thehostelwitness

Brisbane Photoset

Pretty much all post-card shots of the city, I remember not really feeling up to taking pictures. The Seahawks had just been crushed by the Packers in the playoffs, making my 21 hour bus ride to the city to catch the game pretty much ridiculous.

Still, the city grew on me and eventually I found some really cool places to visit - sans camera, naturalich.

Brisbane Photoset

New photographs

I've added photosets for Melbourne as well as Sydney tonight - enjoy!

Cape Tribulation, Australia

Some pics from the weekend trip up to Cape Trib, where the rainforest meets the beach. 

Cape Tribulation photoset

Australian creatures

A collection of my Australian animal pictures. Go wombats!

Animal photoset

Cairns Botanical Gardens

Just in a photo uploading mood! Photos from the Cairns Botanical Gardens in Cairns, Australia.

Cairns photoset

Melbourne International Airport

Thanks to the no ATM card thing, I recieved no less than 3 offers from friends and family willing to wire me money! Thanks! In hindsight (and to avoid giving my mother a heart attack), I should have pointed out that I had my credit card still. So no small purchases like ice cream cones, but thankfully food and shelter were readily available.

My flight to NZ leaves at a bright and chipper 6am, past-Jacob being the optimistic sort of fellow. So instead of paying for another night in the hostel for what would amount to only a few hours worth of sleep, I'm holding down the fort and spending my last day in Australia at the airport. Wi-Fi, beer, and TVs abound, so one can say that I'm in my element.

After the casino incident, I pretty much have kept a low profile in Melbourne, restricting my outings to lunches and for some reason, a weird mission to find a handheld Texas Hold'Em poker game. I don't know why - just sometime three days ago, the overwhelming need to find a cheap handheld game of poker strutted into my brain and sat on its lap, unmovable, like a third-shift Vegas stripper. So I spent two days hunting for a cheap game.

From snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef to hunting for a $20 game. Surely, it is time to move on to other pastures. Australia has been wonderful - definately surpassed what expectations I had landed with and given "next time", I hope to make it to the center of the continent, camp in the outback, and make it out to Perth. Really, I wish more of my friends could visit here, if only to share in the experience. Maybe the next time one of you decides to take a vacation, you'll consider Australia. Its a little out of the way, but a trip down the coast will stay in your heart forever. As it is now, I will head into New Zealand and if all goes well, stay there for the next couple of months. The goal of the NZ trip is to get as much hiking in as humanly possible, so unless they have wifi out on the Routeburn track, postings will be sparse, but hopefully not lack for content when they do come.

Goodbye, Australia!

Crown Casino, Melbourne

Probably 90% of my friends reading this would probably have groaned upon seeing the word "casino". To be fair, my track record isn't the best when it comes to casinos...a little won vs. quite a bit lost. Catch me outside of one and you would never guess it - I don't make bets (even for a buck), I don't spend my spare time hunting down the local casinos, and I like to watch my money grow safe and sound in the bank account, like a chia pet.

Put me in a Vegas casino though and all bets are off. Bad Jacob makes his appearance. The sound of clay chips being stacked together amidst a birdsong of coins and slot machines ranks as one of the sweetest sounds in the world, universe possibly. Hemmingway, Tolstoy, Capa, Aristotle, Kenny Rogers - all gamblers. The illustrious company I keep.

However, this trip would be different. I wasn't here to gamble. There's only one place to catch the Superbowl in Melbourne on a Monday morning and that would be in a casino. Granted, I had no idea that this particular casino was one of the largest in the southern hemisphere. I would also learn that gambling revenues account for a quarter percent of the state of Victoria's income - and this was the only casino in the state! A huge blue dragon with giant paper lamps greeted me upon entering and I couldn't help but let out a laugh - at the size, the noise, the sheer cheesiness of a giant blue dragon. Oh no, I thought. This is just like Vegas.

