Matt needs to go to work!

Magnetic Island Day Trip

It’s Sunday morning and we’re still laying bed. Since we last wrote we have moved from our beautiful apartment on Castle Hill overlooking Townsville to a single bedroom in our friend’s apartment. Oh, and Matt still hasn’t worked a single day. Next week, both these things should change. Matt’s scheduled to work Monday-Friday and we have a good feeling about the apartment we’re seeing on Monday evening.

We had a fun day yesterday. We took the ferry out to Magnetic Island, which is only 20 minutes off shore from Townsville. Magnetic Island, also known as Maggie, is 52 square kilometers and is about 90% national forest and 10% laid back beach towns. It has the largest population of wild koalas in all of Australia. It got its name back when Captain Cook sailed by and had difficulties with his compass.

We got a late start (again) so we didn’t get out there until 11:45. We first tried to rent electric bikes, but they were all out. So we decided we’d walk and take the bus around the island. Next time we’ll rent the small cars called Mokes. Our first stop was Arcadia and Alma beach. After a few VBs and XXXXs (two popular Australian beers), we got changed and headed down to Alma beach. The water was too cold for me, but Matt had a blast in the waves. The waves were actually big enough he could body surf. (There are no waves on the beaches of Townsville, so this was a nice surprise.)

Our next stop was Horseshoe Bay, the largest bay on the island. We sat around and played in the sand. It was a very tropical, almost Caribbean type of place. We took the bus back to the ferry terminal only to realize we had misread the ferry schedule and consequently had an hour and 40 minutes until the next ferry. But, we turned lemons into lemonade and decided to spend the time watching the sun set at a waterfront restaurant.

Today we are heading to the inaugural game of the North Queensland Fury soccer/football team.

***We finally have photos from our Great Barrier Reef trip online. Follow this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/matthew.berkman/GreatBarrierReef?feat=directlink

Wednesday July 22nd

Good news!  Matt's license/registration was approved by the Medical Board so he's technically fit to work now, although his work visa still has to be approved.  But they've said that should happen in the next 24-48 hours.  They're working on sticking him on the schedule, probably as early as Friday.  It also means we can open up a bank account here, which means we can pay rent if we ever find an apartment.

So...we still don't have a permanent place to live yet, and our tenancy at the Castle Hill apartment that the hospital put us in ends tomorrow morning.  On the upside, a friend of ours (whom we met through our friend Whit who worked in Oz a little while back) has been so incredibly generous to let us crash at her apartment while she's away in Brisbane for the next couple weeks.  It gives us a bit more time to find a place and of course saves us a ton (or heap as they would say here) of money. Matt's going to move our things over there this afternoon while I'm here working.  

Last night we went out to trivia night again at a bar on Flinder's Street called Maggie Malone's.  I had met a few girls last Tuesday night when I went to a book club meeting that our Australian friend invited me to.  Anyway, one of those girls goes every week to trivia night so we joined her and some of her other "mates."  This time there were a lot more questions tailored to the Australians, but there were also tons of American-centered questions.  Like "who sang the song Oops I did it again?" or "what language do they speak in Mexico?" (apparently some people said Mexican!).  Really easy for us!  And just so you know, the U.S. is the biggest produce of cheese.  

No other news.  We may try and see the Harry Potter movie tonight :)

Our weekend in Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

Well, Matt’s still not working. Tomorrow, however, we should hear about whether or not his medical license was approved by the government. Once that’s done he should be able to start work in a day or two. And since Matt has all this time off, we decided to take advantage of the situation and go on a little road trip.

We left Townsville Thursday morning and drove to Cairns. Along the way we stopped at a number of waterfalls and took our time admiring how the scenery changed from the dry outback to a tropical rainforest. That night we walked along the Esplanade in Cairns and had Mediterranean food for dinner. Matt and I were both surprised at how big Cairns is. It’s a very Vegas-like feel, a little too touristy for our tastes. But still fun.

