Hey Everyone!
Here are a few photos from what we get to see when we go outside and drive to Karratha. It's the desert and it's growing on us. The hotel certainly isn't growing on us but the desert is. Maybe that's because it's been below 40 degrees for the last little while.

We have no new news from Dampier

I am sorry that I haven’t updated this in awhile, it’s just that not a whole lot new has been happening and if we had a faster connection I would load up some photos but unfortunately the connection isn’t too good here so you’ll have to wait until we get somewhere better for more pictures.

We’ve been working…a lot. In 9 days we both worked over 70 hours. It’s good though because there isn’t much else to do. So..the more money we make the quicker we can get out of here. Although I think soon we will book our flights to Perth for the beginning of February. So we can spend a week or so in Perth and I can see Karleen and then do a tour of Margaret River and spend some time down south and then start on our road trip.

We’ve made some good friends, I think that some we will be friends with for the rest of our lives even if we won’t see them much. There’s quite a few girls here from Ireland and there is two in particular that we get along really well with. I’ll miss them when we go. I think we are leaving around the same time though so at least we won’t be here without them.

There has been a ton of drama here…more than what we have at home which is certainly saying something. I guess that’s what happens when you put a bunch of girls working/drinking/living together. Hannah and I still haven’t participated in the drinking ridiculous amounts. Both of us don’t have the ability to work hungover. Especially in this heat and with the type of work that we’re doing. Cleaning rooms and wanting to barf doesn’t exactly go hand in hand.

Christmas is going to be so different here and it won’t really feel like Christmas but I think that it’ll be alright. We do a secret santa so that everyone gets to open a present and then the bosses give us something as well from the sounds of it. Then we just have a big party. We get to drink for free all day, none of us work, we get a big Christmas dinner and possibly a beach party. It’ll be a lot of fun and I’m excited for it. It certainly won’t be Christmas but it will be a good day.

We get asked if we’re Irish on a regular basis. Apparently our accents are similar?? I don’t think so at all but I guess they hear a similar accent. I don’t know, maybe it’s cause they’re loaded when they’re talking to us so they don’t really know what they’re hearing.

Sorry this is a slack update but I felt I needed to put something up, it’s been so long. I just haven’t blogged in awhile because this is a travel blog and at the moment it doesn’t feel much like we’re travelling. Sometimes I forget that we’re in Australia until I step outside and it’s 40 above. Anything below 37 degrees is starting to feel cool. We’re going to freeze when we leave this town...and especially when we get back to Canada. We miss home a lot and miss everyone even more. Especially around Christmas. It’s hard to be away from family and it’s the first time for both of us, but at least we have each other. We miss you all so much and will see you in 4 short months!

Our address is

PO Box 284
Dampier, Western Australia
6713

Please feel free to send mail. and presents. and money (Just kidding) and anything else you think we may need.

I'll post a longer one later.

Dear Outside World,

We miss you, we really do and we look forward to our return only 2 and half short months from now.

We’ve arrived in Dampier and been here for a few days now. I have finally found a weak wireless connection however facebook and hotmail is blocked. I never thought that I would see this day, the day where I am forced to go without facebook and hotmail. Wow addicted much?

We wish that we could describe to you the heat here. Hannah made an attempt today and she said that imagine the hottest hottest day of the summer and imagine sitting in the sun for 12 hours straight, with no wind and not being able to cool yourself down…that’s how we feel the instant we go outside. And I’m not exaggerating at all. It’s well over 40 degrees every day. It’s going to be weird to go outside and find 30 degrees cool. I never thought that would happen to me.

I also never thought that I would be able to say that I have lived in a desert, but now I can. When we got here I was a bit scared. It’s a dive, but now that we are working it’s not so bad. We will be making over a grand every two weeks so I can’t complain because that’s a lot of money. I don’t think that we’ll be swimming in the ocean until we get back down to Perth or to the East Coast. There is a beach here but the water just seems kind of gross and it’s right near the mine which also weirds me out because how much stuff do they dump into here.

Each room that we’re staying in has a cyclone kit. And if a cold front comes down from the north they’re be a cyclone. Someone said it will probably happen at least once while we are here. I didn’t ever thing I would be able to say that we had experienced a cyclone either. Scary.

There’s a café a short way away where we can use the internet and will have facebook and hotmail so we’ll go and check that every now and then. Feel free to send messages of encouragement. We’ll need it.

I’ll update soon and maybe post some photos of where we are staying. It’s in Dampier, which is north on the coast in a tiny town with not a whole lot going on, which is good because then we can’t spend our money.