The superbowl brought out the most Americans I had met all month in from the city. It really did feel like watching the game from home, with die hard fans yelling and thrilling at one of the most exciting conclusions in recent superbowl history. I loved it. Afterwords, I took a quick look around the casino. It couldn't hurt, could it? Those blackjack tables look a little forlorn...maybe if I just spend the money in my wallet ($60, American) and call that even, I'd be OK. Seeing how this was my budget for a day, I had no problem with that. Besides, changing this money anywhere else would cost me an arm and a leg, but casinos change foreign currency without any surcharge (so when traveling, change money in casinos). Already the rationalization began - "yeah, I would save money by hanging out in a casino!"

Strangely, $60 lasts just as long as $600 and I happily spend my day watching my stack shrink and grow, until inevitably of course, it was all gone. Ah well. I headed back to the hostel for the night and stopped by the ATM for my weekly allowance. Whistling, an eyebrow raised when I saw that my card had been..denied? Wha? Trying again, same result. A message blinks up at me from the machine: "CARD EXPIRED." I check the card. Sure enough, "Expiration date: 02/08".

A rotten, moldy smell confirms I just shit myself. An expired card happens only, oh maybe every 3-4 years. The thought that it would happen to me when I was almost as far away as possible from my bank never even occurred to me. Well, my replacement card was probably sitting at my parents house. They can send it to me express or better yet give it to Jayson and Jessica who will be up in NZ in a bit...which means I'll have to deal for a week or so.

It wouldn't be really an issue if I had any cash at all. Even $60.

And I'm an idiot.

St. Kilda, Melbourne

St. Gilda is a little community south of Melbourne, filled will all sorts of pretty people - kind of like its own Mel rose Place, if this were still the 90S. Well dressed women, all in heels, retirees in Gucci sunglasses, mixing with guys with purposely unpurposeful hair, backpackers, families, buskers. Home to a nice beach with views of the city only a tram ride away and the wonderfully cheesy Luna Park, (one of those early era carnivals ala Coney Island), St. Kilda's is considered Melbourne's first suburb.

I had arrived in St. Gilda to locate the Linden gallery, home to the local St. Gilda art school, where they were putting on a gallery exhibition of art for sale - over 1200 pieces, with selected items to be made into postcards for future sale. If there was ever a place to pick up a post card of Prince Albert as well of a prince albert, this was the place. I stocked up - so anyone jonsing for a post card shoot me an email with your address.

The Problem with Modern Art (by Jacob Rhoades) is that the modern movement has pretty much torn through anything new, thought provoking, or significant. Blended with our 24-7 culture and ultra ease to digital images and information, you can count that anything newsworthy will be turned into an ironic t-shirt, a painting of a melting planet, andy warhol-esque portraits of a dead villager, etc. I stood there looking at these efforts and failed to be moved simply due to its unoriginality. A g-string bikini made out of barbed wire? Been there. Just what we need is another statement concerning sex and violence. Is there anything truly new that has yet to be said? The answer is "No". So that leaves only one avenue - the truly bizarre. And that's pretty much crap. As Art Brut sang, "Modern art makes me want to rock out!" We may think that modern art is the form evolved from the days of stuffy portraits, dadaism, impressionism, surrealism, etc-ism, but I think they had something back then, namely, "OK, I get that you are tortured. I get that you want to be creative. But you still can't draw for shit, so sit down and let Pablo paint his flowers." And the evidence supports this - the biggest sellers here weren't weird sculptures, photographs of an abandoned house, or collages of upside down American flags. The big sellers were the drawings - all in their own style, but the message was skill over intention.

Anyway, by the time I walked out of the exhibition, huge crowds of people were mulling about the sidewalk, muttering something about a parade. And not just any parade, but the St. Gilda Pride parade. Now here is something worth taking pictures for - locals, decked out, having a great time for everyone loves a parade. The problem though was that I was tired, hungry, and it was H-O-T hot. I wanted to go back to my hostel for a bit of a break and because of the parade, the trams weren't running in this particular neighborhood. I hiked back towards the city. In a park not too far in the distance, I saw a sign that filled me with hope: "SOFT SERVE ICE CREAM". As I got closer though, I saw that between me and my ice cream was the mustering area of the entire pride parade. Between me and my chocolate dipped vanilla cone milled about thousands of gays, lesbians, bi's, tri's, cross dressers, trannies, hermaphrodites, pricillas, biker dudes, butch ladies, Dikes on Bikes, Rainbow Cloggers, Bent Cranks (gay bicyclers), Queer as Country Folk, Swing Patrol (gay swing dancers), Leather is for Cows, and the Victoria Police.

My personal favorite though was the name the aboriginal gay rights group had given themselves, "OUTBLACK".

I mean, what's better then that? Quickly melting ice cream in hand, I found a tram and set back for the hostel.

Melbourne Cricket Grounds, Melbourne

90,000 fans, each one of whom I am convinced had no idea what the hell was going on, roared around the stadium at the start of the KFC 20/20 Australia-India cricket match. The two countries have been playing against each other in various locations for the last month now, so seeing them scheduled to play in Melbourne, of course I couldn't miss out. Melbourne has been called Australia's sport's capital, with cricket, basketball, rugby, and a curious thing called Aussie Rules Football (or footie), which started here in this very city. A surprising thing is that you would expect footie to be the dominant sport, but its really only taken hold in Victoria and New South Whales. The rest of the country loves good old fashioned rugby, perhaps on account that "footie" is the wimpiest nickname for a sport I have ever heard in my entire life.

In Melbourne however on this day, cricket ruled all. The Melbourne Cricket Grounds are hallowed grounds to many Australians of any sports denomination, holding a sort of Wembley or Yankee Stadium-like appeal for the masses. Its a shrine. And make fun of cricket all you want (which I will, shortly), the stadium is absolutely huge. Big enough for 100,000 people at full capacity, the field stretches in a huge oval, easily fitting over 5 football fields within it. Only 22 men occupy the field at any time, so it literally dwarfs them. Considering that the stands are so far back, even with the best seats you are still sadly far away from the action - from my point of view, the players looked like insects, and hence the name of the sport.

The matches have been generating some controversy lately, with an Indian player accused of using a racial epitaph to describe a black Aussie player during a game. The Australians for their part have been accused of violating the spirit of the game by arguing calls and trying to trick umpires on catches. So pretty much, they are on par with American sports on this.

One thing I've been loving in Sydney and now, Melbourne, has been the mass transportation, a commonly reoccurring theme for me. Both cities feature a bus system, many trams, subways, trains, and Sydney even has a monorail. And they all work. As the tram to the stadium became jam packed with Aussies and Indians going to the game, I found myself smashed against the door and not for the first time, found myself reminiscing about New York subways. Everyone else was complaining, but there in the middle was a strange man smiling in peaceful bliss, in his own world: me. So, what do you call a tram packed with hundreds of smelly, sweaty Aussies and Indians on a 85 degree day?

Australian Curry, of course. (And even better, when its time to get off of the tram they all get the runs - to their seats, of course!).

I did some quick studying of the rules before leaving and I figured out you get points by three ways: hitting the ball beyond the outer barrier (6 pts), hitting the ball and having it roll to the barrier (3 pts), and hitting the ball and running to a line about 30 yards away from you (1 pt). The other team gets an out by a strike (pitching the ball and hitting a "wicket" - one of three sticks behind the batter), catching a hit ball in the air, and throwing at and hitting a wicket while the other team is running to the opposite line. There are all sorts of other rules, but the important thing to remember is that they mean nothing at all.

Imagine a baseball game, where just for this particular game, they decide to change the rules to make it exciting. All double plays become worth 1 run. Hitting a home run, to the relief of confused housewives everywhere, becomes a touch down. And you do this, not for a regular game, but for an inter league or playoff game (just one!). That is international cricket, where the rules change. 20/20 cricket is much different than 50/50 cricket, which is in itself different than "cricket". Only God knows why and he's still probably confused if he thinks about it too much. All I know is that the Australians "won" when their batter didn't even swing at a ball and it bounced into the hands of an Indian player behind him. No swing, no out, but still, one point. Game over, but nothing happened that I could see. Everyone was leaving and happy, but I was positive that nothing important just happened. To quote the immortal Will Ferrell, I wanted to shout out, "Am I the only one who sees this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!"

