Week 12- Sydney and the Whitsunday Islands

The Great Barrier Reef!!!

After a two day lay over back home in Melbourne, 14 friends and I departed for Sydney. We caught taxis to the bus station at 3:30 am, caught the bus at 4 am, arrived at the airport at 5 am, and caught our plane at 6:15 am. We arrived in Sydney at 7:45 and by 8:15 we were in a shuttle on our way to a hostel called Woodduck Inn. The place was terrible. It smelled like a combination of chlorine and urine and the staff who worked there were not helpful in the least and made numerous errors when checking us in. We departed to go to the grocery store to buy breakfast and lunches for ourselves for the next three days. I never have spent longer in a grocery store. We argued over the type of bread to buy, how much we should get, what type of meat, how much milk, etc. It was pretty hilarious. Without even realizing it we were shopping under one of Sydney’s landmarks, its famous Coca-Cola sign. No one thought it was that special once we reflected on it. It reminded me of the one by the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. It lights up in red and white and flashes in different patterns. The day was sunny but due to the dust storm 3 days before, everything was a little hazy. In the afternoon we went to Bondi Beach and barely survived. It was a little too cloudy for a beach day and FAR too windy to enjoy it at all. The beach was pretty and the shops around it were quite cute. The surf looked good. I assume it is a decent place, I can’t imagine there would be so much hype (and a national geographic show about it) if the conditions were always like we saw them. That night we went out to dinner with other people we had met at our hostel and then went dancing. 

The next morning of a few of us got up really early so we would be ready to sight see the day away. We walked by a pretty church, through the botanical gardens (which are huge!), and ended up having an amazing few of the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge. We hadn’t planned on visiting the Opera House itself but once we realized how close we were we were drawn to it. I thought that it was probably hyped up as such an amazing building, but it truly is beautiful. We poked around inside a little bit (the bathrooms are really cool; there are no straight lines) before continuing our journey to the harbor. We decided to split into two groups, one went to Mannly Beach (which they said was so much better than Bondi) and my group went to the Toronga Zoo. It was huge! There were so many cool animals. As impressed with the zoo and I was, I think being in Australia has spoiled me. I’m used to seeing all of the animals in the wild and its just not as cool to see them any more. Who would think that you could become nonchalant about seeing kangaroos, emus, and wombats? Platypus’ are still really cool though but thats probably because I haven’t seen them in the wild. That night we went to a nice restaurant thats supposed to have the best ribs in Australia. I had chicken.

The next morning myself and three friends, Bou, Elaine, and Sam, left for the airport. We flew to Hamilton Island in Queensland. Hamilton Island is one of the 74 Whitsunday Islands. Something like 60 of them are national parks. Three have resorts on them and I have no explanation for the other 11... One is privately owned. The islands are renown for the proximity to the great barrier reef and their amazing beauty. We took a ferry from Hamilton Island to the mainland, to a town called Airlie Beach. It’s a total backpacker town, meaning that its small and kitchy, geared toward poor students/travelers on holiday. We stayed in one of the cheap hostels but in comparison to Woodduck it was amazing. It was considered a party hostel because it has a large pub style restaurant, beer garden, and live music every night. Every day my friends and I said that we would go down and dance but every night we came home and were so exhausted that the live music two floors down outside our window did nothing to keep us awake. 

Our first day was spent on the Maxi Raggamuffin. It’s an 56 foot sail boat with an 80 foot mast that had one a bunch of important international races back in its day (70s-90s). Now it spends its days taking people to Whitehaven Beach. The beach is 7 km (3.5 miles) long and made of very fine white sand that is a high proportion of silica. NASA uses the sand to make lenses and windows for things that go into space. The beach glows in a way that I have never seen before. It was hazy from the dust storm (which had unfortunately traveled north while we were in Sydney) but that didn’t stop it from being a beautiful day. The water was crystal clear and almost completely still. You could go in it waist deep and still see your feet. There were small white fish that had black stripes swimming all around. There were also tiny harmless jellyfish that were all clear except for a blue dot in the center that could only be seen in a certain light. I would be swimming and then feel like I was hitting a patch of jello. It was quite disconcerting. We had a picnic lunch, played some volleyball, lay on the beach, and swam more. Finally, after what wasn’t enough time (there could never possibly be enough time) we had to get back on the boat. On the way back everyone on the boat was a little friendlier and we got to know several of the people. There was a couple on their honeymoon who were really friendly (and live in SF) and a girl from Pennsylvania who we realized were going to be going to the Great Barrier Reef with us on Thursday so we became quite friendly. 

