I haven’t been TOTALLY inactive, however. I tried out for a local production of the musical Chicago, and though I didn’t get the part, I DID get a call back. As luck would have it, my university is offering a “drama production” course that will let me work behind the scenes instead for school credit, so hey – twist my rubber arm! Speaking of university, courses are in full swing, which is GREAT because it solves that little “unstructured time” problem that I mentioned above.

I’m also looking for a job. I did a demo for a local company that provides voice work for projects ranging from phone systems to video game characters, so I am hoping that they’ll have a tiny bit of work for me here and there. I’ve been interested in doing voice work for a LONG time. But this isn’t likely to suddenly become anything more than trickle income, if it happens at all, so obviously I need to find something a little more… regular.

I still need to get out into the city and take some pictures so that all of you Oz folk can see what my home town is like. Now that I have somewhere to get up and BE every day, it won’t be long before I find the time for this endeavour falling into my lap. I have to go uptown on Tuesday, actually, so with any luck it’ll be then. We’re supposed to get a week of sun now that the tail end of… whatever hurricane that was has passed through. (Hanna, maybe?)

My original intent tonight was to post some pictures, but I just have so FREAKING MANY. Resizing, uploading, and inserting them takes FOREVER (not to mention, my laptop is getting old and slow, and my internet connection at my desk here at home – which is where the ergonomics are decent enough that I CAN stay here for a couple of hours – leaves much to be desired). I’d like to make them available on some sort of photo hosting website, but I don’t even know where to start. I have a Flickr account but I don’t know if it’d work for so many pics. If you have any advice, I’d love to hear it.

So stay tuned, at SOME point in the near future I will have pictures and actual content for you. Swell, eh? For the moment I’m going to devote a little time to some long-neglected writing projects.

I’m going to make a couple more posts here before I’m through, tying up some loose ends, posting some forgotten pictures and giving those folks in Oz who are following me a glimpse of my home town. I also have to do part 2 of my “Lord of the Rings” posts. But it won’t be right now, because my back is bothering me a little after a long day on my feet. Look for it before the weekend.

I’ll leave you with one picture, though, from my last night in Sydney:

This is the giant ice cream that me and the Script Frenzy people all shared. My expression says it all. (I miss you guys!!)

Woah.

First, though, I have some errands to do today. Among other things, I have to close down my bank account, and pack a little (I’m mostly packed at the moment, really, but I need to do some major re-arranging.) And this evening I’ll be meeting up with my Script Frenzy buddies for what promises to be a fun send-off. It’s going to involve GIANT ICE CREAM. There will be pictures.

To backtrack a bit, however, I should probably catch y’all up on what I’ve done since Queenstown. The day after my last blog post I hopped on a bus to Christchurch. The windows were constantly foggy and, aside from that, dirty as hell, so I didn’t take pictures. But we travelled through a lot of territory in which the “Rohan” and general horse battles from LotR were filmed, which was obvious just from the look of the land. And I saw Mount Cook from a considerable distance, which was still pretty cool.

I feel bad for Christchurch, it really got the short shrift. I saw a tiny bit more of it this time, since we arrived during daylight hours, but by the time I’d dropped off my things and gotten settled into the hostel it was dark already. My flight was at 6AM, so I had to get up at *shudder* three thirty in the morning to catch the shuttle to the airport. That evening I basically did my laundry (which I’d MEANT to do in Queenstown, but forgot) and tried to put myself to sleep by reading Elizabethan plays and drinking beer. I hit the sack at about 10:30 and slept in a few long-ish chunks until 3AM, all the while dreaming that I was mighty Tamburlaine, conquering the world in iambic pentameter.

On the shuttle I ran into N, one of my neighbours from when I was living at Herring Road during university! What are the odds? She was going back to Sydney on a 6AM flight.

My flight into Melbourne was fine, though apparentely another international flight to Melbourne from the same parent company hadn’t fared quite so well.  This doesn’t particularly worry me, as I figure the chances of having it happen TWICE to the SAME AIRLINE on the SAME WEEKEND are significantly more astronomical than having it happen once.

It was nice to be in Melbourne again, though it was rainy the whole time so I didn’t bother to take many pictures. I got the airport shuttle to my hostel and then, since I couldn’t actually check in yet, stored my bags in a locker and visited the Victoria Markets for a couple of hours. This, it turns out, is something of a Kafka-esque experience. Hundreds and HUNDREDS of stalls, and yet there are maybe four stalls in all – the cheap leather/clothing stall, the cheap jewelery stall, the cheap souvenirs stall,  and the AMAZING HEALING PRODUCT stall – and they are repeated AD INFINITUM. I seriously started to wonder if I had backtracked at some point, but no, I was just in a nightmare of endless insanity. I only bought one thing there, something for my brother.

There was another kind of stall – the fruit/bulk food stall – and these were sequestered together in another endless repetition of the same fruit at the same prices being hawked in the same way. But this was much more amusing because I’d never been to a market where people literally accost you with grapes before.

In the afternoon I met up with CH and we went to see two shows. The first was a little overly literary and disconnected in its writing, and relied a little too much on the sure-fire ANGST of WAR AND DEATH, but the main character’s performance was great and the show was TECHNICALLY fascinating. Lots of use of film and light in interesting ways, and darkness – the theatre was PITCH black to start. Then in the evening we met up with CH’s friend R and saw a totally fun little soon-to-be-Fringe show called “The Adventures of ButtBoy and Tigger”. Then we got a bite to eat and chatted for a while, and R helped me find my way back to the hostel so I could collapse into bed. I’d effectively been awake for 22 hours at this point.

The next day was WICKED DAY! CH and R were going to see the matinee (yes, they were seeing the show twice in one day), so I spent some time wandering around the city. I went to the Old Melbourne Gaol (Jail) and had fun looking at the death masks of various people who were hanged over a hundred years ago, including Ned Kelly, the local folk hero (sort of in the same vein as Bonny and Clyde, but I think they actively LIKE Ned more here). And I got the best souvenir EVER, which I’ll talk about more once I’m home.

