Skiing in the Southern Hemisphere

To prove my ignorance of Australia, I was unaware of the possibility of skiing in Australia until this year. Since being enlightened to this opportunity, it was added to my ever-changing and often forgotten list of things I'd like to do in my lifetime.

I thought I had missed the opportunity, as it is warming up quickly here, but Owen (an Aussie who studied at UT last semester, strangely enough) was headed to the mountains on the last weekend of the season, and Alex and I thought we'd tag along.

The guys at the rental shop suggested we go to Thredbo mountain - which had the most terrain open. I won't lie to you and say it was great weather, on the contrary, it was 35 degrees with winds at 39 miles per hour (to put that into perspective, it's almost fast enough to be classified as a tropical storm). The wind had blown the fresh snow from the night before into dunes, leaving behind nice big patches of ice.

After mid-morning, the sun started poking through the cloud (which was actually the snow getting blown around), and we found an area of the mountain with decent conditions, and even a few trails with the previous night's powder still unskied. Most people had given up on the day due to the weather, so we had the advantage of empty slopes and no lift lines. All in all, everything about the day in the mountains more than made up for the less than perfect weather.

This has nothing to do with Australia

I have a piece of chocolate sitting beside me that I don't want to eat. It's not bad, quite the opposite, actually, I'm still enjoying the last bit which I finished a few minutes ago. The lingering taste is still satisfying and rich. I wouldn't call myself a chocolate connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but I picked up a bar of Lindt Excellence 85% Cocoa last night and have fallen in love with it. Unlike Hershey's, which I've read is a little over 11% cocoa, it's satisfying in a much different way.

Byron to Brisbane - Part 2

After a late night of getting dressed up and checking out the nightlife in Surfers Paradise (which is amazing, by the way), we were all feeling like a lazy day on the beach, even if it was cloudy and windy. I can say one thing for sure about the people I traveled with - we're completely capable of entertaining ourselves without bungee jumping, skydiving, or giving some guy 100 bucks an hour to teach us to surf. Two or three of us were making a small sandcastle, when Jeremy came over and told us we weren't thinking big enough. We enlisted the rest of the group to help make our sandcastle bigger, so big, in fact, that people walking past on the beach would stop and take pictures, give us suggestions and (once they found out we were foreign) ask us about where we were from. It's amazing how friendly strangers are in Australia.

Sandcastle-ing is only fun for so long, so we would up body surfing through the big waves. One huge, particularly violent waved flipped me over and crashed me on my head, breaking a tooth. Ouch. Could have been worse (probably much worse), but still wasn't a pleasant experience.

So far, I've always had good luck with public transportation in Australia, but when we got out of our cab at the train station to catch a ride in to Brisbane, we found out that the track was under construction and the station closed. After a few moments of mass confusion (we already had our rail tickets), we found out that a bus would be driving us to the nearest operational train station, which was about 30 minutes away from seemingly anything. We accounted for most of the people on the platform, with nothing in sight but a parking lot and the bus we came on pulling away through the drizzle.

One long train ride later and we arrived in Brisbane. It's a beautiful city; on the river, warm (usually), and slow paced. I would have liked to spend more time there, but we were still able to make it out to Moreton Island (which is all sand) for some sight seeing and four-wheeling around the beaches and dunes.

One thing I love about Australian cities is that they have huge botanical gardens in the middle of the city (think Central Park, but with weird plants and trees). They make for great sights when you're just walking around town, and make great picnic spots. I was sad to leave Brisbane the next day, as I could have spent a lot more time there, but we were running out of money and had to get home for classes. All in all, it was a spectacular week with a bunch of spectacular friends in a series of spectacular places. This country is all right.