So I've been in Australia for 7 months now, mostly working for PGL at Camp Rumbug, and it's been an absolute blast. It's hard to describe everything that's happened, so I'm going to do that thing where I post my top 5 photos and an explanation of each in less than 150 words... Here goes.
Me and my Brits (L-R:Jake, Drew and Katie) These are the guys I
lived with, ate with, had water pistol fights with (sometimes indoors - sorry
Mum!), BBQed with, went to the zoo with, played cards with, watched far too
many films with, and went to the beach in matching hats with. We're so cool. They
were an absolute pleasure to live, work and play alongside :)
Each morning on group, I had to go to work at least half an
hour before breakfast and make and butter toast for my whole group. This is
roughly 1 loaf per 10 people, and when I had up to 200 people (including
teachers) in a group, that works out as a whole lot of toast far too early in
the morning. Why am I talking about toast when the picture is clearly of the
sunrise? This is the view that made it all easier. The view that made standing at that
toaster bearable. Foggy days were hard work - luckily there weren't many of
them!
This is some more of the gang, at a party in our house. They
are complete lunatics, but they are my Rumbug family. They were welcoming, and
accepting of all of my (our) British idiosyncrasies (most of the time - it's
still a hoover though guys). They put up with me in my good moods and my bad,
and as with my actual family, criticised my odd socks every day. They invited
me to their houses, let me invite myself round to their houses, had a surprise
birthday party for me (not the party pictured), fed me, laughed with me, listened to my rants,
worried about me when I had a cold (and got stressed that I was still wearing shorts in the winter) and
helped me whenever I needed help. They are awesome people.
Mostly, I had weekends off. This one weekend, I had big
plans to stay up all night to watch Wimbledon, and to sleep during the days
(time zones make watching sports in the UK very difficult!). I knew that I
had to go to the post office on the Saturday morning though, so I got up
thinking I'd drive there and back, and straight back to bed. On the drive
there, it was such a beautiful day, I changed my plans. I headed down to
Wilsons Prom, the local National Park, and climbed Mt Oberon, and had the most
spectacular views. Found a quiet spot and had some time watching the clouds float by.
Over Easter, we were lucky enough to get two weeks off work.
Me, Katie, Drew and Claire flew over to Tasmania, and had a fabulous 2 weeks,
with great weather. We stayed in Hobart for a few days, headed down to Port
Arthur (one of the British Prisons), went up to Cradle Mountain (I've got a
great photo of a rainbow over Lake St Clair which was very close to being on
this blog!) and Wineglass Bay, we stayed in a town called Penguin (The only
town called Penguin in the world), and camped on Bruny Island - this photo is
from our private beach that we camped next to. Life is so hard when you have a
private beach!
As you can see, it's been pretty spectacular, and spectacularly pretty. I'm now off to New Zealand, followed by South East Asia, so will be blogging mostly to keep Mum happy ;) but it's also good to have some kind of record of my travels, because I am terrible at keeping a diary! As this chapter of my adventure comes to an end, and another one is about to start, this one quote sums up how I'm feeling pretty much perfectly...
"As I go on, my idea of home is expanding &
I can’t wait to find out how big it will be"
- Brian Andreas
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