Team Shark Bait

My friend Heather invited Amy and me to go sailing with her on Wednesday at Lake Illawarra. We both had class until 12:30 and we had to make the bus at 1:10. We literally ran from the bus into our apartment, grabbed a granola bar, threw on bathing suits and ran to the bus stop. Lets just say that I haven't been to the gym since winter break...so this was intense for me. We had to run across town in order to get to the bus stop. We were dodging cars and pedestrians. We made it to the bus stop just in time!

We got dropped off right near the boat rental place which was awesome because we originally had thought we were going to have to walk about 20mins to get to the rental place. The owner of the shop set up the catamaran, gave us a couple of pointers and set us out into the lake. Heather has been sailing for many years, and is actually a camp counselor at a sailing camp. Amy and I on the other hand had little to no experience. Our first lap across the lake we shot across the water and got stuck in a sand dune. The water got very shallow very quick before we were able to turn around. So, Heather literally had to get out of the boat and physically push us out of the sand.

After that mishap everything went pretty smoothly..until Amy had a chance to drive. She had the boat in a way that the entire bottom half of my body was in the water and the boat almost tipped over! It was pretty scary! Later on, I was driving and Heather said that I wanted to get her wet with water to push the rudders in a certain way. So I listened to her, and ended up making the boat dive under the water and almost threw her overboard...wooops! The three of us laughed the entire 2hrs we were out on the water. I had a blast!!

One detail I left out is that last week a great white shark was spotted in the lake that we went sailing in..ahhh! Thankfully, we didn't see it though!

Dreamland

On Wednesday night we had a bunch of people over and then headed out to the bars. We ended up at 151 where I won 2 free tickets to the Dreamland concert. I was originally planning to buy a ticket, but this worked out perfectly because it saved me $40. So Saturday, Amy and I went to campus east to hang out with Jen in her room and pregame. I ended up selling the extra ticket I had so I ended up making $40 that weekend...woo!

The concert was house music, which is a mixture of hip hop and techno. It started at 4 and went until 10. I stayed until around *:30, and at that time my ears were ringing so bad from the music that it was time for me to head out. It was fun, but it wouldn't have been worth spending money on.

Sunday Amy and I went to LeVendi a cafe on the beach and I got a milkshake...yum! Sunday night, we had people over and tried to get into the harp, which was closed so Amy, Jason, Heather and I went to a club called the ivory. It was definitely an older seen, lots of cougars..haha! They played some awesome music and we danced a whole bunch!

Weekend in Melbourne

On Weds April 14th I traveled to Melbourne for the weekend. I got in around 8:30 and took the skybus and a free shuttle to my hostel (Nomad's Industry). That night I roomed with a guy from England, New Zealand, Germany and a girl from France. What a mix! Since I got in late I just headed to bed.

The next morning I woke up early and headed to check out the Queen Victoria Market on my own. It was pretty chilly and started to rain, so I went back to the hostel to get some pants and a rain jacket. When I got back the guys from New Zealand and Germany had just woke up. I waited for them to get ready and then we headed out together to explore the city. We utilized the free tourist bus and tram and saw lots of the city. We checked out the Docklands, Federation Square and the Botanical Gardens. That night we all hung out at the hostels bar (and did a jager train). Kelly showed up around 10:30.

Friday, Kelly and I went to the Melbourne aquarium to check out the animals. We were the oldest ones there without children...haha! We met up with our group at 3, went on a walking tour and checked out little alley ways and explored the non-tourist areas of Melbourne. We stopped at a girly bar to get mocktails since our group was 15 girls, 2 guys. We ate dinner at a dumpling restaurant and got desert at Maz Brenner's chocolate bar (what a great invention!). We then went to the Comedy festival and saw Charlie Pickering...so funny! After the show, a bunch of us went to a bar down a sketchy alley that smelled like garbage (where all the best bars are in Melbourne) called Croft Institute. It was science themed with beakers and test tubes and we took syringe shots!

Saturday Kelly and I spent the majority of our day at the Queen Victoria Market shopping and checking out the locals (dolla forty banana!) At night our group went to a footy game (Aussie Rules football) which is a comination of soccer, football, and rugby. I also had my first meat pie at the game...it was pretty good!

Sunday was an early start. We all hopped in a bus and headed to the Great Ocean Road. The views were beautiful but the road was wild. I think it should be called the great windy road. We were in the bus from 7:30 am until about 6:30 pm. We checked out the twelve apostles which were gorgeous!

