Like last year, I spent Canada Day at work. I tried pulling the whole national holiday thing but for some reason it didn’t fly at work today. And like last year, I wore the above shirt to work. A colleague who was out of town on excursion even remembered to text me a “Happy Canada Day.” Well done, Chris.

Amanda also surprised me by decorating the apartment in anything Canadian/red. She’s awesome. My other highlight of Canada Day was seeing someone wearing a Canucks jersey at Central Station on my way home. I was tempted to say something to the man but then remembered I’m pretty anti-social.

I’ve lived in Australia for nearly four years now but I still find myself discovering new things every now and then. My latest discovery are TeeVee Snacks. Apparently I’ve been casually bypassing them in Coles for the past four years. MY LOSS. These things are great. It makes me wonder what else I am missing out on.

During the last week of our summer holidays, Amanda and I flew up to the Gold Coast for a four day holiday. I had never been to Queensland before so I was excited to see another part of Australia; I feel like I haven’t seen enough of this country, to be honest. Anyway, we were staying in Surfer’s Paradise and I was expecting the worst: drunk bogans, obnoxious tourists, and loud teenagers. While I am sure all of the above were present, I must say my low expectations paid off as Surfer’s was a far more pleasurable experience than I was expecting.

Our hotel was near the beach so we spent part of every day in the ocean. Surprisingly, the beach was never very busy, no matter what time of day it was. Not bad considering it was still the school holidays. We’re not sure if it was the recession or the fact that school was going back the following week but we certainly weren’t complaining. Compared to Sydney beaches it was a dream.

On our first afternoon on the beach I was body surfing (fairly well, I might add) in the warm Pacific water. Amanda was sitting up on the beach watching. At one point I came out of a wave and looked to my right and saw, much to my terror, a grey shape about two metres long in a breaking wave about 15 metres away.

There was a fin protruding from the wave.

After writing about shark attacks here for the past few years, my bloody, ironic death flashed before my eyes. My immediate reaction was to get the hell out of the water. Conveniently, I was in water that was too shallow to swim in but too deep to run in. Perfect. So I did one of those awkward water runs that make my lower extremities look like they belong to a giant marionette being manipulated by a novice puppeteer. Oddly, I didn’t yell “shark!” or anything. I just moved. Everyone else off to my left…well if they couldn’t see it themselves that was their problem.

Once I made it into water in which I was confident a shark could not to get me in (about 15 centimetres), I turned around to see no sign of my tormentor. And everyone else still swimming. One other guy saw the same thing I did, or so I assumed, as he was standing in the shallows with his boogie board staring out at the waves (he had previously just been out there with me). I walked up to him and asked if he saw “that.” He replied, “The fin? Yeah I did. It was probably just a dolphin though. They were all over the place down at Burleigh Heads this morning.”

A dolphin. While many spend hundreds of dollars to swim with dolphins in captivity, I just swam/ran from the chance to play around with one in the ocean. Brilliant!

I then made my way up to Amanda and explained what happened. Meanwhile, my boogie boarding friend went up to the lifesavers just to make sure it was a dolphin. It was about this time Amanda and I saw a fin out beyond the breakers, jumping out of the water in a playful, non-menacing manner. Stupid dolphin.

* The shark was actually almost certainly a dolphin

Over the course of the four days we spent most of our time relaxing…which is exactly what we wanted to do. If we weren’t at the beach we were likely by our hotel pool (complete with swim up bar!), reading on our hotel balcony overlooking the Pacific, or eating. We also visited Sea World (Wost. Log Ride. Ever.) and did a little shopping.

We checked into our hotel the day after the Big Day Out so our hotel was full of musicians; we saw Lupe Fiasco, The Dropkick Murphys and TV on the Radio wandering around all week. Kinda random/cool. All in all, a great little getaway before heading back to work this week. Some photos from the trip below, starting with the view from our hotel room.

Back in May I wrote:

But I may be that prick at work who wins stuff without any skill whatsoever. Hate me, hate me now.

Well, a few weeks ago when the NRL regular season wrapped up, our footy tipping competition at work came to an end. And it turns out that I CAME IN SECOND PLACE! How does that taste, LOSERS? You all (well almost all) lost to a Canadian in a footy tipping competition. Ouch.

My achievement was awarded with a cool $255! It all came down to the last weekend when I picked one result more than someone I had been even with for weeks. He was not pleased. My pick ended up costing him some cash (we would have split the second place prize).

People at work were not happy with me for a couple reasons. First, I obviously know nothing about the sport. In fact, I find it really dull. The Grand Final just wrapped up a little while ago and I didn’t watch a single second; I probably saw 15 minutes of game play the entire season. Second, I was tipping the last few weeks via email while I was on vacation in Vancouver; a Canadian beat them….FROM CANADA.

