New Zealand with The Fam

Oh Christchurch! That's where we are. We also use it as a swear word. It really works. When you get angry rather than throwing out the classic four letter word, just exclaim Christchurch! You will feel better.

Alright so I have been in New Zealand for 10 days or so now with the visiting fam. Let me introduce in order of appearance: my sister Amanda, my brother Chris, and my padre Fred. They all came out to visit me and travel around Sydney for a bit and then NZ. So I am just going to list off some highlights from our time in New Zealand. I realize neither Jesse nor I have discussed much of our trip down the East Coast. I am afraid you will just have to wait a little longer for that recap because I really don't want to try and cover all that ground and all those stories without Jesse's collaboration. But we will get there eventually. But for now just New Zealand!

We arrived in the NZ on the 20th of July 2009. Flying into Auckland on the North Island we got in late in the evening and didn't do much that night besides find a hotel and pass out. Up early on the 21st we burst out of Auckland in our rental car down to Rotorua and their famous thermal activity. We spent a couple hours hiking through this mountainous landscape with thermal pools aplenty. It seemed like everything was boiling. You would see rocks with steam billowing out like a chimney. Numerous lakes and ponds and streams were all uncomfortably warm with steam rising off them. Very surreal.

After making quick work of the hike we boogied back into town in Rotorua to be in time for a Maori cultural show and feast. We learned all about the Maori culture and traditions. We got to observe some tribal dances including the women with their poi balls and the men and their hakka. Very cool stuff. After the performances the men and women from the audience were encouraged to come up on stage and learn a few moves. Amanda and the women were first with their poi balls. Spinning a ball around on a rope never looked so difficult. The sis had no problems with the spinning but the catching was another matter. She had fun with it either way. Then it was us guys up on stage to learn some of the hakka. It was a lot of stomping of the feet and beating of the thighs. The most important part of it all was you need to have your scary face on with your tongue stuck out pretty much as far as you could. All three of us Lindbergs got the hang of it pretty quick. We looked pretty fearsome.

After the show we had a feast of traditional Maori dishes along with some classics like cake and icecream which was much appreciated the night before my bday. They then took us out to show us their geyser that as luck would have it was going on when we got there. Water was shooting up 20 meters or so into the air. Very impressive. We then sat down outside on some rocks to enjoy some hot chocolate by the geyser and hear more about the Maori people. At this point in the evening the temperature is only a couple degrees above freezing and hot chocolate will only get you so far. What I wasn't expecting is that the rocks we sat on were naturally heated by the geothermal activity. It was like heated seats in fancy cars. But these were rocks and it was all natural. Such a good evening.

Next day we went out to Waitomo for some black water rafting. We all got zipped into our wetsuits and were issued our inner tubes and descended into Waitomo's extensive maze of caves. For about an hour we spent half our time climbing over rocks and learning about how the caves are formed and marveling at the tiny specks of light coming from the ceiling. Glowworms setting up camp on the ceiling would emit a tiny amount of light and then drop a snotty little web down to try and catch any sort of insect attracted by the light. Very beautiful. The other half the time we would be floating along the stream that flows through the caves on our tubes. Some of the time we did this in complete darkness. Definitely one of the coolest things I have done for my birthday. After that we hightailed it back to Auckland to fly down to Christchurch and the South Island.

In the South Island we kept up the hectic pace driving out to Lake Tekapo and it's magnificent blue hue of the water caused by some rock on rock grinding action from a glacier thousands of years ago. We took a treacherous hike up to the top of Mt. John. Ice covered much of the path so the trip down the mountain was pretty entertaining. Between the four of us there was much falling and bruising of the hind quarters.

After Lake Tekapo was Queenstown. The highpoint of our time there was the Shotover Canyon Swing we did. Much like a bungy jump, you freefall from a platform a hundred meters in the air. With a regular bungy you would get to the end of your rope and bounce back like on a giant rubber band. With the canyon swing you swing out across Shotover Canyon coming uncomfortably close to rocks on all sides. Perhaps the scariest thing I have ever done. The best part about the whole thing was you got to choose how you jumped. I was the first to go and decided to jump in the Chair of Death. They buckled me into a plastic chair and had me scoot the back of the chair right up to the edge of the platform. I leaned back in my chair just past the equilibrium point, begin to fall when one of the attendants would grab me and pull me back pretending to need to check my straps one more time. Finally tipping back and falling off the platform was awesome. Amanda followed me by doing the Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood. They suspended her out over the canyon and instructed her to lean forward so she was hanging vertical with her face down staring at the jagged rocks below. Without warning they released her. Chris then declined to do any of the fancy jumps and elected to just take a huge running leap off the platform into nothingness. He says he can't remember any of the running and jumping, only the first step to go and then when he was out in the middle of space with nothing below him. After that I took one more jump doing the Pindrop method. Standing on the edge of the platform I clasped my hands behind my back and leaned forward to get a nice view of the ground that would shortly be flying up at me. Then all I needed to do was hop a little to my left off the ledge while trying to avoid the sharp rocks nearby. Jumping feet first really makes your stomach rise up into your chest. Chris then took the final jump by squatting down in a cannonball position with his heels on the edge. Falling backward he flipped end over end into the canyon. My heart was racing for a couple hours afterward.

Next day we were up in Wanaka where I went snowboarding with some friends I met out on the Whitsunday islands back in Oz. Such a long day of snowboarding which I haven't done in something like 8 years. Still sore from that day. The rest of the fam took the day off and did a few light hikes and enjoyed the scenery of the area.

The next day included a short stopover in Oamaru to see the penguin hotel. On the coast this penguin reserve has set up an area for wild penguins to come and live/breed that is protected from predators. There were only 8 or so penguins in the area that we could see that day and they were all sleeping more or less so it wasn't too exciting but still cool to see wild penguins even if they were staying in a motel.

Yesterday we went out to Hanmer Springs to bathe in some thermal pools. We had gotten a taste of the thermal pools in Rotorua but weren't allowed to go in them so we were excited to get in at Hanmer Springs. The pools were ok. Overdeveloped, the area seemed much more of a day spa then a rare natural phenomenon. Lifeguards were swarming not letting us do anything. Don't run. Don't put your head underwater. Don't swim under that bridge. You need a pass for that waterslide. Christchurch! The highlight of our time in Hanmer Springs was the mountain biking Chris and I did (Dad came too for a little). Loads of cool trails through the forest. We got moderately lost and exceedingly muddy in the couple hours we were out there.

Today we booked it up to Kaikoura to swim with dolphins. Now when I hear “swim with dolphins” I assume it sounds cooler than it actually is. But that is false. We got decked head to toe in multiple layers of wetsuiting before heading out on a boat searching for the dusky dolphin just off the coast. Once we found a nice pod of about 300 of them the boat moseyed on up and let us swimmers into the water. In these dolphin encounters we are expected to be the entertainment for the dolphins. If you sing into your snorkel or just make lots of dolphiny noises the dolphins will come right up to you and swim all around you trying to figure you out. Diving down into the water was difficult with all the incredibly buoyant neoprene we were wrapped up in, but if you could manage it the dolphins loved it. Whenever I would look around and not have a dolphin in sight I would only have to dive down a meter or two below the surface and swim along and before long I would have five or six of them weaving around me again trying to play with me. For the first couple minutes in the water I didn't think I could handle the shocking cold but then the dolphins arrived and you forget all about that feeling you have lost in your extremities. The only downside to this activity was Amanda who was probably the most excited for the dolphins was suffering from a nasty cold the whole day and could only spend limited time playing with the dolphins. Alas.

So that is a little taste of our week and a half in NZ. Hopefully I will have more pictures of all this to show to you soon. Unfortunately my camera bit the dust. Or rather it bit the sand at the bottom of the ocean back in the Whitsundays. One of the many stories Jesse and I have to share with you all when we put together a recap of those three weeks. But for now this is Brian Hotdog Lindberg signing off. A year older and hopefully a year wiser.

Rose Bay Reunited

And we are back. Jesse, Erin, Brian. Taylor where are you? Not in Oz anymore. Anyways I am going to keep this short. I met Jesse and Erin up in Cairns about a week ago to travel down the East Coast with them over the next couple weeks. In the last few days we lived it up in Cairns, scurried down to Mission Beach, floated out to Magnetic Island, and hauled ourselves down to Airlie Beach where we are now.

Mission Beach was quiet. Scotty's the hostel was much fun but the staff were trying to sell us on skydiving relentlessly. Got a bit annoying. We spent most of our time on the beach. J and E went out and did a little diving. I did some hiking around Dunk Island.

Then Magnetic Island was awesome. Well Arcadia Hotel where we stayed was not awesome. Worst place I have stayed in Oz. But the Island was great. We rented scooters and flew around the island all day. No desire to do any hiking or exploring on foot. We only wanted to ride. We did get a little hike in on the side though. Saw some wild koalas and a great sunset.

