North Stradbroke Island

Griffith University made a trip for us! Yesterday we went to North Stradbroke Island, east of Brisbane, 45 minutes by car and 45 minutes by ferry. It was great! We were told it was going to get about 32 degrees, but luckily it didn't get that hot at all, maybe only 23 (still hot for Norwegians). At the end of the day we even had rain. BIG rain! I don't like temperatures above 30, so I didn't mind. But I'll have to get used to it later, because here in Australia we're moving towards summer now.

Pics taken from the ferry:

 

We were allowed to go for a swim before having lunch. Yey! I simply love to swim! I do it whenever I get the chance. One of the last things I did before I left Norway was taking a swim in the lake with my boyfriend. Cold as ice of course. And in July I went swimming in many different places in Switzerland, even in a fountain. But this beach on Straddie was something completely different. Big waves, sand, nice temperature. Loved it! See my big smile:

For lunch we had fried fish fresh from the sea. Delicious! About time that I ate some fish. I miss Norwegian salmon. A guy from the restaurant took us to his street where a wild koala was high up in a tree. So now I've seen a wild one too:

And this is how is looks like when Norwegian tourists see an animal in a tree:

The third, and last, part of the program were some workshops. A guy whose name I didn't get showed us some old aboriginal costumes for ceremonies and how they play the didgeridoo. It was so cool! I heard a guy play didgeridoo earlier this year, which was quite good, but he was Slovakian. This Aussie did it much better, because he is part of the indigenous people of Australia, who really know how to do it right. I don't have pictures of it, though, because my battery was low. He also taught us how to dance in the aboriginal way. Three or four dances. With sounds and stuff. But the best part was when he let us paint our own boomerang. Aborigines use mainly four colours, black, white, ocher yellow and red with a touch of brown in it. Nice earthy colours:

And here are some of the patterns and symbols we could choose from:

I didn't finish my boomerang, because I changed my mind about the colours and painted over almost everything I had made. I like to paint, but I need time to try and fail and to decide how I want it to look like. And then it started to rain. Not heavy, but some of the things I painted got washed away a bit, so I put the unfinished boomerang away in a dry place and tried to learn how to throw it instead:

I need to practice some more on my technique, because the boomerang didn't come back to me at all. The workshop-guy told us that they don't hunt for big animals with it, mainly birds. I would never have been able to hit one. I'm just a silly tourist with aboriginal paint on my face:

Cuddling koalas and feeding kangaroos

Ten of us got up early on our day off to go to a koala sanctuary called Lone Pine. It's further up the Brisbane river, out of the city. We had a boat trip for a bit more than an hour. Beautiful! Nice and sunny on the top deck, and very friendly staff. And of course a recorded voice telling us "interesting" facts. 

Girls from my class on the river boat, Karoline, Carina, Nina, Line:

The koala sanctuary is full of koalas, as you already might understand, but also other typicalAustralian animals: fresh water crocodiles, platypus, dingoes, golden possum, kangaroos, wombats and kookaburras. I remember we sang a song called "Kookaburra" when I sang in a choir as a teenager. Originally an Australian nursery rhyme, but a very funny and different song when all the different voices from our choir were put together. Unfortunately I didn't find a good version on You Tube.

Look how cute they are. In wild you shouldn't cuddle them, but these are all tamed:

To hold and cuddle a koala we had to pay 16$ extra, but as real tourists we gladly paid it. The money goes back to Lone Pine, which is self-funded. Paying for the cuddling and a photo helps build new enclosures, plant eucalyptus trees and pay for animal research. Here is my picture taken by Carina:

And here are four of the girls, Stine, Malin, Marte, Nina:

I could've taken pictures with more animals, like snakes, birds and crocodiles, but it was so expensive. I'd love to hold a snake once. Maybe I should've done it. Maybe I was stupid to let my chance go. But I bought some animal food and got to feed as many kangaroos and wallabies as I liked. They live in quite a big area. Looked like they have a very chill life. Imagine how it is to be fed by tourists all day long, lay in the shade, take a nap and just...relax. Just looke at these guys here:

This guy here ate straight from the bag, and another one even tore it apart and ate the paper:

Wallaby, some kind of small kangaroo:

And a cool spider web, even though spiders wasn't a planned part of the sanctuary:

For those who miss hearing my voice, here it is:

Cancelled the video by a mistake, and now I can't upload it anymore, sorry.

At the "Back O' Bourke"

From Saturday the 8th to Sunday the 16th we were in the outback. We drove almost 1000 km from Brisbane to the small town Bourke. It's really in the middle of nowhere! 2800 people live in a town that's hundreds of kilometres away from other towns. If you'd want to go shopping for new clothes in a shopping mall (there's only one clothing store in Bourke) you'd have to travel for more than three hours. In Australian language people say "back o' Bourke" when they talk about the Australian outback, because Bourke is the typical example for it.

This is how the buildings look like:

Darling river, the third longest in Australia:

Heaps of dead kangaroos along the roads. Trucks don't stop for them:

We stayed with local host families to get to know their way of living out there. Karoline and I stayed with a great family with a cool two year old kid. I want a kid like that! The husband was interested in animals and hunting (with a bow and arrow!), so he took us for a kangaroo safari after dark. The first hour wasn't very succesful, so we got outside the car to watch the stars instead. I've never seen the milky way as clear and bright as that! Tried to find the "Karlsvogna", but couldn't find it. Either because there were too many stars this night, or because we don't see the same stars as we do at home. I don't know. On our way back we saw a few kangaroos jumping across the road, so we were satisfied with our safari in the end. The wife in our host family is originally Dutch, but moved to Bourke after she had two months of teacher training in the high school there, where she met the love of her life. Can you imagine how it is to move so far away from home? My mum is Dutch too, but she didn't move to the other side of the globe, she "only" moved to Norway. I'm happy I have a Norwegian boyfriend, because Norway is still my favourite country.

In my host family's big backyard with a Dutch book about Australia and typical Australian beer:

Another pic for my boyfriend:

What we basically did in Bourke was getting to know the culture, what people do for a living, seeing the landscape and such. So we went to a cotton gin, lime and lemon fields, sheep farm (as if I haven't seen sheep before...), guided tour in a national park, camping in a house with mosquito net walls, paddle boat cruise on the Darling River +++. Some things were cool, like picking my own lemons from a tree, and since I'm a teacher, visiting the high school was quite interesting too. But I got so fed up with travelling by bus on bumpy roads several hours a day, that I wasn't as excited about the program as I should've been. I wasn't bored, it's just that my mood could've been better. Still a bit jet-lagged and missing my boyfriend didn't help much on that. But I'm very happy I had the chance to see how Australia looks like outside the big cities. And the very best thing about these nine days in the outback was getting to know my classmates a lot better :D

Like these guys here:

Kristina juggling with limes and lemons:

Cotton seeds:

The Australian and Aboriginal flag:

Gundabooka National Park:

 

Redbank camp, with walls of mosquito net:

Socializing:

Good morning, girls:

Putting strings around tails and balls to make them fall off in a few weeks, auch:

 

  

The criminal story of a guy I'd never seen before who grabbed my boob on purpose and gave me 10 dollars (60 NOK) for it!! Of course I kept the money. He was being rude:

That was all from the outback, see ya!