Employed at Last

Attention angry mobs of unemployed Australians:

I TOOK ONE OF YOUR JOBS!

There really aren't herds of unemployed Australians, so I don't feel bad for making that joke.  Who's laughing about shipping away their prisoners now, huh, UK?

Yes, folks, I have gained employment.  And as an added bonus: It's in my chosen field and utilizes my Master's Degree!

I am so, so pleased and eternally grateful.

I am a temporary resident of Australia, and it seemed like I was only getting nibbles of interest from applications for temporary jobs.  So, I focused my search exclusively on temporary jobs at the three universities in town.

I won't mention which university I will be working at, or my exact job title, lest my superiors find this blog and witness my affinity for using words like "barftastic" and "craptacular" and immediately render me unemployable.  But you better trust and believe, this job is the bomb.  Dot com.

I'm a little hesitant to admit just how many jobs I applied to and interviewed for in total, in case it makes me look like a neo maxi zoom dweebie for not being able to get a job immediately in a good economy.  In my defence, though, I was being very picky, and had a quite narrow job search.  Gaining employment after ten weeks + 1 day after landing in this country (where I have no education or work experience and zero contacts) isn't too shabby, right?

Like I eluded to earlier it's a temp job, for one year.  I will be covering for someone out on maternity leave.  I want to start that fetus a college fund or something because if it wasn't for his/her existence I would not have this amazing job opportunity.  I love that frickin' fetus.  I wish it all the best in its birth and subsequent life.

This job really came up at the perfect time.  I was starting to panic big time about my situation (Did I go to grad school for nothing?  Will I have to dance for dollars to pay my student loans?  Are there even BBW strippers?)  Also, the stupid TV network stopped playing Jeopardy! every day which was my main intellectual outlet.  It's sad but true.  Home girl needs to get out of the house!

(Side note: I cannot deal with Alex Trebek sans moustache.  Grow it back, dude, you're killing me!)

I would like to take this opportunity to send out boat loads of good karma to the other people who applied/interviewed for this job but lost out to me.  I know that awful, crushing feeling of getting your hopes shattered but I'm sure there's something just as awesome out there waiting for you somewhere else.  You never know, you might wind up on an exotic new continent, working the job of your dreams with the most supportive partner ever in the near future.  You'd be lucky to be as fortunate as I.

For the past few weeks I had "upgraded" my status from Job Searching to Officially Unemployed.  I won't start the job for a few more weeks, so in the meantime I'm not sure what I'll identify myself as.  I can tell you one thing I won't identify with, though!  Desperate and poor.

Because poverty doesn't look good on me.

A Labour Free Weekend in the Rainforest

Another long weekend, another opportunity to travel somewhere fab!

This time it was Labour Day (yes, with a U) which is celebrated on May 1 in most of the world and the first Monday in September in the USA.  For whatever reason it's celebrated the first Monday in May down here.  Whatever, a day off is awesome regardless of when it is (says she who is unemployed)!

Queensland, the state in which Brisbane and we reside, is huge and there's lots to explore within it so yet again we stayed within the state.  Australia is made up of 6 states, 1 territory that looks just like a state, several territories nobody seems to know/care about and one Washington, DC-esque I-don't-fully-understand-what-this-is area.  One of these days we'll branch out and see some place else besides the Sunshine State, but for now we stay in our own back yard, this time in Lamington National Park.

We have been doing nothing but beaches so far and I was feeling very bored with the idea of exploring yet another amazingly beautiful tropical beach.  What else is there in Australia?  I asked myself.  Hinterlands is the answer to that question.  Hinterlands, from what I can ascertain, means Not Beach.  Or, if you want to get all scientific, the area behind a coast.  Somewhere between the ocean and the classic Aussie outback.  Basically, the bush.

This being a national park there is very limited choices for where to stay, so we had a whopping 2 options.  I briefly considered camping but it is now autumn here in the southern hemisphere, so in the mountains it can get legit cold at night.  Tenting in our paltry camping gear is not recommended at this time of year, so O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat it is!

