I apologize for the horrible tennis joke in my title, I just couldn’t come up with anything better to label this entry.

We flew in from Hobart and met up with my buddy from Vancouver, Aaron, at the Melbourne airport before heading to his place out in the suburb of Box Hill.  Like our friends from Vancouver in Sydney, he was also working in Australia (albeit he was here on a 6 month contract and not indefinitely like them).  Unlike our friends in Sydney, he moved here because he has an unhealthy infatuation with Australian surfer dudes.  To each their own I guess.

Anyways, we were happy to be able to crash at his place and for the next 5 days we explored the area.  We also met up with our friend Susannah, an Australian we ended up travelling much of Syria with.  She had started a new job in Melbourne after living for 8 years in London and it was great catching up with her.  On our first day we basically just walked around the central business district, checking out the Queen Victoria market and Chinatown as well.  It was hot out and the skies were blue so we decided to relax in the shade in Federation square for a bit, surrounded by a lot of other Melbournites who were watching tennis on the outdoor big screen.  The reason they were watching tennis was because the Australian Open happened to be on at the exact time we were in Melbourne, which was pretty sweet.  In the evening we hit up a club/lounge called Transport and had good night.

Have I mentioned how expensive Australia is?  I’m pretty sure I have, but to illustrate this point I’ll tell you about our movie experience.  The next night, after dinner with Aaron’s girl Megan (yes, for those who know Aaron and are reading this, there actually is a real life female who not only is awesome, she also seems to like him…crazy but true) and her friends we decided to catch a movie.  Di wanted to watch the Green Hornet since Taiwanese superstar Jay Chou was one of the main characters, and Aaron and I were down to watch a super hero movie.  The theatre was pretty nice, though no nicer than those we have in Canada, and the ticket prices were advertised at 18 dollars.  I thought that was pretty steep, but when we paid for the ticket it was actually 24 dollars each!  You see, 3D movies are 23 dollars and we had to buy the glasses for an extra dollar.  I paid 48 dollars for what turned out to be a pretty crappy movie.  Actually pretty crappy is an understatement, it sucked.  Don’t watch it.

While Aaron was working we also spent some time with Susannah.  She took us out for a fantastic lunch at a French restaurant called Bistro Vue in the downtown area, complete with Wagyu beef and perfectly smoked salmon.  It was a nice change from this ghetto restaurant called China Bar (though the food was actually decent) that Aaron kept taking us to.  The highlight of our time in the city though was seeing a tennis match one evening with Susannah at the Australian Open.  Di and I picked a day that worked best for the 3 of us, not knowing who was going to be playing.  We totally lucked out as our tickets ended up being for Nadal vs Cilic.  Nadal is the number 1 ranked tennis player in the world, so to catch him playing Cilic (ranked 15^th) was pretty awesome.  This was our first time watching live tennis (that’s them playing in the above picture), and where better to do it than at a Grand Slam event.  The match lasted about 3 hours, and though I wasn’t used to being completely silent while watching athletes play, I really enjoyed the game.  Nadal won, and I, like all the other screaming ladies with outstretched arms, was hoping he’d throw me his sweaty shirt once the match was done.  No luck there, shucks.

For our last couple of days in the area we drove up the Great Ocean Road, Australia’s most famous stretch of asphalt.  Megan (I swear this girl is real guys) was sweet enough to take Di, Aaron, and I on this famous road trip in her ride.  We made it to the town of Apollo Bay pretty late at night, and the next morning we headed to the 12 Apostles, the Great Ocean Road’s most famous landmark.  Basically this part of the coast is comprised of sheer limestone cliffs overlooking fierce and beautiful seas.  At the 12 Apostles, the erosions caused by the powerful ocean left independent limestone “apostles”, though we really only could count 5.  Nevertheless it was a gorgeous spot, and the apostles won’t be around forever due to continued erosion, so we were happy to make it there.  On the way back we grabbed some fish and chips and a bottle of wine and just relaxed on a beach to eat lunch and enjoy our surroundings.  The beach was packed, full of teens wrapped in Australian flags and families with little children, as it was Australia day.  That definitely made for a lively and happy atmosphere.  The Great Ocean Road is populated by some awesome surf towns that are not far removed from each other.  As we drove by Torquay, Lorne and Apollo Bay I was slightly disappointed that for the 3 weeks we’ve been here we haven’t yet got on a surfboard.  Luckily I quickly got over that disappointment due to the music that was playing on the radio.  We were listening to a program that was all corny love song dedications, and they were playing hits like “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You”.  As Aaron and I loudly sang along to that song, and others like “Sometimes When We Touch”, I could tell that Megan and Di were enchanted by the magical unison of our voices and our heavenly harmonies in combination with pretty much the best songs ever.  I’m sure it’s a car ride that touched their hearts and will forever leave a blissful impression they can look back on in their darkest hours.  In all honesty singing along horribly to those cheesy songs with Aaron was pretty hilarious, to me and him.  Actually travelling in developing countries for so long hasn’t really given us the chance to keep up with the new music, so to my dismay Justin Bieber wasn’t the only one putting out awesome new songs on the radio when I arrived.  I admit that I’m pretty into Bruno Mars’ music now.  I’ve probably heard that Grenade song no less than 10 times in the past few days, and after singing it so much in the car I’ve pretty much got the lyrics down at least as well as Aaron’s got the dance moves down.