Extreme Days 7,8,9

After white water rafting, we headed to Cairns our final destination. The first night we all went out to the woolshed for dinner. Thursday was the EXTREME day. Friends of mine signed up to go skydiving and did that super early in the morning. I didn’t go because I want to go skydiving in Wollongong. I spent the day exploring the town with the girls I was staying with; we got lunch and did some shopping. That night was bungy jumping! I went through waves of nervousness on our way to the AJ Hackett bungy jump place. But once we got there I was pumped! I was one of the first people to jump off the edge. It was a WILD experience. After the bungy jump, I did the jungle swing which was a blast!

Friday, we woke up early to go scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef! This was probably my favorite day. It had always been a dream of mine to go scuba diving, and to be able to go at the Great Barrier Reef was unreal. After a 2 hour cruise out into the ocean we arrived at our dive spot. I was in the first diving group and was paired up with my friends Adam, Stephen and Graham. We got all geared up and got into the water. We slowly descended by holding a metal bar in the water and moving to deeper depths. After we got several meters under the water, we linked arms with our guide and began to explore. We were under for about 20-25minutes. It was awesome, I absolutely loved it! I saw lots of coral and even saw nemo!

On Saturday, our last day, we went to the beach. We got there in our double decker party bus and everyone who past us stared and honked their horns. We went swimming in the designated area at the beach. There were signs everywhere saying to beware of jellyfish and crocodiles. Luckily, I didn’t see any crocs! After the beach we headed to the rainforest, where we checked out Crystal Cascades at river/waterfall. It was very pretty! That night we had our last hurrah at the woolshed. Jimmy and Pete used the money they had collected from the sin tin over the week to make a very strong drink for all of us to share. I had a bit too much because by about 10 o’clock I was ready for bed..haha! I did make it to the woolshed and ate like crazy when they brought food out. It must have looked as though we all hadn’t eaten in days.

Extreme Day 6

Today’s activity was white-water rafting down the Tully River. This experience was awesome! There were 7 of us on the boat and a guide (Julie, Diana, Reva, Stephen, Adam, Graham and me). The rapids were a combination of level 4’s and 3’s. There were several commands that were important for our fun and safety. “get down”, “hold on”, “left”, “right”, “forward”, “backward”.

The major rapids were on the first part of the trip. Luckily, no one fell out of our boat. Although, our guide wanted to “see how we could swim” so he had us all jump out of the boat and float feet first down a small rapid. After a BBQ lunch we all hopped back into our boats. This part of the river was a little calmer, so we played some games. The first one involved all of us piling in one end of the boat and going off a steep drop. The result of this was that we all ended up flipping over our boat and taking a swim. We also climbed a large rock and jumped off into the river. Another game we did is everyone got on one end of the boat and trip to make the boat vertical without tipping it…yet again, we went for a swim. We also went directly under a waterfall. The trip was a last and definitely one of my favorite parts of the entire spring break trip!!

Extreme Day 1

On the first day of our trip I woke up around 6:30 to take a shower before I needed to meet up with the Extreme group. I left the hostel soon after and headed out to find the bus station. I had a bit of trouble finding the bus part of the transport station. I ended up at the train station and had to ask for help to find the bus station. With the help of a very nice man, I made it. I stopped and got some brekky at Maccas (McDonalds).

When I got to the area in the bus station we were told to meet up I realized I was the first one. Shortly after I arrived my guides Jimmy and Pete showed up. Jimmy was in the process of blowing up an inflatable kangaroo, who was our mascot for the week. Within an hour or so our entire trip (aka 72 people) showed up. We all piled onto the largest coach bus I have ever seen. It was a double-decker bus, pulling a large trailer, crazy!

We drove an hour or so to the Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin’s Zoo). We checked out all the animals and went to the crocodile show. Bindi (Steve’s daughter) started the show with a display of dancing and singing. Then the real show began! Out came elephants, then birds that were trained to fly around in the Crocoseum, and then the crocodile! It was huge!

That night we stayed at a hostel in Hervey Bay in a sketchy bungalow. Right when we (Julie, Diana, Stella) walked into the room there was a gecko crawling on the wall. Our “neighbors” were a bunch of bogans (hicks) who were living in tiny trailers. After dropping off our stuff and changing we headed to our booze cruise in Hervey Bay. We were served dinner and given unlimited free beer and goon. Some people got pretty wild!

When we returned to the hostel, we went across the street to another hostel to hang out at their bar. We certainly brought the party when all 74 of us showed up at the bar, when there had only been about 10 people there. Julie, Diana and I shared a cocktail jug of a delicious mixture. After lots of dancing we headed to bed so we could be ready for the next day!

Extreme Day 5

Today we woke up bright and early to catch a Maxi yacht to the Whitsundays to do some snorkeling. In our itinerary it said this yacht was a multi-million dollar vessel…we all felt otherwise! Yet again, almost everyone was hung-over from partying the night before so I was sure that people were going to get sick.

