The meaning of 'September Break'

Well hello there. So this is my blog entry to explain both my trips to Surfers Paradise and Brisbane, and also my absolute stupidity wherein I lost ownership of my camera. However, before you get too excited, I will have to start at the beginning with the purpose of my travelling in September. This, it seems, has befuddled many of my friends that can't seem to contemplate why I get to go on holidays when they have to go back to University ( I do work in a school as well, remember). Well, because the school system over in the southern hemisphere parallels the seasons they experience here, just like our system changes with the seasons in the north, their breaks and holidays are at different times. So as it is our winter back home in December, downunder we start feeling the 40 degree weather. Likewise with our summer in Canada, Australians start feeling the 20 degree weather ( Haha, well I guess it gets as low as 10 at night here). This would then explain to all my rather confused friends why I went on a 'spring break' in september, because it technically is their spring. I hope now everything is clear...
My September holidays started off with a 13 hour wait in an airport smaller than Vic Intl. Our (Marco's and myself's) only free ride into Townsville left at 5:00 am, whereas our flight out of Townsville to Brisbane departed at 8:30pm. This left Marco and myself plenty of time to catch up on sleep from our early waking, to play cards, to glance at my newly purchased SI calendar, and to play pool in a cafe across from the departures area. After several thoughts about doing a mid-day hike to the coast out of sheer boredom ( An 1hr hump with our heavily laden bags ), we received a call from a friend that was due in Townsville at any moment and who thought we should go out for lunch (with still 8 hrs before boarding). This afternoon snack ended up turning into a random search for long lost friends, and eventually a barbie with complete strangers who were friends of a friend. It was great times because our vacation attitude had taken over early, and the drinking commenced at the first sign of beer. Herr Marco had a few too many, and after checking in at the flight desk ( a time we barely made because of traffic back to the 'port ) yelled out to me while I was walking in front of him " WE NEED MORE BEERS". Take-off was an interesting event, because everything was already moving fast for me before we'd begun to taxi...
We landed in Brisbane as slightly more sober men, at around 10:00 pm. Somehow Marco and I had managed to wrestle our way into a friend's sisters' place for the night since our hostel booking had gone awry... and that night had led me to meet a nice guy who dives for the Australian navy and who would later come up to visit us for the Charters Towers races (Oct 21st). The next couple days we stayed in Brisbane and I had come to love the city that was big, but also very accomodating and easy to get around in. If you ever come to find yourself trapped in the city, well just say any one of these three words: roma, central, or southbank. This will solve any of your travelling woes, since they are all very well located train stations which can take you anywhere from Steve Irwin's "Australia Zoo", to the Sunshine coast or Gold coast. Number one favorite spot: Southbank. It's an oasis trapped in the middle of the stone and glass, with picture perfect sand pools and flowering arches draped over the curving sidewalks. It's quite an architectually orgasmic place, and can be found just over the Brisbane River bridge with great views of the skyscrapers. The bitch of it all is that I'd taken some great amazing pictures of this city, all very well planned and posed for... but I'd lost the friggen thing. Oh well, I'll get to that later, just writing this all out reminds me of some really beautiful places. Damn.
Regrettably, we had to leave Brisbane. The rest of the coast was calling my name and a couple of days was already a frivolous investment in my 2 week timeline, so we'd packed up and hitched the train south with two additional strays. Well they might see that as insulting, so in all fairness we'd actually met up with two clean and healthy German ladies whom we met while on orientation in Melbourne. Annika and Janina were both acquantances in school prior to their GAP year who became friends after discovering they were heading in the same direction, and so they also thought they would travel together for the September period break. It was only after talking with Marco for a little while over the internet that they decided that the three of them would see the same places, and of course I joined in slightly later as the out-of-place and anglophonic Canadian. Yes, a lot of German was spoken over the break, and no, I didn't understand a word.
But we were 'auf der strasse' (on the road) and bound for the Gold coast's Surfers Paradise with hope of seeing the sun that had successfully evaded us in Brisbane. Unfortunately, it turned out that the bastard hid from us in Surfers too. In actuality we'd surfed and lounged on the moderately populated beaches for around 3 days and did manage to see our share of sun, but not long enough to save us from a near-disastrous surfing lesson in a lightning storm... oh well, it was cold, dark and wet but the ever-popular surfing guru that taught us for $40.00 made us laugh so much with his outrageous claims that it saved the day. What we'd already intuitively thought was a rip-off lesson from a guy who seemed to know and compete with every professional surfer in the world (yes Ghislaine, Kelly Slater too), seemed to make itself evident after the time had to be cut-short cause of the 'bad tides' and the pictures that couldn't be taken cause it was 'too dark'. Apparently Bodi had also gone drinking with Steve Irwin and was at his private 30-strong funeral... lol. Anyways, now comes the great camera story: To cap off a bad day, us four guys (well two girls, two guys) decided we should go to the cheap restaurant we'd attended the night before and which had seemed to have good food ( God knows we were hungry and cold after 4 hrs storm surfing ). Because I thought I'd get some good group photos of all of us, I brought along my camera. Though my fatal mistake was neglecting to keep it in my sight since there was relatively small table space, and so I'd put the camera et al on the ground. Finishing the meal, we all paid, stood up and walked away, leaving me without a thought as to the whereabouts of my camera. I'd obviously realized my mistake by the next morning, but after running down to the restaurant, I was told that no-one on shift that night or anyone working that day was given a camera by the next customer at that table, or had reported a lost camera themselves. I'd left my phone number with little hope, and understandably couldn't wait till I left the city of shit behind me. The first week of my travels was already over, and it most certainly had ended on a lowpoint. With the tattered remains of my travel hopes, I boarded the train back north to Brisbane and attempted to console myself with a couple subway foot longs and some microwaveable garlic bread...