We had a great time in the Melbourne area, watching tennis, checking things out, and visiting our friends and meeting new ones.  Hopefully Susannah and Megan will come visit us in Canada sometime soon.  And Aaron, thanks for letting us crash at your place; I’d catch a grenade for you (yeah yeah yeah).

Before Eug could openly admit he wanted to stay in Sydney to read more poetry to me at Bondi beach for a few more days, we found available accommodations in Tasmania and flew there.  We usually don’t book ahead more than 2 days in advance, but because January is the busiest season for Tasmania, we went ahead and booked our full 6 days there.  These included our plane tickets flying in from Sydney and flying out to Melbourne, our rental car for the road trip, a river cruise, and 3 different hotels.  The entire research and booking process took us about 8 hours altogether, we were pretty worn out after that.  It felt like the time we put together an IKEA Pax wardrobe with the sliding door!  Not fun I tell ya.  Sorry for complaining about trip planning but when you are used to just going with it, it’s actually tough to plan out an exact itinerary for an entire upcoming week.  And an exact itinerary strips away a lot of the fun and adventure in the journey.  Since Mellissa offered us such a welcoming and comfortable stay in Sydney, it was a little hard to pack up and leave.  The road was beckoning though, so we moved on.

Tasmania is an island state almost directly below Melbourne at the south eastern corner of Australia.  It is reachable via an overnight ferry from Melbourne or via flights from other cities.  Tassie (as it’s nicknamed) is well known for exquisite beaches, beautiful mountains, abundant wildlife and wilderness.  It also produces high-quality cheeses, wines (especially Pinot Noir and Riesling) and seafood.  Our first stop was the capital city Hobart.  We walked around Hobart the first day covering the historical parts of town, Salamanca market, and the waterfront.  Eug said the waterfront has an incredible resemblance to Halifax.  I’ve never been but I’ll take his word for it.  We also came upon a very happening venue on the water that had a free concert going on with lots of wine and beers.  We went in to check out a live blues performance in a packed tent, which almost broke our ear drums.  We found out later that the weeklong celebrations were for a new art museum opening up in Hobart named Mona Foma, housing the $100 million private collection of a guy named David Welsh.   When we returned to the city after our road trip we discovered that on the last night of festivities Mick Jagger was headlining a performance.  Locals were super excited as our waitress told us he was the ‘biggest celebrity’ to ever stage a concert in Hobart.

The next day we picked up our Nissan Micra from Budget Rent-A-Car and drove to Port Arthur, a natural penitentiary chosen by Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur in 1830 for those who committed crimes more than once.  Port Arthur is nestled in the Tasman Peninsula on a vast grass field in a bowl shape, with hills on one side and water on the other.  The natural landscape made it easy for the guards to keep an eye on the convicts and near impossible for the convicts to escape.  The admission ticket included a 40 minute guided tour and 20 minute harbour cruise.  The tour was informative and we each got a card at the end which represented a convict we could follow through a sort of ‘choose your own adventure’ path to see what happened to his life in Port Arthur.  The jail was brutal in how it treated its prisoners, with many being literally worked to death.  It was also “forward thinking” when it abolished lashing as punishment to prisoners and instead placed them into small cells with masks on in solitary confinement, ie. physical torture was replaced with conditions that fostered insanity.  It was a solemn place to visit, to say the least.  Afterwards, we headed west to Strahan, a small town in the west coast where tourists go to get a taste of the wilderness via train, seaplane, or cruise.  We took the famous Gordon River cruise which brought us out into Macquarie Harbour and Hells Gate (aptly named by arriving prisoners at the penitentiary here) in addition to the Gordon River.  We also did a forest walk where we saw some of the world’s oldest trees in the world’s densest rainforest.  I was pretty excited to see what a 2000 year old Huon pine (world’s 2^nd longest living tree) would look like, only to be disappointed by what resembled a scrawny, wrinkly trunk covered in moss.  It definitely wasn’t as regal looking as the world’s oldest trees, the sequoias in California.  We also cruised by Atlantic Salmon and Rainbow Trout farms in the tea-coloured half salt-half fresh water harbour.  That was pretty interesting to see.

