Click to enlarge the photos. And yes, I did wear the same thing almost every day. Don't worry-- they were washed every once in a while. :U

I really have no idea if these dates are accurate. For some reason, the dates in my journal don't match up with the dates on my photos. Buh?

To

8.19 - MINIMEAL!

New Zealand

8.21 - The Mystery of the Pink Cat Car
8.22 - The Quest for the Egg of Mantumbi
8.23 - That Smell, I Have Not Smelt One Like It
8.24 - Today is Not Our Day to Die Today
8.25 - Chainsaw Juggling!
8.26 - The Revenge of the Horrifyingly Scenic Train Ride
8.27 - Watermelon Attack, Oh No!

Australia

8.28 - Tooling Around Brisbane
8.29 - Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary + Boat Rides
8.30 - The Road to the Woodshow, 2006!
8.31 - Tin-er the Dog!
9.01 - Toowoomba is a Funny Word
9.02 - Kick the Rock! Old School!
9.03 - Funyun Bunion Mountain
9.04 - We Killed Steve Irwin D:
9.05 - Pai Einchiputzu!
9.06 - DI Sedge: Nursery Crimes
9.07 - Delicious Chinese Traditional Buns
9.08 - Singing at the Sydney Opera House
9.09 - Bird Doodie

From

9.10 - It's Go(ing Back) Time!

9.10.06

Hot damn! It's been a year, and I still haven't finished writing this! Yeah, technically I crapped out on this whole journal thing on the last day, never got around to writing it. And by technically, I mean actually.

So what do I remember?

( I think it would've gone a little something like this... )
THE END

9.09.06

Whoo, I'm writing this 3 months after it happened!

So, today we're going down to Canberra to visit with friends of the parents and to drop of the "we-can't-take-this-on-the-plane" box. I'm sure it must've taken 3 hours to get there, but I'm also sure I wasn't awake for any of it.

They live in a pretty swanky place, but unfortunately they also have CHILDRENS. Boys, aged 3 and 5, or something to that effect. Horrors! They had a lunch-meaty spread out for us, but after I noticed the childrens kind of fingering everything, I decided eating anything might not be the best idea. I did eat ONE cookie, though, but it had been sanitized.

Apparently, they're big rugby fans, so we got a random demonstration on the part of the childrens. It was weird.

Anyway, after tooling around their house for a while, we all go drive to this shopping center-type place, which also has a small reptile house and an aviary. Srsly. The aviary wasn't open at this point, so we headed over to the reptile house, after stopping to look at the koi pond they had right in the center of everything. Why can't we have swanky things like this back home?

( Snakes on a plane!!! )

9.08.06

Woke up this morning, feeling… oddly awake. Well, not really awake, so much as I had the ability to open my eyes.

The plan for today was to just go down to the harbor area and walk around.

This time, instead of taking the train (and having to walk uphill to get to it), we took the ferry. It was weird how the ticket system was set up—you got on, rode to wherever you’re going, got off, THEN bought your ticket. I guess you need it to get out of the, uh, station, but still. You’d think it’d be better just to have you buy it before you got on what so as to not make it easier for people to mooch off them. That sentence made no sense.

So anyway, we walked the shorter walk down to the docks, saw a Pomeranian in a little jacket along the way. The ferry way coming in just as we got there—it was the same kind as in Brisbane, a catamaran or something like that. They’d named it Susie O’Neil. We sat on the outer decks, so we ended up getting sprinkled with water and, somehow, salt. It was tasty.

( Orchid sex... )

9.07.06

I got up several times this morning, only to go back to sleep for a few minutes. I think I finally got up around 10 or so. We didn’t have any sort of plan at first, but decided to head over to Chinatown and Pady’s market. It was a bit of a walk to the train station, uphill. Both ways.

Subways are pretty HORRIBLE.

Luckily, it was only 3 stops and about 10 minutes to our stop, though. I got to almost fall off the escalator! We were on the side where, apparently, you’re supposed to walk up. I kept only stepping up with the front part of my foot, so my heel would catch on the step and I would almost trip. It was fun.

As we walked down to Chinatown, it started to rain. Like CRAZY. But it ended within minutes, so it wasn’t too bad. Dad wanted to go eat in Chinatown, but me and mom didn’t, so we headed over to Pady’s market, which is (mostly) like a mall. We went up to the food court, but most of the places served… Chinese food. I ended up getting chickpea curry on rice with a GREAZY pancake sorta thing. It was tasty.

( Conan O'Brien swooped upon by obese bird! )

9.06.06

Was woken up at 9AM, horribly tired. Took a bath. Yay?

We checked out of the hotel, then were on the way to Sydney. Stopped at McDonald’s AGAIN. This was a real fancy one, too. Big screen TV, the whole Mcafe deal, weird chairs. First we went to a garden-type place, which was nice. They had PUKEKO, just walking around like near the bath houses in Rotorua. Pukeko are greeeat.
As we were walking through the first garden (they had several different themed gardens), we heard this weird bird sound. Mom said it was “canned-bird” and started looking for a speaker. However, just then I looked up and saw a magpie (?) on top of one of the topiaries. He was mad about his singing being called canned.