The second day we went hiking in Conway National Park, located right outside of Airlie Beach. We hiked up to the peak of Mt. Rooper and then to Coral Beach. The views at both places were gorgeous! The dust had begun to clear and the visibility was amazing. The water was so blue and it was really neat to spot patches of fringe reef surrounding the island. Coral Beach is named because instead of having rock or sand it has coral. We spent ages on the beach sorting through it, being amazed at all of the variations and patterns that coral has. I should mention that we made friends with one of the bus drivers on our arrival to Airlie Beach. All of our bus rides (I think there were 5 or 6 total) we took with him (except 1) by coincidence. He was really helpful because he would be willing to give us directions to wherever we wanted to go (we had no idea where Conway was) and would stop before he was supposed to so that we would be closer to our destination. He would make announcements about the locals as they got on and off the bus that were hilarious (and of course I can’t remember what they were because I never wrote them down). 

On the third day we went to the Great Barrier Reef! When you’re around the reef a huge distinction is made between fringe reef and outer reef. Fringe reef is located around the islands. It usually has some fish and a few species of coral but is generally considered more tarnished and dead. The outer reef is in deep water, has tons of fish, tons of coral, and is the coolest thing ever. We took a two hour boat ride on a supercharged ferry to get to a pontoon that was located just off of the reef. The pontoon had all of the equipment we could need for snorkeling and scuba diving. I really wanted to try scuba diving but couldn’t because of my asthma (which of course made me incredibly determined to learn how in the future). Instead I got to put on a baby pink “stinger suit” for protection against jelly fish, flippers, mask, snorkel, and a pfd to make it easy to hang out and just watch the fish go by. The initial plunge into the water was scary. You had to swim about 50 feet through open water before getting to the edge of the reef. I always jump into water with my eyes closed, I never trust that goggles will stay on , but when I opened my eyes I found myself underwater and surrounded by fish (regal tang, think Dory in Finding Nemo). I swam over to the reef and was immediately amazed at how different living reef looks from the pieces of it we found on the beach. It’s so colorful and it comes in so many shapes! There were a million fish everywhere which was really neat to see. Under the pontoon lived some grouper fish, which can weigh up to 600 lbs and be 8-10 feet long (they are so scary looking and luckily don’t come anywhere near the area we were in). First I swam around the edge of the reef and then I swam over it. There were about two feet of water so I had to be really careful not to kick the reef while swimming. Some patches of the reef are sandy on top. In these areas there are white fish that harvest algae. If you get too close to their algae farm they’ll swim up to you and harass you. I got smacked in the face by two of these fish. It was the most startling experience I’ve ever had. I fell in love with giant clams. Small ones went from my wrist to my elbow and larger ones were at least the size of half my arm span plus my shoulders. I really can’t explain how magical it was to put my face underwater and just get absorbed in everything that was going on. It felt weird to surface and become exposed to the sunlight. It makes everything look so soft under water. Going home was really sad. I didn’t want to leave at all. I could have spent hours more in the water (it was 80 degrees F) just observing life. The ride home was beautiful. The dust finally cleared and it was so sunny. We hung out with our friends from the previous boat and ended up having dinner with them. It was really good fun. 

After perusing the shops for a short while in the morning it was time to say goodbye to Airlie beach. We had to catch a ferry back to the island where the airport was. We arrived in a cold Sydney. Luckily we were in a different hostel, this one called the Funkhouse, which was clean and friendly. We went out dancing and I managed to rip my jeans. I’m quite upset about this. 

The next morning it was pouring rain but staying in the hostel sounded like no fun so we went out anyways. We first went to Darling Harbor and stumbled across a farmers market that was combined with the food festival that was going on. Further down the harbor was a Latin dance and music festival. We went to China town for lunch and then randomly found this huge indoor vendor mall. We stayed there for hours. Above it was a normal mall which we also perused for hours. What seemed like a day that wouldn’t be fun ended up being really interesting! We caught a shuttle back to the airport where we rejoined the other 10 members of our trip who had been in Cairns. I slept the entire ride home, not waking up for take off or landing. When I woke up I couldn’t figure out what was going on. 

In other news: one thing that strikes me as quite odd is that we just had our day light savings time switch last night. I don’t think it’s for another week in the US (I have no idea about any other countries). Mom is coming to visit in November and I’m really excited! I finally have my exam schedule and it looks pretty good. I think I like having finals spread over a month (although I’m sure I’ll probably hate it when I’m sick of studying after the first week).