Great Ocean Road

In order to catch this blog up in as fast a fashion as I possibly can before this study abroad is over I’m going to have to change to elaborated bullet points of the major points to a trip and leave your creative little minds to fill in the gaps. This blogs filler should be a big ol’ bucket of bus-van, 21 person seater.

DAY ONE:
• The trip was through Melbourne Uni, the Outdoors club. For a small price they were offering trip along the great ocean road for Melbourne Uni students.
• The great ocean road is a winding road east of Melbourne along the cliffs of the coast built by returning war vets who had no jobs.
• Starting on Saturday fairly early in the morning with a two hour drive to our first destination
• 2 hour surfing lesson, I stood up almost at first but progressed fairly quickly backwards after that.
• The beginning of the great ocean road is marked by a log ‘entrance way’
• Second stop, huge waterfall (and so cold!)
• The windey part of the road began then, in and our along the headlands. Great views and sights.
• Third stop, wild koalas. Truly wild, not like the Phillip Island conservatory. And a joey fairly fresh out of his mothers pouch climbing amount the leaves.
• There were numerous stops along the way to get out and see some of the best sights from the great ocean road.
• At the waterfall the tour leader, ‘Azza’ (as he proposed to be called) filled the bus-van with sticks.
• That night at a backpackers in Apollo Bay, Azza lit a bonfire with said sticks and we sat around that for the last bit of the night.

DAY TWO:
• The next morning we headed into the rainforest first where Azza gave us a history/biology lesson of sorts about the massively huge and tall trees there.
• Heading back to the coast and the great ocean road we stopped at a few more beaches and overlooks for the views.
• The 12 apostles (or the ‘sow and piglets’ as they may have previously been referred to) were the next stop. What used to be 12 stumps of un-eroded rock separated from the mainland (now something like 8).
• Gorge Beach, where a ship had shipwrecked and the only two survivors washed ashore. We stayed here for a while. The water was absolutely freezing (I did go in), and learned a bit more about aussy footy (like how to kick and handball). Randomly ran into some of Barrys friends who I met in Brisbane.
• London Bridge—it did in fact fall down. A peninsular of sorts out into the sea that used to be like a bridge till the middle fell out. As bill Bryson (and Azza tell), two people were stuck out there when the bridge fell, they were cheating on their respective counterparts.
• Finally there was lunch, and the trip back to Melbourne.

It was good and enjoyable trip, definitively worth the money. The views and sights from the road were pretty spectacular, even the road itself. I would highly recommend it especially for study abroad students at Melbourne Uni who don’t have access to transport out there (and even if you do).

Classes: Part One

This is a series of posts I’ve been meaning to make since orientation exactly 12 weeks ago now. And being as this past week signaled the end of classes right now might be an apt time to write about classes overseas at the University of Melbourne. This first post is about taking classes overseas, and a second will be about the actual classes and professors. And this post basically follows on from this post
That Monday I took my first lectures in my classes, Chemistry, Culture Media Life, War State and Society, and Australian Indigenous Studies as well as my first tutorial for Chemistry. By Wednesday I had dropped chemistry (which I realized was WAY over my head) in favor of Globalization. With that change the rest of the week followed fairly smoothly as I began to understand and appreciate the Aussie way of classes. That was:
Each of my classes has three teaching hours a week. 2 of those are lectures. Lectures are in the large lecture halls around campus—most buildings have one, some have two, one even had 4 smaller ones. Here a single lecturer or a host of guest lectures give you the bulk of the information you will need for the class. Terms, theories, definitions and facts are shoved into you brain as fast as the lecture can in their 50 minute time period. The remaining hour is a tutorial. Here the big lecture hall is split into smaller groups (10-20 people each) to hold meetings throughout the week for sessions with tutorial teachers. In many cases tutorials take the form of discussions about the weeks topics presented in the lectures. It’s here that the information jostling around in your head is solidified with examples and clarification into something meaningful. After particularly confusing weeks it’s easy to see the benefit that tutorials have on classes. In some cases, like my Chemistry class which I promptly dropped, there are Practicals. Practicals are generally once a week in addition to lectures and tutorials and usually last for 3 to 4 hours for realistic application of the week’s material. Then finally for all classes there is reading. Interdisciplinary subjects and broad ranging subjects generally utilize a reader, while more concise subject will use the traditional textbook (chemistry, par example). The readers are separated by weekly divides and contain one to two readings that supplement the week’s lectures. Readers are good sources for material, information and quotes for essays that have to be written throughout the year, as well as for the reason they were designed—to be read.
The class day is split up into one hour periods, with one running into the back of the next. This means that lecturers and teachers generally run from 5 mins in to 5 mins before so students can get between classes. Although in some cases (my Culture Media Life lecture) the lecturer often ran to the very end or even over the time period.