Then I saw a pukeko and fallowed him around for a while, trying to get a photo. I think I ended up with 20 pukeko photos by the end of the day.

( Porgio is a PREVERT... )

9.05.06


So after a little while, we packed our things into the car and drove two minutes into town to find the internet café. We heard that the library had computers available, but it wasn’t open yet and either way, we didn’t know if you had to be a member or not. I don’t think my Maryland library card would have worked. So we just went over to the for-pay café place.

After that, dad decided to stop by the didgeridoo place we had seen on the way back from dinner last night. We saw the guy who makes them out back, making one right there. So dad talked to him for a while, and then we went into the store. All sorts of crazy-awesome didgeridoos, including one that looked like a crocodile, teeth and all. In the end, I got a CD and dad got a $300 didgeridoo. Whoo.

Now he’s going to have to learn how to play it. So I guess he’s going to be sitting out in the front yard, in his underwear and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, playing it. He’ll probably grow a beard, too. BUT NO MUSTACHE. And that’s always creepy, the beard and no mustache thing. Maybe a Pai Mei-type beard. He says he’s going to start using his Chinese name: Pai Einchiputzu.

See where I get it from? See? Crazy old man.

( Osama assassinated by sad wombat! News at 11! )

9.04.06

Well, today’s been a long, mildly horrible day. First, the usual get on the bus at 8AM to go into town. Only this time we packed all our things on to head over to the bus station. I got to visit Tina one last time, though.

After a short ride into Toowoomba, we found out that the bus to Brisbane was at 11AM, and not 9, like mom had thought. So we sat for 2 hours. Well, actually, I slept a little. On the bench near the station—it was a cultural experience. Right. Oh, and we saw them loading cartons of “ONE DAY OLD CHICKS” onto the bus. And, yes, there really were chicks in there—can’t be too sure about the one day old thing, though.

So it’s a 2 hour bus ride—there weren’t any seats together, so I had to sit next to an old lady with a bouquet of flowers. Better her than the kid with all the crazy piercings, anyway. When we got to Brisbane, it was a fun adventure to get all our bags off the bus, then down to the street level. Me and dad waited in the garage area while mom walked to the car rental place. Stood around there for about 20-some minutes until she got back… in a baby blue Toyota. Yay.

So the plan was just to drive from Brisbane downwards to Sydney, stopping about halfway to stay in a small town called Bellingen, in a bed & breakfast type place.

Along the way there were some interesting occurrences. As always, lot of cows. But also tiny horses and a fuzzy donkey. We saw a big avocado by the side of the road, advertising a tropical fruit farm, so we decided to stop by there.

Turns out it’s $32 per adult to get into the main part of the farm, which is actually a whole big bus tour-thing, so we just went into the (free) gift shop and café. They had a “make your own ice cream” deal there, where you could pick out several fruits to have mixed into ice cream; I got dragon fruit/kiwi/strawberry. It was huge. And it turns out you get a bit of whatever the person before you got, in the very bottom of your cone. Dad got some of mom’s, mom got some of mine; don’t know what I got, though.

We moved on after that, and guess what? On the radio, they said the crocodile hunter had died! Well, at first, I thought they had said “Steve O”, so I was like, “Eh.” But then they repeated it (several times) and I was like “OMG!” That is fairly to significantly unbelievable. And just as soon as we get to Australia, too.

And by a stingray. They keep saying the stinger went THROUGH his chest, but that’s kinda crazy. I mean, even those HUGE stingray in New Zealand didn’t seem to have stingers THAT big. But then, who knows. It’s really weird—I mean, even though I always made fun of his catchphrases and the horrible way he picked snakes up (by the tail, man!? You grab them by the tail AND around the neck!), it’s weird to know he’s dead. And by a stingray, too; how anti-climactic.

And did I mention that I just got done writing a pattern for a knitted stingray, just a few months ago? Eerie.

So, anyway, after awhile, so stop off at a McDonald’s for a late lunch; dad got the McOz, aka the one with the beets. I didn’t see the regular cheeseburger on the menu, so I said what the hey, and got a quarter pounder. With large fries and an equally large drink, because if you get the large fries, you MUST get the large drink too. I can only drink so much Fanta, man. Anyway, it was quite gooood. Didn’t like the REAL onions, though; usually it’s the tiny, chopped up, dehydrated kind. Them’s good eats.

Well, after what seems like HOURS and HOURS of driving, we finally get to the bed & breakfast. It’s only 7:30 and it’s already dark out.

It’s VERY nice, as is the lady who runs it. My room, while not having a TV, is very large and has its own bathroom attached and even had one of those mesh things that go around the bed. And ROBES.

Oh, and the name: Rivendell. Yes, as in the Lord of the Rings Rivendell; they even have a quote from the books on facy paper, framed on top of the fireplace. The dork in me (that is, all of me) loves that. Too bad I’m not that big of a LotR fan. That is, I’m to lazy to have read the books.

Were it to have been 2,000+ pages involving crazy hermaphrodites, I could’a totally done it by now, though. Those crazy Wraeththu and their crazy; I love those guys.

