Fair Dinkum

Two of my friends from the states flew in Friday night, and what a weekend we had. They were scared/highly impressed by my driving-on-the-left-side-of-the-road skills, and having a car enabled us to do things such as ZORB (more on the Zorbing to come – I must add photos for the full effect).

Saturday night we went up to Brisbane to attend an Australian Rules Football game: Brisbane v. Melbourne. Again, Australian sports rule. I felt like I was at a Guidditch match: so much flying on broomsticks. No, obviously not – but the fans were so enthusiastic, everyone had scarves and flags in their teams colors and it was exciting. And the players just start hitting each other and no one cares. And they’re not wearing any sort of padding/helmets, and they can kick the ball, hit the ball, throw the ball, anything. The scoring was confusing, too. We never quite figured it out.

But the best part was that when the Melbourne Demons won they played their fight song and it was the song “It’s a Grand Ol’ Flag”, and they just changed some of the words. Hysterical. I was finally able to celebrate the 4th of July in Australia!

Sunday after church we went to the national park in the Gold Coast Hinterland with the intention of walking to see the famous waterfall there. We arrived at 2:30 p.m., went and asked how we get to the waterfall, and they wouldn’t tell us! They said it was too late and if we tried we’d get stuck in the dark (it gets dark around 5) and then we couldn’t get out and it was 12 km there and back (they said it would take 4 hours total) so we just couldn’t go.

Of course, we are proud Americans and decided we knew better than the forest ranger. So, we found a map and figured out how to get there ourselves – now with 2 hours, 15 minutes to make it there and back before it gets dark. Sometimes I am a real idiot. Especially living here – no one would know where I was! No one would miss me! I don’t have a cell phone! We would have had to sleep in the forest and be eaten alive by wild killer kangaroos.

Luckily, we walked quickly and made it back just in time. The waterfall was cool and the walk there and back was through a rainforest. Beautiful – though we didn’t really get to enjoy it as we were racing through the forest to make it back before dark.

Stay tuned for more on the ZORB. I have wanted to go Zorbing since I saw it on The Amazing Race in 2004. Who wouldn’t want to get inside a 3.5 meter PVC ball?