“Wicked” was great! An extremely well put-together show, lots of good songs and dancing, and Crazy Singing (mum will know what I mean. CRAZY.) It certainly wasn’t a very DEEP show, though to its credit it doesn’t try to suggest that it’s much more than a fun romp with a Slightly Moral Message and a True Friendship and other white-bread kinds of themes with Capital Letters. The person who played the lead role was sick today, she missed the matinee performance altogether and had to leave the main peformance halfway through and be replaced by her understudy (or stand-in, I can’t remember – either way, she was still pretty amazing in her own right, though she didn’t quite have the unbridled vitality and sharpness of the main player.) I didn’t have one inkling that she was sick, though, so she must be tough as boots to have stuck it out for that long.

After the show R went home early and me and CH went to an all-night diner to sit around and chat and pick at various extremely tasty Greek appetizers. The place was called “Stalactites” and I have pictures which I’ll upload once I’m home to show you why.

Now I’m back in Sydney, and I had a hilarious transportation disaster which I’ll replicate for you in its entirety later (once the tragedy has had more “time” added to it, thus making it a comedy). It’s hard to believe that I’m really going home. More than that, it’s hard to believe that THIS ISN’T home anymore. Ack. Okay, no more noodling along these lines for now. Time to go wrap up some loose ends and enjoy my last night in Sydney.

Speaking of “home,” I’m going to be there in a week. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around this fact. So I won’t! Instead I’ll write about Queenstown a bit.

The bus ride into the Queenstown area took us up into the mountains. At one point we were actually more than a thousand meters above sea level, which is some pretty decent altitude. The terrain is really interesting in this area, very rocky with tufts of yellowish grass and plantlife sprouting out of it. I didn’t get any decent pictures out of the window of the bus, but there are some from the next couple of days that show what I mean. And there was snow up in the hills!

On the way down the views were amazing. I could drive around this area for a long time and never get bored of it.

When we’d finally wound our way down, down, down to the city (the road kept weaving back and forth along the mountainside), I started wondering if I would recognize the Remarkables. I have this difficulty with translating 2D to 3D images, see. But when I looked up, I KNEW right away what I was seeing.

This mountain range – and various pieces of it – are used MANY times in Lord of the Rings. The next time I watch it I’m going to have to keep my eyes open for ‘em. (A lot of the time they aren’t snow-capped, though.)

I got settled into my hostel (which has been booked solid the whole time I’ve been here – I am VERY glad that I booked my room well in advance) and explored the city a little. The waterfront is really nice, the view of the Remarkables and the other mountains (which literally surround the city) is really breathtaking. Nestled into the top of this mountain is a restaurant/cafe, which is technically accessible via a walking trail, but more easily via gondola.

That night I wrote a bunch of postcards (which I sent the next day – TWELVE in all) and hit the sack fairly early. The next day I intended to parasail, but it was too windy so they weren’t operating. So I went up in the gondola instead and visited that restaurant/observation area. The gondola ride was great, though quite short. It literally feels like you’ee being lifted straight up in the air (and you practically are – I’m not sure what the gradient is, but… well, you can judge:)

The view from the observation deck was straight out of the postcards that many of you will receive. Note the Remarkables just hanging out in the background, being majestic.

I had an ulterior motive beyond sightseeing for this gondola ride, however. And that was: THE LUGE!

I had originally thought that the luge was an alternative way to get down from the mountain – as in, you get strapped in and get shot back down along a luge track. This, sadly, was not to be. However, the reality was just about as awesome. There are two 800-meter long tracks, one “scenic” and the other “advanced.” The “luge” is really more like a gravity-powered go kart, but this makes it no less awesome. The thing that scared the crap out of me at first, though, was this:

You’re carried up to the top of the luge track by a little ski lift. Now, I can handle gondolas and that sort of thing like a pro. But the whole “swinging out in the open air on a little seat” business that is involved in a ski lift DEFINITELY tripped my fear of heights. But I wasn’t about to miss out on the luge experience, so I sucked it up and went for it. It WAS kind of freaky at first, but not nearly as bad as I thought it’d be. I found out later that you could walk up to the top if you wanted to, but it was a fair trek and I was glad to have the experience of just going for it and getting over that initial fear.

The luge ride itself is SO FUN. The cars are quite small and I had to rearrange myself in them somewhat in order to apply the brakes effectively, but I had good control over my speed and the steering was solid. And you can really get up some SPEED on those things! I’d bought two luge rides, but I bought a third one once I was up there – I just had to try it ONE more time. (The fact that you have AMAZING scenery in the background as you zip down this thing only adds to the awesomeness of it.)

I went back down the gondola later and frittered away some of the afternoon in coffee shops, writing and reading a little. I went to see “Mama Mia” that night in theatres, and it was heaps of fun! Very enjoyable. I love Meryl Streep, it’s just that simple. (The whole theatre was in gales of laughter every time Pierce Brosnan sang, however.)

The next morning I got picked up at 8AM for the first of two half-day “Lord of the Rings” tours. These weren’t as specialized to Lord of the Rings as the one in Wellington had been – we did go to a few locations, and see some others from afar, but for the most part we did a lot of sightseeing in the Queenstown area. This was no less awesome, however. The terrain here, as I mentioned earlier, is really interesting. I’ll post a couple of the best photos, but I have a lot more that I’ll put up earlier. I’m glad I booked a tour for it, as almost every area we went to was ONLY accessible via really rough “off road” routes. We bounced over mud and fallen trees and through rivers and all sorts of fun stuff.

Another bonus was that my guide had a lot of knowledge about the area, be it geographical or social and political, so he was really interesting to listen to. We also saw some locations that were used during the filming of the Wolverine movie! I’m looking forward to seeing it in theatres to see if I recognize any of them.

At one point we were driving along a road with a sheer drop of at LEAST a hundred feet, with maybe a foot of leeway between the wheels and DEATH. Obviously the road is used all the time and my guide was extremely comfortable driving on them, but I will admit that I DID spent a certain amount of time with my intestines in a definite twist.