Now we are at Airlie Beach. About to go out on a little Whitsundays Sailing Trip. Should be fun. Hope home is going well. Will try and get something a little more substantial up on the blog soon. Bye bye.

B

Exmouth to Perth

Exmouth was the last time we spoke? That was pretty much forever ago. Actually I rambled for quite some time about a lot of things that happened since Exmouth in my little Word document here but didn't like the final product so I scrapped that and started again. How do you like that endless line of English teachers that always taught me to revise revise revise. They always wanted so many drafts out of me. Well here you go. Draft numero dos.

The difference between this draft and its so recently deceased ancestor is I think less rambling. More to the point. There has been a lot of beautiful scenery seen and gorges explored but it all seems to get a bit repetitive after a while. I give you a name of a different place and tell you the same thing about how beautiful and remote and awesome it is. But no more. Interesting places that you aren't going to see most anywhere else in the world. Interesting people! Plus maybe a story or two. Here goes nothing.

Exmouth: same as all the other beaches plus windier. How's that for brevity? Moving on.

Coral Bay: favorite beach so far. Less wind. Great day. Nothing too exciting though. Lyndon River, Carnarvon, Whalebone Bay. Boring boring boring. Blowholes: ooo that was a fun place. Really neat rocky/craggy coastline with holes in the rocks where water would shoot out of like a rocket up into the sky so high. I got out of the van and looked at the treacherous rocky terrain that needed to be crossed to get to the blowholes and I looked at my sandaled feet and I told myself “Brian be very careful. With all the walking and exploring you still need to do it wouldn't do to cut up one of your footsies.” And what did I do with my very very very first step after thinking that? I'm not kidding it was absolutely the first movement I made from standing by the car thinking that. I crushed my left foot into a nice big rock. Blood everywhere. Whole big scene. Good work Brian. Anyways, the blowholes were still cool. I have tons of pictures on that link on the side of the blog I keep mentioning.

Mmmm onto Monkey Mia. Dolphin feeding central of Shark Bay. Every morning 5 mama dolphins swim on in to get a little morning snackeroo from the helpful rangers. For a couple hours that morning we had 10 or so (5 mamas and their little baby dolphins with them) dolphins wandering about in the water less than 15m offshore from us. During one of the feeding sessions I got to feed a little fish to a bossy/moody mama dolphin Nikki. Very cool. We also learned about dolphin life. The alliances created among males. How the mother leads her newborn up to the surface and teaches her to breathe. The gang rapes that go on when the alliances of males kidnap a fertile female. Very kid friendly material here.

After that we hit up Hamelin pool on our way out of Shark Bay. Hamelin pool is home of the world reknown Stromatolites. Living fossils! Rocks that breathe! Whatever you want to call them they are some of the oldest organisms. They were around when the atmosphere was so deficient in oxygen that most all of us oxygen dependent animals couldn't survive. These boring little rocks sat in tidepools billions of years ago quietly bubbling up little bits of O2 until the atmosphere was ripe for breathing. We appreciate it Stromatolites but trying to see you in the choppy water on a windy/rainy day was just not my cup of tea. Maybe next time.

Moving on to I would have to say the most outrageous stop so far. Welcome to the Hutt River Province Principality. Way back in 1970. A man named Leonard got fed up with paying taxes and the Aussie government and all that. So in response, he found a neat little loophole that no one (even Prince Leonard himself) will actually explain to me that allowed him to legally secede from Australia. So now almost 40 years later he is owner to his own little 5 acre nation in the middle of Western Australia. Second largest country on the Australian continent. What I love about Leonard and his nation is he totally went with it. He didn't just secede and go on living life like normal. He created a flag and a constitution and currency and stamps and even an army. All of this is mostly ceremonial and it's just fun for us passerbyers to purchase all the notes of his currency for $4AUD. The prince gave us a private tour of our land and stamped our passports as we entered and exited his principality. He is a very quirky and energetic old man. So proud of what he did and how he outsmarted them all. Loves to show you maps of the world with huge cities like Melbourne or Sydney are not even mentioned but the Hutt River Principality is listed quite clearly. We only hung around the Province for an hour or two but it was definitely one of the more memorable experiences traveling abroad so far.

The next day after tearfully saying goodbye to the Prince, we wandered our way into Kalbarri national park where we did the usual beaches and gorges that I am not going to get into except to say I did a nice little 16km jog along the cliffs in Kalbarri which was pretty exciting and scary. Lots of loose rocks with lots of edges to fall of the face of the Earth into. I felt like I was playing Mario Kart. Moving along at breakneck speeds with incredible blue waters all around but way below me with only a meter or so of dirt separating me from a big big drop. Anyways my fav part of Kalbarri was the Seahorse Sanctuary. They raise and breed seahorses to sell them as pets to reduce the pressure to fish for seahorses from the wild to serve as pets. Just because that isn't a great practice cuz the horses from the ocean usually don't survive reacclimating to tank life. They argue that this seahorse farm is a much more humane way to go about the situation. Anyways we got to see seahorses in all the stages of their lives. They start out so so so sos small. There was a sweet video of a daddy horse giving birth to his little tiny children. Just popping them out one after the other. All in all it was another place that I don't think you can find many other places in the world.

Geraldton: biggest city we have seen since Darwin. A whole 26k odd population. Really unfortunate that everything was closed since it was Sunday. Bad form Geraldton. Not even a supermarket open on the holy day of rest. All I wanted was a supermarket and a bookstore. What they did have is a nice museum focusing on aboriginal history, HMAS Sydney, and the Batavia catastrophe. We watched a full 50 minute video reenactment of the Batavia's story. So much intrigue. Shipwreck, survival, treachery, mutiny, heroism, terrorism, rescues and swordfighting, romance, sorrow, horror. What else could you want? Real actors? Nah who needs those? It was a lot of fun all around. One of the better museums I have seen out here. Beats out that disgrace for a powerhouse museum in Sydney.

Finally Yanchep National Park was the last fun spot we hit up before rolling into Perth. I loved me that park for its super cool caves. There was a whole network of them. All I really wanted to do was turn off all the lights down there and go down with just a headlamp and get all lost in the passages. Hopefully run into all the spirits like the Jinka that aboriginal lore says is down there.

So that's a nice recap of the last week or so. I am in Perth now for another five days before I am back to the west coast. I am about to go take a shower now. My second since I wrote that last blog post. Ewww. Ok im out. Peace. Love. And all that Good Stuff.

Lindy

Updation Station

I met a man from Brussels… he was 6 foot 4 and full of muscles. I said “do you speak my language?” and he just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich. Now, I don’t know if you’ve had vegemite, but I hope so. It is the weirdest stuff I’ve ever tasted and I gotta say I don’t know how it’s popular. They must have had some fantastic marketing when it first came out.

Anyway – Back in blogland is where I am. I’ve been slacking off like a 200 pound 12 year-old in gym class, so it’s time to kick it in gear. There isn’t all that much to update everyone out there on what has happened… but more what will hopefully happen. Well, ok, we’ve done more than nothing here in the past few weeks so I’ll go over that first.

One notable thing I got to take place in recently was the dicing up of a ‘killah’… as it is affectionately called. A ‘killah’, as I understand it, is just a bull/cow from a cattle range that you kill and eat. I was a butcher for a day. Now, I wish I had a picture of me with all the different parts of the cow on the table or hanging on the hooks (especially the kidney, tongue, liver, etc), but I don’t have a picture because my hands were covered in meat/juices. I helped Rob cut different pieces up for steaks or mince or whatever else. Then we took a break for a bbq lunch and I had cow liver and kidney for the first time in my life. I liked the liver a lot, but Erin preferred the kidney. Both were very interesting flavors. Afterwards Robbie hooked us up with a bunch of steaks and a couple kilos of mince so we’ll eat well for the rest of the time here. I’m currently under the impression it’ll be fine to just leave the meat in the fridge for the next week and a half and cook them up when I want them… is that ok? Somebody let me know if I definitely need to freeze it to keep from keeling over because I’d much rather just leave it as is. Mmmmmmm, delicious.

I recently finished reading a book called ‘Exodus’, which was a fantastic novel based on the creation of the Jewish nation of Israel. It’s a good book and I’d recommend reading it if you haven’t. I knew a decent amount of the hardships the Jewish people went through during the holocaust in Europe, but I had no idea about most of the other stuff prior to and since. I also recently finished reading Huckleberry Finn, which I’m not sure if I ever read before. Mom – did we read that when I was growing up? I couldn’t remember any of it and thought it was very entertaining and a good break after such a serious book. Tom Sawyer is hilarious. I just started ‘A Portrait of Dorian Gray’, which Erin’s claims to have heard it’s fantastic. It’s a penguin book and only 250 pages or so – so it should most definitely be worth the time. What else am I gunna do here?

