A Queens Land

The last two weeks have been nonstop work. For the first time during this whole trip I actually have felt that I am in college. It is almost over though, I just have to finish my final research paper and then I will be free of homework for a while.

We have been in Brisbane for a month and my time with Hayley (my host mum, well me and Melanie say that Hayley is our MUM, because that’s how they say it here. Our real mothers at home are our MOM’s) was fantastic. For the next week we are on spring break. We are given a stipend and we have to figure out our own travel and we can go anywhere we want.

I am on my way to Byron Bay, a small hippy beach town that is about two hours south of Brisbane. I think that it is going to feel like we are back in Seattle/Portland because of all the hippys. Its going to be great. Some of us are staying at this hostile called the Arts Factory and we are going to be sleeping in these big teepees. Sadly we won’t be putting them up ourselves (Ali and Rianna).

After a few days in Byron Bay we will take a long bus/train ride way up the coast to a small town called Gladstone where we will meet back up with the rest of the group. From there we will get on a catamaran to Heron Island to do some marine biology and snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef! I have been told that you can walk around the whole island on the beach in just 20 minuets.

Also some of you will be happy to know that there are Passover plans in the works. So many of us are Jewish that we are going to make our own Seder. It will be one of the very last days of the program and we will be in the middle of a forest in the Glasshouse Mountains I think. I have encountered so little Judaism here; I think that it would have been hard to find a Seder to go to. I was told that there is only one conservative synagogue in the whole country and it is in Melbourne. The lack of Jews in this country stems from the post world war two period when the government excluded Jews from immigrating after the Holocaust. When Australia became a country in 1901 the government initiated the White Australia Policy, which basically meant that nobody who wasn’t European, or white could immigrate here. So the lack of Jewish people sort of comes as a result of that policy. The White Australia Policy did not end until 1973 and even today the government is sort of strange with their approach to multiculturalism.