We rented a car, declined the extra $20 per day insurance (this information will come in handy later) and drove there bright and early Saturday morning.  Along the way Martin noticed something dead in the ditch.  Something big.  Could it be the elusive kangaroo that we have been dying to see?  I could not live with myself not knowing, so we swung the car around to have another look.

Dang, it's too far from the road to get a good look, and there's too much traffic on the road to pull over and see.  If we are to solve this case there's only one way to do it, and that's get out of the car, run down the ditch and have a look for ourselves.  All this for the slight possibility of seeing a dead kangaroo!  Psycho?  Totally.  Am I psycho enough to go for it?  You betcha!

WARNING: This picture, being roadkill, isn't pretty.  If you've got a super weak stomach I suggest you scroll past this picture without looking at it.  But really, it's not bad.
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I'm giving you a chance to bail if you want.

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I'm warning you.

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Last chance!

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Ok, here it is, a dead marsupial - that is missing its head:

What. The. Hell. Happened to that things head?!  It was gone, literally gone.  Not picked clean by predators, not detached from its body.  It was GONE!

O
M
G

So creepy!  Where did the head go?!  I stuck around for a picture and then high tailed it out of there.  I had a ways to get back to the car and this thing had gone reverse Lord of the Flies so I was not about to stick around and gawk.

I'm not entirely sure if this thing actually was a kangaroo, though.  The legs and tail make me think yes, but it was a strange medium size and there are other small kangaroo-looking marsupials that live in this area.  I got a kick out of being able to tell my first kangaroo experience story via decapitated roadkill, but honestly I question if this was a kangaroo at all.

But why did it have no head?  Another question to haunt me for all of my days.

We continued up the twisty, scenic mountain road to get to our resort.  We stopped at an alpaca farm along the way, which made me realize I don't know if it's pronounced al-pack-uh or al-pock-uh.  I thought they were lamas at first, so it's a good thing I don't hold a degree in mammalian biology.

As we got to the resort Martin (the driver) was gawking at the flora and fauna and promptly ran our car right in to a pole.

Oops.

"Ran in to" makes it sound a lot worse than it was.  He idled into it, so it was a slight love tap at the very most.  We had to ask ourselves if it had really even happened.  So we got out to check the bumper/headlight and found this gigantic, huge scratch along the side of the bumper:

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.  Remember how I mentioned earlier we declined the $20 extra per day insurance?  This is the part of the story where that becomes important.  Had we sprung for the extra insurance our liability would be max $300, regardless of how much damage we did to the car.  Without it, as we were, our liability could be as high as $3,000.  Before we picked up the car we did a quick glance around it, nothing too thorough, and hadn't noticed it then.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.


We did our best to buff out the damage with a freaking sock soaked in bottled water, which - if you can believe it - did jack shit.  There was nothing we could do about it now but kick back, try to relax and hope that scratch was there before we got the car.  Also on the docket: Try and save as much money as possible at this ungodly expensive place in case we have to shell out thousands in rental car repairs.

As I mentioned in my Asia travel blog, Martin is a huge bird nerd.  This place is renowned for its bird life so you can about imagine the exciting times that lie ahead of us on this trip!  One such bird-centric activity was a Birds of Prey show, which featured various types of raptors (these not these, unfortunately).  I did the show for Martin's sake but it was actually really interesting!  Check out this awesome barn owl picture Martin caught with his iPhone:

This owl flew right by my head and it was completely silent.  Crazy cool.  I have never seen an owl in the wild before (is that weird?) or a lot of the birds featured in the show.  A lot of them had been injured and rehabilitated and are a threatened species, so I didn't feel too bad about them having to live in captivity.  Though it's not like I've ever met a zoo I didn't love.

For a few bucks you could buy a tray of bird food and feed some of the local "wild" bird life, who were so tame they'd eat right out of your hands.  So of course we had to do that.

Bright and early the next morning (6:45 a.m. to be horrifyingly exact) we participated in our third bird-related activity in a 12-hour period and went on a guided bird walk around the resort grounds.  It wasn't really bird watching (or "birding" as it's called by the elderly nerds who love to do it) but we did look at birds, feed birds, and learn about birds for an hour.  It was edge of your seat entertainment, for sure.

