Mate vs. Mate, State vs. State

The past week or so I have been hearing about this thing called "State of Origin." From my roommates, from friends, all over the tv and news, everywhere.

At first I wasn't really sure what it was but I asked my roommate and was informed that it is a series of 3 rugby games, Queensland (Maroons) vs. New South Whales (Blues).

Since I'm up in QLD a large majority of my friends here were for the Queenslanders, but there were also a few from NSW adding their voice to the mix. The saying for the game is "Mate vs. Mate, State vs. State" because it's a compilation of the best rugby players from each state, regardless of what professional team they play for. So guys playing for QLD were playing against professional teammates from NSW and vice versa. So it would be like an American Football game between Ohio and Indiana, not the Browns or Bengals vs. the Colts, where the teams are determined by geographical location, not drafting or trading or any of that. That would be far more difficult as our states are much smaller, but you get the idea.

So after understanding what the game was I headed down to the pavilion to watch it with a group of people from the apartment complex. I wasn't sure what to expect but it was definitely more intense than I ever would have thought!

The pre-game show was over 45 minutes and everyone was getting quite restless and loud before the game even started. Most of the group piled on and around the couches were decked out in maroon but there were two proud New South Welsh sporting their blue. The teams came out, the crowd went crazy, and we were ready for some rugby!

Throughout the first half (40 minute halves) my roommates Elsie and Ayesha were helping me out with the rules. I still don't completely get the game, but I have a much better understanding than before. I kept comparing it to American Football to make sure I was keeping everything straight so that's how I'll lay out my basic understanding of rugby (at least the rules used for this game, I was also informed that there's 2 different rugby leagues which are both separate from Australian Football and they all have their own rules). So the pitch is similar to an American Football filed, 100 meters long with end zones and goal posts at each end. The ball can be carried or passed, but only passed backwards. So just as NFL teams get 4 downs with the ball rugby teams get 5 tackles with the ball (no stoppage of play in between though, they just get up and go again), if they don't score by their 5th tackle they have to kick the ball away. Then the other team comes back at them with the same thing - 5 tackles to try to score. If they score a 'try' (by getting in the endzone) they get to try to kick it through the goal posts... I'm not quite sure how the placement of the kick works thought because it was different every time. The try is worth 4 points where a kick through the posts is worth 2. Similar to the NFLs touchdown and point after. That's about as far as I got rules wise, I was still confused as to what the penalties are and what happens when the ball goes out of bounds and what a scrum is, but I'll try to learn those during Game 2.

So after learning all this and enjoying the intensity of the game (and the crowd in the pav) the thing that still surprised me was the amount of injury/blood. In the first half one of the players dislocated his shoulder. It was not pretty, one of those replays that you really don't want to watch because it just makes you cringe every time. He walked off the field, the trainer popped it back in, and he was right back out there running full speed into a wall of guys tackling him. Throughout the rest of the game I can't even count the number of players who started gushing blood. Foreheads, cheeks, legs, everything! I've watched plenty of sports games where someone gets hit and splits their head open and gets bandaged up and keeps playing, don't get me wrong, that doesn't surprise me. What surprised me was the frequency of the occurrence in this one single game. It was brutal!

So that was my first Australian Rugby experience. NSW won leaving the Queenslanders eager for redemption in game 2 which takes place June 18th. QLD has won the series the past 9 years so they're looking to keep their streak going. If QLD does win there will be a game 3 but that will be July 9th, after I'm home.

It was really cool to see the energy of the game and gain a simple understanding of the sport. Going to try to learn the rules of Australian Football too, Aussies seem to be a fan of either that or rugby and there's trash talking between the sports on top of between the teams, so it'll be interesting to see what the differences are.

Right in my backyard...