I have some specific “Lord of the Rings” locations, but I’m going to save them for when I’m home and have the luxury of a little time (and Photoshop). These ones are going to take a little more work and explaining, too. However, I’ll give you just this one for free:

On this stretch of snow that joins these mountaintops is where, on the way to the pass of Caradhras, Frodo dropped the ring, and Boromir picked it up. “It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing… such a little thing…”

Okay, I’ll give you one more, because it’s easy to explain:

This is the river Anduin, just about where the Fellowship encounter the Pillars of the Kings, the Argonath (those giant statues).

That night I got in touch with my friend C, who lived in my neighbourhood while we were going to university together. She and her friend K were in town, so I met up with them and we went out drinking for a while and had a great time.

Today C was off snowboarding, and I had WANTED to parasail but the wind was STILL too high, so instead me and K went luge riding and generally hung out for most of the day. We had a ball with the luge, I need to get filthy stinking rich so I can build a luge track of my own. So I’m not going to parasail after all, which sucks, but the luge was a LOT of fun and it was also WAY cheaper. It all works out in the end.

After my Lord of the Rings tour on Friday, I finally managed to meet up with Laura and the hopped-up-on-diet-coke version of Margaret for a drink. This is when we found out, completely by chance, that we would be spending part of the next two days on the EXACT same course – taking the ferry to Picton, then the train to Christchurch, and then the train to Greymouth. Isn’t that hilarious? It must have been FATED, I tell you. I got to meet Laura’s mother, who is awesome, and her niece as well, and we shared a table for the duration of the ferry ride.

I hadn’t realized that the ferry would be so close to land for most of the trip. Instead of an expanse of water, we got some AMAZING coastal views.

Just to bring you back to earth after all of that majesty, I’ll mention the newspaper headline that Laura’s mother discovered (as best I can remember it): “Experts blame feeding for duck explosion.” I was really excited until I realized that they meant a duck POPULATION explosion. We laughed about that one for a LONG time.

The train ride to Christchurch was fairly long, about six and a half hours as best I recall, but the scenery made it go by in a snap. I had a seat in the same car as Laura and the gang, so I occasionally visited them and for close to an hour I disappeared with Margaret onto the observation car, where we basically gaped at the views and said “Wow!” about a hundred thousand times. For a hundred kilometers the train followed the coast. Sometimes we were only a few meters away from the beach, which consisted of volcanic rock and black, black sand.

On the other side, in the meantime, was an increasingly mountainous expands of land, which eventually broke out into snow-capped mountains.

Once we were in Christchurch I hopped into a shuttle bus and got delivered to the doorstep of my hostel. After dropping off my things I went out to find Laura and the gang, as her mother had very kindly invited me out to dinner with them. And she paid for me too! Which was extremely nice of her, and very much appreciated, not in small part because I am on the poor side, and also because the food was extremely good. (Though the service was weird – there were some, ahem, language barriers, and for some reason each dish was brought out on its own, with a decent wait in between. But like I said – food was GREAT.) It was nice to get a little more time to spend with them, the company was wonderful (once nice thing about this road trip is that I’ve never gone ALL that long without seeing a familiar face. Not that this has in any way stopped me from making more of them along the way.)

The next morning we were on the same train again, this time going from the East to the West coast. We were in different cars this time so I saw less of the gang, though we did rendezvous now and then on the observation car. Unfortunately, two factors made the observation car a bit of a trial: it was only HALF a car this time, and there were about TEN TIMES more people on it than there had been the day before. People were pretty ruthless about getting in front of you to take photos, though Margaret is small enough that she could get up against the rail fairly easily. I did manage to get a few really good shots, though – the scenery was, amazingly enough, EVEN MORE… um… amazing, as the train brought us straight through the mountains this time.

About half way through the journey, somebody must have decided that they liked me, because they named a whole town after me!

See the sign on that red building in the distance? (Click on the image to bring up the full-sized one if you can’t.) Nice of ‘em, eh? Laura decided that we needed to have a writing retreat here at some point.

Once we were through the snow-capped mountains and over on the West coast, the terrain changed significantly. This is a temperate rain forest area, so it was suddenly a lot more GREEN. But the mountains here were no less interesting, shrouded in clouds and fog.

We parted ways in Greymouth, since I was staying there and the Laura Patrol was going back on the train to Christchurch. (I should be meeting up with Laura and the rest of the Script Frenzy gang a week from today, on my LAST NIGHT IN OZ. ACK. For some reason, time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’… you know where.)

Greymouth was a cute little down. Didn’t get to do a lot of exploring there, because everything was closed on a sleepy Sunday evening. But it was still early enough in the day for me to snap some photos.

(If you put these top two together side-by-side, they essentially form a panorama of Greymouth, as seen facing away from the ocean.)

Here’s what it looks like on the other side:

The hostel I stayed in was nestled up in this hill (it’s higher and steeper than it looks here – this is the hill you see in the second “panorama” shot I mentioned above.)

I was only in Greymouth (which they actually pronounce as “Grey Mouth”… did I mention that already? I have a feeling I did) for one night. The hostel used to be a bed and breakfast, I think – the keys to the rooms were these old skeleton keys and everything, and there is even a room there marked “Chapel.” (I’d say it might have been a funeral home, but it would have been MURDER getting corpses up and down the driveway to that house. Pun fully intended.)

When I got up in the morning to get my bus, it was WHIPPING wind and rain. It was a short-ish walk (maybe ten minutes?) but it was cold (yes, actually COLD) and wet and not very fun. My umbrella broke in the attempt to use it, but at least it did shelter me from the rain somewhat until I got to the bus stop. I threw it in the rubbish bin outside. It was a cheap umbrella anyway and I got more than my fair share of use out of it.

I called my folks for a couple of minutes from a payphone near the bus stop, but my bus came a little early so I cut the call short and climbed into the nice, warm vehicle for a few minutes. It was going to be another long day on the road down to Queenstown. But if you can believe it, the scenery slowly got even more amazing.

