Melbourne: Great Ocean Road

So we are going back in time a bit here. School seemed to catch up with us and we forgot about the blog. After O Week, UNSW has "Week 0" which is supposed to be another prep week with a bunch of seminars on how to write essays and cope with stress and incredibly boring and useless things. So, instead of attending the seminars (which were NOT required), we decided to take advantage of the time off and jet down to Melbourne for 5 days. We left Sunday March 1st (yes, we are going way back in time), and came back Thursday March 5th.

On Tuesday we did a 12 hour tour of the Great Ocean Road, which is the coastal road that goes down South and to the West of Melbourne. We got picked up downtown on our super cool bus (which we have now seen everywhere in Australia) and started out on the tour. It took about an hour to get outside of Melbourne until we started to hit all the surf towns where Rip Curl and Billabong started. The tour involved a lot of driving, as the main goal was to see a sunset at the Tweleve Apostles. We stopped at various points along the way though.

The first stop was to see some kangaroos hopping in the wild. This was our first kangaroo spotting since we have been here, and even though they were far away we were very excited. The next couple stops were some scenic lookouts at high points along the drive. The views were absolutely beautiful and I've never seen so many nice shades of blue in the water. The weather was a little weird though, with gusting winds and rain at points. It made travelling at high speeds along cliffs in a little rickety bus a little worrying at times, but we made it alive!

From one of the beautiful lookout points along the coast.

The second major stop was to see some koalas in the wild. Again, our first real koala sightings, so we were on the lookout as soon as we got to the park. We finally spotted some koalas and got out of the bus to take some pictures. They are incredibly lazy animals, and all but 1 of them we saw were sound asleep. One did manage to wake up as we were looking at it, gave us some glares, yawned and then went back to sleeping.

The one koala that was awake and gave us a yawn!

The third stop along the way was the Loch Ard Gorge, a gorge where a ship crashed in 1878. There were only two survivors of the 51 passenger boat who climbed up the large cliffs to get rescued. We walked around the Gorge for awhile, taking some more beautiful shots. Before we went down into the Gorge though we had our first spotting of some of the 12 Apostles and other rock formations just off the coast, which we would be watching the sunset at later in the evening. However, because of the crappy weather, we didn't get to see much of a sunset from the 12 Apostles, but as we were leaving the Gorge the sun was poking through the clouds and we got to see a bit of a sunset.

The island archway, near Loch Ard Gorge.
Beautiful sunset over the Gorge.

We finally made it to the 12 Apostles (there are only 11 left now) just in time to see the sun disappear behind the massive clouds. The sights were still beautiful though and a nice end to the long day before our 3 hour bus ride back to Melbourne.

A couple of the Twelve Apostles

Bundeena

Moving on to the 26th- we've nearly gotten you all caught up! We woke up early to catch the ferry (pronounced furry by our favourite Spaniard) to Bundeena National Park. We first had to take a train to the end of the line at Cronulla, a cute little town that has lots of nice shops and gives of a Stratford-esque vibe. The ferry itself was old and had that old ferry charm to it, if you can imagine that.

Upon arrival at Bundeena, we were told by our guide (one of the exchange coordinators) that we needed to prepare for a bush walk in which we would see large snakes, really big spiders and maybe a few deer (or dear!). She then went on to say that our goal of the day was to avoid being sent home in a wooden box. Lovely.

A little apprehensive, we ventured out on our bush walk. I, for one, was holding my breath for much of the walk because I somehow convinced myself that might just keep those monster spiders at bay. While we didn’t find any of the above mentioned creeplife, we did come across a number of other interesting things (most of which are pictured below). This included national heritage sites, nude bathers, native art pieces and even a real, live cactus!

Our “experienced” guide was highly competent and managed to get us lost about five times in two hours. By the third fumble, she started getting pretty creative with her explanations of why the trails weren’t quite the same as the last time she was there, or why a detour to see more of the bush we had been looking at for the last hour was so necessary. Frustrated, five of us decided to break off from the group to find the others that opted out of the walk to spend some time on the beach. Not to worry, though. Those of you who know me would agree this was a fantastic idea given my razor sharp sense of direction that relies on my never-fail intuition (yes, Mom and Dad this is Laura writing). It had taken us about 4 hours to get to where we were at that point. We were back to the beach in 20 minutes (okay, maybe Morgan had to take over navigating a bit).

