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THURSDAY 18TH DECEMBER
This morning we began the last leg of our mini adventure, travelling from Melbourne to Sydney, to arrive in Sydney 3 days later. At 7am, Stinger, our new driver, arrived at Base Hostel, loaded us up and started on the long drive out of Melbourne. The weather was still miserable, wet, windy and cold, so those first few hours of just sitting on a bus were quite welcome. We were heading to Wilsons Promontory, the southern-most point of Australia. We made a short stop in a small town called Foster in South Gippsland before entering the national park. Wilsons Promontory is named "Yanikee", the aboriginal word for "between waters". This is because over 12,000 years ago this area used to consist of many islands placed in the Bass Strait, the channel of water between the Australian mainland and Tasmania. The Dutch were in fact the first to land in Australia on the west coast, but they decided not settle when they found no water. Funnily enough they actually wrote in their journals that the whole of Australia contained no water and that the aboriginees were a species of animal which could survive without it. The Portugese are also known known to have hunted and fished along the coastline but they never settled either. It was only in 1770 when Captain Cook, having landed in Botany Bay, sunk the British flag into the soil and named the eastern side of Australia, New South Wales. On January 26 1788, Australia Day, Captain Arthur Phillip started the actual settlement of the country, bringing over British convicts which they could no longer send to the USA due to the War of Independance that was happening at the time. Phillip discovered Sydney Harbour, the world's largest natural harbour, and established a small community there. This led to the creation of the Australia that we know today. The Bass Strait was named after the explorer, George Bass. Bass, along with Matthew Flinders, the first European explorer to circumnavigate Australia in 1802, discovered that Tasmania was separate from the mainland in 1797. This was a very extremely useful discovery as it diminished the previous time it had taken to travel the southern coast by almost a week and a half. The national park is located on this coastline and contains many picturesque beaches, luscious mountains and various unusual species of wildlife. As it was still raining we decided not to do the walk but we still visited Whisky and Squeaky Beach. Whisky Beach is so named purely because a boat, travelling from New Zealand, was shipwrecked here and thousands of whisky bottles floated ashore. Squeaky Beach gained its name from the noise that is created when walking on the dry sand. This sound is produced due to the high silica content of the sand. After several hours spent exploring the park and discovering many parrots, rosellas and cockatoos, we headed on towards Lakes Entrance where we were to stay the night. The Lakes District contains three main interconnecting lakes, King, Victoria and Wellington, which are separated from the sea by the world famous Ninety Mile Beach. The unsurprisingly ninety mile long beach stretches all the way from Seaspray to Lakes Entrance. We arrived in the town of Lakes Entrance in the early evening and were treated to the local speciality of fish and chips for dinner. Having been checked into our hostel by a very grumpy landlord, we whiled away the rest of the night playing multiple rounds of "Bulls***" and chatting before heading off to bed.
FRIDAY 19TH DECEMBER
We departed Lakes Entrance early this morning and rolled on our way to Thredbo in the Snowy Mountains. To get there we had to drive along Barry Way, a single-laned windy road that could have become quite perilous if not taken carefully. Luckily, the only incident we encountered was when the air conditioning guard fell off the bus and had to be detached to stop it dragging. The mountain range is situated on the Victoria-New South Wales border and before entering the Kosciuzsko National Park we passed through several small villages. The first of any note was named Buchan, renowned for its limestone formations, and the last was a village of 5 people called Suggan Buggan. We stopped for lunch at Jindabyne, a busy ski resort in the winter months, which is located next to a man-made lake of the same name, after which we moved on to Thredbo. This ski resort was our overnight stop and is a picturesque little village sitting at 1370m. Before checking into our hotel, we were aiming to complete a 13km hike up Mt. Kosciuszko, Australia's highest mountain (2228m). Two weeks ago this track had been completely covered in snow and there were still remnants of the winter months on the summit. After reaching the top, which although absolutely freezing, offered some amazing views of the surrounding mountains, we discovered some snowy patches to slide down before making our descent accompanied by Stinger's dance playlist whicg resounded out of his speakers. It was awesome fun, dancing our way down the mountain, doing skateboard jumps and even getting an old man to join in...he loved it! After a wait at the bottom, we returned to our hostel which was more like a hotel, for a BBQ dinner (again!) and some drinks that kept us entertained for the entire evening.
SATURDAY 20TH DECEMBER
After a pancake breakfast our bus departed from Thredbo. Our first destination was Canberra, Australia's capital city, where we were to visit the Parliament House and have lunch. On the route into Canberra we passed through a town where a treaty called the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme was signed in 1974. This project is aimed to increase the Snowy River's flow to 28%. This is because this river's flow fell to 1% when a man-made water-channelling system was built in 1974 to take water to the Murray and Murrumbridge rivers. The Snowy River is still struggling (now running at 10%) but the local governments are making more efforts to attempt to improve the situation. We drove into Canberra around midday and stopped for a quick look around the new Parliament House. When the separate states of Australia became united in 1901, they decided to build a city for the purpose of government. The site of "Kanberra", the Aboriginal word for "meeting place" and a spot that was used in such a way in former ages, was chosen in 1908, much to the disapproval of Sydney and Melbourne. These cities both thought that they deserved the mantle of being Australia's capital city, Sydney because it was the first settlement of modern Australia, and Melbourne because it had been the centre of almost every aspect of Australian culture for many years. However, the other states and areas of the country did not agree and so Canberra was built. This city was placed in the renamed Australian Capital Territory and an international competition was held to decide the architects. Two Americans from Chicago were chosen, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin and this is why the city's layout closely resembles that of Washington and other American cities. The architect of the new Parliament House was also selected from a competition which was won by Romaldo Giurgola in 1978. This new centre of government was dug into Capital Hill, the earth of which was replaced on top of the building and covered in grass so that pedestrians could walk over the top. As this building had been paid for out of the taxpayer's money, anyone is allowed in and around the building, even when the parliament is in session, to symbolise that the Australian people are bigger than its government. The building is designed in the shape of 2 boomerangs and outside its entrance, embedded in the ground, is an Aboriginal mosaic, first surrounded by water to signify Australia's island status and then by red sand to symbolise the distinctive red soil that is found in the country. This was where the present prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made a 30-minute public apology in 2008 for the white Australians' treatment of the aboriginees and in particular for the "Stolen Generation". The speech was a massive step in the progression of relations between the aboriginees and the white Australians, which are still strained in the majority of aboriginal areas. After lunch we began the last leg of the tour to Sydney. We had a hilarious game of bus bingo with chicken noises, songs and star jumps being performed and we soon arrived in Sydney in the early evening. I had to make a very speedy turnaround after checking into my hotel, making a quick journey to the other end of town to collect my baggage that I had left in storage before joining the others and the Awesome Adventures' owned club, The Gaffe, in Oxford Street. We had gatecrashed one of the other tour's Christmas Party and took full advantage of the free food and drink that was on offer, before partying the night and the most part of the following morning away in their underground disco. Finally we all had to say our goodbye. It had been a long but amazing trip, one I would recommend to anyone who was looking at doing something similar.
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