I See Trees of Green...

...red roses tooI see em bloom...for me and for youAnd I think to myself...what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue...clouds of whiteBright blessed days...dark sacred nightsAnd I think to myself...what a wonderful world.

(Spring: given that you experience every season on any given day in Melbourne)

To the Rescue

This is a regular part of my day. With the Royal Melbourne Hospital practically right across the street it does mean should i get injured in any way its right there, but it also means that everyone else is going there. There are two medical helicopters (the other one looks cooler) and they both land here at least 3 times a day although on a good day it can be over 10.

AusTour 20: Pictures

Pictures from AusTour (everything from Brisbane down to Sydney and into South Australia) have been added to the Gallery. That’s everything for AusTour, and it took me long enough to recount…

Oh and if you want to see or read every post from AusTour you can look at this page thanks to the magic of Blogger’s Labels!

The Melbourne Cup

Sunny and beautiful were the conditions for this Melbourne Cup day (the biggest horse race in Victoria—and I think Australia too) it really couldn’t have gotten any better. I went with Barry, some friends from AustraLearn and RMIT village for the 148th Melbourne Cup. The Melbourne Cup race is actually the 7th race of the day (out of 10) which is again part of a bigger festival at Flemington Racecourse the Melbourne cup festival (including Derby Cup day this past Saturday). It was my first time to a horse race so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect but had been watching the other major races (Caulfield Cup and Derby Day Cup) in the previous weeks of the spring racing season. Melbourne cup isn’t just about the races, it’s about the fashion and flowers and there were many absurdly large hats and hairpins in the crowd. It was fairly packed at the racecourse, the general admission area being the grass zone between and in front of the two stands (grand stand and hill stand). The racecourse did look good and all the flowers were in bloom (mysteriously, they must train them or something as blooming was definitively 2,3 or even 4 weeks ago). The other part of the cup, of course, is the betting. The Melbourne cup is the most betted upon race in Australia (‘the celebration that stops a nation’) so I’d been trying to figure it out in the run up. I’d set a limit of $25 for betting that day with a good portion going to the actual Melbourne cup race(as most people do, the Melbourne cup is one that all join in on regardless of their experience). We arrived for race 4, but I didn’t bet till race 5. Reservedly I put $5 on Hips Don’t Lie to place (3.6 to 1 odds)…he would win, making that my first win in horse racing ever. The next race I bet on was the Melbourne cup, picking 3 horses to place and Nom De Jeu to win…none of those happened. In race 9 I picked Tour Guide to place (3.3 to 1 odds)…and he came in third. Finally race 10 picked Secret Flyer to place…as he passed us he was in third but fell half a length behind crossing in 4th. All in all, I ended up winning $1, that is I departed with one dollar more betting money than I arrived with (take that punters). Of course my strategies were based on punters odds and by how much I liked the horses’ name.
The Melbourne cup race itself was incredibly tight for first and second with about a half a nose between them (Viewed edging out Bauer) as they crossed the finish line.

