In case you hadn’t noticed, I am now back in America. Oregon, to be exact.

So let’s see… Tane took me to the Brisbane airport at 8.00 am on 26 December, 2007. My flight departed at 11.45, and after hopping quickly down to Sydney to catch my international flight to LAX, I arrived safely in California at 9.00 am, 26 December, 2007. Huzzah for the International Date Line! And no, Charlie, it’s not a telephone number that you can call to get hooked up with “Hott Asian Girrrrrlz.”

Anyway, I had a long layover in LAX while I waited for my flight to Portland, and after arriving in Portland (where my absolutely amazing dad and superbly wonderful sister Christine were waiting for me), I then drove the three hours home. In the snow. Talk about climate change. Anyway, so all up, it was just about 38 hours from Brisbane to home. I don’t plan to be doing that again any time soon, thank you.

So there. Being back stateside has made me realise just how much I missed my family and friends and has certainly put this whole “living internationally” thing into perspective. More on that later.

But for now, I would just like to let everyone in the States know that I am home and ready to catch up, and I’d like to let all of my new Aussie friends know that I miss you all very much and think about you daily. I’d also like to add that if I were to delete all of my “Friends” on MySpace and Facebook who never emailed me or bothered returning the emails that I sent them whilst in Australia, I would be left with my family and the following individuals: James, Charlie, Janna, Keenan, Lisa, Stephanie, Aileen, Craig, Sabrina, Whitney, Liz, Roger, Justin, and Rachel. In SIX MONTHS. That’s just over two people per month. So, thank you to the fourteen people who remembered me!

Soooo.  You might have watched the videos, and you might have seen the photos, but nevertheless, allow me to enlighten you with the gripping drama of the Moreton Death March.

It all started about a month ago when my mate Tane mentioned that some friends of his were organizing a bushwalking weekend on Moreton Island.  Ever eager to get some experience doing things off the mountain, I asked if I could come along and he said “But of course!”

Now, we both had it in our minds that we would go to the island for a nice, relaxing bushwalk with maybe some snorkeling and a barbie at the end.  What waited for us was nothing short of a nightmare.  Yes.  That’s right.  A nightmare.

To start off with, the people who planned the route decided that 48 kilometres would be the prefect length.  And, they didn’t bother learning how to read topographic maps before selecting the route.  And, they didn’t tell us what the route was so we could investigate on our own time.  And, they didn’t check to make sure that there was potable water at any of the campsites that we would be passing.  And, they didn’t take into account the age and medical condition of all of the members of the walking party.

So Day One of The Moreton Death March…

Got off the ferry on the western side of the island at 1000, started walking immediately.  Proceeded 19 kilometres through ankle-deep, soft sand while carrying a 20Kg pack and wearing Chacos.  Arrived at beach on eastern side by 1700, then proceeded north along beach (hooray compacted sand!) to designated camping site (Eagers Creek), 2 kilometres away.  By now we were out of water, and upon arriving at Eagers Creek found it to be dry.  As a bone.  Having no other option, we continued north along the beach for another 7 kilometres and arrived at the Blue Lagoon campsite by 1930, an hour after dark.  Exhausted, we made camp and quickly ate and fell asleep to the melodious sounds of blistered feet and aching backs.

Day Two, The Moreton Death March:

Woke up at 0500, broke camp, and got walking by 0615. Not a bad way to start the day, watching the sunrise over the ocean, but still aching, dehydrated, and moderately irritated at the planning of the trip. Seven kilometres north to the lighthouse on packed sand, and then 14 kilometres back to the ferry sloshing through deep, loose sand. Oh, and about 300 metres of that was off track through thick heath because of ANOTHER planning error. I tell you, these folks had absolutely no appreciation for maps! Anyway, trudging along through the sand, and a police truck comes up behind us bearing one of our walking party who had fallen behind. At this point, we still had about 8 kilometres to go, and we were all pretty sure that he would have been hospitalised had he continued in the condition he was in. Tane and I wisely removed water from our packs and tossed them into the back of the truck and happily limped on, 20Kg lighter each. Arrived back at the ferry by 1400, having completed 48 kilometres in 28 hours.

So let this be a lesson to you, fair reader. If you want to let somebody else plan YOUR holiday, make sure they’ve got some freakin’ credentials, and make sure that their motivations are similar to yours. Because otherwise, you’ll find yourself in the rain, pushing through dense, thorny bushes while wearing sandals and shorts. So be ye warned.

Oh, you’ve got to take this test, yo.

Australian Citizenship Test.pdf

Hey there!  I’ve finally gotten around to posting some photos under the Pictures! page.  Navigate to them by clicking on the Pictures! link, yo.

