Missing sunny and hot days already.

.I had to surrender last week and give up wearing shorts all the time! :( I was so used to the warm weather that it was a shock when out of the blue on Wednesday evening coldness arrived. I had planned to be up north by now so I didn’t bring many pieces of warm clothing, maybe I have to go shopping some! :D  Winter is supposed to be pretty nice here, mostly sunshine, cold nights, warmish (at least by Finnish standards!) days. Saturday was anything but a nice sunny day! The day was full of pouring rain, coldness and miserable greyness. It’s been raining this evening as well. :( Just have to hope the weather will get better.

Yesterday for the first time at work I felt like working in a kindergarten! Though even five-year-old kids can clean after themselves after eating, but it didn’t seem to be the case here last night that adults could manage the same. How is it possible that these grown up people who can travel the world are unable to do their dishes and clean after themselves? I just wonder how they manage if they live on their own… I really wanted to say them all: “I’m not your mother who cleans after you, so please at least do your dishes!” Of course I didn’t say a word, just cleaned everything. Next time I just might say something about it.

Me and Bill

I really like this job I have. It doesn’t get boring since I’m cleaning, driving, working in the reception and doing whatever needs to be done. I also meet workers from other hostels at the bus stop. We sit together and talk while we’re waiting buses to arrive, which are pretty often late! :D On Saturday the weather was just so miserable that I sat in the bus with a couple of girls, because they didn’t want to go out to wait for the bus. I heard a bus come and was surprised to see Premier coming in, exactly on time! Even bigger surprise was to see Greyhound coming from the opposite direction at the same time! And yesterday felt like Christmas – both buses came early! And I can tell you, it really doesn’t happen often!
Small joys can brighten up the day but the best moments are spent with the people I work with. They really are amazing people. I've laughed, joked and cried with them. They are my family here.



Alexandria Bay

My stop before Hervey Bay was Noosa and I loved it! It was small enough to walk around but not too small to get bored. I really liked walking in Noosa National Park. The beaches were beautiful. I liked everything in Noosa. One of the best days there was a day when I walked Coastal Trail appreciating the scenery. I could have stayed sitting close by where the waves hit the rocks for ages in Alexandria Bay. It was so relaxing to see those waves and listen to the sounds of the sea. I walked a lot in Noosa just to look around and see what it’s like in different areas. Even on a rainy day I enjoyed walking and running for ten kilometres.

Music brings a lot of memories from different moments, different people. Apulanta’s song Maanantai always reminds me about someone who was, and still is special to me. And the song reminds me of him only because he didn’t know the song and wondered how I knew the words. I can listen to so many other songs too and they will remind me of my sisters, midsummers spent on the countryside, nights out with work mates, people that have been part of my life for years, wonderful moments spent with friends and so many other memories. Sometimes I just sit and listen to all those songs that bring back the memories, some songs over and over again.

Sunshine Beach, Noosa

Alexandria Bay, Noosa

I’ve been here three months and I feel so weird speaking in Finnish! We have two Finnish girls staying at the hostel and they are the last ones I’m going to tell voluntarily that I’m Finnish! I’m so used to speaking English, especially when I’m working that Finnish just doesn’t come out naturally. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. I can still write well in Finnish and I didn’t seem to have too much trouble speaking Finnish with my mum, but English feels more natural.

Today I was asked if I ever want to have children. Of course I want to have, was my answer. I didn’t have to think twice. Then we have to find you an Australian boyfriend, I was told by Bill. Well, who knows what happens in life. Things usually happen when you least expect.



"You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still,
it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone,
not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart,
you feel like you have known the person for forever....connections are made with the heart, not the tongue."
- C. JoyBell C. -

This is the cake I got. :)

It wasn’t just family and friends I left behind. I also left a big bunch of work mates (some of them are also good friends) behind. They were a huge part of my life and I like them a lot. I was so moved when they gave me a friend book filled by them and an emergency fund they had collected for me. I also got a cake! I quite couldn't finish the cake on my own so I got a little bit help from my friends. :) That night was one of the best with my work mates and I must say I miss them. Even more now that I just read the friend book through.

