Partying like it's 2008

The final days of 2008 were amazing. Those final days were so amazing, in fact, that I essentially did them all over again this year, in the final days of 2009.

Some may view such repetition as a bad thing. I do not. Not when you've identified a surefire recipe for success.

Last year's Christmas was spent with a friend's family – Yogi and the Davis family – overlooking the ocean at Macmasters Beach. This year's Christmas was spent with another friend's family – Shorty and the, uhhhh, Short family – in the slightly less exotic Wagga Wagga.

After driving from Sydney to Wagga on Christmas Eve, I was awoken early the next morning by Shorty's sisters,* both of whom were eager to rip open some gifts before Christmas services.** After a brief, one-hour service – actually pretty painless, especially if you want to put it up against High Holiday services – we were back to the house for a day-long feast.

*Shorty's sisters are in their 20s. Yet to this day they still force the family up at 7 on Christmas morning to open gifts.

**Shorty's birthday quite unfortunately falls on Christmas. So not only did he grow up with the dreaded Christmas/birthday combo gifts, but he's been to Church on his birthday every single year of his life. Even the "but Andy's Jewish!" excuse this year wouldn't fly.

It's absolutely no secret that the Short family can eat. Big time. And we did so on Christmas day, by stuffing ourselves on four varieties of meat – turkey, ham, chicken, pork – and a few of your staple veggies, like potatoes and sweet potatoes and pumpkin. My. Lord.

This was of course topped off by desert, which included fruit salad, ice cream, pavlova, trifle, and the pièce de résistance (well, for me at least), plum pudding with brandy sauce. Oh. My God.

That was lunch. We did it all again for dinner. And then again for breakfast the next day.

We could have kept on feasting on the leftovers all throughout Boxing Day, but instead, it was time to cook up a whole new feast! This time it was to the barbecue, as the Shorts ticked off more types of meat that hadn't been consumed yesterday: rissoles,* sausages and steak. And what Short family barbecue could be complete without a potato bake? Oh, I think there was some salad, too. And most importantly, the plum pudding made another appearance.**

*Basically a hamburger patty, although a little thicker than what you see in the US and usually prepared with herbs and other seasoning mixed in.

**My current list of favorite Australian food that's not commonly available in the US: meat pies, sweet chili sauce, plum pudding with brandy sauce. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few more.

Throughout the day, the rest of our caravan for the trip to Melbourne and Falls converged on Wagga. And so continued the near-identical trip from last year. Again, this isn't a bad thing.

The 27th was a day of transit, from Wagga to Melbourne. We made our way down there by early evening, set up camp at Shorty's brother's apartment, and headed out for a barbecue at a friend's place and drinks. We had a big day ahead of us, so we kind of took it easy. Kind of.

The 28th was Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test match between Australia and Pakistan. First ball at 10:30. Stumps at 6. Seven and a half hours of cricket and no result (not that one was to be expected). I loved it.*

*And bucking the trend that I cited in my post from before this trip, in which I said that I was sports kryptonite for successful home teams, Australia ended up winning this Test match!

And then, it was on to Falls! Up quite early on the 29th, we caravanned it down to Lorne, got to the festival area, slowly made our way to the campsite, set up camp, and got to it.

One massively key point of difference between Falls this year and last year: the weather. Last year, it was freezing at Falls. FREEZING. And rainy. This didn't stop me from having a great time, but it really didn't help. This year? Hot and sunny! And I loved every minute of it.

I'm not sure if the music lived up to last year's, but it was still fantastic, with The Temper Trap, Art Vs Science and Major Lazer being highlights.

And on New Year's Eve, with the Hilltop Hoods on the stage at midnight – a somewhat dubious choice to bring in the New Year, in my opinion – we said goodbye to the Naughts or Naughties or Oughts or whatever the hell we're calling the decade... and then kept on going for several more hours. It was fantastic.

What wasn't fantastic, however, was New Year's Day. First, it had rained that night, and we woke up to a wet and gray morning. Everything was damp. Second, after packing up, it took us all of three and a half hours to drive out of the site. And third, later that night (and perhaps due to an ill-informed lunch of KFC; ironically, my first KFC in exactly a year), my stomach revolted.

Not a great way to start a new year, by any stretch, but the days prior were a great way to close out the preceding one. Just as they were last year.

Farewell, 2009. Helllloooooooooo 2010!

There are cane toads, there are kangaroos... and then there are cassowaries

This is Part Four of my thematic recap of my trip to Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef.



It's been one month since I finished my trip to Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef with John, and this is my fourth of what I was hoping would be many more entries on the trip. So it's time to get on it and combine a few entries, because, well, the details are fading. Fortunately, the one set of memories that will be engrained into my memory for perhaps the rest of my life is night driving on this trip.

We've all driven at night. We've all probably had close calls with animals while driving. We've all driven during rainstorms. And I'm sure we've all done looooong night drives, all the while fighting fatigue.

Combine all of those and you get the drive that John and I did on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day.

You see, we had taken our time driving north our first few days. Noosa was fantastic (and mostly rain-free!) and Rainbow Beach was a compulsory stop because beyond being our gateway to Fraser Island , we found a great campsite right on the water. But after taking our time, we realized we had to get on it. So after spending Christmas Eve Day on Fraser Island , we hit the road at 8, hoping to make it to Airlie Beach (959 kilometers north) by the next morning. After a brief detour through Tin Can Bay (read: we got lost... again), we were back on the main highway and heading north. And pretty quickly, as it became dark, we were blindsided by a cacophony of dangers:

• It began to pour. Not a drizzle, not a steady rain, not heavy rain. No. It was pouring.
• Driving down the road, it quickly became apparent that we weren't alone. Nope, standing on the side of the road every few kilometers was a kangaroo, just waiting to hop on out in front of us.
• And what beings were on the road with us? Hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of cane toads.
• Finally, heading down this two-lane "highway" at 100 kilometers per hour, we had 18-wheelers flying by us in the opposite direction, kicking up water and wind as they flew by.

So there we were, crouched over the wheel, as dusk turned to the pitch black of night, trying to look past the rain-soaked windshield to (a) stay in the left lane (a challenge that was difficult enough in its own right), (b) keep an eye out for kangaroos ready to hop in front of us and (c) trying to keep control of the van as big rigs flew by us.

Fortunately, the one thing we didn't have to worry about were the cane toads, for they absolutely riddle the road (they've completely overrun Queensland and the Northern Territory -- think The Simpsons episode where Bart unleashes them in the country), so there's really no sense in trying to avoid them anyway. Instead, every minute or so, we'd simply make some cane toad pancakes.

Anyway, as the night wore on, the weather calmed down. The roos and cane toads were still out, yes, but at least the visibility was much better. And it being Christmas Eve/Christmas, the roads were pretty much empty. So, in between the many stops for coffee and other artificial products to keep us up and listening to some ungodly talk radio, we started making good time. That is, until about 5am, when the sky opened up and unleashed a torrential downpour the likes of which I've never seen. I thought earlier in the night was bad? Nope, this was bad. And so there I was, on a highway with a speed limit of 110 kph, going maybe 30.

Now, I'm rereading my post up to this point, and it really doesn't do that night justice. So I'll pass on Exhibit B, with photographic evidence. For a few nights later, John and I headed into Mission Beach. And what do you know, but we were facing pretty much the same exact conditions: rain, roos, cane toads and big rigs. But this time, there was a twist. For we were driving through one of the only places in the world where cassowaries are still native. What's a cassowary, you ask? The photo to the left... that's a cassowary. And it is the ugliest thing you have ever seen. Honestly, John and I had seen one face to face in a wildlife park only a few weeks before this trip and I had to divert my eyes. It's absolutely huge (some grow to be over six feet!) and has a gigantic bone protruding from its head, a nasty turkey-like wattle and a piercing, intimidating stare.

Oh yeah, and then there's this video and this lovely quote from the Wikipedia entry on cassowaries: A cassowary's three-toed feet have sharp claws; the dagger-like middle claw is 120 mm (5 inches) long. This claw is particularly dangerous since the cassowary can use it to kill an enemy, disembowelling it with a single kick. They can run up to 50 km/h (32 mph) through the dense forest. They can jump up to 1.5 m (5 feet) and they are good swimmers." What the hell is this beast??!? Some sort of a freakish cross between the T-1000 and a velociraptor??!?

So driving down the winding road to Mission Beach, imagine the same scenario again: rain, roos, cane toads and big rigs. But now, thanks to signs like in the picture on the left (!!!), we were all too aware that there was some sort of beast looming in the forest besides us, just waiting to step out onto the road, demolish our van and then disembowel us with a single kick! So there we sat, bracing for what I quickly talked myself into believing was an inevitability.

(Quick sidenote on this last picture. Really? Really??!? You're worried about the cassowaries? I mean, I know they're a protected species, but let's reread this passage from Wikipedia again before we jump to conclusions on who exactly we're protecting.)

Of course, the inevitable did not come to fruition. And after driving probably 20 kph to get into Mission Beach, praise be to whoever the praise is due, we survived without any encounters with (let alone seeing) any cassowaries. For which I am -- and always will be -- supremely thankful.

We ended up staying in Mission Beach for two nights because, during the day, it was frickin' gorgeous. However, come the day we left, we hightailed it out of there in the very light of day. And for the rest of the trip, we never drove at night again.