Oh, and enjoy…

So what do YOU think of the whole peerage thing that they seem to embrace so freely in the United Kingdom? And no, this is not just one of those random questions.

Now, according to that convenient and highly reliable source of information known as “the Internet” (you know, Al Gore’s invention…), there hasn’t been anyone knighted in Australia since 3 March,1986.

Evidently, on 14 February of 1975 the queen decided that there should be a system of honours in place that would “supersede” all other honours conferred upon men and women of this humble continent, so with a magical wave of her scepter she created what was called the “Order of Australia,” or something like that.  There were five levels of honour included therein, with knights and dames at the very top and valet parking attendants at the bottom.  Or maybe it was pedicurists…  Anyway!  So they’ve got this system, ok?  Then in 1986, and for reasons unknown to 99.9997% of the world’s population (the other .0003% are the only ones who actually give a flying hoot about the whole “titles of nobility” nonsense), somebody decided that knighthoods and dame…doms(is that a word?) were against the rules.  I can picture the decree now…

“A serfdom shall be the extent of thy progression, and thy progression shall be to that of a serf.  To baron shalt thou not progress, neither shalt thou progress to peasantry excepting that thou proceedest regressing directly to back serfdom.  Thou shalt not progress to knighthood.  A duchy is totally out.”  Thank you, Mr. Python.

So all that to say the following: we had a guest staying with us the other day who absolutely insisted that we, the peasant rabble, only address her as “Lady Smith.”  (Obviously, “Smith” is a fictitious name that I have created to protect her privacy.  Hehehe…)  In fact, this is not her first visit to the O’Reilly’s fiefdom –I mean the guesthouse— and there are stories of her extendedly berating and verbally abusing previous employees who made the grave, grave mistake of calling her by her given name, Edith.  So this time, they gave us some warning in advance about her.

And the whole concept just made me sick.  It must be the American/Mexican/human being in me that was stirred into questioning whether or not it’s right that people should DEMAND that deference be afforded them simply because someone tapped them on the shoulder with a bit of a sword.  I can understand why one could enjoy the “feel-good” feeling that would accompany being called “sir” or “lady,” but when you command other people to address you thusly, isn’t it a little counterproductive?  There’s no respect behind it.  There’s no feeling other than hostility and resentment accompanying it.

And I, stubborn as I am, inwardly refused to call Edith “Lady Smith.”  I wasn’t going to stir the hornets’ nest by walking up and drawling, “How yer goin’, EDITH!?!?!???” but I absolutely refused to go all subservient for someone who had done nothing to earn my admiration.  So the whole time she was here I just called her “ma’am” in the most Sam Elliot fashion I could muster.

Ok, I’m done.

Having not reached its annual average for rainfall for over 12 years, Lamington National Park is looking surprisingly good. Most everything is still green, and the waterfalls actually have water in them. Notwithstanding, we still desperately need more rain, considering the fact that Brisbane has a little bit more than one year’s worth of water left in its reserves.

Our wish came true not long ago when, in the space of 5 days, we got more rain than we did in January, February, March, and April combined. Monday we got 33mm, Tuesday 27mm, Wednesday 164mm, Thursday 17mm, and Friday 31mm.

Noosa up north got 840mm in 48 hours and promptly flooded.

Don’t get me wrong: we’re still a looooong way from meeting the 1607mm average for this year, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

Now for the funny part! SO! Due to the enormous rainfall that we received, O’Reilly’s 4×4 bus tours suffered just a smidgeon. I know that you can sense a good story coming along, but bear with me, for, as everyone knows, all good stories must first be prefaced with a little background info.

O’Reilly’s has a contract with a Japanese tour agency called TPO under which we take their group (every day) up to a lookout called “Balancing Rock.” Essentially, since they mostly only speak Japanese, we are just renting them the use of a bus and driver to get them up there and back; they have their own tour guide who accompanies them.

Well, the day that it rained 164mm, TPO got taken up to Balancing Rock. Due to a variety of factors not the least of which was the monstrous amount of rainfall, the bus wound up halfway sliding off the road (which, incidentally, runs along a narrow ridgeline between two very steep cliffs) and leaning up against an acacia tree.

So envision, if you would, a giant green bus full of 26 Japanese tourists slowly sliding, sliding… sliiiiiding off the side of a cliff. Can you imagine the deafening roar of all the cameras? It wouldn’t be that difficult for me to believe that all of the tourists scrambling to the downhill side of the bus to get better shots of their impending doom somehow contributed to the bus’s sliding off the road as far as it did.

At any rate, we wound up sending another bus up to retrieve the driver and his shell-shocked tourists only to almost get THAT bus stuck! And all we could do after that was wait for the rain to let up and the ground to dry so that we could try to winch the bus off the side of the mountain.

