This is Priit's house. It is cosy and has been well bug-proofed. That is a must here in Australia due to all kinds of poisonous creepy-crawlies. The weather was good. I think about 26C.
Our first stop was a shopping centre about 10 minutes' walk away. It is built on both sides of a river and has several bridges across within the centre. I really like that the Aussies have not gone wild on air-con. They have it, but it does not cool you down so much that you would catch a cold with the difference of temperatures outside.
Once we had bought some food and window-shopped a bit, we went back home and drove to the ocean, which is about 10 minutes' drive away. It was my first full day here and I had to test the water.
I was probably the whitest person on the beach, but I did not care and enjoyed the waves in the warm water. The swim was refreshing and I stayed on the beach another 10 minutes to sunbathe for 5 minutes each side. The sun is so active down here that I dared not stay any longer.
Actually, even though many people looked tanned and wore their bikinis and shorts, there were just as many people in the water in T-shirts and long shorts or even long-sleeved shirts. People are concerned about excessive exposure to the sun and locals tend to cover themselves up when they spend a considerable time outside.
After the swim we drove to Brisbane to meet some other Estonians who live here. I was pleasantly surprised to find that people tend to be quite law-obedient and drive within the speed limit. An interesting fact, though, is that speed limits only apply on state roads. On private ranches, the owner can make his own laws. In the north, some ranches are the size of small European countries.
Our first visit was with Maarja (centre), who has been here for a year and a half. As she had her friends Anna and Rio visiting her, we spend the early part of the evening looking for a place to eat on Melbourne Street and, after walking up and down the street for more than an hour, ended up in a Subway. It was good catching up and hearing about life on the road and working in farms...
The last part of the evening was spent with some lovely friends of Priit, Roland and Maret. They have two kids and they have been living in Australia a year and a half.
Priit has been warning me for the past two months that he would make me climb a mountain when I got here. From what I gather, he goes there quite often and has been trying to persuade different friends of his to go there too, but to not much success. He has managed to drive people there, but usually they fail to climb it and return from different parts of the trail. I agreed to climb it and thought I'd better get it over with as quickly as possible, so we scheduled it for this morning.
This is what Mt Tibrogargan looks like from the distance. It is a peak in the Glass House Mountains National Park. It is sacred to the Aboriginal people like other mountains in the National Park. It is 364 metres high, "a class 5 Australian standards trail requiring high fitness levels and rock climbing experience". As I was reading the information at the foot of the trail, I had some misgivings about attempting the climb, but Priit assure that it was a piece of cake.
As he had climbed it on many occasions before, he was as good a guide as any to help me with my first rock-climbing experience.
Actually, although it was quite a steep rock, it was not impossibly so. I quite enjoyed the climb, keeping in mind the 3-point rule: always keep three points on the rock and move the fourth, the points being hands and feet. When I got to a certain height, where it was easier to climb already, Priit suddenly said, "Don't look up! Just keep coming." When I had moved forward a couple of steps, I looked back, and this was the picture that I saw, that had been above my head just a couple of moments before:
I shuddered, and was glad I had not looked up before as I would not have dared to move through. We were at the top at that point and kept walking further to reach the other end and see the ocean. As I kept my eyes up now, I saw several more huge cobwebs above me with huge differently-coloured spiders in them. As they did not seem to move in to attack me, I took some more photos, but I will not post any more here now. For me, the spiders were far worse than the actual climb. On my way down, I hurt my knee against a tree stump, but other than that I returned in one piece.
When we got home, I had agreed with Henri and Eneken to meet with them and go swimming together.
They work at a local hotel and get two days a week off, but the weather has not been so nice on their last couple of days off, so they had not been to the beach since Christmas Eve. Henri has learned to surf and was doing quite well despite the waves being really big and powerful today. Can you imagine being only knee deep in water and then a wave coming at you so powerfully that it sweeps you off your feet and pushes you several metres towards the beach?
This is Henri on his surfboard. :)
After some more sunbathing on the beach (during which I covered my shoulders as I had already got some sun while in the water), we dropped Henri and Eneken off home and drove 200 kilometres to Gold Coast to meet with some more Estonians.
Ivo and his wife Maire have lived in Australia for three years already and have got a lovely home with a sauna and a swimming pool. Yes, a SAUNA!!! Naturally, I could not let an opportunity to go to a sauna in Australia pass me by. :)
This is it at the far end of the swimming pool. Actually, as crazy as it sounds, it was actually rather pleasant, when the sun had set and the air was starting to cool a bit, to go to a hot sauna and then jump into the swimming pool and look up and see stars in the clear sky above.
We were not the only guests - there were more than a dozen people there, all Estonians, all there to enjoy the company of compatriots and a good sauna. Some people played the Estonian version of Scrabble while others just chatted.
I found out quite many interesting things about life in Australia, schools in Australia, and Australians. Apparently, they like to communicate face to face. This is a fact that many Estonians looking for jobs in Australia do not know. They send out tens of CVs to businesses and wonder why they do not hear back from any of them. Apparently, it is quite easy to get a job, if you turn up at a place and ask to see the manager. They talk to you and having determined that you are a normal person, they are quite likely to give you a job if they have a vacancy.
I would really like to visit a school here, but they are all still on their summer hols. Apparently, many kids just play outside the whole day and teachers go and invite them in from time to time, but there are kids who do not go inside to study and there are no sanctions for them. Also, they do not have any compulsory reading books neither in primary, nor in secondary school. They start to specialize really early and many of them graduate with some kind of a vocational certificate. According to one source I found, Only 14 percent of Australians attend university in pursuit of a bachelor's degree or higher qualification.
Anyway, had a lovely time with all the Estonians, but had to leave at a reasonable time to allow for our 200 km drive home.
It is 3 am and I need to try to sleep as I need to get used to the local time to stop me from being really tired in the middle of the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment