Australia - They got animals

Disclaimer - We visited Australia AFTER we visited New Zealand, but since many terrible things happened to us in New Zealand those posts are delayed so Laura and Stephanie (who was along for the ride but left something behind) can take time to deal with the trauma. Everything is fine, don't worry. We still love New Zealand, we'll just never return. How's that for a cliffhanger?

Now that's settled, time for my take on Australia, fair and balanced. A marked improvement on Laura's "facts" and "research", I'm sure you'll agree. To start, if you've never visited Australia you should know they have some special animals. Here's a video I found that explains one of the many lovely animals that call Australia home. This little guy shows up whenever you have some food, are thinking about having food, or just wonder "Is there something worse than pigeons?" We arrived in Australia through Sydney, one day later than planned after New Zealand gave us a final middle finger by cancelling our flight and delaying us one more night in Wellington. Thanks, New Zealand. We stayed in Bondi Beach, which my friend Michael (an old acquaintance who showed us around the city) claimed would be really busy on a hot Saturday in the summer. Readers from NYC, I present to you a MASSIVELY crowded Bondi Beach. Remember this next time you go to Coney Island in August.

Along with a lovely cliff walk, a lively party scene, and an amazing pool situated directly on the ocean, Bondi specializes in making you feel spectacularly unattractive. After we explored the beach we put ourselves into Michael's capable Australian hands. I met Michael about 13 years ago in Buenos Aires, and somehow have stayed in touch long enough to force him to show us around his home city. Along with dinner and drinks, he took us to an NRL (National Rugby League) game at Leichhardt Oval, an old and fascinating venue where we immediately felt less ugly than we did in Bondi. We got to meet his son (and say hello again to his partner who we met a few years ago in the Bronx) and ask all sorts of stupid questions about Australian flora and fauna, the rules of rugby, and how exactly did an Australian Prime Minister just disappear one day in the 70s while out for a swim?

That about wraps up Sydney, but with the mention of flora and fauna, let me highlight two lovely inhabitants of Oz we met right off the bat. Pun intended.

• Flying Fox - it's a giant bat. These jerks live all up the East Coast of Australia and screech the entire night while fighting over who gets to sit on what branch. The are the largest bats in the world, and sound like it. They are vegetarians, fortunately.

• Huntsman Spider - it's a giant spider. We only saw two but that was enough.

The first one just casually walked alongside us for a few feet when we were heading home one night. Truly terrifying and unpleasant. But as an Australian we met later told us, they eat all the really bad poisonous spiders so they're helpful!

After Sydney we rented a car and drove up to Mudgee, an area known for its wineries. We had some great wine then went to bed to rest up and prepare for what I'll call "Hell Camping" for the next five days. When planning this trip I intentionally switched when we'd visit New Zealand and Australia so we could try to get some cooler weather in the beginning of autumn in Australia. Instead we got a heat wave that coincided with every single night we camped outside. Laura whinged constantly but I put on a brave face and never once suggested we just get hotel rooms with A/C.

First stop of hell camping - Warrumbungle National Park. We spent two nights here and it was fairly awesome. We hiked and met kangaroos and emus, as well as more bats, bugs, and lizards. And colorful birds. It's a dark sky reserve so the stars were amazing, even through the sheen of sweat that would often obscure my vision. Some creatures we encountered here:

• Kangaroos - These things are all over the place, and the first time you see them you think "WOW A KANGAROO!" and life feels bright and shiny.

Then you notice that they just sort of stare at you with their beady dead eyes, no fear whatsoever, and you start to wonder what exactly they're thinking. By the 10th kangaroo encounter you realize they're just waiting for you to let your guard down, by the 26th sighting you understand that a kangaroo hive mind exists across Australia, and a human sacrifice is the only way to save yourself. By the 38th time you see one you've accepted your fate as kangaroo food. Anyway, they're kind of cute but poop all over the place.

• Emus - These are giant birds. One of them ran right in front of me on an evening hike and scared the shit out of me. It was like Jurassic Park and I was Muldoon, but without the cool boots and hat. I was just yelling "SHOOT HER" to an empty field.

• Australian Children - We met a group of 6th graders camping out for a few nights as part of a combined geology/astronomy unit at their school, and they were delightful. I've never felt cool to be an American, and probably never will again, but these kids wanted to know everything about the USA. We showed them our money, explained that some while people say "Gosh" and "Easy-peasy" it's not exactly common on the East Coast, and that we do in fact have Target in the States. Those kids were alright. Too bad the kangaroos got them.

Second stop of hell camping - Diamond Head Campground. It's a big empty beautiful beach with tons of scary jellyfish and even more kangaroos than Warrumbungle.

• Jellyfish - They'll sting ya. Like jellyfish from the States, but scarier and more of them. Although I only saw Men o' War and a few other smaller weird things, the box jellyfish is a particularly nasty thing that can kill you real good.