To answer that question… I will say not much. We have about a week and a half left here in good old Bedourie before moving on to bigger (it’s impossible to get any smaller than here) and better (more exciting, that’s for sure) things. Without giving too much away… Lindberg and Erin and I are going to do more ridiculously fun and amazing things in 3 weeks than any 3 people should do in a year. Activities include, but are not limited to… Scuba diving, sand dune tobogganing/surfing, snorkeling, surfing, 4WD’ing, rainforesting (no that doesn’t mean cutting down rainforests… just checkin em out), NRL footy double header-ing, sailing, hiking. What do you think? I know… I’m excited, too!

With only 3 weeks to do everything… our schedule has to be worked out to the day and in some instances the hour. What I mean to say is that one particular day we get back from a 4WD tour of Fraser Island in the evening. Then we sit around for a few hours and get on a bus at 1am headed towards Brisbane. When we arrive at Brisbane at 6:05am… we have 55 minutes to take our stuff to our hostel for storage and return to the bus depot to get picked up by our next tour (Moreton Island) at 7am. We will be sleeping in more ridiculous places than ever before. Actually, thinking back to New Zealand, it’ll just be almost as ridiculous but certainly just as fun.

I hope you enjoy reading Lindberg’s blogs because I am living vicariously through him at the moment. He inspires me to continue my rigorous workout regimen in preparation for the fun along the east coast.

That’s all for now – you stay classy readers.

- Jesse “T-minus 11 days” Meredith

The West Coast Beach

Broome? Crocodile Farms? That was ages ago. Is that the last time we spoke? Unacceptable. Where is my ink well and featherpen? Let's get another something something written.

According to my notes (which I keep on the side of our van written in the canvas that is the red dirt that is in and on and coating pretty much all my worldly possessions by now) Broome was just about a week ago. We expected to be in Broome, the last bastion of civilization before Perth, for at least three or four days soaking in the NorthWest charm. That didn't quite happen. Turns out there is really very little to do in Broome. The first night we caught up on all the necessities we have been deprived of in our van. Laundry and a full kitchen to cook with and a real shower with real hot water and a real mirror. Looking in the mirror for the first time in ages wasn't a pretty picture. Then we hotfooted it down to the beach for Stairway to the Moon. This spectacle occurs the day after or the day after the day after the full moon. When the moon rises over the mudflats around Broome it shines a very sturdy column of light down on the flats. And when the moon is just over the horizon the flats light up like so many steps proceeding up to the moon. Pretty cool thing to see. What I thought was even cooler were the hundreds of people lined up down the beach in the dark with their cameras all out. Hundreds of tiny little dots of light from the cameras display was awesome I thought.

Before bed we took a quick stroll around town looking for a little drink. We found what appeared to be a quaint little Irish pub which would seem to suit our needs. Except for it was the most bizarrest barscene I have experienced. Strolling in at half nine the lights were all on and glaring. There was no music to speak of. The place was fairly packed with plenty of people mulling around but it felt like the bar was trying to get people to leave. One of those end of the nights closing time deals where all the lights go on and the music stops and you get to see who you were apparently dancing with. We skedaddled out of there pretty quickly. A side note: OpenOffice accepts skedaddled as a word. No squiggly red line underneath like it gave me for bizarrest (like most bizarre. Duh). Anyways I was not expecting them to accept that. Moving on.

We were up bright 'n early for our full day in Broome. Bright eyed and bushy tailed for all the treasures the place had to offer. Turns out it didn't have much. An ok downtown area with shops I have no interest in. Some cool beaches which I mentioned before. They were amazing and empty and awesome. But beyond that we were pretty disappointed with our last taste of supermarkets and hot showers and Mackers (Aussie speak for Mickey D's which is youngkids speak for McDonald's). Caught some cricket on the telly that night, spent the morning down at Cable Beach again and then we got back on the road.

The writing on the wall, or on the side of our campervan, says we continued on to Cape Keraudren from Broome. I am following my notes now cuz that is way too far back for me to remember. The Cape was a pretty special place. The ranger talked it up quite a bit as we entered which was interesting and helpful but problematic as the sun was setting quite rapidly and we needed to find firewood and set up camp before we couldn't see which leads to the outside chance of running over a little kangaroo. Fortunately we were able to escape the ranger and set up our camp without any roadkill to show for it. It was a quiet night. The next day we were up with the sun to go see the beach the ranger had spoken so much about. Pretty incredible. Miles and miles of quiet untouched beach with glassy blue water. Spent the whole day on the beach playing and reading and running. Tried snorkeling a bit but the visibility was pretty terrible. The water was beautiful, just opaque. It was a lazy day by the beach for us and the last truly warm day we have seen out here. I suppose the most outstanding thing about Cape Keraudren was being able to run off a couple kilometers and be the only person in sight with tons of beach to do whatever you pleased with. I pleased to pretty much just alternate wind sprints with sitting and relaxing. But the point is the possibilities were there. I could have done anything.

From the Cape we moved onto Dampier. A small little town with a nice little picnic beach we swam in. Nothing too exciting there. From there we moseyed our way down to Exmouth which is coincidentally where I am now. I am not going to get into the story of Exmouth now because that would just leave you with a cliffhanger. Not knowing how its going to end. I don't even know how it's going to end! Ok I can make some predictions but I don't get paid here to make predictions. Plus its breakfast time so the telling of Exmouth will be for another day.

Some side notes. LAKERS LAKERS BABY LAKESHOW BOOYAH. That felt good. It really wasn't as special to see the results on my rss feed pop up in boring regular text. Not even bold. I missed that moment of watching the seconds fall off the clock in Amway arena. That's ok. I celebrated out here. Now my Steelers are superbowl champs. Lakers have their title for 09. Now the Dodgers just need to keep on keeping on winning more games than anyone else in the majors to make it 3 for 3 with my teams in 09 (that is my professional teams. I expect the great record in '09 by the pros to be shortly followed by my collegiate teams doing some damage in the playoffs in '10. Looking at you GareBear.)

Besides that I spend all my days thinking about July with Jesse and Erin creating havok along the East Coast. Jesse sent me an itinerary and I am thoroughly stoked. The chaos will continue for quite a while still. Good morrow from Exmouth. Since it is tomorrow here. We are way ahead of your time. Happy trails.

Lindy

The Amazing Crocodile Farm

There are only two Crocodile Farms in Western Australia. We went out of our way a little bit to reach Wyndham and their crocs. Later we realized that the other farm is in Broome which was our next stop no matter what so we feel a little foolish about going out of our way. With all that said, it still was so so so awesome.

We drove up to the farm around 1030 in the AM and there was a donkey outside to greet us. By 11 the tour began. Tour guide Chris was very entertaining and informative unlike the paleontologist back in Isa. Chris had a goat accompanying him for his opening song and dance so I think that helped his chances a lot too. He told us that the farm had been recently closed down and reopened and pretty much all the animals they get are the crazy ones that manage to get themselves into trouble and get captured because they are a hazard. These crocs are the ones that tip canoes. Or the ones that climb out of the water up the dock mosey their way down two blocks and consume a dog and it's leash. So they get all the crazy ones.

The crocs are farmed for their skin and meat. The tour included feeding time for many of these prehistoric beasts. Most of them were pretty docile even when food was around. Chris explained that during the Winter these coldblooded animals can stay pretty quiet. In the summer they are bashing at the side of their cages for small little morsels of steak. It is just about Winter in Western Australia but the temps are in the 80's and 90's so it doesn't feel like it. Summer out here is supposed to be unbearably hot and sticky. Chris was saying all the good shows the crocs make in the summer being all hyper animated is when the temps are in the 110's and consequently there are 0 tourists around to see it.

Here is Fred. I made sure to get a number of shots of him because he reminds me so much of my good ol' D A D. So that was the gist of the tour. Massive beast after massive beast showing up for a little snack right in front of our faces. Pretty incredible how these things can move and even jump out of the water. Some of them close to 5 meters long and are capable of disappearing into the water in a matter of seconds.

Now Tom and I have reached Broome and the West Coast. I swam in the Indian Ocean for the first time in my life yesterday. It was excellent. Cable Beach was probably the most crowded beach we will see on the West Coast and still after a ten minute jog down the beach I was able to have a nice 3km stretch of water all to myself. So incredible. So remote. Plus I scared up a nice little sting ray in the surf. Alas I didn't have my mask with me to get a better look.

Happy June to everyone! Schools out for summer! Or just about. That's fun. Alright time to go stock up on supplies and drive down the coast in search of another deserted coastline. One final note, click the link on the side of the page to see more of my pictures from the North and West of Australia. There are heaps of excellent shots I couldn't put up on the page in fear of overloading you with too much impossible/incredible visual stimuli.

B “B is for Blindy” Lindy

Darwin to Broome

Welcome to the Outback everyone. Ok Jesse already got you acquainted with the nothingness of it all. But now I am out here too so I will rewelcome you all. I am now on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere approximately 500km East of Broome and the West Coast of Australia.