Still, I came for the experience and for that, the fans delivered. Beach balls and inflated condoms (pity the man who tried to blow up a lubricated one) bounced all around the stadium, 90,000 boos when security took them away. One beach ball shaped like a punching bag landed near me, so I promptly hit it up in the air, the weighted bottom of the thing propelling it with lightning speed into the face of a 70 year old woman. Nice. And I had the company of the people around me, one traveller from Canada overheard saying how he didn't like maps because it "made him look like a tourist" - which makes perfect sense of course, coming from someone wearing a baseball cap with the words "CANADA" written on it.

Fans were reminded again and again that throwing things on the field was illegal, cursing was illegal, and the Mexican Wave was illegal. And what, exactly was a Mexican Wave? A wave where people yelled "Ole!"? No, as far as I could tell, it was a normal wave that any true Seattlelite will tell you over and over ad naseum that it was invented in Seattle at a huskies game. At some point in its travel to Australia, it just picked up a Mexican passport.

Still, I dream of a day when every country has their own wave. A Scottish wave traveling with kilts lifted up, a Mexican wave with sombreros tossed into the air, an Australian wave with beers saluting all around the stadium. Dare to dream.

Brunswick St, Melbourne

I have quite possibly discovered the world's greatest street: Brunswick, in Melbourne. Its a lofty claim, to be sure, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything quite like it. Novelty stores, young designer clothes, vintage items, cafes, bars, all packed onto one street that stretches for over a mile just outside the city proper. Its the only place I can think of where one store sells $10 t-shirts next to a place selling them for $100. All of this, crammed into old Victorian style buildings, giving it a unique feel, a buzz that there is something about the place. If I were to move to Melbourne, after only two days of surveying, I'm 99% sure it would be near this street, in the Fitzroy neighborhood.

Melbourne has over 4 million inhabitants, so its a bit of a puzzle to me that someplace so close has avoided the fate of a Brooklyn and become uber-gentrified. It may become a pain on the weekends with all the city people descending on it, but during the week it was calm, peaceful even. Tattooed chicks a plenty, and not a single glass-framed condo in sight. I was in heaven.

Melbourne so far has been a vast improvement over Canberra, the capital of Australia, where I spent just one night to break up the 14 hour journey between Sydney and Melbourne. Think of the world's largest outdoor shopping mall, then stick in government offices instead of retail stores and you pretty much have it. I got lost just walking the five blocks from the bus station to the hostel - the first time in all of Australia that I've gotten turned around. And its because every single building looks like the other and can't make up which street its on. I didn't even bother going to the national history museum because like America, Australia is a very young country and shares a similar history. Seriously, the history goes something like this:

1. James Cook discovers Australia for Britain. (Cook also discovered Hawaii).

2. Fleet of 11 ships lands in Australia, drops off crew who proceed to decimate native population. (same same)

3. The Irish and Chinese move over in force. Gold is discovered. Rush is on. (same)

4. Ned Kelly and his gang terrorize Australia wearing a suit of armor.  (The Aussie Billie the kid)

5.  Silver Chair releases debut album. (same)

My first morning in Melbourne, a steady rain and wind was going, sending me to the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI). This is basically a museum for movies, videos, and computer games. All free. Let me tell you, there is hardly a better way to pass a rainy day then to head here and just play. Eventually, the weather cleared up, sunlight descended, and the temp rose up and up until I was a sweaty, smelly mess.

My roommates for this next week are pretty decent folk, but one with a predilection towards talking in his sleep. In German. "Nein, Nein mutti! Ich bin ein Berliner!" or something like that. Its not too bad though - we had one guy in Port Macquarie who literally rolled out of his bunk and smacked the floor hard enough to wake up the whole room. As he THUNKED on the ground, he woke up a girl sleeping in the bunk below who forgot she was in a hostel. "WHO ARE YOU?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY ROOM!!!!," she screamed. It made for a lively night, but even more fun to talk about it over breakfast. Another roommate snored so loud - and this is coming from a guy whose been known to let out a few Z's himself - so loud, that he kept the entire room up for hours. Even in the dark, I knew everyone else was awake. One guy would cough loudly to try to stir him. Another person actually kicked the bunk from beneath. In the morning, he left and the event, as most traumatic events occurring to groups of people, bonded over the incident. It was our own St. Krispin's Day.