The picture above is of a riverbed, taken from one of many one-lane bridges. Several of these were even used for train traffic as well, on one lane! Golden rule: MAKE SURE THE PATH IS CLEAR BEFORE CROSSING THE BRIDGE. The riverbed is quite barren this time of year, but I imagine it gets much wetter in the spring.

This was where we had a break for coffee. Pictures do not capture the splendor. It was amazing 360 degrees. And just a minute down the road, we had to come to a complete stop for this:

Sheep!! And at this point we were completely surrounded – note the rear-view mirror!

Up to this point the scenery was similar in awesomeness to that which we witnessed on the train trips in previous days. And that’s when a new element was introduced: lakes.

It must be the contrast between the flat, glossiness of lakes and the bolt, jutting ruggedness of mountains, but they complement each other beautifully. As we slowly wound our way through mountains and around these gigantic lakes I basically just stared, slack-jawed, and took pictures whenever I thought that I might be able to capture some essential element of it all. Not easy through the window of a bus, but I tried.

I have more, which show the scenery slowly becoming drier and rockier (more… dare I say it? Rohan-esque?) The snow is also going to get more up-close and personal in this next batch. But I’ve been working on this for, like, an hour and a half, and I’m tired. So I’ll save the rest for my next post (which may come as soon as tomorrow night.)

For now, I’m going to hit the sack in preparation for a reasonably early morning and another day-long Lord of the Rings tour. Here’s hoping the weather is decent!

I already said most of what I wanted to say about the North Island, so I’ll just put some of the best pics up for your enjoyment. First: shadows of Hobbiton.

Doesn’t this look like a human-sized and modernized hobbiton? Unfortunately the little round hills don’t translate too well in this picture – I took a few, and this is the one that turned out the best, sadly. Though this next one has a hint of it, as well, maybe a bit more dramatically:

This next one has some roundy Hobbitness too, though it was taken a bit further south, in Rotorua.

The whisps you can see aren’t clouds, they’re steam which rises from the earth (and various bodies of water – hence a number of warm natural baths in the area). My friend Laura, of 24-hour theatre fame and such, spent more time there and talks about it a bit in her blog.

Here’s another one that shows the steam:

The next stop we made was at Lake Taupo, where we could see the mountains in the distance.

We proceeded to drive around the lake, which was a lot of fun because the road was CLINGING to the side of the hill:

See that little line that runs like a rim around that mountain? That’s the road.

We spent a long time winding through mountain roads, but once we got out of that and onto open ground again we had an AMAZING view.

The view from the other side of the bus was really interesting as well – talk about TOTAL contrast to what it was like up north (and what it soon returned to, once we got out of the mountainous area).

(Not bad for pictures taken out of the window of a bus, eh? Also: Sheep!)

For the last few hours of the trip, we were in total darkness. It was almost alarming when I looked out my window at about 8 o’clock and saw waves coming up the beach. I didn’t get a view of Wellington until the next morning, when I opened the drapes in my room on the 6th floor of the hostel.

Not bad for a room that was costing me all of 25$ a night!

I was really drained that first morning so I slept in fairly late and didn’t get to explore all that much. I did wander around the harbour (which is beautiful) and take a bunch of photos to try to get a feeling for the city.

These must have been some DANGEROUS trees, because they were totally fenced in on all sides!

Okay, so see the picture above? That’s an empty pool-like area, or water-designed area, as far as I can tell. And there are steps that… descend right down into it? I don’t get it.

The one above and the one below are of the Civic centre, which is basically town hall and the site of the city library.

The pigeons! They’re WINNING!

Um. I can’t decide if somebody actually died at this intersection and they decided to use it as a warning for people to look before they cross, or if somebody just has a really weird sense of humour.

The next day I wanted to do more wandering and picture-taking, but of course it was raining. Not that this stopped me entirely, of course. It just limited my scope a little. My first order of business for the day was to take the cable car up to the botannical gardens. Because… well, duh. Cable car.

The hill is REALLY steep. This cable line has been in operation for over a hundred years, though they revamped it in the 1970′s so this isn’t the original car. The view from the top was pretty cool.

At the top, in the original winding house for the cable car, there’s a museum that talks about the history of the line. And the original cable car was there, which was kind of neat.

Sitting on the OUTSIDE like that would have been pretty fun.

The view from the bottanical gardens was great, but it was starting to rain in earnest so I didn’t stay up there too long.

While I was up there, though, I saw a sign for the “Sundial of Human Involvement.” And with a name like that, I HAD to check it out.

So I did – it’s literally a sundial in which YOU, THE VIEWER become the, um, pointer. Or whatever it’s called. There’s a figure-eight with the months of the year, and certain days within that month. You stand on the correct month and day with your arms stretched up above your head and with your palms pressed together, and it tells the time (apparently it’s accurate to within a few minutes.)

Of course, it being a cloudy day I didn’t get to try it out.

I tried to walk down through the gardens, but it was rainy and wet and I was getting lost frequently, so I gave up and took the cable car back down. (Apparently they used to charge two pence to go up, but just a penny to go down, way back in the day – lots of folks seemed to enjoy the walk back down into town.) I swung by the parliament building, which is called the “Beehive” because… well:

After this I went to the train station, because I thought I’d have to go there in a couple of days and I like to case joints out so that I know how to get there and that kind of thing. And this amused me, but I imagine it will amuse many of you even more:

That night I spent some time at the Te Papa museum, which was really great – lots of different areas that would take hours and hours to fully explore. I also stumbled upon a small gallery that was showing some portrait work earlier in the day, which was really interesting; I’m glad I happened upon it.

I had gotten wind that there were a couple of productions on in town, so I checked them out. They were playing at the theatre across from Te Papa, so I was able to pop right over there (and all of this is less than a five minute walk from my hostel, which is also nice.) I wound up going to see Rome: The Musical, which was great! Written and directed by a local fellow, but I didn’t realize that until I looked him up later. It was singing straight through, and the singing was GREAT (the songs also stuck with me for the next couple of days, so they obviously had something going for them.) Like I was saying to Laura, the show allowed itself to have a couple of quite sombre moments – like laying someone into a grave… and then doing a samba on it. Very fun.