It's worth a mention here that this resort was, surprising to me, actually not filled exclusively with old people.  There were young couples like ourselves, families with kids and of course, plenty of blue hairs.  Besides bird stuff, a major draw of the resort is access to hiking trails so nature lovers, as well as the geriatric infirm, can find something to love here.

Before embarking on a hiking trip of our own we had breakfast, where I had my first encounter with an Australian delicacy:

What is Vegemite, you ask?  Well, it's like Marmite, if that helps you any, which British people love.  And I have roughly zero idea what both of them really are.  The interwebz tell me that Vegemite is a "dark brown food paste" (yum yum!) made from yeast extract.  Marmite seems to be no different.  It is the waste product left over from brewing beer.  Now that's good eatin'!

These packages are super shallow and contain very little Vegemite so my fat Nutella-eating ass grabbed 2 so I could slather it on my bread real nice and thick.  Yeah, big mistake.  This stuff is salty.  Like, gag-me-with-a-spoon salty.  Once I scraped 99% of it off it was ready to eat and palatable.  To make it really delicious I think you need to use the old trick my dad does with peanut butter on toast: Add 75% butter, 25% spread for a perfect ratio.  Also, like peanut butter and various Norwegian sandwich toppings, it is important to grow up with it so you think it's ZOMG so delicious even when it really isn't.

After breakfast (and maaaaaybe a post-breakfast nap) we headed out into the forest for a day of hiking.  Before we even got off the main road, look what we ran into!

A big-ass snake!  I only screamed a little bit and that's because I was excited to see it, not because I was scared.  It didn't move the whole time we watched it so I thought it could be dead, but it wasn't.  It was just sunning itself.  This thing wasn't even in the forest, so imagine the creepy crawly stuff that actually lies within!

After a not long and certainly not strenuous hike we came upon this awesome sight:

Moran Falls, which as you can see is very pretty.  I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a waterfall this big in real life before.

We then hiked up a huge incline to Moonlight Crag, where there is a lookout point onto a [former] volcanic valley.

This hike was not so easy, it actually sucked really, really bad, especially because the whole trail was out in the blazing sun with no canopy to keep you in cool shade.  Views were beautiful but I recommend you have at least some modicum of physical fitness before embarking on this hike.  And not be a super lazy complainer, such as myself.

On the way back home we ran into some pademelons, which are adorable little marsupials that look like mini kangaroos.  After seeing the size of those, and the size of the roadkill dead in the ditch, I'm pretty sure what I saw dead was, in fact, a kangaroo.  So I will tell my grandchildren about my first run in with a kangaroo in Australia, and I will traumatize them mercilessly, like I will no doubt have done already to their parents.

We debated about coming clean to the car rental company, about the huge scratch on the front bumper.  No way in hell were we going to mention the run in with the pole, but ultimately we decided to come clean about what we found.  If we were going to have to pay up big time we'd rather know about it immediately, rather than wait by the phone endlessly for weeks, or worse yet notice a huge charge on our credit card.

So we confess the gigantic scratch on the front bumper that we may or may not have caused and await our punishment.  The car rental guy picks up the paperwork - which we had with us all along - and points out the clearly marked area of the car that indicates the scratch was there before we got the car.  We're off the hook!  Our finances won't be ruined by a hideous blue Ford Taurus after all!

The perfect resolution to a perfect weekend getaway.  

We No Speak Americano

You'd think that the English language spoken in one country is the same English spoken in another country, wouldn't you?

Well, yeah, you're right.  But that doesn't stop the Australians from saying some really crazy stuff that, to the untrained foreign ear, makes no friggin' sense.

I have compiled a short list of words/phrases that have been Australian-ized, along with their northern hemispheric translations.

"arvo" = afternoon
What am I doing this arvo?  Oh, the usual, just putting another shrimp on the barbie, then taking a nap.  Also, putting two words together to form a whole other word, like afternoon.

"ashume, capshule" = assume, capsule
For some reason some words get an unnecessary sh sound added to them.  They're still spelled the regular way but pronounced more....lispy.

