Trips To Australia
The Possums 2007 Team Leader report
by Emma Trainor
Travelling there
After meeting at Cardiff but station, all the possums were anxious but excited about the trip ahead. The coach journey felt long and when we got to Heathrow we felt like we’d been travelling all day, but we had a marathon journey still ahead of us.
After meeting up with the English crew at Heathrow, we checked in. This went quite smoothly, Etihad were pretty helpful, there were some problems with the e-tickets not being linked. We weren’t sure what this meant - but they opened up desks just for us and it didn’t take too long.
The flights there were great - Etihad were very helpful and attentive. And after a bit of juggling around most people ended up sitting with someone they knew or had met that day. Team Leaders were treated with a glass of Champagne.
The journey to Abu Dhabi felt surprising short, and on arriving you could feel the excitement building. The airport was fascinating - a tiled air balloon! We had a taste of their culture through their different dress and the products in the shops.
We left AD and ‘enjoyed’ a further 14 hours in the air to Sydney. An interesting landing to say the least! We had to circle to wait for the residential restrictions on landing, and then when we were ready to land, we were stopped because of a lack of fire rescue teams on standby! This made everyone tense up, but we landed safely in the end.
We all got through immigration smoothly - one chap was really helpful and helped us get through quickly.
We met the bus driver at the airport .He was a friendly guy which was a great introduction to the people of Australia. And so a bunch of sleepy young Brits made their way to Newcastle.
Newcastle
We arrived at Newcastle and it was a beautiful day. The youth hostel was fantastic with helpful staff and a first class lounge. After a quick freshen up, we went to the beach - and some braved the Pacific namely James, Hannah, Sophie and Robyn. Others were happy just to watch! The first night we ate out with Sarah, but unfortunately for most of us that first night was a complete blur!
Our days in Newcastle were spent sleeping, eating (when our stomachs got used to the time difference that is!), playing on the beach and playing games in the Youth Hostel. The beaches were fantastic and we made the most of them. We borrowed a giant tennis ball from the youth hostel and used it for various games including volley ball, night-time volley ball (didn’t last long!), beach football and the ‘throwing a ball at people’s heads when they’re not looking game!
We witnessed an amazing storm out on the Pacific Ocean from the beach one night - all the coal tankers were lit up by forked lightening!
The team leaders bought Articulate board game and this gave us all hours of amusement. Rachel was particularly fond of this game!
We managed to use public transport to get us to Blackbutt Wildlife Reserve on Saturday. We had close encounters with Kookaburras when eating lunch and for $2 stroked a Koala! Here we saw our first Kangaroos, Black Swan, and Wombats.
On Sunday we were picked up early by and taken in an old style bus to the Hunter Valley. Again we had a brilliant bus driver with great Aussie humour. He let us plug in our ipods and we were all treated to Gavin’s bizarre taste in music!
The Hunter Valley tour was great fun. It was good to see some countryside and we even saw kangaroos in the wild and some sadly squashed on the roads. The wine tasting was great for those who could legally taste it...as the team leaders and James stumbled back on to the bus!
That night the same hard-core bunch stayed up late and the team leaders were once again dragged (kicking and screaming obviously) back down to Newcastle beach to be slaughtered at football by Rachel and Sarah.
Conservation Work
Monday was an early start and the team leaders lead by example by sleeping in! We were met by John and Nicky our conservation leaders and we spilt into two groups and travelled in land-rovers to our base for the next 5-days.
We were welcomed to Walkabout Park by Nick the Park Manager who gave a tour of the park and an introduction to the work that we will be doing. He told us bout the dangers of the various animals that we might encounter and at this point a wolf spider made an appearance on the rock we were all sat on, talk about good timing. Did you know there are no poisonous spiders in Australia? (just venomous ones!)
We didn’t actually do any conservation work on this first day, but we had plenty of time to get to know the locals. Memorable characters include Sarah’s new nest friend Ernie the emu - who took a particular fancy to Emma P’s lunch, Ugg the Kangaroo, scribbley gum trees and the cutest of all, the baby emus.