And then, the next morning, was the LORD OF THE RINGS TOUR!

Welcome to Name That Scene!

I’m running out of internet time, so I’ll be brief. Here are some pictures of film locations. See if you can tell what they are. (Feel free to be as specific as possible! If you can name the exact MOMENT, then you rock. But if you just have a sense that a general scene happened somewhere, go for it!) A couple of them are pretty tough, so I may give a hint or two.

LOCATION 1

(Hint: A very general location – many scenes were shot here. Can you guess which ones?)

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LOCATION 2

(Hint: Extended edition only.)

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LOCATION 3:

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LOCATION 4:

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LOCATION 5:

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LOCATION 6:

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LOCATION 7:

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LOCATION 8:

A funny thing happened on the train to Alice Springs that I forgot to mention in my post about the Ghan. I was still wide awake at midnight, so for a change of scenery I went to the lounge car and read for a couple of hours. At about two thirty I thought I’d head back to my seat(s – since nobody was sitting next to me, I had both to myself.) After spending a few hours in the lighted lounge car, the darkness of the passenger coach was nearly impenetrable – I had to practically feel my way to my seat, which was at the very back of the car.

I set down my bag, but there was something soft on the back of the seat. A sweater? That’s weird – someone must have left it there. I pulled it out from under my bag and draped it over the back of the seat.

Then suddenly someone sat up out of the darkness and quite nearly scared the BAJEEZUS out of me. “I’m sorry!” she said, and scampered back to her seat. I was so shocked and surprised that I just sort of let out a laugh. I felt bad afterward – I’d probably put my bag right down on her head, and I would have probably just let her sleep there for a while longer if I’d realized how much trouble I was going to have getting comfortable. She was quite small, so she was probably able to curl up on the seats with some level of comfort, whereas the rest of the night was an exercise in the futility of getting to sleep, for me.

After I’d finished “The Rock tour” I had a full day to myself at Alice Springs before I was to fly to Cairns. I figured that I would wander around and go to museums and such, but this just happened to be a public holiday for the town, so most stuff was closed! Just my luck. It was “show day,” a throwback to smalltown exhibitions of crops and animals and that kind of thing. I might have gone if it wasn’t so pricey – just the shuttle to the location was 15$ and there was a pretty steep entry fee. As luck would have it I ran into a woman I’d met on the Ghan, so we had a cup of coffee and chatted for a little while in the afternoon.

I had a window seat for the first leg of the fight to Cairns, so I saw both Uluru and Kata Tjutu from the air. The landscape was really amazing from up there – it was wide and flat, with vegetation seeming to flow in broad, almost fluid strokes and veins across the landscape. I have to wonder if the patterns follow underground river systems.

Cairns, by comparison, was surrounded by mountains and teeming with greenery. There’s a long esplanade that offers a great view of the harbour, and at one end there’s a large man-made lagoon where people can swim for free – apparently the water of the harbour isn’t fit for swimming as it’s more like glorified mudflats all the way out to the reef.

I wanted to see a bit of the jungle while I was there, so on something of a whim on my first full day there I booked a passage on the Sky Line gondola. It was a great ride, which goes about 8 kms up into the mountains in three legs. There was an amazing view of the city on the first leg, and at that waystation I went on a short guided walk in the rainforest. What a change from the week before. In the center of the continent, rainforests have been gone for millennia, leaving a host of plants that have adapted, in various ways, to wrestle water out of the earth, sometimes burying their roots as much as 50 meters down. In the jungle, the fight is for light – trees grow in the branches of other trees,  vines thrive and snake their way up to steal some sun. There are also some extremely old species here, like tree species that date back to before flowering plants existed on earth, and trees that flower and grow fruit directly on the trunk instead of out on the branches.

The trip ends in Kuranda, which is a cute (though slightly tourist-trappy) town. I declined the option of “cuddling a koala” for 15$, mostly because I’m pretty sure koalas would rather just sleep and eat at their leisure and don’t want me cuddling them.  (I’ve petted a kangaroo. I’m happy.) For a change of pace I booked a train ticket back which follows the first tracks to be (painstakingly) laid in that area. My seat was facing the wrong way, and was on the wrong side of the train for the really good views, but the information about the history of the line that was piped over the loudspeakers was really interesting and the bits and pieces of view that I was able to snatch WERE awesome.

Once I was back in Sydney after the reef trip, I went on a weekend trip with my friends from MacMS (some of whom were in / involved in the musical with me.) Due to a shortage of cars on the way down, some of us opted to take the train. It was three hours, but it was a total hoot. We spent the whole time yucking it up and probably really annoying the other passengers. Highlights include stories from “Colin” and “Gramps,” two old man characters that L and C played, respectively – they usually involved very innocent beginnings and then devoloved into twists that involved drugs, sex and/or some kind of “facility”. Oh, the humour of young drama people.

The weekend was quite laid-back, mostly we watched movies and played Singstar and Wii and, on one occasion, went to Berry for a little excursion. I’d actually been in Berry before, on my very FIRST weekend in Oz way, way, way back in February. (Things keep coming full circle. IT’S WEIRD!) We had some famous meat pies (rumoured to be the best in the country – and they WERE really good), had some awesome ice cream, and raided a lolly shop (I’m still savouring my strawberry bon-bons and chocolate covered cashews.)  Oh, and I had a queen-sized bed ALL TO MYSELF. It was freaking BEAUTIFUL.

When I got back into the city that night I realized I had quite a few hours to put in, so I texted my friend CH, who lives in the city and who I met through Script Frenzy. He was actually alrady with J, ALSO of Script Frenzy, and one of her friends, so I hopped on a bus and joined them. We hung out and chatted for hours and had a great time. (Well, I did. Can’t speak for everyone else. Maybe they were sitting there, quietly praying that I’d leave them alone. You never know.) Man, just when I’m developping a circle of friends, I leave. IT’S NOT FAIR! Why can’t everybody just live where I live, and move when I move? Sheesh.

