Blue Mountains, Tasmania

Australia is apparently a very natural place.  The population is smaller than that of California but the land mass is similar to that of the US.  Anyway, I went to the Blue Mountains, which are in Katoomba, 2 hours west of Sydney.  It had amazing scenery and some great hiking trails.  The most challenging of these was The Giant Staircase at the Three Sisters area.  It composed of a few hundred stairs going down a mountain on a narrow path that seemed endless.  The spectacular views made it well worth it but it did a number on my knee.

After Sydney and the Blue Mountains, I flew south to Tasmania for a 6-day tour.  I was surprised to find out that only 2% of travelers to Australia go to Tasmania.  It was at the top of my list.  The tour was different and fun because it was with one group of travelers and the guide for the duration.  Before, I was going around to different places by myself on a whim.  Tasmania was great.  It had lots more hiking.  I went to the top of a few mountains and saw vast lands from up there.  It made me feel bigger and on top of the world, while at the same time one with nature.

Besides hiking, I saw some wildlife as well.  There are a number of species endemic to Tasmania.  Some notable animals I saw were wombats, wallabies, kangaroos, and tasmanian devils.  It was cool to see real-life tasmanian devils because I still remember the cartoon version.  At the same time, it's sad because they are becoming endangered because of a recently-discovered mysterious disease that is wiping out their population.  There are efforts underway to find a cure to prevent them from becoming extinct.

After Tasmania, I headed to Melbourne.  More on Melbourne later...

Indigenous Australians

On my first day in Australia, I was walking around to see the area and went into the Sydney Museum.  They had a section on the Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal people).  At first it looked like an interesting thing to learn about.  It caught my attention right away because it had documented the struggles that these people had in their country.  They were the original inhabitants of the land and were there for tens of thousands of years.  The Europeans (specifically the British) came, didn't understand their lifestyle, forced them off the land, attacked them, stole their children for slave labor use, spread diseases to them through blankets, etc...

As I looked at these exhibits and read the stories, it sounded all too familiar to me.  It reminded me of the the Native Americans and African Americans.  The story is very similar, as well as the tactics.  There is something called The Stolen Generation, which basically comprises of Aborigines who were stolen from their family at a young age (less than a year, sometimes less than a month), put into European families to be taught the "white/right" way of life.  Many of them ended up becoming the troublesome part of society (no sense of their history, depressed, adopted criminal lifestyle, etc.).

The annoyed me because I grew tired of learning these types of stories a while ago.  As the same time, I felt and still feel a connection with these people because the story of their people is similar to mine.

Arrival - Sydney

So as I was on my way from New York, it didn't really kick in that I'm going to Australia until my connecting flight in San Francisco.  Once I went into the international part of the airport, a completely different section, and went to my terminal, saw how big it was, and saw the size of the plane, it started to kick in.  When I arrived in Sydney, it was weird because I didn't know where to go.  Once I figured it out and got to the hostel, I met other travelers (all from Europe).  The next day, I went to orientation and almost every other traveller in this program was from Canada.  In general, I haven't met many people from the US here.  Most travelers are from Europe or Asia.  Going to orientation was great though because it provided a support network and sort of home away from home.

On first look, Sydney is a nice city.  In the first couple days, I've seen maybe 3 black people but a lot of Asians which was a pleasant surprise.  The Sydney Central YHA hostel is actually near Chinatown in Sydney.  I went to the mall and all places in the food court except one were of an Asian cuisine.  A cool thing I saw at the mall was a few table tennis exhibition matches.

I have limited internet access and I'm having issues uploading pictures but hopefully there'll be some soon.