Bye warm Australia! Hello cold NL ;)

After the road trip I only had about a week left in Australia. Marko had said while we were on the road trip that he would like to show Melody and myself Tambourine Mountain. And he did, we took a walk through the sub tropical rain forest. It was so pretty there. If I had not heard so many creepy noises there I would totally consider building a tree house and living there. Another thing on my to do list was Australian Zoo, you know, Steve Irwin’s zoo! I have some Slovene friends (Kristjan, Kristijan, Matej & Simon) who happened to be in Australia around the same time as I was and Australia Zoo is something we did together. I got a picture with them and a snake, one with me and just the snake, and one with me holding a koala. As I was holding the koala I realized it smelled funny, when I returned the koala to the keeper I noticed my hands smelled funny and then when I was telling Kristjan about how funny your hands smell after holding the koala he made me aware of the fact that your hands are nothing in comparison with the smell the koala left on your t-shirt. He was right, I smelled like a koala for quite a bit after that. The zoo was awesome! I would recommend it to anyone. The crocodile show was splendid as were the staff that walk around the zoo carrying big smiles on their faces and often an animal of some sort in their hands. You’ll walk somewhere and see a staff member with a lizard in their hand and then you, as a visitor can pet the lizard. We had planned to see the tiger show because my friend Ben, who’s a senior photographer at the zoo, had told us about it. It was scheduled to start at 2:15pm. We were getting a bit hungry around 1:15pm so my friends’ friend Sanja and I volunteered to get food for everyone while the rest sat at the tiger arena. Simon and Sanja’s mum joined us and it only took about 5 minutes to walk to the cafeteria. Ordering didn’t take too long either, but for some reason getting our order to us took about 20-30 minutes. Sanja told me to go back to the tigers so that I wouldn’t miss the tiger show, but I know what I’m Iike, I get lost in down-time Amsterdam, a place where I’ve spent considerable time growing up. I had no hope of finding my way back by myself in a place I didn’t know. So I waited, and when we finally had all our food we headed back. I was walking in front, with a steady pace hoping to speed things up a bit. Sadly though, even though I was sure I was heading in the right direction, I kept taking wrong turns and then Simon would have to call me to come to the right side again. When we finally got near the arena at 2:29pm, I heard the voice of one of the tiger handlers over the PA system ‘Well we thank you for your attention during this tiger show, we hope you’ve enjoyed it...’. Great. I missed it. All of it. I wanted to tell them to do the show again. I mean. Certainly one of the tigers would be available to do some more tricks? It’s not like the tigers had a busy schedule or anything, as I looked through the window they were just lying around. I forgot about asking them this while I was talking to one of the handlers after lunch though. Ever wondered why tiger handlers don’t get eaten by the tigers? What tiger handler Matt was able to tell me is that him and the 7 other crew have basically raised these animals since they were cubs. So it’s a respect thing. Matt also told me that he could almost guarantee me that if I were to go in there and tried to pet them like he does that I would get eaten. So no petting of tigers for me..

After coming home from the zoo, I went to the prayer meeting at church later that evening. One of my friends, Curtis, who I met on ICQ (remember those days??!) about 10 years ago was there as well. Meeting him in real life was cool, he took me to the glow worm cave (google that) and to O Reilly’s. Both of these places are very nice spots of nature. The latter one is where the picture with the bird was taken. Al these birds fly around there freely, if you have seeds in your hands they’ll eat them right out of your hand. And if you don’t have seeds they’ll still blatantly land on you. This particular bird got stuck in my hair which was a little bit painful for both of us, but all of us survived :) .

That day after O Reilly’s I had to finish packing my bag to go home, my 5 weeks were up. With sadness in my heart I finally closed my suitcase knowing I would miss Australia. It was a weird kind of sensation wearing long trousers again, especially since the sun was shining ever so bright outside. I know I complained about the lack of sun when I first got to Australia, since I had told everyone back home that I was going to Australia to find the sun, and it wasn’t there the first few weeks. But I wanted you to know that I found it. And I was fully intending to bring it home with me, but I couldn’t find it when I left Australia at 9pm. Anyhow, so I got on the plane fully dressed. There were some people wearing shorts and t-shirts, which I found particularly brave because the Australian airline companies, more than companies from any other country that I’ve flown with try to make you into icicles by the time you get to your next destination. They do this by turning the air conditioning on -2 degrees. I remember when we flew to Darwin on Christmas day that I was very cold despite the fact that I had brought, and was wearing my cardigan, scarf AND Melody’s knee socks. I tried to sleep during the flight but I just couldn’t stop thinking about how cold my feet and legs were. When I got out of that plane I was still quite cold because the airport, being in the hottest part of Australia was heavily air conditioned as well, but then when I walked through the airport doors my whole body thawed out instantly. Darwin was so hot and humid that you could almost drink the air. I’ll admit it wasn’t the greatest feeling in the world, but as I got on the flight in Melbourne going back to Europe, Qantas was still trying to freeze me over and I knew that once I would leave the airport in Amsterdam I would still be cold and not warm like in Darwin. I don’t believe in an everlasting hell where those who reject God burn forever and ever, the Bible teaches me different, God is way too loving to allow anyone to burn forever. But if God really was a tyrant who wanted people to suffer for eternity, I’m pretty sure hell would be cold. Very, very cold.