Late afternoon we were taken to our accommodation. The lodges were more basic than the Newcastle Youth Hostel - but everyone seemed fairly happy, if not a bit spider phobic, as most rooms had webs or spiders lurking somewhere.
The cooking facilities were great. A really successful barbie on the first night (cheers James!) and a taste of kangaroo (even some brave veggies tried it) set off 5 nights of great food - well done team! Particular thanks to Emma P, Emma B, Sophie D and Stacey for a couple of superb chocolate cakes!
Our conservation work was really rewarding in the end. On the last day we had a tour of all the work achieved, this included: building compost bins for kangaroo pooh, scraping off moss to allow new grass to grow, fencing, checking the boundary fence, making sand piles in the dingo enclosure, pulling a weed called Whiskey grass and the one I think we should be most proud of, breaking rusty vehicles ready to be taken for recycling/landfill. A visit to a local waterfall finished off a week of hard work. Gavin entertained us (as always) with a spectacular fall down some steps here. I’m surprised you didn’t hear his exclamations back in Wales.
Sydney
On Saturday morning we were taken to Sydney by Nicky and John who kindly took us on the scenic route. We saw a view point across to where Home and Away is filmed (more exciting for some than others!) and we saw some aboriginal art which was surprising clear and detailed.
Arriving into Sydney and over the Harbour Bridge we all looked forward to making the most of our last few days in Oz. The Central Youth Hostel was amazing. A pool, sauna, TV room, movie room, loads of internet connections and the rooms were spacious and clean (until we arrived!)
The first day in Sydney was spent exploring the city. Most people split up to look around. We all had a great time at the Tower restaurant - the food was pretty good, some was disappointed with some of the strange things on offer. But you couldn’t fault the views - spectacular.
The next day we had an extremely moving visit to the Jewish Museum. Hearing the harrowing true stories from our guide was hard enough, but when Eddie (another Holocaust survivor) told of his life and offered us all advice on how to live our lives, I don’t think any of us failed to be moved.
We then made our way to Bondi on the bus (this trip seemed rather superficial after the museum). Bondi was much more built-up than we had expected, but still you can’t deny the sea and sand look beautiful. A few tried surfing, some more successfully than others!
The bridge climb the next day was really well organised. They were really helpful and shuffled things around to suit us. We all looked very fetching in our all-in-one suits and matching hankies! The climb was great; awesome views and stunning photos to take home.
The Oz Jet boats was good fun, though some were disappointed that we didn’t get as wet as the dingoes! Free time in the afternoon meant shopping for some, but a few of us opted for the Sydney aquarium which was really worth while. We had close encounters with sharks and turtles.
That night we had pretty good meal of chicken snizchel at the YH, followed by the tiniest portion of gateaux!
The next morning we found our way to Westmead Children’s Hospital. We were shown around by a lovely lady who was a volunteer. A moving but inspiring tour left us with a positive view of how different hospitals can be.
We meet for photos at the Opera House that afternoon and posed in our Aussie hats! Most of us made an effort to take a ferry trip out to Manly that afternoon and were treated to a brilliant night time trip back across to Circular Quay.
The last night! We had loads of giggles at the Hard Rock Café. The Possums (some of us anyway!) walked to the Café and beat the taxis - good navigation thanks to Vince. We went back to the Youth Hostel feeling a bit deflated; we were having too much fun to go home! Some of us spent hours in the corridor putting off the inevitable - packing and the long trip home.
We had a messiest room competition and the whole team won - because the lot had pigsties for rooms!
Journey Home
After a panic about whether the coach for the airport was going to arrive, it turned up and took us to the airport in plenty of time. The journey home was long but most people got some sleep which helped pass the time. The stop in AD was pretty uncomfortable. There were no seats, just a tiled floor for nearly 3 hours. The journey to Heathrow was pretty good, except no-one had a working video screen so we had to find other ways to pass the time - mainly sleeping!
Leaving everyone at Heathrow was more emotional than I had ever anticipated and as tired as I was, I secretly wished that the earlier coach to Cardiff was full and we’d have to wait around for another 2 hours, but alas we took the earlier coaches home and cried...lots.