Tag Archives: australia

The Great Ocean Road Trip Weekend

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I almost don’t know what to write about I’ve had such a busy few weeks! My roommate’s boyfriend has been visiting for about a month now so between juggling exploring with him, studying, and doing other things it has been busy! My own friend came and stayed with us for about a week as well! I haven’t seen her in almost a year so that was really exciting! Our little apartment was quite the full house for a bit! But last weekend was one the the biggest highlights I’ve had in Australia to date.

After studying pretty hard for a couple of weeks and writing 2 exams on the Friday our brains were dead and in huge need of a mental break! Thus we kicked off our weekend by going out for supper and heading out to a footy game! Footy is a sport unique to Australia (I think… correct me if I’m wrong) and it seems to me to be a bit of a cross between football and rugby. I loved sitting in the huge MCG stadium and cheering for a team I just learned about and taking in all the sights and sounds. I was highly entertained by the fact that in Melbourne you can get meat pies at sports games (instead of hot dogs and hamburgers) and single glasses of wine and cider (So classy, Australia). I like to think I did a pretty good job of trying to memorize all the rules of footy. After that we went into the CBD (central business district aka downtown) for some late night snacks and exploring!

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Footy game at MCG stadium

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This is the part of the weekend I really loved: The 4 Canadians (Me, Jessica (the roommate), her boyfriend, and my friend) decided to road trip the Great Ocean Road. It is the world’s largest war memorial and FULL of amazing coastal sights! The Great Ocean Road is one of the main tourist attractions in Victoria and stretches for about 245km. It can also be backpacked or camped—plans for the future!

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We rented a car and left on Saturday morning! First stop was Bell’s Beach where the famous Rip curl surfing competitions are held. The waves were huge and despite the rain and the wind there was still a lot of surfers out in the water! I’ve actually never seen so many surfers before in my life so I found it really fun to stand there and watch them bobbing around in the water before popping up and riding the waves.

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Apparently it is a very Australian thing to eat fish n chips on the beach… so we had great intentions at lunch time. However, autumn in Melbourne had alternative ideas and we got rained out. We enjoyed our fish n chips in a nearby park in Anglesea whilst watching a kangaroo! There was also a quirky sulpher crested cockatoo that found and ate a whole donut as his lunch!

We made quite a few stops along the road to check out the changing coast line– full of blue water, crashing waves, tall
cliffs, rainforest, and wind. LOTS of wind.


One of the major site seeing stops is near Port Campbell at the 12 Apostles. They are these incredibly impressive rock formations standing tall out in the surf. The light colored sandstone rock looks amazing as the blue waves crash around them. We took our time meandering down the road so by the time we reached the 12 Apostles the sun was going down. Unfortunately the wind and the rain was pretty bad at this time of the day so our group selfie left some beauty to be desired…. but the 12 Apostles looked amazing:

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We warmed up from the rain in our hotel and at a local cafe bar… even trying some shucked oysters! #yum

The next day we set off the finish our drive to our last planned stop: Port Fairy. I had heard about a walk to a lighthouse where we might be able to see some rock wallabies! And we were in luck, not only did we see a walleby-we saw 3! As well as a seal! The lighthouse was beautiful as well 🙂

We stopped at a cool cafe for lunch and to warm up before making the long drive home! We still got out and looked at a lot of the sites we had missed, including a whale nursery (we were a bit early in the season… need to come back in a month or so to catch some Southern Right whale sightings) and Cheeseworld (where we obviously bought cheese and sampled their ‘world famous’ milkshakes!). One thing we all wanted to do was a quick rainforest hike, so we took advantage of a momentary break in the wind and the rain to go for a quick hike into the forest to check out Triplet Falls! Apparently there are supposed to be platypus in the creek at the bottom—but we didn’t see any!

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By the time we finally made it back into the city it was dark out, but since our weekend wasn’t full enough we decided to head down to Lygon Street. Lygon is in the suburb of Carlton which is a very Italian district. The street is always bustling and full of good food and amazing gelato. It was my friends last night in town so we wandered around Lygon before heading back to our apartment to crash!

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New Digs!