I’m home now. In The Netherlands. Hadassa picked me up from the airport, which is quite sweet because she tends to get speeding tickets anytime she takes me to the airport. After the last time in November she vowed she wasn’t going to take me ever again. Technically she didn’t take me to the airport this time, she picked me up from it. So I guess she’s not broken her promise. She made me drive home after having flown for 30 hours though so she’s not that sweet. OK she didn’t make me, she just expressed that she didn’t feel like driving :) So she is sweet, one of the best sisters in the world she is. Being back home with the sister has been really good. As much fun as I had in Australia, there’s a certain type of fun that I can only have with my sisters, and being back home I realized how much I’ve missed that. Having said that though, it’s too cold here. I really wish our radiator would be more flexible so that it would curl around me. I might feel a bit differently in spring time when it’s less cold, but right now I’m seriously thinking about looking for a job Down Under so that I can spend some more time there.

If I end up doing that you’ll hear from me :) In the mean time I wish you all the best for 2012. Enjoy it because it’s flying by. I mean, it’s January 19th today already.. before you know it it’ll be 2013!

Lot’s and lot’s of love and blessings to you all,

Zippora

More Roadtrippin'

That morning after Devil’s Marbles we made our way to Mount Isa where we had booked a spot for our tents at a local camping. It was on this day that we started to get the news that the cyclone/tropical storm was causing havoc behind us. The tropical storm changed the weather forecasts to our destination in Mount Isa as well. Where before we had expected a whole lot of sun, now there was a good chance we would have a whole lot of rain instead. Not really feeling like setting up tents in the rain, we opted to stay in a cabin instead. On their website the camping had advertised being close to a really nice lake. So when, after a long day of driving, we finally got close to this camping and our navigation system seemed to have no clue as to exactly where this place was and we did see a really nice lake, we decided to follow the road around the lake, hoping we would get to our destination. We were following signs that were leading to a park, and we figured that was were the camping would be. It wasn’t there. We followed that road until it died and our camping still wasn’t there. Garmin was still confused, and you know when navigation systems get confused they are just annoying, they keep talking and guessing when really they should just admit that they don’t know! Anyhow. I think at this point Mervyn said the name of the place we were looking for out loud again. It is at this point that Melody goes ‘o, that place? We passed that a long time ago, you know, where we saw the policeman..’. ‘So why didn’t you tell us then?’, Mervyn asked. To which Melody responded,‘I thought you guys knew where you were going’. Melody is a phlegmatic, a real one. She doesn’t talk much, but when she does talk it is probably important. We drove back to where we had seen a policeman about 10 minutes before and Melody was right, the policeman was gone and now that he was no longer there to distract us we could see the pretty big sign that read the name of our camping. We checked in, Melody cooked us some delicious spaghetti and then we slept. The next morning we got on the road again, heading to Townsville. Mount Isa is not the most beautiful place in Australia, it’s an industrial city that reminds me of Spijkenisse, which is basically an industrial place in The Netherlands where various factories form a substantial part of the landscape.

Townsville was nice. I thought it would be a small town, but it really seemed to have everything you could need. We went for a beach walk in the morning, I loved that. I wish I lived closer to the beach.