• Bandicoot - This is a marsupial with a long weird nose that was sniffing around our tent at night. Not nearly as entertaining as the video game counterpart.

Third and final stop of hell camping - Byron Bay. Spent two nights here, it was hot. Byron Bay was sold to us as the bohemian beach town of the east coast of Australia, but I'm not sure any place where Chris Hemsworth has a house and coffee costs 8 dollars can be properly called bohemian. Still, it was a funky town and we had fun here.

After Byron Bay we drove up to Gladstone, a town at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef. From there we took a ferry to Heron Island and stayed there for two days. This was cool. Not literally cool, it was still hot as hell and there was no A/C, but the experience was enriching.

Heron Island has escaped some of the worst coral bleaching and possesses a vibrant aquatic ecosystem you can explore just by snorkeling off the shore. There are also thousands of different birds that call the island home, including one bird that sounds like a baby crying loudly, which it does the entire night. While snorkeling we met many marine friends:

• Sea Cucumbers - There were many types of these funky detritivores and they all looked beautiful and gross at the same time. Did you know there is a fish that lives in their butts?

• Sharks and rays - Cousins, but not siblings. We encountered some very large rays and reefs sharks. How do you differentiate between the two? Sharks generally have gills on the side of their head, while rays are underneath.

• Tons of colorful fish - There were just too many to count.

• Sea turtles - We visited during hatching season, so during the evening we were able to walk the perimeter of the island and find baby turtles flopping their way down the beach to the ocean. Most them them were eaten by sharks or dismembered by seagulls, but hey, circle of life. We also met their grown-up counterparts in the ocean.

Finally, we met a lovely Australian couple that gave us a lot of insight into the country, Sarah and Mike. Mike even sported an Ibis shirt, which confirmed for me that all Australians love the Ibis. They also recommended a visit to a wildlife park down the coast on the way back to Sydney, which brings me to our return trip.

Gympie - We stayed one night in Gympie, which was described to us as the "Alabama of Australia". I had the worst Indian food in the world there and then we were off to another campsite the next night. But in between we visited a magical place where you get to see all sorts of Australian wildlife safely behind fences - Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

We saw a giant saltwater crocodile named BOSS

HOG, Tasmanian Devils (which are dying from face cancer, sadly), dingos, wallabies (which are non-evil kangaroos) and of course, koalas. You can pay to hold a koala, and we very much did that as well. Great recommendation, Sarah and Mike.

After Currumbin we headed back to Sydney and flew to Melbourne to close out our time in Australia. We spent three nights in St. Kilda, just south of the city center. On the first night we attended an AFL (Australian Football League) game, between the St. Kilda Saints and the Western Bulldogs in Marvel Stadium. That's a stadium plastered with advertising from the MCU, right next to Batman Street. In fact, Melbourne was a trailblazer in naming places after comic book characters, as it was briefly called Batmania.

Australian Rules Football was really fun to watch. Like rugby, the players wear no pads and there is a lot of kicking and passing (but only by bumping it with your fist) involved. Unlike rugby, the pitch is vast, and is wide open the entire game, and there are a whole lot of rules that seem confusing to a clueless American. Fortunately we enlisted two friendly Aussies sitting behind us to explain the game, and we had a great time.

For the rest of Melbourne, we ate. A lot. It's a city known for food. Seafood, pies (the savory kind), chicken parm (a unique Australian invention we'd never encountered before), pies (the sweet kind), and more. We also took part in a pub quiz. As usual we failed spectacularly on all Australia related questions but did win a gift card we couldn't use after I was the last man standing in a rock/paper/scissors contest. Oh and we did meet one more critter that we had seen before, but in a different environment.

• Australian Possum - A terror in New Zealand, a cute little non-threatening furball in Australia. We heard them jumping on the roof of our Airbnb at night. Least scary Australian creature by far.

One note before I close this chapter - Laura and I learned a lot about native Hawaiians and the Māori people in Hawai'i and New Zealand, but there was much less of a visible presence of Aboriginal Australians during our time in Australia. From what little we knew of Aboriginal history this wasn't surprising to us. In very broad strokes, the current status of Aboriginal people in Australia is more similar to Native Americans in the continental USA than it is to the Māori or native Hawaiians. Neither of us are anything close to an authority on the subject, but if you'd like to learn more you could start with this infographic and go from there.

Finally, here is a much better description of Australia's dangerous animals. If you didn't like the swearing in the ibis video, maybe don't watch this one. It also ties into the number one question we got the past two months when speaking to Australians and Kiwis, especially when Laura mentioned she was a teacher.

That's it for Australia! As of this moment we're in Krabi, Thailand, relaxing for a bit before moving on to Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea. After that, things get a little hazy. See you soon, or whenever Laura allows me to post again.