We miss you world and will try and stay in touch.
XOXO

Farewell Perth, it was fun

Oh Perth how we love you, you and the job shop. We’ve been in Perth for 5 nights and we have managed to score ourselves a job. We’ve been persistent. Very very persistent. We’ve gone to the job shop every day that it’s been open and talked to them…a lot. On Friday we went the job shop and this guy Andrew (who works there) started talking to us about our plans and said he would send out our resume’s to a bunch of his hospitality people and then he would have a job for us Monday. There was no way that we were going to get our hopes up because we had both heard that before. But sure enough, we got a text from him saying come in so we did and he gave us a card with 3 numbers and told us a bit about all three places. He recommended one of them the most though so we got home and decided to give them a call. Hannah has mastered the phone…I give her all the credit. So she called them and talked to one of the girls who said the boss wasn’t in at the moment but he would call us sometime soon…so we waited and waited (well really only for a night, but it felt like an eternity, especially because we kept shopping and spending money). The next morning we woke up and decided that if they hadn’t called by midday we would give them a call, nothing like a little persistence. We chilled out all morning and watched copious amounts of television killing time when quarter to 12 our phone rang. And it was the guy calling us to let us know that we had the job. So, we called the girls at the hotel and they said we could start anytime this week but it was best if we were up before Friday because there’s a big event Saturday where we will be able to meet everyone. So we got on the net and booked our flights (which are going to be reimbursed!!) and called the girls to let them know that we were going to be there Thursday afternoon!

I can’t even begin to explain how excited we both are. All day we haven’t been able to stop smiling. The job itself consists of us working in a hotel doing bartending, serving, helping in the kitchen, basically anything and everything. We get a room for free to live in (now we can finally say we’ve lived in a hotel, we’ll send you the address soon, so feel free to send us…anything….anything at all, money, presents, tim hortons coffee…just kidding...but really we have an intense craving for proper coffee from home). Anyways, we will be making well over what we do at home and living and eating for free….who can complain about that!!! That’s about all…please feel free to leave your questions and concerns in the comments section located at the bottom of this post.

Secondly, after our fantastic news we did a little shopping because the weather up there is 40 degrees everyday and we get to look at nothing but the sea and red sand. So we shopped and then we decided to save lives. Right next to our hostel is a large building. And on the side of the building it says give blood. So we walked in the door and said “G’day, I was wondering if you would take our blood today??” She sent us upstairs where we filled out some paperwork, had our little interview and then filled up some bags with good old fashioned Canadian blood. It’ll be good for those lucky aussies who get it. It all went off seamlessly besides Hannah getting a little ill. She recovered with poise and grace and walked in the door of the hostel to me being ready to fall asleep. We watched a bit of television and decided we would go out for dinner to celebrate ourselves getting a job and we went to the amazing Korean BBQ. One of those places where they have a little BBQ on your table and you can cook your own meat. Unfortunately, you had to order 2 meat meals to be able to BBQ so we didn’t have a chance to do that but rather the chef cooked my meat wonderfully. As a side note, I ordered the assortment of meat plate because I had no clue what to get and I don’t think I’ve ever had that much meat in front of me at once. And Hannah got a fried egg on top of her meal. We each had about 5 little bowls of various things in front of us and miso soup and rice. It was so so good, we definitely stuffed ourselves. To finish off our meal of course we left room for dessert we had an amazing chocolate fondu. It was unreal and I’m so glad we decided to go for it. Everything was delicious. To top off an already amazing day/night, on our walk home we saw a lady dancing to Push It by Salt N Peppa. Brilliant…and next time you see Hannah ask her to do a demonstration. She pretty well did it 9 times on the way home and you could probably hear me laughing from far far away.

Okay, I just have to add this little tidbit of information last night at around midnight when we were all already asleep or just getting to sleep I heard this weird alarm from outside and I was thinking ok like what is that, we’ve already had a stabbing what else can possibly happen. So we were lying in bed and all of the sudden we hear a ridiculous sounding alarm…not at all like a normal fire alarm from home. So Tamsen (one of the girls in our room) wakes up and is like what is that, is that a fire alarm?? In which I finally clue in yes and we should probably go. So here we are dressed in really skimpy pajama’s because it’s so bloody hot running around on our floor trying to figure out where to go to get down because all the doors are closed and say “fire door, do not open, do not obstruct” So we manned up and opened the door and ran down the stairs just happening to come out of the building RIGHT beside the bar. Oh excellent. Anyways, all was well and the alarm only went off because someone burnt some toast…because when we got back into the building it’s all that we could smell. YUM

Favorite photos...only not really because we love them all.

We feel we need some photos and to kill some time before dinner. So we're going to post our favorite photo from each place and maybe come up with something witty to say about them. No promises though.

This was on our flight..there's no real words to describe how greasy my hair gets in 1 day. Hannah's is starting to get bad too...there's been a couple traveling days where we are extremely greasy and smelly by the time we arrive at our destination...sexy.




These were taken on the beach in LA. This was the beginning of our trip and I'm pretty sure our expressions clearly display how excited we were. We're still that excited. Every day. We just already filled up Hannah's 8 GB memory card.




These next couple are from Sydney. We decided to save you from looking at the photos with the horrible weather. Instead you get Hannah looking ridiculous (it's rare when she doesn't) and me trying to be cool...I got a long way to go.




In Coff's Harbor we met Lisa who's pretty stellar. She also enjoyed making ridiculous photos with us and we took one for the parents and one for us the whole time. The other one was the one we sent away to get our potential job. Let's hope that works out.




Our Byron Bay photos suck...guess we'll just have to get better ones when we are there again in a few months. Bring a bong really just speaks for itself and the cliffs and the beach were absolutely breathtaking even though the weather was crap.