And there’re DOGS-- little ones. One is a Papillion/”fox” mix (though I don’t know what she meant by fox—fox terrier?) and the other is a maltese/shih tzu mix. The Papillion/fox likes to jump and can almost make it up to the first segment of the door (they have one of those two-part doors, with a separate top and bottom half). Also, a big “ginger” cat, who I haven’t seen yet. It better not be orange, though. Orange is NOT the same as ginger, as I keep trying to convince my mom. Zim looks nothing like ginger! Have you even SEEN the color of ginger? It’s like a light brown! Not orange!

RWAH! The Zim goes…

Bu’anyway, the owner (at least, I think she’s he owner) recommends this pub down the down, which we walk to. There’s a sign outside that says, BY LAWZ, no one under 18 is allowed in, but we go in, anyway. Once we’re past the main pub and into the restaurant part (which, oddly, is also called “Relish”, just like the café in Rotorua), however, they add “unless in the company of a responsible adult” to the bottom. Interesting how it changes like that. Hey, what about that whole hiring bartenders competent enough to, say, CARD their young looking customers thing? How inconvenient. Just like how I’m not allowed to go to that fancy party type thing that mom and dad get to go to when they exhibit at that art/craft show. Since they serve alcohol there, I’m not allowed to go at all. Or that one restaurant in Canada/Seattle (don’t remember which one) where they kick anyone under 21 out after, like, 9PM. I don’t even like alcohol.

Aaaanyway, we managed to not get arrested. I had this stuffed chicken deal (though stuffed with WHAT, I’m not sure; it was green) with some sort of red pepper sauce on top. It was pretty good, but not as good as the stuffed chicken I had in New Zealand.

We saw a cat on the way back. And I almost fell over. And once I got into my room, I noticed there was a big cockroach hanging out on the floor; mom executed him. With a firing squad.

Seriously.

SO anyway, dad needs to use the laptop for his whatever, so I need to get stop writing, now.

9.03.06

Weehoo, sleeping on a bus is fun. Got up around 7:40 to get ready to go to Bunya mountain, a (or part of a) national park. Once again, I was really tired and my stomach hurt. Thankfully, there were a lot of empty seats on the bus, so I got a row for myself -— roughly 4ft. wide. Brought my pillow along for just such an occasion, and used my jacket as a blanket—I have something about sleeping when people can see my eyes. Weird.

It’s about a 2 hour trip over there, so I slept until we got there, only waking up a few times.

And they’ve got wallabies. Lots of them. And one even had a hard-to-take-a-photo-of baby in its pouch.

Oh, and those dirty, freeloading, turkey/buzzard type things. Dirty mooches. I also learned that those evil birds that chase people around back at the place are POISONOUS. Seriously. Glad I’m just learning this now, and not when I was egging them on yesterday.

Well, anyway, they’ve got several different trails to so on, and we chose the 4k one, I think it was. It was pretty interesting; all sorts of trees. Like these really tall, wide ones, whose name I don’t know. Or those crazy strangler fig dealies, like those ones in Cambodia. You know the ones. We even got to walk through a tree that was covered in a bunch of them. Or something—I don’t know how they work.

We stopped at this overlook for a lunch-type thing. I had toast and toast with butter and some ham juice in between. Mmmm.

So, more walking, more walking. Not really much to speak of. Oh, I did get to hug a tree, though. Crazy.

OH YEAH. And a dead wallaby, like, right there in the middle of the path. No idea what it was doing there. I think they’re going to call in the wallaby CSI— the current theory they’re going on is that it got hit by one of the trees that had fallen. But I say it was… MURDER! Wait, no.

So, after much walking, we get back to the main area where I get lunch at the café they’ve got. Gooey gnocchi and fries. It was tasty, but since they gave us, like, 3lbs. of fries, we had to get a box for them. Uh, got back on the bus and say a lot more wallabies around. Really, just laying around in peoples’ front yards like giant squirrel monsters. I’m sure if my grandma lived around there, they’d find a way to die in her chimney without anyone realizing it until they inevitably do.

And I have no idea how they got the bus up those tiny, winding roads. Or how they can get away with NOT having seatbelts on them; we actually bounced out of our seats several times. In fact, I’m pretty sure they even have a sign at the beginning of the hill warning large vehicles about said roads. And how exactly did I sleep through all that?

Oh, and we just noticed that the last row of seats was just one BIG seat—like a couch. Well, that would have been nice to have known when I was trying to sleep. Anyway, much of interest, other than that. I ate some more of my fries and my soda (in the glass bottle) fell over and started rolling under the seats in front of us. I got it back, and it didn’t even spill much. Ooh, exciting.

There were a lot of cows, some baby ones. We passed by two who had somehow managed to get on the other side of the fence, realize the other side of the fence was crappy, and try to get back on the other side of the OTHER side. I like cows.

Random doodads: We passed a sign (assumably referring to a road) that said “Meat Safe”, went through a town called “Oakey”, saw a gas station called “Zimm’s Corner” (or something like that), and found out that, apparently, Burger King is called Hungry Jack here. Or, at least that restaurant is using a freakishly similar logo, just like with Streets/Good Humor. Fascinating.

