TravelBio

As of my last blog entry, which I posted just a few days ago (but wrote a couple weeks back), my upcoming travel plans revolved around going to the Australian Open.  I went back to the States for Thanksgiving and Christmas and was hoping to make it back to Australia by mid January.  Two friends whom I’d met at Ohio State were interested in going with me to the Open.  From Australia we were considering a trip to New Zealand as well. I was hoping to make it to the Australian Open, partly because I love watching tennis but also since I hadn't been to Melbourne All of that changed within the last few weeks.  I had been researching flights to Melbourne with airline points.  Unfortunately my points balances are down - I booked my flight back home from Perth using American Airlines miles.  Even if I had ample points, however, award flight availability was paltry.  It was a repeat of my trip to Australia in 2014, when I couldn't find any space on American flights until the

I'm sitting on my ass here in Ohio thinking of what to do, so now seems as good a time as ever to roll out the blog updates.  Even though I will be heading back to Australia again, I feel 10 months there has given me enough experiences to come up with a list of general tips and tid-bits from the country we refer to as "The Land Down Under" (more in that in a minute). This first post will be a list of stereotypes we have about Australia.  Most of these are way off the mark or at the very least aren't the whole picture.  Such as: The Outback We tend to think of Australia as a vast, red desert.  Yes, lots of the county does look like that, but there are also snow-capped mountains, tropical rain forests, fertile grasslands, and temperate forests.  You can ski in the southeast during winter.  North Queensland reminded me of south Florida.  The country is quite geographically diverse. Sheep herders and Crocodile Dundees Most Australians don't

All said and done I worked 5 months in Norseman, Australia, from late June to mid November.  Aside from a trip in November to Esperance (2 hours south) I didn't leave town!  It was boring to be sure, but I was typically working 6 days a week and saving up almost all of my money.  At several points during my 5 months another employee went on vacation and I picked up more shifts - sometimes working 60 hours a week - so the money was good! Some pictures from the beach near Esperance...it was beautiful but the water was freezing! I booked a flight home from Perth to Columbus, Ohio set to arrive Stateside the day before Thanksgiving.  I had considered traveling more around Western Australia, but had no car and wanted to keep most of my savings for another trip.  Would I prefer traveling in WA for a month, or two to three times that long in the Philippines, for example, for the same cost? On Tuesday, November 18th I worked my last shift at the Noreyre Motel rest

Here are a few more pictures I took from my time in Norseman, Western Australia: The dirt road to Hyden Norseman's own golf course; the tee-box had seen better days! For some reason I found several car shells, along with  trash scattered in the woods near the town. All that was left of the old train station; now only freight passes through Norseman Wild flowers in town View from a lookout point 5 kilometers outside of Norseman: Looking at the hill on my hike back to Norseman From the salt lake near town, which is dry most of the year From the mine site: Road into the underground pit A huge open air pit about 5 kms outside of town