The next morning we got up early and drove to the dive shop where we left our car. The boat left the dock around 10 and by 11 we were at the Great Barrier Reef. Here’s a link to our location on Google maps (and try satellite view): http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-16.4601,145.9854&ll=-16.4601,145.9854&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

Our first dive was spectacular. We saw a few sharks immediately and a huge wrasse, which is a grouper-like fish. This thing was seriously as big as we were. The guide was feeding it bread, which gave us a chance to pet it. (We didn’t get a photo at the time, but you can see one at this link: http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/848605.html). After one additional dive we transferred off the first boat onto the live-aboard boat, Ocean Quest, where we spent the night.

Over the following 24 hours we did 5 additional dives, including a night dive. By the time we were done, we were both completely exhausted. We've inserted one of the shark photos from the dives here, but we're also going to be uploading photos to an online album. We'll post the link to it in another blog entry.

Saturday evening when we got back to shore we cleaned up and went out for a very memorable dinner at a place called Ochre. After Matt had a couple of local brews (Fat Yak and Redback, which is named for Australia’s deadly spider), we had crocodile for our first course. We both thought it was excellent, and was only slightly better than our main course, which consisted of emu and kangaroo.

The next day we headed inland and upwards to the highlands of the Atherton Tablelands. The drive was beautiful and passed through both farmland and rainforest. We had our eyes open for cassowaries the whole time but to no avail. We stumbled upon a great little tea house in Millaa Millaa for lunch which overlooked the hills and forests. In the evening, we ended up camping in Mission Beach, a cute little beach town north of Townsville. In our attempt to pack lightly, we had left behind our sleeping pads. We painfully regretted that decision.

This morning we packed up, grabbed a coffee and a scone, and drove 2.5 hours south to our Townsville home. We still don’t have a permanent place to live, and Matt still doesn’t have a job. Life couldn’t be better.

Here are a few shots from

my day out at the Billabong

Sanctuary. It is a nice

zoo/wild animal park.

They have kangaroos hanging

out for the kids to feed. The

highlight was probably the

crock feeding. Quite amazing,

the way those things can jump

out of the water.

We have internet again, or at least something resembling internet. It's a little pre-paid wireless device you stick in the USB port. Sounds great, right? Well, the downside is that you pay per MB uploaded/downloaded instead of a flat rate for unlimited access. And this is apparently the standard practice for all internet service providers (including broadband, all that stuff we have in the US). Once we figured that out, we then realized why the internet we "borrowed" from our neighbors went away. Ultimately what happened was we stole all of their credits. Matt thinks I'm being silly, but I feel so bad about it that I want to go door to door and find out who the victim was so we can repay him/her. Wow, who would have thought internet operated that way? What a scam. So while we can now check our email and update the blog, we can't just leave our internet on all day.

Matt spent some time at the Billabong Sanctuary this afternoon and saw a crocodile feeding. He'll post photos tomorrow. I, once again, spent the day at home working. Fun fun. It's tough being the only breadwinner in this household right now :) But, Matt has made me dinner the last few nights which has been fabulous. And we're still planning our trip up to Cairns for the weekend. Friday and Saturday will be spent out on the reef on a live aboard diving boat. We've signed up for the "shark encounter" dives. We'll see how that goes. Cages are apparently not required, but only cost $30 extra per dive. It's under debate right now whether we'll splurge for them - I'm sure you can guess which one of us is the cheapskate.

All for now. We may be signing papers for an apartment tomorrow. Wish us luck. Can't wait for that to be done and out of the way.

Sorry we haven't posted in a few days.  Our luck ran out yesterday when we discovered that the internet connection we were "borrowing" from our neighbors suddenly disappeared.  We're hoping to have our own connection up and running shortly.  The internet cafe is a big pain.

Matt went over to the hospital yesterday to meet people in the ED.  Unfortunately, due to some delays in his medical licensing/registration here in Australia, he won't be able to work for awhile - at least for two more weeks.  On the bright side, he's decided to volunteer up at the Billabong Sanctuary as a crocodile handler until he starts work.  We may also take a road trip up the Great Green Way to Cairns (pronounced "can" apparently).  

