Cinco de Mayo

Back in the States, it had become a tradition to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with Erik's University of Maryland classmates. We wanted to continue the tradition here, even though we are a long way from Mexico and it is not a commonly celebrated occasion in Oz. The date snuck up on us and we didn't realize that it was so close until we were getting ready to leave for Brisbane. At that point we tried to get something organized and fortunately many people were still available on the date of the party, which actually fell on the 5th of May! :)

When deciding on the menu, I knew that beergaritas were a must-have for this event, but what I didn't think about was the fact that I cannot just walk into a store and buy limeade concentrate, which is a necessary ingredient for the beergaritas! Fortunately, I found a few recipes online and I was able to make homemade limeade concentrate, which the guests suspected led to the deliciousness of the beergaritas (though I've had them with the canned stuff and I still think those are delicious, too)! We were able to use proper American enchilada sauce, thanks to a shipment made by my good friend Mo late last year. We were saving the sauce for a special occasion and this proved to be the perfect time to use it. Next year, we'll tackle homemade enchilada sauce.

It was a true multicultural event at our house, including guests from our current home country along with friends from New Zealand, Canada, Spain, and Italy! A good time was had by all and I'm confident that our group will grow even larger (and perhaps even more diverse?!) by the time Cinco de Mayo rolls around in 2013.

Enchiladas, anyone?!

Sunshine Coast

I sat down to write the second post about our trip soon after we returned home, but got sidetracked by several other things. We got back to Melbourne midweek and started planning for our Cinco de Mayo party while getting back into the swing of things at work (I am being called in to substitute on a more consistent basis now, which is great), and I let the blog post slide to the end of my list of things to do. Hopefully I can remember all of the best parts of our trip without leaving anything significant out!

Since we were in Brisbane for a wedding, I thought we should take a few days and explore some other areas of Queensland that were within a few hours drive. From Brisbane, you can go south and explore the Gold Coast or you can go north to check out the Sunshine Coast. Most Aussies that I had spoken to recommended the Sunshine Coast, and when Erik visited Oz about 10 years ago he remembered not being super impressed with the Gold Coast, so that made our decision about which direction to go pretty easy.

On Sunday morning after the wedding, we head north out of Brisbane towards Noosa. I had been told that we had to stop at Glass House Mountains National Park. These "mountains" are actually extinct volcanoes that most likely formed about 27 million years ago! The park is obvious to spot once you get close, because the peaks of these mountains stand out among the remainder of the land, which is relatively flat. To get to the Glass House Mountains we drove on Steve Irwin Way, which would have taken us all of the way to the famous zoo if we had chosen to visit it. However, given our recent experience with kangaroos and koalas, I didn't feel a visit to the zoo was necessary! The drive down Steve Irwin Way was reminiscent of being in Northern Minnesota. The two lane road is lined with thousands of pine trees on either side. However, once we got closer to the mountains, we noticed landscape and flora that was very similar to that of Hawaii.

From the lookout on Mount Tibrogargan. Mount Beerwah to the left and Mount  Coonowrin on the right.

We did a short hike of Mount Tibrogargan but did not hike up that mountain. Apparently it's a really popular place for rock climbing and we actually heard a few climbers while we were strolling around the base of the mountain.

This is where we spotted the climbers. Obviously they are too small to see in this picture.

Crazy looking fern!

After our short hike, we drove to the lookout point of the Glass House Mountains for a different view. The picture below is probably all that many people see of the National Park, as it has easy driving access and signage from the road.

At this point it was getting late in the day but we still wanted to do a bit more hiking, so we headed to the base of Mount Ngungun. This hike was quite steep and rocky in a few places, but the reward at the top was worth the work.

Can you spot Erik in this picture?