"ta" = thank you
In Scotland they liked to say thank you by saying "cheers" (which I liked, made me feel like I was having a round at the pub in the middle of the day), but "ta" just confuses me.  It's not short for anything that I can see, if it were it'd be "th".

"How ya goin'?" = how are you?
I might be mistaken on the translation of this one.  Are they asking "how ya doing" or "how is it going"?  I do not know.  Whenever asked this question I stumble around it and quickly reply "Uhh...good!  And you?"  I'm not sure if it's proper etiquette to get all Joey Tribbiani and ask "How you goin'?" in reply.

"doona" = dyne (på norsk)  
This is a translation into Norwegian, because I don't think the Ikea (the authority on all international home goods nomenclature) translation of "comforter" quite does the trick.  Here's what I mean:

A dyne is painstakingly stuffed into a cover sheet that's sewn together on three sides.  Comforters, and the Americans who love them, do not have the time or patience for this task.  They'd rather use a comforter with a non-removable cover that just never gets washed.

Dyne, pronounced dee-nuh is remarkably similar to "doona".  But doona sounds funnier.

"sheila" = woman
Any woman is a sheila.

"See that sheila over there?  Her name is Sheila."

I wonder who the Original Sheila was, since the rest of us females have to live in her shadow forever more.

"bottle-o, fish-o" = bottle shop, fish shop
Apparently if you put -o at the end of a word it indicates that that item is sold there, which makes me wonder of a brothel is called a whore-o.

"toe-mah-toe" = tomato
This one isn't so surprising, as [I think] the entire non-American English speaking word pronounces it toe-mah-toe.  The reason I bring it up is because of big, awkward me and my pronunciation of it.  When I ask for tomato sauce (ketchup is too fancy a term, you see) I feel like I sound like a garish brute.  American English can just be so....indelicate.

But I clearly have a Yank accent so I feel like an even bigger jackass by saying toe-mah-toe, which is obviously unnatural and is falsely put on by me.  So I rush through the word so you can't understand much more than the beginning toe and the end toe.

"Could I get some toe*cough*toe sauce, please?"

Yes, because that's the best solution in this case!

Who puts this much thought into communicating the word tomato?  It's brought a surprising amount of stress to my life because, clearly, I have no life!


A lot of the Australian-ized (oops, make that Australian-ised) English seems to be a form of shortening words.  Because saying two syllables (ar-vo) instead of three (af-ter-noon) means you'll have so much extra time on your hands!


So much extra time, in fact, that you'll be able to fill up your eskie (cooler) with stubbies (beer bottles) and partake in the national past time:

Worth noting: shrimp are called prawns here.

Observations on Oz

We've been here two months now and I haven't done a random observations brain dump post in a while.  I have observed many random things so here we go with more:

- Geyser is pronounced geezer

How this

Came to be pronounced like this

Will forever be a source of entertainment for me.

- Liquor stores are Drive Thru, kind of

I don't really get the logistics of this, since those parked cars will block the passage of any cars behind them.  You don't get service at your window, you still have to get out of your car and in to the 3-walled store to make your purchase.  I don't really get the purpose of the drive thru besides it being an ill conceived parking lot.

- You can get sunburned when the sun isn't even shining

And shocking to most, that sunburn has actually turned into something resembling a tan on my shoulders and arms!  You almost have to see it to believe it.  Heidi has a tan!

Oddly enough, however, my legs do not tan AT ALL.  Even if I'm out all day with bare legs and no sunblock on them they're still white as a sheet.  A few years ago I was tubing down Red Lake River, got drunk and fell asleep on my tube for god knows how long.  My legs burned really, REALLY bad (so bad that it felt like my shin bones were splitting when I tried to walk) and they've been ghostly white ever since.  Is it possible to burn the pigment out of your skin?  Somebody alert medical science.  I need to be studied.

Don't cry for me, though, it wasn't all bad.  It was a really good nap.

- If you work at a classy place a pianist will greet you as you arrive at work every day

Martin's building has a grand piano in the lobby and a pianist plays every morning as people arrive to work.  Fancy!

Mmm, quite.