The stop after Townsville was Mackay. This is a place where Mervyn knew two sisters, Nathanea and Nadine. To say that he knew them might be a bit of an overstatement actually. They were facebook friends, but had only met once in person and had had some, but not too many Facebook interactions. They had invited him to visit them a few times, and now that we were passing Mackay he had arranged for the 4 of us to stay at Nadine’s house. Due to some circumstances we weren’t able to stay at her house so we were going to stay with Nathanea instead. Nathanea has two kids so we knew it would be at least them 3, and us four which makes 7. When we rolled up to their house though, we counted 5 cars on the drive way. At this point we are starting to feel more than uneasy about the idea of potentially overcrowding this house, since it would now be 7 + however many people came with these other cars. As Mervyn gets out the car to go and talk to his friend we tell him to tell her that we’ll just find like a motel or something to stay in, that we appreciate her hospitality, but that we just can’t take her up on it. So he spoke to her, and I’m not sure what went wrong but he didn’t convince her that we weren’t staying. So we stayed. I’m so happy we did though, we ended up having a great time. First Nadine, Nathanea and her two gorgeous daughters gave us a tour of Mackay. Because it was rainy and grey that day we stayed in our car as we followed Nathanea. She drove her own car and give us the tour guide information over the phone as we would pass landmarks in Mackay. Nathanea is a racer, and she didn’t seem afraid of the wet (and therefore somewhat slippery) roads, which reminded me of Hadassa (my youngest sister). When Hadassa gets into a car she becomes fearless. Nothing phases her, not wet roads, not icy roads, not the police :) . Anyhow, so we got our tour through Mackay, and towards the end of it we ordered some take out and got some ice-cream to go with our Bowen mangoes. Bowen is a place we cruised through on our way to Nathanea’s house and Bowen is famous for it’s delicious mangoes. If you go through the pictures in the link I posted in my previous post, you’ll see a huge statue of a mango, that’s hows serious they take mangoes here!

After Mackay, came Agnes Water. That was the prettiest spot of our road trip. Our view from our tents were the palm trees at the beautiful beach. It was nice and hot when we got there as well, so after we put up our tents we headed straight for the ocean. Next time I go to Australia I need to figure out this surfing business, it wasn’t high on my to do list, but it will be next time. We went to bed quite early that evening and we slept well, even though the wind was blowing like crazy. Our assigned spot was one that would normally be used by caravans. It would’ve been no problem for a caravan that the soil was so full of rocks that pegs do not want to go in there completely, because caravans don’t need pegs. Tents do. So yeah..Mervyn and Marko worked really hard at making our tents ready for the night but as the wind was blowing that night I heard how one of the ends of the tent escaped its peg. I was seriously praying that the wind wouldn’t take our tents, it was blowing in the direction of a small forest you see and I really, really didn’t feel like chasing after my tent and having to climb in some tree to retrieve it. Both our tents kept their ground though so none of my fears came true. We woke up the morning after, spent about an hour sitting on the rocks looking out on the ocean, and then we got ready to leave. It was Saturday morning (December 31st), so once we got into the car we started making our way to Gin Gin church. Gin Gin church was really nice, the sermon, the people, and the potluck were all good to/for us :) .

Since it was New Years eve we were planning what to do around midnight. I think we were all just tired from this week of traveling, so even though part of us maybe wanted to stay awake for the new year, once we got to our camping near Noosa Heads, had put up our tents, had dinner and a shower, we just lay down on our mattresses. I fell asleep at 10pm, I woke up at midnight because of the fireworks, wished Melody a happy new year, and then I fell right back to sleep.

So that was our road trip! The camping near Noosa was about 2 hours from Brisbane (Marko, Mervyn and Melody’s home) which we reached around 1pm. Tetka Maria, awesome as she is, had made us some lunch, and had also gotten all of us some (belated) Christmas gifts. I got a t-shirt with two hearts on it. Because I’m loved, she explained :)

Hakuna Matata

I got on the flight on Christmas Day and the cyclone hit Darwin the day after we left. The cyclone became a tropical storm and though it tried to catch us. It never did. The day after we left Tennant Creek to go to Mount Isa, the high way we took to get to Tenant Creek was closed of because it was severely flooded. Some people got stranded and had to wait for the flooding to clear before they could continue their journey. Flooding causes the water levels to rise which means that some crocodiles who would other wise stay in their creeks, now swim into places where they are more likely to encounter humans. We had originally planned a stop at some natural springs to go swim there, because of the flooding and the increased chance of crocodile encounters we skipped that.

In The Netherlands you can’t drive for more than 3 hours and not reach a different country. If you’re in NL and you drive for 11 hours like we did on the first day of our road trip, you could cruise through as much as 4 countries. As we were driving from Darwin and we reached the outback I was just amazed with the vast amounts of nothingness. A lot of the nothingness was desert which was interesting. Because of the huge amounts or rain they’ve had up north it was actually not desert-looking at all, really what we saw in the desert was lots and lots of different shades of green!
I didn't think this road trip business through. I saw the route that Mervyn, the brain of this operation, had planned out for us. But it didn't occur to me that this route would take us away from civilization. I had heard the term ‘outback Australia’ before, and I knew it would probably have to do something with a remote place. What I didn’t realize is that we would be driving through it for days and days. I didn’t think there were paces within the Western world where you could drive for hours without having phone reception. However, in the outback we really only had phone reception when we came near somewhat major towns. Mervyn had a different telecom provider than the rest of us and they gave him a bit more coverage but even he would have to go for long periods without reception. I’m not sure what we would’ve done if our car would’ve broke down, or if another type of calamity would’ve occurred in between towns.. Google Stuart Highway and select the street view and you'll see there's absolutely nothing there. No AA patrol (ANWB), no houses, and a lot of the times not even other cars on the road. Oh well.