Did I mention it was humid in Queensland?! I actually enjoyed it, as it is relatively dry and cool in Melbourne this time of year and it was a nice change to have some warmth and humidity. After the hike we hit the road again on our way to Noosa, arriving after dark and after a mix up about which condo we were renting. Once we got settled, Erik grilled dinner and we enjoyed the most delicious roadside pineapple I've ever tasted. In the morning we walked down to the main beach in Noosa and spent some time relaxing on the beach and laying in the sunshine.

The unique thing about Noosa is that it's a beach town right next to a National Park. It also has waterways that run through the town, making for a very picturesque place (given the nice warm weather and the beautiful beach, I was harassing Erik about why he did not get a job on the Sunshine Coast!). It is "famous" for the triathlon festival that is held there every November, as it seems to be one of the most popular triathlons in Australia. After some beach time, we headed off for a walk along the Coastal Track in Noosa National Park. This hike reminded me a bit of the Bondi to Coogee cliff walk we did in Sydney.

Watching the surfers in Tea Tree Bay. Huge numbers of surfers here, even in the middle of the day.

These characters are everywhere you turn, similar to the roosters on Kauai

Sadly, the sun is setting on our last night in Noosa.

That evening we grilled our dinner again and then headed into the town of Noosaville for dessert. It was really quiet with not much open, but we stumbled upon a place called Amo Gelato. The guy behind the counter was incredibly friendly and he didn't have much other business, so we proceeded to taste just about every flavor of gelato they had available! Everything was made from local. real ingredients and the taste was evident of that. The almond and praline flavor was our favorite, and we also tried tiramisu, rocher (made from Ferrero Rocher chocolates), and chili chocolate.

In the morning we headed back towards Brisbane along the Sunshine Highway, which runs right next to the ocean and provides beautiful views. We stopped at Mount Coolum, which I had been looking forward to hiking the top of, but instead found this:

Unfortunately the trail was closed for work (even though we did not see or hear any work taking place...this also happened to us when hiking in the Dandenongs), so we'll have to return one day to check out the views from the top of Mount Coolum. At that point we decided to hit the beach in Mooloolaba, another town along the Sunshine Coast.

We were able to soak up some sun before the rain came in and ended our afternoon a bit early. Fortunately, that worked out well because we were able to meet Dave and Jaylene, the bride and groom from the wedding in Brisbane, and their charming son Zane, out for an early dinner. We ate delicious burgers at a place along the river in the CBD, and it was great to be able to spend some time with the newlyweds before boarding our plane to head back to Melbourne. So long, Sunshine Coast, hope to see you again soon!

Brisbane

In 2004, I went on a trip to Europe with a tour company called Contiki. On that trip, I saw beautiful sites and also formed friendships with several amazing people. In 2007, two of those people, Joe and Dave, were able to make it alllllllllll the way to the US of A from Australia to watch Erik and I get married. This past weekend, I only had to fly two hours to partake in the wedding celebrations of one of my greatest tourmates, Dave. Dave is affectionately known as "Super Dave" due to a trash bag party, a phone booth, and a pair of Superman underwear.

Antibes, France. May 2004. Trash Bag Party.

Erik and I arrived in Brisbane, also affectionately known as "Brissie" and/or "BrisVegas", late Friday evening and were met at the airport by Dave, Joe, and another great tourmate, Pete. One of the lovely things about traveling interstate in Oz is that security is minimal. They were able to just go through security to wait for us at the gate. No boarding pass necessary. No need to show ID several times. No taking off shoes or jackets before going through metal detectors. It's fantastic! Once organized, we headed to a pub for a few beers and enjoyed catching up that evening.

Dave, Joe, me, Pete, and Erik's finger. :)

Unfortunately it was raining on Friday night and it continued to rain all day Saturday and into Saturday night. Because of the weather, Erik and I didn't get the chance to do much exploring of Brisbane, though we did make a trek in the rain down to the waterfront. Much like in Sydney, but on a smaller scale, there is a ferry service that runs up and down the river that many people use for commuting purposes. The waterfront was flooded about a year ago and it appears to have made an amazing recovery in a short period of time. 