- Australians freaking love their schnitzel


They LOVE it!  It's everywhere.  I want to believe it has something to do with their love of TV cooking competitions, but there is no culinary excuse for schnitzel. It's deep fried meat.

- They have fruit you didn't even know existed


As I was heading to the fruit and veg market one day Martin demanded that I pick up some exotic fruits for us to try.  It's a good cultural experience, I agree, but I was apprehensive about how to actually eat these freaky looking things.

Have you seen such crazy things before?

Persimmons

Longans

(These could totes be used as 'eyeballs' instead of peeled grapes for Halloween parties)

Mangosteens

They were all edible enough, creepy texture notwithstanding, but the persimmons were the tastiest.  After we'd eaten most of it we noticed a huge-ass caterpillar waltzing all over it, so that's where the fruit tasting session came to an abrupt end.  Nasty, but 'tis better to find a whole caterpillar than a half caterpillar, I say.

And that's all for today in the whacky world of Oz!

Easter on Fraser Island

Due to a lack of vacation days during our (ahem, Martin's) first year of work, we really have to utilize any and all long weekends for travel. Lucky for us, Australians actually care about time off at Easter (more so than Americans, but less than Norwegians), which has resulted in an extra long weekend with Good Friday and Easter Monday being public holidays. We seized this opportunity to travel to Fraser Island, just off the coast about 5 hours north of Brisbane.

Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world (remember the second?), and when they say it's made of sand, they mean it. There are no roads throughout the island, just bumpy, bumpy sand paths. The island contains "rainforests, eucalyptus woodland, mangrove forests, wallum and peat swamps, sand dunes and coastal heaths" - all sprouting out of the sand.

I had this vacation planned booked before we even got on Australian soil. In fact I had the whole thing planned before our visas were even granted! I am an eager beaver. Eager to see this country with the time and money we have available.

To get to Fraser Island you first need to make your way to the mainland that's closest to the island, then take a ferry over. The town closest to the island is called Hervey Bay, but make no mistake, it is pronounced Harvey Bay. I made a fool of myself plenty before learning that fact, so I'm warning you in advance. You can fly from Brisbane to this area but at $200 per person air travel was a bit rich for my blood. So what's the next best option?

Greyhound, baby! Nothing but the fanciest for us.

Two things of note: One, that big grill on the front of the bus. Martin told me it was to deflect kangaroos that get hit on the road. I don't know if this is true or not but kangaroos do get hit by cars frequently. That makes me sad, especially since I have yet to see a 'roo. Second thing: Check out the final destination of this bus. Cairns, 1,058 miles (1,750 km) from Brisbane! That's over 30 hours of Greyhound bus sitting! Hoooooly crap.

There's lots of stops along the way so most (or all) people don't travel that far or take the whole journey in one fell swoop. Still, that is a long way. Our 5 hour, 15 minute journey was surprisingly pleasant and arrived right on time. So far I am down with the 'hound.

There are several departures from Brisbane per day, and we decided to take the earliest one so we could have the whole afternoon to see Harvey Bay (we wouldn't get to the island until the next day).

Big mistake. Biiiiiig mistake.

It was Good Friday, which despite being a "public holiday" shouldn't mean much in a town that exists solely to cater to tourists. Not for Hervey Bay, though. Oh no, it was completely shut down and deserted. Well, it wasn't entirely a ghost town as there were other tourists like ourselves walking around wondering "Why am I wasting my time with this town?"

We sat down for lunch at a restaurant that is, most of the time, sea side. At 2 p.m., though, it's more like a you-can-kinda-see-the-ocean-from-here restaurant. The tide was way, WAY out.

It's not like you can be mad about this because then you'd have to be mad at the moon. And then you'd just be a crazy person. This allowed you to walk way, way far out (half a football field I'd reckon) and see some coral-like plant life that normally would be buried under many feet of water:

There's only so much ocean looking one can take before it's time to move on. So we headed out farther into town in search of alcoholic refreshment. Our "sea side" restaurant didn't have a liquor license. If they did, we would've stayed all afternoon to see if the tide ever came back in.