Oh and Barry did fairly well too, ridiculously, getting some $40 and $60 winning tickets (he even had Bauer to win the Cup with 40 to 1 odds—missed that by half a nose) . Other people didn’t do so well. It’s all luck really and it’s all part of the sport. And overall it was a great day.

AusTour 19: Adelaide: the complete Review

Adelaide was great overall. It was like Melbourne multiplied by 0.65 and with 10 times the amount of grass. It was definitely quieter than Melbourne can ever be—not as exciting. On the plus side it makes a great place to get away from the city yet still be in the city if you know what I mean. The transport system isn’t great, but it’s not a big city so there is little problem. It was a good place to add on to the end of trip, not as expensive or as hot as Uluru and Alice springs, or as far as Perth, with enough to keep a tourist occupied and satisfied for a couple of days. And I can earnestly say I was satisfied.

AusTour 18: Adelaide Day Two

After a less exciting and informational ride back to Adelaide I stored my luggage in the terminal (having to return later that night) for day two in Adelaide. The first stop I made, and one I had seen the day before was the Rundle Street mall. Here I counted no less that 3 clowns, at least 7 instrument performers (including a singer, harmonica-ist, two boys emphatically playing ‘pep-band’ songs on trumpets, and several guitarists), 1 free tattoo lady [i was tempted...], 2 people on huge balls, and a couple of other people I cant remember right now. Rundle Street mall is a pedestrian only section of Rundle Street with more shops than your dog has fleas. Following that I walked up to the Adelaide oval for an actual tour. The old man who led it, dressed to the nines (or perhaps the eights) in a uniform you would probably expect from the turn of the century (20th that is) was fairly informative about the history of the oval and its specific significance in cricket history (host of the ashes in 1884 where England won!) as well as some of the major players after whom the stands had been named. We got to go out onto the oval grass (pretty cool) but the most impressive part was going inside the traditionally kept and still operable scoreboard. It’s a fairly mammoth task of operating this monster, and required at least 4 men on a good day.Following the oval tour I went down to the Adelaide art museum. Mostly this was to see some of their Aboriginal Art (Again for my essay), but I also spent some time in their more classical art of which they have a lot. For free entry it was good just walk quickly through the fairly sizable rooms for a quick glance at the art. As five o’clock neared again and everything in Adelaide began to shut down I headed down through Adelaide Uni to the banks of the Torrens. I sat for a while on the quite banks of the river, watching the ducks, rowers and sun sinking in the sky.
As the day drew to a close I grabbed dinner before heading back to the bus terminal for my bus back to Melbourne to end the trip. It was an overnight bus getting into Melbourne at 6:30 in the morning. It was good to be back in Melbourne, a city that is now incredibly familiar to me, but it was also nice to be away from it. Somehow I managed to get from Southern Cross station to my apartment without a single tram passing in my direction, a 30 minute walk.