We have tons of photos from Canberra and have no idea which to choose. The one where I have the fish head is fantastic just because the fish was gigantic. The one with the glove is amazing because I've never seen something as brilliant as this glove and the one from Oktoberfest is just us with our bff's. Oh how we miss them.





In Port Macquarie we started our travelling again :) We got to hug palm trees again and ride the camels. Just like the good old days.




In Melbourne we took tons of photos and their is honestly way too many photos to choose from. We got this lovely old italian man in a speedo and leather skin to take our photo with the pirate flag and the other one is just a good one of the two of us. If we start hating each other then instead of us smiling you'll see photos of us choking each other...no bigs.




And that's it. We have so so many pictures and it's going to be impossible to figure out what to put in an album when we get home. Especially once we are driving again...then there's going to be even more photos.

Melbourne

Melbourne was good. Melbourne’s weather for the majority of the week that we were there was brutal.

We took the train from Port Macquarie to Golburne. It was a long but uneventful train ride. It was 15 hours of traveling that day and by the time we got to Golburne we were both exhausted. We had a 4 hour stop over in Sydey where we went to this strange asian mall. It looked pretty awesome if you would have time to check everything out but we had neither the energy or the money to spend there. We got to Goulburne around 11:15 and our walk to the motel we talked about nothing but the fact that Ivan Melan was close somewhere in the jail serving 7 or 8 consecutive life sentences. He’s the guy who killed 20 backpackers in NSW. This didn’t freak us out at all. It was a good thing that the motel was so close. When we got to the motel the door to the reception was locked and we thought we might be sleeping outside. After ringing the doorbell for about 10 minutes someone finally came to the door, we’re both pretty sure that he was sleeping because he was really out of it when he took us to our room. The motel was dodgy and our room smelled awful but it was a warm bed to sleep in and really that’s all that matters to us. When we woke up we went for breakfast at a little café. The town, we realized in the daytime is similar to Neepawa, with a very small town atmosphere. The café served chips with their breakfast. It was huge and very strange to be eating eggs and fries at 9 AM. We left Goulburne and got back on the train to Melbourne. When we got to Melbourne we took a cab to our hostel, Urban Central and checked in.

When we got into our room there was a girl in there already. We started talking to her and she seemed really nice and at this point we were excited to be staying in the hostel. A couple minutes later enter boyfriend. At first they seemed nice, talkative and not annoying. We thought that it was just the four of us in the room. 4 beds = 4 people right?? Wrong. We went to try and find some dinner because it was late and we just walked up the road and went to the first thing that appealed to us. It happened to be a extremely delicious and very cheap pizza place. It was probably the best pizza I have ever had. The piled on the toppings and had pretty thin crust. So good. When we got back we put on a movie and all of the sudden this man walks into the room and we were really really confused. He said started a conversation with us and the couple walked out of the room. His name was Carl and he was a aspiring professional poker player. He told us that just a couple weeks prior he had won 160, 000. I still don’t’ know if I believe him but he seems legit since he had just bought a brand new motor bike and along with everything he told us it’s very possible that he had really won that much. He talked a lot about finding god and god helping him win this money. And his only advice to us was to never gamble. He was a nice guy but he snored a lot….A LOT and grunted. So we went to sleep and then the couple came back in and we quickly figured out that they were only paying for one bed. They had their stuff EVERYWHERE, had her knickers hanging from the bunk as well as a disco ball. Everytime I walked down from my bunk I had to step around their stuff. Most often I failed and just walked all over it. They were some of the worst room mates we’ve had yet.

We did a lot of wandering around in Melbourne and checked out Block Pl, which is a small little alleyway where when you walk down everyone talks to you trying to encourage you to eat at their restaurant, we checked out Chinatown…and we have a little story about that. Hannah’s friend Haydn came to see us for a couple days and we went out for dinner the first night. We decided to walk down to Chinatown and go to eat there. We picked a random one. It didn’t look very fancy on the outside but the minute we sat down we knew we were rather out of place. I think it was the moment that we saw 4 people talking about who HAD to serve us. We sat down and they poured us some water and then a server came up to our table…not to take our order but rather to place the napkins on our lap for us. He started with Hannah and then went to Haydn and then by the time I realized what was going on I was like “I’ll just do this myself” because I don’t think that I could hold back my laughter any longer. It was the first time in our lives where have been anywhere where people put the napkin on our laps. It was rather bizarre. We ordered dinner and drinks…Hannah’s drink was 12 dollars…for pretty much 2 shots and a tad bit of juice. I had champagne with a bit of peach liquer and Hadyn had a beer. The meal was good. After you are done they bring you a bunch of toothpicks….classy.