The goal of the bush walk was to see some native artwork. There's some pictured below, feel free to share your comments. We reserve all judgement. Joking aside, the scenery was beautiful. There were fantastic views of small cliffs and the water. The bush was great too, though it did lose its lustre after walking in it for hours and collecting many a scratch and scrape (and hive- lucky me).

We caught a quick swim on the beach and then ventured out to catch the ferry home. It was while waiting with our feet dangling from the dock that I managed to accidentally sacrifice my only flip flops to the beautiful blue ocean. Morgan had a good laugh. The day ended with our first party at the Roundhouse, the university bar. It was a great way to party away the loss of my beloved sandals. May they rest in peace.

View from the ferry enroute to Bundeena

This would be a national heritage site (the rocks under the water). We were instructed very sternly not to touch. We were all in such awe that we had to take a picture, though.


Aboriginal artwork. We think this one would be a representation of primitive roadkill.

The bushwalk featured many a green bush.

View of our picnic lunch stop

O Week

From February 23-27, UNSW has “O Week”, or Orientation Week where all the clubs and organizations set up stalls around campus and try and give you a bunch of free stuff to entice you to join their club. During this week we also had some mandatory exchange orientation sessions, as well as unofficial exchange excursions throughout Sydney.

Monday we decided to be super keen and go check out all the stalls around campus to see what clubs there are. We were mainly interested in finding out about the rowing, but it seems as though they aren’t as intense as home. We signed up to be on the email list, but don’t think we’re going to be able to get on the water for another couple weeks, and even then, things seem a little bit confusing! We are quite anxious to get on the water, especially after seeing the crews down the Yarra River in Melbourne this past week. Needless to say we walked away having given our emails to way too many clubs, and a bag full of brochures and information which we quickly threw out.

The main University Mall full of all the clubs stalls

Tuesday was the start of our mandatory exchange orientation which was supposed to start at 9, but ended up being around 9:45. We all gathered in one of the lecture halls to learn about life in Sydney, our health care, courses and various other seemingly useless things we had already read from the several packages we received. After they provided a BBQ lunch for us and then there was supposed to be a scavenger hunt. Team Canada, as we are known, opted out of the scavenger hunt for a day at the beach. It was finally nice and sunny and our previous experiences with beaches had been full of clouds. One of our aussie friends kindly drove us to Curl Curl, a beach North of Sydney and we relaxed there for the day.

Curl Curl Beach

On lifeguarded beaches in Australia you are supposed to swim between the red and yellow flags. When we first went out, we were in between the flags but decided that we wanted to experience some of the really big waves so went to go swim in them. Despite being able to swim and most of us having been a lifeguard at some point, the waves were a little big and the current was a little strong. We were being tossed around, losing bathing suit pieces left, right and centre and finally got whistled in by a lifeguard to come and swim between the flags. Apparently he could tell we were stupid foreigners and didn’t want to have to come save us!

The red and white flags you are supposed to swim between

The waves we wanted to take on

Wednesday morning was another boring morning of mandatory orientation but in the afternoon they had planned another excursion to “The Rocks”, a part of downtown Sydney right at the waterfront. The mission was to do a pub crawl starting around 1 in the afternoon. We decided that was a little bit too early for us to start drinking so we toured around the area. This is where we had our first up close experience with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Needless to say the cameras were out in full force and we were amazed! After walking around for awhile, we stopped for a nice lunch and some gelato and then joined up with the rest of the pub crawl group. The evening ended off at the Opera Bar, the bar between the water and the Opera house.

Harbour Bridge

First sight of the Opera House!