The next morning I flew to Auckland, New Zealand. I feel a little bad for Auckland – by the time I got there, and got settled in my hostel, and got out into the city, it was only an hour from sunset. I didn’t see a lot of it, in other words, and thanks to my camera batteries being dead (and my wanting to recharge them rather than buy new ones), I didn’t bother getting any pictures. You’re not missing anything – google “Auckland, NZ” and you’ll get better pictures than I could have taken in that one-and-a-half hours of daylight, anyway. I made the effort to meet up with Laura (of Script Frenzy and 24-hour-theatre fame) and her family, who arrived a few hours after I did, but with no success.  There was just too far to go, and not enough energy to get there. (Even if we had met up, I imagine we would have stared zombie-like at each other for most of the evening.) On the flip side, I managed to finish a short story that I’d started the other day, which makes me happy. It’s still rough, to the tune of “I wouldn’t even show this to my mother, it’s that rough,” but it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I hear that a lot of the best stories have those.

The next morning I checked out and walked to the bus stop on Quay St, grabbing some quick breakfast on the way. I was in for a pretty eventful 12+ hours of driving, and not all in a good way. Some sort of angry anti-bus god must have been hanging over us, because after two hours on the road, the bus broke down. It took us an hour and a half to get going again on a replacement bus, and this one was even more questionable than the first had been – it was ANCIENT, and the seats were tiny and uncomfortable. It also fairly crawled up hills, and seemed to have a hard time just generally moving from gear to gear. Another two hours on this one and we swapped busses again, as a preventative measure this time. (A group had been going up to Auckland on a nice NEW bus, so they took the old bus, on the assumption that it wouldn’t make it to Wellington and THEN back up to Auckland.)

They’d been on the road for less than an hour when the clutch blew. Score one for us!

As for the trip itself, and the scenery? AMAZING. But not exciteably so – it just kind of quietly sat there, going, “Oh hi. Yeah, I’m New Zealand, just sitting around, being beautiful. Enjoy!” The best word I can think of to describe it is “bold”. It’s like it hasn’t settled down into just being regular terrain yet, and is still all bumpy and jumpy and half-way wondering if it shouldn’t just throw caution to the winds and become volcanic again. (Auckland, I should mention, was hilly. VERY hilly. I had to walk down this one hill on my way to the hostel that LITERALLY gave me vertigo, and semed to just get steeper and steeper the further down I went. It is steeper than any hill I have EVER had to walk on in my life – and that includes the “hill of DOOM” from Perth. It is not hard for me to imagine that this hill was once the side of a volcano.)

The route the bus took, which had been a total surprise to me, actually went through some areas that I’d really wanted to see, particularly Lake Taupo, and the nearby mountains such as Mount Ruapehu. Those were really amazing for me, because I’ve never SEEN mountains like that before, with the snow at the peaks. (Speaking of snow, I saw some on the side of the road! The first snow I’ve seen in five months, after just barely getting out of my stormy, wintery hometown. It was in a shady spot and I imagine that it’s pretty rare that far up in the north island, since a couple of guys had pulled over and crossed the highway to take pictures of it.) The bus went around the lake and gave me a great view of the mountains. It also took the twistiest roads I’ve ever seen, the kind that are clinging to the side of the mountain and have turns that  turn you around and around so that, after a few minutes, you have no idea what direction you’re moving in. And though I didn’t get up to Matta Matta to see Hobbiton itself, I could see the essence of it clearly in the countryside near Auckland – rolling, round hills, peppered with sheep and cows.

I got into Wellington at about eight thirty last night. It’s always a little strange to go into a city at night, because it makes navigation really hard. I knew, from looking at maps and such, that I was near the harbour, but it was still awesome to wake up, open my blinds, and SEE IT from my hostel window.

I explored a bit today, and made some phone calls (which included my booking a Lord of the Rings locations tour for Friday – I decided to go for that instead of renting a car, but I may still rent one in Queenstown. We’ll see). Tomorrow I’m going to do a walking tour around Wellington, take the cable car up into the botanical gardens, and then spend some time at the Te Papa Tongarewa museum and activity center.

I’m not 100% sure what I’m doing once I get there, though I am seriously considering renting a car and going to see some Lord of the Rings related sites at my leisure. I may see if there are any reasonable tours, but they tend to be awfully pricey (and it would be nice to just go at my own pace for a few days.)

First off, thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes in one form or another – I was totally cut off from civilization ON my actual birthday, but when I got back in town the next day my inbox was positively flooded with messages. Thank you! It was a little strange to celebrate a birthday away from home for the first time, and hearing from all of my friends really made me feel at home, even though 16,000 though I’m kilometers away.

On Monday I was picked up at 8AM and after a bit of form-filling-out and general info, we were loaded onto a small day boat (called the Sunkist) and shipped out. It was a somewhat rocky 2-hour trip to the big dive boat which lives out on the reef, called the Kangaroo Explorer.

This 25 meter catamaran was going to be our home for the next three days. We hopped on board and made our way up to the sundeck (though, for reasons that will become clear shortly, we called it the “cloud deck” or the “wind deck” for the duration of the trip) for a quick briefing about how things were going to operate.

Our shoes were basically stored away for the duration of the trip – I didn’t put my sneakers back on until we were back on dry land again. Then we had a quick tour of the ship. The middle deck was where my cabin was, and functioned as a general storage space for wetsuits, flippers, and a makeshift drying line for towels and swimsuits.

All the action happened down on the dive deck, where everybody got ready to jump in for a dive or a snorkel.

Also on this level is the saloon, where we ate meals and could booze it up in the evenings (though nobody actually did – everybody was always too wiped out and dehydrated to want to drink at night.)  We were allocated a cabin (I had a bed in a 4-share cabin, which had its own bathroom and shower, yay!).

The days basically went like this:

5:30AM – Wake up call.

6 AM – Dive / snorkel time.

7 AM – Breakfast.

8 AM – Dive / snorkel time.

11AM – Sunkist arrives with passengers.

11:30 – Dive / snorkel time.

Noon – Lunch.

1PM – Dive / snorkel time.

2:30 – Sunkist departs with passengers.

