Week 7: Mike vs. Spontaneous Road Trips

Classes. They happened.

For Thursday, Liam, Matt, Tim, and I had booked a trip with a couple of girls we had met through our classes, Amy and Marissa. We had planned to go snorkeling with a company that actually had the permits to get up close and personal with migrating whales, essentially letting us swim with them. To get to the dock though, we had to rent a car. On Wednesday afternoon, we all got an email saying that, due to rough seas, our whale excursion was unfortunately cancelled. When we got over the disappointment of not being able to swim with whales, we realized that we still had the car rental to pick up in an hour. Now we have a bunch of college kids, a rental car, and no plans. You guessed it… road trip.

So with only a few hours before sunset, we pretty much googled “beaches”, clicked on the first link and put the address in the GPS. We had nowhere to stay, nowhere to be, and only a general idea of where to go. In the span of an hour, my night had gone from a quiet evening in, to an adventure that would make for one hell of a college essay.

Our “plans” in place (I use the term plans in the loosest sense possible), I gathered together some clothes, a sweatshirt, a blanket, and a pillow for our absurdly spontaneous night. At about 8:30PM, Liam, Tim, Marissa, Amy, and I (Matt had a test the next day L) loaded into our 2000 Nissan Pulsar and began driving North towards our destination, Noosa National Park. We were driving for about 20 minutes before we realized the E-break was on. We were off to a great start.

With no place to sleep and a car the size of a toaster, we decided that we were going all in and sleeping on the beach (a personal bucket list item for me). We were kinda sure that you’re not supposed to do this, so instead of the main (and likely patrolled) Noosa Beach, we aimed for the stretch of sand right next door: Sunrise Beach. The sun rise from Sunrise Beach. It was too poetic to pass up.

And so we drove on in our rickety car we named Laqueefah through Surfer’s Paradise, past Brisbane, and upward to the Sunshine Coast. After about 2 ½ hours, we reached the quaint town of Noosa and the revered beaches that line the coast. We spun around for a few minutes until we found a parking lot along Sunrise Beach. At this point it was around 11PM so the town was dead quiet on a Wednesday night. Not even feeling remotely sleepy, our motley crew gathered up our pillows and blankets and walked toward the inky blank waters of the Pacific. The beach was beautiful, even at night. It didn’t take long for our eyes to adjust to the darkness and we searched for a suitable spot to set up camp. After only a short walk we found a perfect little patch of sand nestled into the hills lining the beach. It was void of light pollution, hard to spot from any nosy late night beachgoers, protected from the wind, and elevated enough so that we wouldn’t get surprised by wet toes at high tide.

The campsite

Happy as clams, we laid out our towels, snuggled up in our blankets and looked up at the unsullied night sky. If you’ve read my blog about the outback, you’ll already know that I have a special affinity for looking up at the stars. The only problem with the outback was that we went during the super moon, which in itself was actually awesome, but at about midnight each night, the moon would rise and it would be so full and bright that it would dim the stars quite a bit. On this beach, on this night, it was different. There was no moon. With no moon, no man made light, and no clouds, the night sky was in a state I didn’t think was even possible. I had thought the outback was the pinnacle of my stargazing. I was dead wrong. With my naked eye, I saw the entire Milky Way galaxy stretching from horizon to horizon. The view from Sunrise Beach looked like the type of long-exposure picture that someone would keep as their desktop background. Meteorites blazed across the night sky every few seconds and at least a dozen satellites drifted silently amongst the stars. It was outright spectacular.

As for sleeping on the beach, it was surprisingly comfortable. While it got rather chilly as the night went on, I had dressed appropriately and the dull roar of the ocean waves just a few feet away lulled me to sleep pretty quickly. At around 3 am I woke up to shift around a bit in the sand when I spotted that the famed Southern Cross had risen from behind us and shone impressively in front of the Milky Way. In the midst of me wishing that I had a camera that could properly capture the sight, the largest shooting star I have ever seen streaked across the sky, flew right in front of the Southern Cross, then exploded into 7 separate pieces that continued to fall down to Earth. It was doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope (to say the least).