The next day with Haydn we went to another asian place which turned out to be another disaster. We were searching for sushi and this one looked promising. We got inside, got ourselves some menus and found something to eat. Hannah and I both decided to try some tempura sushi, I got a few other rolls and Haydn got a chicken dish. Oh also on the menu we found raw beef with a raw egg cracked on top…mmmm sounds delicious.. So…Hannah and Haydn got their food and I waited and waited. I asked the girl if my sushi was coming she said she would go find out She came back 5 minutes later with the wrong thing so I said that’s not right..can I please get what I ordered and then waited and waited…and by this time Hannah and Haydn were long done and I was no longer hungry. So…I told Hannah and Haydn I’d take care of the bill because I had to clear up a few things regarding my order and the look of horror on Hannah’s face was priceless. I’m pretty sure she thought that I was going to freak out on this woman. I was extremely upset so granted she was totally right in thinking this. I acted surprisingly calm however, but the lady was very understanding so that’s probably why. After lunch we went and checked out a cupcake place that was recommended to me by someone from home and they were absolutely spot on. It was brilliant….so so so so good. Haydn and I had a cookies and cream cupcake and Hannah had a carrot cupcake and we shared a chocolate milkshake. It was amazing and I would also recommend it to anyone going to Melbourne.

While in Melbourne we also checked out the Queen Victoria Markets which had a lot of different little shops and we found a bunch of stuff for the people at home. We also checked out the casino and saw New Moon!!!! The casino had a shopping center, a movie theatre, a food court, a bowling alley, an arcade, lots of restaurants and bars and then of course the slot machines and the card rooms. We checked out the ACMI (Australian center of the Moving Image) It was really neat, and we went to a souvenir shop where Haydn did all of his Christmas shopping and Hannah bought a couple things and I bought some really lame things. We found poutine while we were in Melbourne!!!! And it was vegetarian so Hannah got to try some as well! It’s been 3 years since Hannah had poutine…she was pretty excited. We went to Bridge street which is just similar to Osborne with lots of shopping…too expensive for us travelers but we wanted to check it out. On the last day that we were there we walked to St. Kilda and checked out the pier, acquired some pretty brutal sun burns and wandered around.

Our last couple of nights we stayed in a rather dodgy hostel. The only plus side is that we had our own private room. On hostels.com (where we book most of our hostels) it said that the hostel was newly renovated. Well I think that only the bar and outside of the hostel were renovated because the inside was crap. The reception was never open so we had no idea who the staff was and the walls were paper thin. It was however, right on the beach so that was really nice. We were able to look out the balcony and see the ocean, can’t really complain about that view.

All in all, Melbourne was good and we do look forward to going back when we have a vehicle to check it out a little bit more. However, now we are doing 3 major cities in 24 hours. This is going to be a bit hellish. A 3 AM wake up call is not what we want.

Instead of posting photos on here we have both just posted heaps of them on facebook. But...if you have both of us you may just want to look at one persons because they're mostly the same ones.
Xoxo

Strange Random People

We’ve met heaps of people on this trip that are rather strange. Because we are using this as a travel journal as well as a way to let our families know how we are doing I’m going to write about them on here so that we won’t forget about them. The reason I suddenly thought that I should start writing this down is because while I was waiting for water to boil to make our pasta a man came into the common room grabbed a knife from the kitchen, sat down and started picking his teeth with the knife. I just about vomited. Although with the atmosphere in this hostel nothing should surprise me anymore, more on this later when I write a post about Melbourne.

Another interesting character we met came around today. We were walking along the beach when a man came up beside us and started explaining the storm drains and why the water was so mucky. After he explained that he went on to warn us about pedophiles and perverts. And it wasn’t just telling us to be careful he told us about some very graphic things that he has witnessed. This little warning went on for a good 15 minutes and was slightly disturbing. At first I was fine with him warning us and what not but then it just wouldn’t stop and I was kind of creeped out. Needless to say, I was relieved when he left.

The first three days that we were in Melbourne we stayed at a hostel called the Urban Central and the hostel had the potential to be really awesome. The people in our room were not so awesome. One of the guys was trying to be a professional poker player and told us that he had one 160 000 recently. He knew a lot about it and I think that it might be true but I’m not super quick to believe anyone. The other people in our room were a couple from England. When they were by themselves they were both very very nice but as soon as they were together they were the most annoying people ever! They had a disco ball hanging from their bunk. It was ridiculous. Not only did they have a disco ball but they also had several pairs of her underwear hanging off the bunk. Every time I wanted to climb down off my bunk I had to climb all over their stuff. It was nuts and I was not impressed.

When we were at Port Macquarie there was a bogan family at the pool. We really didn’t think anything of it and then we heard them tell their only child to stay in the pool. They said do not leave we will come back stay in the pool. After Hannah and I got hungry we wandered down town and pretty far and we saw the parents coming out of a restaurant!! As if, they left their kid and went and ate food. As a side note the child was only about 8 years old. It wasn’t until around dinner time when they went back and picked her up. I felt so so bad for her.

We’ve across several people who use far too much cologne. Our very first experience with this was in Sydey on our first couple of days here when we stayed in a 10 person dorm. We quickly learned that 4 people female dorms are the way to go. There was 4 german guys who used an disgusting amount of axe. Everytime we walked into the room we couldn’t breathe in for a bit. It was terrible.

