The Photographic Chapter Continues...

The last 4 months I have spent traveling in "Big Red" and taking pictures down the east coast of Australia from Brisbane, then across Victoria twice (where I saw a PINK LAKE!! and that's not sand... it's salt!), then I caught the 11 hour ferry ride with my truck and trailer from Melbourne over to Tasmania where I spent 2 months driving around from town to town in Tasmania, that's right, that is a sign telling drivers to be ware of Tasmanian Devils! I am then finishing in Hobart. I was going to leave my job at Christmas time as I have started to get quite bored with it at times, not much room for artistic expression, and the clients lately have all been a bit of the snobby sort. However, I do still get some good clients and do find enjoyment in my job, but it is time to move on. The company really wanted me to stay on for a bit longer after Christmas and do another 3 weeks in Tasmania, while I train my replacement.
My replacement is my current make-up artist, Elise. She is 19 and a wonderful work/travel companion, I will be sad to leave her. But she will become the photographer and is training a friend of hers from home to be her make-up artist. Anyway, I agreed to go back after Australia Day (Jan 26) if they paid for my Christmas tickets to Perth and back, then flew me back to Brisbane when I am all done. They agreed and it has worked out perfect! They pay for my flights around the country while providing me time to backpack on the west coast and return to backpacking from Brisbane and this time go UP the east coast. Then I plan to go over to Darwin (middle of the North Coast), travel to see Ayer's Rock in the middle, back to Darwin and out the door to South East Asia. Not sure where exactly yet. But my visa expires here in the beginning of April, so after I finish working, it should give me about 6 weeks to see the rest of Aus, then onward.

Enough about work, how about Tasmania instead!! Tasmania has been awesome! I have seen so much wildlife up close! I also think I am having such a wonderful time here due in part to my great new friend, travel companion and work buddy, Elise (Lisey). She is wonderful and brings excitement into my life. On our days off we go on what we call our "Adventure Daze". These usually consist of finding a national park to hike around in for the day, stopping to eat fruit and take pictures. What should be a 3 hour walk, usually takes us 5, haha :) we just sit and take pictures and eat fruit and talk about god knows what. It is really nice to spend our days off immersed in nature, as otherwise we would never see the sunlight during the week as we work 12 hour days. We have done lots of things around Tasmania, but my favorite has been Mt. Field National Park, where I saw the biggest waterfall I have ever seen, and I have seen a few. This one was named Russell Falls. We hiked up next to it, even though you were not supposed to. We were so happy we did, the views we got from being on the side were incredible and I caught some double rainbows on my new camera... the images look wicked, you all should totally go check all of them out!

I also very much like the city of Hobart. It's geography makes it amazingly beautiful. Everywhere you look there is water! It is a city built in the middle of inlets with islands all around. The view from the top of the mountain at the back of the city is incredible, even if we visited on a cloudy day. We have also visited caves, mountains, tree top canopy walks, and historical sites (from when Tasmania was where all the convicts were sent). There are more pics of all our wonderful adventure daze at http://picasaweb.google.com/find.barlow/TasmaniaAdventureDaze# (Chris and Terri, there are pics here of a real Echidna for Julia :). A guy with red hair you will notice in a lot of the pics. This is Blake. He is a bar tender in Hobart we met out and about one night and quickly befriended. He joins us now for adventure daze as his "weekend" is also in the middle of the week like ours. There are also pics from my travels around the main land of Aus while in this photographic chapter of my life which can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/find.barlow/NewImageTravels02# .
I can not believe my time here has been a full year! I thought at first I would just come for a month to see Ayer's Rock. Weird how plans change. Currently, I was very much needing a brake from work, even if it is only to return for 3 more weeks before I finish for good. But I am in Perth now and loving the vacation!

Aussie Life Now...

Life down under has extended itself once again. Just as I was getting over my job in Brisbane and ready to move on, a new opportunity presented itself. It is a job I find I really enjoy and could see myself doing for a little while just to save extra cash before I depart Australia. I am now a photographer by trade, studio photography. Mostly I do family portraits and glamour shots. I learn every day more about posing people than photography, how to enhance good attributes of people and hide their bad. It is pretty fun and to have a job I enjoy I find does good things for my soul.

It is travel photography (and a sales job). We also offer "bedroom" photos if the client wishes. I encourage all my clients to try these out for themselves. ;) I have a strong belief in making my clients feel good about themselves while they are comfortable and enjoy their time (My favorite is when the bigger crowd gives it a go and then are happy with the results I produce. Good on'ya mate!).

I am finding that I love this job. Not only do I get to help people enjoy their time and feel good about themselves, but I never get bored. I meet a new person every hour of the work day, 12 hours disappear in a little longer than a blink some days! I am constantly learning about people and sharing in, what I hope to be, happy moments caught forever in time. On top of all that it is good money and they pay me to travel Australia, from town to town! Last month I had training in Melbourne where I met a dingo! Then I returned to Brisbane and traveled down the east coast, exploring it on my days off. I will continue this until I reach Melbourne again and then go south on the ferry over to Tasmania. From there I will be flown across the country to Perth for a month, before returning to Tasmania to finish my run there. It is going to be a busy few months.

Which brings me back to my original point. My trip in Australia has extended itself at least a good 6 months past its originally thought of departure time. I am also thinking I will be spending heaps more time in the South East Asia region of the world. My trip has already extended itself by years and I have barely started it I feel. I am loving my adventures out here and am happy to be in the "photography chapter" at the moment.