Went out behind my apartment complex this evening to take some pictures of the sunrise and was reminded that there's cool stuff to see right here in my backyard! On my way down to the lake I noticed these guys in a nearby tree:

After doing a bit of research when I got back I was able to identify them as Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos. There was a bunch of damp brush (where snakes could be camping out) around the tree so I wasn't able to get very close but I did watch them for a couple minutes from a distance. Something spooked them and they took off so I continued down to the lake where I took more photos:

Fraser Island

I'm having trouble with how to start this blog post so I guess I'll start it with a warning: it's going to be a long one! It's a great story and some wonderful pictures, so read on :)

Our journey started Thursday afternoon. Lovisa, Jillian, Nicole, Kieran, and I all crammed into the car, with all of our stuff, and headed up north to Hervey (pronounced Harvey) Bay for the first leg of our trip. That night was spent grocery shopping, prepping food, and packing up the truck. We all headed to bed early after setting our alarms for just after 5am...

We all got up, packed the last minute things in the truck, and headed off to catch the 6am Kingfisher Ferry over to Fraser Island. We were a bit early so we had some time to get out and take a few pictures as the sun rose across the bay.

The ferry ride across was about 45 minutes long and gave us some time to go over our schedule with our tour guide (aka Kieran). Since he had spent a lot of time on the island growing up he had planned our stops and had it all worked out. Once we reached the island we made a quick stop to grab breakfast and lower the air pressure in the truck tires (since we'd be driving on sand all weekend) then ventured onto the inland tracks!

For anyone who has never driven on sand: it's quite an experience. It had rained the night before so it was smoother than it could have been, but it was still quite rough. We were bouncing around in the truck quite a bit and it seems a bit like driving in snow in how you drift in it and have to steer with the slide to get out of it. Jillian and I (the Yanks, as we were referred to this trip) compared it to Cedar Point - hilly and lots of turns and some good air time.

Our first stop on the island was Lake McKenzie. The pictures do not do this place justice, it was absolutely incredible. Since we were there so early there weren't any other people there and it was just so peaceful.

After relaxing there for a bit we made our way to our second stop of the day: Basin Lake. Although the water wasn't blue here it was still completely transparent and another empty, peaceful place to hand out and relax for a bit. The only downside was our first major run in with the mozzies (that's Aussie slang for mosquitos). By the time we left Basin Lake we were all already covered in mosquito bites.

 

From left to right: Nicole, Kieran, Lovisa, Jillian
This was the best group picture I could manage... it was a fun/silly group to travel with :)

From here we were off to Central Station! Central Station is the past location of the logging village that used to be on Fraser Island. Although the buildings don't remain there were signs with information on the history of the area and the various town buildings such as the schoolhouse. This is where we set off on another hike, passing Wanggoolba creek along the way. At first glance I thought there was a layer of algae on top of the creek but upon closer inspection realized that we were just seeing the bottom of the creek which was all sand, the water was crystal clear.

After this hike we decided it was time to head to our campsite and get the tent set up to ensure we were all set before it got dark. This turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than expected... the tent poles weren't in with the tent. Being resourceful we grabbed the rope we had and attempted to put up the tent anyway! Our first attempt got about 3/4 of the way before we realized that in the spot we picked initially there simply weren't enough trees for us to tie to and that the tent wasn't going to work out there.

I didn't stand and watch the entire time, I just took breaks to document the process

We found another spot not too far from where we were that had 4 good trees that we could use as corners and got the tent up! It wasn't shaped exactly how it was meant to be, but it worked! We were all very proud of how we did. We even got tarps up over it to make it waterproof since rain was expected for much of the weekend.

It took a couple of hours and we were all a bit hot and tired so we decided to head to one more lake to finish the day. A short drive and a bit of a hike took us to Lake Wobby where we went for a swim. The water was quite cool but it felt good after the long, tiring day.

Before I jumped in I climbed to the top of the sand dune right next to the lake to find... even more sand!

Now I knew that Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world but still, that's a lot of sand. After swimming for a bit we headed back on a different trail, up over the sand dunes this time. The view was really something.

Once we made it back to the car, and after hiking over 10km that day, we ventured back to the tent ready for dinner and a good night's sleep. Dinner went smoothly and it was dark by the time we finished up. We crawled into the tent, set up our sleeping bags and settled in for the night. That is until we realized that it was only 7pm. Getting up so early, running around all day combined with how early it gets dark threw off our schedules a bit. Nicole and I realized we weren't going to be able to sleep that early so the two of us headed outside and sat on the sand dune overlooking the ocean and the moon and talked for a couple hours. The moon was really bright and we watched the clouds pass by and the tide come up the beach.