In Coff’s Harbor we stayed in our first 4 person dorm and we stayed with a lovely girl named Lisa who wasn’t weird or quirky at all. And another lady…Catherine from San Fransisco. She was certainly different. She got naked a lot and didn’t wear a bra and didn’t give us a warning and was oddly shaped. She was mostly nice but the most opinionated person I have ever met and she definitely sounded American. She had views about EVERYTHING. There was one evening when the four of us were sitting in the room talking and drinking and at the very beginning we were all talking and then after Catherine started arguing everything that was said Hannah and I both quickly tuned them out because we didn’t just want to sit and argue. Definitely American and definitely annoying. She asked us if we wanted to get a flat with her and at the very beginning we were like ya that wouldn’t be a bad idea but after a few days with her we never wanted to see her again.

Our next stop after Coff’s Harbor was Byron Bay where we stayed in the dreaded Arts Factory for our first 2 nights, I think I’ve talked about the arts factory before but if not let me know and I’ll remind you. There wasn’t anyone weird at the Arts Factory, well except everyone. The girl at the reception was hammered one night when we got there and was having her own dance party behind the desk. She was really awesome though. After that hostel we stayed in another one in town and there was a lady in our hostel named Jill, who was very very nice, but about 50 years older than us. And she also liked to get naked…it was not pleasant.

Regardless, of all of the weird people we met we have also met some really awesome people. In Sydney, I (mandy) met the Thorncraft’s which took us in and treated us like family. In Coff’s Harbor we met Lisa, from Germany, who wandered aimlessly around with us and taught us german drinking cheers. In Byron Bay we met Rachel, from Ireland who came with us for dinner and drinks and live music. We also met a lovely man who was our tour guide to Nimbin. He brought his 2 adorable children on the tour and their dog. In Newcastle, on our resting days, we met Satu and Tanja, from Finland who were hilarious. (Mrs Bucket (miss bouquet, miss bouquet, the lady of the house here) yes I know that no one will get that). They also introduced me to Strongbow which is a cider that I fell in love with. I really really hope that we have it at home. After Newcastle we went to Canberra and we met heaps of people there. Cam was pretty much our family for a month. The three of us made a pretty awesome team. He also introduced us to a lot of people. Nick, Sav, Dave, Ivan, and lots of others. Because of him we have couches to crash on when we’re back on the east coast.

Port Macquarie

Or as mom would call it port mackery
We arrived at 6:55 after an extremely long train ride which started at 6 AM. After a combination of 2 trains and a bus we were happy to finally get to our destination. The only downfall was there was a crazy man on the bus. He boarded with a lovely small ghetto blaster, thankfully he kept the tunes off. He had a rather scruffy beard, a black leather jacket, and tight black sweatpants. He had a little belly as well and was about the height of Hannah. He was rather talkative, but thankfully didn’t talk to us until we arrived at the bus stop. We called our ride and they were on their way, however while we were waiting there was a lovely 60-70 year old couple (later on we found out the town was full of them) trying to figure out how to get a taxi to take them to their hotel. The scruffy man offered his help and the couple were grateful. After giving them a bit of help he repeatedly came over to us and was bitching about foreigners, swearing, talking about how he learns the language of the country he visits (realistically I don’t think he travels). This entire time Hannah and I were not really responding to this man at all and thinking that the couple was taken care of. Before our ride got there we noticed the couple still wandering around and looking confused so we offered to call them a taxi and they were so so grateful. This strange strange man was our first glimpse of port Macquarie.

Thankfully once our ride got there we realized we were going to be ok. The man that picked us up to take us to our hostel was very nice and the lady at the office was lovely. She even offered to give us a private room for the price of a dorm room!!!! It was so so amazing. We checked in and got settled and took a stroll. We were famished so finding a place to eat was top priority. We happened to come across a delicious thai place where we had some dinner (which we inhaled) and then had some ice cream on our walk home. While we were walking home we found a little bug that we had never seen before. And by little I mean giant…and by giant I mean cockroach. I’ve never screamed and ran so fast in my life (except for that one time I thought I was being chased by a goose, which was actually a swan which in reality was only a cyclist passing by, ya that was fun). Anyways, we learned quickly after that to watch our feet while we walk and Hannah learned it’s not wise to run your hand through the foliage as bugs will cover your hand in a very very short time. So that was our first night…early to bed, early to rise.

Day 2 of port Macquarie proved to be a little better. We woke up bright and early and went to Maccars for breakfast and then picked up an adaptor because I had forgot ours at cam’s place. After this we took a walk to the beach. The weather wasn’t that great but it was nice enough for us to take a swim. .. and there was no way we were putting it off any longer. It was Hannah’s very first time in the ocean. I wish I could have filmed it for everyone to see. Her reaction was priceless, an unbelievably amount of excitement. We played around in the waves for awhile, I lost my hair tie, Hannah swallowed a whole bunch of salt water, we both almost lost our bathing suits. It was amazing. After we finished we went home and went to the pool where we sun tanned a bit more and swam for the afternoon. It really really felt like we were on vacation at this place. That night we watched sixteen candles and had an early night…because the next day we knew we both had to get up early.