Uhm got back to the place, sat around for a while. Not much. Got dressed up to go the banquet they were having for the last real day of the meeting. We all got pumpkin soup, which was very good, and I had the roast beef (alternative being pork), which was okay—I don’t really like the kind of beef I have to work at to eat. You know, steaky type; not like the really tender, stringy type or ground. Where you need a special knife just to cut it.

I left early so I could catch up on, well, doing this. And to go see Tina again. TINA! Oh, and apparently the dog from last night is named Jetta (Jedda?) and lives on one of the nearby farms; she likes to come up here to look for people to play with. And bark to eat, I guess.

And now it’s around 9PM and it’s gotten REALLY windy outside. Probably bringing in more clouds, because we’ve somehow managed to have 2 nice days in a row. And some birds out there were really squawking about something, though I don’t know which ones; probably the evil, poisonous ones. And now there’s this horrible high-pitched sound out there. Pontianaks is my guess.

Just sayin’.

Hey, and since Christmas is in the summer around here, do you think their Santa wears short shorts and an open Hawaiian shirt? Just sayin’.

Oh yeah, and it’s Father’s Day today. Dad liked the fart-poem card, as was predicted. If you ever need to get a card for my dad, just get one that involves bodily functions, or talking animals. Or money. Just sayin’.


Whoo! I headed over to the dinning hall for a while to make sure dad had given one of the Maryland flag pins (which he and mom had been giving out) to Father Jack, aka Kevin Williams (or something to that effect; he makes violins), who was to be seen holding a half-drunk bottle of wine. He hadn't drank all of it, but it was funny none the less.

On the way out, we saw Jedda the dog right outside (who lives on 40 Barber Road/Drive/Lane Highfields, Queensland, by the way) and I got to play with her for a while. She followed us up to the main building where she found a stick and we played fetch. Sorta. She’s one of those dogs who knows how to fetch a stick, but never wants to give it back; she’d rather just try and eat it. But when you scratch her belly, she goes into a kind of trance and THEN you can maybe try to take it from her. But good luck, anyway.

Then it was time to go back to the room and pack, but I decided to go get the camera and take some more pictures. Unfortunately, the batteries had almost died, even though I had just replaced them last night (except with normal ones, instead of the usual rechargeable ones, which last quite a long time) and it was hard taking pictures with the flash, without it shutting off. But I managed to get a few, anyway, plus one video (which are never that great, but hey).

Finally, I had to go in to get all my packing done (almost everything from my bags had been strewn about the room over the past few days), so I had to say goodbye to the Jedda. This place has great dogs; I hope I can see Tina again before we have to leave, but I think Jedda would’ve gone home by then. Or maybe still working on eating that stick…

9.02.06

Whoo, today was interesting. After about 5 hours of sleep, I was woken up about another 5 hours too early to go to this wood exhibition-type thing at a community/sports center not far from here. And along the way, my stomach decided it wanted to punch me in itself. Huzah!

There were a few interesting things there, the first being a semi-abstract statue outside the building with several mens’ room icon –looking people playing some kind of sport. The weird thing? Two of them were missing their perfectly spherical, shiny, heads. And to add to that, one of the headed figures was holding a ball that looked EXACTYLY like the ones used for their heads. Now that’s art.

Few more things of interest:

A wooden rocking horse which could at anytime replace the vengeful female ghost from any Asian horror film— red eyes, grayish-greenish-blueish skin, and messy black hair. Get that one for your kid’s room! Horrible, horrible, idea.

A big landscape mural made entirely out of tree bark.

Oddly shaped violins painted bright colors, including one that changes color as you move past it.

A display of old hatchets, including tiny ones used to crack toffee. Yay, toffee.

And some other stuff. I was getting hungry and lunch was about 2 hours away, so I had a fried potato thing and burger-flavored crunchy things from the little café-type place inside the building. And a strawberry marshmallow thing.

Well, about an hour before lunch, I was pretty much about to collapse from tired, and since one of the IWCS members had offered to drive me and mom into town if we wanted, we decided to ask her (rather, I got MOM to ask her) if she could take me back to the apartment… type… place.

So, anyway, I hung out there, watching my stories, for the next few hours. At about 3:40PM, I got bored and decided to go for *gasp* a walk. And for once, it was actually warm and sunny out. *double gasp*

There are these weird birds here who look like they should live near the sea (even though I haven’t seen any water around here), but for whatever reason, decided to live here. I walked past two of them and they started talking to eachother, and then yelling at me. Well, I circle around them for a while, until I decide to get closer. And, after some more yelling, one of them decides to take off into the air and start chasing me. And I run, screaming. Eh, yeh feckin’ basterds! I could take ya’, if I had my wooden beating stick with me!

Yes, I really do have a beating stick—I got it from the wood expo earlier. I’m thinking of working something up with it and the bottle of holy water that’s downstairs.

Having had enough of that, I decide to kick a stick (and then later a rock) around for about 15 minutes, only to go back into the room after I realized that I would probably pass out after a while. Because my legs don’t work. I fail at kick-the-rock. I’m totally awesome at kick-the-can, though. Oh yeahz.

No sooner than I get back into my room, does the bus with the parents and the rest pull up. I go out there, and after dropping all their stuff off at the room, we head over to the dining hall until dinner. We helped out a bit, and by “we” I mean “mostly mom, but I brought the glasses over and put the chips in the bowl”.