AusTour 17: Kangaroo Island

aka the most unplanned and inefficient part of the entire trip. I had decided to go to kangaroo island on a whim—it was in the vicinity of Adelaide and was relatively easy to get to. What I didn’t decide on was how exactly I would get around such a large island. Most people rent cars or take tours to see the entire island. Me, I didn’t. Regardless of this deficiency I decided to treat Kangaroo Island as a day to relax, to take it slow for once on the trip.
The day began with a 6:45am bus from Adelaide bus terminal to make a ferry at 9. The bus and ferry were run by the same company, sea link. The bus driver was friendly even for such an hour and gave some pretty good commentary coming out of Adelaide and down through the valleys and wine (and olive) valleys. I’m sure it was interesting but I don’t remember much about it, partially and mostly because it was SO GAWD DAMN EARLY IN THE MORNING. Anyway when the bus got to the 45 min ferry line I saw the high and rough seas, groaned and took a travel sick pill before hiding in the centre of the ship away from anything that proved just how much we were rocking. Arriving in one piece and without any spillages, I disembarked to find a place to drop my stuff. Id seen the YHA from the ship so knew it wasn’t far and when I got there I found my key on the counter and let myself into my room. The owner of the hostel sprang up from nowhere after about five minutes and she was really nice and helpful. With my bags stowed in my room of six for one (!) I went ‘into town,’ what I mean by that is I went into the two roads that run parallel to form Penneshaw. The lady at the info desk was entirely unhelpful and arrogant so I left with little more than a map. With it only being about 11am I went into the only café in town, ordered a cup of tea and sat down with the days paper (how Bill Byrson!).
The owner of Kangaroo Island YHA had told me about a track along the coast and out to the ruins of a house. I decided I would walk that, having nothing else to do and no way to get anywhere else. The walk was pleseant and quiet, the sun was warm and the sky clear. I stumbled upon a group of wallabies and spent a while with them (probably most to their distress). It was a very casual wonder up and along the cliffs, in no hurry and stopping often to sit and look out to sea or across the hills. There was no hurry that had existed in the past 10 days, so it was entirely relaxing just to be able to go as fast or slow as I wanted. On the way back I saw some dolphins just off shore and watched them before they disappeared.
Back in Penneshaw I sat on the beach just taking in the atmosphere and basking in the sun for the remaining part of the afternoon. Again, incredibly relaxing atmosphere. After dinner there was a walk around the little penguin’s habitat for incredibly cheap. Unfortunately their colony has been decimated by seals eating the returning penguins so they weren’t nearly as loud or numerous as their Phillip Island cousins. After that I went across the road back to the YHA where I talked with 2 of the 4 other people staying there for a good while in the sitting room before heading to bed to depart the next morning at 11 back to Adelaide.
Kangaroo Island: the Complete Review
Yeah, I didn’t do anything really, but that was good. In the end that’s what I really wanted—not another action packed adventure. It’s definitively worth a visit if you do it right, there are lots of attractions on this quarantined island, they’re just spread out. With that in mind ill have to plan something better and come back to really explore the island.

AusTour 16: Adelaide Day One

As my first day in Adelaide dawned I decided I was going to follow the walking tour in the Lonely Planet book. We’d followed the one previously in Brisbane and it turned out alright (apart for being tired at the end). I headed north towards the start the botanical gardens and National Wine Centre. At some point I decided I didn’t want to do the tour because it had left out some of the places I wanted to see, so I used it as a rough guide before departing from it completely. My first stop was the Nation Wine Centre; Adelaide and South Australia are where a lot of Australia’s wine is produced (this and the Yarra Valley in Victoria), so I thought it an apt stop. The ‘museum’ was fairly generic and uninformative, the entrance rises above an open cellar and it was absolutely packed with wines of all kinds which was kind of interesting. From the Wine Centre I entered the botanical gardens. Adelaide’s botanical gardens are (smartly) split into two parts the actual gardens with plants of every kind for all over the world and, what most Aussies use Botanical Gardens for, the Botanic Park. The dichotomy allows the plants to grow and be admired and allows a place for Aussies to play and relax on weekends and days off (all the other botanical gardens I’ve seen in Australia mix the two). I walked through the rose garden, a symmetrical walk garden and past a pretty good replication of a Mediterranean house and garden and out past the zoo. The zoo was on my list of ‘maybes’ but looked uninviting from the road so I skipped it for now and continues over the Torrens into North Adelaide. Here I stopped quickly at St Peters cathedral where I was told pretty enthusiastically about their new stained glass windows that apparently represent Australia and its history. My next stop was the Adelaide Oval, I had planned to take a tour there and luckily the afternoon tours would start in the next couple of days. A stayed for a bit (the oval is part of Adelaide parks so you can just walk in) and watched the grounds men converting the footy pitch to a cricket ground. Following the oval I walked back into the CBD towards Tandanya an aboriginal Art museum (at that point I had to write a paper on indigenous Australia art for one of my Uni classes). The museum was showing aboriginal weaving at the time, which was fairly interesting and different from the painting traditionally associated with aboriginal art. With the working day closing I finished off my main attractions for the day in the Adelaide museum. The museum was fairly disorganized; there was no narrative just a show and tell performance. It was funny though seeing some of the North American animals in the mammal’s exhibit—mammals like the black bear which I see all too much off. As the museum closed I went up to Lights Vision which I believe is the highest natural point in the inner city with a view out onto the CBD. There was one thing left to do that day and that was to find dinner which was little problem, what was a problem was finding ice-cream anywhere in Adelaide—I mean proper ice-cream, the homemade stuff not the generically produced. Adelaide for one reason or another is completely devoid of ice-cream. I went back to My Place for the night and talked to some cool people about Kangaroo Island (where I would go the next day) and life in general. I had to go to sleep early because the bus left at 6:45. Yay.

AusTour 15: Adelaide an Arriving and Intro

Barry had left to return to Melbourne as his classes were starting up again, as Uni Melbourne didn’t start up for another week I had some more time to hit some more places. I chose to explore Adelaide for those days. I arrived into Adelaide later that night after leaving Sydney, slightly confused when the captain announced the time adding ‘if you want to change your watches.’ Id talked to a lady who had just come in international so I thought nothing of it, until I realized my phone clock and every other clock in the airport differed by 30 min’s (not a full hour, surprising). I’d done I little bit of research into how exactly to get from Adelaide airport to my accommodation—My Place Backpackers. I had to take a bus, I didn’t know which one nor when exactly I had to get off. So once again I was learning a transportation system as it was being imposed upon me. Needless to say I almost missed my stop and would have if I hadn’t asked the driver. I stepped out onto the street for the first time entirely in Adelaide (And south Australia for that matter)…and it looked nothing like I thought it would. It didn’t look bad, just different then what I had imagined. I partially blame Bill Bryson for this one I think. He chucked Adelaide and Canberra (Australia’s Capital) to close together in his book ‘In a Sunburned Country.’ I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, something like green lawns and white stone buildings both of which didn’t exist where I was standing and especially in the middle of the night.

Before diving head first into the warm waters of the next days schedule Ill finish this post by describing what Adelaide was, if it wasn’t what I thought it was. If at any point the previous paragraph came off as me depredating Adelaide it was because that was my initial impression as a fell asleep and it wasn’t until the next day (and daylight) that I found it a much nicer place. Adelaide has a pretty bizarre set up. The CBD runs along Torrens River, with North Adelaide sitting on the other side. King William Street runs vertically from north Adelaide through the CBD. Now here something peculiar happens. Road going horizontally across King William Street change names on the other side (Hindley becomes Rundle, Currie becomes Grenfell, Waymouth becomes Pirie, Franklin becomes Flinders etc). Adelaide began as a planned city, planned by Colonel William Light (Lights vision) to whom there is a statue on a hill on the north side of the Torrens. So while the previous illogicality seems to make no sense, there is a sense of direction to the city and it’s fairly easy to navigate. One of the other advantages is the ring (moat) of gardens or parklands that surrounds the inner city. As the inner city ends there is a block of Greenland before the suburbs begin, creating a buffer between the city and the suburbs. So in conclusion Adelaide proceeded to dispel any misconceptions I might have had about it the night before…which was good because I was there for two days.

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AusTour 14: Sydney: the Complete Review

(Sydney gets its own review post)

I did like Sydney. Like I mentioned in my first post on Sydney I was excited when I got there and this excitement carried through for the most part. I do, however, feel like I missed a lot of Sydney somehow. What we got in this trip to Sydney was the tourist experience. And we did it up proper. the see Sydney cards were really a blessing and a curse—get in easily, but have so much to do you don’t know what to do with yourself. In all it went too fast really, I would really have loved some more time to slow things down and take things at a slower pace rather than cram everything in. It will be something I will have to return to do at some point later as I feel like there was a lot of culture and life to Sydney that we missed. Also shoving it on the end of such a long trip down the east coast did it no justice either, by that point I was pretty exhausted…and it only continued on into Adelaide.