Erik getting soaked so that I could get a picture of the Story Bridge

Our hotel, the Novotel, was right in the CBD and was in an outstanding location for the weekend. It's not often that Erik and I splurge for a nice hotel, but I found a package that included the all you can eat breakfast buffet. We also got upgraded, I think, to a "premier floor", which had really nice amenities. I wish I had pictures of the brekkie (Aussie slang for breakfast) to share with you, because my mouth is watering just thinking about all of the delicious food. The hotel gym was really nice as well, complete with a squat rack and a hip sled, two pieces of equipment that are a rare find in hotel gyms.

The wedding was at The Brisbane Club, a beautiful venue in the CBD. The ceremony was on one floor, the cocktail hour on another floor, and the reception on yet another floor. The food was delicious, the DJ was great (lots of classic American wedding songs were heard), and Erik and I even got a shout out in the father of the groom's speech! Overall it was an absolutely amazing night and I was so happy to have the chance to be a part of it.

Contiki friends reunited! Dave, Smash, Jemal (aka Marley), Joe, and Pete

With the beautiful bride and handsome groom!

My handsome husband of almost 5 years!

On Sunday morning, Erik and I hit the road towards the Sunshine Coast, which I'll blog about next. We came back into Brisbane on Tuesday night to meet the newlyweds for dinner, and we were able to see the waterfront in a bit more of it's glory since it was not raining! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera. The newly married couple was also kind enough to take us to the airport for our trip back to non-tropical Melbourne. We had a great stay in Brisbane surrounded by wonderful people and surely this will not be our last trip to the state of Queensland.

Not my picture, but wanted to add a shot of non-rainy Brissie!

Round 1

The district level footy season lasts about 20 weeks, each week defined as a "round". Last weekend was the first round of play for the team that I am working with and the team that Erik is playing for. I wasn't really sure what to expect in terms of how many people would be there to watch and how the day would go, but I did know that there was a special "guest player" playing with our team in order to try to attract a large crowd on opening day. Anthony Koutoufides, affectionately known as "Kouta" by the locals, played for our side (teams are referred to as "sides" here) last week to the tune of what I'm guessing was a couple thousand dollars in his pocket for one game.

Kouta getting ready to play with the Moonee Valley FC

Kouta used to play in the AFL (equivalent of the NFL if we were taking American football and not footy), and had great success during his career, including being a few votes shy of winning the Brownlow Medal (the MVP of the league, essentially) in 2000. In totally non-footy related news, he won Australia's Dancing with the Stars in 2006! One of the guys on our team who follows the NFL first compared him to Tom Brady, but then decided he was more like an Eli Manning, not having quite the stature of Tom and his Under Armour and Stetson cologne ads, though Kouta did advertisements for both Nike and Adidas in the 90's. Either way, he's a big deal and LOTS of people came out to watch him play, which created a really fun and exciting atmosphere. Both teams (the senior team, or the 1's, and the reserve team, known as the 2's) beat the opponent by over 100 points, a big turn around from last year when apparently both teams lost to that same opponent by a combined 300+ points. Perhaps we should have tried to get Kouta for Round 2 as well, because we got flogged (commonly used Aussie word when a team loses badly of which the definition is: to beat harshly) in yesterday's game. Both teams lost by over 100 points, so the shoe was on the other foot, as they say. Apparently the team we played yesterday will be a top 5 team in the league (out of 14 teams), so there is no need to get discouraged yet. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before or not, but the team I am working with won only 2 games last season, so I am certainly hoping for a better season this year!

Unfortunately I didn't capture the spectacularness of this rainbow, which was completely full and extremely bright over the CBD after a big storm came through this afternoon. Here is what remained of the rainbow when I left the gym.

