G'bye, Oz!

Pretty much done with Australia now - I'm sitting in the Sydney aeropuerto, with an hour and forty-five minutes until my roughly ten hour flight to Honolulu. Snagged a book for the flip (Shantaram), hope my ipod is charged, and got about four hours of sleep last night in hopes of crashing out on the flight. Got a window seat, to boot. i think i'm on the east side of the plane, and we fly through sunrise, which oughta be cool (assuming I'm conscious)

Anypoo, enough about the flight - barring extraordinary neighbors, it'll probably be exactly what i expect. It's leaving Australia that's the momentous (but simultaneously entirely devoid of fanfare) part. I still haven't quite sorted whether or not i could continue to wander, or if i'd have been happy working some random job. the job certainly wouldn't've been satisfying, but towards the end of my ten or so days in Manly I had some great conversations with a few brits and a kiwi - helped me appreciate what there is to gain in sticking around. But what I said last post still rings true - I know i can travel now (although travelling Oz is spectacularly easy - easier than travelling the States, I'd bet), and for the time being that curiousity's sated. The job front though, is my current version of the great unknown. I don't see myself happily settling down into a career any time soon, but I want to do something techy, something tinkery.

I'll miss Oz, certainly, but it feels like a good time to move on. I'll miss the kickass landscape, and the mind-stretching expanses. I'll miss the hilarious signage. I'll miss the freakin' bizarre wildlife. I'll miss starting a conversation and having no idea what accent, what voacbulary, and what story's going to come out of the person's mouth. I'll miss weirdass words. I'll probably step out into traffic a few times in the states. And go to the wrong side of the car for shotgun. And probably move over to the wrong side for the escalator going my way. And miss ginger beer. And meat pies. And eating kangaroo.


Mmmm... kangaroo.


Urp.

flightward!

makin' like a hockey player and leafing

Coming Soon to an America near you!

Just got off the horn with Hawaiian Air, and Australia will be short one Ben come Sunday. Plan is to dust off from Sydney in four days, land in Honolulu ten and a half hours before I take off, hang out in Hawaii for a shade over a week, and then pop off to Santa Francomocisco on June 18th. From then I'll probably burn a week in the Bay Area before moseying to points east.

Aside from selling off the car ($800AUD, and the radiator went pear-shaped hours before I sold it. Lucked out with two Brits who didn't mind fixing it themselves for the right price.) the past week has been mostly waffling about what I should do - go back to the states and rustle up a job, pop off to NZ or thailand/laos/cambodia/malaysia and break the bank, or find some cash-in-hand work in australia and then pop off to other lands. I finally sacked up and decided to go home.

I'm in no particular rush to get home, but it seems like the right choice. That's not to say I don't miss friends, family, and familiarity - I missed them the moment I left. It's more that there's no deadline, mostly no job or classes to start. But the biggest question I've got right now (and for the past few years) is if I've got the chops to actually work - to actually design something I'm proud of, to produce something to call my own, to actually affect something other than my own development; to just make Something happen. And to misuse; semicolons. It sounds like hippie crap even as I write it, but it feels right. Staying here and working wouldn't be the challenge I'm looking for, despite getting flair points for being NotAmerica. Maybe an engineering job in NZ, Dubai, or perhaps Europe would scratch the travel itch and chip away at the work thing at the same time. I feel like I'm almost over my Having A Purpose hangup, and willing to finally try something. Or maybe I'm just trying to tack some personal change on at the end of this Oz trip.

Here's where the paragraph about how travelling has 'changed me' (Changed Me? don't think I like the capitalizationing anymore) would go - but I haven't the slightest idea how it has. It was frightenly easy to slip into old internet-addict (short-term mental stimulation addict) habits once I lost momentum here in Sydney/Manly - so I'm not exactly some phoenix reborn. A friend pointed out, I may well realize further down the road that something has changed. Either way, I can say for sure, it certainly has been a trip.

The [Almost] End of Fun

Well, Shab and Brando are off on their own journeys. Adam's off to Singapore for a week,then Tokyo for a week, followed by Lost Dangles. Brandon's off to En-Zed for a few weeks with his pops, back to Sydvegas for a few weeks, and then points homeward.

Sad to see 'em go, getting back up the empty room after waving their shuttle off definitely hit home. After all my intentions of some epic solo adventure, having Adam along changed the trip for the better. Niether of us were particularly decisive people, but between the two of us, one (usually him) was willing to sack up and make a decision. Brandon was a great addition - he's a hilarious guy, and brought enthusiasm for travelling when the novelty was starting to fade for me. Having someone wide eyed and excited reminded me of how kickass the trip was, right when I was shifting into semi-grizzled veteran mode.