So we find a pub, have a seat and order some beers. We are told, soup nazi-style, "No beer for you!" Why? Because it is Good Friday. Because JESUS, that's why.

Actually, you can get beer, you just need to order a meal to go with it. Not an appetizer, not a side dish (this was explicit), but a meal. Why? I already told you, BECAUSE JESUS!

WTF, we have stepped into the Twilight Zone with a façade of the dullest town ever. So we order nachos to go along with our beers, roughly 10 minutes after we just ate lunch. Nachos are considered a meal, you see, so sayeth the Lord.

We eat our nachos (not bad, by the way, and I know bad nachos after years of living in Norway) and drink our beer. We leave after one round because I don't know if we'd have to order another meal to get a second round of drinks, or what Jesus's policy is on that. Kidding aside, it is the state or the city council's policy, and I deem it a shitty one. Hervey Bay will forever be considered Dullsville in my mind because Good Friday was too precious to cater to tourists, the one and only reason it exists.

Maybe it's a lovely place to be when things are actually, uhh, open, but from my vast experience with boredom in Hervey Bay I cannot recommend this destination. Unsurprisingly (and not uncharacteristically, I must add), we spend the afternoon napping, but this time for lack of anything better to do. Our 7:20 a.m. departure out of town couldn't come fast enough.

Bright and early Saturday morning we are picked up by bus at our hostel (hey, Australia is expensive and I'm unemployed, no judging) and pick up others on our way to the ferry that will take us to Fraser Island. Freedom from this town is imminent! I haven't felt this way since high school.

On the ferry over we are warned, warned and warned again about the HuGe RiSk that dingoes present to humans.

From what I could tell there was a 99.9% chance that dingoes were going to EAT MY BODY AND SOUL, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. Note the first one says negative dingo encounters are expected especially over Easter weekend. Yep, we're screwed! Though I'd much rather get mauled by a dingo than stay in Hervey Bay!

As soon as we get to the island we hit the ground running with the tour I booked. This being a sand island the only vehicles allowed on to it are 4x4's. You have 2 options for seeing the island: Take a tour in somebody else's 4x4 or bring your own, get stuck frequently in the sand paths and have to dig yourself out. We chose the former. Gladly.

Look at this tour "bus" (more like a tank), including me for scale:

That thing is a beast! It tore through deep, uneven sand like a hot knife through butter (though very bumpily). We were delayed by a half hour that day because some rinky dink Mercedes "4x4" kept getting stuck on one of the paths, disrupting all traffic behind it. The jerks in that Merc had 50 annoyed people stuck behind them, shooting daggers with their eyes and laughing that they sent a fluffy little bunny to do an ox's job. See why we chose a tour instead of going it alone? This is what the "roads" looked like:

This shot actually looks quite smooth and bump-free. Trust me, it wasn't.

Our first stop that day was Basin Lake:

It's a freshwater lake (one of many), that you aren't allowed to swim in. You used to be able to but so much sunscreen washed off into the lake that it was killing off the wildlife. Oops. And who would want to kill off this little guy?

Adorbs!

We spent a good chunk of that day hiking through the forest, seeing nifty sights like this:

After a picnic lunch and more jungle walkin' we arrived at our leisurely afternoon destination, Lake McKenzie:

Another fresh water lake, and this time you can swim in it! The water was crystal clear (at least in the shallow parts) and we spent several hours lounging on our beach towels, swimming and eating cookies provided by our tour.

If you found this blog post by Googling "Cool Dingo tours" I must advise you: The cookies alone are worth choosing this tour over others. Christ on a bike, they were good! Totally worth getting diabetes for.

The next day was another early one, especially for Martin who was feeling a bit rough after a long night at the local Dingo Bar with his newly made BFF. There's no rest for the wicked, though, we had a lot of ground to cover today!

It was pouring rain when we got up which, surprisingly enough, flattened the roads down and made our drive much, MUCH smoother. It only ever seemed to rain while we were inside the bus and not outside exploring so we really got the best of both worlds.

Our first stop was a lookout point to the sand blows, an area of forest that is being overtaken by sand blown inland from the beach.