I knocked out again and awoke at 4:45 to the growing light of the sun on the horizon. We were rather surprised to see that there were already 6 or 7 surfers wading into the water for some early morning rollers. While we stood at the ocean’s edge still bundled up in our blankets from last night, a pair of surfers walked past, pointed, and said in the most Australian way possible, “Oi! That whale is going nuts!” We looked to the ocean and sure enough, there was the whale, breaching out of the water, having a grand ol’ time. He breached five more times, an incredible spectacle in the growing morning light.

You can see the whale on the horizon line

We watched the sun rise out of the water, just as it has done for billions of years and I decided to try something I had heard about years ago in middle school. A few seconds after I saw the first rays of the sun over the water, I quickly squatted as low as I could in the sand at ocean level and the sun rose…again (This is due to the curvature of the Earth and how your point of view from different heights from sea level allows you to see a slightly different horizon line. This equation, D ≈ sqrt(2*R*h), will give you a rough estimate of your apparent horizon distance if you plug in the height of your eyes from sea level as h and the radius of the Earth as R. You likely don’t give a crap, but I think it’s cool. I’m a nerd, nothing new there). ANYWAYS, I technically got to see the sunrise twice in one day from Sunrise Beach, so I guess I have that going for me.

After my overtly geeky science experiment, we gathered our belongings and headed into Noosa to find some breakfast. On my way to back to LaQueefah, I walked past two surfers who were walking back to their less aptly named cars and I struck up a conversation with them. They were older gentlemen, likely in their 60s, and I chit chatted with them for a bit about why they were out so early. They casually stated that they come surfing every weekday at 4:30AM right before they go to work. HOW SICK IS THAT!? I mean honestly, they must be nearing retirement age and they go surfing every day at sunrise before work! I’m lucky to get out of bed before 11am and not break my alarm clock in a sleepy rage. Mad props to those guys.

Noosa was an enchanting little beach town with a visibly tight knit local community. The main beach was actually voted the third best beach in the South Pacific, and for good reason. We found an outdoor café with a really friendly owner and got breakfast there. With no plans for the rest of the day, we asked the café owner what we should do in Noosa. On the spot, he whipped out a map of the area and told us to do a scenic hike around the national park. Heeding his advice we began our walk around the park and scenic it indeed was. The coastline was craggy with the basalt of some long dead volcano and huge cliffs towered over the ocean at the northern tip of the park, a place appropriately named “Hell’s Gates.” We took gratuitous amounts of touristy pictures along the way. Would you expect anything less?

On the eastern coast of Noosa National Park, a large stretch of sand called Alexandria Beach provided us with a nice resting point to cool off with a swim. You know what really sucks? Tan lines. You put in all of that effort to get that golden brown shade and you still have some certain areas of your body that remain pasty white due to those pesky things we call “clothes.” Apparently some past Alexandria Beach frequenters recognized this pressing issue and decided to combat it by shedding a few layers to let the sun finish what it started. Sooooo yeah, Alexandria was a nude beach. I guess that’s another thing off the bucket list? On this day, there were only a handful of people partaking in this particularly primordial practice (oh damn Mike, that alliteration), so we were able to distance ourselves from the leathery skinned 70 year olds who enjoyed feeling the breeze-between-the-knees. Trust me, nobody wants to see that.

After our adequately clothed swim, we continued along the beach whereupon Liam spotted some rocks with some large waves thundering against them. Well, Liam decided it would be a splendid idea to get a Little Mermaid-esque picture of himself with a massive wave crashing behind him. What he failed to realize though, is that the wave actually continues to crash over the rocks, even after the picture was taken. So he died.

Nah, I’m kidding, he just got pushed over and scraped the bottoms of his feet. The picture did come out frickin awesome though. Worth it? Probably.

You gotta admit, it's pretty cool

Liam was full of good ideas that day because he also decided to do the hike with bare feet. Another 3 miles to walk, some nasty cuts on his feet, and no shoes made for a less than ideal situation. Amy was recovering from an Achilles injury and the hike was the longest she had taken since getting her boot off, so Tim and I split off, grabbed the car, and picked Amy, Liam, and Marissa up at the other end of the trail so they didn’t have to walk much more.

So we left Noosa in the rearview and despite being tired, sandy, and a little wounded; we had a phenomenal time. Our impromptu adventure was amazing and was one of my best stories for this entire semester. Worth it? Definitely.

We got back to campus midday Thursday and despite our exciting past 24 hours, Liam and I still had a full weekend ahead of us. We, along with a bunch of other study abroad kids, decided to take advantage of the high Australian minimum wage (in comparison to the US) and make some moolah! The V8 Supercar Race was in town and where there are fast cars, there’s rich people. And where there’s rich people, there’s places for the rich people to show off how rich they are. And where there’s places for the rich people to show off how rich they are, there’s lots and lots of food. That food needs to be brought to said rich people and that’s where broke foreign kids come in!

So I got up early Friday, donned my straight black wardrobe which I bought for a solid $30 from K-Mart (Including shoes) and hopped on the bus to Surfer’s Paradise. I was assigned to the corporate boxes all weekend long so I got to service all of the top tier suites situated right above the pits. Each box was all inclusive so the food and booze flowed endlessly. This meant A LOT of work for me and my equally black clad comrades. Friday was a long day of running up and down stairs with massive trays of gourmet food, but being a fan of motorsports meant that the powerful scream of the V8 engines whizzing past made it a little bit better. The fact that I was getting paid $27 an hour helped too. We also ate a ton of the leftover food from the corporate boxes. There were entire trays that were left untouched that we all devoured.

Behind Pit Lane

Saturday was a very similar game plan. I woke up early, got to the track by 9am and immediately started running food. After a 9 hour workday the day prior in my $5 K-Mart shoes, my feet were not exactly in the best of shape. But hey, the pay had risen to $29 an hour. Around midday, my supervisor had me and a few others grab some carts and replenish the alcohol for the Moet suite. Moet is a pretty pricey champagne, about $60 AUD per bottle, and we were tasked with transporting 25 cases of the stuff through the dense race crowd and up to the Moet suite. So $9000 worth of champagne being carried by 4 dudes dressed all in black with earpieces and walkie talkies must have been quite the spectacle. As we worked our way through the crowd, people actually started taking pictures of us. We must have looked like the secret service transporting the President’s personal liquor cabinet or something. If anyone spots me on Instagram wheeling around champagne let me know, I want the photo cred.

After the final race had finished and we had cleared out all of the boxes, the supervisor asked if I wanted some overtime work. I jumped at the opportunity of course, and I ended up helping to restock the beer for the entire track. Between the 8 of us that stayed late, we moved 20 pallets of Coopers pale ale which totals out to about 57,600 cans of beer. That’s a lot of beer. I paired up with this really funny guy from West Africa, and we got to use these cool souped up golf carts to help transport the cases. So naturally we whizzed around the track between each run. I ended up working until 10:00PM and though I was tired, sore, and sweaty, it was actually a lot of fun ripping around the track after dark (My African buddy and I may or may not have had a few minor incidents where our need for speed was too overwhelming and we ended up losing a few cases over the side of the cart).

Sunday was the same deal as the past two but my feet and my K-Mart shoes were having some relationship troubles and they weren’t on very good terms. Nevertheless I powered through the day, worked another 8.5 hours, said goodbye to my fellow food runners, and limped my way out of the track for the last time. Because I was already in Surfer’s I met the squad at Waxy’s and stuffed my face with as much $3 steak as I could humanely eat. After such a grueling weekend, I passed out the moment I got back on campus. What a freakin week.

Week 6: Mike vs. Ziplines

            On Tuesday, Liam and I got a haircut. “A haircut?” You exclaim, “Why is a haircut anything notable?” Well, I’ll tell you! ‘Twas the best haircut I’ve ever had! On top of shearing the luscious locks that had been growing out of my head for the past month, they also treated us to beer and a massage. It was a pretty swanky joint and $25 AUD for the full works was a steal. The hairdressers were super nice as well and they were all from South Africa (shout out to Sarah if you’re reading this). It was a very pleasant experience.

            On Wednesday I went to class! Yeah, it’s still easy to forget I actually go to school. My class that day was adventure tourism, and to be perfectly honest, it was the least class-like class I have ever been to. It was one of our field trips and we were brought back to the place of dreams, where it all began: Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary (The place where I spooned a kangaroo). This time, instead of cuddling with various marsupials, we did the ropes course/zip lines that wove around the canopy of the park. The belay system on this course was phenomenal. Instead of having an instructor constantly holding tension on the rope from below so you don’t fall; the entire system was self-contained and allowed everyone to move at their own pace without any help needed. It was a hugely efficient way to do it and it was the first of its kind that I had seen. Furthermore, the zip-line doohickey wheel thing that attaches to the line was right on your harness so you didn’t have to do anything special for the zip-lining sections. The course itself was sick too, with lots of varied obstacles and some genuinely challenging parts. All of this was over the animals too! So we crossed rope bridges over dingos, Tarzan swung over wallabies, and zip-lined over crocodiles. In case I haven’t made it abundantly clear yet: I love this country.

            On Thursday, since my mega-difficult classes (see above) were done for the week, I went to the beach! Liam and I hopped on the bus, rode to Broadbeach, saved a small bird who had fallen out of its nest, laid out our towels, and bummed it for the rest of the day.

Birdie

            On Friday, since my mega-difficult classes (see above) and my mega-difficult Thursday at the beach (see above) were done for the week, I went to the beach! The Goon Squad and I hopped on the bus, rode to Broadbeach, saved a small bir… wait. No, we didn’t do that this time; laid out our towels, and bummed it for the rest of the day.

            On Saturday, seeing that the arduous grind of the work week was over (see above… and above and above), I went to the beach! I think you can guess the rest.

As you can tell, this is a pretty stressful lifestyle I’m living. I should really allow myself more time to relax.

A private airshow

Week 5: Mike vs. Australian Oktoberfest

            The beginning of this week was essentially dedicated to telling everyone all of our crazy outback stories. Classes sorta happened too. Wednesday night, the boys (Tim, Matt, Liam, and I) had another shot at night golf and this time we weren’t denied at the door. I’m not particularly good at golf, but I still talked a lot of smack for the hours leading up to tee-off. Well, I have never lost so many stupid golf balls before. I swear, I hit them right down the fairway and they just straight up disappeared. No trace. Night golf is hard. It still was a ton of fun playing under the lights though.

Thursday was supposed to be the customary beach day for Liam and me before it started torrential down pouring mid-morning. While we were trying to figure out how to salvage the day, it occurred to me that The Martian had just hit theaters. Having devoured the book in less than 24 hours this summer, I was totally down to blow a couple hours watching Matt Damon get rescued… again (you’d think that after Saving Private Ryan, The Bourne Identity, and Interstellar, someone would have realized that this dude needs adult supervision like 24/7). So we spent the afternoon gorging on popcorn and some beautiful cinematics. It’s a great flick, see it if you get the chance.

            This was the first weekend that we didn’t have anything major planned so for the first time, the Goon Squad split up (it’s shocking, I know). Tim’s parents were here so he met up with them in Brisbane and Matt, Monika, Anna, and Sarah went to Sydney for the weekend. As the only squad survivors, Liam, Courtney, Julia, and I caught wind of Oktoberfest in Brisbane that was being hailed as one of the largest in the world. A bunch of Americans, a German beer festival, in Australia? Yup, that sounds to be right up our alley.

            We loaded up on the train early Saturday morning with another American student at Bond named Shane. He’s a wicked chill Californian with some pretty rad surf stories. After somehow getting lost twice looking for the massive fairgrounds in Brisbane (we struggle to get around without Tim leading the way, not gonna lie), we finally made it to Oktoberfest. We bought our steins and prepared for a full day of quality German bier and schnitzel. There was only one major problem: quality German bier and schnitzel in Australia is apparently super expensive. Our rapidly depleting college bank accounts weren’t exactly overjoyed. Nevertheless, we enjoyed some authentic German ale and music. 

From Left: Shane, Liam, Courtney, Julia, Me

We decided around noon to explore Brisbane a bit and return back when the festivities ramped up later that night. A short walk from the fairground brought us to a bar called Taps which had an entire wall of custom beers on tap that were considerably cheaper than the ones at Oktoberfest. We befriended the bartenders there and ate, drank, and made merry.

