Backpacking

hey.
just picked up a celphone.
my number is (as you would dial it): 011 61 0406 74 3939
you can call that number to talk to me... free for me, but costs you money. can text me at that number too.
and I fixed the link in the last post, for the ballina flat. I think.
ok. gtg.
more later.

Been a really fun last while here...
flew from Tasmania the day after my last entry. had a nice leisurely morning packing my gear. got a ride two towns over with the lady who ran the eco-hostel. made a couple calls on a payphone to peoples back home (managed to lose my watch - to add to the list of lost items... now also including 1250mb of SD media, which I lost weeks ago, my soap and towel stuff sack - realistically, not that bad... with the exception of my two memory cards) annnnyhow..
got a ride to the airport right off... left early, just in case, and got there with 5 or 6 hours to spare... good time to hang out, get some sun... cook up the rest of my food before leaving a gas cylinder with a note in the parking lot (can't bring them on the plane) which, in all likely hood probably attracted the bomb squad... (you laugh now..)
Chrysi picked me up from the airport - spent the night ripping around the city... got one of those famous (franks?) pies and hung out on the waterfront.... later ending up under the harbour bridge rambling the night way while gazng apon the sydney operahouse hown below.... very surreal for me.. having just spent the last fortnight in the boonies and then suddenly dropped into the biggest city in the country.
Missed all possible accomidations. ended up sleeping in the car for a couple hour down by the water and were up with the sun for a beautiful morning.... which later turned out to be the longest day ever...went on and on... had highlights tohough.. nice art gallery run through with Chrysi (she's an art theory girl) I don't even remmber what else happended that day... lazing in the park... food was eten... people met... beers consumed. got a hostel in the city that night and eplored around downtown Sydney at night with a Kiwi (new zealander) guy. what a place! layers of urban jumgle... multi layered subway system... freeways, peds ways, a monorail... lights, boads and bridges. bloody beautiful.... as crazy and hot as sydney can be during the day... it is a wondeful place at night...
Spent the next day scoping out the sights.. being a tourist... sydney opera house, botanical gardens, all of that... we all spent the night at Lauras place and hit the road in the morning.... 10 hour drive to Ballina. relatively eventless drive (except for the giant bananna) and yeah. we're here...
Renting a flat here for a week with Chrysi and Laura. beautiful beach view.... a 1 minute walk down to the beach itself... Chrysi's a really great cook and is spoiling me with wonderful food... and it's tropcal enough to grow bannanas here. what more can you ask for, really?
unfortunately my time is up here... I'll have to write again with more detail in a few days. and photos!
until then...

(more pictures at the bottom of this entry)

