A lot of treasures.

Today, during spring cleaning, I found a small box in my apartment that I must have missed unpacking. This was a great find because inside were a bunch of little things I'd had while traveling in Australia and New Zealand, including my 4 GB SD card that I've been looking for all year.

Other than that, the rest of the items were mainly souvenirs and trinkets. This is inspiring me to finish putting the rest of the pictures from both my southern hemisphere trip and my Yukon trip up.

When I was in Auckland, I found the coolest Japanese import store. I could only buy a few little things including these pencil toppers with teensy little impractical fruit-shaped erasers in the end. I usually keep the berry one on the end of my pencil.


Various soy sauce and mayo containers.


The monkey mayo container opens and has a tiny little banana spoon inside.


A pretty pottery spoon from a store in the art deco town, Napier, on the North Island of New Zealand.

A 20 cent coin from New Zealand. All of their money is this pretty.


A pen for writing on porcelain or metal. I think I actually bought this in Ottawa. I haven't tried it yet, but I really want to this weekend. I think I'll go to the thrift store tomorrow and find a mug to decorate.


A tea towel from NZ with all of the breeds of sheep on it. I brought back some tea towels for my friend and this one for me.


And, my favourite Australian Swallow Casein knitting needles (made from milk protein!) that unfortunately popped on the plane once we got to a certain altitude and crumbled into a lot of pieces. If you look closely, all the breaks happened at the little air bubbles. I guess those are weak spots and maybe the air pressure change was too strong for them. These needles are great though, kind of bendy and warm. I bought them at a wool store the first week I was in Perth that took me about two hours to get to, and used them to knit navy blue merino gloves for my mom's birthday. And then continued to knit with them throughout my entire trip.


Annnd, some NZ fridge poetry. Which is now punched out and on my fridge in a random pattern. Mainly I really like the sheep magnet.

Happy Australia Day!

Today I mailed my contribution to Spins & Needles Urban Cozy Project at Winterlude 2010.

Spins and Needles is a knitting group in Ottawa. This year they have designed a large-scale outdoor art installation made up of knit pieces from all across Canada. They have invited many organizations to participate. Bronwen sent me the call for submissions the other day and I decided I'd send something in.

My something is a large garter stitch patch made of three smaller garter stitch patches. I used a lot of balls of wool that I will never use for anything else. Mainly what I could dig out of my packed-away wool collection.

This is it. It will look better when it is cozy-ing a tree in Confederation Park or Majors Hill Park or Parc Jacques-Cartier.





This is an in-progress picture of CP carrying out the kneading stage. This is a very important part of the knitting process ensuring a properly risen final product with a nice even crumb.

November Day.

This morning I left Bondi Junction bright and early at 6:30 am. I caught my train to the International Airport. Sydney has fantastic public transport. It only took me about half an hour ot travel all the way from the eastern suburbs on the coast to the airport in the west. Plenty of time to go through customs, immigration, biosecurity, regular security (where I had nothing confiscated, for once), duty free, a million miles of airport, and spend my last ten Aussie dollars on tea and a muffin at Gloria Jeans (Australia's equivalent to Second Cup, I'd say. I used to always think there were just a lot of women's clothing stores around when people would mention it, but I've got it all figured out now, just in time to leave). Once I got through all of that, I boarded my Air NZ flight and headed across the ditch to New Zealand!

On the plane I watched 500 days of Summer. It was okay, but I wouldn't really recommend it. Maybe if you have a long flight and nothing better to do, try it out, but I ended up reading my travel guide for most of the flight (which was only three hours long, anyway). To eat, I was served a mini shepherd's pie with tomato sauce (pseudo-ketchup), a little salad of sweet potato, feta, sundried tomato, and orzo. That was nice. There was also a really tasty apricot cake for dessert. I wanted that lemon pop that they have everywhere (it's called Lift, but I couldn't remember the name) so I requested pop and the stewardess asked me what that was. The landing in Auckland was the worst flying experience I have had so far. It seemed to take so long for them to descend. And it was windy and rough. I distracted myself by looking out the window. As you land, you can see both coasts of NZ because it's so narrow at this part of the country. I thought that was really cool. I also felt so excited to be here because dry, red Australia was sort of making me miss Canada a bit and NZ looks so much like home.