3 PM – Afternoon tea.

4 PM - Dive / snorkel time.

6 PM – Dinner.

7:30 -  Night dive.

8:30 – Sit sleepily in the saloon for a while, then crawl, exhausted, into bed.

After lunch I got ready and went on the 1pm snorkel. It was cloudy and a bit windy, and the water was pretty choppy, but a guide went with us and explained a few tips about snorkelling before we went, so I felt pretty good about it. It took us a few minutes just to get out to a good snorkelling area – we were going against the current so that it would be an easy trip back to the boat when we were finished. I was using the snorkel for some of this time, though it’s sometimes hard to follow someone with a snorkel because if you look up/forward instead of down, the snorkel suddenly becomes a big ol’ straw and you find yourself breathing salt water. At this point we were in water that was 5-6 meters deep, so the coral was quite a ways below us.

Then suddenly it was RIGHT THERE – just a meter below the surface. It completely took me by surprise. It was beautiful – amazingly varied, colourful, and just teeming with fish. At that moment I realized that this trip was COMPLETELY going to be worth it.

We spent about half an hour out snorkelling, though the choppy water was a little distracting sometimes because you kept having to purge the snorkel by blowing into it with a “TOO!” kind of sound. When we got back to the boat the woman who’d been guiding us out there asked if we were interested in doing an introductory dive, and my response was a HELL YES. 

So she set me up with an instructor who got some medical information from me and then did her best to scare me out of doing anything stupid by explaining about how going up too quickly can give you “the bends” and how if you hold your breath while you surface you might pop your lungs. FUN! I will admit, hearing about nitrogen bubbles in my blood kind of freaked me out. But I knew they wouldn’t let people do this kind of thing if  it wasn’t REASONABLY safe for the average non-stupid individual, so I decided to go for it.

First things first: the wetsuit. I tried one but it was too small, so they gave me the biggest size they have. It was tight, and I needed someone else’s help to get it on – basically I pulled the zipper closed while they zipped up. It was like being pressed into a sausage roll. Apparently this is completely normal – she actually said that it was a little LOOSE on me! Unfortunately it wasn’t a wonderful fit through the arms, as it was obviously designed for a big tall man to wear and I make only a MEDIUM height man, at best. It was kind of funny, actually – water tended to collect in my arms, and when I got out liters of warm water would come trickling out at the wrists.

I am DEAD SEXY.

Then they had to weight me down. I am super super buoyant thanks to my ample fat reserves, and the salt water holds me up VERY well. Which is great for floating, but not so great for diving. They fitted me with TWO weight belts, and once I was in the water they had to add another FOUR weights to get me down under the water with any kind of ease. Then they strapped me into a vest and got me set up with a nice full tank of oxygen, which was nice of them, because me and oxygen get along real well. I strapped on the ol’ fins and mask, and with a big step toward the horizon I splashed into the water and was ready to go.

My instructor had me practice a few skills first – I had to be able to make my ears pop by holding my nose and blowing (they call this “equalizing”). I had to do this frequently under the water as I went deeper. I had to be able to get water out of my mask while underwater (you tip it up slightly and blow through your nose – this also equalizes the pressure in the mask, preventing your face from getting sucked into it and giving you black eyes. Jerry Seinfeld obviously didn’t know how to do that properly.) You also had to be able to take your mouthpiece out and put it back in underwater, while continuing to let your breath out (rule number one of diving: never hold your breath.) No problem. So my instructor let the air out of my vest and down we went for my first dive.

It. Was. AMAZING. What a cool feeling, being completely surrounded by water. We swam together for a bit with her holding my hand, but after just a couple of minutes she let me go so I could follow her of my own accord. It’s almost like watching an interactive silent film – all you can hear are your own sounds, your breathing and the sound of water splashing against your ears. The bubbles from your exhalation rush past your ears, and it’s quite loud – it took a little while to get used to it. We went around, swam under the boat, picked up sea cucumbers (they’re SO SOFT and squishy!) and looked at the little clown fish swimming around in an anemone. They are SO CUTE, their little mouths open and close while they flitter around and they look like they’re smiling. No wonder they chose those fish to be the main characters of “Finding Nemo” (they’re a veritable celebrity at the reef now, everybody wants to find “Neemos”).

The certified divers were following Renaldo, a diving instructor and filmmaker, as he was filming various things to be made into a film. He also made a film the next day, when he personally took me out for another introductory dive – he’s so familiar with the reef that he was able to find me his favourite turtle so we could give him a scratch on the shell (apparently they like that because it cleans the shell, and they’re big ol’ hams with the divers nowadays because they know we’ll do it for them.) We also saw two flatheads together, fish that lay on the sand at the bottom and bury themselves so they’re almost invisible. And he stuck what I think was a sea cucumber to my hand – very weird!!

They had a night dive that night, so I decided to go on that one as well. It was very different – most of the little fish were hiding away, and we saw some really interesting bigger fish. I was a little disoriented, though, because you can only see where your flashlight reaches, and I kept bumping into rocks and stuff. I think I would enjoy it better once I had more experience.

If I had known I was going to like diving so much, I would have signed up for a course and gotten my certification for open water diving. Then I could have maybe stayed for an extra day and done some dives that went a little farther away from the boat. I also started to get frustrated with the fact that I wasn’t allowed to touch my own equipment – on an “intro dive” you are basically in the hands of  your guide. Which was fine at first, but I really wanted to learn more and become more comfortable IN the equipment and USING the equipment. Oh well, now I know.

I went on four dives all-told, two on the first day and two the next day, on my birthday. When everybody found out that it was my birthday, they arranged with the chef (who is from Montreal) to have him bake me a cake! They brought it out to me after supper and surprised me by singing “Happy Birthday”. I was really touched. They didn’t have candles or icing or anything, but that was fine by me – it was a nice rich chocolate cake, and there was ice cream, too. After that I had a couple of beers, but even though I had been trying really hard to keep hydrated that day, I still wasn’t feeling up for more than that.

