I finally saw kangaroos!! =D

Yesterday I went to the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary with my friends Soo Se and Laura and we saw kangaroos, koalas, dingoes, wallabies, snakes, birds, platypuses (platypi?), giant lizards and lots of other animals. It was so much fun!! We woke up super early and caught the tram downtown, then took a train one hour outside of the city to Healesville, which is in the Yarra Valley wine region. :) We thought since it was so far that it was going to cost a lot to get out there so we planned to go to the animal sanctuary in the morning and then go wine-tasting afterwards. As it turned out, the end of the train line (Lilydale) is still in Zone 2, and so is the bus route that took us from the Lilydale train station, past several wineries, to the animal sanctuary; that means we each only had to pay $4.80 to get all the way out there! We decided we're going to go back to Healesville sometime this weekend for a day devoted to wine-tasting, which allowed us to stay at the animal sanctuary longer than we had planned. The Healesville Sanctuary seems to be a very nice place for the animals who live there. The property is huge so all the animals have lots of space to roam and everyone who works there clearly loves animals and knows a lot about them. Next to the dingo habitat, they had pictures of each of their dingoes (including one who recently passed away) and little bios about each one, describing their personality and listing their best friend in the den ("den friend"), the way their howl sounds, etc. I almost cried when I read that one dingo named Opal "is coping well since the recent loss of her life-long den friend Harry." :( The staff at Healesville encourages visitors to make simple changes such as switching to toilet paper made from recycled paper to reduce the amount of trees that are cut down since those are homes to birds and other animals. We watched a bird show that featured lots of cool birds of prey and colorful parrots. The birds flew over the crowd and did tricks. Rachel, I could totally see you working there someday. :) We got to get pretty close to all the animals, especially the kangaroos and koalas, and they were adorable!! I decided not to pay the extra $10 for a "Magic Moments" close encounter with the dingoes, even though the girl at the ticket booth told me when she went into the dingo enclosure, a dingo licked her arm. It was a difficult decision but ultimately my need to save money won out over my desire to be licked by a dingo. I am regretting it already. After about four hours at the sanctuary, we started to head back into the town of Healesville for lunch and then a little wine-tasting. We had just missed the bus and the next one wasn't coming for almost an hour so we decided to hitchhike into town. I asked one girl who was just leaving the sanctuary if she could give us a lift but she was following someone else and didn't know the area well enough so she couldn't take us (but she was very nice) so we went out to the road and I stuck my thumb out. About ten cars passed and gave us a thumbs-up but no one stopped. Finally a man pulled over ... he was one of the tour guides at the sanctuary! What a score! He drove us into town and dropped us off at the Cole's grocery store, which was only about a 5-minute walk from the Giant Steps Winery. :D We got some food and then spent about an hour tasting wine (for free!!) at Giant Steps. They had really good wine under three labels: Giant Steps, Innocent Bystander, and Mule. We left at around 4:15 to try to catch a bus to another winery before they closed but it was going to be a while so we tried to hitchhike again. Only a few cars passed us (lots of thumbs up and one middle finger up haha) before a lovely hippie woman picked us up and asked where we were going. We said we wanted to go to Boat O' Craigo Winery (we had passed it on the way in and were intrigued by the name) and she said, "I would take you there but they're not open on Thursdays!" haha whoops :/ We had a winery map with business hours on it but apparently we hadn't read it very carefully. It was already close to 4:30 and we didn't have a backup plan so we just let her drop us off about 20 yards past where she had picked us up and we went back into Giant Steps and tasted (and re-tasted) the rest of their list. It was pretty funny. :D We're going to do an all-day wine-tasting trip either tomorrow or Sunday, so hopefully we can check out Boat O' Craigo the second time around. By the way, Soo Se is an old friend from SLO and Laura is a new friend, also from SLO! She's here visiting Soo Se, who just moved to Melbourne and will be working and traveling in Australia for the next year! We met up at the Verdasco/Berdych match together last week and have watched lots of tennis on TV since then. This morning we went to a (free) circuit training class at a gym downtown. Right now I'm staying with them at an apartment they're renting in a part of the city called Brunswick East. It's only about a 15-20 minute tram ride from the center of town. Last week I was staying with my cousin RIchard's friend in Clifton Hill but on Tuesday he had friends coming to stay from out of town so I got the boot. I sent couch requests to several couchsurfers but no one could host me. Fortunately Soo Se and Laura offered to let me stay that night ... and then the next night ... and the next night. They said I can stay until I find another place, and if I don't find another place I can stay until I leave for Sydney next week. :) Okay here are the animal pics you've all been waiting for, plus a few others from the past week:

