TASMANIA!

Saturday night I got back from an absolutely amazing trip to Tasmania. I've uploaded the photos here and the posts explaining all that we did along the way will be coming soon. Enjoy :)

Tell the world I'm coming home (March 18)

For the last 36 hours, I’ve had three lines of one song stuck in my head. Over and over and over on repeat.

I’m coming home

I’m coming home

Tell the world I’m coming home

But of all the songs that have been stuck in my head over the years, I don’t know that these lines will ever get old. And that’s because of the reason they're stuck there in the first place.

Friday morning I got some awesome news. After six months of applying to internships, stressing like crazy over what to do with my life and then spending six weeks going through the interview process for an internship that I really wanted, I finally got the news that I’d waited so long to hear.

I will be the new photography intern at The Bakersfield Californian.

Two days before I woke up to a voicemail from TBC’s photo editor my stress levels were peaking. I had written more cover letters, sent out more resumes and put together more versions of my portfolio than I want to think about. And as I went through the process and continued to look for more jobs, I kept coming back to one undeniable fact. As great as many of the jobs I was finding were, they weren’t where I wanted them to be. After four years of bouncing between Maryland, Houston and now Australia, I was ready to be home.

Once I decided to make getting back to California my priority, I began working on changing my vision for my future. On convincing myself that photography could become just a hobby, that I could see myself working in an office, and that I could figure out how to actually grow up (because let’s face it, for as long as I get to spend my days capturing moments with my camera, I will remain uninhibited, easily excitable and full of youth).

My computer hated me for two days as I opened tab after tab of potential advertising and marketing jobs that I could apply for. But luckily, I never had to.

I had a paper due on Friday at 4pm. My final paper of college. It was for my Australian Media class and was about psychological treatment for journalists after trauma coverage. I actually really enjoyed writing it, but I felt the need to stay up all night writing it since it was my final paper. 

So I stayed up working on it until 5am Friday morning, going to bed only after making sure that my roommate would wake me up at 11 so I’d have time to go over it a few times before turning it in. When I woke up to a tap on my leg at 11, I did the first thing I do every morning. I checked my phone.

It was then that I saw the missed call and voicemail from TBC’s photo editor. By the time I had checked his message and walked out to the living room to call him back, I was trembling. I knew the conversation was going to go one of two ways. Thankfully, it went as I had hoped.

After I got over my initial excitement, there were phone calls to be made. I knew my mom was in class (her final class at UCLA! Go Mom!) so I called home, dying to share the news with my favorite little man.

Over the last four years, there’s been one memory that consistently chokes me up and it’s a moment that I wasn’t actually there for, but one that was described to me after the fact. My freshman year my Mom, Rachel and Tommy flew out to College Park to help me move in. At the end of the weekend, saying goodbye was incredibly difficult, but Tommy didn’t seem to fully process what goodbye meant as I left them at Stamp to walk back to my dorm. Something must've clicked shortly after and when they pulled up next to me during my walk, there were tears running down his face. My mom later told me that he stared out the window in silence for the entire car ride with tears streaming down his face and when they bought him a stuffed animal at the airport, he named it Jackie.

Four years of keeping in touch via phone calls and brief visits home has been rough and it was so nice to finally get to tell that same sweet little boy that I was coming home. When I called home, Tommy answered and I could hear the smile in his voice as I broke the news. The moment was priceless.

Over the last day and a half, I’ve gotten to share my excitement with some of the amazing people who have helped me get to where I am today and it has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you all for your love and support. 

You've just got to laugh about it (March 16)

I’d like to take a moment to interrupt my delayed/prolonged/unnecessarily drawn out stories of Australia with a breaking news update.

Today started out like any other Wednesday. I woke up at 6am to the sun shining through the windows, got ready for school, hoped on the bus and was all set for another lovely Australian day. As I sat at my desk waiting for class to start, my phone went off. The message I read went something like this:

Approximately half a second after receiving that text, I was on the phone with my mom to ascertain exactly what had befallen my most cherished companion. Now let me first explain that my car is in Atlanta, along with all of the worldly possessions that didn’t make the cut to join me in Australia, being cared for by my wonderful Aunt Sheila, one of the kindest people I know.

My mom answers the phone, half laughing at what has to be the fastest response she’s ever gotten from me after a text message.

"Are you in class?" she asks.

"Nope, I've got 12 minutes until class starts," I say.

“So have you heard about your car?” she asks.

“Um, no...,” I say, almost too afraid to hear what is going to come next.

“Well, hopefully you’ll be able to laugh about this."

Now, just out of curiosity, how many people have actually laughed after finishing a conversation that starts out with that question?

But I digress.

So my mom goes on to explain how my car had been making some squeaking/squawking/grumbling/altogether unpleasant noises that had led my aunt to arrange to have it towed from her house to the dealership.

Sounds simple enough. 

Unfortunately, the tow truck driver didn’t properly attach my car to his truck and at some point in the process my beloved Xterra rolled off the back. The good news is that it was in my aunt’s neighborhood and nobody was injured in the process. The bad news is that my aunt lives on a bit of a hill so my car came to rest by running into a parked car.

Thankfully I won’t be home until the end of April and since the car was already being towed to the dealership the bodywork can be done there as well, but all around not exactly how I had hoped to start my day.

Class started soon after I hung up with Mom and the next thing I knew it was noon and my weekend had officially begun. My first stop once I was back in Broadbeach was the grocery store where I picked up salmon and rice and was all set to make an amazing lunch. I got home, preheated the oven, added some deliciousness to the salmon and popped it in the oven.

After it had cooked for about 10 minutes and as my roommate’s mom and I sat in the kitchen working on our laptops, we heard a popping noise. I was content to go on distracting myself with Facebook as I mentally drooled over my soon to be lunch. But my roommate’s mom looked concerned so I headed over to the oven to investigate the noise. And for no particular reason, cue The Monster Mash.

I looked inside and peaked under the light

When my eyes beheld an eerie sight.

For the pan with my salmon had cracked in four

Making it edible no more

My pan had smashed

It did the salmon mash

The salmon mash

It was a Pyrex smash

It did the mash

It went up in a flash

It did the mash

It did the salmon mash

From my balcony in Australia’s east

To the kitchen table where we like to feast

My tears poured forth and my sobs burst free

As I set out to find lunch plan B

I’m not quite sure how to continue this story after that brief interruption for a sad remix of The Monster Mash, but here we go.

So yes, the pan with my lovely lemon pepper salmon was down for the count. My initial plan was to find a cookie sheet, salvage the salmon and keep on cooking, but I was warned that glass could’ve gotten into the salmon so I gave up my dreams and went searching for a new lunch plan.

At this point, my hopes were sufficiently dashed. Nothing was going to beat the lunch I had envisioned and by now I was starving so I settled for oatmeal.

Got out the packets, poured some milk in a microwave safe bowl (didn’t want to risk breaking anything else) and put it in the microwave. After two minutes, the timer went off and I begrudgingly walked to the kitchen to collect my consolation prize. Only it couldn’t be that simple. Nope. It was Oatmeal City in the microwave. The bowl was scalding hot and covered in oatmeal along with the rest of the microwave. I cleaned up the mess, salvaged as much oatmeal as I could and called it a meal.

I considered counting that as strike three for the day and hiding in my room to avoid blowing anything else up, but that’s what I love about Australia. It’s impossible to get down about any one of these things. You’ve just got to laugh about it.

So I looked outside, saw that the sun was shining on a gorgeous day and headed to the beach. After a wonderful nap on the beach and some decent work on my tan, I returned to the room. I’ve found that nothing ends a day better than running along the beach at sunset accompanied by Spanish music so that was just how I ended today. It was wonderful.

I hope all of your days are just as wonderful and that you’re able to find the humor in any situation that is thrown your way. The best is yet to come :)

Love you all and miss you tons!

-JB

It's not wrong, it's just different: Driving down under (Feb. 11)

(To see more photos of the Chevron Island fishermen, click here.)

Thursday night as we pondered where to go, we decided that this weekend was the weekend to take our first stab at renting a car so we could drive down to Byron Bay to watch the sunrise over the lighthouse.

We headed to Avis on Friday afternoon to collect our rental car and spend a few hours figuring out how to drive on the opposite side of the road. After getting the car our first stop was a nearby shopping mall where I picked up film for my Holga camera and then we headed down to the beach. The sun was starting to set and it was getting pretty windy so we packed up quickly and kept driving. One of my photo assignments for the weekend was ‘silhouettes’ so as we passed several fishermen along the wharf with the sun setting behind them, I just had to stop.

Learning to drive the car on the opposite side of the road wasn’t as terrifying as I thought it would be. I just found myself repeating “drive on the left, drive on the left,” whenever I got into a confusing situation (like a round-a-bout, of which there are way too many!).

Eventually we made our way back to the Meriton, found a spot in the parking garage and headed up to our apartment to prepare for our crack of dawn awakening. 

Week 4 of Classes (Feb. 7-11)

During our fourth week of classes I reached a few milestones in my collegiate career. On Monday I turned in my first actual assignment of the semester, a large report for my web design class. The project itself wasn’t too bad, but because the Australian grading system is the reverse of the US and their requirements and expectations seem to be different, I spent hours checking and rechecking to make sure I’d followed the directions.

On the Wednesday of the fourth week I gave my final presentation of college. If you’re anything like my dad, you’re probably wondering how that is possible. It all stems from the fact that I’m only taking three courses this semester and all of the percentages of the grade are laid out in each course syllabus. And of those three classes, my Australian Media course was the only one that required any sort of presentation. Granted it was only a five-minute presentation and we were limited to one slide so it really wasn’t all that grand of a presentation by most standards, but it was, nonetheless, my final one of college.

Other than that, the week flew by like all the rest and before we knew it we were once again trying to figure out where to go on our next weekend adventure.

Fraser Island Day 3: Gradual return to reality (Feb. 6)

(To see more of my Fraser Island photos, click here.)

I apologize for getting so far behind on this. For whatever reason trying to explain all of the amazing things that happened during our weekend on Fraser Island has just been so daunting that I’ve literally been putting it off for the past month. Absurd, I know. But here goes. The final day of the trip. Hopefully after this I’ll be able to get you all caught up in a more timely fashion.

Day three started out with its own special treat. As we began getting ready in the darkness, our German traveler noticed an outline of a bug on the floor. Only, of course, it couldn’t be any bug, it had to be an enormous cockroach. As soon as she pointed it out and we all began screaming and jumping around, it took off running toward the beds and under our stuff. Needless to say we all got ready quite quickly, grabbed our stuff and headed back for the truck.

We drove out to a small bay where we scarfed down breakfast (the most delicious egg sandwiches and pineapple juice I’d ever tasted) before collecting our little buckets of dead fish to feed the dolphins. After waiting in line with mostly small children under the age of 5, we finally got our turn to walk into the water to hand feed the dolphins. It was the coolest sensation as they just ate the fish right from my hand. When my roommate and I walked back to return our buckets, the lady asked us if we liked it. Seeing as how we were grinning like idiots and babbling on and on about how cool it was, she offered us a second bucket to go and feed them again. She certainly didn’t have to ask us twice. So we grabbed the buckets and headed back to feed them again. It was wonderful.

We then headed into the mountains, stopping to pick up lunch in the small town of Matilda before we made our way to a huge waterfall. We had to put on real shoes for the walk to the falls because of the risk of leaches. As gross at that sounds, the walk was actually beautiful. We were again surrounded by towering green trees and all sorts of beautiful flowers and birds. We ate our lunches overlooking a beautiful tree covered valley alongside a large waterfall and swimming pond. After awhile it started raining (raining in the rainforest, I found it quite ironic) so we hiked back to the truck, checked each other for leaches and then were on our way.