Anyway, it was a great day at work when I walked into the office to be greeted by accolades, scorn, obscenities, and an envelope containing $255 cash.

Despite moving here nearly three years ago, Canada Day 2008 was the first Canada Day I actually spent on this giant island (in 2006 and 2007 we were back in Vancouver at this time). Since I had to work I decided to make the best of it and I actually dressed up (a little) for the occasion. In addition to the above shirt I also wore this:

Needless to say, I didn’t wear it all day, but it did get some attention with my students and at our staff meeting in the afternoon. I was even wished a “Happy National Canuck Day” by my colleagues. I was also sledged a bit at work too…but when you come from a prison colony you don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to national identities. KIDDING.

(Sort of)

(I’ve already written about Australia Day vs. Canada Day)

Happy Canada Day!

Sean continues to milk one trip in April for blogging in May…

There are Big Things in Australia. In Goulburn (one of the glorious bustling cities along the Hume) they have the Big Merino. It’s even anatomically accurate. In the gift shop attached to the sheep’s right flank we overheard a woman say to a man (with absolutely no irony), “You can climb those stairs and get right up inside the sheep.”

What a fantastic world we live in.

A few weeks ago, Amanda and I spent the better part of four days driving all over the southeastern part of Australia. Our ultimate goal was The Twelve Apostles on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road so when we set out from Sydney on a rainy Monday morning we had a whole lot of road ahead of us. Most of that road was the Hume Highway.

Fortunately, the rain didn’t last long. In fact, the entire time we were in the Melbourne area it was beautiful, sunny, and warm while back in Sydney it continued to rain (it rained for 13 days straight in Sydney last month!). The drive from Sydney to Melbourne is pretty easy:

Step 1: Get on Hume Highway
Step 2: Stay on Hume Highway for approximately 9 hours
Step 3: You are in Melbourne

I love driving, so I actually did all the driving on this trip. The Hume Highway is not the most exciting stretch of road in the world (though I80 through Wyoming is far worse) but I was excited nonetheless as I hoped the road would afford me the opportunity to see some of the wonders of rural Australia. And the Hume Highway delivered.

Just a little past the thriving metropolis of Goulburn is the up and coming suburb of Yass. Now the McDonald’s people in Yass fancy themselves a little bit edgy as evidenced by the massive billboard outside Yass:

A little further along we saw a Dog on a Tuckerbox (though I preferred the no-nonsense sign):

You might well be asking yourself what could possibly top a dog on a tuckerbox. Well the fine folks in Holbrook might respond by telling you about their submarine. I would have loved to have been a part of the meeting that led to a landlocked town hours and hours away from any body of water larger than a puddle acquiring a decommissioned submarine that they would then half bury in a park.

“You know what screams Holbrook?”
“What, city councillor?”
“An old navy sub.”
“…”

And they are proud of that sub, dammit.

“What delights lay beyond Holbrook?” I wondered as we continued southeast through New South Wales. Would Wodonga turn out to be the Paris of the southern hemisphere? Would Bowser have a Super Mario themepark? I drove on, eyes wide like a kid at Christmas, enraptured by what I might encounter next.

Well cross we did into Victoria where we came across Glenrowan, the site of Ned Kelly’s last stand. Ned Kelly’s last stand is one of the most popular moments in Australian history. Peter Carey even wrote a novel about the Kelly Gang and won the Booker for it. And this is how the site of the last stand is preserved:

I have some more pictures of Glenrowan that I will save for a separate post. They are that good.

Anyway, on we continued, getting closer and closer to Melbourne which would be our basecamp for our trek along the Great Ocean Road. But before we got to Melbourne we passed a town called Dookie. You can’t make this stuff up! The sign also makes me wonder just how purple Violet Town is.

It took approximately ten hours to drive from Sydney to Melbourne (including a number of stops) and that entire time we saw no (live) kangaroos (about 20 dead ones though!). Luckily, on our return journey we saw one kangaroo and a fox! Score.

More photos from our trip here.

Coming up next time: our hero negotiates Melbourne’s hook turns and trams and then faces off with a vicious echidna all the while discovering that Australian speed limits are ridiculous.

As if it wasn’t enough avoiding crocodiles, sharks, snakes, and spiders, you now need to worry about the mosquitoes killing you up north.

A man has died from the mosquito-borne virus Murray Valley encephalitis (MVE) in Western Australia’s far northern Kimberley region. The WA Health Department is warning people in the Kimberley and the Pilbara to take extra care to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes around swamp and river systems.

Full story.

And I’m way behind here. As evidenced by the post below, Amanda and I drove the Great Ocean Road last week. It was beautiful. In fact we drove all the way from Sydney to Melbourne so I got to see a lot of the Australian countryside which is filled with some of the most random towns anywhere. I will write more about this soon…but for now check the photos on Flickr.

More will be here shortly…

Victoria is a beautiful place.

As mentioned last Sunday…