First off to catch up from my last blog, I did Isa in a day and was in Darwin for two after that. Mt. Isa was fairly disappointing. I woke up super early to get up to the town lookout to see the sunrise. It was mediocre. It was cool to see the transition of how the town looks at night all sleepy and then when the light is on it and everyone starts waking up. The colors of the sunrise were a little bland though. I then got all clean and primped and ready for the day and made my way down to Outback Isa that does underground tours in the mines where they dress you up in mining attire and you go down and get to climb all over real mining machinery in a real mine. So cool! BUT, my primping and preening caused me to just miss the one tour of the mines that day. What sort of place only has one tour a day and it leaves at 815 in the AM? What kind of place is this? So I consoled myself by visiting the fossil factory. Apparently most all the fossils found in Australia were found kinda near Isa but still in the middle of nowhere. They had some interesting displays but the whole thing was geared towards kids with annoying commentary on the exhibits blaring from speakers constantly. Please disembodied voice, just let me read the exhibits and enjoy them in silence. There was a tour of the paleontologist lab by the paleontologist himself which really sold me on the whole shebang. I wasn't impressed by the doctor's presentation. After spending a week learning to give good presentations I felt he was lacking in a number of different areas. I recommend he goes and becomes a divemaster just to further his career in paleontology or just increase his customer satisfaction. So that's Isa.



22 hours on the bus and I am into Darwin. Finally. Checked into Darwin and immediately began research on what to do in Darwin. Do I go up to Kakadu national park? Or Litchfield? Maybe I want to do a dive on one of the shipwrecks they have in the area? What else is there to do in Darwin? Apparently not much? I know I eventually want to make my way out to the West Coast so how am I going to do that? I don't want to go by bus anymore. So I went online and just put all of this paragraph so far into the search bar to see what came up. I eventually redirected myself to the local online message board and found a guy who needed someone to keep him company as he took his campervan from Darwin out to the West Coast and then down to Perth. Which is convenient because I was looking for someone to keep me company as I road in their campervan out to the coast and down to Perth. Unfortunately he wanted to leave in a day so I wouldn't have time to see Kakadu or Litchfield. Alas. Sacrifices for I must see the west in a month so I can go back and see the East with Jesse and Erin in July. Anywho that only left me time to catch the Laker game. Domination Station. Good work Kobe. And then I met up with my new travel buddy Tom at the bars and hang out for awhile to make sure we wouldn't stab the other person in their sleep halfway through our trip down to Perth.



We got along well enough so bright and early the next day we set off for Katherine and then out towards Broome. First stop was lunchtime on the side of the road. Nothing too exciting there. We are budgeting about $8 AUD per day for food for our trip so its a lot of PB&J and Doritos. Then after lunch it was time for me to take the wheel of our Wicked campervan for the first time. That is it was time for me to take the wheel of a motor vehicle for the first time in Australia. Sitting on the wrong side of the car looking for the seatbelt over the wrong shoulder with the stick shift on the wrong side and the turn signal lever also in the wrong place with rear view mirrors all confusing me and how am I going to drive a stick with my left hand when I haven't driven anything in ages and haven't driven a stick in ages plus 2 and it really feels like the door on my right is way way to close to me and is really intruding on my personal space and were the doors so close to me when I drove cars back in the states? Terrifying. But I brought us into Katherine safe and sound for a refuel and a swim in the hot springs there. We drove and drove and slept and drove out to Timber Creek and Gregory National Park and Keep River National Park and numerous walks and hikes and lookouts that are all starting to blend together now after only three days. We made it to Kununnurra a small little town right on the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia. There were some nice hikes there along with a public pool which was o so refreshing and they had showers so I felt clean if only for an hour or so for the first time in days.



From Kununurra we got out to Wyndham to see a spectacular lookout and did a tour of the Crocodile Farm. We made sure to be at the farm during feeding hours so we saw these prehistoric beasts devour chunks of fleshy meat. So awesome and scary. But I am going to do a whole separate post on that since I have so many pics and videos of that. I don't want to clutter up this post with all that stuff. So now Tom and I are 250km South of Wyndham winding down after our third day of our excellent adventure. We hope to drive a lot tomorrow and make it into Broome where we will chill for a couple days. This trip is getting busy and hectic and is so so so much different from the other legs of the trip in Sydney and Cairns. It's tons of fun to be all self sufficient and on our own out in the middle of nowhere with no schedule. We wake up and have no real idea of what we will do or see that day. Where we will end up. Who knows? It's definitely an experience and I wish I could do a better job of describing the specific things we are seeing and doing but there is so much so quickly. I will just continue to take loads of pictures. Thousands of words apiece. Efficiency. Ok we have to be up with the sun tomorrow so I am to bed. Gnight and love from the middle of nowhere!



Lindy

I'm On A Bus

Three months and 105 dives and too many Mad Monday Pub Crawls and I am on the road again at last. Currently I am doing a full day of bus riding from Townsville to Mt Isa. But I will backtrack a bit and talk through my last week in Cairns.

The big finale of my time by the reef was my Dive Controller course (same as Divemaster course). This course is supposed to be the thing I had been working towards for the last few months as a trainee on the boat. I did the trainee program more to get a lot of diving and time in the water, but getting the DiveCon certification is a nice little bonus. The course lasted five days and was done completely in the classroom and in the pool. The focus of the course was to learn how to teach. I made two classroom presentations (15 minute lecture on dive masks and then a 20 minute lecture on nitrogen narcosis) and two pool presentations (explaining and performing certain diver skills such as mask clearing and alternate air share procedure). The narcosis lecture was fun for me to put together. Lots of fascinating research done on what exactly the nitrogen is doing to our heads that messes us up at depth. Masks not so much. I don't care too much for equipment unlike my instructor. So it was great to get my second lecture topic changed to something a bit more biological.

Besides passing the presentations, we also had to pass a watermanship evaluation and a multiple choice test. The watermanship tests included swimming 400m, snorkel (swim with mask and fins) 800m, and treading water with hands out of the water for 15 minutes. Lots of fun. You get different points for how fast you can do the swim and snorkel. I did fine on the swim and I dominated the snorkel. With the swim you need to have good form and technique which I don't have. With the snorkel you just kick and kick and kick and don't have to worry about technique. That's more for me. Same with the multiple choice test. Much of the test was a lot of math (calculating air consumption and using dive tables) which I liked because there is a definite right answer. It was the questions that have a few good answers and you have to select the 'best' answer that I don't care for. But I did fine.

So that's that. I am a divemaster or DiveCon or whatever you want to call it. There is some outstanding paperwork that the shop still needs to get me before I can actually receive my DiveCon card. There always seems to be some sort of problem with the paperwork.

Anyways I finished my DiveCon course Friday night and then spent the weekend figuring out what I would like to do next. Watched the Lakers dominate on Saturday and did a lot of the aforementioned paperwork that day as well. Sunday I stared at a map of Australia for a long long time and from that decided I would like to find my way out to Darwin. Sunday night I had one last night out with my friends before getting on a bus bright and early Monday morning. But I had a bit too much fun Sunday night apparently. Slept in an missed the bus. Fortunately another bus came at midday which I managed to make. But still I wasn't happy to start my travels by missing my first bus out to Townsville.

It all turned out for the best though. The ride out to Townsville was a 6 hour trip down the coast. Halfway through the trip we stopped at Mission Beach to pickup/dropoff people. At that point a nice group of kids who I had met and hung out with a little up in Cairns boarded the bus. Whataretheodds is what I said. It was very nice to catch up with them for the second half of the trip. Unfortunately once we arrived in Townsville they had to immediately take a ferry out to Magnetic Island. I was on my own again.

There isn't much to Townsville. Small little town with some nice museums and an aquarium. Big reptiles roaming the streets. Unfortunately I didn't have time to see them. The bus got in at 6pm and I needed to catch the 7am bus out to Mt Isa the next morning (which I am on now). I really only had time to grab some dinner and make some new friends at the hostel I was staying at for the night. There were some large animals on the street. This morning I tried to run up Castle Hill overlooking Townsville. I figured it would be a good little workout plus some amazing views of Townsville and the surrounding area. What I didn't figure was that trying to run a rocky/uneven trail at 5am without much light at all is pretty much impossible. So I got halfway up the hill before having to abort in fear of breaking an ankle and leave the conquering of Castle Hill for another day. Mark my words Castle Hill. I will be back for you.

Boarded my bus at 7am and I arrive in Mt Isa at 7pm. I will spend a day there before moving on. I expect to make one more stop before I get myself on up to Darwin. I purchased the bus pass that gets me from Cairns to Darwin one way, but lets me get on and off the bus as much as I want in between. The bus pass cost about as much as a flight would but I prefer to see some of the things along the way. Once I get to Darwin I will be looking to share rides with other people driving out to the West Coast. That way is cheaper and we have more freedom to stop and go when we please. But for now I am enjoying spacing out as the bus just goes. Plus we stop at the most random roadhouses and I eat the most random food and I always picture Jesse and Erin standing there behind the counter right before I walk in. Alas I am missing their roadhouse by about 1000km. Anyways I got this Lot Burger yesterday in Hughendon I reckon and as far as I could tell it contained: beef, steak, egg, beetroot (bears, beets, battlestar galactica), pineapple, coleslaw, carrot, cheese, tomato, lettuce, onion, pickle, and much more.