Interesting past few days in the city...
Had one day of pouring (all bloody day) rain. I think it was the day after my last entry. Didn't get out much that day...
The next day was beautiful... so I packed light and headed out for the day. Wandered all about downtown.. checked out the Ian Potter Center National Art Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Center for the Moving Image in Federation Square, gave the Botanical gardens a couple hours for a walkthrough - beautiful stuff. Botanical Gardens especially.
Then decided to head out to Fitzroy and St. Kilda beach... which is kind of like the Whyte ave or Commercial drive of Melbourne. Really nice part of town. Ended up meeting a couple of german girls (lots of germans here, I'm telling you) who just got off their plane a couple of hours before. We went out for drinks (beers on the beach) Fed the possums fine german chocolate. There were tonnes of them. first possums I've seen here actually. fuuuuny little creatures. Cross between a squirrel and a cat or something.
anny how. On the beach.I had a train schedual. calculated that I would have plenty of time to get back to Altona. Hopped on my tram to the Flinders street train station downtown. all on time, everyhitng was good. Still had 18 minutes until the last train, so I ducked into the toilets to take a leak. Got down to the train platform just as as the 12:05 tain sped off. no prolem. There was one more in 16 minutes. not the case. the last train only went about a third of the way, which is no bloody good because there is still about 20km more to go. A young guy comes up and asks if there is another train to such and such place. We both missed our trains and ended up hanging out for an hour or so, planning a way to get to a sleeping place. He offered a place to stay, but it meant a $25 cab ride, as all of the trams and busses were shut down. Long story short - I could get a bed in a hostel downtown for the same price and I had german ggirls to meet the next morning... so I found a hostel.. a crazy city hostel. stayed on the 5th florr. elevator and all. hundereds of rooms. had a shitty shower with no soap and went to bed. All in all, payed $24 for a room that I only had for 9 hours. I would have slept outside but I was only wearing a light T shirt and flip flops... and I don't know Melbourne at night - so I used my better judgement and got a hostel - (keep all you "travel safe" people happy)
That was last night. Spent today helping the german girls find a tent to save on costs... wandered through chinatown and visited the National Gallery of Victora for more fine artwork. Had a nice exhibit of Ancient Egyptian, Mexican, Greek, Syrian, Iraq-ian objects. They Egyptian ones were particularly intriging... something about contemplating an object made by the hands of man 5000-6000 years ago... half decent paintings aswell. Nothing as nice as in the Adelaide Galleries though...
Hit the Queen Victoria market on the way out of town, again... nothoing like the Central market in Adelaide... this one was just produce, not the delicious gormet foods you've never heard of sort of market... but hey, half a kilo of grapes for a buck is a pretty good deal... and a big full of all kinds of fresh fruits and veggies for $5. can't go wrong.
OH - I SAW A HIGHSPEED CHASE TODAY! downtown Melbourne. I was in a tram. just saw it down a street I was passing. a black sports car of some sort. The cops had this vehical sort of cornered.... bottlenecked, more like. when I noticed what was going on, the car was right outside my window. It came to a stop and 4 cops approached it. One cop tried to open the door and the driver pinned it, peeled the tires and sped off. knocked a couple of the cops on their asses.. knocked stuff off their belts - radios flying into the air. The car sped down the tram track in the midddle of the roadway, lightning fast, where cars normally don't drive. Came up to a roadblock that was set up - bunch of cop cars and things and was speeding toward a gap when my view down the street got obscured as my tram continued down the track, perpedicular to the street with all the action. My brief glimpse of the action was something right out of Grand Theft Auto - "GTA Melbourne City"
Pretty exciting day in the city. I've seen it all and Now I'm ready to go.
I bought a plane ticket this morning to fly to Launceston, Tasmania tomarrow morning. Even with less than 24 hours notice, the flight cost be $80 AU, (about $72 Canadian) I'm spending about 12 days in Tassie... have only the roughest, sketchiest idea of the route I'm planning on travelling, so far. On the evening of the 16 of Feb, I'm flying to Sydney. I wish I didn't have to fly to sydney... but the time frame for Chrysi's days off and the way everyhting works out, that is the way it has to be really.. So I bought that ticket this evening, as they were already getting really booked for that flight.
So yeah. The next 3 weeks are layed out infront of me. I have a skeleton to work within here.
I'm bombed tired presently. it's late here. just figured I should make some record of Melbourne happenings before I plunge into the wilderness of Tasmania.
sleeep.

PHOTOS!!
(photos can also be found by clicking on "fenderson" under the authours column to your right, then clicking "more photos" under the photos column. Or bookmark the page when you get there...