Our final stop on the way home was in another quaint little town where we got snacks and window-shopped before starting the drive back to Brisbane. Everyone was totally wiped out so the drive was quite peaceful as we listened to music and soaked in the sun pouring in through the windows. We dropped the other three girls off in Brisbane and then continued on to Surfer’s Paradise. We had planned on stopping in Surfer’s Paradise to see Russell’s apartment so we’d be able to find it when we returned for the Super Bowl party, but as we were almost back the truck started shuddering and making all types of clunking noises (it was a manual transmission). So since it was clearly struggling and Russ was worried about being able to make it to Broadbeach and back after dropping us off, we instead headed in to Surfer’s Paradise and caught a bus. Ordinarily, this would’ve been a non-issue since the public transportation system is quite convenient. However, after three days of roughing it in the wilderness, we were looking far from presentable. So we hopped the first bus we could find (less we bump into someone we knew while wandering Surfer’s in our unkempt state) and eventually made our way home.

It was then that we were hit with the toughest choice we’d had to make all weekend. What to do first upon our return to civilization: shower or collapse into bed? I was so disgustingly dirty that the thought of climbing into my fresh, tidily-made bed (yep, the cleaning service had come while we were gone!) was too much to bear so I showered before lapsing into the greatest sleep/nap/coma ever.

Fraser Island Day 2: Is this real life? (Feb. 5)

(To see more of my Fraser Island photos, click here.)

After a sleepless night consumed by endless dreams of being swarmed by bugs and nearly suffocating from the heat, we were ready for day two. We skipped showering out of fear of the spiders running around the bathroom and headed out to the truck for a trip into the rain forest. It may only have been day two, but one of the first skills we had developed was the ability to pack up the truck quickly and scream and jump enough to get just about all the bugs out of the back before quickly slamming the doors. So we were ready to go in no time.

Our first stop in the rain forest was alongside a 2,000-year-old tree, which, as Russ put it, was roughly as old as Jesus. Yes, it was enormous. From there we walked into the rain forest where we stopped to check out the world’s most dangerous spider (it seemed to be napping for the day so instead we just took a quick peak inside its hole), walked through an old aborigine town surrounded by towering trees and admired the endless greenery. As we walked we could hear birds laughing and singing through the trees, a sound we were told signaled a change. In this case it was the constant changing from sun to showers.

As we drove through the forest we watched it change from mostly low trees closer to the ocean to a huge canopy of a rain forest as we headed inland. Our second stop was at the largest perched dune lake in the world, a completely isolated spot surrounded by green mountains and white sand beaches. Russ caught a baby sea turtle that we all got a chance to hold and then he broke off eucalyptus leaves so we could all breathe in their intoxicating scent.

Our third stop was supposed to be a special lake hidden in the forest, but the rough terrain of the driving path had forced the road we were looking for to close. I can’t imagine what the closed path must have been like given how rugged the road we were allowed to drive on was. We were literally driving through a muddy rutted out path between towering trees that went up and dropped down constantly. Riding in the back of the truck we were all bracing ourselves against the roof to try to minimize how much we were thrown about.

From there we headed back up the beach where we drove by the Maheno shipwreck and on to Indian Head. After climbing up the rocks, we had a 360-degree view of the island, beautiful beaches and the endless ocean. During the winter they head up there to whale watch in the clear water below.

On our way back down the beach toward the ferry, we stopped at the cleanest creek in the world to go for a swim. One million liters of water (enough to hydrate all of LA everyday!) bubble out of the ground and flow down to the ocean via the creek each day. We walked up the creek a decent distance before plunging into the ice-cold water and floating our way down to the ocean. Our second stop on our way back to the ferry was at another special creek; this one full of Petri oil, which we were told would help our sunburns and unkempt hair.

Eventually we boarded the ferry and returned to Rainbow Beach where we stayed at the Dingo Backpackers lodge, a thoroughly intriguing experience. All five of us girls stayed in one room with six bunk beds and a bathroom whose only light flickered incessantly. While there we all took our first showers of the trip and had a communal BBQ with the other backpackers. At dinner I learned that, for our French and German speaking companions, my English was the easiest to understand, a point that may seem trivial, but given the amount of grief I receive at home for my “accent,” I considered to be quite a victory.

