Last Day in Australia!

So once again, I’m a bit limited by the amount of time that I can be online, so no pictures at the moment on the blog, but they are posted onto my flickr site. So my time in the land down under has finally come to an end. 2 months and 2 days since my departure from Atlanta, GA I have covered about 9000 miles westward from my home, and tomorrow, I will begin the first 1000 or so back. Tomorrow is particularly interesting because I will be traveling to a new countrty as well as seeing Catherine for the first time since June 9th. By this time, she is somewhere over the Pacific, and will be arriving in Auckland in approximately 7 hours from now…. Unfortunately for her, I won’t be arriving in Auckland until about 12 hours from now…. But we’ve made arrangements to meet up in the land of Kiwis so hopefully everything will work out just fine.

So as for my last day in Australia, I tried to make the most of it. I was up at a hostel-early 7:45am and getting a proper breakfast downstairs. My breakfast was again my multiple pieces of toast, but only one bowl of cereal as my rations (and cash) are running low. I spent the first 4 hours of my day doing a combination of running/walking to various parts of the city. I started off at the Olympic Park area where the current AFL and rugby teams play, then easily jogged my way up to the Kings Cross (nightclub district) area, got myself a Red Bull, and continued on my journey. I ended up next by the Navy Yards, then stumbled across the entrance to the Sydney Botanical Gardens, which were absolutely awesome. I saw some of the best views of the city there, and the park in itself is pretty great. My next goal was to figure out how to get onto the Harbour Bridge. About 30 minutes later, I managed to find the approach and ran my way across the bridge and back. After all of this, I was pretty wore out. I only brought a little cash and my camera for this journey, and now that it was nearing noon, I was pretty famished. So I ran/walked my way back to the hostel, and made myself a bowl of soup and some other little things for lunch. By 1:30, I was back on a walk, a little more properly dressed this time. I headed over to the Paddington Market to buy some souvenirs to take back with me, and then over to the Powerhouse Museum (and old powerhouse, kinda like in Brisbane), to check out a major design exhibition going on. The museum was actually very impressive and modern. It was a bit of a combination of everything, including art/design, engineering and sciences. It was pretty cool, I guess I forgot to mention earlier how easily engineering and design go hand in hand here in Australia. Back at UQ, there actually was an architecture/civil engineering collaborative design studio….. I am still debating if such a thing could ever occur in the states.

So tonight was a pretty slow night, I was again starving by dinnertime, so I ate almost the rest of my rations here at the hostel, but still was having an urge for some good old fashioned aussie chips (fries), I went down to the local woolies and spent my last paper bill on some hot chips and some milk to finish off my box of cereal back at the hostel. So now, I am down to my last $2.10 of Australian money, hopefully I won’t need any money tomorrow, but I am keeping my fingers crossed (I already bought a train ticket).

But in looking back, this summer in Australia has been nothing short of awesome. A paid vacation, an academic collboration, an international adventure, it’s really been all of these things. But the trip isn’t over quite yet, so I have another 12 days or so to look forward to, and I hope to make the most of those still!