This huge chunk of forest was just being buried by sand, more and more each year. The picture doesn't seem like it but it was actually pretty cool and sand dune-y. Also cool, near the lookout point:

Eek! We saw quite a few gigantic spiders chilling in their gigantic webs. We were always a safe distance from them, though, thankfully, as they were freaking huge and scary.

We then headed to 75 Mile Beach, which is the beach that runs along the eastern coast of the island (along the Pacific Ocean) but is a highway. A real, functional highway of just beach:

There's tons of different sites along the beach highway so we spent the rest of the day driving down it, stopping at the cool things to see, my favorite being Eli Creek:

Eli Creek is a freshwater creek that varies in depth and has crystal clear water that you can swim in. It reminds me of a natural "lazy river" floating pool that you find at water parks. The ocean is right next door but it is not recommended to swim in since there are jellyfish, sharks (srsly) and very huge waves and dangerously strong currents. So people who value their lives and limbs swim here instead.

Then we went to the Maheno ship wreck.

"The most photographed piece of rust in the world." About three-fourths of the wreck is buried under the sand. She used to be a luxury ship, but she ain't any more! I never understood why ships are referred to as "she"...

Throughout the day Martin had been drooling over the little single-engine airplanes that were flying overhead. Word on the street is that they take off and land right on the beach highway, among the traffic. As soon as the pilot came on to our bus to offer a 15-minute tourist flight for $70 a head I knew I couldn't fight it. We had to go, according to Martin.

$70 is hard enough to swallow, but $140? Not going to happen. She who does not work does not go on wildly expensive tourist flights, either. So I convinced him to go without me. It worked out really well because the plane could only fit 7 passengers and 6 of our other bus mates wanted to go. Perfect! I didn't want to take up the seat of someone who really wanted to go (I was very meh about the experience, regardless of price). And even more perfect: Since Martin was going up solo he got to sit right next to the pilot!

There is nothing in this world that Martin loves more than aeroplanes and flying. He said "That pilot has the best job in the world" approximately 200 times. It wasn't until much later that he found this article, detailing how one of these little planes flipped over upon landing. There easily could've been deaths! Scary. Oh, and the planes totally do take off and land right on the beach highway!

Here are some aerial shots he took:

We were reunited just up the road at the Pinnacles Coloured Sands, which I can only assume are rock, otherwise the wind coming off the ocean would blow them away.

Then we hiked up this little mountain, Indian Head, where you can supposedly sometimes see sharks out in the water.

No sharks were spotted off the top that day. Disappointment, disappointment.

And finally the Champagne Pools which, false advertising alert, are not made of champagne but sea water that is trapped behind the rock wall once the tide goes down.

The rocks protect you from the treturous sea that lies behind, and the jellyfish and sharks don't make it over, so you can swim here.

Speaking of jellyfish, we saw a few dead/dried up ones along the beach.

But sadly this is the closest we came to deadly wildlife. This means we saw no dingoes. I was all but promised to be attacked by one, damn it, I want my money back! I'm not surprised, though, since we were always in a big group or in our huge, loud truck. People who camp on their own are probably the lucky ducks who get to be mauled by them.

This concludes our jam packed 2-day tour of Fraser Island. That evening it was time for us to return to my worst nightmare: Hervey Bay. We had one more night there before our return bus back to Brisbane the next day, on Easter Monday.

It wasn't as bad as Good Friday, but it wasn't good, either. Now before the Hervey Bay tourist board comes banging down my door I will defend them by saying this: It is a huge starting point for whale watching tours and it is months until whale season begins.

Still, I bet few people in this world have been so happy to see a Greyhound bus pull up to take them far, far away!

Norsk Mat - Norwegian Food - Part 3

Hey, remember Norway?

Now that we've been Down Under for 7 whole weeks I figure I should revisit my Scando-culinary adventures since I was so adamant about photographing our food while we were there. Feast your eyes and stomach on my previous entries here and here.


Dish 1: Fårikål

Oh man, this picture does not look appetizing. But trust me: It is. Fårikål, pronounced four-E-coal, literally means "lamb in cabbage" and to me it is the quintessential Norwegian dish.