When I was still in Finland I was known to sleep late and not wake up early if I didn’t have to. It was nothing unusual if I got up at 3 p.m. after a night at work. Now I couldn’t imagine staying up until the early hours of morning! I’ve become quite a morning person here. My last week’s day off was the first morning in two months that I slept as long as I wanted to, not having the alarm waking me up. Well, I did wake up at 7.30 a.m. and got up because I was just so hungry! :D But after breakfast I just went back to bed and happily slept until 12.30 p.m. And I had decided I shouldn’t have to feel guilty for sleeping for once!

I really like the mornings when I do opening at the hostel. It’s nice to get up and go around in cool crisp air listening to the sound of birds and pretty often you can also enjoy the sun shining its early morning rays.
If I wake up before my alarm it’s pretty easy to tell by listening to the sounds around if it’s time to get up or not, without even looking at the clock. If you can hear birds (they can be really loud in the morning!), there’s no need to get up, but if there are no sound of the birds, it just might be good to get up and have breakfast, maybe.

Yamba was one of my few stops along the coast south of Brisbane. I must say I liked it. It was small, but you had everything you needed close by. I just wished I had been able to surf I would have enjoyed my time there even more. There’s only one hostel, so it wasn’t hard to decide where to stay. The hostel was really nice and Shane’s tour is a must in Yamba! I had so much fun during those few hours! I just wished I had done it on my first day in Yamba. Yamba has beautiful beaches and it’s a great place to surf, so I gathered from other people. It’s not allowed to have surfing contests in Yamba so it has stayed as a small and relaxed place, not known to huge crowds. The sunsets in Yamba were just one of the best I’ve seen! On my last night I sat on a huge rock on a break wall wind blowing around me and watched the sun go down. It was one of the best moments spent alone I’ve had here. 

One of the nice places Shane took us on his tour.

A nice view in Yamba Bay.

It feels a bit funny that the winter is coming. I’m so used to having winter when it’s in northern hemisphere that it’s a bit weird to have winter when northern hemisphere is having their summer. But what I hear, here in Hervey Bay it just gets a little bit cooler and the sun is shining most of the time. Nights can be cold (nothing compared to Finland though!), but I guess it will be just nicer to sleep when the air is cold, not so warm and humid. I guess the winter here can still be better than Finnish summer! :D

This one needed saving before
someone stepped on it.

Two nights ago I was in the kitchen and one boy said to me: “I think you have a visitor over there.” He pointed towards the shelf with coffee cups. A cricket had found its way inside which is usual in the evenings. I just went to get a paper and got a glass and carried the cricket outside. I wouldn’t have done it two months ago! And later I saved another insect and carried it outside. I was so proud of myself that I didn’t just runaway. I’m sure there will come the time for me to run away! :D



When the sun starts setting here rainbow lorikeets start their singing. If you can call it singing because the noise is so loud that you can hear it when you’re driving a car windows closed! In the evenings they get together and you can see dozens of them in one tree. They look really nice but the noise isn’t charming.
In Port Macquarie it was flying foxes that started their nightly flying at dusk and you could see hundreds of them flying over the river towards Pelican Island. During the day the flying foxes hung in trees in Koolonbung Creek and made just an awful noise. Due to an unknown reason for me they had changed their spot in the forest since I walked there with my sister in December 2010. But they were still equally scary hanging in trees above you and a few flying now and then to another spot. I wouldn’t have liked to be there on my own! :D  

Time seems to be flying by and I guess soon I’ll notice that six months is gone, at least past almost three months have gone in a flash. I know I haven’t seen that many new places but it doesn’t bother me. I’m older than on my previous travels and I don’t feel like rushing from place to place every three or four days. I have the visa for a year so why hurry? On the other had I might soon notice that my year is almost up and I still have loads to see. The more you see the more places you seem to have you want to see. There’s always some other place you want to see. You’ll never sit down and think: “Now I’ve seen everything I want to see.”

