Over So Quickly

4am, Friday Morning. Yes, 4am. 2 of the people in our room not-so-secretary snuck out to catch their plane to their final destination. I should take a step back and describe where we were staying. Now I don’t know if you’ve seen hostel the movie, but that’s generally what I was expecting it to look like on the inside. Needless to say it was not. After all this was Australia and not Amsterdam (close but no cigar). So instead of being a small and shady hostel tucked away behind in a small allay I was greeted by a glowing neon sign in the middle of a pretty loud and alive city street--Gilligans.In fact it was described by lonely planet as “the Ritz of all hostels.” I wouldn’t have called in the Ritz, but it wasn’t shabby either. With about 4 floors and countless rooms, a kitchen for each floor and balconies all round it was easy to see why AustraLearn would prefer this place. The rooms were of 8; mine filled with the 5 guys for Melbourne Uni (including myself), 1 from somewhere else and the 2 that left at 4am for their flight to Brisbane/Gold Coast. it was good to have all the guys for Melbourne in one place as it allowed us to get to know each other better before being thrust into the City of Melbourne. Each room had a toilet and shower room and plety of space for backpacks and luggage, and entry onto on of the many shared balconies. I should also mention that the shower was SO nice after 56-odd hours of traveling. So yea, back to 4am…after falling back asleep, 4 hours later it was our turn to leave. The Backpacker (and I know this whole post seems like an advertisement for Gilligans) has a nice breakfast situation too with lots of selection to eat. Surprisingly (especially for myself) we had no problems with this flight, it left 5 minuites late and there was minor panic when all of austral earns luggage came of DEAD last (pretty much everyone’s luggage who arrived normally (aka not me) was lost on the trip from LA to Cairns). We left the warm costal city in the north and flew down to Melbourne where it was…well, FREEZING. We dug through our luggage to retrieve the warmest clothes we had before bracing the cold night on our way to our accommodation, RMIT Village Old Melbourne, 5 -17 Flemington Road, North Melbourne VIC 3051.

Cairns

Although my time in Cairns was short lived (due to my insane travels described below) it was a good time. Originally scheduled for a 3 day orientations weekend, with trips to the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest, I only spent 1 and a half days missing the Great Barrier Reef. I did get to go to the rainforest though, to a place called Rainforestation that was literally 20 minutes outside cairns. Cairns is a cool place in that you can be inside the city with 10+ story buildings, nightclubs, malls and restaurants then 10 minutes outside be surrounded by sugarcane (and sugarcane toads—which it’s the law to kill on sight) and 10 minutes further and up a mountain to be in the rainforest. With a zoo-like animal sanctuary, actives like how to throw a boomerang and play a didgeridoo with aborigines, and army duck tours through a rainforest set-up it was a quick immersion into Australia and Australia’s wildlife and plant life. The wildlife park was probably the best part of the day with kangaroo’s up-close, koala’s, wombats, barramundi, crocodiles, cassowary, snakes, and a lot of the other animals in Australia that can and will kill you (and the signs made sure you knew it). I spent the rest of my brief time in cairns touring the small town/city enjoying the cultural intricacies of Australian life. Oh, and I saw Dark Night with a bunch of people (yeh, 2 days before its release in America).

Airlines Suck

So I arrived at EWR with plenty of time for my 6:40 flight only to find out that it had been delayed to 7:35. Ok, well that’s fine, 55 minutes…unless of course you have only 1hr 40mins to catch a connecting flight at LAX. In typical Newark fashion we sat on the tarmac for an hour, and then because of a storm front to the west we had to go around it and up into Canada. Needless to say we didn’t get into LAX till 1-something. I had missed my connecting flight…so without any luggage I spent the night in a hotel only to get up and spend the next day sitting in LAX…for 9 hours. Departing reasonably on time, we spent the next 11 hours flying only to be notified by out captain that we had run out of fuel and would have to stop in Noumea. I should say that we hadn’t strictly speaking run out of fuel but would if we continued to Brisbane because of a storm over Brisbane. Noumea looked lovely, from what we could see from our small 12 inch windows, but yet again I had a connecting flight in Brisbane (which I had 4 hours this time). 2 hours later we took off again; to arrive in Brisbane 50 minuets after my connection to cairns had left. So I sat in Brisbane airport for 6 hours. Narrowly avoiding passing out completely in some fairly uncomfortable airport chairs I got on my flight and made my way to Cairns, arriving 36 hours after everyone who I was supposed to be traveling with. Cairns is awesome though.
Now pictures of Noumea (c) Amanda Sacks (the person next to me, because i couldn't be arsed to get my camera out):