my only true “journalism” class. However, this class was unlike any journalism class I’ve taken before. One of the first things our teacher explained was that the only class rule is “no worries,” meaning if you can’t make it to class or complete an assignment for whatever reason, no worries. How many times have I heard that in a journalism class? Oh right, that would be NEVER.

Needless to say the first week provided fascinating insight into the Australian teaching structure. 

First week in Broadbeach (Jan. 10-16)

(Sunset on the Gold Coast) 

Our first week on the Gold Coast the endless rain and cloudy skies continued and we spent little time on the beach, even though it was always within sight from our living room and balcony. We instead spent out time figuring out the bus system and exploring our new campus, which is quite beautiful, but also extremely small compared to Maryland. I’m pretty sure all of Bond University could fit on McKeldin Mall.  Despite the weather, it was a really fun week as we enjoyed the Orientation Week activities and got to know our surroundings. O Week was a nice taste of the welcoming and connected atmosphere at Bond.

It was nice to find that the Bond campus wasn’t the only inviting place, really all of Australia has demonstrated the same level of friendliness and openness, regardless of where we’ve been. And I think that especially came through as we heard about all of the flooding in Queensland. Yes, the Gold Coast is in Queensland, but we’re at the most southern part, less than have an hour from the state of New South Wales, so as we watched the news reports of the flooding online, it was hard to put it into perspective. But it was amazing to see how quickly all of Australia came to the need of the flood victims. Everywhere we went people were collecting money to help support the victims, on campus students were out in force selling raffles tickets to raise money. The Australian spirit and sense of community has been truly inspiring. 

Departure to the Gold Coast (Jan. 9)

(View from our balcony with the ocean in the distance)

If there’s one thing I discovered on our travels from Sydney to the Gold Coast, it’s that an Australian accent can be extremely difficult to understand, especially when it’s coming over the intercom in the airport and talking about some kind of emergency on the landing strip. But as we all sat at our gate in the Sydney airport and they mumbled something about an emergency and announced that all flights were delayed until further notice, it became clear that this journey was going to be anything but routine. We never actually found out what had happened on the tarmac, but when we were on the plane our pilot told us about a mechanical issue that they’d had with the plane, apparently another reason for the delay.

Flying into Brisbane was surreal. It looked like a third world country with a largely uninhabited coastline, with little more than smoke-billowing factories. It was a stark contrast from our arrival in Sydney. Eventually we landed and got all the luggage sorted out and headed out on the bus to the Gold Coast. It was surprisingly gray out and it actually started to rain as we gathered our luggage and headed up to our new home, The Meriton at Broadbeach. 

Sydney Part III (Jan. 8)

(View the best of my Sydney photos here.)

Our final full day in Sydney we had most of the day to ourselves to explore wherever we wanted so we got up first thing in the morning and walked down to Paddington Market, a higher end market that is only open one day a week and features all types of custom jewelry, clothing, and all types of artwork. It was amazing to see all the different types of artwork and jewelry they had and so inspiring to see all the paintings and photographs on display. After spending a few hours at the market, we figured out the bus system and headed down to Bondi Beach, by far the most beautiful beach we’ve seen in Australia. The beach itself was absolutely packed with people and the water was an unreal shade of turquoise and absolutely packed with people.

As much as we wanted to stay and hangout on the beach, we had heard about an amazing cliff walk that connected several beaches and we wanted to see what it was all about. The walk turned out to be an absolutely breathtaking experience. As we walked along the cliffs from one beach to another, it was hard to believe that so much beauty could all be so close together! To say it was amazing would be an absolutely understatement, there simply aren’t words to describe how beautiful it was!

From there we hurried back to our hotel to get ready for our evening harbor cruise. After getting all dolled up we headed down to Darling Harbour where we boarded an amazing boat that had shuttled ESPN employees around during the Sydney Olympics. From the boat we watched the sunset over the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, an absolutely breathtaking sight! After a delicious meal, we disembarked and headed into Sydney to experience the first night of the Sydney Festival, unfortunately we were a bit late and after walking through throngs of people headed in the opposite direction, we accepted that we had missed the festivities and called it a night since we still had to pack up the hotel to get ready for our trip up to the Gold Coast.  

Sydney Part II (Jan. 7)

(View the best of my Sydney photos here.)

Our second day in Sydney we did a walking tour of the city that included several vantage points of the Opera House, a trip through the botanical gardens and all sorts of shopping districts. It was really cool to finally see all that Sydney had to offer. As we ate lunch across from the Harbour Bridge, I couldn’t help but wonder how I got so lucky. But that was only the beginning of the day.

From there we went to the Featherdale Wildlife Park where we were given passports to stamp as we went from exhibit to exhibit. Yes, the passports were designed to appeal to the elementary crowd that frequented the sanctuary, but we also found them quite amusing, as we went from place to place making sure we saw the animal before collecting the stamps. I was surprised to find that the kangaroos and some of the other animals (including a peacock!) were able to roam free around the park, making the opportunities to pet them endless. And pet them we did! I had never imagined how soft and docile the kangaroos could be, characteristics that made them even cuter and more lovable than ever.   

After we got back we went and checked out Paddy’s Market, an enormous warehouse of a market with all sorts of handmade goods and souvenir type items. Our favorite table in the market had handmade bracelets with all sorts of charms on them, including miniature versions of Australian coins. They were all so neat that we ended up coming back with quite a few and are still wishing we could go back and check them out again!