Australia

I’m sitting on an A330 as it flies north across the outback. From 30,000 feet it’s hard to tell it’s not eastern New Mexico down below me. But if I look closer I can see thatI’m on the far side of the world. A lot of things felt that way over that last seven weeks. I think I could live in Australia for a while. I would stay another month and go see the west coast if I had the time. Nepal beckonsthough and I am really looking forward to seeing it. Goodbye Australia, I hope I’m back before too long.

The last couple of weeks were a little less exciting than the first few were. I was back in Sydney for a couple of days before I fully recovered from whatever I caught on the way to Melbourne. The main reason I wanted to see Melbourne was an article I saw a while back listing it as the “most livable” city in the world. It is nice as cities go. I can see how it won that listing. It is still a big city though and I’mhappy other people like living there…

I spent a lot of my sick days sitting next to this fire in a cafe. 

Just in case you didn't notice the actual train... 

I spent my last couple of days in Melbourne looking for a ride to Sydney. I hoped to see some of the countryside in Victory and New South Wales. But time ran out and I bought the last cheap ticket I could find to Sydney. Which at least added Tiger air to my list of airlines. I got a good price on the ticket, but public transportation was a bit of a shocker. Getting to and from the airport was more than ½ the price of the plane ticket.

Once in Sydney I spent two nights in downtown. The highlight of my downtown stay was seeing the iphone5 launch at the Sydney apple store. No I didn’t stand in line to buy one, I was mostly there to use the fast free WiFi for updating my OS… But, it was pretty fun to watch the queue. The last couple of days were spent with friends inAshfield. Thank you Philip, Kim and Fiji for hosting me at both ends of my time in Australia. I look forward to seeing you guys again sometime soon.