We woke up bright and early and got ready to go camel riding!! At 9:00 a very nice elderly man named John picked us up and took us to the beach to see the camels. The camel ride was so fun. You get on the camel when it’s sitting down so that was a bit interesting and challenging but the ride itself was pretty awesome. We rode them down the beach and it only lasted about half an hour. We learned there was 1.5 million wild camels in Australia and that we can use poop as lip balm if we needed to. They can drink salt water because there both will filter out the salt for them. That’s all the random facts I remember at the moment. After the camel riding John took us to the lighthouse road where we could see 19 km of beach, it was an absolutely amazing beach and apparently men their horses on this beach for endurance races. After that lovely view he took us to the koala hospital and we got to see a couple cute little koalas. Koalas survive on gum tree which is in fact toxic which is why they sleep for 18 hours a day…because they drug themselves. This is apparently a blog of random facts.

After this little adventure we went back to the hostel and spent the afternoon at the pool, both of us got a little more tanned on these three days that’s for sure. Although my left shoulder is noticeably darker than my right shoulder….must stop wearing one shouldered shirts. We made ourselves dinner, which we ate out of a pot because we didn’t want to wash that may plates, had some ice cream at the ice creamery and watched the most disturbing movie ever , hard candy, and went to sleep for our last night there. At approximately 12:45 am I was woken up by a key in our door. You can imagine my freaken horror since I thought that Hannah and I were the only people with keys to our door. And this person was definitely opening the door which was directly beside my bed. When the door opened there was a person who looked rather creepy standing in the door way and I can imagine the look on my face when they saw me and said sorry and closed the door. This entire time Hannah remains asleep. I get up and make sure the door is locked (even though that really does no good because they obviously have keys) and Hannah looks at me and says “was there just someone who tried to open the door” I said yes and she said “okay that’s fine”. I have never been so terrified in my life. I laid there wondering if I should wake her up to come and look outside with me but I didn’t want to wake her. So I laid there not being able to sleep for fear of death and abduction for several hours before falling asleep. In the morning when I asked Hannah about it she had no memory of it. It was like it never even happened. The next morning we packed up and headed off to Goulburn where I am currently writing this while on our journey. We are waiting at Sydney Central for our next train.

I know I have crap grammer and my stories might lack flow but it’s the best I can do right now due to the grease in my hair blocking my brain flow. I’m not sure how I’m going to adjust when I am back home and have to put make up on every day and take a shower. It’s going to be rather difficult. Good thing it’s not 40 degrees at home and no this is not me complaining about the weather. I love 40 degree days and Australia.

We Have A Plan

We're going big...and not going home.
We've made some pretty solid plans and we are both very very excited for this. I can't even actually begin to explain our excitement. Hannah gets to swim in the ocean for the very first time and I get to feel the amazing salt water on my skin again. I will document her swim like there's no tomorrow and share it on here for all to see.
Okay so our itinerary....just in case you care.

Monday, November 16, 2009. - We leave Canberra at a shocking 6:43 AM. We take the train to Port Macquarie where we will spend 3 nights. This train will arrive at Port Macquarie at 6:55 PM. During the trip we will be switching trains once and hopping on a bus for a half hour. The hostel that we are staying at is called the Sundowner Breakwall Tourist Park Hostel if you want to check it out online. Then you will have an idea of the absolute beauty we get to experience. While we are in Port Macquarie we will be doing some camel riding on the old beach and we are also possibly going to go and check out the koala hospital. Other than that we have no plans but to lie on the beach and enjoy ourselves. The link for the hostel is here http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/Sundowner-Breakwall-Tourist-Park/Port-Macquarie/10659 I think that there is a map on there as well.

Thursday, November 19, 2009 - We leave Port Macquarie at 9:00 via the lovely countrylink train system. (this is always how we travel, I now love the trains) We will be taking a bus from Port Macquarie to a little town and then hopping on the train to Sydney Central and then another train to a little town called Goulburn. We get to the little town fairly late and have booked a night at a motel called the alpine heritage motel. You can find a link to check it out right here http://www.alpineheritagemotel.com.au/ It looks pretty stellar to me and it's right across from the railway station.

Friday, November 20, 2009 - We leave this lovely little town that we won't even have a chance to explore at approximately 10:20 am on the train and make our way to Melbourne. We will get to Melbourne at 6:55 pm and check into our hostel. For three nights we are staying at the urban central backpackers (http://www.urbancentral.net.au/photos.jsp?counter=1). When in Melbourne we don't really have any big plans. We will probably check out the casino (Hannah's never been to one) and there's a whole bunch of little shops and markets we will check out.

Monday, November 23, 2009 - We leave the urban central backpackers and head to another one in melbourne that's right on the beach. Ironically it's called the beach. We read mixed reviews on this one and weren't sure that we were going to stay there but we have decided to give it a go for a couple nights. The reason that we wanted to is that you can get private rooms for only 30$ a night. It will be so nice to have a couple nights in Melbourne where we can just throw our stuff wherever.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 - We will be saying goodbye to Melbourne at 8:30 AM and heading back to Sydney. I think that we will really like Melbourne so this may be a sad goodbye. We get to Sydney at 7:54 pm. We aren't booking a hostel for this night. We are going to try and be hardcore. We will go out for dinner when we get to Sydney and then quite possibly hang out in the airport until 6:00 AM when we get on a flight to PERTH!!!! I am so excited to be going there. We found this great little office that will hopefully assist us in finding an amazing job.