I thought I'd share a few funny terminology things with you that come up with the footy guys. I often ask them how things went in practice. They are constantly correcting me because they call it training, not practice. Their shoes are not cleats (they have NO IDEA what cleats are), they are boots. In fact, Erik mentioned to the other sports trainer (my official term when working with this team) that he needed a band-aid because his cleats were rubbing, she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Game jerseys are not called jerseys but jumpers. We aren't exactly sure how that works because a jacket is also a jumper. A bruise or contusion (like when you get kneed in the thigh) is called a corky. In training, when they put on pennies (the different colored mesh things so that you know who is on each team), those are called bibs. Before the regular season started, we had 3 practice matches, not scrimmages (they had no clue what a scrimmage was). And I'm not taping their ankles, I'm strapping them. :)

Another amazing autumn sunset captured thanks to the iPhone.

In terms of life in general, I was back to work last week after two weeks off due to school holidays. School is year-round here and that was the first break, separating term 1 from term 2. I was fortunate to be called to work at the sports school right across the street from where we live, so it was a nice ease back into working in a place that I am familiar with already. Week 2 of the second term starts tomorrow, but it's a bit of an easier week because Wednesday is a public holiday for ANZAC Day, a day that marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the first World War. It will be nice to work for 2 days, have a day off, then work for 2 more days before another weekend rolls around!

I thought this cloud made it look like there had been an explosion over our 'hood!

Dandenong Ranges National Park

The second day of our failed camping trip was intended to be spent hiking in Dandenong Ranges National Park, which is one of several parks that are within an hour drive of where we live. Having slept in our nice warm bed instead of in a freezing cold and wet tent, we were happy to get up bright and early yesterday to beat rush hour traffic on our way to the Dandenongs. In addition to finding a book about camping in Victoria last week, I found a book of day hikes in the state. I wanted a challenging hike with impressive views, so I picked the Mt. Dandenong circuit, deemed a medium-hard trail for a total of 15.5 km.

The start of our hike in Kalorama

Temperatures were quite chilly in the morning, but for the most part the weather cooperated yesterday. There were brief moments of rain and also moments of sunshine, though I would guess that we had cloud cover for the majority of the day. That really didn't matter, as we were in some sort of green fern-laden world during much of our hike! From the car park we started along a trail that was narrow and actually passed close to the homes of some local residents. After a few ups and downs, we ended up having to deviate off of the trail due to a closure (several "tracks" - the Aussie term commonly used for trails- seem to be closed from flooding in 2011 and some for downed trees or other improvements) at the Sky High Observatory. Cars pay $5 to enter, but luckily hikers can check out the viewing platform for free. Fortunately we had a map of the trail in our borrowed book, and Erik was able to navigate us back on track quite easily (even though I was insisting we were going the wrong way...I have absolutely horrible sense of direction!). Once we returned to the trail, the path was wide enough in many places for a vehicle. I later learned that these are fire management tracks to help facilitate fire fighting, as bush fires are regular events on the mountain.

Walking through the morning fog at the start of the hike.

View of the CBD from the Sky High Observatory

Ferns everywhere!

Fern tree or palm tree?!

I loved all of the lush green trees and bushes, even though I guess I was hoping deep down to see a few fall colors in the mix. I did spot a tree or two that had turned yellow or red, but nothing like what happens along the East Coast or in Minnesota during the fall months. We saw our first wallaby on this trail today, as it literally jumped right across the trail about 20 meters in front of us. It was too quick for the camera, so I have no cute animal pictures for you from this hike. :( There were many birds in the park and noisy ones at that, which is pretty typical for Melbourne (the birds here are always squawking at something, it seems). Overall, the trail was a decent pick in that it provided nice scenery and superb views of the CBD (which would have been spectacular on a clear day, no doubt!). It involved a lot of climbing, and also a lot of descending. There weren't many times along this hike where we were actually on level ground.

Can you spot the CBD?

6km to Montrose? We'll be there for dinner, Jill and Dan!