I love this dingo!

black-breasted buzzard (they use rocks to crack open emu eggs ~ this guy was about to demonstrate on a stunt egg as part of the bird show)

flying fox

wallaby

giant monitors

kissing kangaroos :)

kangaroo scratching his arm

I love this cool guy!!

koala

koala scratching his bum

koala sleeping

koala on my head :)

CRAPMAN! ~ Healesville Sanctuary's superhero

sometimes I have to take all my bags on the tram; 

when this happens, I'm a nuisance :/

me, Soo Se and Laura at the tennis, 

watching some awesome matches in Garden Square

beautiful Verdasco :)

tennistennistennistennistennis :)

Hello! I don't have a lot of time to post a full blog but I feel like I owe you all at least a mini-blog to let you know that I'm alive and explain what I've been doing over the past two weeks or so. As you probably know, the past week has been devoted to Australian Open TENNIS!! :) :) :) 

It's been my dream for a long time to come to this tournament and it's even better than I imagined. I'm having SO much fun!! Before I left California, I bought a 5-day grounds pass (which was really unnecessary because I don't think they ever sell out of grounds passes, but it made me happy knowing I had a ticket to the Aussie Open in my possession). The grounds pass gets me into the tennis center all day (from 10 am to whenever the tennis is over) and I can watch any match on any of the 21 outdoor courts. The only courts I can't get into are Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena. Sadly, Rafa only plays at Rod Laver, so I won't get to see him unless I want to pay $75 for a day pass to Rod Laver, which wouldn't be very smart because that now equals five days worth of money ... yep, feel free to do the math and you'll know what I'm workin' with for the rest of my trip. :) So no Rafa but of course I can still watch him on TV, and in addition to the outdoor big screens at the tennis center, there's a huge screen in Federation Square, downtown Melbourne. I watched the first set of Rafa vs. Bernard Tomic (18 y/o Aussie kid) there tonight and then went home to watch the rest. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched yet but it was a very good match. 

An even more exciting match was John Isner vs. Marin Cilic, which I watched today in Margaret Court Arena. Other than Rafa, Isner and Cilic are my favorite boys to watch. I went to each of their first and second round matches, and I was so excited when I found out they were playing each other today. I camped out at Margaret Court Arena as soon as I got to the tennis center this morning and watched the first two matches being played there so I'd be sure to have a good seat for Isner vs. Cilic. Again, I won't tell you what happened in case you tivo'd it to watch later, but it was an awesome, awesome match. :) Today was one of the best days of my entire trip. Tomorrow should be pretty good too. Beautiful Fernando Verdasco has been playing all his matches at Hisense (one of the ones I can't get into) but for some reason they have him playing at Margaret Court tomorrow, so I get to see him, as long as I get there in time to get a seat. He plays third, same as Isner and Cilic did today, so I'm going to spend the whole day there again and it should be no problem. Don't worry -- I'm putting on heaps of sunblock every hour or so. :) 

In addition to the beautiful tall boys, Isner and Cilic, I've also seen the following players: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Mardy Fish, Andy Murray, Tommy Robredo, Maria Kirilenko, Gisela Dulko, Philipp Petzschner, Santiago Giraldo, Ayumi Morita, Monica Niculescu, Jurgen Melzer, Tsvetana Pironkova, Iveta Benesova, Sally Peers, Robin Soderling, Illya Marchenko, Flavia Pennetta, Agnieszka Radwanska, Radek Stepanek ... and I'm sure I'm forgetting some but that's most of them. And today I saw Fernando Verdasco from only about 30 feet away and was able to get some decent pics. Here are those plus some others from the tennis.