I got to visit with Tina again. Yay. 10+ more photos.

So, dinner’s shepherd’s pie, steak, peas, corn, gravy, and rolls. I normally don’t like ground beef, but I the pie was good anyway—it had potatoes on it. PO-TA-TOES! ARE YOU FLUENT IN ENGLISH YET!? Wait, what?

Desert was a little weird—some sort of egg custard with pudding and a peach slice. I liked the pudding and peach, but the egg was really… Rototuaey . You know what I mean.

Bloo, bloo, bloo, hung out for a while longer after dinner. They made some announcements, we got a free sample pack of tea bags, and mom helped them clean up.

Then me and mom (shut up, grammar) decided to make use of the ping-pong table at the back of the hall. We’re both really BAD at it (especially me—the few times I managed to hit the ball, it went flying across the room), but it was great fun anyway. That is, until one of the IWCS guys came over and decided he was going to teach me how to play a proper game of ping-pong, whether I liked it or not. Uh, no. I’d rather play a crap game of ping-pong with my mom, than play an equally crap game with some weird guy hovering around and trying to take the paddle from me every 2 seconds. Way to take the fun out of ping-pong, man. I bet he would’ve tried to teach me how to properly kick a rock around if he had been there…

Anyway, after that, we headed back to the room for a while, until I heard a dog barking outside. I looked out the window, and saw what I thought was Tina, so I decided to get my beatin’ stick and head out to see what was bugging her. Turns out it wasn’t Tina at all, but this tiny (and equally old) black dog. Dad was just coming back from wherever, and he said the dog had come by earlier and wanted someone to play with him. I got a few photos, even though it was too dark to see anything on the screen. He picked up a piece of bark, and started to try and eat it. Silly old dog; I’ll have to find out who he is.

Back to the room, where I attempted to go to sleep. Well, first, I discovered that my horrible florescent lamp wasn’t working, so I got the one from the other bed room. And spent the next 10 minutes trying to find a place where it wouldn’t BLIND me with its 900 watt bulb, or make it look like something was on fire due to its yellow plastic cover. Fun.

And now sleep at around 12AM. Whee.

9.01.06

We finally got to go into Toowoomba today. Got up real early to get on the bus; I hate getting up to do things. Once we got down there, the guy drove around for, like, 10 minutes talking about stuff before he let us off. Really, not too much to talk about,

First, we went to a book store, because I need to go a book store every few days, OR ELSE. I didn’t even know what I wanted, but dammit, I had to go there. Wait, except for Whale Rider, which they didn’t have. Anyway, I got a book called “Blaze of Glory”, which has a FREAKING AWESOME cover, but otherwise, I have no idea what it’s about.

Then, we went to a smelly place-type store. You know, essential oil kinda things? Like the hippie stuff I got yesterday. They had black pepper oil. AND IT REALLY SMELLED LIKE PEPPER. Holy crap. Bu’anyway, over to this weird fairy-themed store. I actually don’t like fairies that much; I’m more into the bad guys of mythology. Yeah, I know there are fairies that’ll TOTALLY TAKE YOU DOWN, but they’re just not as cool as dragons, nagas, sirens, PONTIANAKS, etc. So I only got this astrological pendant-thing. I didn’t really like the one for my birthdate (which it turns out they didn’t have, anyway), so I got the one after that; it’s nifty. And they put it in a bag full of sparkly stuff, and then that in a purple cloth bag, which was free. Neat.

Tooled around at the internet café for a while.

And then! McDonald’s! They had the same café-type thing attached to it like the one in Rotorua, too. And I got a cheeseburger and large fries and a raspberry frozen thing. And it was DELICIOUS. I don’t care what anybody says—I love McDonald’s cheeseburgers. Mmmm.

So anyway, back to the place.

I saw Tina again! She’s CRAZY! I was sittin’ down next to her, and she kept trying to roll over on me. And then she got up and laid back down like my cat does sometimes—on her stomach, with her back legs sticking out—and started pulling herself around. Then she started rolling around on her back like crazy. I kinda freaked out a bit, because I thought she had some sort of mad cow disease, but later dad told me that dogs do that leg thing all the time. Crazy Tina.

Oh, and she butt-scooted. You know what I’m talking about, right? Tina’s a great dog.

Went back to the room and slept for, like, 4 hours. And then woke up. It’s dinner time right now, but it’s steak and lamb, and I don’t like steak and lamb. Yep.

Mom brought me back some mashed potatoes and gravy; a little too potatoey. For some reason (which later turned out to be that a fuse had popped or something) the microwave wasn’t working, so I had to heat them up on the crazy old stove they have here. It’s the kind with the metal plates, as opposed to a flame which is what we have at home.

Stayed up until around 3AM because every time I’d lie down, it’d get hard to breathe. Weird.

8.31.06

Forced myself to get up so we could go on a little bus ride into town. First, we went up to this flower garden/tea house place, but the tea house wasn’t open yet and it was all rainy, so the flowers weren’t at their best. Then, off to go antiquing! I was hoping they’d have some books, but they only had a few. Mostly gaudy old furniture and plates and such. Mom saw a china cup there that had the same pattern as, I dunno, one she had once. But it was $160.

