I depart in a few days and I am feeling a wide range of emotions: happy to finally see my parents, sad to leave my best friend and nervous for the future. Coming to Australia was the best decision I have made in my 20 years and I don’t want the journey to end. Once final exams wrapped up I traveled to the smaller rural places around. These were the places my friends grew up and knew like the back of their hand. Gunnedah and Armidale were my first two stops and I am now currently in Canberra- the Nation’s weirdly small town capital.
Saying goodbye to people at the end of each of my stops has not felt real yet. It won’t hit me until I am on that plane tomorrow ascending into the sky. I know once I step into that airport and have to say my last goodbye I will be an emotional wreck. It will be hard for me to sleep tonight knowing I have to say goodbye to such an amazing place and amazing people.
In Gunnedah there was not much to do, everything closed at 10pm and there wasn’t even cinemas there! I only stayed for 2 days with that friend because I was so bored! I then went to Armidale with another friend named Kate. We traveled to Coffs Harbor for a day and visited “The Big Banana.” Since being here I have learned that Australia is famous for having “Big” random things all across the country; there’s a big prawn, a big guitar, a big sheep, anything you could thing of, but the big banana was the first “big” thing in Australia. We also went to the beach and got ice cream while in Coffs. The next day was Thanksgiving in the US, so Kate’s mom decided we were going to celebrate- Australia style. Kate and me woke up and made pumpkin pie and that night we all stuffed our face with loads of KFC- the acceptable Australian turkey.
The following day I returned to Newcastle and packed up my stuff and said a few last good byes before leaving for Canberra a few days later. I stayed with my best friend in Canberra and we hit all the tourist stops as well as secret hikes and caves only the locals would know about. He made my last days in Australia the best and I know there are still a few more memories to make these last few days before I leave.