Chapter 44 - Noosa Heads, Day 3

In which our hero meets some Londoners and learns to surf ... 

I know this is pushing it a bit, but I finally feel like I have time and head space, so I'm going to try to catch up on some of this stuff. I'm just finishing Week 3 of Semester 2. This weekend will mark six months that I've been here. I've had some good times, and some bad times, and made some friends. It's been good.

Anyway. So our third day in Noosa Heads. If you'll recall, when we left off I'd just had a fun night out with my team mates and some others that joined in. Most likely it was 1:00 a.m. by the time I got to bed, but I deliberately didn't check so as to not worry about getting enough sleep. I planned to wake up at 7:00 a.m., but Wen Ying got up at 6:30 or something to have a shower, and then her normal daily alarm went off, (the one she uses for work), so I just got up at 6:45. We had to eat, strip down our beds and take the sheets to the front desk, pack up all our stuff, and check out before our surf lesson. The first thing I did was get dressed in my swim suit, then load on the sunscreen. Then I packed all my stuff and stripped the sheets off my bed, so that after brekkie I'd be totally ready to go. I packed a bag to take to the beach, and my backpack with all my other stuff which would go in the car while we were out.

We then went to breakfast. I was a little unsure what to eat, as I didn't want to lose energy before the end of the lesson, but I didn't want to be so full that I got cramps or felt ill or something. I went with the standard peanut butter and banana sandwich, apple, and cup a' tea. As I was sitting there, two women who I'd seen around the kitchen came in and sat down. By their accents I made them to be North Americans of some sort. I couldn't help overhearing their conversation, and one said to the other "Did you go visit so-and-so for me?" To which the other replied something like, "Where does he live again?" At which point the first said, "Something something Wharncliffe and Southdale something."

WHAM! What? Can't be! What are the chances there's a Wharncliffe and Southdale in any other city? "Are you guys from London?" I asked, "Ontario?" the one said, "why yes, we are." "This is freakishly crazy!" Says I, "So am I!" So then we talked a bit about things, and tried to figure out if we knew any of the same people, but we weren't entirely sure how to go about it. Neither of them had grown up there, so things like high schools and long term connections couldn't be used. It didn't really matter though. It was awesome. Like seriously, what are the chances? It turns out one of them was studying in Sydney, and the other was her friend who was visiting. They were on a road trip up to Cairns. The one who was visiting owns a massage therapy place on Richmond near Oxford.

That was a crazily fun encounter, but alas we had to part ways because I had people to be and places to see. I headed back to our room, and encountered ...

Bush Turkey!

This reminded me of the random wildlife that would be just outside our door in St. Lucia. Cats and lizards and whatnot. I also ran into the two Londoners again, and it turned out they were staying in the room next to ours. And, funnily enough, the guy one or two rooms over in the other direction was from Windsor, which I discovered the night before. He kept saying he was from "near Toronto", but some of us pestered him enough, and told where we were from, that he realised he could be more specific. Like there was myself from London, a girl from Sarnia, a guy who'd done uni in Toronto, and a girl from Toronto. So that was cool.

Anyway. Back to the day. We put all our stuff in the car, then collected our bedsheets and room keys and headed down to reception to check out. They were very good about it, and even offered to keep our bags safe while we were out. We were also allowed to leave our food in the kitchen, and come back for showers and lunch after the surfing lesson.

So we headed down to the bottom of the driveway, where we were to meet the van to take us to the lesson. There were two other girls already waiting there. They were English. We were all a bit nervous about the surfing thing, but I was more excited than nervous. While we were waiting, guess who showed up?

BUSH TURKEY! Tee hee hee .. . (those guys are everywhere ... )

So off to the surf lesson. It turned out I didn't need most of the sunscreen, because we were given wetsuits that went down to our knees and elbows. I thought I'd be lying on a surfboard for three hours in the Australian sun, which caused me concern for my back, shoulders, and the backs of my legs. The wetsuit protected my back, upper arms, and upper legs, but my legs spent most of their time well under water anyway.

We first had a quick lesson about currents, waves, and rips, and how the best thing is not to panic but just ride it out if you get caught in a rip, because it will take you back to shore eventually. We then, on dry land, learned the correct position of lying on the board, and how to push our upper bodies up so we could essentially surf lying down. Then it was into the water to test our new skills. It went quite well, and the maybe once or twice that I caught the wave just right, it was a great feeling just going with it. I tried to do this with my prescription goggles, but they got all foggy and splattery, so I gave up on them. I couldn't have worn my glasses because they'd have been washed away. So I was doing all this slightly blurrily.