Next was a craft store with lots of beads. Despite knowing nothing about jewelry making, I decided to get some beads and a base necklace-type thing. Even though the beads I got aren’t going to fit on the necklace. Eh, I’ll figure something out. I also got hippie-scented perfume (well, it’s got “hippie” in the name) and a knitted bracelet kit which could either be really fun or totally horrible.

After a quick stop at a chocolate store (and some gawking at the “willy” shaped candy), we headed back for lunch. I had milk and a butter sandwich. Ohhh!

And then I saw I dog over by the door, so I went out to go find her. After a brief detour to look at some pink birds, I found her in the garage on the side of the cafeteria.

Why do dogs always go for the crotch?

Er, anyway, I took a bunch of pictures of her, then went to get mom. She took some more photos of me hugging the dog, who at this point, I only know as 0039, because I guess she just had the standard phone#-address-no-name tag. When we went back inside, we found her person and asked about her. Her name’s Tina. Tina Turner, to be exact. And she’s some sort of lab-mix. Great dog.

Now me and mom are just sitting around the “flat” and I’m working on transcribing my journal onto the computer. Even I can’t read my handwriting sometimes…

Hey hey hey, it’s dinner time. First up: Prawns (WITH THE EYES STILL ON!) and oysters. Second: Crab dippy stuff and white fish and smoked chicken.
You know the thing about prawns/shrimp/etc? If they lived on the land, and this I promise you, no one would eat them. Cockroaches, scorpions, HOUSE CENTIPEDES? Sound tasty? All land-things, all disgusting. However, put them in the water and MMM, MM, MMMM, steam those bad boys up! I mean, take a look at a shrimp with the head and legs still on and tell me it doesn’t look like some sort of centipede monster!

Anyway, I had a bit of the fish and a bit of the chicken and a bit of the crab. The crab would’ve been pretty good, were it not for the bits of shell, which, by the way, kills the appetite faster than something that’s fast. I still really don’t like white fish, so I still didn’t really like that. The chicken, however? It was cold. And one piece I had totally had this crazy looking tendon-thing in it, and these doodad that looked like BEANS. WHAT THE HELL? Scaryscaryscary.

The thing is, with things like oysters, you can look at it and right away say: “Hey, that looks DISGUSTING!” inside and out. But with chicken or what-have-you, you can get a piece of chicken and say: “Mmm, mm, mmmm, that’s some TASTY looking chicken”, only to pull it open and find something HORRIBLE in it. HORRIBLE.

It’s like one of those chocolate eggs what have the toys in them; you never know what’s going to be in it. Except instead of an easily choked on toy, it’s some crazy-nasty chicken thing. Yes.

Oh yeah, I got a few pictures of Jack Hackett-guy. He was wearing an orange paisley shirt. Awesome. When I mentioned the similarities to dad, he was like “Oh yeah, he does!” and said that he looked familiar even before I said anything about it. Awesome x2.

TINA!

8.30.06

Hey, I guess I need to transcribe all this junk at some point. I don’t feel like getting my book out, but since I’ve already got the laptop on, I might as well do a bit of today’s entry.

Slept in late again, and by that, I STILL mean 9PM. The bus to Toowoomba (???), aka the IWCS place, stopped by the motel to pick us up. Apparently a lot of the IWCS folks were saying there, too. Got all my stuff packed up and headed down the stairs. And when I didn’t put my whole foot down on the last step (only the heel), I got to fall over. I didn’t even drop anything, but I did yell “CRAP!” pretty loudly. And despite the fact that the whole group of IWCSers was standing just a few feet away, no one seemed to notice.

I don’t think my legs are supposed to work anymore. Because even as I’m sitting down on the comfy bus chairs, they hurt. For the first time since ever, I WANT to take a bath, but unfortunately, there’s a crazy drought going on so I don’t think I’ll be able to.

It’s supposed to only take an hour or so to get there, but we took about an hour picking a few people up at the airport and… some place else.

Man, this is crap scenery. So far: New Zealand > Australia. Yeah, I said it. Australia’s pretty pug fugly looking. And a teenage Kate Winslet never went crazy and killed anyone here. That I know of. Just sayin’.

Really, the only interesting things I’ve seen have been emus and cows. WHITE COWS. And as always, one brown. OMG.

I want a McDonald’s cheeseburger. BADLY. I think they must cut them with cocaine or some such addictive substance.

AND OH LOOK IT’S RAINING. About the drought… ? It’s pouring out there.

I saw a sign advertising a McDonald’s. 15 minutes ahead. WHY YOU TAUNT ME?

Hey, we’re almost there. Still want my cheeseburger. Man, is it ever easier to do this on the computer; less convenient, I suppose, but at least it’s easier on my wrist. I have the wrist of an old lady.

The Toowoomba Grammar School is pretty good looking. Much better than the Kelsey Grammar School. Infact, the whole area’s pretty good looking. We just switched from complete crap (+emus) to a nice little town. Looks nice, at least. It could be the seat of the Australian/Gay mafia for all I know.

I think the battery’s gonna kick soon.