The next two days we visited two great hiking spots, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park and Freycinet National Park.  We did a few of the famous hikes there.  One was the Dove Lake-circuit underneath Cradle Mountain and the other one was the Wineglass Bay lookout and Beach circuit in Freycinet.  One problem with traveling for a long period of time is that we’ve become somewhat travel snobs.  We started out being Roman ruins snobs after seeing the amazing ruins in Libya and comparing them to all the others on the Mediterranean.  We later became dive snobs after going to Palau (regrettably not listening to Eug’s dad’s advice).  Now we are lake snobs after seeing Jiuzhaigou in China, and winery snobs after being in South Africa.  The Dove Lake circuit was nice and is rated one of Tasmania’s top hikes but we couldn’t help but compare the lake and mountain to our last hiking experience, which was in China.  To be fair there was a big Dutch group who came to Cradle Mountain park just to snap pictures of the flora and fauna, and they were fascinated.  Wineglass Bay, however, was indeed gorgeous as you can see from the above picture.  It was unlike anything we’ve seen before so we could see why it was ranked one of the world’s top 10 beaches by the US Magazine “Outside”.  The white sandy beach with turquoise coloured water was encased in a perfectly parabolic bay.  It was a great workout too, to hike there after being in the car for so many hours.  At the base of the hike the park had signs posted that rated the walk very difficult and not recommended for children and the elderly.  Really it was probably equivalent to hiking to the first 1/4 mark of the Grouse Grind and we quite enjoyed getting our hearts pumping.

One interesting/disgusting thing I should mention about the driving is the amount of road kill we came across while driving trans-Tasmania.  We consciously kept a record and we saw, on average, one dead animal for every 5km we drove on the highway.  Some of the carcasses were pretty big, comparable to a big dog at home.  They were mostly wallabies and possums I think.  Either way, the sheer number of dead animals was crazy.  The roads were extremely windy all through Tassie, and though posted limits were about 100 km/h, Eug usually kept it around 80 km/h as one turn inevitably blended into another and going at 80 clicks around a corner in our Micra didn’t feel too stable.  There rarely were any straightaways on the road.  The local Tasmanians, however, were obviously used to driving on the curvy roads at high speeds as we were getting constantly passed whenever they had a chance.  This must be why there is so much road kill on the highway!  I went to Australia for a month about 10 years ago, so I’ve had my fair share of seeing live Kangaroos and Wallabies hopping around.  Eug, on the other hand, has seen more dead wallabies and possums than live ones because of this road trip.

We ended our Tasmania trip in one of Hobart’s coffee shops called The Cupping Room where they roast their own coffee.  The coffee shop itself had a cool urban vibe to it and needless to say their coffee was really good.  As Eug mentioned earlier, Australia has a serious coffee culture, and we were not disappointed with the small cafes here at all.  We were also told that Melbourne is known for the best espresso, and that is where we are headed next.   We’ll report back soon.

Since we had to cancel our trip to Queensland, on the recommendations of our friends here we changed our plans to head to the island of Tasmania.  However, Tassie is an extremely popular place to go in the summer and all the hotels in Hobart, its capital, were booked up for the weekend.  Thus we had a few more days to spend in Sydney before leaving, and though I could have easily spent every day on Bondi surfing we decided to give Mellissa a break from us.  So we headed up to the wine region of Hunter Valley to get our drink on for a couple of days.