The beauty of fårikål is its simplicity. The only ingredients are lamb meat, cabbage and whole black peppercorns cooked for hours and hours in water. After that amount of time the meat is falling off the bone, and the flavors meld together to make a super tasty, super easy, super cheap (cooks for hours = use cheap meat) meal.

I do have one complaint about it, though: Eating around those black peppercorns is fraught with danger. Have you ever bit down on one before? I imagine it's similar to chomping down on a stone that's been infested with ants. It ain't pleasant. Luckily I'm not the first one to have felt this way so butchers now sell tea bags full of peppercorns, to keep the flavor intact while removing the danger of them floating around and getting into the good stuff. Norwegian ingenuity where it counts!

I implore you to make fårikål at home. It is, in my opinion, Norway's crowning culinary glory.

Dish 2: RisengrynsgrøtHow does thick rice pudding covered in butter, sugar and cinnamon sound to you? Delish, right? Well how about for dinner? Eeeew, gag me!

Risengrynsgrøt literally means "rice grain porridge" but I always just call it risengrøt. Not sure how ignorant I sound by calling it that.

I don't know how a rich, sweet dessert-like dish turned into a meal for Norwegians, but somehow, somewhere it did. Don't get me wrong, it's delicious, but too much is definitely not a good thing and a meal-sized portion is way too much of a good thing.

There is a similar dish called rømmegrøt, which is sour cream porridge, again served with butter, sugar and cinnamon. Just thinking about that version puts me into a diabetic coma. Again, it's very tasty but not large quantities- or meal appropriate. Everybody makes it from a package (or buys it pre-made) nowadays so it's surprisingly difficult to find a Norwegian recipe for it, so here you have it from the good old Sons of Norway.

Dish 3: KlumperKlumper literally means clumps. Clumps!

Um, appetizing...

These go by many different names in Norway. The more I Google the more I realize that the word klumper is actually not one of those names, so can I only assume it's just my in-laws that call them that? Or perhaps I am mistaking it with komper, which is one of the actual names used for them. Hey, I never claimed to be fluent (or even marginally competent) in the language.

Another name they go by is rasperballer which - I shit you not - means "grating the balls" according to Google Translate. Which is actually a pretty accurate, albeit disturbing name. These things (I won't even bother trying to use a name from now on) are grated potatoes mixed with flour to hold them together, then boiled. On their own they're pretty meh but it's the accoutrements that really make them special:

Melted butter and bacon!

What a glorious, glorious combination! Somewhere in the history of Norwegian cuisine hot dogs have also become a side dish, and I've always seen them served on the side of these things. Anything smothered in melted butter and bacon gets an A+ from me, and these balls of many names are no exception.

Dish 4: MakrellThese are mackrel. Nothing to really expand on here, except that these were caught in the ocean just out of town and given to us by a neighbor. Yay for being a localvore!

The reason I wanted to bring them up is to tell the tale about Norwegian children eating makrell i tomat saus (mackrel in tomato sauce) as a sandwich topping. Considering the fact that canned tuna is a pretty normal sandwich topping, it doesn't really seem all that interesting. Except the mackrels in Norwegian kids lunch boxes aren't finely shredded, unidentifiable pieces of meat like tuna is. They are nearly whole, sardine-looking, identifiable fish. In thick tomato sauce. That smells like cat food met death on a hot tin roof. And kids love it!

Nowdays you can find it in stores, but kids in Norway just don't grow up with peanut butter the way I did. Because of this, many find peanut butter vile. And that's just insanity because everybody knows PB&J is the ultimate sandwich combo. They also love leverpostei on their sandwiches, which is liver pâté. Spreadable, ground up liver as a sandwich topping. And kids love it!

Norwegian kids get fish and pâté. American kids get high fructose corn syrup in a jar. Think that has anything to do with the difference in obesity rates between the two countries?

[editor's note: After consultation with my mother-in-law I was indeed wrong about klumper vs. komper. I don't know where I got the idea that they were called klumps. She would also like the world to know that she makes her sour cream porridge from scratch. She's the Norwegian Martha Stewart, I'm telling ya!]