Woah, okay. So straight from nice little town to “Hey, that looks like the kinda house a serial killer would live in”. We’re actually not staying in Toowoomba, but just off of it. The meeting place is some sort of religious retreat, just like the Florida meetings. It’s a little creepy. Instead of getting the “two beds + lamp” room I’ve been told we were going to have, we get the “flat”.

It’s two floors of pure 70s nostalgia. And pure creepy. But it is still pretty nice; there’s a living room (with crappy TV), a kitchen, some empty room, a laundry room, 3 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms. It actually looks like there’s 3, but it’s just that the toilet is in a separate room from the shower. Weird.

They’ve got closets like I think they did in “One Missed Call”. The one that girl pokes her head out of? I really didn’t pay much attention to that movie, other than to gawk at that crazy zombie. That was one fine lookin’ zombie. What now?

We went over to the cafeteria type place where I got to eat a ham sammich. After scraping as much stuff off it as possible. Ham is weird.

Stayed in the room for a few hours, watching DVDs.

When I went downstairs to go over to the main building, what do I see? I lizard! A tiny (about 3in.) gecko just sitting in the hallway! I don’t know where the camera is, so I just go over to the meeting area where they’re playing a slideshow. I get bored after about two minutes and decide to go back to the room, where I see that the lizard is still there. I find that the camera’s still in the room, but also that I’m not supposed to take pictures of this lizard. Because 1) Whenever I so much as breathed, it’d wiggle a few inches away and 2) The camera is a lazy bastard. With the flash off, it turns out orange and blurry and with the flash, it turns out bright and blurry. Plus, for some odd reason, it took around 10 seconds for it to take the picture. But I finally got two or so decent shots.

Headed over to the cafeteria for dinner; oniony hamburgers and “snags” (aka hotdogs). It was actually pretty good, and I rarely eat hamburgers (no cheese!?). Especially ones with so many onions. And even though they came on huge buns (like, 4”x4”x2”, if that’s the right way to say it), I had two.

After dinner, it was pouring rain—actually, it was throughout. Sprinted back. Since the laundry room (where the lizard ran off too) isn’t (as) scary when you’re not alone, I decided to go look for it. Was up in the corner, or at least, I think it was the same one. This one was pink, while the first was brown, though the may have just been the lighting. I don’t think I would’ve seen two different ones without seeing both in there. Or something. Anyway, I called mom in and just as I got the camera working, it wiggled (yes, that is the best word I can think of to describe how it/they move) into the space between the wall and the windowsill. I turned the flash on and pointed it into said space a bit (spiders, you know, have to worry about the spiders), but it’d gone down into ANOTHER space behind the… bricky stuff. You know, that stuff what holds them together? Mortar? Whatever.

Either way, it was a gecko and it was pink and it was hard to take pictures of.

Oh, also? There’s a bottle of holy water in the living room. No, I am being completely serious. But, unlike every hotel, ever (though I suppose this doesn’t really count as a hotel), there ISN’T a Bible in the dresser. Or, at least, not in mine. So, holy water: yes, Bible: no. Oh, and on that note, I saw an old guy in a big poncho (and not one of those cheap plastic ones they make you pay $5 for at amusement park raft rides, either) who looked almost EXACTLY like Father Jack Hackett. You know, from “Father Ted”? If you haven’t seen that show, you fail. At the internet or life or whatever. Well, anyway, he looked just like him, only with more hair and a poncho and probably not a horrible alcoholic priest who says “Feck!” a lot and gets his glasses stolen by crows. But other than that, spot on.

8.29.06

Slept in late this morning. And by late, I mean 9AM.

Got on the “Cat” boat to get over to where we’d get onto ANOTHER boat to get to the koala sanctuary. Got that?

The 2nd ride took about 1 ½ hours and was sorta a combination “look at those houses, there” tour. Crazy houses.

My foot still hurts.

Got to the koala place. Guess what they had?

Koalas.

Like, 300 of them. And wombats. And a cassowary who wouldn’t stand still for a good photo. Dirty cassowary… naw, I loves me some cassowary. And, oh! Guess what else they had? Turkey monsters. Oh, no, they weren’t part of any exhibit; they were just there. Like a bunch of dirty hobos.

FREELOADERS!

And EMUS! These ones were much cleaner than those NZ ones. Dirty NZ emus, can’t even bother to fix themselves up. Anyway. They were only about 2 inches from me, and I even got to poke at one. Wow.
Then kangaroos! Horror! They had this big enclosure that you just walked right into. Complete with poo. Kangaroo poo. EVERYWHERE. After a while, you don’t even bother trying to avoid stepping in it.

And at this time, I’d like to give another shoutout to my homey, Adilic. I think you would have like it.

The poo, I mean.

I got to pet a wallaby. I think he hated me. There was a sign at the front about what not to do around them, and one of the things was DON’T PUT YOUR HAND IN THE JOEY’S POUCH. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T DO IT! That amused me to no end. WHERE ON THE DOLL DID THEY TOUCH YOU!?

There was this fuzzy grey one; I think it was old. Don’t think I pet it, though. Should’ve.

They all lie around in the same pose as my cat. The one that pees everywhere.

