Darwin...Northern Territory...The Top End

How did I get to this place, Darwin? The best answer I can give is by plane.

Exactly a week ago I arrived in Darwin, wondering how I could see the "sites" in only 3 days. All of a sudden I am applying for jobs up and down the 3 streets that make up Darwin's city business district.

The "plan" was to fly to Darwin and the next day pick up our rental van, which we would drive for a month going from Darwin, along the west coast down to Perth. BUT when we went to pick up the van, we quickly realized it would be impossible to leave Darwin that fateful day...the van was stick shift, or manual, and I only know how to stall out when driving stick shift. Not to mention the fact that the drivers seat is on the right (so the gear shift would be in your left hand) and you have to drive on the left side. So while an option was to find the next person to teach us how to drive manual, the idea was quickly shot down. We have enough to think about already just driving an automatic. After a day of trying to make other vehicle arrangements, we were unsuccesful (mostly because all the vans in our price range are manual) and forced to stay a little longer, as in atleast a month longer...

So now it has been a week, and I am pleasently surprised by Darwin... First of all I love the weather. Darwin has two seasons, wet and dry. Currently it is the dry season so everyone is out and about. It is around 80-90 degrees Feveryday...and I am loving it.

I also love Darwin because given the unexpected issues, we have had to act fast in terms of looking for jobs, and we have gotten lucky. I have worked a business party (through a hospitality agency) at the Darwin Sailing Club, and I also (out of luck) met someone on the street who got me a job at the Darwin Convention Center. I also hope to work at the Darwin Cup and see some aussie horse races! Both Jill and Condon also have been lucky finding jobs, Jill is temping at a
company and Condon is bartending.

Next on our agenda was housing...we have been living in hostels, and because it is dry season, the prices are way high and making us go broke. Out of luck Jill ran into a friend from Cairns who just moved into a sharehouse. He checked with the landlord and sure enough there is a room available for us for a very cheap price. It is not only a room, but a whole floor because no one else lives on the first floor. We will have our own apartment practically. We move in on Thursday. Housing? Check!

Also, whenever we discussed going to Darwin the consensus always seemed to be "I won't die if I never make it to Darwin". So it was a shock when we realized it would be our home for atleast a month. We decided to see what the town had to offer in the fun department. Our first night out we placed third in a trivia contest and got a 50$ bar tab. They loved us, and we started to love Darwin.

And finally another reason I love Darwin is becase you never know what you are going to get. This past Saturday the Vice-President of China dined at the Darwin Convention Center. Then on Sunday, 3000 US Marines arrived. Check out their ship!

I got some info from a few of them and
they told me they were in Darwin to pick up their mail and supplies. When they are in the middle of the ocean (looking for pirates) they cannot recieve their mail, so they have to go to a port. I couldn't think of a better port city than Darwin!

So there is my new life in a nut shell. So what happens in a month??? The company we rented our van from has ONE automatic (3 seater) van in ALL of Australia. It supposedly will be in Darwin on July 22...we are hoping to reserve that van and finally take our west coast trip, like
we planned. In the mean time we are working like animals trying to make all the money we blew on this unexpected situation... which turns out to not be so bad.

Traveling the Atherton Tablelands with Celebrity, John Nicholas

That's right. Last Tuesday, Jill, Condon, and I hired (rented) a van with an Englishman, John Nicholas, and a German named Jorge. So before we leave Cairns on Tuesday I am running last minute errands when I get a call from Jill and she says " we are leaving a little later, there is a photo shoot going on right now". I assume the group wants to take a picture together. But when I get to our van, I realize it is a newspaper photographer who is taking Jill, Condon, and most importantly John's picture. John was the featured person because the article focused on English travelers in Australia. Jorge was not allowed to be in the picture probably because he didn't understand what was going on and kept asking the photographer what he was doing. Jorge, the man is doing his job. Right as I walk up the photo shoot was over, and I had missed my chance at stardom...there will be other photo shoots..

We had the campervan for 7 days and 6 nights. It came stocked with a microwave, refrigerator, sink, stove, sleeping bags/sheets, and a tent just to name some of the basics. There was room enough room for 3 of us to sleep in the back with the cushions pulled together and two boards underneath to support us. Above our sleeping arrangement there was a loft area where the 2 boys could sleep comfortably. However Jorge is over 6 ft tall and he was too clostraphobic to sleep with his head inside the loft so instead he slept the other way, causing his head to hangout sometimes, and for is pillow to drop all the time. Entertainment for me though. The Englishman would sleep in the tent whenever possible...I always thought the German would need the room more but John would beat him to it. Here is a picture of the campervan!

But we hit the road heading south. Over the first few days we stopped to see crater lakes, swim, hike, and have bbqs. On night 2 we arrive in a small town, Milla Milla. Population 300 people. We stop in at the Millaa Millaa hotel motel to have a drink and charge some of our electornics. We also are looking for a free way to charge our refrigerator battery. I ask a fellow townsman, Ben, about charging and turns out he has a battery charging outlet at his house right around the corner. Great! We get to talking and he learns I am from Ohio and tells me how he has a chat
friend in Lorraine, OH... And another chat friend in Baltimore. This is when I realize Ben is a little different. But either way the girls hang out at the hotel motel while John and Jorge go to Bens house to figure out the battery. Better them than us. Especially after Ben offered up his Internet to us atleast 3 times "Really, you can use my Internet, I have aol, msn chat, skype...". Ben loves the Internet! While the girls waited at the bar, we looked at the Milla Milla newspaper which a single piece of computer paper. The weekly brainteaser did not tease Jill and she ended up being the winner of the week. Her name "Jill from America" will be congratulated in the
following week's paper. Jorge and John get back from Bens house and it turns out the cords for charging were to small/big. But they were not completely empty handed, Ben had cut out the article from the Cairns Post that had the picture of Jill, Condon, and John. Serious celebs!

