Today marks the end of a weekend getaway to Melbourne that began on Thursday afternoon after leaving my Biology lab. Tomorrow morning I’ll be flying back to Sydney and taking a train from there to Newcastle, to begin the week anew on Monday. An integral part of the study abroad experience, and the part I was looking forward to the most, travelling around has been rewarding from the get go.
The first city I visited, of course, was Cairns for the TEAN pre-orientation program, and there was barely any time to breathe before we had our plates full of activities to introduce us to Australia. I landed at the Newcastle airport after some 32 hours of travelling, grateful that I didn’t have to take a 3 hour shuttle from the Sydney airport to get to the hotel we would be staying at. After arriving at the Hilton though, I immediately sat down to dinner and a presentation running us through the itinerary for the time we’d be spending in Cairns. This included, among other things, the opportunity to go skydiving or bungee jumping, a walkabout of the bush with an Aboriginal guide, a jetboating tour of the harbor, and a visit to a wildlife sanctuary (of course we were going to see kangaroos). Despite my mother’s protests, I took the chance to go bungee jumping, and even if it wasn’t the highest jump I could have done, or the first ever built (those still await me in New Zealand) it was still extremely exhilarating to jump off of a bridge with nothing holding you up but a rope. The trip came to a close after a dive at the Great Barrier Reef, where I was followed by a sea turtle for about 20 minutes, which had me ecstatic for the majority of the dive. I met some good friends, all who were going to different places throughout Australia, and after some hours of cultural training, we flew off to our respective universities.
After a few weeks of being in Newcastle and getting acquainted to my new room, the amazing campus, and getting to know the group of people I now call my friends came my second chance to travel: a day trip to Sydney also led by TEAN to get a chance to go surfing in famous Bondi beach. I’ve done a bit of surfing in Florida, so even though it was supposed to be a beginner’s course I managed to do pretty well, and it was really great to be in the water again. After that, I met up with one of the girls I’d met in Cairns and stayed with her for another day while she showed me around Sydney, offering a “local’s” perspective. The good thing is Sydney’s only a 3-hour train ride away, so I have plenty of opportunity to go back and thoroughly visit the city at a later date. Now, after about a month and a bit of being here, a few friends and I found a hostel to come to and traveled to Melbourne for a four-day vacation. We spent the first couple days discovering the city through walking tours around the historical center and down alleyways to see huge murals and graffiti, and then walked to Phillips Island to visit the penguins that live there. This was followed by a trip to the botanical gardens, and then a visit to Brighton beach and its famous painted beach-boxes, and then today we finished off the trip with a bang, as we went on a full-day guided tour of the Great Ocean Road, a winding highway that follows the coast and sits precariously among the cliffs. Along the way we stopped at quite a few beaches and prime locations for pictures, and finished it off with a post-card view of the 12 apostles, a cluster of huge stand-alone boulders off the mainland named after the disciples of Christ. It was refreshing to be able to make my own way around the city, and I’m anxious to explore even more of beautiful Australia. Even though it’s still August, I’m already dreading having to leave in three months.