Future plans for me are up in the air. Running low on cash, and am gonna take a hit on the car resale. Getting to SE Asia is looking unlikely, which makes me sad. Might spend some time in Hawaii on the way back, or hit NZ briefly. Pretty much all hinges on deciding how thoroughly i want to beach the SS Ben's Budget.

Anypoo, there's a metric buttload of pictures for your perusal below. over 80! Starting shortly after we bailed on Cairns. Highlights include the Whitsundays, Fraser Island, and random large fruit. The BenLog's updated as well. the BenLOG? no? fine.

Alright, I've got to work on dumping Dusty into the fantastically craptacular used car market here. If you're near Sydney and looking for an unimpressive but fully functional ex-backpacker car, I know a guy who knows a guy. We'll call it $1500AUD. No? I like the cut of your jib, so, just for you, $1200. Fine. $1000?

Miscellaneous digital shenanigans

Spiffy QT pano of Maheno beach on Fraser Island

Perhaps equally spiffy pano of Whitehaven beach, in the Whitsundays:


Click!

Probably my favorite beach in Oz - didn't think Mandalay Beach in WA could be beat, but this one's a winner. Also saw a platoon of these little soldier crab dudes on the beach, probably about 50 of them. They do this cool corkscrew to dig into the sand and face back out at you. And they have the short term memory of a goldfish.

Crazy Ben's Home of the Discount Picture!

Josephine Falls, just south of Cairns

Ditto

We stumbled upon a Rally car race up - i think - Mount Stewart in Townsville. our curiousity was rewarded with a rallied-out Detomaso Pantera

oh, but it-a sounded so nice-a

more classic rally look

"They told me at the start line, you either win, or you crash. so i crashed"

The lower half of the middle sign is... convincing.

View from a lookout, south of Ayr.

Yards and rigging on the Solway Lass, the boat we had a stint on for the Whitsundays

Shab and Brando in the bow net

Damo settin' sail. Bastard wouldn't let me play on the rigging

My home away from home on the Lass, the bow net

Whitsundayery

Anchor lights at night, from a drifting ship

The Lass

More Lass

Goanna! (these captions practially write themselves)

Particularly jungley ferns on top of Mt Rooper, near Airley Beach. I feel like the hallmark of a good rainforest is its gigantic freakin' fernish things.

Crab dude wants a piece.

Purty road, south of Seventeen Seventy (I think it's cooler spelled out. 1770 to the locals)

Cruising along the beach on Fraser Island

Maybe a dingo ate your.... garbage?

At least there are signs

They have photons in Australia!

Purty Fraserness

Bow-thingy from the wreck of the Maheno. I could have photographed it for hours.

The wreck that is, not the bow-thingy.

And I kind of did find time to fit in a picture or two

Or four.

Fine, five.

Shiny beach

The beach was graded so slowly going out it pretty much left a mirror. At night I could make out the reflection of the southern cross, which was pretty damn amazing.

yeesh, alright, six Maheno shots. I swear it's the last one

Sunnyness just up the steps from the Champange Pools. Saw a humpback from up here

Indian Head, still on Fraser. Saw dolphins from up here

It was the weekend of a huge fishing competition, and the sand in the Indian Head bypass got churned into powder by the boat trailer traffic. Boats get stuck, spectactors/traffic victims pull up a chair and bust out the esky, and hilarity ensues. Adam, Brandon, and Jo(h?)n model the aussie classic look: VB in hand.

The parking lot on the southern side of the bypass.

Truck towing a truck towing a truck towing a boat. Bogen (Aussie for redneck) leading the charge, and yelling at ranger, off-frame, to get out of way. Ranger doesn't. Crowd chants 'Ranger's a wanker'. Also note rainbow.

Big dipper! Silly thing doesn't know its the southern hemisphere!

Post-sunrise at Fraser. Nowhere near as cool as the previous days, but someone was slow with the showering.

Lake McKenzie. Totally freshwater, crystal clear, colder'n hell. One of the most tranquil spots I've been.

Lake McKenzie plus Ben.

A pair of the glasshouse mountains. I'm too lazy to grab my map, but I think that's Beerwah on the left, and.. not Beerwah on the right. Best name was 'Tibrogargan', which we hiked the next day.

Lorikeet lookin' scruffy at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Did that koala... wink at me?

Koala with indigestion

Wombat!

Wombutt!

Finally checked 'mom and baby koala' off the aussie to-do list.

Ben with sheep, sheepdogs, sheepman.

Bris-vegas, baby

Yo.

Sunset from the lighthouse at Byron Bay. Easternmost point of Aussie mainland. Pointy bit in the mountain range is Mount Warning, the first place in Oz light hits. Was all set to hike it (leave at 3am), but found some bedbugs that night. kind of killed the four hours I had to sleep and i nixed the hike.

Arguably the even more easternmost point of Australia. gotta check the google maps.