Achievement Unlocked: Archival Immortality

You may have read my post about going to the King of Tattoo convention in Tokyo last month. It was hosted by Tattoo Burst magazine, and the issue covering the con is out now.

I was in the pinup contest, and they put my picture in the magazine!

IMMORTALITY ACHIEVED!

...archived along with the hundreds of other faces and tattoos in the history of this magazine, written in a language I can't read. 

It's a start.  (^-^)

Adventures in Oz: Sydney (Part 6 of 6)

Link to Part 1: Cairns
Link to Part 2: Great Barrier Reef
Link to Part 3: Port Douglas
Link to Part 4: Australia Zoo
Link to Part 5: Tamborine Mountain and Surfer's Paradise

Between Surfer's Paradise and Sydney we stopped to visit some friends of the family. They brought us to visit a national park area called the Blue Hole (not sure why it's called that). It's one of those areas that has a lot of depth in the vista (and a tall waterfall), but pictures don't quite capture it.

There may also be a small population of wild easels.

Also a small population of McDirties, known to hang out around lookout points.

We had a great time and we hope to see them again sometime, but there was more driving to be done.

This camper van worked out really well for us. Here I am eating breakfast at the table. Cairns was nice and tropical, tee-shirt weather all the time. By the time we got to Sydney the climate had worked its way into early spring, complete with all the rain and cold. Hmph.

We actually had a pretty good setup. During the day this area was bench seats and a table (and our luggage), at night everything folded down into a bed. Opening the back door revealed a small kitchen area complete with sink, gas burner, refrigerator/freezer, storage for pots and pans (included in the rental), and a rack for the glasses and coffee mugs.

We saw a fair amount of other camper vans on the road, but the company we went with was the most popular. We'd choose them again.



Lots of roads cut straight into rock around Sydney. How long must that have taken?

Sydney is much more populated than everything else we've seen except the Brisbane/Gold Coast area. Definitely more concentrated.

We walked around downtown for a while. It's a nice little city (compared to Tokyo, most cities will probably feel small to us), although the general vibe is much more angry than the rest of Australia that we saw. I even saw a woman eating a soft serve ice cream cone that looked furious. You're not allowed to be angry when you have an ice cream cone! It's against the rules!

We came across a statue of a boar in front of the Sydney hospital with a sign explaining that it's good luck to rub the snout.

Although, judging from the polished-looking areas, apparently the snout isn't the only thing that's good luck.

I only touched the snout. I consider myself lucky enough.

There's a very nice park in the middle of the city, too.

The fountain is surrounded by a few characters from Greek mythology, and some turtles spouting what I feel is an unfairly forcible stream of water. It makes it look like they've had a really rough night of drinking.

Now you won't be able to un-see that idea. You're welcome.

Husband and I agreed that this is an unusually well-designed minotaur.

I've always felt bad for the minotaur. He got the short end of the stick all around.

Aussies have such fantastic names for locations.

But perhaps somewhat questionable fashion sense.

All in all, a nice city to visit.

Driving to the airport, we saw this poster. I have no explanation.

Have you seen this shirtless man? You have now!

Fun at the airport!
After dropping off the camper van, we got a taxi to the airport, where we were to spend the next 17 hours. Well, almost. Eventually we discovered that the terminal closes between 11pm and 4am, so we had to drag our luggage around the city until we found a 24-hour fast food restaurant to camp out in. This wasn't easy, because every town and city we had been in or through closed down at 6pm. Shopping malls, department stores, hardware outlets. Sydney wasn't really any different, even the bars closed at 11.

Having been up all night, when 4am rolled around and we could drag our luggage back to the airport and finally check in for our flight, things started to be funnier.

For example, the destination "Wagga Wagga."

I was also bored enough to analyze the designs on the coins. What is this? Sports with Australian wildlife!

Miniature emu racing, pole vault and leapfrog with kangaroos, swimming with giant platypuses, and apparently teasing an ibis with a cat toy.

The ladies' room also cracked me up. There are usually dispensers in public restrooms, but they don't usually consist of 90% cosmetics.

Near the check-in counters, there is a vending machine that sells babies.

For breakfast, I had a smiling pie.

Eventually we were able to check in, get on the flight, and get home without incident. It was a great trip and we'd love to go back. There are a couple of places I wouldn't mind spending more time, and we might do a trip from Sydney to Melbourne.

Someday.

Adventures in Oz: Tambourine Mountain and Surfer's Paradise (Part 5 of 6)

Link to Part 1: Cairns
Link to Part 2: Great Barrier Reef
Link to Part 3: Port Douglas
Link to Part 4: Australia Zoo


We open with more driving. We did a lot of driving.