Though I am partial to New World wines I never have been a huge fan of either Semillon or Shiraz, two varietals Australia is well known for.  The Hunter Valley region, not as famous as Australia’s Barossa region on the worldwide stage, is especially famous for its Semillon and Shiraz.  To be honest even though they’re not my favourite grapes I still love drinking wine in wine country.  So we drove the 90 mins it took to get there and started to taste the moment we arrived.  The first winery we passed by actually had a bunch of wild Kangaroos hopping around in its vineyard, sweet.  The lady at our guesthouse recommended some small wineries to us so we started with those to get our tastebuds wet.  We eventually moved on to the larger, more picturesque wineries to soak in some views and take some shots (pictures).  Some of the wineries were massive and promoted concerts as well on their grounds.  For example, INXS was playing at one winery sometime in the near future while Neil Diamond was playing at another.  I wouldn’t have minded watching INXS (I have no idea who their lead singer is now though I did have the KICK tape when I was a kid and I used to love ‘Never Tear Us Apart’.  My air guitar always came out after the silent pauses in that song.  And the saxophone solo was pretty sweet too, they should bring the saxophone back.  Sorry, I digress.) but sadly Di didn’t really know any of their songs.  Even more sad than that, she knew who Neil Diamond was.  And what’s even more sad then that?  She’s a huge fan of the song ‘Sweet Caroline’ because of the version sung in Glee.  But again, I digress.  Anyways, we had our first multicourse fine dining meal in Australia at a top restaurant here as well.  All in all, the wine was decent and the food was good.  However, the last wine region we visited on our trip was around the South African towns of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch.  In comparison I would have to say that South Africa’s wine valley was superior in every aspect.  Our meals there blew us away, the wine was delicious and their valley was stunningly beautiful.  Our friends here concur that Hunter Valley is not Australia’s best, so hopefully in Tasmania we can check out some wine as well.  I do sound like a snob here though; Hunter Valley still really is a nice place (just look at the above picture) and a short drive from Sydney, so recommended if you have some extra time like we did.

When we returned to Sydney Mellissa had a night planned for us with a few of her friends.  She made a reservation at a small seafood restaurant called Fish Face.  It was a neighbourhood joint with an open kitchen that held about 20 guests and served really tasty seafood from a small menu.  It, like most joints in Sydney, allowed BYO which meant you could bring your own wine to polish.  I really wish Vancouver allowed more of that.  After a great dinner we walked up the street to Eau de Vie, supposedly the spot with the best cocktails in the city.  Though I will vouch that the cocktails were the best I’ve had all year they were 25 dollars a pop!  Yes, 25 dollars, that is damn expensive for a mixed drink.  The vibe of the place was pretty cool, the bartenders looked very old school bartenderish (shirt, tie, tight vest, etc), the roof was low, the room was dark, and the varieties of liquor available were impressive to say the least.  Though I couldn’t recognize almost any of the bottles, the labels looked antique (which is cool, I guess) and the drinks were really good.  Each drink did take very a long time for them to make, which pretty much meant it took 30 minutes just to get your order in if you had 2 people ahead of you in line.  I had a couple concoctions made with ginger beer which were awesome.  All in all, it was a great (but expensive) night out.

Now we’re in Tasmania, ready to check out a different scene.  At our hotel in Hobart we just watched an episode of Glee.  I guess I should admit that I too, sadly, have become a Glee fan.  Sigh, that’s embarrassing. 

And it’s been super sweet.  As Di mentioned earlier, we’ve decided to stop doing the tougher travelling to finish off our one year trip.  So after spending New Years in Taipei we took a look at an atlas and decided to head to Australia.  Just 4 months earlier my friend Mellissa in HK moved to Sydney so I quickly messaged her to see if she wanted visitors.  The good news was she was happy to have us, the bad news was she had to leave the day after we arrived to Perth for a wedding.  So for a couple of days we had her sweet pad to ourselves.  And it was a sweet pad, set in Neutral Bay (a really nice part of Sydney) with a great view of the water and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Having a place for ourselves with a kitchen inspired us to cook, and we made a couple of great meals at home for the first time in over 10 months.  Luckily my other friend I.G. is also living in Sydney, so he took us out for a night while Mellissa was gone.  Both IG and Mellissa lived in Vancouver and went to UBC with me.  IG also lived in Japan for a while before completing law school and now works as a lawyer here.  Mellissa has lived in the cream of the world’s city crop, with stints in London, New York and HK in the finance field.  Both are now total Sydney converts, and after spending a week here Di and I can see why.