We headed back in around 10pm and got a few hours of sleep. Now comes the good part of the story: Lovisa woke up around 3am because her corner of the tent had flooded. We rearranged a bit and fell back to sleep until around 5:30am when Nicole woke up because it was raining on her. The puddle near Lovisa had grown and we turned on a lamp to discover that the entire area near Nicole had flooded as well. We lovingly referred to this new body of water as Lake Camperoo.

You can't really tell from the picture but there was a good inch/2.5cm of water there. We all huddled in the one dry corner of the tent until the rain stopped. The four of us girls found it hilarious and were laughing almost the entire time but Kieran was a bit frustrated. We tried to explain to him that it really was quite funny but I think he'll just need a couple weeks to really find the humor in it.

 As we waited on the beach for the sun to rise we decided that we would try to get a room at the backpackers resort nearby for the next night. Lake Camperoo was nice, but one visit was enough for us.

The sun rose a bit, but not much before more clouds rolled in.

After sitting at the beach for a bit we got to work pulling all of the wet stuff out of the tent and hanging it on trees to dry. Once it had been emptied we untied everything and flipped the tent over, hanging it up upside down to dry out during the day. After finishing that up, enjoying pancakes with Nutella for breakfast, and re-packing the truck we headed off to Eurong to see about a room at the resort. We were in luck and were able to get one for a good deal! The view was quite nice as well - you can't tell too well from the picture but it was overlooking both the pool and the ocean. Not too shabby.

Once we unpacked most of our stuff into the room we changed clothes and started down the beach! We had initially planned to drive about an hour up the beach to a point called Indian Head then make a few stops on the way back but the tide came in faster than expected so we made the stops on the way there while we waited for the tide to lower. First stop was Eli Creek.

 

 



We walked the path down to one end then walked back up the creek to the beach. From here we headed on to the Maheno Ship Wreck. Kieran explained to us that it had once been a Japanese cruise ship. Once it had been retired it was being towed somewhere by another boat when a cyclone (hurricane) hit and the towing cable snapped. It washed up on the island and has been there since! Apparently you used to be able to climb on it and look around but over the years it has sunken deeper into the sand and has corroded too much for that to be possible anymore. It was really cool!

 

After having a look and taking pictures we loaded back into the truck, next stop was The Pinnacles! The colored sand formations were beautiful. There were other smaller ones along the beach but these were the biggest and most colorful ones.

 

 

From here we ended up passing Indian Head to go to the furthest stop of the day: Champagne Falls. It was quite a windy climb down to the beach and was still really windy when we got down on the rocks.

 





Lovisa was using her towel as a cape - good reference for how windy it was!


 

From here we ventured back to Indian Head for our last climb of the day. It was a pretty intense climb up but oh my goodness was the view worth it.

 

 

 

 

As you can see from the sign and the pictures we were pretty far up. There were a lot of signs warning you not to get too close to the edge, people have fallen and injured themselves pretty badly. We were careful to stay far enough back while we enjoyed the view. On the way down we decided to take a different path again... after the climb down I realized that the climb up really wasn't that intense. The path ended up turning into picking our way through/jumping from rock to rock down to the shore. I really enjoyed it but it wasn't quite what we were expecting.

 

From Indian Head we drove back to the campsite to fetch the, now dry, tent. We emptied as much of the sand out of it as we could, put it in the back of the truck, and had a much smoother drive back to Eurong since the tide was low and we were able to drive where the water had smoothed the sand out. Once back to the resort we swam in the pool for a bit then had a hot shower (which was nice since we hadn't had one for a day and a half and because we hadn't expected to be able to have one all weekend) and a short nap. Since we hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and had been moving all day again we were in need of some rest. After dinner we all hung out and played a couple card games before settling in for a good nights sleep and looking forward to being able to sleep in a bit the next morning.

 

The whole "sleeping in" didn't work out for me and around 6am I walked down to the beach to watch the sunrise again (3rd morning in a row!). It was really cloudy again but there was a period of time where the sun still peaked its way through and it was really pretty.

