#2 Visit Australia Part 1

Why Australia?
I wanted the accent. I wanted the beaches, the mountains, the outback, the more rugged way of life. I wanted to experience that so I could prove to myself that I could do it.
After I graduated I had two options.
I could go back to school and work on a master's degree
or I could get a job/career.
It was now or never to go travel the world with other young backpackers. I cut off intimacy with current relationships and somewhat successfully stopped new ones from forming. I couldn't date while I was halfway around the world.

I could write pages on the stuff I did, giving in depth detailed experiences, but for this project, I just need to report I've done it.
I've posted the entire photo album under links to the left of the page.
In a very large nutshell, here's what happen down under.

Enter
I flew into Sydney with no clue where I was sleeping that night. I picked up some hostel brochures from a stand and picked an internationally acclaimed one called YHA. I told the customs agent I didn't know where I was sleeping. He pulled out my map of Australia and asked why I had this if I was just staying in Sydney. ....because I'm in Australia? Just in case?

Manley Beach, Europeans, and Homeless Businessmen
I decided that my first order of business should be to walk to the beaches. It was at 30min walk from the hostel through the very heart of Sydney's skyscrapers. There you had to avoid hawkers (people who try to get you to donate to some charity/organization, mostly backpackers trying to make money). It was here I saw my first homeless person sleeping on a cardboard box...wearing a full pinstripe business suit. At the end of the walk was Sydney Harbor, The Rocks (elite part of town), the Opera house, and underground cafes/bars. A 20min ride on a ferry across the harbor drops you off at Manley port, a 3min walk to the beach. The beach is lined with stores selling their discounted Corona for $52 for a 24 pack. Older men wore speedos, some women were topless, and the surfer crowd looked like...stereotypical surfers.
I noticed large cliffs in the distance with a trail that lead to them. I decided to explore and found a dirt trail leading up to overhanging cliffs. I decided it was not a good idea to jump from rock to rock after a giant lizard shot out from under a rock after I landed on it, luckily it wasn't a sleeping snake.
Rule 1 in Australia - snakes are bad.

Dance like an Aussie
Underneath my hostel was a bar. I ate some pizza there and thought it was funny they played Sweet Home Alabama. Much later in the night they had crab racing for $2. I named mine Chuck Norris. Out of the many things Chuck Norris is capable of, he is not a crab racing champion. I was then selected to do a 30 second strip tease with two other guys (a Canadian and an Aussie).
We all had to strip at the same time. The bar was packed at this point (no shoulder room), full of 18-25 women from Sydney and around the world, flashing lights and noise. It was a blur. The two other guys started dancing around. I got down on two knees rock-band style and slid up to the edge of the stage. The shirt came off. I realized this was probably a bad idea because I just flew in from a snowstorm 4 days ago. I was deathly pale compared to everyone.
I got second place. Canada won. I let America down.

Melbourne (Mel-bun)
I took an overnight bus to Melbourne shortly after arriving. It was here I met a guy whom I will refer to as Blue. He showed me the downtown, the hidden clubs, the rooftop bars, and recommended where to go if I needed to take a girl out on a date.
I met a girl from Sweden. I showed her some card magic, a hobby I got into while I was in Melbourne (check out Bernards Magic Shop) and we ended up talking for about two hours on the couches. We went out the next two nights, eating great Chinese food, crepes, Bubbletea, and gelato (similar to ice cream. I applied for several jobs while I was there, getting hired to work at the Melbourne Grand Prix, a nude art model at the Melbourne Uni of Art, and an electric company. During middle of all this, I was living with a guy named Sal, who was from Iran. He had been stabbed twice for getting another guys girlfriend's phone number. He looked like a rockstar and probably did cocaine. I payed him $15 a day to sleep on his couch for two weeks.

Reasons to not do heroin in Tasmania
I flew over to Tasmania to live on an organic farm with a guy named Tim. Tim lived by himself at the base of a plateau (aka small mountain) growing all of his own food. I slept with a German guy in a homemade log cabin. An Irish girl slept in her tent by the stream that was about 50 yards from our cabin. My typical day was to wake up about 8a.m., eat some homemade cereal, plant seeds in Tim's garden, then go spend the rest of the afternoon hiking by myself in the Tasmanian mountains with no cell phone reception. There were no trails, lots of spider webs, and loose boulders. I took baths in the creek when it was time to clean up.
Tim was surrounded by poppy fields. For those of you who don't know better, poppy fields are massed produced because they are used in the medical industry. However, if prepared correctly, you can make heroin. In order to prevent people from stealing poppy flowers, about 1 / 1000 poppy flowers are "jacked up" to provide about 100x the dose. Which means, if you steal some poppy flowers to make heroin....there is a chance it will be that over-dosed flower, which will kill you. I recommend checking out Launceston and Cateract Gorge for those who stop by.

Back to Melbourne.
I met up with Blue and his mates back in Melbourne were we went out and met as many people as we could. I had to get use to drinking in bars with 18 year old girls. When they say they graduated...they don't mean from college.
Met a girl named Jess and we danced a night away. She invited me over to her 'University' (not college!) to attend a social salsa dancing class. It was pretty exciting. Blue later took me out to a bar that hosted salsa dancing somewhere else in the city.
I worked as crowd control at the Melbourne Grand Prix at this point. John Travolta flew in as he is a representative? of Quantis Airlines. Ferrari, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz McLaren, were all there with their multimillion dollar cars and merchandise. Saudi Arabians who reeked money were escorted to corporate box offices. It made "high profile events" held in Nebraska seem like a college guy who puts on fake diamond earrings and pretends he's got fame and money.