Australia Pictures

Australia

The Deadliest Country on Earth

Over my two week Easter break I decided to go to Australia! It was massively fun, and coming back was a sad, sad experience that devastated me for at least a week. Regardless, going to OZ was a great highlight in my southern hemisphere experience.
I began my adventure by flying into Sydney. My good friend Christy is studying there so I stayed at her place before we went off exploring the continent country. We went and hung out at her friends place that night and the next day we flew up to this stunning place called Byron Bay. We met up with my two other friends from Santa Barbara, Jess and Kristin while we were spending time in Byron. It was raining the entire time we were there, but we all still loved it. Such a surf town, but with tons of stuff to do. I will definitely return one day. The town was considerably packed because there was a 5 day music festival that was going on when we were there. We went to the last day of it and I got to see Ben Harper, Xavier Rudd, Missy Higgins, and Jason Mraz. It was a great show minus the fact there the entire venue had anywhere from 4-6 inches of mud because of the rain! The next day we took a bus up to a place called Hervey Bay which is basically a gateway to the famous Fraser Island. Hostels in Hervey run camping excursions on Fraser and they gave us these overally top-heavy, 4 wheel drive tanks, crammed 10 of us in and said go. HA. I laugh now, but i was worried for my life most of the time we were driving. We were doing some serious off-roading and I really felt like we were going to roll. I mean it. The last day we were there one of the cars from a different company flipped on the beach. 2 people died and 4 more were heli-vacated to Brisbane hospital.But, besides all that Fraser was full of beautiful beaches, scenic views, and gorgeous Lake McKenzie, and offered the perfect environment for adventure seeking. We all liked it so much that we decided we wanted to stay another day on the island. We were planning on staying at this extremely classy resort, but on the last day Christy and Jess met some overlly friendly Australians who offered to let us stay with them at their campsite. They provided food and everything and let me tell you, they had beach camping down to a science... They had a refrigerator and freezer, two pantries, a 4 burner stove, a huge canvas covered living area and air mattresses in all of the tents. Not to mention a shower unit with hot water available. They were only staying on the island for 10 days, but it looked like they could have lived there for months. Anyway, after a great night with them we got off the island and headed to Brisbane. Both Jess and Kristin went back home after that because all of the Aussie univeristies only got one week while I got two. So Christy and I met up with our friend Samantha Leigh who studied abroad from Brisbane in Tahoe when I was a senior in High school. We caught up on everything while she showed us the city. The next day Christy flew back to Sydney, but I stayed an extra day with Sam. When I flew back to Sydney I stayed with my old roomate from this past fall, Kai. he lives in a dorm and was able to get me free food the entire time I was there. I had some great times in Sydney. There are a ton of beaches all around and most of them have good waves. Kai took me to this place called "The Baths" at Coogee Bay. It was basically just a bunch of rocks that made a big pool but the waves smashed up on them and you could hide underneath all sorts of little caves and watch the water come over. I spent the rest of my time in Sydney just checking out the city and trying to take it all in. I wish I could have seen more places in Australia, but the country is colossal. I could have spent two weeks just in Sydney.