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Easter weekend is finally here! With that, I’m on my autumn break, so I have a bit of time to catch up online. Since I don’t have my best friends or my family here for the holidays I decided to write a post with them in mind. Knowing that my parents and my grandmas are quite curious about where I’m living I decided to fill you in on my apartment….

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Here is the hallway to our front door. On the left you can see the doors into the bedrooms and the bathroom. We are on the 3rd floor of our apartment building.

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This is our kitchen, floor to ceiling window walls lead out to the balcony. We have a small oven with a couple of burners and an apartment sized fridge. Yes, that is my cow cup on the table. No way I was leaving Canada without that! I must drink my daily 6 cups of tea somehow.

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The bathroom (yes, I did clean all the rooms before I took these pictures haha). Thank you to everyone who has sent me videos of massive Australian spiders crawling out of toilets, that is now what I think of every time I go in here!

Here is my bedroom, I got the bigger bedroom/closet but the smaller bed. I typically haven’t liked studying in the same place that I sleep, but so far it is working out okay. The decorations on my wall are all pictures of my friends at home 🙂 There’s a little Tim/Wendys, some selfies, some Cano Palma, some animals, a few travel pics, and a lot of great memories!!

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Now this is where the magic happens! My desk, all the studying and the learning! I’m loving my classes and the learning material. Of course I’m excited for more of the practical and hands on work that I will be doing in my final years. But for now, it still feels like a dream every time I look up and think “I’m going to be a doctor.” The classes have not been too hard yet, we have spent quite a lot of time studying the digestive system. I’ve seen some really cool digestive tracts, including a kangaroo! IMG_0126

Lastly, our balcony is one of my favourite spots! It allows us to crack a window and let in fresh air, and on nice days we can sit on our outdoor couch and soak up the sun! Here is our view! It is even more spectacular at night when all the city lights are on and the ferris wheel and Bolte bridge are changing colors!

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That’s it for today! Happy Easter everyone, wish you were here!

Settling in to school

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While it was all fun and games in my last post about my animal handling practicums… this week was the first week of real vet school. I started lectures!

Some of the lectures this week focused on teeth and dentition. I haven’t had a lot of previous classes on this subject and therefore found it quite interesting. At home I work in small animal clinic where we do a lot of dental surgeries. Having the background knowledge about animal teeth will be super beneficial when I go back to work. I can’t say that I find dental consults, cases, and surgeries the most interesting part of veterinary medicine but they are quite common!

Other classes covered the skull and associated bones and muscles; we also spent time looking at microscope slides and identifying cells. My favorite parts of the week were when we got to practice some hands on skills with greyhounds and sheep and do a dissection of a dog leg.

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The biggest bonus I have discovered thus far is that Hills (a major pet food company) provides all the vet students with free tea and coffee in our building!! If nothing else, I picked the best school solely for this reason alone 🙂

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Studying in the vet student kitchen area

By this point I have discovered that most things in Australia are ridiculously expensive (except phone plans!). As an attempt to save money and be more active I’ve bought a bike and plan to bike everywhere instead of taking the tram/train/bus. Hopefully I can keep up with this into the Australian winter season (I hear it rains a lot)… I’ll get back to you on that.

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Here I am (squinting in the sun) with my new bike on the driveway up to the vet building.

Cheers!

“I’m new here”

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Hello from Australia!!

I arrived in Melbourne almost a week and a half ago. We are staying in an apartment hotel close to the university and have spent the majority of our time here researching properties and completing apartment inspections. In the evenings we’ve done a bit of exploring — strolling down Lygon Street (similar to whyte ave) and sampling gelato from some of the many stores. The Yarra river was busy and looked gorgeous under a sunset another night! Carlton (the suburb we are currently in) is heavily influenced by Italians so its a foodies heaven!

Jessica and I have spent a lot of time getting lost, explaining our accent, and asking questions —-how long until “I’m new here” is no longer a valid excuse?? Haha

Today, after some very stressful searching, we finally selected an apartment and will hopefully move in in a couple of days!! We should be able to bike or tram to school; and the area seems lovely with lots of shops and a nearby park! Tomorrow there is a well deserved trip to the beach planned and then adventures at Queen Victoria Market in the evening with other vet students!!