 

Once the sun was completely enveloped by the clouds I went back to our room and slept for another hour or so. Once it hit around 8:30am we were all up, making breakfast and packing up. We needed to be together and out by 10am. We did so, and even folded up the tent correctly to get it back into the bag, and discussed what we wanted to do for our last day on the island. Our ferry was due to leave at 2:30pm so we still had a few hours to play with.

We ended up back at Lake McKenzie for a bit but it was very crowded and not long after we got there it started to rain. Central Station was on the way back to the bay where we were catching the ferry so we ended up stopping there to hang out for a bit. Lovisa, Kieran and I went for a short hike while there, we covered 3.6 km in around 45 minutes. Once we got back to Central Station and reunited with Nicole and Jillian we played cards for a bit again until it was time to leave for the ferry.

The ferry ride back was quite eventful! Not long after leaving the bay we saw a whale and as we were nearing the bay on the other side we saw a group of dolphins jumping! It was really exciting as it is really early in the season to see whales and we weren't expecting to see the dolphins either.

Our adventure ended with unpacking and cleaning up the truck (I think we brought half of the sand from Fraser Island with us) and reloading into the car to head back to USC. By the time we got back we were all exhausted from the our adventurous weekend. We parted ways back to our own apartments with yawns and smiles and a great story!

This trip definitely ranks up with my time in Sydney and at the Great Barrier Reef. So grateful to be having these amazing experiences!





Brisbane, Take 3

Jillian, Lovisa and I ventured into Brisbane this afternoon! I had heard about a free concert at the Brisbane Powerhouse and we decided to check it out. A couple buses and a train ride later and we were there! The theater is right on the Brisbane river and we stopped to take a few pictures before heading inside. 

I've never seen a "Go" sign. Thought it was pretty cool!

The building itself was really neat and artsy. 

Inside there were multiple small theaters, a couple restaurants, and the open stage area where the bands were performing. We only ended up staying for the first group that performed, but they were quite good! 

It was absolutely beautiful outside and after a bit we decided we didn't want to be stuck inside anymore so we went back out by the river. There was a park right on the bank and there were a lot of people enjoying the day with a picnic. 

Since we had left the concert early it wasn't time for us to catch the bus back to the train station yet so we walked a few blocks to grab dinner. We went to Nando's (the chicken place where I ate last time I was in Brisbane!) so that Jillian could try it out. She ended up liking it just as much as Lovisa and I did and the three of us had an wonderful dinner.

Once we finished we caught the bus back into the center of the city and caught a train that brought us back!

It was a fun way to spend our Sunday :)

Now that it is Sunday at home too I am looking forward to giving my Mom a call to wish her a Happy Mother's Day! It's definitely weird not being at home to spend the day with her, it's making me quite homesick this evening. But I'm going to go give her a call soon and I'll get to Skype with my family tomorrow morning so that will help!

Less than 8 weeks left in Australia, planning to make the most of it! Looking forward to Fraser Island next weekend :)

Liquid Nitrogen & Hell's Gates

Today started with a trip to the doctor to find out that I sprained a couple ligaments in my foot playing pick up soccer the other day... oops. Picked up a compression sleeve and some Advil and was on my way for a day trip to Noosa!

It was a bit rainy when we started out but it cleared up slightly as we got closer to Noosa, only drizzling on us slightly throughout the few hours we were there. 

We started at Nitrogenie, a place that uses liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. They mix it in right in front of you and it's really sweet. (Get it, sweet? Ha ha!) 

After enjoying some yummy, incredibly smooth ice cream we wandered to Noosa National Park. We walked a couple km through the rainforest (and the mud) and eventually came out to the coastal path where we got some pretty cool views of the ocean. 

We stopped at a couple places, one of which was called "Hell's Gates." They were pretty high cliffs and we couldn't get down very far, but I climbed as far as I could on stable ground. 

After exploring Hell's Gates a bit we heading back to the path and continued on our way. As we got closer to where we started near the parking lot we saw a lot of people surfing and paddle boarding. It was a bit rainy but the waves were looking pretty good today! I am hoping to go surfing at least one more time before I head home. 

Tomorrow a few of us are heading into Brisbane to explore and go to a free concert that should be fun. Look out for a blog post and pictures from that coming soon! :)