Crazy day today...
Woke up bright and early this morning near a place called Sharps track... in a free campground at the base of a 4WD trail, 5km out of Lorne. (much nicer than the night before, which we spent sleeping just off the highway in the wind and rain) At this place it was just me and the germans. No noise from the highways. No drunken Australians. no nothing but trees and some strange sound that I've spent the better part of today immitating to locals, in hopes of figuring out what animal created it... We figured it was a Wombat in heat... jokingly.. althought it sounded like a big cat...an unhappy big cat.. but they don't have big cats here, just farrel cats.... Then one guy I talked told me about panthers that escaped from a travelling circus... he told me the story before I told him about the sounds, BTW) but I think it was really a possum... that is what Pete has told me... he actually immitated a possum - and made the same sound I've been trying to replicate all day- (again, before I asked... psychic Australians or something) So I figure he must be right... just very surprising to me that a little critter like that could make such a ferocious noise....
annnyway...
I am presently at a fellow named Pete's place here in Melbourne... more correctly, Altona - A suburb of Melbourne out on the Werribee line. spent the afternoon and evening exploring around downtown Melbourne.. amazing city.
The train system here is amazing... unbelivable setup they have. trams and locomotive trains streaching all over the city - Map of train and tram lines HERE.. Melbourne is the biggest city I've ever explored on foot, I think... 3.16 million people or so. beautiful multicultural artisian city.
Pete, the guy I'm staying with, I met through couchsurfing.com
I've used couchsurfing in Canada. I've hosted and stayed with people... but this is my first time using it overseas. Excellent experience so far. Free shower! my own bed! set of keys! no rain and bugs biting me! **choirs of angels sing**
You see, it is only two weeks into my journey and I have already assumed the appearence of a wheathered traveller... I have torn my clothes, foregone shoes, become dirty, smelly, bug-bitten and oversunned. I haven't done proper laundry since I was in Canada... and I only packed with me one change of clothes... so yeah. It's nice to have a home base to work from after spending the last week in the rainforest.
Parted ways with the Germans. We spent the last whole week together, exploring all of the little nooks and crannies of the great ocean road. mostly the trails that go up into the woods and things.. most people drive the great ocean road in an afternoon. We streached it into a week. We had so much fun together...good times.
They took up jobs in Lorne, working in a resort kichen. I wanted to keep moving. Sad to split up but a the same time it was also nice to break away and get back to calling my own shots... like my split second decision to skip the $37 V-line bus ride to Melbourne I had planned today, in favor of walking half a mile out of Lorne and sticking out my thumb.
I hitched to Melbourne faster than the bus would have got me here. Got picked up in a Courier van driven by a really cool Aussie guy... we learned heaps (everyone here uses the word 'heaps') of stuff from eachother during the hour or two it took to get to Geelong. I love this style of travelling... no other way would I meet such a diverse spatter of people. Took the train from Geelong to Melbourne.. about an hour or so... And only $7.50... sticking out my thumb saved me $30 today.
But yeah... today has been totally different than the last few days... nice exciting, fresh feeling.... everywhere I go there are new things... lots of new birds here in Melbourne... I found some kind of fruit on a tree... looks like an apple but it's fuzzy on the outside... is horribly bitter and is hollow inside - WTF? and have seen more and different strange fuzzy animals scurrying into the bushes...
I feel more Canadian than ever before...
have only breifly met two Canadians so far... mostly Germans and lots of Aussies... All is well! Canadians are very well liked in this part of the world!
annnyhow. looking into flights to Tasmania. should be cheap. see if it works out in my timeframe here. Should make my decision by tomarrow... Planning on heading back into Melbourne to explore tomarrow... hit up the Victorian market for some good eats... I'll write again soon and get a bunch of photos up here tomarrow probably, while I have the facilities available here...
cheers.