The orange one that pees everywhere.

After that, and after scraping doodie off our shoes, we headed over to the dingos. Their names were Kosciosko and Smiggings. Seriously. SMIGGINS. They weren’t orange and skinny like you always see them on TV; more like huskeys, off-white colored. Vanilla dingo. That sounds like a fancy drink. Or a porn name.

Meanwhile, I think it’s illegal to make “The dingo’s got me baby” jokes around here.

Then mom decided to head off to the gift shop, because we were running out of time before the boat came to pick us up. Me and dad saw a turtle.

AND IT WAS THE GREATEST TURTLE TO HAVE EVER LIVED, EVER.

He was by the side in the duck cage, sticking his neck out the holes in the fence. Freaking great turtle.

Then, on the way to watch the sheepdog demonstration, we saw these poofy chickens. And a big, nasty, brown sheep.

WITH A TAIL.

Sheep never have tails back home; I think they cut them off when they’re lambs.

She kept yelling at us, the nasty wench. And you know what she says? FOOD. I’m serious! It sounds like she’s saying “food”. It was freaky. One of the lambs looked like a cow.

Watched the sheepdog thing for a little while; there was one dog who got to jump on top of the sheep. Then it was time to get to the boat. Which is where I am now. Writing this. And my wrist really hurts.

Weehoo, I think I’ve spent more time on boats today than I ever have! Must be just like it was on the Titanic. Except a lot shorter and without the sinking or the dying and not in the early 20th century.

But still on a boat. Boats. Ships. Boats. Right…

So anyway, we got off that boat and onto another to go somewhere to eat. And it took OVER AN HOUR to get there, because we stopped 9 times. So we get to wherever , see the restaurant we planned on going to, decided it looked too expensive, then just walked around for a while. We don’t see anywhere else to eat, so we stop in at a grocery store to gawk at weird Australian food.

You know what they have? Chocolate eggs. WITH TOYS IN THEM. They used to have something like them when I was little(r), but they stopped making them because a bunch of dumbasses choked on the toy inside. Because it’s not like EVERYTHING else in the world is a choking hazard for some stupid kid.
So I got two.
Also, they had those cereal bars—you know the ones. But here’s the thing: They’re made of Rice Crispies and by Kellog’s, but they’re not referred to as Rice Crispies. And while the mascots look a lot like Snap, Crackle, and Pop, they clearly aren’t. Seriously.

And there’s a brand of ice cream called “Streets” that uses what looks a whole lot like the Good Humor logo. Or Good Humour. Oh, and something called “Paddle Bars” or “Ice Cream Paddles” or something. I thought that was funny. One flavor (flavour?) was supposed to be some sort of frozen jelly pop—too bad I couldn’t get it. Sounded neat.

Anyway, we didn’t find anything to eat, so we just took another hour-long boat ride back to the motel-area. We finally ate at the mall food court, about a block from the motel. McDonald’s. For the first time in years, I had a McDonald’s cheeseburger (or any cheeseburger, for that matter).

And it was DELICIOUS; I’m serious.

You know how I was saying a while back about local “specialties” at McDonalds? Spam+rice in Hawaii, lobster rolls in Maine? They’ve got something like that here—the McOZ. It’s got BEET in it.
And my cheeseburger wrapper said “Egg and Bacon McMuffin” or something on it. Weird.

You know what else is weird here? Everything seems to close at 6PM. Seriously, we got to the mall around 5:30 and a lot of the restaurants were already closed. I think this is another thing that has to do with being south of the equator.

Oh, and since Father’s Day here is on the 3rd of September, we got dad a card—it’s got a poem about farts in it. But the card place was getting ready to close, so I had to climb over a bunch of stuff to get to them. I think I crushed some things.

Dad went off to get some mediocre Chinese food while we were eating, so it’s going to be a surprise, I guess. Me and mom walked back to the motel while he was still doing that. You know something crazy about Australia + NZ? The crossing lights only last, like, 5 seconds. And it takes forever for them to change to green. I don’t know how old people are supposed to cross the street here.

Have I mentioned this already?

Watching TV—did you know that there’s an Australia and NZ Idol? Same theme music/logo style and everything.

Ate one of my eggs—the Simpsons one. Got Itchy.

I HATE ITCHY.

8.28.06

It’s the first real day in Australia.

Yes, they didn’t have days until we got here.

Yesterday? Got off the plane, waited for a while outside. An IWCS guy drove us to our motel. Let me tell you. Airport area Brisbane? Looks like shit.

Oh, excuse me. Shite. It really does.

They even had the obligatory “Thing on Fire”. Got to the motel. The neighborhood’s still crap and the motel ain’t so fine, but at least the guy working the place is nice. Even brought us up a new mini fridge when ours didn’t work.

And from there, I’m not going to talk about. Let’s just say emotional breakdown.

( Don't Feed the Ibis! )

Well, here it is. I said I was going to keep a jourlnal for Japan + Hawaii, which I never finished, so I am by law required to keep one this time. The handwritting will be unreadable and there will be numerous spelling and grammetical errors, such as that one right there, but I don't care. And if you do, then you fail. Fail!

( Palm trees, dammit. )