The views from the Opera Bar at night are amazing

Tropfest

Sunday the 22nd (yeah, we’ve gone back in time a bit here) was Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival. We’re not sure if this was in terms of entries or competitors, but either way it was a great day! We met up early with the other exchange students and headed over to the Domain (a big park) in the early afternoon to grab some lawn. The pictures below pretty much sum up the day. Lounging, munching and living it up like the Aussies do best- chillin’.

Once the sun set, the movie screenings began. Each short film was limited to 7 minutes and had to include the year’s theme, spring, in some way or another. This meant a number of the 16 finalists had surprise endings that were “sprung” on the audience. The evening was also scattered with a couple live performances and air guitar competitions.

The winning film was called “Be My Brother” and used a light-hearted approach to addressing prejudice of those with mental disabilities. The main character was played by a man with down syndrome who was needless to say incredibly excited when he went up to receive his awards (also winning best actor). If you’re super keen on learning more about the film festival (there’s a New York version as well) you can check out the following link: http://www.tropfest.com/



Hanging out in the sun awaiting the official Tropfest movie showings to start. Note the number of umbrellas- contrary to what many people think, Aussies are actually very responsible about their sun exposure. There's a very big "stay out of the sun" campaign by the government, and locals are diligent about wearing sunscreen and hats.


The movie screen and the surrounding crowd. The stage was multi-sided with thousands of people sitting in front of each of the 3 screens.

View of downtown at night

NCV and Interesting Food Encounters

So we know many of you are anticipating these posts. We know it’s been awhile since our last update but we have been super busy as you will see with all of the explanations to follow. Some of you don’t even know what kind of place we are living in so we’ll talk about that first now that we have been settled in here for the last two weeks.

We are living in a university residence. It’s called New College Village. It was just finished being built in January, so brand spanking new! It was mainly intended to be for post-grad students but they hadn’t filled it when we went to ask so they were letting in some poor homeless exchange students which is how we managed to get it.

It’s right across the road from the main entrance to the “uni” (as they say here, none of this “campus” or “school” talk) meaning we have no longer than a 10 minute walk to most of our classes! The bus stop is also right outside the entrance with buses that go basically everywhere we would need to go. In terms of location it’s perfect except it’s a 15 minute bus ride to the nearest beach. Although the shark sightings are holding us back on swimming!

The unit we are in has 6 individual rooms and we share a kitchen and living room. There is no tv in the living room, but there is a common room right outside our door that we can use with a massive wide screen tv. We haven’t had much time to watch but are anxiously wanting to see two shows we have heard about. “Border Security” – an actual broadcasted show on problems the customs people encounter with people trying to get in to the country. And “Bondi Rescue” – a Baywatch like show, but with hot Australian male life guards replacing the babes in red swimsuits and detailing the rescuing they do at the beach 20 minutes away, Bondi. Laura and I are in the same unit right across the hall from each other. Each room has their own ensuite bathroom with shower, toilet and sink. The only thing we had to buy was towels. Each room comes with sheets, duvet and pillow and the kitchen is all equipped with plates, cutler, glasses, etc. This may be the best part though. Our rooms and kitchen get cleaned by the housing staff every Monday and our sheets are replaced. It’s more like a hotel than a university residence!

Our own individual bathrooms!

Half of Morgan's room

The shared kitchen/dining table

Most of our roommates seem to want to have nothing to do with us. We are still waiting for the 6^th one to move in, but two of the ones who have moved in haven’t said anything but “hi” to us yet. There is one nice aussie girl who has moved in and she actually speaks and doesn’t hide all the time. I think they are all done their undergrad though, or at least the one we have talked to is!

As for grocery shopping, we have been adding to our list of crazy Australian food that we are contemplating trying, but have to build up some courage, or also stuff that is just crazy! The list includes: kanga bangas and all variations of kangaroo meat, aussie pizza and burgers which seem to have eggs on them, cheese and bacon balls, yo yo and anzac cookies, pies – possibly from a store called pie face and tasty coon cheese. We did get to experience vegemite at orientation and will not be going out anytime soon to get ourselves a jar!

Pies at Pie Face actually have faces on them!

One of the various Kangaroo meats you can buy.

Our experience with vegemite ended with faces like this!