We've gotten to experience a little bit of the nightlife here.  We played trivia on Tuesday night (and did really well b/c all the questions were related to American culture) and saw a funk band play on Thursday night.  We've also been doing some cooking (Pad Thai, cioppino).  Oh, and we also saw a wallaby in our backyard last night.  We posted a little photo of a wallaby just in case you don't know what they look like.  Super cute!

Wild World of Sports!

This last weekend we decided to sample the local sports scene by going to two events neither of us have ever gone to before: a cricket match and a rugby game. The home team "North Queensland Cowboys" was playing the Sharks from Cronulla. Saturday evening we got on a bus and out we went to Dairy Farmers Stadium. General admission tickets in hand, we grabbed a beer and a meat pie and headed for the grass. It was great! Everyone was really into the game and we understood at least 60% of what was going on.

The next day however that percentage dropped to approximately 3-4% at our second event, the test cricket match against Pakistan. We knew they had balls, we knew they had bats, and that was about it. We had a beer, fell asleep and went home. Cricket makes baseball look like hockey on steroids.

Here are a few pics from our outings.

I thought it would be worth mentioning that the house Matt posted on Friday is in fact not our new Casa de Berkman. No need for alarm, I would not set foot in a place that would require any form of snake extermination. For those of you who don't know, Queensland is home to a good portion of the most poisonous snakes in the world. Google these if you like: death adder (there are lots of other types of lethal adders here, too), taipan, eastern brown snake, tiger snake, the list goes on. I'm constantly on the lookout for these guys. It certainly makes me question my sanity when choosing Townsville over snake-free New Zealand. And it makes me actually appreciate rattlesnakes since they at least have the decency to rattle at us if we get too close.

So currently we are still searching for a more permanent apartment since the hospital only has this place on Victoria Street for us until the 23rd of July. And I have to say that despite the shower situation, I'm becoming rather attached to this place and it's going to be hard to move. What shower situation you ask? Well, check out the photo above. The pile of towels on the floor is our dam to hold back the water pouring out of the shower above. There is no barrier to keep the water from going absolutely everywhere, and the floor of the shower area isn't even curved downwardly to draw the water into the drain. Apparently this type of shower is all the rage here. Weird. Very weird. I can't possibly think of any reason why someone would choose this type of shower.

So we have quickly discovered that Australia is a pretty darn expensive place.  I just spent $19 on a tube of Maybelline mascara. Incredible.  Other shocking prices include $10 for a small bottle of shampoo for Matt and $15 for a small bottle of sunscreen.  

Where in the world are Matt and Lindsay?

Well it sure didn't take us long. After an extensive search, here is the new "Casa de Berkman". We are only 10 minutes from the beach and 15 minutes to some great restaurants. There is a very cute little wallaby that lives nearby. The guy who rented the house to us is de-snaking the property prior to our move in date. What a steal!

Friday was a great day.  In the morning we climbed Castle Hill, which is right in our backyard.I It's a pretty tough hike actually, but it has incredible views of the city, ocean, and Magnetic Island (as does our apartment porch).  After that we had lunch on Palmer Street and walked around the city a bit.  The city is absolutely beautiful and the weather is perfect.  But, it's still relatively warm (and it's currently mid-winter), which makes us a little concerned about what it's going to be like in the summer.

Later in the afternoon we bought tickets to Saturday's rugby game (Townsville Cowboys vs Sharks) and Sunday's cricket game vs Pakistan.  Time to learn the rules of cricket, which I currently know nothing about.  

We're here! After a rather uneventful 32 hours of travel via LA, Auckland, and Brisbane (New Zealand Air was great by the way), we arrived at the Townsville airport. We were picked up by a couple of very nice Aussies who drove us to our temporary housing located in between the Strand and Castle Hill. The view is incredible as is the apartment. We're planning to pick up a few things at the grocery store tonight and have dinner down by the ocean. Then it's time for some much needed sleep.