This day's adventure was Tamborine Mountain, a weird mix of small venues sprinkled around a mountain. Wineries, cafes, resorts, boutique/antique shops, rainforest hiking, ATV and horseback riding, laser tag, art galleries, and a glow worm cave.

The main thing I wanted to do was see the Skywalk.

Advertised as a 30-meter high walkway, it wasn't quite as long as I expected, but it did lead us on a circular path through the treetops and through the rainforest at ground level.

I learned about strangler figs, a crazy cannibalistic plant that begins its life cycle in the canopy and grows toward the ground, latching on to a host tree for nutrients, eventually overgrowing and consuming it.

Strangler fig babies

Fully grown strangler fig, hollow on the inside where its host tree used to be

Rainforest vines are surreal

Vines tied out of the way of the walking path

Back in the Skywalk ticket office/cafe/gift shop, there was a tank of fish that look (to me) a lot like a little fish wearing a big fish costume.

For lunch we found a tiny, somewhat weather beaten pizzeria run by an older European woman. Across the street was this sweets shop. The sign got my attention...I'm pretty sure one of those things doesn't belong on that list.

It turns out that "spiders" are what we call "floats". A scoop of ice cream in a glass of soda. Why on earth they're called "spiders" is beyond me.


The glow worm cave was pretty cool. It's a man-made structure, created by the people that did the environments in the Australian Sea World, on the grounds of a winery.

Not only does the logo consist of a cartoon worm with a glowing butt giving a double thumbs-up...

 ...but the brochure, website, and video introduction to the cave all feature this poem:

I wish I was a glow-worm,
a glow-worm's never glum
'cos how can you be grumpy
when the sun shines out your bum!

Words to live by.


The staff has to catch insects every day to feed the glow worms (technically the larval stage of a very small fly), so they're out there with butterfly nets looking like a bunch of idiots, but all their hard work and maintenance is really paying off. They started a handful of years ago with a few hundred worms, painstakingly collected from private property with the owners' permission (it's illegal to take anything from the public parks). Today they have about 3,000 and are estimating that they can start reintroducing them to the wild in another two or three years. The inside of the cave is pitch black, dotted with blue glowing larva butts. I had a hard time reconciling how pretty it was with how creepy the damn things are. Not only are they tiny, very ugly things that catch their prey with strings of thread and liquid sticky, but they start out cannibalistic. They get their nutrition to start growing by eating each other. It makes sense – there isn't much else to eat in a cave – but bleck.

No cameras or phones were allowed to be on in the cave, but it wouldn't have photographed well anyway. It's really something you have to see in person to appreciate.

The cool part about this whole exhibit (other than the lack of sharp and slippery rocks and danger of unidentified bugs and debris falling in our upturned faces) is that we can see them during the day instead of trekking through the wilderness at night to see a natural cave. They've flipped the day/night cycle of these worms by turning the lights on at night and off during the day.

After the glow worm cave we made a brief stop in a group of stores to see Fairies on the Walk, which is a store that looks exactly like you're imagining it. It's the average four-year-old girl's dream come true. Everything is sparkly and glittery and pink and purple, wings, wands, and crystals everywhere. And there is a separate room where kids could have a fairy party, sitting on toadstools and sipping pretend tea. The woman who owns and operates the shop dresses to the nines. Glittery wings, sparkly face paint, and a fairy-tastic dress. She didn't seem crazy when we chatted with her, but I did cringe a little when I complimented her store and she said, "thank you fairy much."

We were told later (too far away to go back) that there is another woman in the area that dresses up like a piece of fudge.

It makes me think of the village in Hot Fuzz before they killed all the street performers.
(Crusty jugglers.)

We had a nice view driving away from the main areas of Tamborine Mountain:

And we drove for a zillion more hours.

There is an area just south of Brisbane called Surfer's Paradise. It's pretty touristy, but they do have a couple really awesome things that made us want to stop. One is a horror cabaret dinner theater experience called Dracula's that we couldn't get tickets to because the show doesn't happen on Sundays, the other is the haunted house associated with that show.

Of course there were no pictures inside the haunted house, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was well designed with some great attention to detail and a lot of fun. There were zombie meter maids, a shark attack (well, it jumped out at you and then laughed at you) and an entire floor devoted to being digested by the ex-prime minister.

They let me take pictures in the lobby, though.

That giant monster is animated. I was so fascinated by the design that it took me several minutes to realize it's holding a spider on a leash.

Also, there's a plastic vampire in the middle of the floor.

And I don't know what this is, but it adds atmosphere. That's a very stylish little skirt.

Hey, look! It's a hand on a leash!

We walked around a little, but we didn't do a lot of exploring because we were only there for a handful of hours before finding a place to do laundry and getting some sleep before getting up for more driving.

I'm almost done, I promise.

Link to Part 6: Sydney