We headed back to Oktoberfest in late afternoon in good spirits and were absolutely stoked to see that the crowd had quadrupled in size. There was a massive tent decorated in wreaths and images of the Bavarian Alps that really gave the feel of Germany. And this tent was PACKED. 

A sea of lederhosen 

The same band that we saw playing earlier in the morning was back on stage and they were rocking (in German of course, so we had no idea what they were actually saying). We snagged a few more brews and ventured into the pulsating mass of humanity. It was freakin amazing. Naturally, no one knew the words to any of the songs so our “singing” consisted of harsh, guttural noises which would have made an actual German cry. Every once in a while the band would play a song in English and the crowd would go nuts. I discovered my new favorite song while at Oktoberfest too. It’s called Fliegerlied. 

The hottest song of 2015. Peep it

It’s a song about being really happy and talking about how wonderful of a day it is. They have this ridiculous dance with it too that everyone knew by the end of the night. 

It was honestly so much fun. Unfortunately we had to catch the train to campus so we had to bid auf Wiedersehen to our small slice of Germany while the party was still bumpin’. I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable our Australian Octoberfest was and I can only imagine how crazy the German Oktoberfest is. It’s definitely getting written down in permanent marker on my bucket list.

We ended the week appropriately at Waxy’s where we were able to reflect that it’s impossible to have even a remotely dull moment in Australia. Another good week for the books.

Week 4: Mike vs. The Outback

    The beginning of this week was pretty straightforward. Classes and stuff. Maybe some notable things actually happened between Monday and Wednesday, but my memory at the moment is dominated by our second large excursion of this Australian semester. I am talking, of course, about our journey to the great Australian outback, or the bush as the locals call it.

            The Goon Squad was all together for this momentous odyssey. (Anna, Julia, Court, Monika, Matt, Tim, and I) We caught a red-eye flight out of Brisbane that took us to Darwin, the largest city in the Northern Territory. By the time we got to the hostel in Darwin, it was already 3am and we had to be at the bus for pickup at 6:30am. We all somehow managed to wake up and stumble our way to the beast of a bus that would be our home for the next 3 days and met our met lovely tour guide, Leigh. And by “lovely,” I mean a rugged, experienced, resourceful, and hilarious dude from Cairns. Leigh lives the type of life that any free spirited and outdoors loving person would kill for. He either acts as a tour guide in the outback, a dive instructor at Cairns, or a dive instructor in Indonesia. When he can, he travels around the world diving and backpacking. We were lucky enough to get him on one of his stints with Wayoutback Tours and this guy knows more about the outback than I know about my own hometown.

            Joining Leigh and the Goon Squad on our bus were 9 other people who came from all over the globe. We had university students from Germany, Netherlands, Italy, and Mexico as well as a pair of Swiss bankers who had graduated only a few years ago. It was the single most diverse bus I’ve ever been on. We departed from Darwin to begin our almost 1000km trek across some of the least inhabited terrain in Australia. Once we left the city in our rearview mirrors, the countryside quickly changed into a vast expanse of red, iron rich soil, dotted only with small shrubs and termite mounds. The termite mounds we saw throughout the trip were huge, with some reaching over 10 feet tall. The Northern Territory was just coming out of the dry season so the land we saw had not seen a drop of rain in almost 6 months. It was an arid, barren, dusty landscape that was strikingly beautiful… especially from inside of a nicely air conditioned bus. The temperature was a steady 90 degrees Fahrenheit for most of our trip and rose to the upper 90s for a few hours each day. It was HOT (and we brought long pants, thinking that it might get cold at night. Leigh laughed at this and told us he doesn’t even own a pair of pants. So that was a big waste of precious packing space. Live and learn I guess.)