Sydney could easily be Vancouver’s older, bigger sister.  We spent a few days walking around downtown and architecturally a lot of the city looks similar; in downtown alone there are tons of comparisons.  For example, Sydney Harbour Bridge looks like Burrard Bridge, the Rocks area is kind of like Gastown, Darling Harbour is kind of like Granville Island, and Chinatown is well, like Chinatown.  Neutral Bay, where we’re living, totally reminds me of Kitsilano.  There are a lot of inlets full of little sailboats just like in False Creek as well.  In addition, a ton of the girls are running around in lululemon pants!  We have not been in another country on our travels where lululemon is so prevalent.  Maybe women in the Middle East wore them under their burkas, but I doubt it.  Anyways, while exploring the city our first stop was obviously the Sydney opera house.  I really don’t have to describe that building as I’m sure it’s one of the most identifiable in the world (if you don’t know it, check the picture above, and try getting out of your house once in a while).  We were even able to catch a concert in there one afternoon.  It was a kind of ‘opera greatest hits’ concert that just started for the summer season.  Inside the opera house was a lot smaller than I expected, and the concert seemed to be more of a casual recital than a serious heavy opera performance but it was enjoyable.  I knew it was gonna be pretty chill when I asked the lady at the ticket counter if there was a dress code, and her response was that I had to wear a shirt.  I was wondering if she meant I had to wear a collared shirt, but what she meant was that I just couldn’t show up topless.  I guess I’ll have to check ‘going topless to the opera’ off the bucket list in another city…shucks.  The concert had only 6 performers: 2 sopranos, 3 tenors, and one funny guy on a Steinway who also acted as the host.  It was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  The rest of the time we’ve just been relaxing, walking around town, eating fresh Sydney fare and drinking copious amounts of great espresso and Australian wine out in the summer sun.  Speaking of espresso, the coffee is fantastic here, and though Vancouver has a dominant coffee culture, that dominance is spearheaded by Starbucks.  Sydney has a far greater number of independent cafes, with Starbucks only being seen in the touristy areas.  We haven’t had a bad latte yet at any of these independent cafes, which we really appreciate since most of the countries we’ve been to serve instant Nescafe as coffee (nasty!).  They also have their own terms here like ‘long black’ and ‘flat white’ for their coffee orders, kind of like our ‘double double’.  Though I might like the coffee scene here a hair more than Vancouver’s, the beach scene here is far, far superior to ours back home.  We spent a day at Manly beach and another at Bondi (pronounced Bondai not Bondee) and here’s where I got seriously jealous.  Their beaches have great waves and surf culture is really prevalent.  The swells were large on the 2 days we were on the beach, and signs were up everywhere to not swim in the ocean.  The surfers obviously didn’t care which was cool for us to watch.  I wanted to rent a longboard to catch the whitewash, but I didn’t want to be the only novice tool in the water so I stayed on the beach.  The day we spent at Manly rained a little so the crowds were more sparse but the beach was still stunning.  What was crazy at Manly was watching a few 8-10 year old kids go through lifeguard training, it was hardcore.  They were powerfully swimming through water that would have tossed me around like a ragdoll.  The day we spent at the world famous Bondi beach was sunny and it was gorgeous there.  Mellissa told us Bondi was where the beautiful people of Sydney strut their stuff, and I could totally see what she was talking about.  Literally.  Topless girls were everywhere!  I wouldn’t have placed an exclamation mark behind that sentence if I was writing about the beaches of the South of France but I had no idea they would be topless in Sydney.  Hence, the exclamation mark.  Actually, I just heard they were topless on Bondi, I was too busy staring into the eyes of my beautiful wife during the times I wasn’t watching the surfers ride to notice half naked women.  Seriously.  Oh I was reciting poetry while looking into her eyes as well.  Anyways, the beaches and the beach/surf scene blow Vancouver’s away.  And though we only went to 2 beaches, the city is littered with countless others mere minutes from each other.  Did I mention I was jealous?

Oh i haven’t explained why I titled this entry ‘Stranded’ in Sydney.  We are supposed to be in Brisbane right now, doing some sufing on the beaches of Gold Coast or in Surfer’s Paradise or in the town of Noosa.  After a few days of that we were going to head to Cairns so we could scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef.  Unfortunately, if you’ve been watching the news you’d know, the whole area is a disaster zone as it’s covered in floods.  So Di and I had to cancel our flights and reroute our itinerary in Australia.  We’ve finally figured it out, and the places we’re going to come highly recommended from our friends here.  So though they may not be as famous as the province of Queensland (where the floods are) we’re still looking forward to it.  However, we still have a couple days left in Sydney before our flight out…hope we can head to Bondi one more time, so I can, um, recite more poetry.