It’s still up there, by the way.

And we’ve given the lookout a new name. It’s now called “Balancing Bus.”

Check out the photos.

Hey all!  Sorry it’s been so long since my last (substantial) post.  Been kinda busy, ok?

Anyway, as you can see from my itinerary, things have been happening down here.  I now have either progressed, regressed, or digressed to the point that the management is no longer babysitting me on walks, etc.  The fools!  HA!

The weather here has been amazing lately!  Of course, it would be considered very cold by Aussie standards, but by Oregonian standards it’s downright balmy, baby!  Of course, the best part about the weather warming up (aside from the increased likelihood of getting a tan and watching other people get tans…) is the fact that a lot of the birds that go north in the wintertime are coming back. 

So now, I shall officially get on my Soap Box Of The Day.  And what, fair reader, would said Soap Box Of The Day be?  Allow me to frighten, er, enlighten you! 

It is time for the United States to start using the metric system.  No more of this gallons/pounds/miles/feet nonsense.  I am confident that my father will agree with me on this topic for the following reason alone: every unit of measurement in the metric system (volume, distance, weight, etc.) is interconnected using the decimal system.  For example, one litre of water weighs one kilogram and displaces 1000 cubic centimetres.  Therefore, one cubic centimetre of water weighs one gram.  By contrast, while one gallon of water theoretically weighs a convenient 10 pounds, that is the only sane measurement, as it displaces 277.42 cubic inches.  Therefore, one cubic inch of water weighs… 0.57674284478408189748395933962944 ounces.  Oh, and while we’re at it, isn’t it easier to remember that there are 1000 metres in a kilometre as opposed to 5280 feet (or 1760 yards) in a mile?  I’m shaking…

AND ANOTHER THING!  (Hopefully all you Peter Sellers fans out there got that not-so-subtle reference…)  What is up with Fahrenheit!??!?!?  Not only is the word itself ridiculously hard to spell, but Dr. Fahrenheit was such a putz that he couldn’t even generate temperatures below zero (Fahrenheit, that is) in the laboratory!  Heck, all you’d have to do is bottle some of the February air from Bend, Oregon to generate temps lower than zero!  Anyway, Dr. Fahrenheit’s colossal ineptitude notwithstanding, how many of you actually know what the freezing and boiling temps of water are (again, in Fahrenheit, please!)?  I’m deliberately withholding those numbers just to see what percentage of my readers actually know.  And Wikipedia is off limits for this one, y’all.  Celsius, on the other hand, is quite simple: zero degrees is freezing, and 100 degrees is boiling.  Not only that, but it ties in exactly with the absolute temperature (or Kelvin) system. 

So which system does our great country rely on?  You guessed it!  The irrational one!  But wait, because there’s more!  In the most stunning acknowledgment of the imperial system’s inadequacy, all medication measurement and scientific measurements use the metric system!  And the military does, too!  And if THAT’S not enough, not even sporting events are immune to the yard/metre discrepancy!  Take swimming, for instance.  While high schools compete at district, state, and national levels in metres, they typically train in yards.  Oh, and Master’s Swimming?  They compete in yards.  At the state level, that is.  Nationals are in metres. 

Anyway, that’s my Soap Box Of The Day.  Any suggestions for my next tirade?  Comment away!

0545- Get up.  Whoa, groggy.

0546- Shower. Ooooh, yeah!

0600- Put on work uniform, which consists of a Columbia Omni-Dry long-sleeved shirt and matching zip-off pants.  And boots.  And sometimes, gaiters.  Oh, and underwear…

0630- Get sultanas and nuts together for morning bird walk while guzzling a cuppa tea.

0645- Bird walk!

0800- Morning bird feeding (I feed the birds in a feeding area that abuts a picture window in the dining room, then I walk back inside and explain to the guests what they’re seeing.)

0830- Brekkie for me.

0900- Lead the morning guided rainforest walk.

1230- Return to Guesthouse for a quick lunch.

1300- Afternoon bird feeding (same as morning).

1330- Prepare for either a) afternoon walk or b) afternoon adventure activity (which would be either the Flying Fox zipline or the Giant Swing).

1400- Lead whatever it was that I prepared for.

1600- Return to the Goosehouse.  Er, I mean the Guesthouse.

1615- Assume control (I like that expression!) of the Discovery Centre.  In other words, I get chained to a desk until…

1730- Close the DC and get ready for dinner.  Unless, of course, I’m doing the Glow worm walk, which starts at

1745- Glowies!  Until around

1915- Return to the Ghosthouse.  I mean the Guesthouse!!!

Check out the following article from theonion.com.  It changed my life.  Seriously…