At the end of our hike, we drove to a different location to do a short walk to Sherbrooke Falls. This part of the park features more green ferns and also Mountain Ash trees, which apparently grew after severe forest fires in the 1920's. These trees grow up to 100 meters and can live up to 500 years. The Falls were unimpressive but it was a nice short walk, nonetheless. We will certainly head back to the Dandenongs for future hikes, hoping to see more wildlife and explore new areas of the park.

These birds know where to find food...in the picnic area near the parking lot!

We aren't sure which bright individual came up with the name of this "long" bridge!

Camping Trip...FAIL!

A few weeks ago, Erik and I started discussing what we should do for the Easter holiday weekend. After some deliberation, we decided that it would be a great time to go camping. However, once we started talking about the possibility of camping with friends and co-workers, we learned that Easter is essentially the most popular weekend of the year to go camping in Victoria, and that most campsites were already booked full for the Easter holiday. Not a problem, we thought...we will just delay our trip a few days and go camping for just one night instead of a few, since we were both off work for a couple of days after the holiday weekend.

We spent much of our beautiful Easter Sunday on a long walk near our house.
If only the weather had stayed this nice for Monday...

This past week, I found a book in the library that was helpful in identifying a few more "bush" (the Aussie equivalent to wilderness-based) campsites, though I learned that most sites within an hour or so of the city were larger caravan-type campgrounds. We planned out a few potential hiking and camping areas and packed the car last night. Unfortunately, when we woke up this morning, the weather had taken a turn from pleasant and sunny to cold and rainy! (I did hear on the radio on our drive back home that today was the coldest day in 5 months in Melbourne, which explains why even though the temperature was around 50F, it felt absolutely freezing). While we debated what to do, we caught the exciting end of the Masters, live from Augusta, which was absolutely worth getting a late start for, in my opinion. There seemed to be some patches of blue sky mixed within the clouds, so we decided to head out on some sort of adventure, though we were undecided about our final destination at that point. Sadly, the weather only got worse, and by the time we were in Frankston, a small coastal town on the Mornington Peninsula, it was raining hard and the wind was howling. We nearly turned around to go home, but after looking at the radar, it appeared that the further south we went, the better the weather would get. So we made our way down the peninsula, stopping at a few areas along the way to enjoy the scenery, and we did, in fact, counter some blue skies along the way. The drive reminded me a lot of the Great Ocean Road, though not quite as spectacular, but the road winds along the coast, providing scenic water and beach views.

One of the nice views along the Mornignton Peninsula.

We ended up all the way down at the end of the Mornington Peninsula at Port Nepean National Park. It was free to enter, and from the park you can witness beautiful views of both Port Phillip Bay and the open ocean. The wind was ferocious when we were near the ocean, with gusts so hard at times that I thought I would be knocked over! There are several walking trails within the park, most with access to different forts that were used by Australian soldiers in both World War I and II. In addition to the entrance of Port Phillip Bay being the most heavily fortified port of the Brittish Empire, the area has evidence of some of the earliest European settlement in Victoria, so this would be a great place to visit for history buffs.

In 1967, prime minister Harold Holt disappeared here while swimming.

Evidence of the former military presence.

We ate lunch at the former site of Pearce Barracks, which were torn down in 2007. The land in the distance is the town of Queenscliff, which is on the western side of Port Phillip Bay. A ferry provides transport between the two sides.

We spent a few hours walking around Port Nepean, and then headed over to Sorrento Back Beach to check out some additional ocean waves. Again, the wind was fierce and that made the cold temperatures seem even colder, but the views were worth braving the cold. There were even a few crazy kids in the water (in wetsuits, of course!)

At this point we had pretty much ruled out camping. There are spots to camp along the end of the Mornington Peninsula; however, they are all caravan parks, not the "bush" campsites we were hoping for. The closest bush campsite that I knew of was a two hour drive away, and home was less than a two hour drive away, so that was a pretty easy decision to make. This was sort of similar to our decision to leave the Great Ocean Road a night early to head home due to lack of good camping options. Hopefully we'll be more fortunate on our next camping trip in regards to campsites and weather!