At the Auckland airport I had to go through immigration, duty-free twice (I hate that because they just constantly squirt perfumes and it's so hard to breathe), customs, security, baggage claim, biohazard control (my boots needed to be cleaned properly and I saw a little sniffer beagle carrying a bag of brussel sprouts back to his security officer. That was so cute.), baggage x-ray, and finally out into the airport where my cousin, Jonathan, had been waiting for an hour. He said he'd never seen Auckland International so busy. It was absolutely packed for some reason.

We drove back to his townhouse and I met Liz and Oliver. Oliver is the cutest little thing. He has a sore tummy right now because he has reflux (his was born on September 14, so he can't really deal with these things). But, I rocked him for about an hour and he was so smiley and happy. Such a sweet little guy.

Once he was all ready to go and we had chatted for awhile, we all went out to a nearby village and had thai food. It was great. I was stuffed because Liz and Jonathan had also bought a bunch of Halloween treats, but nobody had come to their door. Trick or Treating isn't really a tradition over here, but it's starting to become more popular so they were hoping to get at least a few kids.

Tomorrow I'm going to hang out with Liz and Oliver and plan the rest of my trip. I'm not tired tonight because of the time difference, so I'm sure I'll sleep in a bit tomorrow. I'll let you know what I've planned once I figure it all out!

Bondi Junction.

The past couple days in Sydney have been fantastic. The first night I shared my room with a girl from New Zealand. The hostel was the nicest city hostel Ive stayed in. We went down to the pub for dinner and ended up staying for the trivia night. I was no good because I could barely understand the hosts accent and I know very little about Aussie pop culture, politics, and historical figures. It was fun anyway. There was also a paper airplane making contest and I did pretty good in that. I didnt want to win though because the priye was two buckets of vodka and that was the last thing I needed.

The next day I went and got a badly needed haircut. It turned out great. Ive decided to grow it out a bit and every time I do that I end up liking the next short haircut. After that I went all through Sydneys Chinatown, checked out the markets, and went to see Wicked. The show was absolutelz fantastic. The lighting and costumes and sets were so incredible. The lead actors were great. All of the songs were awesome. To be honest, I had forgotten how much I love the story. Its just so clever and interesting and makes so many comments on politics and society, but its just funny at the same time. I might even read the book again. Actually, there is one book by that author I haven't read yet, so maybe Ill look it up.

Today, I took the ferry through Sydney Harbour and out to Toranga Zoo. I had another fantastic day. The zoo is all about education and conservation. The enclosures are great, I went to see the open flight bird show, the seal show, the penguin talk, and the chimp talk. They were all very well done. They are actually building a lot of new exhibits too. I think Ill have to come back some day because I didnt get to see a platypus and they are opening a new Tasmanian Devil complex which the proceeds of Wicked are supporting through their Green is Good program.

I took a ton of photos at the zoo. I even made a couple little movies. The very first exhibit I saw when I came in was one of my favourites, the red pandas. This one was active, but there were also several lazy ones sleeping in the trees.

I also really loved the echidnas, little Aussie porcupine=like creatures. This one is confused about where his nature area is located.

After the zoo I headed back to the hostel, picked up my pack, and hopped on the train out to Bondi Junction. Its the town in behind Bondi Beach. I have two friends from the Uluru tour who live here and they are letting me stay for three nights. This is really generous of them because they don't have a whole lot of space and they work very late hours. Right now I'm using their housemates computer. Hes Czech, so this keyboard doesnt have anz apostrophes. The y and z keys are not only reversed, but they are doubled, so you can use both keys to type either letter. Also, all of the words on this computer look like theyre from outerspace. For example, this is how you say New Tab = bez názvu. I could get by on the French one, but here I just have to guess and try to remember where the commands are on the list becasue I dont have a chance to find them otherwise. O well, at least it isnt a Mac.

Promised pictures!

Tonight I'm updating my resume and applying to that job I mentioned in the Yukon next spring. Well, actually it's more like next winter because the earliest position starts in January. I'm going to apply for one of five that start at the end of February or later in the season. I really need to spend some time at home and write the article from my Masters before I head out again. It justs seems so strange that they work in the Yukon during January. I thought everyone up there just hibernated.

Since I'll be on the computer for awhile, I thought I'd set it to upload some of my favourite pictures from the last month (I haven't added any since I went to the Daintree on October 3.

Assisting Helena at PK's pool tables. Her injured finger makes this sort of thing very difficult. Trust me, our game wasn't even affected, we're always horrible.


Myself, Courtney, and Laure putting up the wall of the new building. Helena couldn't help so she took pictures.


Lizard eggs are everywhere. So are lizards.


Feeding a little blossom bat some reward honey after we captured him and ID'd his species.


