Norfolk Island
Currently in the South Pacific, on a small island called Norfolk Island. The surf has been great and the people have been very friendly.
I’ll write more about it later, the internet is not so great.
Delayed again.
So this is day three in New Zealand. The airline did it again. I am starting to really dislike the people at Air New Zealand. (Nice split infinitive, eh?) This time it had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the fact that they are clowns.
I have flown on some of the worst airlines in the world, but Air New Zeland takes the cake. The employees are rude and not very bright and the planes themselves are held together with duct tape. The seats are wafer thin in order to cram as many people as possible on board. I don’t mean to whinge, but if you are going to New Zealand, fly someone else.
New Zealand
The brief stopover in New Zealand, which was supposed to be 12 hours, on the way to Norfolk Island, has become a bit more. The weather in Norfolk Island has apparently been horrendous. So I am stuck here until tomorrow. Then I am flying out… or trying to again.
Had a good day walking around Auckland. It is definitely very Asian in flavor, with a good number of Pacific Islanders as well. I like it and am excited to come back here in 2 weeks.
Leaving Australia.
I am sitting in the airport in Sydney waiting for the flight out to Auckland,
followed the following day with a flight to Norfolk Island. Australia was
nice. It was good to be back in a modern, wealthy country for a while. But
expensive. (And I still can’t get over how the old men pull their socks up to
their knees.)
Hopefully, there will be good waves in Norfolk Island; after that, I’ll be in
New Zealand for an undertermined period of time.
I might look for a job in New Zealand.
Something involving snowboarding would be best.
Today I went to Tropical Fruit World. It was still a working avocado farm, but the owner switched crops when the price for avocados collapsed. He started planting various other tropical crops to try and make money, and then people asked for tours of the farm to see and taste the weird fruit he was growing. At some point a light bulb must have gone off, because now it is $20 (Australian) to go into the farm and take a tour. A kangaroo / emu petting zoo, boat trips, a train trip, etc all are part of the package now. There are over 500 different varieties of fruit. It was awesome!
I ate heaps of fruit, and thanks to SARS, had almost the entire place to myself.
The kangaroos are rather bizarre. I still can’t imagine what genetic gumbo came up with animals that hop. But it must work for them. Emus are bossy.
The best fruit was the Rollinia (so good you want to roll in it Rollinia deliciosa). The Rollinia tastes like lemon meringue pie. Second was the Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum . Once you eat the miracle fruit, it somehow shuts down the
taste buds on your tongue, blocking out the flavors for everything but sweet! Sounds crazy and it is. The fruit guy gave me a green lemon to taste before the Miracle Fruit and then another one to eat after it.
The Lemon turned sweet, in fact, it was delicious.
So it was a cool day at the Farm. The surf was small, and tomorrow night I go back to Sydney. Then next day Auckland, the following day, Norfolk Island for 2 weeks.
Macro-Economics and Mountain Climbing.
I was thinking today, that the time of relative obscurity of Australia might be coming to a close. Bill Bryson makes it a point in “Down Under” to talk about how little press the country receives. I think this will be changing fast. It has the most untapped resources of any developed country (viz. mining). There are huge amounts of mining that can be done and most of the interior of the country is empty. There is a lot of potential. The recent run-up of the Australian dollar against the world’s currencies, including a multi-year high against the U.S. dollar is probably a clue as to the potential that Australia has. The trade (which hasn’t been announced yet, but is probably forthcoming) with regard to Australia’s role in the War To Kill Saddam will be a Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the United States. This will bolster the economies of both countries, although, it will provide more raw materials for American goods. Much the same way that Canada was treated by NAFTA. However, Australia is most likely going to look at the deal as increasing the market for Australian goods, as opposed to a siphon for their raw goods.
Regardless, this alliance will help the Australian economy. It will also eliminate some of the obscurity of Australia and create further strange bedfellows between the U.S and Australia.
Yesterday, I climbed Mt. Warning — the largest caldera from a shield volcano in the Southern Hemisphere — it is a very old mountain and previously was very big. Although the climb through the rain forest was more interesting than the climb to the summit. It was beautiful and very diverse. There were kangaroos and other animals in abundance and the trees were enormous. Did a little bit of hitchhiking here which went pretty well. People are very friendly and trusting here.
The surf is picking up.
Yesterday I went to Surfer’s Paradise. It really is anything but that. The surf was bigger than Kirra is, but it is just a choppy beach break and really mixed up.
(There are shots of the Kirra, Snapper Rock, Coolangatta, Greenmount super-wave, below, on May 07.)
Nothing like the perfection of the Coolangatta breaks. It is a bit strange though, because it seems like Florida, just upside down. For example driving North from Tweed Heads, the bus went through Palm Beach, then Miami Beach. (?) The people are mostly elderly. There are actually good waves, unlike Florida. But it is warm, geriatric and modeled on Miami Beach. The entire Gold Coast, aside from where I am, seems to be the same. It was definitely the right call to stay here, out of the neo-hipness of Byron and the Hard Rock Cafe backpacker glitz of Surfer’s Paradise. I actually am looking at property in Tweed Heads as an investment. Everyone seems to agree that it isn’t Surfer’s Paradise… yet… and they are hoping it will stay small town Australia, but I think that the American businesses of Surfer’s will creep down here eventually. Especially since the waves here make this the real “Surfer’s Paradise”.
The surf is dropping a bit. Got a couple of good small waves yesterday, but the weekend crowds should kill any chance of waves here over the weekend.
I actually wound up getting a library card here for Tweed Heads, because there was a one-time fee of $25 and the Internet was free.
This was a pretty good deal, as the Internet here is insanely expensive. Something around $7 per hour. Plus, now I can check out some books.
Tweed Heads.
Drove quickly through Byron, the waves there were not very good and there was a faux-hippy patchouli odor that lingered in the town. It kind of reminded me of Taos, New Mexico. Hippies that are more like weekend-types, and think it is a statement to not bathe.
So I continued up the coast to Tweed Heads / Coolangatta.
This spot is much better.
There is a bunch of breaks here called Snapper Rocks, Rainbow, Greenmount, Coolangatta and the legendary Kirra. You jump out by Snapper Rocks and the current pulls you by all of the spots. Greenmount has been the best lately, but you can pick off a few waves from each spot every drift.
It has been firing and I caught one of the best waves of my life yesterday. An incredible tube that just kept going and going. I kept thinking it was going to section on me, or close out, but it was just perfect. Like a machine. Perfection. A couple feet overhead and pumping.
Apparently there used to be points here, but they pumped sand out of the river and now, if it was big enough, and a couple of days it has been, you could ride one wave from Snapper to past Kirra, which has to be over a mile.
Here are some pictures of the super-break. Aka SuperBank! 
(Bear in mind these were taken from Greenmount and start 1/2 a mile up the beach and go past where they were taken for another 3/4 mile or more.)
Going to stay here about a week and then decide where to go next.
The waves are 10xs better than Byron and everything costs about a third as much.
I am straddling the border between New South Wales and Queensland.
North or South. I’m not sure yet. Fly out of Sydney on the 17th so probably south.
Moving on up…
I am moving up the coast, looking for warmer water and better surf. I dragged the rain up here with me, though.
But it is nice to be out of the city for a bit.
Saw kangaroos on the side of the road this morning. Which was very very cool. The bus driver told me that he had seen a kangaroo go into someone’s car, through the windshield, when it had been hit. (Apparently, they are not very road-saavy.) Then the ‘roo tore the roof off the car trying to get out. When it finally did, it actually jumped clear of the car, into a power line and set itself on fire.
The car was a Ford Falcon.
The bus had a big grill on it to stop that type of thing from happening.