Farewell Australia, Hola Argentina!

  Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Sunday, November 30, 2008

"Redback, funnelweb, blue ringed octopus,
Taipan, tiger snake, and a box jellyfish,
Stonefish... and the poison thing that lives in a shell, and spikes you when you pick it up...
Big shark, just waiting for you to go swimming at Bondi Beach...

Come to Australia
Your life is constantly under threat
Have you been bitten yet...
You might accidentally get killed,
Your blood is bound to be spilled..."


So goes a comic song here here in this land of deadly creatures.  (check out   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEeq5qGh8I      to see it performed... well worth it!) 

Look how huge it is compared to home!

But I've done alright... been here seven months and, while I've had often thrilling first-time encounters with roos, koalas, wombats, echidnas, kookaburras, emus, turtles, all manner of wondrous lizards, seen a couple of non-venomous snakes and averted my gaze from the odd spider's web, the only thing to come to any harm after my extended stay on this amazing land mass is my bank balance...

Melbourne in the sun!

  I had planned to be in Aus for about 5 weeks and the length of my overstay has decimated my travel fund. But it was worth it. I had an odd intuition as I was leaving Asia that I would end up spending more time than I had planned here and I'm glad I was right. It was great to catch up with friends, to meet so many lovely people through them and through Servas, and to get to see the phenomenal geography of the centre, north and northwest, especially, not to mention skiing, ballooning and skydiving for the first time.

Melbourne tram

At Flinders Street Station, Melbourne

I'm quite sad to be leaving a place where I feel so at home, but if luck goes my way, and naturally I am assuming it will, I will be back in a year to live and work for a while. But right now I am bidding a fond farewell to Aus and am very excited to be returning to South America to catch up on La Vida Latina after too long a gap. It's 6 ½ years since I last drank cerveja with Sergio and Dani in Brasil and it's more than twelve years since I finished my stint of working in Colombia. Ai ai ai!!! I can't wait to be in the thick of all that Latin music, volatility and drama again...