Only one dive gave me a problem, and this was to be my fifth and last one, on the last day. First of all, it was with an instructor who had JUST come onboard, so he didn’t know me at all – that’s always a little nervewracking. We had some issues getting my weight belt sorted out as a result of that. Once I got in the water, I realized that it was REALLY choppy – far worse than it had been in previous days. It also had a really wicked current that immediately sucked me a fair distance from the boat – I literally had to grab a line and pull myself over to the instructor and the other intro divers.

Because it was so rough I was using the regulator for oxygen, but the instructor told me to switch to the snorkel to save air. Unfortunately I IMMEDIATELY was breathing salt water, and it was coming so hard and fast that I couldn’t even get enough of a breath to purge it. The instructor started trying to explain to me how to purge it, which annoyed me because I’d been snorkelling a few times and DID know how, but it’s not his fault – he was kind of stressed, since he’d had pretty much no notice before he was handed three intro divers to take out in fairly rough conditions.

Due to all of the above, I was getting upset. And when I get upset, my breathing gets kind of wonky. Normally I would just grit my teeth and power through it, and all would come out fine. But I knew that a breathing problem was NOT the kind of thing to start a dive with, and that it would be irresponsible fo me to claim that I was “OK” to go down in my current state. So I bowed out of the dive. The guy who was helping me get back out of the water was totally encouraging. “You did the right thing,” he said. “The third rule of diving is, ‘never do anything you’re not comfortable with’.” Amen to that. I was still kind of annoyed at myself for a while for GETTING upset, but I never regretted coming out of the water on account of it.

That’s the kind of situation when it would have been nice to be in control of myself – I could have just gone straight down and gotten out of both the choppy water and the current. Things are always much calmer beneath the surface, and it would have been no problem once I was down there. I hope I have the opportunity to dive again, I really enjoyed it and it made me want to learn a lot more about the reef and the wildlife there so that I could more thoroughly enjoy it.

I met some really nice people too – particularly D and C, a couple from Newcastle (north of Sydney) who had been diving together for a little while. They were a lot of fun. I actually saw them again this morning while I was having a coffee. They’d stayed for a night at a hostel called “The Asylum” for the sole reason that it would be cool to say that you’d stayed at “The Asylum”. I can even get some mileage out of it, myself. “So I met this really nice couple, then they got dropped off at the Asylum…”

Sleeping was a little difficult the first night – it was hard to get used to the constant rocking of the boat. The second night was fine, though. There is something intensely tiring about the whole process of going for a snorkel or a dive. Not the least of this is from getting the wetsuit on – which, on the very last occasion that I tried, I managed to do  ALL BY MYSELF!! I allowed myself to sleep through the very early morning dive on both days, though I am wishing that I had gotten up for at least one of them. That’s the kind of experience you can really brag to people about. “I got up at FIVE THIRTY to go diving!”

All in all, it was a great way to turn 25, even though the weather was cloudy and windy and I didn’t get to see a shark. (Sharks and divers get along well in these parts. They are completely uninterested in attacking humans, though on night dives they ARE interested in divers’ flashlights.) Oh well – all the more reason to come back again some day.

Now that’s a sunset to remember.

We didn’t go straight to Uluru that morning, as we had a few folks to pick up first (they were supposed to come for the full three days, but one of them was robbed the night before and had his wallet, phone and shoes stolen. Hiking in sock feet isn’t exactly a great idea. So first we checked out the visitor center at the resort.

This place is chock full of swanky resorts. The cheapest room is probably over 200$ a night, and the most expensive one is about 1,600$ per night, with a minimum of TWO nights. I can only imagine what kind of madness goes on in a room that costs that much.

It’s pretty hard to explain how big this rock is. I took pictures of it from far away and from practically pressed up against it, but somehow that doesn’t quite cut it. Even when I was right there walking around it I would look up at some interesting feature, then walk for what seemed to be a long-ish while – when I’d look up again it would seem like I’d hardly even moved. This rock is 9km around, but the track is probably more like 10. I would have preferred to take more time to walk around it and rest a little, because by the end I was so beat that I could hardly enjoy it. Still, it was an amazing experience.

Quite a few interesting sections of the rock are marked as sacred aboriginal sites, traditionally used in various rituals, and so photographs of them were forbidden. It was interesting how irritated people got about this – even more than irritated, I’d say a lot of them were downright angry. I don’t really have a problem with it, myself – most of Uluru was still available. And even if it hadn’t been, doesn’t peoples’ anxiety about not being allowed to take digital photos for once suggest that maybe there IS a loss of something sacred, even if it’s only “seeing it first-hand,” experiencing something that can’t be taken with you?

We watched the sun set on Uluru while we made dinner, right in the bus parking lot. After that we tried to go get some beer, but the resort was charging 5.50 PER BOTTLE – the same price you’d pay to stay and drink it. Okay, so I understand that you want to cut down on drinking, but SERIOUSLY.

So a little less beer-endowed than we thought we’d be, we went back to the campground and talked about morbid things like dingoes eating babies. (GREAT bedtime stories for when one is sleeping only a few miles where this apparently took place.)

The next morning we got up and watched the sun rise.

After breakfast we went to The Olgas, traditionally known as Kata Tjutu (‘Many Heads’).

This was going to be another somewhat challenging hike, but my legs and ankles were telling me to take it easy after two days hard, hard work. I walked up about a kilometer into the trail and then just relaxed while everybody else did the final bit. The view was still nice, and I got some decent pictures.

After this we made lunch and then started heading home. It was getting a little late and the bus was having some difficulties – we SHOULD have been back by about 6pm, but it was 7:30 before we rolled into town, and close to 8 by the time we got dropped off at our hostels.

Then there was a comedy of errors in which we couldn’t get a taxi for the five of us who were at the YHA, so we tried to walk – but we started going in ENTIRELY the wrong direction. It was 9:30 by the time we got there, and the kitchen normally closes at 8pm, but they’d kept it open because they knew we all were coming (VERY nice of them.) They had good, cheap food and good, cheap beer, which was absolute bliss after another long day in a bus. Then we got a free shuttle bus into town and drank our faces off until the bars closed. Somehow I managed to climb into my top bunk without dying and fell into an extremely restful sleep.