AusTour 13: Sydney Day Four

Day four dawned, and with it our last day in Sydney. After checking out and leaving our luggage with the hostel (what we had been doing the entire trip on the days we left when our departure was later in the day). We made our way down to darling harbour again where we had booked a ride on Sydney Jet. Sydney Jet was like the harbour cruise two days before. except that is was in a high speed jet boat, fish tailing and spinning etc. after donning fairly large ponchos we realized we might actually get wet on this ride. That was kind of an understatement; the guy who sat behind us might have been swimming at one point. Oh, and STOLEN PICTURE. Reasonably wet, we found some well prices fish and chips and dried off in the intermittent sun (typical as it was beautiful the day before). Following that we went to the National Maritime Museum which was on the opposite side of the harbour. We got entrance to the two ships they have with our See Sydney Cards—a submarine and a destroyer-type ship. The submarine was pretty fascinating, and I managed to do a classic door-swing through one of the portholes. The war ship was good, but I was extremely confused when the lights went off and it began simulating an attack sequence. The actual museum had some pretty cool stuff in it, included a temporary exhibit about toy boats to which there was a curious short film in French with toy-ship characters playing. Bizarre. With time running short we headed back to the hostel to retrieve our bags and through the end of rush hour headed to the airport. The trip there was hindered by one stick—that although the airport is in the transport system it requires a separate ticket to exit/enter the airport. After failing to find the source of a meat pie topped with mash potatoes in the airport and settling on Hungry Jacks for dinner again, Barry departed for Melbourne and I to Adelaide for more adventures around Australia.

AusTour 12: Sydney Day Three

Over exhausted and possibly with a mild case of heat exhaustion the next day dawned. The good news was it was going to be a nice day again—in fact it was going to hit 30 degrees centigrade. Our first stop was 2 hours on bicycles around Manly. Manly is a short ferry ride (one of Sydney’s 11 ferries named after the 11 ships in the first fleet to come to Australia in 1787—thanks Rocks tour!). In fact most of the locations outside Sydney are accessible by ferry either run by Sydney Ferries or the faster HabourCat’s. Manly is decidedly a beach culture; a thin strip is bordered on both sides by beaches and is a popular destination for Sydney day trippers. I should mention that it took us a good amount of time, a tour of Manly’s Ocean World (mucho insignificant compared to the Sydney aquarium we had seen the night before), a conversation with an old lady and a trip to the visitor centre before we actually found the bike place. There was no hassle to rent the bikes though and we made our way out along a suggested route by the bike shop man (a web designer/marketing student in uni…sounds vaguely familiar…). This route though was uphill most of the way, and by the time we got the top of the hill it was about time to go back down hill. After some creative directions by myself we got a quick tour of most of the city streets in Manly and visit to the beaches on both sides. After the ferry ride back from manly we made some impromptu decisions after missing the next schedule attractions (Barry’s fault for getting the location wrong) and got on the ferry to Darling Harbour. Essentially there are two sides to Sydney, the main harbour or circular quay where the Rocks, Opera House and Bridge are, and the secondary harbour (darling harbour) home of star city, plenty of clubs and restaurants, the aquarium, the national maritime museum and our next attraction Wildlife World.

Wildlife World is essentially the home of all critters Australian in Sydney (possibly apart from Tonga Zoo). Kangaroos, wallabies, spiders, snakes, koala’s, birds, and nocturnal’s (fact: there are more animals active at night in Australia than at day) etc. following Wildlife World we had some down time (thank god) before a night-time observatory tour at 830. The one hindrance to this was we needed to eat, and no where was open/ or even existed. It was absurd how we could be walking for 45 mins straight without passing a single restaurant open on a Sunday night. We would eventually settle for hungry jacks—fast food yum!