or to view the entire album, go to the link at the bottom of this blog. :)


p.s. I know I completely skipped over the reef trip and I promise I'll come back to it when I have more time and a better computer to write from. For now I'll just say that the trip to the Great Barrier Reef was one of the best days of my trip, and possibly one of the best days of my life. It was amazing. My pictures turned out super lame so I won't even bother getting them online at this point, but there are plenty of pics of the reef online so you know what it looks like. It was fantastic. The trip to Cape Tribulation was wonderful too. Oh and some of you already know this but I would feel like I was cheating my blog readers out of a great and stupid story if I didn't report to everyone that I checked out of my hostel in Cairns and caught a shuttle to the airport and showed up A DAY EARLY. Yes, I booked my flight to Melbourne for Sunday but I thought I had booked it for Saturday so after arriving at the airport, I had to catch a shuttle back to town (thankfully the driver took pity on me and drove me back for free), get another night in the hostel (I couldn't find couchsurfing accommodations unfortunately, but the girl at the hostel did give me my own room. yay!) and basically do Saturday over again the following day: check out of hostel at 10 am, put bags in storage, spend 6 hours reading in and around the lagoon pool, go to airport. Good times :) Then I flew here and began my week of tennis bliss. :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=87920&id=1622315286&l=7fd6f1099b

<3

Cairns

I got into Cairns last night after enduring a 7-hour train ride (from Townsville) in the most foul smelling train car I have ever encountered. Seriously. At first I thought it was the car itself, then I considered the possibility that it might be ME (it wasn't; I smelled great, and still do), and after realizing that the smell got much worse every time someone walked past my seat, I realized that most of the people in my train car had some serious B.O. There were also three 2-year-olds running up and down the aisle, and occasionally screaming their heads off. It was a terrible train ride, but it could have been even worse -- I was blessed with another solo seat, so at least I didn't have any of those stinkers sitting right next to me. Also, when I originally booked my trip to Cairns, the train wasn't running so I was supposed to be on a bus. When I got to the train station, I was happy to hear that the bus had been replaced by a train. =) We left half an hour late, and after going about 100 yards, the train stopped in the middle of a busy intersection and sat there for at least ten minutes. Here are a couple pics of the cars backed up at the intersection (and people finally deciding to drive over the center island and go back the way they came):

My week in Townsville was fun and pretty uneventful. I went to the beach a lot, hung out with friends, took some nice long walks, hiked Castle Hill, and went to the gym one day. On Saturday I took the ferry to Magnetic Island and stayed in the hostel there for two nights. The hostel was right on the beach in Nelly Bay, a short hike to Picnic Bay, which had a stinger net to swim in, and a long hike or a bus ride to the other bays on the island. My room at the hostel was the worst I've been in so far. I shared a room the size of my Avila apartment (actually, I think it was smaller) with 7 other people. I was the last one in the room so I got stuck in the top bunk, right by the door, so when I had my locker open it completely blocked the door. Oh well. I was hardly in the room. There was a pool at the hostel and I swam in that a little but I spent most of my time at the beach. I found a cute little mexican restaurant that had a book exchange out front:

so I was able to trade in the two books for two new ones. I got a great book of short stories by Jeffery Deaver (Twisted) and a 700-page Stephen King book that I'm halfway through right now (Insomnia). Here are some pics from Maggie Island:

After I came back from Maggie, I stayed with my friend Celine, a couchsurfer that I stayed with in November. I had planned to stay with her for two nights, but unfortunately I lost track of the days and when I asked her if I could stay Sunday and Monday nights, I didn't realize that I was due to come back from Maggie on Monday (I thought my third day there would be Sunday). I had already booked my Tuesday afternoon trip up to Cairns so my time with Celine (and my time in Townsville) got cut short unfortunately. But we had a really nice time taking her dogs to the dog beach:

and that night we went swimming in the rockpool at The Strand with some of Celine's friends. On Tuesday I left Celine's and had lunch with my friend Matt. We also took his dogs for a walk and then he dropped me off at the train station. I should have gotten cash when I was in town but I didn't so I boarded the (stinky) train with only $3 cash. That was stupid. I spent the rest of my money on cheese & crackers and a cup of tea. When I got into Cairns last night I had NO money so I couldn't take a bus to the hostel. It was 8:45 at night (somehow we made it to Cairns on time despite the 45 minute delay at the beginning of the trip) and I had to walk about 7 blocks with all my bags. It wasn't very far, but Cairns isn't a super safe city to be walking around at night, so I just walked fast and called the hostel on the way to make sure I knew exactly where to go. I made it to the hostel, checked in, and was given the key to a room on the 4th floor (they call it the 3rd floor but to them, the ground floor is 0). There's no elevator so I got to take the stairs (my fave! but not carrying 20kg of stuff after speed-walking several blocks). Ugh. I went up to Room 301 and it was a 10-person dorm that was nearly full. There was stuff everywhere! No lockers in this hostel. =/ And the only two empty beds were both top bunks so there was nowhere to put my stuff, unless I wanted to put it all on my tiny bed with me, or just leave it in the middle of the room. I dropped my stuff and went back downstairs to see if I could get a different room. Thankfully the girl was really nice, even though I'm sure she was annoyed that I was requesting a room change already. Oh well. She gave me a key to a new room down the hall from the first room and I went back upstaits to check it out. I was sooooo happy! The new room was an 8-bed dorm with only three people in it so far. I finally got a bottom bunk, and the one in the far back corner of the room which gives me all the counter space in the back corner as well as the space under my bed. Woo hooo! And no one needs to walk past my bed for any reason so I feel safer with all my stuff sitting there not locked up. The bathrooms in this hostel are terrible but oh well, at least my room is good. And the price is amazingly cheap. I'm only paying $45 for 4 nights, and that includes a $5 meal voucher every day!! This morning I went downstairs to find a breakfast spot and I also asked the guy at the front desk (an Irish guy who goes by "Irish" haha) about the wildlife park and Kuranda, a cool little rainforest town I heard about that's only about 30 km from here. He told me about a tour that goes to Kuranda but he said he would advise me to skip Kuranda and go to the Daintree Rainforest instead. The Daintree is one of the oldest rainforests on the planet; some of the trees are over 110 million years old!! Irish set me up with a trip on Friday for $105. The bus picks me up at the hostel at 7:30 am (eek!) and drops me back off at 6:30 pm. We go on a scenic coastal drive up to Cape Tribulation, take a wildlife cruise on the Daintree River (wildlife = crocodiles!!), take a guided tour through the rainforest, walk on the boardwalk in Cape Trib, swim at Mossman Gorge, check out Port Douglas, and I'm not sure what else. It sounds awesome!! The tour includes "morning tea" (breakfast) and lunch. I'll be sure to post pics asap. By the way, tomorrow's trip is pretty exciting too. Tomorrow I'm going to the GREAT BARRIER REEF!! I found the tour company online through a random search and booked it while I was at Maggie, and Irish told me I booked with a really great company -- the glass bottom boat that will take us out to the reef is one of the newest boats in town, and he's gone on the tour with them several times and says it's fantastic. They also offer free pick-up/drop off at the hostel, and breakfast and lunch, as well as wine and cheese and fruit on the boat back to Cairns. It's a 6-hour trip and we get to snorkel or dive (I'm snorkeling) at two amazing spots on the reef. I'm so excited!! That trip also begins at 7:30 am so I gotta wake up early tomorrow. I'll post another blog with pics asap. Oh, on Saturday I might check out Kuranda before my FLIGHT to Melbourne. Because of the terrible floods in Rockhampton, Bundaburg, Emerald, and now BRISBANE (!!!), there's no way to get south of Queensland from where I am now. The earliest the railroad will book a trip south is the 20th so I could wait till then and use my rail pass but the Aussie Open starts on the 17th, and the 20th is only a guess anyway. The railroads are still under water in those areas, and after the flood waters recede, they're still going to have to bring out engineers to make sure the railroads are safe to travel on; if the railroads aren't safe, they'll have to fix them, so who knows how long that'll take. I decided two nights ago to buy a plane ticket to Melbourne, and I got a pretty good deal: $181. I stopped in at the Flight Centre (they claim to have "unbeatable" prices on domestic and international flights) while I was walking around downtown Cairns today just to see what a flight would cost ... $269 was the cheapest. Yay! Looks like I booked just in time. So I have an exciting couple days ahead of me and then I'll be back in Melbourne for about 2 1/2 weeks, watching tennis and hanging out. On February 3rd I take the train to Sydney and on the 4th I fly to New Zealand!!! =) Here are some pictures from my first day in Cairns:

:)



So now you're all caught up. I'm going swimming at the lagoon now. I hope everyone is having a great day!! Miss you all!! :)

Townsville ...

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't updated my blog in a while. I haven't had much to tell. Since I arrived in Townsville a week ago, I've just been relaxing, hanging out with friends, going to the beach, swimming, reading and going for walks/hikes. Pretty anticlimactic after my Melbourne-to-Townsville ordeal last week. It's been lots of fun though. Since I was so drained from four days of train, bus and plane travel, I decided to extend my stay in Townsville by a few days; it's a good thing I made that decision because it really wasn't my decision to make. I called Queensland Rail the other day to see about getting on a later train (I was supposed to leave Townsville on the 6th) and the woman saw I was booked for the 6th and said I couldn't have left that day anyway. Because of the devastating floods in Rockhampton, Emerald and Bundaberg, they aren't even booking trains for this week or next week. The earliest train I can get out of Townsville at this point is the 15th!! I can't get a train out of Brisbane until the 17th (not because of the floods -- the trains just don't run every day from every city) so that puts me back in Melbourne on the 19th -- the THIRD day of the Australian Open. :( I'm going to call back in a couple days and see if the trains are going to be running any sooner. I'm hoping to leave here on the 13th so I can make it to the first (or at least the second) day of the Open. We'll see. Today I'm getting a day pass to a gym in Townsville so I can have a nice indoor workout. This weekend I'll probably go to the beach a few more times and also go to the Billabong Sanctuary so I can finally see some of those cute Aussie animals that are supposedly running around everywhere. :)