After a decent ride out into the water, we arrived at the area in which we got to snorkel. I put on my stinger suit (to protect myself from all the jellies in the water), grabbed my snorkel and goggles and jumped in off the boat. Right when I got in the water there were several huge fish swimming around me. It was awesome! I had a noodle with me which was nice so that I could just float along the water. I saw some awesome coral and fish.

After swimming around for awhile we got back on the boat to have lunch. I don’t think that they were prepared for the amount of people who were on the boat, because by the time I got up to the food, all that was left was bread. So for my lunch, all I ate was bread…definitely not enough! Once lunch was over we sailed back to the marina in Airlie Beach to grab the rest of our bags and head to mission beach. We were given 20minutes to find some food before we hopped on the bus. My friends and I went to a grocery store where I found a value pack of Tim-Tams!! Best find ever!! Happy with my Tim-Tams I got on the bus with Adam as my travel partner. The bus ride was 6 hours long.

Halfway to Mission Beach we stopped at a McDonalds. I literally ran out of the bus and eat the entire group (72 people), and was the first one in line. A bunch of the boys decided it would be a good idea to have an ice cream eating contest. About 5 of them each bought 4 cones. They were all cocky thinking they would devour the ice cream. One guy only ate one and a half cones…so weak! A guy just on the sideline was so unimpressed that he began to just grab the guy’s ice creams and eat them himself. He ended up eating the most of anyone and he wasn’t even originally in the competition. All the other boys ended up throwing up their ice cream..yuck!

We all hopped back on the bus and arrived at mission beach late at night. We were brought to our rooms, which I would say were our best accommodations, the whole trip. I roomed with Julie and Diana and we each had our own beds. The room even had towels (which was great because I had only brought a beach towel and it was stinky!). We showered up, watched a little TV for the first time and went to bed.

Extreme Day 4

Today was a great day because we were given a chance to do whatever we wanted. We could rent a jet ski, go tubing, or just hang out by the pool. The weather yet again wasn’t working with us, so we spent a lot of the day trying to soak up the sun when it was out, and hiding under a roof when it began to rain.

Adam, Julie, Diana, Erica and I decided to do a little exploring of the island. We went on a bit of a bushwalk (aka hike) to an island. It was really neat because when the tide changes the footpath disappears under water. We were able to make it across before this happen, and we were the only ones on the trip to make it out to that point.

After our walk we tried to open up coconuts to try the milk. The boys were using rocks to try to break them open. This technique didn’t work very well. We were very excited when we were told by one of the workers at the resort that there was a coconut opener in the near the golf course. We gathered 6 or so green, ripe coconuts and tried to open them on this spike. It was very efficient and we were able to gather a lot of coconut milk. I tasted the milk, and it was gross. I was also worried because I had heard that if you drink too much you could get the runs.

That night we had a beach party. This night was much more fun because everyone was out and about. We played drinking games out on the tables outside the bar and then had a massive dance party on the tables. It was so much fun!

Extreme Day 3

Today we arrived in Airlie Beach at a public rest stop area. We were given about an hour to get changed into bathing suits and clean up, as well as pack a small bag for 3 days of beach bumming. We ate McDonald’s b-fast sandwiches for brekky before we hopped back on the bus to be dropped off at a marina.

We walked out onto a pier on which we boarded our rides for the day. There were 3 jet boats waiting for us. About 15-20 people climbed on each boat and we quickly took off into the water. We were cruising, and “battling” with each other. We were jumping wakes, making whirlpools, and trying to splash the other boats. It was wild! Unfortunately we hit a large patch of rain, which when going fast felt like I was being pelted by hail. We then got out into the open ocean. The waves were so huge that they entire boat would get airborne. I had to hold on for dear life at some points! During this entire boat ride the majority of people on the boat were heavily drinking goon and playing spin the bottle. After about 45min on the boat we reached the Whitsunday Island.

We went on a hike to a lookout point that had a beautiful view of Whitehaven beach. It truly was beautiful white sand. We climbed back down the mountain to get back on the boats to head to the next island. As I was sitting on the boat waiting for everyone to get on I watched as on girl practically drowned trying to walk through the water. She was so drunk that she was being dragged through the water. They had to physically pull her up onto the boat. This girl ended up passing out on the boat for the entire rest of the day, missed lunch, and never set foot on the beach…what a waste of a day!

