We’re Back….! Chillin in Down Unda

Week 28

Day 190

Perth Australia

31.9522° S, 115.8589° E

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been back in Australia for almost a month, but that’s how long it’s been and that’s how long it’s taken me to catch the blog up with our travels.

We landed back in Sydney on February 5th after a night of flying from Bali.

Touching down at 9am we had a whole day ahead of us to make the trip from the airport through the city to the Circular Quay to catch the ferry to Manly.

The Barton Family was nice enough to let us crash again and rest up for what would be a whirlwind of a week of events.

I’m sure most of you figured out via Facebook or Instagram that Tom Keynoted the last RYPL Game Changers Conference hosted in Sydney along side with Joe Brachocki and Stacey Brown.

From the run through Friday morning, to the Conference on Saturday followed by a mastermind meetup of LiveYourLegend Sydney, through the more intimate meetups going on throughout the week until we flew out to Perth, our time in Sydney flew by.

While really busy, I can’t really complain about all the activities we had because everything was a blast!

The Conference was held in the PowerHouse Museum in Sydney.

Followed by the Live Your Legend Sydney meetup at Quarrymans Hotel, home to tasty eats and frosty craft brew!

Sunday we allowed the “adults” to continue their game changing conversations while I mucked around with the kids at the beach!

Tuesday we wrapped up the RYPL event with work at The Hub, a co-working space in Darlinghurst followed by more Entrepreneur Conversations over tasty brew in Newtown.

While there was a lot going on, our time in Sydney wasn’t all work.  We also squeezed in some site seeing heading out early Tuesday morning to check out the Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains were on my bucket list of Australian attractions that I had wanted to see, but I had reluctantly given up hope of seeing them as they are a couple hours outside of Sydney and I knew we would be super busy.

As has happened many times on this trip, the universe intervened not only providing us with wonderful hosts Kim and Mick who offered up their house for us, but Mick and Kim also happen to live at the base of the Blue Mountains making the trip an easy start to one of our mornings!

Thank you again so much Mick and Kim for your hospitality!

In between all the RYPL fun, I did manage to escape to meet up with a fellow fall ’12 Bikram Yoga TT, Emma at her studio at Sutherland Shire to take and teach a class!

We flew out early on the 12th to head to Perth, the last stop in Australia before we head to South Africa.

Once again Tom and I were blessed by our travel guardian angel.

Seattle friend Lauren, put me in touch with her sailing friends who now live in Perth.  Without meeting us, the very generous Bruce family offered to host Tom and I between their apartment in Perth City and their Sail boat which they moor in Fremantle.

As we arrived in Perth on the very morning that the Perth Now printed a story declaring Perth the most expensive city in the world now surpassing Hong Kong and Sydney for the #1 spot we were incredibly grateful for a place to stay, but staying with the Bruces truly turned out to be a home away from home.

We had blast hopping into family life making dinners together during the week and relaxing on the weekends, spending time sailing out to Rotto (Rottnest Island).

A couple times things got lost in translation, but I can say that I’m slowly but surely starting to pick up the Australian Language.

A couple of my favorite phrases include:

Brekkie: Breakfast

Maccas: McDonalds

A cooked chook:  Cooked Chicken

Lollie:  Any sort of sweet

Mexican : a person from south of the New South Wales border

Shout : turn to buy the round of drinks

arvo – afternoon

It can be hard to catch on at first, but when in doubt drop any R’s and add an ie to the end of the word and your fine.

But some of the most important language is in regards to ordering a beer as this can be a difficult task.  Here is a quick brush up from All Down Under.

Beer
Ginger Beer	mildly alcoholic drink made from fermenting a mixture of ginger and syrup
Black and Tan	drink made with beer and stout
VB	Victoria Bitter, a brand of beer
A Green One	Victoria Bitter, a brand of beer
XXXX	famous Queensland brand of beer, pronounced “4x” NOT “x x x x”.
Amber Fluid	beer
Brownie	bottle of beer
Slab	carton of 24 cans (tinnies) or stubbies of beer
Throw Down	small bottle of beer that you can throw down (drink) quickly
Tinny	can of beer (or an aluminium boat)
Schooie, Schooey	a schooner of beer. Not to be confused with schoolie which is a holidaying school student after completing final year exams.
Darwin Stubby	famous Northern Territory bottle of beer (1.25 litre)
Longneck	bottle of beer in South Australia (750 ml.)
Middy	medium sized glass of beer (about 266ml or 9 oz., varies depending on state)
Pot	medium sized bottle of beer in Victoria and Queensland (about 285ml, varies depending on state)
Schooner	large glass of beer (about 443ml or 15 oz., varies depending on state)
Stubby	small short-necked bottle of beer (about 375ml or 12 oz., varies depending on state)
Tallie	very large bottle of beer (about 750ml or 24 oz.)

 

Travelers Tip:  As you can see there is more than one way to order a beer and if you simple order a beer there is a good chance you’ll end up with a throw down.

Australia is home to some crazy wildlife.  Where we in the states grow up seeing deer and seagulls, Aussies grow up seeing kangaroos, koalas, and rainbow lorikeets on the regular.

We saw a lot of Aussie creatures on our first trip up the east coast of Oz, but it wasn’t until we sailed out to Rotto that I saw my first Quokka.

Taking a picture of the weird little creature under a table, a little girl came up to me and proudly announced it was the first Quokka she’d ever seen.

I told it was my first as well.

She looked at me surprised and said, “Well I’m only 4!”

I told her, “Wow you’re really lucky I’m 28!”

“That’s a LONG time to wait to see a Quokka!” was her reply.

She was right, 28 years is a long time to wait; but it was worth the wait as our sail to Rotto was gorgeous!

Here is the photo tour:

 

 

 

Rotto was a pretty amazing place and we feel so lucky the Bruce’s shared their special spot with us as well as sharing their lives with us for 3 weeks!  Thank you so much for your hospitality!  We hope to one day repay it when we settle down and have a home!

In addition to sailing to Rotto, the other highlight of our time in Perth was being able to kick back and relax, catch up on life, and eat healthy meals before the travel starts up again.

Resting up and catching up on life, means Tom had a lot of time to work on Insurgent Publishing and Tommorkes.com which was great as the past month had left him feeling a bit behind; while I had plenty of time to teach a couple classes, do lots of yoga, and muck around all over Perth for my 365 day Scorpion Challenge.  Here are some of the best pics:

 

Tom and I head to South Africa tonight and squaring away the logistics for our arrival has a taken a little bit of time.  Luckily we’re set for our time in Johannesburg.

We’ve booked a hostel which sounds pretty cool as it’s an ex-mafia mansion.  One of the benefits of this hostel is their free airport pickup.  We’re trying to make Johannesburg as easy as possible until we can escape to Cape Town on Sunday as we hear it isn’t the friendliest place….but I’ll have more about that next week when we’ve seen it for ourselves.

On a side note, the whitening lotion I bought in Indonesia doesn’t seem to be working.  My skin keeps getting tanner and tanner in the Perth sun 🙂

FYI while I do buy sunscreen to keep myself whiter, I would never buy whitening lotion…those that know me know I’m apt to buy Jergens Natural Glow, but in Indonesia the only lotion available is whitening lotion.  Funny how Asians want to whiten their skin and Caucasians want to darken theirs.  I guess the grass is always greener!