After dinner Russ busted out his Play Station and we played an international golf video game for a few hours before eventually heading to bed.  

Fraser Island Day 1: "This is paradise" (Feb. 4)

(To see more of my Fraser Island photos, click here.)

For the first couple hours of the drive it was just my roommate and me as we headed up to Brisbane to pick up the rest of our group. As with any tour, we started our drive with introductions. I gave the extended explanation of being from California but going to school in Maryland and eventually he just accepted that I was a child of the world. Then it was my roommate’s turn. She’s spent most of her time in the middle of the country, which to most Australians (and most Americans, to be fair) must just look like a jumble of nameless states. So first she explained that she went to the University of Kentucky, but got minimal response. Then she went on to explain that she grew up in Kansas at which point he exclaimed “like Dorothy!” Precisely.

Eventually we picked up the other three members of our trip, made introductions again (at which point we discovered that most foreigners also believe Texas and Kansas are synonymous) and continued on to Fraser Island. I’d imagine it was a beautiful drive though we all slept for most of it, each person finding their own unique way to sleep while sitting knee to knee and surrounded by coolers and luggage. Eventually I woke up to the feeling of careening down a hill. I was sitting sideways behind the driver’s seat and peaked over Russ’s shoulder to see the speedometer hit 120. Kilometers per hour, that is. I did some quick math and discovered that was actually only about 75 mph, but for whatever reason it felt like we were flying.

We all gradually returned to consciousness, opened the windows and enjoyed the drive as Sweet Home Alabama and Born in the USA crackled in and out over the radio (yes, no joke, they really play those songs here). It was the perfect soundtrack to our road trip as endless greenery and lily pad ponds whizzed by the windows.

As we headed north we drove through small towns and valleys that had been extremely hard hit by the Queensland floods. We drove over one bridge (with nothing but green fields several meters below it) that Russell said had been completely covered during the floods. He told us a story of just making it over the bridge before the floodwaters rose; another company’s truck full of passengers that were just a few hours behind him ended up stranded and unable to return to Brisbane for four days.

We stopped a few times along the way for bathroom breaks and food before arriving at Rainbow Beach around 11 (over five hours after we’d departed Bond) where Russell let air out of the tires in preparation for our off-roading 4 wheel-drive weekend on the island. From there we drove to a completely secluded beach where we got out and walked through 6 inches of sucking mud (sans shoes) to the water’s edge.  It was the clearest ocean I’d ever seen and the area all around us was spectacular. The blue sky was full of puffy white clouds that came down to meet green land and white sand beaches. I looked to our German-speaking companion and spoke in a language we could both understand. “This. Is. Paradise.”

After reveling at how clear the water was, we got back in the truck and boarded the ferry to Fraser Island. It was a short boat ride before we were again pulling up to another beautiful beach and headed out on our adventure. As we went flying down the beach one of the first things we came across was a wild dingo chilling alongside a spring water creek that bubbled out of the island and flowed right down to the ocean. When I say we stumbled upon a dingo what I really mean is that as we were flying at 80 kph down the beach, there it was just chilling in the middle of the “road.” Yes, in Fraser Island the beach serves as a freeway complete with speed limits, rules of the road and police officers toting speed guns. It was quite a unique experience.

Once we’d gotten over our dingo excitement we continued on down the beach, slowing just enough to keep the creek water from splashing high enough to come in the windows. After about 40 minutes of driving along the beach we arrived at our “beach resort.” It was too early for us to actually get into our rooms, but we sat in one of the gazebos to eat lunch. I made two important discoveries during our brief lunch stop. The first one was Sweet Chili Sauce aka the greatest sandwich addition ever. I stumbled upon it largely by accident as I was putting together my ham sandwich and I’m pretty sure I’ll be bringing back approximately 82 bottles with me. If you ask nicely, I just may share.

My second discovery was far less wonderful. Marsh flies. Literally the most disgusting bugs you can imagine. They’re big. They’re hideous. They’re relentless. And they loved me. They followed us around from lunch on our first day until we had left the island. But more on them later.