***** BRISBANE TO TOWNSVILLE UPDATE ***** (new update 12/30/10)

Hello everyone! Thanks for your blog comments! :D I'm glad you liked my crazy travel story. It gets crazier (and better)! I am still in Brisbane but not for long!! Queensland Rail, the most amazing travel company EVER, has booked all their stranded peeps on a PLANE to Townsville or Cairns or wherever their destination is. You might be confused because when I posted last night, I was getting ready to take the Tilt Train to Townsville, from Brisbane. Let me explain: I got on the train (delightfully cushy business class, my own single seat again, tv in the arm rest and all that good stuff) and we were due to leave the station at 6:25 pm. At about 6:30, they came on the intercom and told us that we were delayed ... not because of floods this time, but because there were people in the tunnel!!! They said the police were on their way. We only had to wait a few minutes and we never heard another thing about it so I'm not sure why the people were in there or what happend to them, and it really has nothing to do with my story but I thought it was entertaining so I wanted to share. :) Anyways, we finally left Roma Street station (again) and everyone was happy. I made some good friends on the train -- Kristine and Nilly from Germany, Mandy and Yoon from South Korea, and Mary from Townsville. We were having a good time and very excited to be on such a nice train, finally headed up north. Then at around 9:15, we stopped at a train station called Nambour and were told we'd have to wait about half an hour while engineers surveyed a bridge up ahead to see if we could pass. They came back on the intercom a little while later and told us we'd be going BACK to Brisbane because we couldn't get past the bridge. We were sad and exhausted but there was nothing we could do. Some people on the train were pretty upset and demanding accommodations. It obviously wasn't Queensland Rail's fault that it's raining harder than it has in years (some people say this is the worst rain in 30 years; some say the worst in 90 years!!) so I was just like, whatever. I called the Base hostel in Brisbane to make sure they had rooms in case I needed one for the night. They did but thankfully I didn't book one. After about half an hour, one of the Queensland Rail guys came down the aisle and was asking everyone for their name, contact information and trip details (like if they were from Brisbane or Townsville, if they had a place to stay in Brisbane, etc.) and said he wasn't able to guarantee anything but they were going to try to put us up somewhere for the night if they could. He came back and told us we would be staying at the Festival Oaks Hotel in downtown Brisbane, paid for by Queensland Rail!!! And they would be providing transportation to the hotel! We got to the train station around midnight and they put us all on buses to the hotel (the people who lived in or near Brisbane got taxis to their homes). It took a little while to check everyone in but once I got up to my room I was so happy!!! It was on the 11th floor, 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, balcony overlooking the city, kitchen, and even a WASHER & DRYER!!! I was so tired but I did a load of laundry and took a bath (and called to arrange a late check out, of course) before I went to sleep on the super comfortable king bed. :D :D :D What a life! In the morning, I called the front desk to find out if there was any information on trains to Townsville. I was told there were several Queensland Rail people in the building and they'd be holding a meeting by the pool at 10:30. Also, we could go downstairs to the restaurant next door and have breakfast, on Queensland Rail -- up to $15.00!!! I haven't spent that much on breakfast the whole time I've been here!! I got scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, tomatoes and grilled mushrooms (my fave!). It was delicious. My friends Mandy and Yoon got a banana split, chocolate pancakes and a sandwich. HAHA! We were stuffed. We went upstairs and were told that they were going to fly us to Townsville, either today or tomorrow, and if we were in the group that had to wait until tomorrow, we would get to stay another night in the hotel!! I was actually kind of hoping I'd be in the second group so I could stay and enjoy the pool and fitness center (and my sweet room), but I found out shortly after that was in the lucky first group and I was booked on the 4:55 pm flight up to Townsville! How awesome is that!??? I am so in love with this company. They've been so nice the whole time. I need to write a long letter to thank them (or maybe just send the manager of QR a link to my blog). They're even providing taxi service!! Oh and right after the first meeting, they offered to buy us lunch! I was still stuffed from breakfast but they said "Come on, get a drink or something!" so I let them buy me a mango/orange juice ... and a fruit salad. :D Okay I gotta run back to the hotel now to make sure I'm there in plenty of time to catch my cab to the airport. Just wanted to let everyone know what's goin on. Talk to ya soon! and I'll post pics of the room (and our food haha) soon. p.s. Skype me!!

**********************************************************************************************

December 30th UPDATE:

Just wanted to let you all know I made it safely to Townsville!! I didn't even take a Xanax on the plane -- that's how happy/tired/delirious I was! And even though there were at least three screaming babies on the plane, I had a lovely 2-hour flight, reading Big Sur and drowning out the baby noise with my ipod. I thought QR was going to pay for a cab FROM the Townsville airport as well but when they put us in the cab in Brisbane they told me I was on my own. No big deal -- they'd already gone above and beyond, and thankfully my friend Ian was able to pick me up, no problem. My friends Mandy and Yoon were trying to get up to Cardwell for a job on a banana farm. Cardwell is about a 2-hour drive north of Townsville (past Ingham, which was one of the major flooded areas), and they weren't sure how they would get a bus once we got there, or even if the bus would be able to get them all the way up there through the floods. As soon as we got to Townsville (fyi, you're allowed to carry on liquid for domestic flights within Australia. woo hooo!), Mandy was greeted by a QR representative who gave her a voucher for a cab. We assumed the cab was taking her to the bus station and she asked the woman what they should do about the bus. The lovely QR woman explained that the cab voucher was good for the entire trip up to Cardwell!!! Two hours away so probably $500 or more!! AMAZING.