So that's where I am now. Where are you? I haven't heard from a lot of you people back home in a while. As always we really love to get comments or even whole emails about life back home. Alright that's it for now. Time to go back to sleep.

Divemaster B

more from the outback

Ladys and Laddettes and Gents and Gentettes… we are having a rip roaring time here. Since the last time I blogged, which seems like forever ago, much has happened. Robbie Dare, the mayor of the shire and my true boss and the owner of the roadhouse and everything else, has come and gone. He’ll be back again in a week or so, but I’ll tell you more about him later as he is truly a character. This week has been much more interesting and I’ve finally got some photos so you can get an idea of what we’re dealing with here in Bedourie. I’ll just base this bloggerino around those pics and also insert some pics that aren’t mine that will shed some light on Bedourie and all its splendor.



That one above is a picture of yours truly behind the bar. If you’ve looked the Simpson Desert Oasis Roadhouse up on google chances are that you’ve seen a picture of the bar with a few patrons behind it. Well this is a picture of me behind that very bar. Wild, I know.

Another day, just the other day in fact, Robbie took Erin and Bev and I to see the pelicans. This was something truly like nothing else you’d ever see. There’s this lake nearby (when I say nearby I mean an hour or so drive) that fills up during the wet season, which was extremely wet this year. For whatever reason the pelicans always come there to breed and they lay their eggs and then go off in search of fish. They fill up on fish and bring them back 100-200 kilometers and puke up piles of fish for their hatching babies. It really can’t be described, which is why I took pictures and video of everything going on so you can get the full effect. Anyway there are supposedly something like 100,000 pelicans and 300,000 eggs at one point, but of course loads of the eggs don’t hatch or get eaten or the babies die or whatever. You know how nature goes. Anyway, below is a picture of that so you can get a rough idea of what I’m talking about... and below that is a video, which may be even more descriptive as it were. (oooooh... video, aren't we gettin fancy here?) Anyway in the video you can't really tell... but the birds just keep going in the distance for hundreds and probably thousands of meters. It was crazy.





The baby pelicans are truly revolting in that they look like aliens and smell like donkey poo. There are piles of dead fish everywhere and that really doesn’t help with the stench, but take a look at this baby and tell me that it comes from our planet. You can’t.



It is truly bizarre. Robbie Dar drives his car quite fast. The speed limit (yes there is one) is 100 kph and nowadays if you get caught doing 140+ you get your license taken on the spot more or less. Lucky for Robbie when he got caught doing 156 kph years ago this law wasn’t in place and luckily he had already slammed on the breaks from 180 kph, which he was doing before. This was years and years ago though… so that’s understandable. Anyway, the drive out and back from the pelicans was sweet because a good chunk of it was offroad and bumpy and roller coastery and crazy style. Our truck followed somebody on the way there, but on the way back I had to get back to run the bar so Robbie was booking it and flying over humps and bumps and turns. And then it was back to the bar where all the action is. You see – Robbie enjoys his rum and he gets very generous after he’s had a few (although he is very generous to begin with) so one night he bought Erin and I a few beers after my bar shift was over and we had a grand old time sharing stories and everything. He’s got some ridiculous experiences, both from his life and from people he’s met, but those are for another time. Below is a picture (not one that I took) to prove to you that there are people in this town and that the bar does actually get somewhat busy from time to time.



The scenery here is pretty unique and the sunsets are usually amazing.



Anyway that’s all I’m really excited to write about at the moment. There have been plenty of other things going on and I’ve got little notes jotted down about them, but I’m more compelled to show you pictures at the moment. We’ve been really heavy on content and light on visual stimuli lately so let’s turn that around right here. Enough of my boring rambling and get some pics up there! So enjoy please.

Oh and just so you know I’m still working out like it’s my job… I’ve only missed two days so far since we’ve been here so keep a tally. Love you all and miss you!

- Jesse “pictures in lieu of words” Meredith

The Last Few Days of Cairns

Ok ok ok I can do this. A blog. I know what that is. Or at least I used to. I feel like Erin. This is going to be difficult but I think I can spit out something meaningful on this page.

So as most of you know I get very few days off from work so I am running with that as my excuse. Especially since on the boat there is nowhere for me to run so I will take any opportunity I can get to run with anything. So let's see, since my last post I have been working working working. I am now a Rescue Diver which means I got my Stress and Rescue certification. That class was tons of fun. I don't remember if I talked about this already. We spent all week rescuing pretend panicked snorkellers and pretend missing divers. I am pretty good with the panicked snorkellers but not so much with the missing divers. A couple times I swim right over the divers with their bubbles practically floating up in my face and I somehow still don't spot the missee. But a lot of the time I got to take the roll of panickee and my job then is to cause as much trouble for the unfortunate soul charged to pretend rescue me. I lie docile in the water weakly calling for help. As soon as a rescuer gets close I lunge. Reach for the face and remove their mask and throw it far away. If I can pull some hair in the process I do that. Then I want to get their fins off too while trying to pretend drown them (cuz that's what a real panicked snorkeler would do. They would grab onto anything floating and try and pretty much stand on top of them in the water.) Once their fins are lost then they have no chance against me with my fins. After a while I have to let them drag me back to the boat in the life ring. But they are dragging me back to the boat kicking without fins and every so often I will start kicking slightly and surreptitiously in the opposite direction. A few small kicks with my fins will completely counteract their furious kicking without fins and we will begin moving in the wrong direction and the rescuer can't figure out whats going on. Ahhh good times.

Besides that I have slowly moved up the ranks of Trainee Dive Controllers so that I am more or less the senior TDC on the boat. I get to tell people what to do a little more and get more of the cooler responsibilities and fewer of the shit jobs. That all is good and bad. I miss all my friends who were above me in the trainee totem pole. They are gone now since they finished their trainee program and have their Dive Controller certification. But then new peeps come in and can be pretty cool I guess. But now I am just about done with my traineeship. I have five days this coming week where I help out with an Open Water certification class. Then I take my actual Dive Controller class the last week in May. Then I am out of the water and out of Cairns. FINALLY. No that sounds too ecstatic. I have had a fabulous time in Cairns. I love it here way more than Sydney (though I loved the people I lived with in Sydney way more than the people I live with here). I've pretty much decided that all I want out of a job (and life?) is to be able to wear sandals and a tank top if I so please. And I so please quite often out here.

So once I get my professional diver certification I believe I will be heading off to Western Australia. I don't really know right now but my tentative plan is to see the west and then the north and the rest of the East Coast and then Tasmania and then New Zealand before I head back home in Augustish. It will be a lot and I don't know if I can handle it and I wouldn't be too upset if I got stuck again in one of those places cuz I really liked it and couldn't see all the rest. But I really want to get back to the northern hemisphere for at least a little bit of the summer up there. I would not be happy to go straight from cold winter here to cold autumn there.

Let's see what else is going on here...Like I said it's getting colder. The water has dropped a couple degrees in the last couple weeks which is a big big difference. There were about two people on the boat wearing wetsuits at the beginning of this month and that was because they were doing 8-10 dives per day and thats a lot of body heat dissipating without a wetsuit. But now everybody is bundling up in a wetsuit or two.

Besides Australia stuff I spend my time checking up on my Dodgers and my Lakers and my fav The Stanford Vball Team. All are doing well or did pretty well so I am happy. I got to see a Laker game on tv out here which I loved. I would love it a lot more if they could finish off the rockets. I seem to be missing amazing seasons from all my favorite teams. Way to start playing really well as soon as I leave. And I watched the season finale of The Office last night which I thought was just ok. There were some amazing episodes leading up to the finale but there wasn't any good flow to the season ender. Also is Steve Carrell leaving the show? I thought I heard rumors but I don't know. Anyways I won't ruin anything from the finale in case you haven't seen it. Besides that I went and saw Wolverine in the cinema last week. I thought it wasn't all that good. Too many crappy lines and the plot was pretty bad. If you like Hugh Jackman with his shirt off then it might be the movie for you but I just thought they had a lot of cool characters in the movie but they were only in the movie for a couple minutes here and there. I want more mutants! I'm psyched to see Star Trek though I haven't ever really seen any Star Trek tv or movies before. Alright thats enough from cairns dive central. I'm happy to be back in blogdom. Hopefully Jesse and I can pick up the blogpace now that he has internet and I have more days off the boat. Thank you to everyone who has sent emails with life updates or left messages on the blog. I love you all. And

I hate USC

B

Outback Experience

Blog-a-log. What time is it? Blog time! Time for me to write one and time for you to read one. How long has it been? We’ve been away for almost a month… and that’s simply not acceptable. I’m in the outback now so I’ll have time to write, but there’ll probably be nothing to write about. This blog may well encompass everything that we already have and probably will experience. Then again we might get surprised, but based on what we’ve seen thus far, well let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.