Now when you're walking your board out to the waves, the trick is to have both hands on it, with your right at the back, if you're right handed. Well, it's not the handed that matters so much as the footed. If you go 'natural footed', that means your left is in front, and your right is in back, from whence you steer. I think the other option is 'goofy footed', I seem to remember hearing once, which means right in front, left steering in back. So, if you go natural footed then that's also how your hands go with walking the board in the water. The other thing about having one hand on the back, besides your steering ability, is you can push down when the waves are coming, which causes the nose to go up, and the board to sort of ride over the wave, rather than diving through it. It's also incredibly important to keep your board perpendicular to the waves so as to create a smaller surface area. You should also turn your body sideways for the same reason. Now for whatever reason, Wen Ying, who was just ahead of me the first time we went out, had her board parallel to the waves. I saw one coming. I saw it hit her. I saw it knock her backward. I then saw the whole mess coming toward me, so I decided to let my board go, and sort of dive under so as to not be smacked in the face. We were a bit of a discombobulated mess afterward, but mostly unscathed. Well, Wen Ying cut the inside of her lip. Other than that, totally OK. That was the point at which my goggles sort of filled with water, and I just pulled them down around my neck and carried on. I should mention, too, that we were attached to our boards by ankle tethers, which are only to be worn in the water, or else you get all tangled up if you try to wear it on dry land. So when I let my board go, it couldn't really go too far, and I could just pull it back to me with the tether rope. It was like a 6' or 10' rope.

Anyway, after having a few gos at the lying down surfing, we went back onto the beach and learned how to stand up. Then we went back into the water and tried it. I think I stood up completely once, for maybe half a second, then I fell in. The best time was when I got half way up, on my knees, but I'd managed to catch a wave perfectly and I just kept riding it practically right up onto the beach. The whole time I was thinking 'OK, I'm going to fall over now,' but I didn't. It just kept going. It was great. I'd definitely do it again. I've been practicing my standing up technique, so next time it's not such a panic to coordinate paddling and watching the waves and standing up and everything. I don't even know if there will be a next time. But if there is, I'll be prepared.

Oh, also, these are other things I learned. The front of the board is called the nose, the back is the tail, the top (that you stand on) is the deck, and the edges are the rails. You need to know these things when you're a surfer, you know.

After our lesson (three hours of fighting waves is just as much tiring as it sounds) we decided to walk back to the hostel so we could dry off a bit. We then washed the sand off ourselves and changed into dry clothes, then set about making and eating lunch. We were basically using up the rest of our food, if we could. I think there were scrambled egg and cheese sandwiches, and something else probably. Here's a couple pics I took of the kitchen, just to show you folks at home.

It was nearly 1:00 p.m. by this point, so we hit the road. We drove back along David Low Way, rather than the highway we'd come in on, just because it went down through the Sunshine Coast and we could see the ocean for a lot of it. I tried to take a picture of the view through the windshield, as we came up over a hill and could see the ocean ahead/to the side. This is the best one I got.

I guess it's really not very oceany at all. Oh well. It's interesting to see foreign streets.

Just near the Sunshine Coast airport we stopped for a bathroom break, and I felt like ice cream, so I went in search of some. We'd stopped in a little shopping centre, where there was a grocery store, and some other stores. I found my ice cream at a video store. This is what I got:

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??? They come in mint choc? AWESOME! (Also delicious)

 The night before we'd left I went out for dinner with my friend Rachel, and she mentioned these ice cream thingies that she said were a staple of childhood road trips. They were called Bubble O Bill, and they had gumballs as the eyes, and chocolate on the back. That reminded me of the baseball glove ones we used to have, with the baseball gumball. I think we'd been talking about TV shows, and I'd mentioned Deadwood, and then Wild Bill vs. Buffalo Bill came up, and then Bubble O Bill. Anyway, when I was on my ice cream finding mission I spotted one, so I took a picture of it.

The biggest bubblegum nose in the west. (I guess Rachel had it slightly wrong, or they've changed it a bit.)

So on we carried. Me with my ice cream. Wen Ying with her driving. Before we left, Wen Ying had told me that I wasn't allowed to fall asleep, because then she'd want to sleep. I didn't think that would be a problem. When my ice cream was finished, and we were closer to Brisbane, I said something like "I totally thought that surfing would tire me out, and I'd be struggling to stay awake, but I'm fine." Not five minutes later I noticed myself dozing off. Then Wen Ying said she needed to take a break, so we did. We found ourselves near another grocery store, and she parked in the parking lot and we both dozed off for about 15 minutes. Then we went inside in search of an energy drink or iced coffee or some such, and we went to the toilets in the library across the street so Wen Ying could wash her face. It was probably 3:30 or 4:00 by this point. When we got back on the road we were starting to be concerned that we wouldn't get home by dark, and Wen Ying doesn't feel very safe driving in the dark. It turns out we didn't quite make it. I think it was 6:00 when we pulled up at my door, and the sun set around 5:00-ish. So that was it. Adventure over. Super tired. The next few days I was quite sore all over. And quite tired. But I felt much better about things in general, and my family related stresses had gone down significantly, as had my homesickness.

Chapter 43 - " ... and there'll be dragons, I shouldn't wonder ... "

In which our hero encounters the biggest lizard she's ever seen ...

Good evening, and welcome to another edition of Christine's Australian Wildlife Adventures. In tonight's program our hero decides to get off the bus a block early, and happens across a really very quite large lizard lurking at the side of the bush. Taking her life into her hands, and with all the care free nonchalance of a foreigner ignorant of such a creature's potential poisonousness, she closes the gap between them by about a meter, and really quite daringly takes it's picture.

OK. So I was still like 3 or 4 meters away. That's not the point. The point is there was a really very quite large lizard just hanging out by the edge of the bush beside the sidewalk on which I was walking.

I circled it, because it's really quite well camouflaged. I only noticed it because it moved a bit just as I walked by.