"We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls."
- Anais Nin -

Leaving isn't always easy

When I sat at the kitchen table at my mum’s and told her that I’m coming to Australia for a year, she said to me I would find a man before I left. And how right she was! When I left home and my loved one in February I cried and my heart ached. I knew I had to leave and live my dream or I would forever blame the other person for not making my dream come true. Leaving never used to be hard for me, this time it really was. After the first week I got used to missing my loved one. Daily text messages and mails were the way of communicating. It was easier for me because I had all these new things over here to experience. But it was too hard for him to stay and have a daily life without me around, so he broke up with me. I cried and felt more miserable than I could have thought possible. But life is what it is. At least I have my dream to live with. And he wanted me to live my dream.
   And this feels like a dream. Sometimes I almost have to pinch myself to know this is real. I’ve dreamt of this for so long that sometimes it feels unreal to really be here. For so long I was afraid to leave the safety of steady income and home. Now I just keep on thinking why I waited for so long? I love it that I can do whatever I want to. I’m not tied to a job or an apartment. I’m free to leave places when I feel like it. I can choose to find a job in the outback or just work for my accommodation on an island. As long as I have a little bit money to travel, nothing else seems to matter. And I know that if things go badly I can always get a flight back home.

There’s a saying that home is where the heart is. And for me it seems to be true. I’m home here. I hardly ever miss any of my stuff (at least not yet!) I left behind or an actual apartment to live in. I have everything I need in my backpack. I could even send some of my things back to Finland or just get rid of them, can’t really make the decision what to do with the things I don’t seem to need. Maybe after carrying them for a while I’ll fed up and just leave them somewhere, hopefully. At least my backpack would be emptier then! :D



After spending three days in Sydney at my arrival to the country feeling really lost and belonging nowhere I was so happy to arrive in Port Macquarie. I didn’t even mind the walk to the hostel from bus station. And how wonderful it was to arrive there and see people who remembered me from my previous visit when my sister was staying there over a year ago! It felt like being home away from home. I was still lost and really didn’t know what to do or where to go, so I spent a month doing almost nothing.
   After freezing temperatures in Finland the warm weather and the sun was a wonderful change. It was wonderful just walk along the beaches and bake in the sun. When I left I was happy to see new places but also sad to leave wonderful people behind. When you spend a month in one place you get to know people and you get used to seeing them every day. I wish I can go back there for a short visit before I return back to Finland.

   I have many good memories from Port Macquarie and I don't regret staying there for a month. Apart from the people working or staying long-term at the hostel I got to meet so many other travellers there too. And it was kind of fun to find someone who liked reading books, making sudokus and walking like I do. For a few days it was great to have someone to go for a big walk with and someone whom to show sights of Port Macquarie. I definitely enjoyed the walk in Kooloonbung Creek and along the beaches where we saw big goannas, not forgetting small geckos on pathways and bush turkeys running on the beach.

When I came to Australia my only wish for the journey was to do the open water course. I had done two introductory dives before and had absolutely loved diving so I thought it would be a piece of cake to do the course. But I was so wrong! I was so terrified on our first lesson under the water, and we were just in a pool! :D The first actual dive we did in a river 465 metres above sea level, and it was so much fun! The visibility was great and it made diving interesting when I saw all different kind of fish in the water. And the second dive in the ocean was a lot of fun too. The last dive I did with my instructor Rick and his friend Warwick was in a murky water in a river with tree trunks and branches. It was definitely a new experience, even scary at first because you felt you saw nothing. But you got used to it after a while and I really enjoyed looking for fish under the rocks with a flashlight, though we didin't find many. I must say that Rick was absolutely a great instructor and great to dive with!