After lunch we drove out to a trailhead just across the “freeway” from the ocean’s edge. We hiked a little over 2 km through a tropical forest as Russ nonchalantly pointed out different birds and snakes and had us all stay close together at one point when he thought he heard a dingo hunting us from through the thicket of trees. Eventually we made our way out to a huge valley of sand that had been completely hidden on three sides by the forest and by the ocean on the other. We hiked through the sand to a secluded lake that was also surrounded by forests and endless sand. It almost looked like a mirage simmering over the sand with glistening water that reflected the green of the bottom of the lake. As soon as we spotted the lake we took off running (or as close to running as we could muster in the heat and sand), hoping that once we hit the water the marsh flies that had been attacking us throughout the hike would leave.

The lake felt wonderful. The water was the perfect combination of refreshing, but not too cool and you could see all the way down to the bottom (this wasn’t always reassuring as they were tons of fish swimming around, which I would’ve been perfectly happy not to see).

After relaxing in the water, watching Russ feed the catfish and getting dive-bombed by marsh flies, we hiked back to the truck. As we drove back to the “beach resort,” the marsh flies flew alongside the truck, easily traveling at 30 kph and completely freaking us out. To make our bug issues even better we came to discover that, in France, the word “cockroach” is taught to reference any kind of bug. How did we learn this? Funny you should ask.

As we were riding back, I was sitting next to our French travel companion, Tiphanie, who felt the need to point a bug out to me that was crawling on the side of the truck behind my head. Only by the time I looked to see what she was talking about, all signs of the bug were gone because it had supposedly fallen somewhere down by my feet. The word she knew for bug was “cockroach,” and by the time she finished saying that I had thrown off my seatbelt and literally leapt across the truck. Turns out it wasn’t actually a cockroach, but some smaller bug that we never actually saw again.

Finally we made it back to our hotel for the night and got checked into our rooms fairly easily. The process of actually getting into our rooms, however, was far more difficult. As we walked over to the backpackers portion of the “resort” we were again swarmed by marsh flies that left us running, jumping and shrieking to our rooms. Only the trouble didn’t end once we got to our rooms since the doors were outside and also swarming with marsh flies.

The actual process of getting into our room went something like this. We would both huddle together pressed up against the door, one of us with the key in the door and the other swatting flies and protecting the key holder. After double and triple checking that we were each ready to make a quick break into the room, we’d swing the door open just enough to squeeze through and then slam it as soon as we were both in the room. From there, we’d examine the room to make sure no rogue flies had gotten in with us and then we’d collapse onto the beds waiting for our hearts to stop racing.

After getting acquainted with our room and taking a swim we headed to dinner, a delicious Mexican buffet (although at that point anything would’ve tasted divine). It rained while we ate so by the time we headed back outside the bugs and the heat had died down a bit. We grabbed sweatshirts and headed down to the beach to check out the stars. It was at this point that I realized I’d never full understood what people meant when they said that city lights make it hard to see the stars. At home you can always look up and see them twinkling away, but that was nothing compared to what we could see from the beach.

It was completely pitch black around us to the point that you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face and as we looked up we could actually SEE THE MILKY WAY! It almost looked like a path through the sky littered with stars and it was too cool! Russ pointed out the Southern Cross to us (which I’d obviously never seen before!) and we sat on the beach for quite awhile watching stars shoot through the sky.

It was only 9 p.m. at this point, but we were wiped out so we headed back to our room for bed. But here came the real debate. How to avoid inhaling/ingesting/being attacked by bugs as we slept. The way our room was arranged there were two sets of bunk beds so we each had the option of sleeping on the top or the bottom. After much debate as to which position was less likely to get bugified, we each settled on the bottom bunks, hoping that the mattress above our heads would act as a shield of sorts. We then decided to sleep with the lights on recognizing that while bugs would be attracted to the lights, at least if we woke up in the middle of the night to the sensation of something crawling around, we’d quickly be able to determine exactly what it was and respond accordingly. Our final step in protecting ourselves from the bugs was to sleep with spare shirts over our faces. Yes, this proved to be incredibly hot since we had no air conditioning, but it was a necessary evil.