So until the 26th of November you won't hear much from us. Our families will probably hear from us once but other than that we are going to take an internet break. We feel this is for the best.

I'll definitely keep up a blog on word until I get to Perth and then I will post them all, just so we don't forget some of the awesome stuff that we are doing.

I hope everyone is good and awesome and we miss you all like crazy.

war memorial

Yesterday we played tourist and we played it well. We woke up early...earlier than we ever get up and decided that it was a good day to go to the war memorial. Finally, I know we said we were going to go all the time but it just kept getting put off to do other things. So we woke up, had some breakfast, got ready and walked on over. The walk was only about 20 minutes...way shorter than we thought it was going to be. As we were walking up to the building on the grounds we noticed that there was a ceremony going on and both kind of freaked out because we thought that it may be Rememberance day and we both didn't have poppies. As a side note, their poppies here are different. It's like a little bunch of flowers. I always thought that it would just be kind of universal.

The war memorial was huge. There was so much stuff to see it was unreal, you could probably spend days there if you took the time to read everything.


Here's Hannah on the steps waiting to go in because we got there EARLY!!! and had to chill out on the steps. We rocked at being tourists. ( I think that's because we are, as much as we try and deny it)



This is a close up shot of the parliment house. It's so neat how everything here lines up. This is a planned city so I guess they were able to make everything line up like that.



Here we are doing our usual poses. Maybe by the time we get home we will be able to make an entire album doing these poses. That would be pretty awesome.






We have a few plans to travel because we haven't heard anything about jobs yet. I think we are going to port macquarie either this weekend or next week. When we are there we will go camel riding and to the koala hospital. I'm excited for this because this also means that we get to go the beach :)

I'm going to put more photos of our trek to the war memorial on facebook and so will Hannah at some point, so make sure that you check them out on there.

Abseiling

So...yesterday was a public holiday. A random public holiday on a tuesday. The reason for this holiday was because it was race day. The Melbourne horse races. So anyways, the guys all had the day off so Ivan and Cam decided to take us repelling or as they call it ab seiling.

The drive to the mountain was beautiful. Although I got pretty sick and felt like I was going to vomit everywhere. But never the less it was absolutely gorgeous. We got there and climbed the mountain. I could not believe the trek. It was brutal but yet amazing scenery the entire time. We took a couple breaks to catch our breath.





Once we got to the top it was totally worth it. The view was absolutely breathtaking and I couldn't believe we had the chance to see that. As a side note...Ivan was carrying a pack that was bigger and heavier than the ones that we have packed for the trip. I can not even begin to imagine how he climbed to the top with that thing. I would have died.







So after we caught out breath and took in the view for a bit we decided to trek around and explore the rocks for a bit. We had a picnic and did a bit of fake rock climbing photos. I (mandy) wasn't sure if I was going to be able to handle doing it because my fear of walking backwards off a cliff started kicking in, and I got really really nervous. It was also so incredibly windy that Ivan was thinking about calling it off. Good thing he didn't







I also took a fake climbing photo only it sucks so I'll give to you the photo where it definitely shows how fake not hardcore mountain climber I am.



So after exploring around for a bit we decided to get suited up to be able to conquer our fear of walking off cliffs.







So once we were all ready to go then Hannah went first and conquered it. So then I knew that I had to go because if she can do it, then I can do it. I would have felt like a huge loser if I was the only one not doing it and I know that I would have regretted it so much. I don't have any photos of me doing it because I only did it once and we both have a video of us doing it the first time. I will try and load them up and put them on here so you can see it and how ridiculous we both look.








After we all went a few times and Cam and Ivan practiced a little rescue mission then we had to head back. And we left happy. Very happy. Even though we were a little frantic because we could see rain coming and we didn't want to get caught in it. Really I think that we were both thinking about the climb down the mountain and how much easier it was going to be then the climb up.




After we got home we were exhausted. Ridiculously and insanely tired. We couldn't even thinking about making dinner so we went to Nando's and had some food. And then came home and crashed.

Our job hunt is leading us nowhere also. We are either going to have to start lying to people and saying we will be here for a year or leave Canberra because this is just not too good anymore.
Also someday when Hannah wakes up early enough we will go to the war memorial. I'll keep you posted on that.

99 bottles of beer on the wall

So I've been told to update this blog. And I'm giving in because I know you fine folks want to see an update. I update my own blog all the time but I suppose that's just not good enough. Nah, just kidding. We just haven't really been updating this because we haven't been doing a lot of sight seeing or anything but we do have a lot of plans for the near future, which I will fill you in on a little bit later.

This weekend was fairly laid back. On Thursday Hannah and I decided to go and see the MJ movie "This Is It" and it was amazing. I don't think that I stopped smiling the entire time. It absolutely blew my mind and I know want to perfect all the dance moves....and we will. We've been practicing Thriller. It's fantastic. Please if everyone can learn it at home I would greatly appreciate it so when I get home and we go to the bar we can bust it out.

On Friday was laid back...Hannah and I had some drinks and sat on the deck, played some games and just talked. It was really fun. We also made a delicious dinner that night. We bought Cameron a video game that he really wanted for letting us stay here so he played that for a lot of the night. Then they went out around 9 I think, and Hannah and I just stayed in and learned the Thriller dance and played guitar hero. Yes we are that cool.