The endless expanse

    Our first stop on our tour brought us to Kakadu National Park, the largest national park in Australia that covers almost 20,000 square kilometers. We drove to the Mary River Wetlands for a crocodile cruise. Now the wetlands/floodplains after 6 months of draught aren’t really that wet. They’re actually rather dry, believe it or not. However, when the wet season comes around, those wetlands get really wet. Like 5-feet-of-rain wet. It rains so much during the heart of the wet season that most roads in the area get completely flooded and some towns are cut off from the rest of the world for months at a time. The rivers that were merely babbling brooks when we saw them would grow to be almost a kilometer wide, some get even bigger. It was crazy to think that where we stood by the banks of Mary River would be covered in 5 feet of water that would stretch from horizon to horizon in just a few short months. Anyways, we hopped onto a boat in the river while it was only a measly 50 feet across. It seemed like a great place for a quick swim to cool off. As it turns out though, the Mary River Wetlands happens to have the largest concentration of salt water crocodiles on the planet. Leigh cheerily informed us that we would be lucky to make it 5 feet in the water before being gobbled up by a hungry croc. Isn’t Australia fun!! With swimming out of the question, we hunkered down beneath the blazing sun for a boat ride amongst the crocodiles.

    Mary River was beautiful. Lily pads with huge pink blossoms lined the banks and exotic birds of every shape and size flew in and out of view. Despite the large number of crocodiles in the area, we only saw two on the cruise. The boat guide attributed this to the hot midday sun and the cold-blooded animals’ need for the cool riverbed beneath the murky waters. The great diversity of wildlife and flora that we saw made up for the lack of man-eating reptiles though. We would also come to see dozens more crocodiles over the course of the next few days. 

Mary had a little River

Croc

    From Mary River, we ate lunch and headed to Ubirr, a set of natural sandstone caves sitting atop a hillside. Ubirr holds a very rich history for the aboriginal people in the area and features cave paintings that date as far back as 20,000 BC. Leigh was able to tell us heaps (the Australian lingo is catching on) of stories about the paintings, aboriginal history, and how their culture has evolved. From the top of the hill, we had an incredible, 360 degree view of the area. In fact, Ubirr is the place where the opening sequence of Crocodile Dundee was filmed. Watch the movie. We were there. Yeah. It was from there where we watched the sunset which was absolutely breathtaking. It was even more mind blowing to think of the aboriginals that sat in the exact same spot watching the same sunset 20,000 years prior.

 

Goon Squad at Pride Rock

Unreal

    We spent that night at Cooinda Camping Ground where we were able to get to know the other people in our group. I always find it fascinating to talk with people from other countries to hear about their experiences and how different some places are from the US. Before calling it a night, Liam, Tim, Matt, and I laid down to look at the stars. The stars. Holy crap the stars. As an eagle scout, I’ve been on my fair share of camping trips and looked at the stars uncountable times. But holy crap… the stars here. I was seeing a night sky I had never seen before because of the difference in hemispheres between Australia and every other place I’ve ever been. More than that though, the sky was essentially exploding with stars. The absence of light pollution, the lack of actual pollution, and the low amount of moisture in the air to form haze gave us a view of millions upon millions of bright, clear stars. It was and still is beyond words. We laid there for probably two hours and saw about a dozen shooting stars ignite the sky. The only thing that drove me into my tent that night was the assurance that we would be sleeping under the stars the next night. And the fact that we were waking up at 5:45am. That’ll do it too.

    Day 2 began bright and early, just as promised. We spent much of our day at Gunlom Falls. Again, being at the tail end of the dry season meant that the waterfalls were not very watery. Leigh put it best by saying that Gunlom was more of a waterdrip, not a waterfall. Nevertheless, we hiked up the side of the mountain to the top of the falls for a spectacular view of the landscape. A few natural infinity pools laid at the top of the falls so we did some swimming and took lots of touristy pictures.

The infinity pools

The whole crew

    We hiked back down to the lower plunge pool and took a dip in the fresh water crocodile infested waters. Oh I should probably mention here that fresh water crocodiles aren’t aggressive toward humans, only their salt water counterparts are. Sorry for the scare Mom. Most bodies of water in the outback are actually unswimmable due to the salt water crocs (I’m pretty sure unswimmable is a word. Spellcheck doesn’t agree with my though. Screw it I’m keeping it.) Gunlom can be swam in because the park rangers will clear out the salt-odiles a few times a year. Waterfall pools are usually fine to swim in too, because crocodiles can’t leap a couple hundred feet in the air to the top. At least I hope not.

Gunlom Waterdrip

    Adequately confident we weren’t going to die swimming in the Gunlom plunge pool, we donned some snorkeling gear and explored the large body of water. Tim thought his phone needed a bath so he ever so kindly took it in the water with him. You can probably guess how well that worked. In the midst of Tim’s tragic loss, Leigh popped out of the water holding a 3 foot long water snake. My adequate confidence of not dying got a lot less adequate in that moment. It turned out the snake was harmless so we played with it for a while. I held a water snake, in a crocodile infested pool, beneath a 150 foot waterfall, in the outback. Never thought I’d get to say that.

Me and da snake

    For lunch we went to a secret swimming hole Leigh had discovered in a past tour, ate some food, swam, and jumped off some rocks. Tuckered out from gratuitous amounts of sun and swimming, we carried on to our campsite at the base of Mount Bundy. Mount Bundy was a weathered mountain along an ancient mountain chain that has felt the full force of the brutal Australian season cycles. A small farm lay right next to the camp so we befriended some horses and bull named Nigel. At the campsite, the wildlife of the outback was out in full force. Lots of ugly brown toads milled about and cool little green tree frogs stuck to the walls of buildings. Wallabies were EVERYWHERE, hopping around looking all cute and shit. I snagged some sweet potato and fed a few and almost got one to eat out of my hand. Almost. Flying foxes, or super-mega-scary-death bats as I like to call them, whooshed around the night sky. They can have a wingspan of almost 5 feet. They big.

    We ate some dinner, made a campfire, and sat around chatting until the wee hours of the morning. I talked to the Swiss bankers, Michael and Joel, for a solid few hours about everything from skiing the Alps, to the decline of Swiss banking freedoms, to the effect the Eurocrisis is having on American foreign investments. I go to a business school if you couldn’t guess. Eventually I wandered over to the open field where we would sleep, set up my swag (an outdoor sleeping bag), and laid down to gaze once again at the stars. It was magical. I stayed awake as long as I could, saw about a dozen more shooting stars, then finally drifted off to sleep.

    I awoke to one of the horses from the farm standing stoically over us in the growing morning light. After falling asleep under the most beautiful night sky I’ve ever seen, here’s this majestic creature, bathed in sunlight, looking over me in my snuggly swag. Again, beyond words.

My wake up call

    Once I had woken up enough to realize that this was indeed real life, I got ready for our last day in the outback. We visited three different waterfalls on that day. The first being an incredible series of deep pools that were perfect for diving into. The water that led into the pools was also naturally filtered by sandstone underground and was clean enough to drink right out of the stream. It was really good. The second waterfall was part of the same river system, just further down the range. It was a massive swimming hole with a thundering waterfall that stayed flowing year round due to the mountain retaining huge amounts of water. This particular place had an underwater cave that you could look into with the snorkeling gear. The third waterfall and final destination of our outback adventure was also huge and had an awesome natural arch to its side. We did some more swimming and sat underneath the waterfall. It was finally time to head back to civilization.

Waterfall 1: The diving pools

Waterfall 2

Waterfall 3: Notice the arch/cave to the left

Matt, Me, Liam, Random Guy

    We got back to Darwin right before dark, so we decided to watch the sunset from the beach there. Leigh had been incredible the entire trip and we kept him entertained. He had so much fun with us that weekend that he invited us to a bar in Darwin for some pizza and beer as a farewell, it’s something he said he very rarely does. With our flight not leaving until 1:15am we jumped at the opportunity. It turned into one of the best nights I’ve had in Australia. After eating our fill of pizza, a live band started playing and Leigh made sure we didn’t go thirsty. The band was sick and played all classic songs we all knew every word to. We had become close with our other international friends so it was a fitting end to a spectacular trip. We reluctantly left our group after exchanging contact information and boarded our plane completely exhausted. The red-eye brought us to Brisbane at 5:30am and after only getting an hour of sleep on the plane, I was a zombie. Needless to say I slept the moment I got back to campus.

    This entire week was [insert synonym of awesome here]. We saw beautiful sites, learned about a place unlike any other on Earth, and met some amazing people. I was excited for the outback, but this experience took up a metaphorical sledgehammer and completely shattered my expectations. We still have Cairns, Sydney, and New Zealand coming up, and they will be hard pressed to beat this trip. Regardless, the outback was easily one of the best things I’ve done in my short 20 (almost 21) years. 10/10 would recommend. 

Sunset in Darwin