just got to Brisbane for the second time today

I'm exhausted!! I got to Brisbane this morning at 5:30 am after a 14-hour (I think ... could be +/- an hour ... the time changed and I lost track) train ride from Sydney, where I visited the Ian Thorpe Center for a shower/sauna/steam and then spent the rest of the day walking around Sydney, carrying one of my heavy bags. Before that I was in Melbourne. I left Melbourne Boxing Day evening and took a delightful 11-hour train ride to Sydney. On both of the trains I had my own single seat; it would have been better if I lucked out and got a double seat all to myself for the entire journey (more room to curl up and sleep) but it's highly doubtful that would have happened on a busy holiday train so I was very thankful for my awesome single seats. okay, back to the present. I am sitting in Brisbane, which happens to be the same city I rolled into at 5:30 this morning, then scrambled to find a shower before my 8:55 BUS (yes, bus, not train -- I had received a text from Queensland Rail the night before telling me that my 23-hour train had been replaced by a coach ... sweet) out of Brisbane, up to Townsville. The shower thing was an epic disaster. I was so happy because I knew exactly where I could swim and shower all morning ... the Spring Hill Baths, which are just about a 15-minute walk from the train platform, up some stairs, through the beautiful Roma Street Parkland, up a hill, and then down a side street. It was a little harder this time because I had both of my heavy bags with me (it was too early to check the larger one in for my next train) and by the time I got to the baths I kind of felt like I might die. And it was closed. =( Apparently it's Boxing Day again today, since the real Boxing Day landed on a Sunday, and Christmas landed on a Saturday, everyone got an extra two days off. Sweet for them but terrible for me!! I walked around, trying to figure out what to do, thinking about heading downtown to shower at the hostel, or maybe catching a bus to the other public swimming pool on the other side of town ... the buses weren't running (at least not at any of the bus stops I passed) because of the "holiday." I had to walk all the way back to Roma Street station to use the showers there. Which I found out closed down, probably years ago. I was desperate so I texted my friend Ronnie who hosted me through CS about a month ago. Thankfully he was home and awake and even though he had another couchsurfer that he had to drive to Byron Bay, he said of course I could come shower -- he even offered to come pick me up!! My hero!!!! He came and got me and I took a 5-minute shower at his house, put new clothes on (I'd been wearing the same ones since Melbourne. yay me!) and felt 1000 times better. He dropped me off at the station and I ran up to the platform and got on the bus. The Queensland Rail guys started off the journey by very kindly giving us all bottled water. I was pretty stoked about that and also the fact that I had made the right call by getting on the second bus. The first bus filled up but only three people got on the second bus. We picked up four more at a nearby station and ended up with seven people, plus a driver and two QR guys, for a grand total of 10 people on a giant bus. Woo hooo! I had as much room as you can possibly have on a bus and I fell asleep after about an hour. When I woke up (in Kybong: BFE), I was told by another passenger that QR was buying everyone lunch!! Up to $14!!! That was awesome. I got a greasy BLTA on white bread and a box of dried out watermelon ... not the greatest lunch ever but it was FREE! Another win for QR! :) We had about an hour to kill at the transit centre/truck stop so I just ate my food, went on the internet and wandered around. I got back to the bus and there was some confusion because some extra people were getting on our bus. Apparently we were driving them to a station about 30 minutes away, and we could get on the bus or wait, because the bus was then coming back to Kybong. That was a little weird but I decided to get on the bus and go for a ride rather than wait in the rain and possibly get left behind. On the way to the other station (Gympie North), one of the QR guys informed us that after we picked up everyone else from Kybong, we would be going back to Brisbane. ????????? We had driven four hours, but we had to turn back because the road about an hour or so past Gympie North was flooded out. So they could take us there and we could wait for a train up, but they preferred to drop us off at Roma Street to wait for the train (that we may or may not be able to get on) because it was more comfortable and we'd have more options there. So we went back and picked up the rest of our little crew, then drove all the way back down to Brisbane. For about the first two hours we were uncertain about whether we'd be able to get on the Tilt Train (the all business class train that runs from Brisbane to Cairns) but our awesome QR guys came through and got us all booked on the Tilt Train. Woo hoooo!!!! We got back to Roma Street about an hour ago and I got my ticket so it's official. At 6:25 I'll be leaving Brisbane once again, and if all goes well (KNOCK ON WOOD!), I'll be rollin' into Townsville tomorrow afternoon. Here's a pic of me happily waiting in line for my Tilt Train ticket after a verrrryyyy long day (make that a very long THREE DAYS):