Saturday around 3 we went to Oktoberfest. It was really fun. Hannah drank an entire beer which I thought about attempting until I had a couple sips of hers. I just stuck to drinking apple schnapps all day/night which was absolutely delicious. We drank and danced and met a lot of people. All in all good day, except for the fact that we hadn't eaten all day and were so hungry by the time we got home. We did a quick mcdonald's run and were good to go. The guys went out after and Hannah and I both passed out and woke up this morning feeling really good.

Today (Sunday) we woke up and went out for breakfast and to pick something up from the chemist. Also, do you ever worry when you are walking around at the pharmacy looking for something that you might be looking at something really embarrassing and don't really realize it?? Anyways, we came home went to the gym and that leads us to this very moment. I think in a little bit we will be going to Sav's pool and going for a swim. It'll be good because it's really really warm out. We are starting to wonder how we will handle the summer here. It's already really hot and hardly into the summer at all.

Plans for the near future:
On Monday (tomorrow) we are going to get up, print off some resumes, say goodbye to Cam's brother Nick and head off to the mall where we will be handing in 10 resumes each. I (mandy) will also be caving and bringing one to a place that I will never admit applying to. Because I am that desperate.

On Tuesday it's a national holiday...so we will be doing, as the aussies call it, a bushwalk. We would call it a hike. And also maybe a BBQ. It'll be a good day.

On Wednesday we'll go to the the war memorial and australia national museum. The war memorial is world renowned to we feel that we must check it out. Plus it's only a 2.5 km walk there so not bad at all.

On Thursday we'll maybe have a relaxing day and hopefully receive some phone calls for our jobs. That would really be ideal.

All of these days, depending on the weather and with the exception of Tuesday we will be lying outside for one hour working on our tans because they are fading fast.

In 2 weeks we are going to go to Sydney to the beach for the weekend. I am pretty excited for this because I want to go to the beach so bad!!!!!! And just hannah and I were going to go and stay somewhere but now Cameron is going to take us and we'll stay at his brothers for free!!! This is fantastic, because we love anything free.

Okay, that's the update. I'll update more just hassle me. Today I had 3 people hassle me and look what happened. An update :)

Here are some photos as well:

This one here is at oktoberfest. It's cam, nick and hannah with the lovely german dancers.


This one here is the lovely view from our apartment in the evening. I do believe that we took this while we were eating dinner. We're unbelievably lucky.


Here's Hannah on our way to the mall as usual...this was the day that we took photos of everything we did because we realized we hadn't taken any in a long time.



Here's the group at Oktoberfest. It was a good time :) Really just like the beer gardens at home.


And this is hannah after her finished beer :) Cameron was so proud of her...as was I. Only more jealous than proud because I don't think I have the balls or lack of gag reflexes to finish a whole beer.

Canberra

Okay, so I realize that we haven't posted anything for awhile but we haven't really done anything, and also haven't taken any photos. So, if you are familiar with my(mandy's) other blog then this may be another sort of rambly blog that I am posting because I feel like I should put something on here. This week we are going to go to the zoo so we will take lots of photos there and put them up on here.
We are staying at Cameron's right now in Canberra and he has offered us to stay here as long as we want to for free (well we would buy food) and get jobs so we might take him up on that and stay for a month or 2. If we were here we would save a lot of money. A LOT. Because there isn't much to do here and we wouldn't be paying rent. The only downfall to this city is the lack of the sea. We aren't anywhere close to the ocean and we have become quite accustomed to a life near the sea, we could go there on days off though.
We were emailing places in both Melbourne and Perth trying to find somewhere to stay. The only place that emailed me back I am 99% confident is a scam. Because they are only asking 120$ a week for it and it looks like this..





....and no place looking like that is less than 500$ a month.
Also there are lines like this in the email that they sent me.

"My husband in respect who owned the flat and I also want you to know that it was due to my husband Missionary Transfer"

"So for now I am now at UK,and more also i am with the keys and documents of the flat,We try to look for an agent or friends that we can give this Keys and document before we left but could not see"

"am so sorry that i cannot call you because some problems with my ear and cant speak well"

AHHHH!!! I hate that people do this, absolutely hate it. Do they think that we are stupid. In all my experience with renting apartments I have received so many of these bullshit, "we are in africa, doing missionary work, send us the money and we will send you the keys". This is so extremely frustrating.

Anyways, that's our current situation. We are at Cameron's, sleeping on the floor, living for free, and trying to decide whether to stay here or move on to an apartment that we don't even have yet. We'll let you know how it turns out.

Mandy hates hangman

As promised here are some photos from byron bay. We didn't take any of the town!!! But we will go back there towards the end of our trip hopefully so we will take some them I promise. Because the town is really really nice. Tons of shops. As I think I said in the other post. Also apparently my english is getting way worse. I think it goes from hanging out with people who's first language isn't english. Hannah's is still good but I have become master of this blog with Hannah just telling me to put up more scenic photos for her mom :) and I think my mom will appreciate them too.