Finally, My Spark Notes of Australia are Here!
It is crazy it has been one year since I wrote my last blog post! Time truly flies, don’t ever take any moment for granted. In the past 365 days I moved to Australia for 6 months, moved back to The South Bay, BOUGHT A HOUSE in Big Bear CA to turn into an Airbnb, started Ayurvedic school, & cooked for + with some amazing people along the way. I am so blessed to have been able to experience what I have this past year. I am definitely at a turning point in my life where I am ready to figure out what I want to do & where I want to be, but I just don’t know what that is yet. So for now, I am going to share a few of my favorite moments from my time in Australia!
My Favorite Aussie Moments
If you wanted to know all the amazing experiences Riley & I had in Australia, you’d be reading for days and I am no book author. So here is the Spark notes of my time in Australia.
We truly saw, sipped, and conquered. The first 4 month were crazy busy with work for both of us. Riley worked his butt of at Thredbo Resort 5 days a week and I worked in an amazing kitchen at Birchwood cafe 4 to 5 days a week and sometimes 6 if I was lucky ;). The friendships we made through our jobs were one of our favorite parts of the whole experience of living there. Things were very similar to America except for the fact that Aussies shorten almost every word… avocado- avo + breakfast - brekkie, & some of their sayings were just so fun to say… keen, arvo, tinnies.. Oh yeah, and instead of seeing deer on the side of the road we saw kangaroo, wombats, and echidnas. If you don’t know what those are look them up!
After putting in the work during their 4 month winter, we were finally ready to hit the road. Straight South we went. We made our way down to Melbourne and had some amazing food and sightseeing before hopping on a car ferry to Tasmania. Yes, a car ferry. Little did we know we’d miss the car ferry home due to it being cancelled for a week straight because of record breaking rain in Tasmania. We were lucky enough to stick to our plan of flying to NZ for the week to meet my Dad!
After New Zealand, the rain had calmed down in Tasmania and we made it back to mainland in Australia. Our plan was to take the East coast of Australia stopping in different towns along the way until we reached Brisbane. We had some amazing stops along the way like Bermagui, Merimbula, Jervis Bay, Wollongong, Blue Mountains, Boomerang Beach, Diamond Bay, Crescent Head, Byron Bay, Gold Coast, and Brisbane. Once we got to Brisbane we packed up our stuff, shipped almost everything home, sold our car, and hopped on a plane to the Whitsunday Islands. We stayed on Hayman Island, the most magical place I have ever seen. Riley and I got to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef, which was unreal!
We managed to stay 2-3 nights in each town in just 4 short weeks! If it wasn’t for the amount of rainfall in Australia that Spring we would have camped more, but at least we still made the purchase of our swag worth it! I could go on & on about Australia but instead i’ll just share some photos for you to interpret the experiences yourself!
Swag- The Australian Swag, as defined in the past, is a portable sleeping unit. It is normally a bundle of belongings rolled in a traditional fashion to be carried by a foot traveler in the bush.
My lessons learned from my time moving/ living in another country:
If your going to do it with someone, do it with your best friend/ loved one. I am beyond lucky to have moved to Australia with Riley, it was the experience of a lifetime.
Moving winter, to winter, and back to winter. Make sure you find time in between winters to soak in some much needed vitamin D. Riley knew that I needed a trip somewhere tropical before we chased the next winter.
Pack light, I made this mistake and took way too much stuff with me. It ended up being okay, but I didn’t wear half the clothes I brought! Do make sure to bring a few items from home to make you feel like you’re not thousands of miles away from family.
Embrace the culture. This took some adjusting to do. I got in such a rhythm of living the materialistic life that us LA people live, it was a wake up call to remember how important it is to appreciate the simplest things in life. Now being back in LA in for 5 months, I am really starting to miss the simple life we had in Australia.
Last but not least enjoy every damn moment, don’t forget to take all the videos + photos you want because it is such a blast looking back on every single memory Riley & I made over there, down under!
XO,
Gabrielle