We ended up getting minimal sleep because of the heat and fear of bugs, but eventually we made it through the night bug-free and lived to see our second day on the island.

Fraser Island Intro: Our Guide (Feb. 4-6)

(View the best of my Fraser Island photos here.)

Friday morning we got up at the actual crack of dawn, which down here in the Southern Hemisphere is roughly 4:15 a.m., so that we’d have enough time to get ready before catching a cab to school. After throwing Powerbars in a duffle bag and checking to make sure I had all of the camera equipment I might need, we hopped in a cab and headed to campus. It was now 5:15 a.m. and the sun was far more awake than we were.

           

We got to campus around 5:30 and had 15 minutes to spare before we were getting picked up so I set to work on my photography homework for the weekend. We had a five-part assignment that was due on Monday: shadows, reflections, low-angle, close-up, and something red. The area around campus has all sorts of rivers and creeks, but during the day it’s usually too windy to catch a good reflection shot in the water. At the crack of dawn, however, the wind was just light enough for me to catch some nice reflection shots of the blue sky and the pink clouds over the water. After assuring my roommate repeatedly that I needed “just one more shot!” we eventually made our way over to where we were supposed to be picked up. Only we’d really received very little information as to where that actually was. All they’d said when we booked the trip was to “wait out on the grass out there,” as they vaguely gestured in some direction. So we sat on a bench still amazed that we were awake at that hour and waited for our chariot to whisk us away.

Just as we were beginning to think that the trip had been cancelled without our knowledge, an old, white, military-jeep-type vehicle drove through the parking lot, flipped a U-ee, and stopped in front of us. Out hopped the man who we would come to know as our guide, Russ. But in that moment he looked like a former military drill instructor turned tour guide, which as it turned out is precisely what he was.

Before I can go into further detail on our Fraser Island trip, I’ve got to fully introduce you to Russ because, as we learned over the course of the weekend, he is likely the most interesting person we will ever find.

           

So meet Russ.

           

He’s a native Australian who grew up in the Tweed Valley going to school with an eclectic combination of surfers, farm children and aboriginal children of the tribe. Because he had friends from all walks of life and a best friend who was from an aboriginal tribe, the stories we heard were amazing. He also frequently referred to “his tribe” as in the aboriginal people he grew up with who had taught him all about nature.

           

We also came to discover that the Tweed Valley is not far from Nimbin, the local hippie town/ marijuana heaven, where as chance would have it most of his high school teachers came from, clearly making for an interesting school experience.

           

From high school, he spent 4 years in the Army before returning home to play on the Sydney professional rugby team, the Tigers. The exact timeline from this point forward gets a little jumbled, but it includes a few years as a forest ranger living on Fraser Island, six months spent roadtripping from Alaska to Guatemala (including four weeks in Costa Mesa, Ca.) and some time spent living, working and skiing in Park City, Utah. Eventually he returned to Australia where he tried out surf photography and had photos printed in several magazines.

           

At some point he moved to Japan where he lived for ten years, some of which were spent training a sumo wrestler from Mongolia (who at one point was one of the top wrestlers in Japan) and coaching rugby. As we came to discover once we were on the island, he also seems to speak fluent Japanese and would frequently shout things to the foreign tourists in their native language. He also now lives with two Japanese girls who both make sushi and brought some along for our trip.

           

Despite his rugged exterior, Russ was also incredibly welcoming and friendly. Forth-five minutes into our drive north he’d already invited us to his Super Bowl party, offered to take us back up to Fraser Island later in the spring when the water had cleared back up and the bugs had largely disappeared, to give us surf lessons and to take us jet-skiing to Stradbroke Island for a picnic.

And so it was with this worldly guide we set off on an amazing adventure to Fraser Island.

Week 3 of Classes (Jan. 31 - Feb. 3)

(View more of my Gold Coast night photos here.)

Time seems to fly by so much faster here. Entire days go by in a matter of minutes and weeks disappear in the blink of an eye. It was hard to believe that I’d already made it to the third week of classes. It felt like just yesterday that I’d unloaded my luggage from the Expedition and wandered through the international terminal at LAX.  