Green Island

So on the day we had to explore Cairns, we instead decided to go to Green Island. One would think that this is a stupid idea considering we'd made the trip to come and see what Cairns was all about...but if you were in our position you would understand the small amount of boredom we'd had with remaining in a city all day (everyone knows cities come to life at night) and the amount of hype we'd heard about the Great Barrier Reef up north. So to us there was no question about leaving the city for the day to check out the reef. We'd left our hostel at around 9.00 am to reserve our spot on the tour-ferry, the journey estimated to only take 40-45 minutes since the island is only 27 km from shore, and then sat around in nervous anticipation of a reef trip and some snorkelling adventures. There was also an air of relief considering we'd been having slightly cold (25 C) and miserable weather in the days previous, but were blessed with a sunny day and 24 degree water temp. Getting on the ferry (really just an oversized yacht) we'd listened to some briefings about the history of the island, the warnings about the deadly jellyfish which weren't really expected during that season but had to be heeded anyway, and other musings by the tour staff who were really working hard for tips from the pale-faced tourists. Green Island is really only a miniscule dot on the map, and can easily be walked around in under 20 minutes...the attraction of it, however, is the white sand beaches, the lush greenery, the reef that can be easily snorkelled, and the pristine water. It's a location perfectly catering to tourists with helicopter tours available, a small resort that allows overnight accomodation, and a crocodile zoo which exhibits only some of the many crocodiles to be found in that area (not on green island, but in the Cairns region) . Our specific tour booking allowed us time on the island from 10:30 am until 5:00 pm, perfect since we still wanted to spend time experiencing the Cairns nightlife. Marco and Katie enjoyed spending time between sun-bathing, walking the island, and the occasional swimming, while I just frolicked in the water. After all was said and done, I had spent approximately 4 hrs of pure snorkelling time and another hour of just swimming out above the reef until I got tired. Although the fish and wildlife weren't abundant, I still had a few chance-encounters that left me breathless in the water... one of which was being able to follow a stingray from behind. Now, of course this was before the whole Steve Irwin incident with stingrays (which incidentally occured only a couple of hours from where I was) and I was about 2 weeks from discovering that stingrays held any danger at all. But at this time I had seen nothing but a few coloured fish all day and I was insistant on following at least something and getting in touch with the true reef. Luckily enough for me, this particular stingray decided not to stab me with his tail, but instead just sped along faster than I could keep up when he got annoyed with me. It was all rather anti-climatic after that point, and I just enjoyed a bit of scenery in the croc zoo, and some more sun-bathing before the 5 o clock hour had come and it was our time to go. What a great first experience on the reef though, and the weather was nice enough to co-operate for what was to become one of the more memorable events prior to my September vacation. Hope you enjoy the pictures below as well. Cheers. (Oh and a tip for all who haven't realised...if you want to see a picture enlarged, just click on it and it should be fine from there)

