Hindsight and Hindrances

Looking back on my travels thus far, I have to admit I really was the most poorly packed traveler. Let me walk you through the stages of my luggage so you can truly see what I mean. I started with a 100lb. monstrosity of a suitcase, a laptop bag, and an outrageously heavy carry-on. At the airport I added a huge duffel bag when they wouldn't let me on the plane because I was over the weight limit (my bags not me personally). After discarding the duffel upon arrival in Auckland, I purchased a smallish roller duffel bag. Deciding I needed yet another thing to carry, I bought a full-size backpack in Queenstown. When I arrived in Christchurch, I subsequently sold both roller suitcases and sent home the carry-on bag along with 50lb. of luggage. Last week when I happened upon a suitcase store in Surfer's Paradise, I bought a small laptop-compatible backpack. With a new home for my computer, I no longer needed my insanely heavy laptop bag and sold that in Brisbane. I now am down to two backpacks, small and large. This entire luggage shuffle took me three months to complete. Just think if I had started with the two backpacks in the first place, how much money and energy I could have saved myself on the trip. Instead, I thought it'd be fun to continuously buy and sell various bags, the route I mistakenly took. For future travelers, I advise against it.

Today Rosemary, Chris, and I ventured out to Redcliffe, a cute little town right near the water. I packed my bathing suit and towel all ready for the beach after days cooped up in the house due to rain. We arrived in town after a few wrong turns (and finally a few right ones) and strolled for a bit. We realized that barely anyone was laying out on the sand and not a soul was in the water, and after looking over the pier, I could see why. Huge, blue jellyfish were swimming (or floating is more accurate) in abundance. I don't know if they were killer jellyfish, as Australia harbors a few types, but all jellyfish sting nevertheless, and we decided swimming wasn't such a swell idea. After observing multitudes of people wearing bathing suits and toting towels and coolers down a path, Rosemary and I decided to check it out seeing as they weren't headed for the beach. At the bottom was a huge park area and swimming lagoon, the place where the whole town had apparently decided to congregate for the day. Rather than take a dip with the hundreds of screaming children and parents, we all hopped in the car and headed back to Brisbane. I spent a good part of the rest of the day on a chair in the backyard reading in the sun. I'm determined to get some semblance of a tan. No one is going to even believe I was in Australia looking as milky as I do.

After being here for a few weeks, I've noticed that Australia has a few interesting quirks that I find a bit over the top. I can see the need for some. For instance, how they prohibit the use of hose water because there's a massive drought. It doesn't seem to matter that the entire country is surrounded by water. In fact, the drought is so bad that the Australian government is considering the use of recycled water. I don't know about you, but I'd love to drink what my neighbor flushed down the toilet that morning. Or I can see how many restaurants forbid the use of doggy bags due to the new standards of food handling. They are trying to avoid any risk of food contamination for which the restaurant may be liable. It doesn't matter that it's a risk most people are willing to take to squeeze every dollar out of their food purchase. "This will be my lunch for the next three days" is a common exclamation we've all heard from the lady at the table next to us. Those restrictions I can somewhat understand. But the other day I was watching a T.V. program that displayed a mature audience label for 1) some graphic language, 2) a (just one) sex scene, and 3) supernatural themes. Who warns against supernatural themes? I didn't know they had been deemed offensive. I also saw a commercial (a commercial!!) with a label that cautioned "Infrequent Moderate Coarse Language." Do they say the word "heck" once or something? Australia just takes PC to a whole new level.