           

Yet somehow it was week three and in the trimester system, week three is when school starts to get real. My week started with a bit of schedule juggling. One of my classes had been moved to Thursday, one of the many days of the week that I refused to go to school, and I was forced to mix around my entire schedule so I could get into a different section and keep my dream of being done for the week at noon on Wednesdays a reality. Eventually it all worked out and another week (or rather three short days) of school flew by as I prepared for a weekend on Fraser Island.

           

But while the week flew by, there was one noteworthy development. It happened on Monday. Because of my schedule juggling, I ended up on campus much longer than I had expected on Monday with several extra breaks between classes so we decided to head over to the nearby plaza for food. It started out like any other journey. We walked over, made a pit stop at the Post Office and headed into the mini-grocery store, IGA. But it wasn’t long after we started wandering the aisles that magic happened. After passing the fruit section and then the lunchmeat section, we approached the frozen food aisle. And there it was. COOKIE DOUGH!!! Because I still had to get back to class and had to catch a bus home from there, I couldn’t actually buy the cookie dough, but just knowing that it existed somewhere on the continent of Australia made going back to class a little more bearable.  It was also more than enough excitement to get me through the week as we anticipated our weekend on Fraser Island.

           

Because our Fraser Island trip that was set for last weekend had been postponed after we’d already packed, we put off packing until the last minute on Thursday night. But as Wednesday afternoon and Thursday began to pass and we had yet to receive a call that our trip had been postponed, I had to scramble to get all of my week four homework done before we left.

Burleigh Heads by Night (Jan. 30)

(View the best of my fire show photos here.)

When Sunday came around I was thankful that our Fraser Island trip had been postponed. The Bond University Photography Society was organizing their first trip of the semester down to a weekly fire show at Burleigh Heads (a beach to the south of us).

We met up with the rest of the club on campus at 6 and boarded a bus down to Burleigh. It was literally the longest bus ride I’ve been on since arriving on the Gold Coast. But the beach itself wasn’t far from campus, we just happened to have the misfortune of boarding the slowest bus in the history of slow buses. I’m pretty sure the bus driver was trying to coast the entire way despite a lack of hills. It got to the point that everyone on the bus was looking around trying to figure out what the deal was. After an hour of moseying along we finally arrived, having traveled a total of 7.8 kilometers or roughly 5 miles (yes, I believe if you did the math you would find that we could’ve walked faster).

As the bus pulled up to our stop one of the guys in the club looked out the window with a wild-eyed expression and began frothing at the mouth. He had spotted Big Chief, a hole-in-the-wall looking burger establishment that he claimed was to die for. We followed him across the street, explaining how much this burger had to live up to given that we had In-N-Out and Five Guys back in the States. After getting our burgers we sat down along the counter and our friend, Kyle, pulled from his backpack the largest bottle of Heinz ketchup I’ve ever seen. He must have had the clown car of backpacks because I literally have no idea how it fit with all the camera equipment he also had in there. Once he had sufficiently doused his burger in ketchup, we began to eat. Our burgers were indeed delicious. I hesitate to say they were better than Five Guys of In-N-Out mostly because they aren’t fair points of comparison. This burger was more along the lines of an enormous restaurant burger cooked to perfection. We wolfed them down as Kyle paused before each bite to add more ketchup to his burger.

From there we headed back to the beach to see what this fire show was all about. It definitely wasn’t what we expected. We walked up to find a large group of people sitting in a circle around about twenty teenagers painted like demons who were juggling various forms of fire as the sound of beating drums played over speakers in the back of a hippie van. We walked over to the side of the circle with the fewest people, set up our tripods and started shooting. The kids juggling were ridiculous. There were two girls who had fire hula-hoops that they spun up and down their entire bodies. But the boys were the coolest to watch. They had sticks with balls of fire on either end that they threw and twirled every which way. The show was really cool to watch and especially fun to photograph so we stayed quite awhile before heading back on a (much faster) bus home. 

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!