I am now writing to you from Darwin, Northern Territory. Many exciting events have occurred since the last blog post.
For the evening of St. Patrick’s Day George and I decided to celebrate our successful bungy jumps and have a bit of a night out. We ran into our friend Mariana, who we had hitchhiked with earlier, and accompanied her to her next boozing location, Buffalo Bar. It seemed like the typical St. Patty’s getup with green beer and the like, but quickly turned into a scene straight out of the movie Coyote Ugly. There were girls dancing on the bar and pool tables in white shirts and booty shorts, who the male bartenders would occasionally pour buckets of water over. The cash registers had to be covered to avoid damage from the water. All the while a Queenstown policeman stood in the corner, with a smile on his face. The place was incredibly trashy, but I can’t say I didn’t have a good time, especially after drinking some green beer.
On the 18th of March we hitchhiked to Te Anau, in Fiordland in the southwest. The following day we travelled for about an hour and a half to Milford Sound, one of New Zealand’s top tourist attractions. We began by trying to hitch there as usual, but after an hour of waiting and realizing the guys in front of us still hadn’t even been picked up, we decided to splurge and rent a car for the day. The drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound is beautiful, so I’m very glad we did. Not to mention that getting to drive on the left side of the road is always a thrill! Plus we were able to pick up the hitchhikers that had been in front of us (who waited for over three hours), as well as some others after them.
Invercargill, the southernmost city in New Zealand, was where we went on the 20th of March. We stayed two nights there, mostly because there were so many cool old buildings to look at. The town had a slightly depressing feel to it, as though its prime was 50 or 100 years ago and it didn’t have much going for it anymore. Nevertheless, we had a good time there. Invercargill has a very impressive Catholic church which we decided to attend for kicks, it was pretty much what you would expect, but still fulfilled my curiosity. We also went to the town’s museum, and went bowling.
We went to Dunedin next, a funky university town with many hills. We were lucky enough to be able to couchsurf with a very friendly Scottish girl named Jenny, her boyfriend Zak, and their many housemates. The day after we arrived we met Zak at Otago University (Otago is the name of the region) for a $3.00 lunch and to have a look around the uni. It was pretty cool to be back on a university campus, I got a very Western vibe. After that we went on a tour of Speight’s Brewery, and made sure to take full advantage of the free drinks at the end of it. In the evening we went with some of our couch hosts to Baldwin Street, which is the steepest (paved) street in the world! Overall, I really liked Dunedin and wish I could have been there longer. If/when I go back to New Zealand, I will go back to Dunedin and stay for a while.
Christchurch is where George and I flew back to Australia from. We stayed two nights there, and our time there had a very different vibe than anywhere else. The entire central business district (downtown) was blocked off and guarded. Our hostel didn’t have much evidence of damage, but just across the street from it an entire strip mall had been destroyed. We spent a couple hours walking around the town observing the damage, but after a bit it began to feel very wrong. I took a few photos but will not be posting them. There were many piles of bricks everywhere, large cracks in the concrete in the sidewalks and roads, and fallen down buildings. I have never seen as many orange cones as I saw in Christchurch. Near the CBD all buildings had a sign on them, either green if the place was all good, yellow if you can enter on essential business only, or red if it is unsafe and no one is to enter under any circumstances. Red also meant that the building would be demolished.
Outside of one house was a neat pile of bricks with a flag of sorts and some flowers on top. We wondered if someone had died there. As we looked around the fence at the house, where a refrigerator and some other kitchen items stood outside, a man walked down the sidewalk coming from the opposite direction. We continued on, catching eyes with him before he walked through the gate to the house he’d no doubt seen us peering at…
“Disaster tourism” had been something to joke about in Dunedin, but there was nothing funny about it once we got to Christchurch and saw the earthquake damage firsthand (over a month after the earthquake had occurred). There have been more than 1,000 aftershocks and they continue to happen and cause destruction. I felt a small one during the middle of the night when I was awake, it was small, but noticeable.
Christchurch was a rather sobering end to my time in New Zealand. Once back in Australia George and I were able to calculate some statistics about our time there, including many about the people that we hitched rides with:
•Total hitches: 52
•Number of people in car: one (73%), two (23%), three (4%)
•Gender of driver: male (75%), female (25%). It must be noted that 10% of hitches were with couples, most of which had the male driving.