We left the local bar and went to Millaa Milla Lookout where we slept. At sunrise I got up and tried to take some pictures with my substitute camera, my iphone.

Other sites were Millaa Milla falls, Zillie falls, Ellinjaa falls.

Saw many more small towns. Including Queensland's highest town, Ravenshoe, and Queensland's tidiest town, Atherton. Day 4 gets really good. We arrive at the Granite Gorge Nature Park. Here you you could camp, explore the gorge, and feed wild wallabys. We had an American style dinner of cheeseburgers with corn on the cob and for dessert s'mores. During dinner a mother wallaby came to hang out with us with her baby in her pouch. Here is the best picture I could get! They are the cutest things!

Day 5 we explored the gorge and fed more wallabys. The wallabys in the morning were really fiesty. They no longer seemed as cute. The gorge was amazing, with huge granite rocks all around, it took us about an hour/2 hours to walk through the whole thing. After the gorge we go up north and back towards the coast to Cape Tribulation which you get to by ferry. The cape is famous because it is where the rainforest meets the ocean. None of the beaches allowed swimming though because the cape is also known for crocodiles and boxed jellyfish depending on the season. Sadly, no croc sightings for me.

Day 6, we leave Cape tribulation and go south towards Cairns. We stop for our last night in Port Douglas which is about an hour and a half from Cairns. It is a really pretty town, and happens to be where I got on the boat to go snorkeling. So pretty of a town that one day, when I have money to jet set around the world, maybe I will take a vacation there. A good relaxing way to end the trip! The next day we arrived back "home" in Cairns. FNQ, or far north Queensland, was
beautiful!

P.S. This story blog turned into a novel!

Welcome to Cairns!

Hi! A major move has just been made...I have semi-permanently moved to Cairns! Located in far north Queensland, on the east coast! Melbourne was amazing but the winter season was coming and it was starting to get colder (no snow, but cold) so it was time to move on! For the past month I have been working 24/7 to save money so I could move to Cairns and start traveling down the east coast!

Queensland is where many of Australia's beaches are located, and there is so much to do and see. I have already spent half of my savings on activities I will eventually do as we start traveling down. Yesterday I completed my first activity and went snorkeling AND scuba diving at one of the biggest attractions, the Great Barrier Reef. It was so amazing! We got picked up at our hostel around 6:45 am in Cairns and we drove about an hour north to Port Douglas to get on our boat. On board, there was a mixture of about 30 people who would be snorkeling, scuba diving, etc. We set sail and cruised for about an hour while our scuba diving instructor briefed us on the safety precautions and how scuba diving works. It was very serious as it can be dangerous... especially if you have heart problems or asthma...a few people ended up not being able to go due to health issues, doctors orders. But the main points were about equalizing your ears every foot or meter, to ensure your ear drums do not pop, and also constantly breathing in and out of your
mouth. It's funny, but once I finally got under water I understood why he focused so much on breathing because I got really caught up with the amazing sight of the coral and fish and almost forgot to keep breathing! But after the briefing we arrived at our scuba spot and the boat docked. We got into groups of 4 and put on our wet suits, weights to hold us down, tanks, masks/goggles and flippers. Then, one by one we submerged and did a skills test to ensure we were breathing right, we knew how to put our mouth piece back in if for some reason it would
come out, and also test to make sure we knew how to clear water out of our mask if it should fill up. All things that would cause someone to quickly panic. Once we all passed our little tests and we were under water holding on to a rope we gradually started swimming down and exploring the coral and fish. One of the first things the instructorshowed us was the nemo fish! Throughout the time there was a cameraman underwater with us taking our pictures! We were under the
water for 30 minutes and went down 6-10 meters. It was so amazing! After the first dive we came back up and took off our gear and we were able to snorkel. Not as cool after you have scuba dived but I had an underwater camera so I was able to take lots of cool pictures! Soon it was lunch time and we rested after a long time in the water. Sadly my camera screen decided to stop working for the rest of the time on the boat...maybe it was exhausted after I turned into a fish paparazzi and literally stalked the same 2 fish most of the time I was snorkeling.

After lunch there was an option to do another dive at a different location and I could not resist! The second dive was even better than the first! It was deeper and had more fish and coral to explore. It was also a lot more laid back because we had a better idea of what was going on. Another 30 minutes of peace in the water down 10 meters. If only my camera had worked for the second dive! Of course as we docked back at Port Douglas the camera man, who followed me, Jill and Condon all day, gave us a deal on a picture package so some good pictures will be posted soon! Along with the pictures of my snorkeling adventure because on the drive home my camera conveniently was back to normal! Some new potential jobs if all else fails are dive instructor
or fish paparazzi...back up plan of course...

Some of the tanks lined up:

Air Gauge: