Oddities from Oz, 2nd edition

8. Ash and I had differing views about the best way to carry our stuff from place to place. I thought it would be best to load my suitcase that didn't have wheels onto her suitcase, that did have wheels, so that we could trade off the weight. That idea would have been perfect, had the my suitcase not slipped off the top of her suitcase every 10 feet as we walk through various towns along the coast. The differences came up when I kept insisting that this system would work if Ash would just walk a little slower and took inclines at a direct 90 degree angle. Ash didn't think it would work and told me she would carry both my suitcase and her suitcase, but separately. Of course, I would have none of that, and it all came to a head in Cairns, our last day of backpacking and we're arguing in front of the Budget Car Rental about how to get our bags to the nearest bar for our last beer of the trip....

9. More about the bags....we packed and repacked our bags constantly. Probably every other day, we were repacking our bags in some kind of embarassing scenario: in the park, at the lagoon in Airlie Beach, outside the Budget Car rental in Cairns, on the ferry toward Syndey, at the bus stop at Byron Bay...

10. Every beach town in Australia has a street name "The Esplandade."

11. The Wicked tour company rents out vans to backpackers and they are everywhere along the Gold & Sunshine coast. Each van has a unique paint job, with some kind of dirty joke regarding sex

12. Raisons are called sultanas

13. Alcohol is really expensive in Australia, especially when you go out to a bar or to eat in a restaurant. Therefore, they've instated a "BYO" system in most restaurants, where you can bring in your own bottle of wine that you buy cheaper at a bottle shop. Generally the restaurant will charge a corking fee of $2.50 per bottle, which is way less expensive than a $7.00 glass of wine.