Full-on Footy

The term "full-on" is often used by Aussies to describe something that is intense, complete, or busy. They might describe a crazy night of partying, a hard workout, a difficult class assignment, or even a holiday as being "full-on". Right now, the Australian Football League season has just gotten underway, and I would describe the first weekend (also known as Round 1), as full-on. The first game was Thursday night, and I'd guess that most of the state of Victoria was tuned in to watch at least a bit of the game. Games continued on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and with each game seemingly came excitement surrounding the beginning of a new season. Because we arrived towards the end of the Footy season last year, we didn't totally immerse ourselves into the footy culture. We did watch the Grand Final (like the Super Bowl), but we did not own a television for the first few months of our time here, so it was not easy to watch the games.

Two players in "the ruck". This is similar to a jump ball in basketball. A ruckman is usually one of the taller guys on the team and he generally has sensational vertical jump height!

We got in on some of the Round 1 action today, as we headed to a game with a few friends. At this point we haven't completely decided who we are going to cheer for during our time in Oz. A common question that is asked this time of year is "who do you barrack for?", meaning "which team to you support?". I'm leaning towards the Essendon Bombers, because we lived in Essendon for a few weeks when we first arrived. I'm also a bit partial to Geelong, because they won the first footy game we attended even though they were the underdogs. We learned their victory song right away that night (yes, every team has a victory song), and it stuck with us for the last few weeks of the season. Geelong won the Grand Final last year, and they certainly aren't lacking supporters, so that might help me make my decision of which team to support! Today's game was a team from Perth (the largest city in Western Australia) versus a team from Footscray, which is actually where Erik's work is located.

The game requires an aerobic capacity similar to soccer, but with the addition of a physical component of tackling like American football (commonly called gridiron by the Aussies!) or rugby.

We were cheering for the team from Footscray today, but unfortunately they ended up on the losing side of the match. Regardless, it was fun to watch the game live and it was a beautiful fall day to be outdoors watching a sporting event at yet another stadium in Melbourne.

Our first sporting event at Etihad stadium. Lots of red, white, and blue from the Footscray supporters.

In addition to the AFL (which would be comparable to the NFL if we were talking "gridiron"), there are "feeder" leagues of footy. Then there are also district level footy leagues across various regions of Melbourne and presumably throughout Australia. Let me introduce you to a few of the guys who are on our footy team!

That is their promotional video for the 2012 season. Some of the guys get paid to play for the team, though I think what they make is generally equivalent to gas money for the week or money for beers and dinner on the weekend after games. We've had 3 practice matches and the regular season starts in 2 weeks, just after the Easter holiday. The team is coming off of a really bad season, but they have made some changes and they seem optimistic that this year will be better. They certainly keep me busy with lots of injuries and I'm enjoying getting to know the guys on the team. It's nice that Erik is playing as well, because it's something we can enjoy together. Impressively, Erik actually scored his first goal (worth 6 points) this weekend, in only his second game of footy!

We also continued our search for delicious Mexican food this weekend, as we met friends for dinner at a Latin American restaurant, Los Latinos, that happens to be a short walk from our house. The prices were very reasonable and the food was quite good. Erik and I split a delicious Chilean appetizer called "arepas de mascora", or seared yellow corn cakes topped with melted cheese, grilled chorizo, and sour cream. I was a bit disappointed that they did not serve margaritas on the rocks, but they did have a great selection of yummy frozen margaritas, so I indulged in a mango flavored drink. I also saved room for dessert, and the tres leches cake topped with whipped cream and berries was amazing! I'm hopeful that we'll make a trip back there when we start to crave Mexican-flavored food, which seems to happen quite often in this house. :)