•Age: young (48%), middle-aged (44%), older (10%)
•Residency: Citizen (69%), resident (15%), tourist (15%)
•Nationality: Kiwi (69%), French (8%), German (6%), English, American or Indian (4% each), South African, Brazilian or Mexican (2%) each
Over 45 nights total, accommodation was free many of them due to wwoofing (two weeks total) or couchsurfing (one week total). Due to this and using hitchhiking as a main mode of transport, I was able to travel New Zealand on the impressive budget of just under NZ$50 (approx US$37.50) per day! This figure is including flights (even the one I didn’t use), expensive sports like bungy jumping, food, etc. Everything!
We flew from Christchurch to Melbourne at 6 a.m. on the 26th of March, where we stayed with a friend named Liam, who goes to La Trobe University. On the first night we accompanied him to an Austrian club for a night of swing dancing. It was a very random night, many different ages dancing to jazz and swing music. Although I took swing dancing classes for many years, I can’t say I really busted out many moves from my old dancing days. However I did have a lot of fun.
We didn’t do too much in Melbourne, just went to some op shops (secondhand stores) and hung out with Liam and his housemates. Played multiple games of Risk. We also attended one of Liam’s lectures at La Trobe for his anthropology class. The lecture was about culture and it was full of information I’ve heard many times before in classes at Western. Nonetheless it was still cool to go to a lecture at an Australian university.
For the past two months George and I have been eating mostly vegetarian (there were several occasions where couch or wwoof hosts cooked meat so I ate some). Vegetarianism is something that I have seen the benefits of for a long time but never seriously considered. I always imagined endless salads and a stomach that was never fully satisfied. However, I have been pleasantly surprised with how delicious, filling and nutritious vegetarianism can be. We have been eating many soups, fresh vegetables, nuts, beans and muesli/granola.
For this reason, I have been compelled to take it to the next level and go vegan. This has commonly been a topic of discussion and I have now decided to try out veganism for a bit, perhaps until my Aussie visa runs out in three months. There are many reasons why I think going vegan is a beneficial decision. When buying food at a grocery store, even if you are buying “organic cage free” eggs, there is still no way to know what the conditions were like for the animals. As many documentaries and books will tell you, there are many environmental reasons to go vegetarian or vegan, for example that it takes significantly less water to make a kilo of corn than a kilo of beef.
However, the main reason driving me to try veganism is simply because eating animal products is not necessary. All of the vitamins, minerals and proteins we need can be obtained by eating plants and plant products. If you don’t need to eat animal products in order to survive in healthy way, why even bring animals into the equation? There is a lot of suffering going on because they are in the equation of the human diet. Going vegan is also an educational experience, from learning how to prepare a variety of vegan dishes, to learning how to maintain a balanced diet without relying on animal products. It’s also a personal challenge, something that forces me to think in a different way, take on a new perspective, experience things I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to experience otherwise.
At the wee hour of 1:45 am, George and I flew to Darwin, a four and a half hour plane ride north of Melbourne. The plan was to find a job here and stay for the rest of my visa. We got in at a quarter to five in the morning and slept for a few hours before going into town where the plan was check into a hostel, print resumes, and get jobs. Within the first four resumes, I had a trail shift for that night, at a bar called The Tap. For hospitality jobs in Australia, instead of having an interview it is common to come in for a couple hours generally unpaid trial shift to see how you go at working at the venue.
My trial shift went well and I was given the job, which is quite exciting. On Sunday I had a trial at an Irish pub called Kitty O'Sheas, and I'll be working there as well. Excitement on the job front.
Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory and has a population of about 124,000. There are two seasons in Darwin: wet and dry. Lucky for me the wet season is ending right now, so although it is rather rainy and incredibly humid at the moment, soon it will be dry, still hot, and sunny (or so I am told). Darwin is in prime cyclone zone, and was virtually wiped out by Cyclone Tracy in 1974 (people still talk about it). Darwin is also in the same territory as Uluru/Ayers Rock, which is a “short” 2,000 km (1,200 mi) away. Uluru is high on my destination list and I will be planning a trip there as soon as I am settled down and have a steady cash flow!
