Zoe + Australia

Dates: 4/25/19 – 5/9/19
total distance: 21,080 miles by plane, right-side driving rental car, wine bus, dive boat, and bicycle

People: Zoe, aka Zola, Z, Zoella

Zoe is my best friend and partner in multiple crimes since 1984.

• ​Zoe laughs at my suffering and destroys everything I love  
• Zoe makes me pee-in-my-pants laughing
• Zoe always shows up when I really need her, without me having to ask 
• Zoe is a brilliant free-spirit, with more smarts and talent than she realizes 
• Travelling with Zoe is always a non-stop adventure

Place: Australia, aka the land down under
​
Two weeks in Australia, a serious ball tearer! Australia is about the size of the continental US, and Australians are incredibly - friendly, polite and quirky. The language was a fascinating, since Australians frequently create new words simply by mashing up somewhat-random words together or truncating them to improve impact. A list of my favorite Australian words is at the end of this post.

I won't bang on about all the Australian phrases I collected as souvenir​s! 

Our adventure: 
After sitting on a plane for 20 hours, we arrived bleary-eyed into the shiny shimmer of Brisbane. The newly developed riverfront revealed paths and parks, perfectly designed for relaxing, outdoor dining and trendy cocktailing along the river.

​Brisbane is easy to navigate via bikes, ferry services or walking paths along the scenic salt-water, shark-inhabited river. Highlights included:  Koala hugging, Yoga , shopping and the South Bank.

Shiny Modern Brisbane

​Six days later, we flew North to Carins, and popped into a right(wrong)-side-ride for an hour-long drive to Port Douglas, a sweet little beach town with modern shops and restaurants (Grant Street and Salsa) and an amazing Sunday Market.  Took a boat to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef with a marine biologist, a go pro, and hundreds of fish.

We hiked the Mossman Gorge in the World Heritage-listed Danitree Rainforest. Fortunately we didn’t find the poisonous insects nor wildlife that Queensland is infamous for and Crocodile-Dundee-Zoe was eager to encounter. The Mossman hike was more of a hot-sweaty walk than wildlife adventure, my advice would be to take a swimsuit and enjoy the waterfalls or drive deeper into the Danitree Rainforest.

Flew Virgin Australia down to Sydney, where we toured by bike, enjoyed a symphony rehearsal during the Opera House tour, took a wine bus to the Hunter Valley, and shopped for opals in the Rocks. 

Is it bad luck to wear opals if you weren't born in October?

What I loved: Australians/Australian jargon, LMAO, driving on the wrong side of the car & road, mukti yoga mats, (I hauled a mat home!), Sydney Opera House, and anything that is linked in this blog.

What I didn’t love:
Giant Fruit Bats (Queensland), ferocious mosquito bites that itched for weeks until I put liquid bandage (New Skin) on them!

Helpful Australia words, as defined by the users:

• ​No worries = you’re welcome
• Starkers = naked
• All out = no discernable effort
• Buggered off = left
• Ball tearer = awesome (even though it would logically appear to be the opposite?!)
• Tosser = wanker (also littering - there was an Ad campaign "Don't being a tosser")
• Sacked = fired (quote from the news “The governor was sacked for dodgy dealing”.)
• Dodgy = shady, illicit
• Straggler = used to describe me showing up late for a Brisbane River boat tour
• Pop in/pop up/pop over = used to direct movement of anything  
• Mashup/mashing = putting any two things together
• Quick smart = fast
• Getting squished = run over by a car/bus, we were asked to avoid this during our bike tour
• Bang on = lecture​
• Sway = influence
• Tada = goodbye
• Bin chickens = ibis birds​

Leaving Australia quick smart

My dad went into hospice and stopped eating during our last day in Australia. It was impossible to get home from Australia quickly the journey home took 24 hours + epic jet-lag. My next trip was predetermined,  as I purchased tickets to Saint Louis to witness my father's death. Karma was in my favor, since Zoe was already booked on a work trip in Saint Louis that same week - showing up when I really needed her, without me having to ask!