For lunch the first day we stopped in a little village. It was freaky. As we get off the main road we see that there’s a cafe at the end of the road. Besides the cafe there are 3 or 4 other buildings but this village seems dead. As we drive towards the cafe, we have to stop because some people are bowling on the road. So we wait for them to move, but they don’t so we carefully drive around them. We park, and hesitantly get out of the car, because on one hand we’re hungry and we need to use the restroom but on the other hand this looks like a place from a horror movie. If it wasn’t daylight we certainly wouldn’t have stopped there. So all of us get out of the car, and where at other stops before and after this one, we would all go do what we have to do and meet back at the car, this time we stayed together until we (or at least I) felt safe. We enter the cafe and it’s the weirdest place. There are pictures all over the wall of random things and people. After I saw a picture of a naked dude on the wall I decided to look at the floor or ceiling at all times. Looking at the ceiling my attention was caught by the dozens of bras, and knickers hanging just above the bar... I told you this place was weird. So anyway, there were quite some people in the cafe, most of them looked quite normal so now I was kind of confident that I could make it to the restrooms and back without being brutally murdered. So I did, and I’m here to tell the story.. nothing weird happened. As I expected there was nothing on their menu that I could eat, but we had bread, avocados and salt in the car so my lunch covered. The others ended up eating something we had brought ourselves also. If you go through the facebook pictures Mervyn posted (I’ll post the link below), you’ll get an idea of the place I’m talking about. It’s a picture with a McDonalds sign.

After our stop in the random place, which was called Daly Waters (I think), we continued or way to Tennant Creek, which is where we would spend our first night. Mervyn and Marko did pretty much all of the driving during the trip. Mervyn is a friend I met at a youth conference in Poland in 2004. He graduated about two weeks ago (YAY!!) and after his graduation ceremony we went for dinner with his two uni friends and their families. It was on this evening that I met Marko, Mervyn's friend.
Marko is a friendly and helpful guy, the only thing is that he kills birds. Little birds.. (notice the name of this blog and see why I'm a little bit worried..) I can’t fully blame him because the birds would just sit on the road while we’re going 100km/hr.. But yeh, the suicidal birds that sit on the roads, Marko helps them out.

We were going to Tennant Creek to see the Devil’s Marbles, big rocks that are sacred to the Aboriginal community and were shaped round overtime by different weather conditions. We were hoping to get to the Marbles before sunset, but we were a little bit too late. Just beside the Marbles there was a campsite. A campsite as in, a place to put up your tents, no running water or electricity. The guys set up the tents while Melody and I attempted to cook. The Australian sun is super quick, once it starts setting you have about and hour before it becomes pitch black. We came prepared and had a lantern, but the serious downside to the lantern and any other sources of light in the utter darkness, is that they attract bugs. Mosquitos, flying ants, flies, beetles.. you name it, we had them, and their families visiting us. Both Melody and I aren’t heroes when it comes to insects so finishing what we were doing and not get to distracted by all the bugs was character building. Since it was dark I couldn’t really see what was in my pot, I tried to keep the lid on as much as I could, I just hoped that none of the creatures found its way there. Eventually we finished cooking and we were ready to have our haystacks (beans, vegetables and corn chips), we ate in one of the tents. It tasted really nice and as we ate we made jokes that it was probably nice because of the bugs we cooked with them. The day after when I was having some of the haystack beans on a sandwich for lunch I actually found a cooked fly in my sandwich... Hakuna Matata..

I promised to update you about the mozzie domes. (Remember the silver platter tents?) We didn’t get any. Instead we just opened the windows to our tent so that we could look outside and see the stars at night. That first night at Tennant Creek I spent sometime watching the stars in the middle of the night. Not because I wanted to see the starts, but because I really needed to use the toilet and I was debating whether or not I was going to wake Melody up so that we could walk there together. That was the deal we made before we went to sleep, if you have to go, you wake the other person. The toilet (read: hole in the ground with four walls surrounding it) was only about a minute away, but we were in the wild, we had spotted a dingo (wild dog that looks like a fox) and we couldn’t be sure what other types of wild life we could bump into. Also we were under strict orders by tetka Maria to go everywhere together, and ‘beat around the bush’ if we had to :) . I didn’t feel like getting up, I was fully trying to ignore my bladder, but it didn’t work, so I woke Melody up and we walked to the toilet together.

The morning after we had breakfast and then walked through the marbles. The were very impressive and beautiful too.

Check out the pictures in this link:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150546252451405.427206.519266404&type=1



To be continued..