Green Island: Pictures

Cairns: More photos

Cairns

Well this was our trip to Cairns. Us Gappies happened to get word from Mac (dean of students and gap supervisor) that he would be making a trip up to Cairns one weekend to visit some friends he had up there, and would have 3 available seats if we wanted them. Gratefully we obliged and quickly got excited for our first real trip outside of Charters Towers since we arrived in Australia. Granted we'd gone to Townsville on a few occasions, but that feels more like a trip from Victoria to Duncan than Victoria to Comox or something, and so Cairns quickly became the focus of all our computer time googling what there is to do in such a place. Turns out there's lots. Not only is Cairns one of the greatest backpacker destinations (since it's esplanade and downtown region has more hostels than can be counted), but it is also is located in one of the most accesible regions of the Great Barrier Reef. Not often do people realize that the Great Barrier Reef isn't actually on the coastline of North-Eastern Australia (Queensland), but instead up to 100's of kms out onto the water. However the farther north you go, the closer the reef curves towards the coastline, and so Cairns, in it's tropical northern location, creates quite easy access to the beautiful water of the reef. Upon arriving there at around 10 or 11 pm, Katie, Marco, and myself began walking up the esplanade (the road bordering the shoreline where you find all the fancy things) to find the hostel that I'd booked back in CT. This took quite a while. In fact we walked all the way up to the top of the esplanade and back a couple of times before discovering that the hostel I'd booked was discreetly tucked into some dark doorway which looked like the most shut-down place possible in the city considering it was only 10 or 11. Got in the hostel, settled down for bed and awaited our fun-filled day ahead of us... whatever that was to be. This was Friday night, and the roadtrip there took approximately 6-7 hours, so we were tired. Saturday led us to the tropical island of Green. No, seriously, the place is called Green Island. It was fantastic, and i'll explain it in another entry... after doing Green Island for the whole day we came back and decided what there was to see in the city. Being a city alive with travellers, backpackers, tourists and just plain crazy locals, we found plenty of spots for a good brew. A couple of destinations we saw and liked were P.J. O'Briens, and Gilligans... there were a couple of honourable mentions though this being a couple months after the fact I can't remember.... and one really shifty cowboy joint that felt out-of-place with the whole palm tree setting, but this is still North Queensland and NQLD loves it's country, so we didn't give them a hard time for it. After a really late night and an interesting phone call to my parents (i'm sure you guys remember), I settled down for the night, which it turned out, was to be closely followed by the morning. It came. I didn't want it to. But I got up anyway at 7 at the pressure of having to check out by 9 or lose my deposit... damn. Well it was still a jolly good time touring the city, walking to the mall that never came, and then catching a taxi to see the man who would be our chauffeur for the 7 hour drive home. All in all it was a jolly good adventure, even with the drive up watching the sugar cane fields float by and the constant thrill of a kangaroo encounter... one can never know. I'll update with some more pictures later, and then my green island pictures. Cheers.

Athletics Day

This was athletics day. Not so much a competition against other schools this time (although that event did happen later on in the term) but this athletics day was a time for inter-house competition. The houses in ASSG are Page/Chad (RED) and Ramsay/Auburn (GREEN) and Feetham/Beckett ( YELLOW). They're grouped accordingly because they are brother and sister houses coinciding with the girls' and boys' dorms. I believe that after all was said and done ramsay and auburn houses walked away with the cup, but don't quote me. Well anyways it was just a great day for the whole school to spend a day together, junior school included (which is a rare occasion indeed) , and have a break from their studies. Here is a picture of a year one by the name of Michael, and the picture of all the students in the yellow shirts are the preschoolers, with teachers Katherine Limkin and Margaret Riddle behind them standing like proud mothers. I also took the opportunity of adding in a picture of the school's dining hall, just because there was some free space and I thought you'd enjoy another perspective. Well that's it for this posting. Cheers.

Townsville