At the next beach the boats anchored in the water and we all ran to the beach. We hung out there for several hours and people drank the entire time. We ate a really good lunch, and enjoyed a couple of hours of sun since we hadn’t seen any in days. By the end of the day people were black-out drunk. We all had to pile back on the boats to head to the hotel/resort we would be staying at for the next couple of days. The waves on the ride home were as huge as the way there, people were passed out, falling out of their seats, and one kid even passed out to the extreme that he continually banged his head on a metal post without ever being woken up by it. I was freaking out the entire time, praying that no one would get sick on the boat. Thankfully, everyone pulled through!

We arrived at South Molle Island, as a drunken mass of people. Several people fell face first in the sand and had to be dragged up the beach. It was a mess! By this time I had, had enough and just wanted to get to my room and get away from the chaos for awhile. I was rooming with Julie and Diana. We had a little bungalow to ourselves. It was ice because it had air condition but the water in the sink and toilet ran continuously for the entire time we were there. Such a waste of water! After relaxing for a couple of hours we had to get ready for the plastic theme party.

The front desk gave us all different colored plastic garbage bags and we were told to make an outfit out of it. I made a shirt and used a second color plastic to make a belt. My roommates created dresses and surprisingly even though we were dressed in plastic we all looked pretty decent. We went out but everyone was hung over from the day, that there were really no people out at the resort’s bar. So Adam, Graham, Diana, Julie and I came back and hung out in our room for several hours chatting. Great end to a WILD day!

Extreme Day 2

Jimmy came to our door and woke us up around 7:00am. We got dressed and loaded up on the bus and headed to catch a ferry to Fraser Island. The ferry took about 45min to reach the island. Once we arrived we got on 2 four-wheel-drive buses and started our adventure. I have never been on such a bumpy bus ride. At first it was fun, but everyone on the trip was hung over from the night before so I was very concerned that people were going to be sick on the bus. Our first stop was Lake McKenzie which was beautiful. The water was so clear; you could see your toes as though you were just staying on the beach. It was an amazing blue color.

Unfortunately, it rained during the entire day. The only times it was sunny was when we were on the bus driving to our next destination. We stopped at a resort on the island and got a buffet style lunch which had amazing rolls. I devoured a whole bunch of rolls. We then got back on the crazy buses drove along the beach. The beach is 75miles long! We also checked out Lake Wabby and Lake Birrabeen.

Had the weather been nicer I probably would have enjoyed myself better. After about 6 or 7 hours on the buses our Fraser Island excursion was finally over. I was so relieved to be out of the 4x4 bus. We got back on the ferry and headed to land, where we got on a bus back to the hostel. We were fed dinner which included pasta and meat sauce and garlic bread. I ate my meal so fast because we only had a short period of time to take showers. I ate so fast that I was able to get the first shower, before 49 other girls. It felt so nice to be clean after a long day of being wet and sandy. After everyone showered up we piled onto the bus for our overnight (12hr) bus ride. I sat with Adam who was a great travel buddy. We chatted for hours. Every 2 hours or so we stopped for bathroom and food breaks, this was good because it allowed us to get up and stretch.

Adam, Julie, Diana and I chose to sit on the bottom part of the bus because there were less people and the people on the top floor of the bus were drinking throughout the ride. At one point, Tim stumbled down the stairs, sat on a girls lap and passed out sitting on her. He was completely out of it to the point that the girl was able to draw on his face using a permanent marker. She drew him a bunch of facial hair including a unibrow. It was hilarious. He didn’t move for awhile and finally after an hour or so he started to move around. He looked as though he was going to throw up, and everyone began to freak out! Jimmy found a garbage bag and tied it around his ears, so he had a vomit bib. I don’t think he ever got sick but it was still pretty funny/scary.

Beginnings of Spring Break 2010

I had been looking forward to this spring break trip for several weeks, and on April 1st it began! I traveled all by myself. I took the train from Wollongong to Central Station in Sydney and got a connecting train to the domestic airport. I got there pretty early because I wanted to make sure that I made my flight, so I got to spend about 3hrs hanging out in the airport. The flight to Brisbane was very quick, only taking about a hour and a half! I chatted the whole plane ride with an Australian guy who was sitting next to me.

Once in Brisbane I caught a shuttle bus to my hostel for $16. It was great because it dropped me off right in front of the building. I stayed at Base Brisbane Central for about $27. I was in a room with 5 other girls, 2 were from Canada, 2 were from England and one never spoke so I have no idea where she was from. All of these girls were actual backpackers who were in Australia just to travel. It was really neat to chat with these girls and learn about some of their experiences. They all went out that night, but I decided to stay in because I knew I was going to have a long and crazy week ahead of myself! Unfortunately, the bars closed at midnight, so everyone returned to the hostel and continued to party. People were on the balcony outside my window until about 3 or 4 in the morning. Overall, I didn't get much sleep, but it certainly was an interesting experience at my first hostel!