By my count, I spent less than 48 hours at home during the two weeks. 
1. Easter at Mornington with Jess and Hayden and Jess' family.
2. Airlie Beach Queensland with Jess and Hayden.
3. Touring Tasmania with my host family.
It was the most exciting and tiring 2 weeks so far!
Lenka’s Easter school holidays experiences:
By my count, I spent less than 48 hours at home during the two weeks.Thursday morning, Rotarians Jess and Hayden picked me up and together we drove to the Mornington peninsula to spend Easter with Jess’ family. The family atmosphere was great – they taught me a new board game, which I quite enjoyed though I didn’t win, and I’ve absolutely fallen in love with their beautiful fluffy black German shepherd. It felt less like Easter and more like any family gathering – the main sign it was Easter is that I got a chocolate bilby, as opposed to a bunny, which I thought was cool. I also got to watch Melbourne Storm get absolutely destroyed on the telly; since they won the first game I went to, I was lulled into the delusion that they were a good team, and now I’ve been thoroughly disappointed. I guess I’ll have to continue to watch them next season from the Czech republic to see if they get any better.
I saw some new wildlife there, the main star of the show being the Starling which I had never seen before. I quite like their feather pattern; their name is a fitting one. Before we left on Sunday, we went to a local market to check out the local life and I went and introduced myself at the Rotary stall, though they didn’t seem very impressed with me.
I slept over at Jess and Hayden’s place and, very early next morning, we caught a plane to north Queensland – Airlie Beach! The first thing on the itinerary was a cruise to the Great Barrier Reef. Somewhat unfortunately, the weather had not been the best before we had arrived, though we were lucky enough to have a warm but not hot and sunny week, and so the winds outside the shelter of the islands were quite strong – 20-30 knots, if that tells you anything. Part of the journey was therefore rather “bumpy”. I haven’t undertaken too many trips on the ocean, so I was pleased to find out I handle seasickness okay, but others weren’t so lucky – apparently, the crew had to deal with 84 people getting sick!
The main problem with the weather though came when it came time for what should have been the most exiting activity of the cruise – snorkelling. Unfortunately, the water was rather murky, and we didn’t get to see too many exciting creatures – though we did see some parrotfish. To add onto that, the gear wasn’t the best and the surface was really choppy; I spent an unfortunate amount of time fearing I was going to drown, since the water kept getting into my snorkel and my glasses. Not very pleasant overall. I had been a bit bummed that I hadn’t done the first-time scuba diving lesson there, but after that experience I’m very glad I didn’t.
Another day, Jess, Hayden and I did a jungle tour. It was interesting to see a very different sort of environment and some of the animals that live there. You don’t usually see goannas or butterflies that big in the wild.
After the jungle tour, we went to visit some of Jess’ relatives that live relatively close. It was there that I finally saw a turtle! It had been promised to me so many times that they would be around and they just didn’t show up, until finally one randomly surfaced at a spot I hadn’t expected to see one at all. We also saw a lot of birds – kookaburras are a lot more common in the north than down here, and there were some interesting raptors and honeyeaters around.
The lunch we had there was also wonderful – they had very fresh prawns, and they were cooked in a way I enjoyed, which is usually a 50/50 for me, and fish from the barbie.
Another thing I quite enjoyed in Airlie beach, though it wasn’t really a tourist attraction, was a beach that was full of hermit crabs. Interestingly, we hadn’t even noticed them at first – we were just taking a walk – until Jess noticed one hermit crab on the bottom, and then we started looking, we couldn’t find a single shell on the beach that wasn’t a hermit crab. They are surprisingly cute, and they tickle when they crawl on your palm.
I returned to the beach later, just to see the hermit crabs again, which was when disaster struck – my camera fell into the seawater and died. Please observe a moment’s silence. I am now getting a replacement and contacting the insurance, so fingers crossed.
One memorable evening was when Jess and Hayden were away to go to a wedding – which was the main reason they went to Airlie Beach in the first place – I went to the hermit crab beach again, got some garlic bread from a pizza stand on the way and had a sunset dinner. Very serene.
The very next day after returning to Melbourne from Airlie Beach (going from sunny mid-twenties to an overcast 16°C was definitely an experience), me and my host family departed for Tasmania. We landed in Launceston and had some beautiful fish and chips, then the next day left for Hobart with a detour for Freycinet national park. After arriving, we went on a hike to get to Wineglass Bay, which involved walking up to the ridge of a mountain and then taking a 1000 steps all the way down just to get there and then the same thing to go back. Though the beach is really not as magically beautiful as some people seem to suggest, it was rather nice, and the hike was pleasantly strenuous.
One day while in Hobart, we drove up to the top of Mt Wellington. I noticed Tasmania was a bit chillier overall, but especially on kunanyi – it was incredibly windy and about 3°C when we got there. They even had bits of snow! That was the first and possibly last time I used my winter jacket while in Australia.
One full day was taken up with a road trip to Port Arthur. It was quite a fascinating place, and I appreciated the effort that had gone into making it easy to imagine what life must have been like for the convicts living there. I was especially taken with the exhibits in the Separate Prison, which almost pioneered solitary confinement as a form of punishment.
We had dinner in a rather fancy sailor-themed restaurant one evening, and though I must say I wanted to dislike the food almost on principle, the fish and chips I had there were the best I’ve ever had. Thanks to the amount of fish and chips I’ve tried by now, I have started developing some pronounced opinions regarding the quality of different interpretations of the recipe, though nothing I will bore you with. I suppose that’s one thing to put on the list of things I’ll miss when I go back.
There’s doubtlessly some things I have forgotten to write about – quite possibly because I did not have my camera to record them, sigh – so this is still a cliffnotes version, despite being around 2 pages long. Many thanks once again to Jess and Hayden for taking me to Queensland, my host family for taking me to Tasmania and even just putting me up in general, and finally to Rotary for making this exchange possible in the first place.
Lenka Pocarovska