Ok – first – the backstory. I can’t remember exactly where we left off last time and since I’m writing this at the house (and don’t have internet here) I can’t check. I’ll just start from when we got back to Sydney and got our relocation campervan. Lindberg was/is up in Cairns. Taylor was/is back in SanFran/Stanford area. Erin and I were heading up from Sydney to Brisbane in a big ole campervan at $5 a day for 3 days. We stopped at various beaches along the way. I body-surfed and got pounded into the sand while Erin struggled (fruitlessly) against the rip currents. We sunbathed and read novels and frolicked in the sand and watched surfers with the high-rises of Brisbane in the distant background. It was neat. Anyway – then we got to Brisbane and realized we had no plans beyond that. So we went to a hostel and figured out we had no money left. Well not no money, but not as much as we would have liked. And I actually had no money because I had to give the campervan people $1000 bond. They refunded it to me, but for some reason it didn’t go through the bank for-ehhh-ver. I had $6 in my bank account for ages. And at the same time my debit card (from the US) expired so I couldn’t even use that. And one night Erin lost her wallet at this internet place and couldn’t get it because it was already closed. And of course all her debit/credit cards and whatnot were in the wallet. And so we lived for a night on the $6 in my bank account and $7 in change that we had in our pockets. It was great – truly a rewarding experience or something like that.

So we decided we needed jobs. So we went a job-searching. Many, if not all, of you know how horrible it is to look for jobs. It is especially bad when you want to get a job without lying to your future employer and you have to tell them you only want to work for 1-2 months and they’re looking for somebody to work a minimum 1-2 years (I tried to apply at the Belgium Beer Café… similar to the Bavarian Bier Café, but not as good). We did get a breakthrough when I asked some girl at the hostel we were staying at about jobs because a job was opening up at the hostel. Erin and I talked to the manager and he said he had to figure some stuff out, but he’d get back to us. In the meantime we went all over the place searching for jobs and got a couple leads. We also came up with the idea that we wanted to experience the outback and that maybe we’d do a farmstay or homestay or whatever you wanna call it. We found loads of places where we could do that, but you don’t get paid for your work. Instead you work 3-5 hours a day for food and accommodation with a family… usually on a farm somewhere sweet. Then we had a breakthrough. Patrick at ‘Travelers at Work’ hooked us up with jobs in Bedourie, Queensland (where we are now) working at the Simpson Desert Oasis Roadhouse. They paid to fly us out here and we’re working in the bar or the motel or the shop or wherever.

So that’s the backstory… and that’s really the whole story. The town has between 90 and 150 people in it at any given time. It has a roadhouse, where we work, with a bar/restaurant and a grocery store and motel/cabin rooms. It has a pub where everybody in the town apparently goes to get drunk almost every night. It has an information center where the lady that works there when asked ‘well what do you do here?’ replies… “well, I mostly work as much as possible. I lead a really low and slow life.” And she was about 27. It has a community center, which Erin and I used today, which is basically a basketball court with holes for tennis poles and nets. It has a pool and artesian spa, which is fantastically out of place but almost unenjoyable due to the ridiculous amount of flies everywhere. We’ve been told a couple cold nights will more or less kill them all so we’re waiting for that. Also you can just hold your breath under the water for as long as possible. No, it’s not that bad… but it is bad. I’m really getting used to the flies. I look like those African kids you see with the flies on their faces because I can’t bother to keep them away anymore. What else does the town have? Hmmmmmm…. Overpriced everything! Groceries cost approximately 2-5 times what you’d normally pay elsewhere in Australia simply because the roadhouse is the only place that sells them and they can charge whatever they want because the nearest store is 200 kilometers or more away.

Erin and I have decided to take this outback experience as an opportunity to really see something new and ridiculous that we’ll never see again and to make some cash. We’re working as much as possible and making a decent wage (and paying next to nothing for accommodation) so we should come out of this with a good chunk of cash. We also decided that since we can’t do anything else, we’re going to get our minds in peak mental condition by reading as many books as possible and our bodies in peak physical condition by working out 4-6 times a week. My legs and shoulders are really sore right now so the latter goal is going well so far. My brain feels fine so the former goal is getting there I guess.

I dunno – I think that’s all. There are actually some funny stories I’ll be able to tell, but I’m tired of writing right now so that’s it and that’s all. I’m sure you’ll be able to deal with it. I’ll try to get some pics asap so you can see what we’re dealing with here. Oh, the Bedourie airport is a shack with a strip of asphalt about as long as you can run while holding one breath surrounded by a fence. I can’t even imagine the windshield of the planes landing in Bedourie… they must be covered in flies. Maybe those bluey glowing electric bug zappers don’t exist here. I think I’ll import them and pile up all the flies I kill and sell them to frog breeders or something. There’s gotta be a market there somewhere.

Ok I’m done-zo. Keep it real.

- Jesse “what are we doing here? Short answer – not much” Meredith

north island

onward and upward is what I always say... or almost always... or in this particular instance i am saying it. Honestly I think I've only said it a couple times - most were probably while hiking some sort of mountain or climbing something. It's a good saying, though. In this case it is referring to our transition to the northern Island of New Zealand and oh, what a place it is to be.

It's a bit warmer up here - not hot by any means - but warm enough to be wearing shorts and t-shirts for the most part. Occasionally a long sleeve T or a pair of jeans will get thrown in there. The story of how we got here is quite a doozie, so buckle up.



Twas the night before easter and all through the land,
Businesses were locked and keys were in hand.
The rescuers down under... together no more.
But three in NZ in the airport for sure.

We all sat in Christchurch, awaiting the morn.
Heading towards Auckland on the day Christ's reborn.
Waiting in the terminal, with 50 people or so.
Wondering if... tomorrow it might snow.

Now that's just silly, it's only autumn here.
Don't you worry - we're staying quite warm my dear.
Ordering Dominos Pizza was not the easiest to do,
Finding an address for them to deliver it to.

When it finally arrived, oh there was glee!
And a beer or two for you and for me.
We had canned food and drinks, but had to travel light.
So it was eat or get tossed before our early morning flight.

So we ate and we drank and played loads of games,
and met some people with silly little names.
A shower and everything and bedtime so soon.
This airport was great... we get our own room!

Well not exactly - we shared it with others.
Children and bikes and friends and mothers.
And in the morning, everyone was out.
To Auckland with glee and a hop and a shout!


Alright so that's my impromptu poem about our night in the airport. It was glorious. We had fun and except for sleeping on the hard floor, it was quite nice. We flew 'Air New Zealand', which is the best airline in the world... I'm convinced. The ladies at the customer service desk were so helpful the day before when we were trying to figure out how we could get somewhere in the north Island for the cheapest. They even looked up prices on competitor's websites for us just to check and see... and then when it came down to it they booked our flights with no $15 booking fee and saved us again. (She saw taylor eating cold baked beans or chili or something right out of the can and felt compassion for us... and she said go buy a decent meal with the money she'd saved us. What a lady.) The airplane was amazing - hundreds of games, movies, tv shows, etc. to choose from to keep you entertained for free. Erin and I will be flying Air New Zealand home for sure... if we can afford it.

Auckland was weird. I'm not going to waste time writing about it right now, but it's sufficient to say that it wasn't awesome, but wasn't totally crappy either. We did see 'The Boat that Rocked' while there and that movie is phenomenal. I don't know if it is out or was out in the US yet, but it's amazing. Hilarius. Go see it. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in it. Awesome.

Rotorua was great. Stinky, but great. It smells strongly of sulfur everywhere in the town. Rotorua is where we went Zorbing. Now, if you don't know... youtube it. Basically you are in a giant hamster ball rolling down a hill. It rules. Also we went to the agrodome adventure center, which has all sorts of adventure activites and fun stuff. Taylor bungee jumped, Erin did the freefall extreme (a giant fan simulates freefall for a few minutes as you float above it in a skydiving suit - so sweet), and we all did the swoop (basically you're all in sleeping bags harnessed to a a wire and tethered 60 meters above the ground or so... then they let it go and you swing aggressively towards the ground, and back up again. Similar to the canyon swing but smaller and all of us did it at the same time. So much fun). We also saw a sheep shearing show there... crap, I'm out of time. Gotta run but I'll fill you in more because that show was hilarious. Love you and miss you all.

- Jesse "ricardo hiraldo rivera the main man" Meredith

ridiculous amounts of fun in NZ

wow - wow - wow

it has been a while from me and all i can really say is wow. we have done it all here.

these past couple weeks have been absolutely insane. We're currently back in Queenstown and about to head out tonight after a Fergburger (most amazing hamburgers in the world probably). This won't be the longest of posts but I hope to tell you a bit about what we've been up to recently and also let you all know we're still alive.