Our beloved swimming hole at Myall Creek.


Cape Trib in the far distance.


Native hibiscus.


A swamp wallaby joey.


Helena in the canopy crane!


The inside of a mangosteen, the queen of the fruit, and one of the most delicious things in the world.


Laure with her magic floating baby coconut. We were just being very silly one night at the station.

My little cabin in the rainforest.

A picture of a picture, these little bats were orphaned and handfed by volunteers at the Bat House. They need to be wrapped in little blankets because they can't thermoregulate until they are about 6 months old. That's why little bats sleep in their mother's wings.


The bowl of fruit we tried at fruit tasting. The yellow lumpy one is the rollina, and the round purple ones are the mangosteens. The giant green prickly one is the jakfruit.


A member of the persimmon family, the name means child fruit, but I can't remember how to spell it. Tastes just like caramel. I loved this one. It's the little brown one tucked in between the rollinia and the green persimmon.

Black persimmon, or chocolate pudding fruit. It looks just like pudding, but doesn't taste so chocolately. It's sweet and nice and I really liked the texture. They do mix it with vanilla and cocoa to make a really tasty frozen pudding that's all natural. I had some after the fruit testing.


The inside of rollinia! Yum! Just like lemon meringue pie.

The little red one is miracle fruit, the green one is tahitian lime. You chew on the miracle fruit for a minute, it's really all pit, just a bit of fruit with very little flavour. Then you eat the lime. The miracle fruit shuts off your sour tastebuds and the lime is so delicious. We even had little shots of vinegar after eating the miracle fruit and it tastes sweet. You have to plug your nose so you can't smell it, but it's so weird. The effect lasts for about an hour.


Jakfruit growing on the tree in the orchard next to the research station. It's the largest tree fruit in the world and can grow up to about a metre long. It's got these dark yellow pieces inside that are so delicious.


Courtney and I running the show at the Bat House. A nice German tourist took this picture for us.
Pushkin the sleeping bat hanging out at the Bat House.


Sand crab homes. They take bits of sand into their mouths, roll them around and eat the organic matter, then spit out the perfect little ball of leaftover sand. These completely cover the beach at lowtide.

Laure, Courtney, Helena on Myall Beach drying off from an afternoon of snorkling.

Courtney at the top of the peak where we stopped for lunch.

Courtney walking along the ridge leaving the final lookout. There is a huge drop on either side of the narrow path and we're about 700 m straight above sealevel. This picture doesn't really capture the ridge very well.

View from the top of Mt. Sorrow. Out over the cycads, down to the town clearings and out over the ocean.

Under the umbrella trees at the bottom of Mt. Sorrow. We really needed to stop for a break and this was one of the most scenic spots for it.


Me on Cape Trib beach. I had to leave that shirt behind. It was just so worn out. I really liked it though.


Courtney and I on the Rum Runner, the diving boat we took to the reef. I wore the wetsuit all day and it's a good thing because even though it was overcast the back of my calves were burnt.


Helena has an underwater camera. She took these the day she was at the reef. I borrowed them from her so that I could have some underwater pictures and show them to you. This was the same reef I was at, and I probably swam past a lot of these things, so you'd never tell the difference. These pictures are pretty good, but the colours are actually much more vibrant when you're there.


This is one of the only areas in the Great Barrier Reef where the blue sea star grows so abundantly.


Helena swimming over the reef. This is at hightide. When the tide is out, you can't swim over some areas.


A giant clam! All of the blue things around the opening are small plants that grow in the cells of the clam's shell. This sort of thing, mutualism, happens frequently on the reef in all different manners.


On the way back in we could see that it had rained in Cape Trib for most of the afternoon. We didn't get any rain out at the reef (about 20 km from shore). And the rain that did fall was gentle and wasn't enough to help with the drought the rainforest has been experiencing for the past three months. People are starting to get very worried that the upcoming wet season won't bring enough rain at all.


Mangrove roots along the boardwalk to the beach. This is where the crocodiles like to live. They aren't around right now because the water is so low.


Rattlecat, the one year old kitty who lived with us at Cape Trib. I wasn't allergic to her because there weren't any walls on our house, so her dander didn't stay around.


Beautiful waterfalls at Kuranda. This picture was taken out the window of the train.


Historical Kuranda Railway. The trip back to Cairns took about 1.75 hours. The train has to pass through 15 tunnels along the side of the mountain. The view was incredible.


Holloway Beach, the place I stayed during my second trip to Cairns.