28 Days in Oz

28DaysInOz: boarding Fast Cat to Keppel Island

28DaysInOz: OMG Eating best steak ever!

28DaysInOz: arrived in Rocky after 8hr bus ride. Found a place still serving dinner. Outback, so steak it is

28DaysInOz: it stopped raining last night and was beautiful today

My LightTable

If anyone is interested, my talented friend Harry has put together a little demo app that he built using Adobe Flex. It shows off my 28daysinoz photos in a neat way.

Hervey Bay and Fraser Island

Arrived in Hervey Bay at 3pm’ish and checked into the YHA. I’m very impressed with this hostel, though their Internet services, while great for what it is, needs to be upgraded. Most YHA’s have some form of Internet available to guests. Most charge ~3-5 AUS dollars per hour. Many have restricted use of the USB ports. In the Hervey YHA they have installed a Flash application called CyberCafePro, which completely blocks access to Windows, making it a little difficult, impossible actually, to use the file explorer, hence, no way to upload photos. Seems a bit odd thing to do in a tourist spot. Frustration sets in, but allows me to focus on what I’m seeing rather than on letting you see it.

I needed to do some laundry, so I got that out of the way, sorted out my packs, then rambled into the main room to post an update to this site, grab a pint, get a (very foul) hamburger and head off for some much needed sleep.

Today I got up at 6:45 and grabbed some quick food then boarded a bus that took me to the ferry to Fraser Island. I met up with Stefano, whom I met at breakfast, another Italian but this time from Bologna. He’s an industrial designer who was working in Milan creating watch, sunglasses and other accessories designs. The ride over was uneventful and though the Captain swears that he saw two dolphins off to starboard, no one else saw them.

On Fraser Island, a world heritage site and the world’s largest sand island, we boarded a 45 seat 4x4 bus. Yes bus. Yes 4x4. We needed it(or a landrover) to thread our way through the rainforest on single track sand roads. Good thing the bus had very large wheels and a very tall undercarriage or we never would have cleared the waves on the beach. I’m bummed that they canceled the beach take-off plane ride due to unstable beach conditions, but I suppose it’s for the best.

Fraser is a wonderful experience that I highly recommend, but you should really spend 2 or more days instead of doing a day trip. The island is huge and needs to be explored. There are several crystal clear “perch” lakes with pure white sand beaches and water so clean it feels like diving into a giant bath tub. There are dozens of shipwrecks on the beach, but we only saw one (pictures coming soon.)

Tomorrow I head off to Australian cowboy country, catching the mid-day bus to Rockhampton, aka “Rocky” where I’ll be jumping off for a 3 day visit to Great Keppel Island the following day.

Photos

I’m not able to upload photos in this town, so there will be a huge upload as soon as possible.

Noosa Heads

I spent my last night in Byron Bay YHA hanging out with:
Gaspar - Belgium
Andreas - North Northern Italian (Blond/Blue eyed with an Austrian/Italian accent) a very smart dude
A Scottsman
A Sicilian
An Irishman
Two Pome’s (English) {Prisoners of Mother England}
A Welshman
An Austrian

The night was mellow, I packed and we talked. I taught them about Google AdWords and as backpackers who each have been on the road for months, the mention of good money to be earned online (mobile) caught their attention. Of the bunch I think Andreas might actually investigate PPC arbitrage a bit.  He could be a good person to hire if anyone wants a multi-lingual Italian employee…he’s quite creative and hungry…

I got up at 6am the next morning to get to the 6:45 bus, but even though I arrived (by my watch) at 6:42, I watched the bus pull away from across the street. Bummer. But all things happen for a reason, so I walked a block, got a Long Black coffee (I think it’s a shot of espresso with hot water, like an Americano) and walked back to the station to wait for another bus. There I met an English couple who turned out to have Moo cards on them! How cool is that? Right now I’m a world away from SF, where I just attended the 1 year birthday for Moo and now I meet a couple with Moo cards. The husband was a photographer and artist, so of course I had to whip out my box of cards and do an exchange. Fun stuff.

I had enough time to go get a second coffee and the local version of egg, bacon and cheese on a roll.

Oh yeah and all this time, since last night, the sky has been pouring rain. I mean Orlando, Florida style bucket-fulls.

So I hop a Greyhound bus to Brisbane finally, meet a really nice French girl named Celine en-route, echange info with her, then change to a mini-bus in order to get to Noosa Heads. The sky is grey and wet, but there is some ambient light and the green grass, leaves and bark of the blue gum trees, and bottle brush plants are all glistening.

I arrive in Noosa around 3pm, walk up a steep driveway about 100 meters away and check into one of the most beautful hostels I’ve ever seen. Noosa is known for being a ritzy, monied place and I would concur. It’s a bit like Palo Alto in a way, except with a beach that surfers would die for. Being a stormy afternoon I decided to beach comb for a bit, and I came across a storm strewn marvel of small stones with young barnacles, stinging jellyfish with 6 meter long blue tendrils and most surprising were dozens of cuttlefish bones. Fantastic light, hope I got a few interesting shots.

That night I met the first Americans that I’ve run into so far. They had been traveling for 5 months, from Virginia and we said we’d stay in touch. After dinner, retired to the bar for a local pint, but ended up meeting two local blokes that took me out for a real local night.

We started in a karaoke bar where about two dozen locals were taking turns belting out tunes. Some were quite good and it’s always good to see the locals in their scene, but apart from the slot machines in the bar it was a bit like hanging out in a college dorm cafeteria.

So next they took me out to Rolling Rock, which is a second floor nightclub on Hastings street. It started out slow, but as the night wore on, the place filled up. At 2am, when I left the place was just about to get REALLY cranked up. But I was beat and had to catch a 9:30 bus this morning.

I made the bus headed to Hervey Bay, but that’s for another post…