We are still alive. We may not be clean at all and we may smell like a skunk left on the highway too long... but we are alive. The reason we smell so bad is that we've been hiking and doing insane things and living in a campervan and we've only showered for 4 minutes in the past 2 weeks (or 3 weeks for me and slightly less for Erin). Don't worry, we've been in the water plenty enough so I'm cleanish.

Alright so the activities we did in queenstown that rocked my and our socks completely off.

First - The highlight of our trip thus far undoubtedly - The Shotover Canyon Swing. Look it up on youtube or something because it is truly out of this world. I have never started spontaneously laughing for no particular reason that I can remember until this time. It was the biggest adrenalin rush and following the adrenalin is loads of happiness for whatever reason. Alright, so here's the setup. They take you out in a van and your guide tells you jokes and generally gets you super excited and nervous for what lies ahead. I think we all had some sort of expectation for what was going to happen and as you drive out there your expectation builds and builds. Then you get there and walk out towards the platform thing. They strap a harness thing onto you and tighten everything up... all the while making comments like "well this isn't exactly the perfect fit, but it should maybe work, i think". You know they're joking but at the same time - they never break character so the whole time there is this doubt building in your head. Plus they are all 22 years old or something and joking around with each other the whole time. "You put the right harness on him right? No i think we gave him hers... whatever." Anyway so they build it up and all this. WAIT! stop there.

I gotta describe what the actual 'swing' is all about. Essentially you are connected to a rope that is connected to a point in the center of a 200 meter deep canyon. The rope you are connected to is 120 meters long. When you actually do jump... you freefall for about 3.5 seconds and then the rope "catches" you by accelerating you through a 120 meter arc. You swing for a bit and kind of slow down at the bottom and then they pull you back up. It is so gnarly. It's like bungee jumping but better because you freefall for just as long but instead of the bungees slowing you down the rope accelerates you as you keep flying through the bottom of the arc. Insanity. Oh, and the best part is you can jump/fall/be pushed off any way you want. I chose 'gimp boy goes to hollywood' and backwards while erin opted for the 'pin drop' and 'elvis cutaway' and taylor went for 'pin drop' and 'the chair'. Gimp boy had me rigged upside down over the canyon with my back arched and staring straight down at the ground/rocks/water/death 200m below.

Just before they let me go... the guy said something along the lines of alright we'll give you a countdown. 5... 4... 3 and I was gone. Hurdling face first towards the ground. It was the most amazing rush I've ever felt. And then as soon as the rope caught me and swung me through the bottom, i started laughing hysterically. It is just that much fun. I had to do it again and they screwed with me so much the second time about going backward. They let me almost fall and pulled me back all of the sudden yelling "No Not Yet!" I almost peed myself. Then they tell me to watch out for this one particular cliff edge and as I'm jumping backwards they wince and make faces like I'm going to die. Watching the platform fall away above me was an equally insane, but completely different experience. I loved it. Erin and Taylor will have to tell you about their experiences but suffice to say - they loved it.

That was all before noon on one day! In the afternoon we went river boarding/surfing. It was really sweet too. Rafting down a class 3+ rapid-filled river with a super thick wetsuit and a boogie board and fins. It was hard work getting in all the right places and not drowning and all that, but the guides were really good at what they did. At the end they drag you around on the back of a jetski and theres a rope swing and a huge waterslide. So much fun. I thought i was going to die, however, as I was slowly freezing to death. A warm (free) shower at the end with no soap was all I needed to fix that up.

New Zealand is fun.

Other things we've done are... glacier hiking at the Franz Josef Glacier. It was pretty sweet. Overpriced and a little long by the end, but still an unreal experience hiking all over an active glacier the size of a mountain. Nothing but ice as far as the eye can see... and we did it in t shirts bc it was a hot day out! Be excited for great pics. Also we hiked the Abel Tasman. It was sweet. Erin's toe basically fell off. Well she had a blister so big and then it just peeled off, so it looked like her entire toe fell off. All in all the trip took three days. The first day was gorgeous - amazing weather and a long day's worth of hiking. The second day was pouring rain all day and we were wet and cold. The third was nice again and pretty short, which was a good thing because Erin had to basically gimp it out the rest of the way. All-in-all it was about 25 miles in 3 days (we weren't able to do the whole thing because the water-taxi wouldn't take us up to the end) and a super-duper neat-o experience.

All we eat is baked beans and creamed rice bsacially [flatulence is an all-too frequent event... just ask Erin - she has never been so glad for a stuffed nose in her life]. No - we're doing great here don't you worry.

What else? well i only have 3 minutes... but we've also done a wine tour in the Marlborough Sounds (probably produces the best sav blanc in the world) and other fun things i can't remember right now.

I miss everyone that reads this (and probably some people that don't, but I guess I can't tell them that on here). We're having a blast and miss you lindy! Erin and I are stoked to get to come see you.

- Jesse "incredible land speed" Meredith

Mad Mondays

It has been about a month since I signed into the Asylum Backpackers Hostel and I think it is high time to discuss the big day of the week around these here parts. Mad Monday is the big pub crawl where most everyone in The Asylum rocks their Asylum shirts (properly graffitied with lewd phrases and nicknames as well as mostly all ripped and unruly) and hits up a few bars in Cairns. We get coupons for each bar where we can get free drinks plus a meal plus discounts on other drinks. Lots and lots of lots of fun times ten.



The night begins at a brisk 630pm. I usually have gotten back from the boat and had an hour or so to collect myself, run thru some emails and maybe get a small cat napper. Unless of course there is a theme for the Monday in which case I have spent that time sprinting to thrift stores or having some arts and crafts time making up something original for the evening. We all head down to out front of the hostel to have a few drinks and further defile each other's tshirts. Some like to get a new shirt each week while I prefer to continue to sport the insults and slogans on my shirt from previous weeks. Any virgin shirts are descended upon very quickly by the herd.

By 715ish we are shuttled off to the first bar, The Rhino Bar, where we get a nice little meal of moroccan chicken and rice or perhaps some spaghetti and meatsauce. Free drink coupon and then it is happy hour with cheap drinks. There are a few games played on stage. Most games are centered around lap dance competitions and pretty much just trying to get us inmates to make fools of ourselves. I vowed this last Monday to not take a step on stage (not in the first bar, not in the last bar, not in any bar). I was superclose to having my plans foiled right away at rhinobar when they had four females up on stage and needed four strapping fellas to team up with them. I don't know why but somehow I am always selected to be a strapping fella either by the guy with the mic or by all the other people in the crowd around me. Anyways I was getting manhandled up to the stage (not putting up too much of a fight) but before I got there four other fellas had eagerly volunteered. Suckers. I was safe.



Anywho after running the first bar for a couple hours we head across the street to The Heritage where there are more free and discounted drinks with more of a dance floor to boogey down on here. Games include finding items in the crowd like Jesse discussed when he was out in Byron Bay as well as a fun one where we get in groups of four and half to fit everyone on top of a single sheet on newspaper. Get the girls on the guys shoulders and you fit pretty easily. But then they fold your sheet of news in half and have you go again. Girls on shoulders and the guys pretty much hugging and we are ok and on to the next round. Fold the pape in half again and the other guy decides he can fit the other three of us on his back. Our game ended with the four of us entangled on the ground definitively not balanced on top of our tiny little paper.

An hour or two of Heritage fun and we are off to The Woolshed. Free drink, free slice of pizza and it is time for Mr and Mrs Backpacker competition. Guys first up on the tables dancing around for the crowds approval to move on to the next round. Generally you try and ration the clothing removal so you still have something to take off in the final round. I still haven't really figured out how to win this game. I try and predict who will move on to the latter rounds each week and cannot reliably predict the crowds whimsy.



Before you know it you are wandering out of the Woolshed at 4 in the AM. Great great nights. The only competition I ever won was a costume contest for the Costume Theme Mad Monday a few weeks back. My years dressing up weekly at Stanford had me prepared to quickly assemble an excellent nerd costume. I won a free trip out to the Great Barrier Reef for some snorkeling and diving. Hot Dog! I get to do that everyday already. So I gave the certificate away to my buddy who I considered runner up in the Costume Competition. Chaos Craziness and Monday's are one of my favorite nights of the week. Somehow I have been in Cairns for every Monday so far. It has worked out just so that work hasn't scheduled me to be on the liveaboard on Monday night yet. There are thousands of Mad Monday Pictures up on http://www.asylumbackpackers.com/ from the last couple weeks. I'm in a ton of them. People ask why I am still staying in a hostel rather than getting a flat here in Cairns. Events like this and that general atmosphere is something I am not going to get from hanging out by myself in my own little flat.

Bye
B

Dolphins Off the Bow

Good morning everyone! I have a solid half hour online this morning before I head off to my Rescue Diver Course so I thought I would put in a quick update.



First off I am halfway done with my 46 day work off at CDC and am having a great time with it. Recently I have been getting a little antsy to keep moving, getting out of Cairns, and seeing more of Oz. These urges are mysteriously coinciding with hearing more from Jesse and Erin out in NZ and talking with lots of friends and family from back in Cali last week. But then I get out on the reef and remember why I am here for another month or two.