Hey everybody!
first off - I have survived this leg of my crazy hitchhiking adventure... it has actually been quite wonderful...
So yeah - picking up where I left off - spent the night at a pricey hostel in Port Campbell (that was the last shower I had, now days ago, unless swimming in the ocean counts)- met lots of interesting people, made a time lapse video of the sun sinking into the ocean and all of that fun stuff... then went back out to the highway the next morning to keep on hitching.
While waiting I encountered my firt echidna - funny little hedgehog/porcupine creatures. look them up on the internet if you don't know what they are. Weird little things they are. followed it around until it went too deep into the bush before returning to my hitchpoint.
Waited for no longer than 2 minutes and the "young German couple" from my last entry spotted me on the side of the road and picked me up in their yellow Mitsubishi campervan (his name is Ned) agian! We had lots of fun the day before and were quite happy to see each other again. As a matter of fact, we still have not parted ways. We have toured all around the Otway Nation Park and along the great ocean road as far a Apollo Bay, where we presently are for the day to pick up supplies, get in touch with the outside world, etc.
Bloody amazing journey it has been. Micheal, Rapheala and I have been seeting up free camps in rainforested gullies, national park campgrounds, at the beach...
Stayed at Aire River Crossing the first night after seeing the famous "twelve apostles" which is nothing more than a huge zoo/tourist trap with everyone posing for photos with this popular austalian shorline behind them.... not even thaaat impressive... we saw better going on little adventures... but it was nice to see in person. Saw a few more roos and another echidna, some lizzards and such... hiked a variety of trails before finding this little campground - only 5 other people there of so - down in a cool temperate rainforested gully - bloody beautiful. Cooked up some nice curried rice and such... I met a really interesting local bloke down by the river whilist search for glowworms, which he had never seen in his whole life, but we ended up finding a bunch (both thourally amused by them) and he ended up talking my ear off for a couple hours, informing me of everyhting he could about this part of Australia (I'm in the province of Victoria now) and of Tasmania and Queensland. I taught him as much as I could about Canada and we came to the conclusion that the primary difference between Canada and Australia is that Canada is full of "the big shit that can kill you" and Australia is full of "the little shit that can kill you"..
Good fun. and the rainforest here has a very distinct smell that is highly intoxicating, and I have never smelled anyhign quite like it. I think it comes from a certain white flower that is very common this time of year.
Next day was so bloody hot we didn't feel like doing a thing. What do you do in this country when you feel like doing nothing else? go to the beach!
Johana beach is a nice big streach of sand, with surf as big and dangerous as it gets. Kill you surf. no kidding. so lifegaurds, no swimming signs. we quickly learned why when we went puddling around. The waves are strong enough to knock you off your feet even if they are only waist hieght and the rip tides are so strong that they wash the sand out from beneath your feet so fast that you're a foot shorter by the time each wave goes out. We played around in the waves, running in and out like childeren... every so often a big wave come in, take us for a ride and thourally scare the shit out of us and we'd head back to the sand... come back again, big wave, scare the shit out of us... then decided that living was better than playing in big waves.....
back to our spot on the beach, which was really nice and far up. figured we were safe. everyyhing was good for an hour or so... then out of nowhere, with no warning, a huge wave swept up the beach, turning our basking spot into 6 or 8 inches of water!! we only had a fraction of a second warning - and ended up getting everything soaked... our food, clothes, everything (for some reason I left my digital camera in the car - no idea why) the car key actually got swept nearly back into the ocean. we found them on the shore. lucky stuff!
Later that afernoon we had our oppourtunity to do our good deed for the day, by warning a mother and father who were letting their tiny kids play in the killer surf. We watched them puddling around, completely oblivious to the fact that about 1 in 100 of those waves is 10 times bigger than the rest...the kids got washed away, parents chased after them, retrived them, only to put them back in the water and let them keep playing... we couldn't bear to watch and informed them of our experiance. fortunately for them, they took us seriously.
So that was the beach.
What else. it's really hard to think of the past... I've been so centered on this momement... always something amazing happening...
the last couple days have been spent at a campground called Aire river east. It was Australia day weekend (loooots of drunken Aussies!!) and the kids have their first day of school on monday. But yeah - the campground was full of Koalas! no Koalas in the woods... we only found a few that day, then we pulled up to our campsite (free camping), stepped out of the van and there was a Koala right infront of me. like 10 feet away... throught the two days we stayed, the Koalas were our entertainment... and everyone elses. I even have a piture of a Drunk ourtralian with a beer by a Koala... baby Kolas with their Mum's all kinds of stuff.
Micheal and I caught us dinner last night! sort of... two small Mullens - not bad, in my opinion considering we started out the day with only a spool of fishing line and a sinker... made a hook out of a sewing needle, while I tempered and Aneeled with a campstove (thankouy metalurgy theroy in welding class) made an "army man" float out of a wine bottle cork and an army man I found in the woods while digging for worms. (yes, wee took pictures) You see, Micheal lost all of the corn we had saved from our meal and the grasshoppers we had collected from the grillplate on the van when he fell in the river while carrying our bait... so here we are in the mud, digging for worms and a fisherman comes by... we tell him our sob story and he gives us half his bait pail of prawns... so now we everyhting but fishing liscences.... just kept 6 for fisheirs and parks... and fished away while all of the "real fisherman" and local kids made fun of us. They were just jelous of our army man float... stratergiacally designed to hunt and shoot down the fish. worked decently. Lots of little fish... just chew off the bait in seconds... caught 4 in total.. but two were really small. I caught one this morning, but it was barely bigger than a sardine, so I threw it back.
Yeah... left our Koala ridden campsite after sleeping in the pouring rain last night (my gear is soaked) and fishing for a hour or so also in the rain, (fishing is addictive. I see what it is about now)
Just cooked up some sausages and hashbrowns in the park... my germans had never had hashbrowns before - tonight I'll show them omlettes! After this we're finding a place to shower and then slowly toward Lorne... by tomarrow or the next day. Then we part ways...
Wonderful times.... learning lots about the english languange... lots about how we think as a human collective... lots about how koalas behave, how fish behave.... been dreaming like bloody crazy and try to make at least one plunge into the depths of this beautiful cool temperate rainforest every day.
my time is up. if you made it to the end of the entry, thanks for reading! I appologize for bad spelling/grammer. but these entries empty my pockets as is, at more than $6 each most times!
ok. I'll be in Melbourne by the weekend. Should be meeting some couchsuring people and will beable to upload some pictures!! as I have a couple hundered at least - beautiful ones too!
ok.
take care everybody.
my love out to you all!