The observatory started with a free walk through the museum part of the observatory with some of the old telescopes and time keepers. There were some really fascinating objects in its collection but before we had time to see it all we were rounded up for a look at the stars. The observatory has two telescopes. The first was an old-fashioned one, hand adjusted through which we looked at Jupiter rising into the sky. The second was a more high-tech computer adjusted telescope which allowed us to see the double star that’s part of the Southern Cross. It was in this dome enclosure we found that the acoustics were just right now hear the person directly across from (even if they were whispering) you as if they were standing just behind you. It was bizarre and Barry and I had some fun with it before I said something too loud next to tour leader where he explained it and everyone caught on. The final part was a 3D star experience which proceeded to show just how small you were in comparison with the rest of the universe. I think I fell asleep near the end.

I eagerly embraced the bed when we returned that night before getting up for our fourth and last day in Sydney.

AusTour 11: Sydney Day Two

Our first full day in Sydney we were out and ready to go by 9. As someone had said on the phone the day before when we were booking attractions, ‘if you’ve got see Sydney cards, you’ve probably got places to be.’ This was true, at 9am that morning we were heading to a 2 hour walking tour of Sydney that didn’t exist. The phone went to some security service, and we never actually found the booth. Regardless of that setback we went towards the Opera House looking for a tour. We successfully acquired a tour, led by a very amicable Sue around, in and outside the Opera House. Because we missed the 10am Sydney tour we luckily got into the opera part of the opera house (surprisingly the smaller side) before a 12pm performance. In all we got to see 3 of the theatres including the biggest two. Both of the big theatres were amazing, size-wise, technology-wise, whatever-wise. We weren’t aloud to take pictures though so you’ll have to see it for yourself. Following the tour there was some time for picture taking around the Opera House. On the tour Sue had explained all about the history of the Opera House and its design (which I couldn’t possible recount here)—the whole structure really is amazing. During some more down time we went into the Botanical Gardens for a quick look (there were bats roosting in the trees) before heading to the Rocks for a Rocks walking tour. It was a walking tour but it was also the most action packed history lesson anyone could have ever conceived. The history of the rocks was pretty much like the smelliest, dirties, hardest fought story ever told. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but the area of the Rocks has evolved a lot in history…from a bunch of rocks over a harbor, to a town where the shit flows down the rocks from your upstairs neighbors through your house, to a historical site known and preserved as the Rocks. Oh and I can now tell you whose on the A$20 bill now too. Following that, and with knowledge falling out of our ears, we practically ran to the scenic cruise of the harbor (with complimentary free drink). The cruise was good because we quietly sailed by the front of the opera house for a view from the harbor, and under the bridge and out to islands and other lands whose descriptions couldn’t possibly have fit in my head (There was something about a ship wreck, a fort, and the prime ministers house). The sun was setting as we glided past the opera house for the second time, giving it a slightly red glow.

As the sun was going down we raced to the sky tower practically in the middle of Sydney to get a look at Sydney before, during and after sunset. The sky tower is the tallest free standing structure in the southern hemisphere, rising 328 meters with observation deck up top (as well as restaurants) and Oztrek down bottom. The views up top were pretty awesome; both out to the mountain ranges where the sun was setting out to the harbour and out towards the sea. Oztrek downstairs was both mildly amusing and dreadfully tacky (that’s all I’m going to say about that).

With the sun now completely set we headed to our final destination for the night, the Aquarium. It was deserted pretty much, which was cool because there was no one there. Unfortunately the seals were asleep, but everything else was awake and swimming around. Of particular awesomeness was the oceanarium (the tubes where the fish swim around you). There were some huge fish, sharks and turtles floating around in there and again the best part was there was practically anyone there.

Following that we returned to the hotel and crashed. Like BSOD bad.