My Rescue Diver Course is sort of halfway to the Dive Master and Assistant Instructor. We learn about how to assist and save panicked snorkelers and unconscious divers and all that. Mostly it sounds like a lot a lot of fun. For a couple days we do tons of practice scenarios where one of us goes out in the waters and is panicking and then tries to cause as much trouble as they can for whoever comes out to rescue them. As soon as my rescuer gets within reach their mask will be off and thrown far away. Fins too. If they are wearing a stinger suit, lets get that unzipped partially and pulled over an arm limiting their mobility. On top of that I will pretty much try and drown my rescuer. Sounds like lots of fun especially when you have multiple rescuers coming at you at once.

So that will be fun. A couple other stories from the Reef. We had dolphins come and play off the front bow of the boat as we were changing dive sites the other day. At least 20 came and played around weaving and jumping in front of the boat for about a half hour. Other wiley veterans on the boat says that happens every few months so I was psyched to be out there for that day. Also, on the liveaboard boat there are usually two hostesses running the bar and laundry and food and all sorts of other things. For the last few days there was only one hostess scheduled so she was working constantly doing the work of two people so she had no chance to go diving for a few days. She finally had a second to get in one dive right before she came off the boat. On that dive she saw not one but TWO manta rays! One was normal size (5 foot wingspan) and the other was around 8ft. So jealous.



Alright that is all the time I have for now. Miss everyone! I have a day off after the rescue diver course so hopefully I will have more pics and stories then.

Love,
Lindy

redemption

alright people - i gotta redeem myself. These posts of mine have been lazy and horrible. I admitted it and that's the first step to fixing the problem, right? Ever since Byron I haven't taken the time to write a proper blog because I'm a cheap-skate... but no more! This will be a solid blog (in terms of length and information). It may not make you laugh, it may not make you cry, but by golly it will make you think "wow, this is much longer than any other blogs of Jesse's I've read recently" and hopefully that is a thought you are excited and prepared to have. Because I'm about to bring it on you.

Alright this is going to be a quite dis-jointed entry and I'm going to just bring things up as they come to my brain... so be prepared for anything and anything.

First off - Erin and I are homeless people. Now before anyone (I'm looking at you --> Mom and Dad) gets too worried about us, it is by choice. It's not homeless in the true sense of the world, ok, maybe technically it is, well just read on. We rented a station wagon from this awesome dude, Phil. He's a mechanic and buys these old cars and fixes them up and then rents them out to people at dirt cheap prices. Works well for him and just as well for us. So right now we are paying about $20 a day (NZ) for our means of transportation and a place to sleep at night. The back seats fold down and he threw in a nice mattress for free for us. It's actually decently big in the back and we sleep quite comfortably (after we figured out the best configuration). We're saving a fortune on hostels, which run about $22-25 a night depending on how nice the place is. The downside to living in a car is that we have no place to shower, etc. No problem for me... I hate showering anyway. I hopped in the lake the other day just to freshen up (it was a balmy 50 degrees or so). Erin payed $5 to shower and we washed her hair in the sink another time (you trained me well, mom) so she's not too miserable. It's been a fun experience and I'll be sad to see the station wagon go when taylor arrives... but then we'll have a big campervan for the three of us so that'll be something new and hopefully just as fun.

Queenstown is awesome. We have done some sweet one day hikes (just 2-4 hours return trip). The one we did yesterday was instead of paying $$ to go up a gondola. At the top is one of the sites of bungee jumping so we watched a couple people do that. It wasn't that impressive and it made us realize we were going to do the big one (134 meters) or none of them. Also up there was a sweet 3-wheeled plastic cart luge track. Maybe it sounds cool or sounds boring and it looked pretty corny but also very sweet. We'd heard good things about it so we decided to try it out. It was a-w-e-s-o-m-e. So much fun. You got going so fast and since you're on this tiny little cart it feels like you are going so much faster than you are. Plus you get to ride up this little chairlift and wear sweet helmets and stuff. Loads of fun. Also you get to crash into people and watch people smashing themselves on the way down (mostly younger dudes that thought they were cool and tried to race at full speed and rolled the carts). Also beautiful pictures and great exercise. Every hike around here is an arduous task because everything is so uphill. There are mountains everywhere and every hike is more or less making your way to the summit. My calves are dominated right now.

... Mostly because we did another uphill battle of a hike today. This one was more out in the open (as opposed to through woods) so it was quite nice. It got darker and cold by the time we got to the top and although it looked like it was setting up for a ridiculously nice sunset, we had to head back down. We were cold! Come on guys, give us a break. We're doing it all for you. Don't worry, we're going to wear more clothes (i.e. not just shorts and a t-shirt) and go with taylor tomorrow night. Then we'll get unreal pics of sunsets and mountains and lakes and everything else gorgeous.

I don't even know how to describe this place. Just watch lord of the rings and watch the background and that's where we are all the time. I can't wait to show you guys pictures, it is absolutely insane here. I wish Timmy (one of our newest dedicated blog followers) was here to take pics because he is a mean machine with a camera.

We saw sheep today. Lots of fun. Sheepies are everywhere. Everywhere in this country. They outnumber people something like 250 to 1. Not really, but I think it is 4 to 1. Somebody look that up and get back to me. Or just make it up, I'll probably believe you. One of the most popular souvenirs you see here is a little sign thing that says "men at work" and its a roadsign image (you know... the yellow background with the black stick-figurey people on it) with a man... ummm... sodomizing a sheep. It that too inappropriate for this blog? If any babies are reading this pretend you didn't read that last part. Anyway, you see these signs everywhere and people love them. I often see groups of people ogling them and cracking up. It makes me laugh and I will try to take a picture of it if I can.

Everyone in NZ thinks australia is so lame and visa-versa. It's so funny. Loads of t-shirts here talk to bad about aus and people on the radio are always badmouthing australia. And in australia all the people I knew said how lame all the people are in NZ. It's kind of like the US and Canada in a way, maybe. Or maybe I'm the only one that thinks canadian people are lame (Garrett, back me up on that one).

Wanaka (pronounced Wah-nuh-ka... accent on the Wah) is a sweet place Erin and I went to spend a couple days before taylor gets here. It, also, is by a lake. A beautiful lake with mountains running into it. You all think I'm making this up but just wait until you see the pictures. We did a sweet hike there, too! I know, all we do is hike. So what? We're trying to save money. Give me a break. Once taylor gets here we'll have much more exciting stories about bungee jumping and going to bars and whatnot. Hold your horses.

Puzzling World! Puzzling world was awesome. It is in Wanaka and it would probably be as close to heaven as Earth could get if I was about 8 years old again. It just had loads of illusion rooms, brain teasers, holograms, a LIFESIZE MAZE you walked through (kind of like a corn maze but made all out of wood and two stories), puzzles, everything I lived for when I was a kid. Mom, you woulda loved it! We would have probably gotten a lifetime membership and gone every other day until they banned us from coming. There was this one room that everything was at a 15 degree angle and it was the coolest room I've ever been in. They had balls that rolled uphill, water that flowed uphill, awesome stuff.

What else? What else? We went to salvation army and bought gloves and hats because it is cold here. And books. I read so much now! It's a joke. I read a full-length novel in two days. Who reads that much besides parents? I guess that's what you have to do when you don't want to spend money.

My mom is on Facebook now... so everyone out there on cyberspace beware. She most likely isn't aware of what she's doing and that's what makes her so dangerous I think. I'm just kidding mom. By the way you should friend Preston's mom on facebook, mom, because she is on there too. Then you guys can post on each other's wall and all that jazz.

Dad - I'm trying to live up to your trip in '77 where you guys payed for nothing and had a fantastic time. We're mostly accomplishing both of them for the time being.

Lindberg is on a boat... probably. I could say that at any time within the next 3 months and I'll have about an 80% chance of being correct, so that's pretty neato. I can't wait to get up there and give him a little visit and have him show us around his pad.

If you haven't seen the video Erin and I made... here is the link.

We ran into this huge van with shrubbery sticking out of it. A shrubbery? A Shrubbery! And we said "what's this shrubbery doing here?". Some lady got all psyched up and told us we were gunna be famous. When she calmed down a bit we realized it was more a grass roots ad campaign done by NZ to try to get people to visit. They record you saying whatever you want about NZ and then you send it to whoever you want after they do it up nice for you. Sweet gig - and you guys got to see us all in one piece. Do I look too skinny? I feel like I may be losing some weight with all this hiking and I gotta get home to get some good old fashioned home cooked meals. Few months. Anyway I hope you all enjoyed it.

And I hope you all enjoyed this much longer installment of Jesse's Brain.

That's it and that's all from Queenstown, New Zealand - the adrenaline capital of the world.

- Jesse "feels better about life now that a semi-legit blog is out and about" Meredith

keep is real on the homefront everyone!