This kind of moments are the ones I miss
when I'm away.

I miss all my friends a lot. It's hard to be away from them and not see them because they mean a world to me. Just today I got an email from one of my dearest friends and I got tears into my eyes. Only because her mail showed how much she cares about me and my wellbeing.
I’m sad that I didn’t see my god son learning to walk on his own nor will I see my god daughter learning to speak, or my friends’ other children to grow and learn new things while I’m here. We adults can communicate my emails, text messages and so on, and endure being apart somehow. But children grow so quickly that when you’re not there, they’ve learnt millions of things. I don’t mean we adults wouldn’t have many things going on in our lives, but we are able to tell about them and you don’t necessarily need to be next to each other listening about those things. But when a child learns to walk or wave or remembers a play you had together, there’s no other way to experience it than being there, words are just not enough.

"Life is never easy for those who dream"
- Robert James Waller -

How this all started

Before I started my journey I really thought I would start writing a blog of my travels. But when I got here I never seemed to find the time to do it and I pushed the idea to the back of my mind. Two months flew by and now that I'm settled for a while here in Hervey Bay I really started thinking I should start writing, it's a long overdue.

I came to Australia the first time eight years ago and instantly fell in love with the country! And I just kept on coming back. My third trip to Australia in 2010 triggered something inside me and in May last year I really started to think about coming over with the working & holiday visa. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to come. It took a lot of courage to make the decision, tell my family and friends and quit my job. After working past ten years it wasn’t that easy to just leave everything familiar and safe behind. It’s the people I left behind that I miss the most, not the safety of steady income or a proper home. I don’t have my own place like back in Finland to call home, but I feel I’m home.

Being broken hearted and far away from my friends and family sucks a little bit, but don’t they say that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger? At least so I’ve been told. The work here at the hostel makes it a whole lot easier as, because I have something else to concentrate on (other than sunbathing and walking on the beach! :D). And working here is absolutely wonderful! I have a really wonderful workmate and two nice bosses, what else can you wish for? The work isn’t always that nice when you’re scrubbing the toilets or sweating changing beds in the heat, but when you meet all these travellers, you don’t even remember those unpleasant tasks. Though I have to say that I actually kind of like changing the beds, but it can be hard work!

Two hermit crabs meeting.

I still don’t like spiders, snakes and beetles that much, but I guess I’m quite used to the smaller ones by now. The other day I found myself thinking where the spider in our bathroom had disappeared! I was so used to seeing it every day that it felt weird not to see it in its web in one corner. One night I tried to catch a cricket to take it outside but it disappeared under a cupboard. But still I was able to be proud of myself that my first thought wasn’t to kill it. And I can tell I wasn’t so calm with all kind of beetles and spiders when I arrived here. I’ve had a couple of hilarious encounters with harmless spiders and cockroaches. And it’s not only spiders, beetles and cockroaches that have scared me. One afternoon I was walking on the beach during the low tide and I saw this beautiful small shell on the beach and I picked it up. You can imagine my reaction when I felt a claw on my finger! A hermit crab had already taken the shell to protect its soft and vulnerable abdomen and it wasn’t happy to have an intruder. But my reaction was probably even funnier when I was scared by a living clam jumping along the beach! :D

Life in a smallish town is pretty nice. Hervey Bay has a population of 62 000, but it’s still quiet and peaceful place to live and stay. Well, I kind of didn’t think that this as a quiet place this morning when it took me five minutes to just get out from parking lot at transit centre! And it would have taken a lot more time if one lady hadn’t given me way to go first. I think it was way nicer to drive yesterday when the streets were deserted. And no, it’s doesn’t feel funny to drive on “the wrong side” of the road! :D
I must say I’m living my dream at the moment. The fact, that I don’t know what my future is, isn’t scary. I have all the doors open in my life and anything can happen, anything.

"Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is the gift.
That's why it's called the present."
- Bil Keane -