FINAL THOUGHT- I just re-read what I wrote in my blog and in my profile when I was first preparing to leave home. Things are so much different now that some of the writing seemed almost unfamiliar, as if it wasn't me. I am really enjoying life outside the box I felt trapped in when planning this trip commenced. This trip has moulded into something completely different than I first thought it would be since then. And things I used to think about everyday no longer concern me; I have a different perception of those things now. I am really enjoying the unplanned path and where it has lead me thus far :) Can't wait to see what happens next.

p.s. Here are some pictures that were taken during training for my company. To give you an idea of what I do everyday. The girl next to me in the goofy picture was my trainee, Lorelle. The mermaid girl was my make-up artist when I first started, Lena.

Brisbane Update :)

Life here in BrisVegas continues to go well. I wanted to post what else I have been up to here other than working.

There is a lovely park with a ton of different rose bushes just a short walk from my hostel. On the weekends the crowd from the hostel usually finds their way down to the park for beers and soccer. But one particular sunny day my friends Peter, Mic and I went and hoped on the City Cat Ferry, which transports people around Brisbane via the Brisbane River which cuts the city in two. So the three of us had a fun day in the sun on the ferry and stopping to smell the roses!
















I went to the mountains outside the city for work for a week. This was awesome as the views were spectacular and I was in a rain forest! Here are some pics of the views from where I worked!




















My birthday has come and gone as they tend to do and I am officially a quarter century! For my birthday I took myself to see the Queensland Orchestra play what they called "The Pink Floyd Experience"! It was definitely cool. There was a band in front of the orchestra, complete with singers. It was amazing hearing the orchestra play everything.

Life in BrisVegas!

Life here in Brisbane (a.k.a.BrisVegas and Brissy) is going swimmingly. I moved here in order to look for work as there was none to be found in Adelaide. I was successful! There is so much work here that you don't have to look very hard to find it. In fact, I did not even have to put one resume out before work found me! On day 2 at the hostel as I was gearing up to go into the city to look for work, a lady rocked up in a station wagon looking for a cleaner for the day. I said I would do it and I ended up scoring a great job. It is NOT a glamorous job, nor a fun job, but it is in fact a job with plenty of hours and great pay. So what is the job? I am cleaning construction sites during their final stages of completion, before they are handed over to the client. Most of these sites are office buildings. My new boss was so impressed with me, she bought me a phone and promoted me to supervisor. I am now in charge of 3 buildings, 3 floors each, being built for Virgin Blue Airlines. This site will keep me busy for the rest of my time in Brisbane!

I plan to stay here until the end of August or so. Or until I get really bored and feel I have enough money to continue on, whichever comes first. In any case, this is definitely my home for the next couple of months.

I am living at a hostel appropriately named Homestead. We have a great little crew of long term residents here. I have made a lot of friends and have a good time with them on the weekend when I am not working my 60 hour weeks! Here are a few pictures of them on a night out :)

p.s. for those wondering about my birthday... Any money gifts can be given to my father who will deposit them into my account. Or if you would like to send a gift, my mother knows what I need :) Thanks! If you want to send me a card, my mailing address here is

Anny Barlow

57 Annie St.

New Farm, Qld 4005

Australia

I hope you are all enjoying a wonderful and stress free summer!

p.p.s. one more thing... I would like to congratulate my brother Mike and his wife Jen on the new arrival of their son William Eli, born June 2, 2008!! I miss my family, especially the little ones more than anyone knows. Take care!

Byron Bay/ Nimbin Adventure with the Girls!

This weekend was WONDERFUL! Just what I needed, a weekend away with the girls. At my hostel in Brisbane I have been lucky enough to meet 2 great females by the names of Esther (English) and Carole (French). The 3 of us rented a camper van for the weekend and made an escape from the city. We rented our camper van from a company called Wicked which paints each of their vans with a crazy theme; ours was Jefferson Airplane! This company was also doing a promotion, so the rental was only $20 total, $6.66 each! Score!

We left on Saturday morning after a few hours of sleep from a big night out on Friday :) It took us just over 2 hours to drive south along the Gold Coast to a happening beach backpackers town with a hippie-ish undertone to it called Byron Bay. This town is fantastic, I had been there once before for an afternoon in 2005, but did not get to explore it as much. We headed right for the beach, and even though it was cold outside and the water was frigid, Esther and I jumped right in, then right out again... berrr! We played around on the beach, enjoying the sand between our toes and then watched the sunset over the mountains from the beach and enjoyed a night stroll checking out the local shops. Then we headed south about 20 minutes to a sleepy town called Lennoxhead.

It was here in Lennoxhead that we wanted to make camp. It was awfully cold outside, and we did not have tents so we 'made camp' in our camper van, parked right along a beautiful beach. We went to bed early, exhausted from the night before and the drive, so that we could get up with the sun! After watching sunrise, I went for a chilly swim in the lake across the street. This was no ordinary lake, it was surrounded by tea trees. Therefore when you swim through the water it seems fresher than normal, exhilarating with a bit of a mint-i-ness freshness to it! It is also said to be good for the skin, but I don't think I remained in the water long enough to experience this. It was a hell of a morning watching the sunrise over the beach then taking a chilly dip in the lake, I was definitely awake by 7am!

After our brief time at the lake, we set out for town called Nimbin which was inland about an hour. This town is said to be Australia's answer to Amsterdam. Now I have never been to Amsterdam, but I assure you this town is rather lacking. It has only one street containing a few cafes, the hemp museum and hemp bar. We went on a Sunday which is when Nimbin has its markets. The markets were great, I got a ring and a pair of pants. The overall vibe of the town on a Sunday was fabulous as the markets are open and the sun was shining and music was playing. After walking around for a few hours the girls and I made our way back to Byron for dinner, followed by Lennoxhead again for camping.

This time we managed to get 2 more camper vans from Byron to join us for a little party on the beach. It remained a mellow night and we resorted to playing cards in the camper van after a certain point because it was just to cold to be on the beach anymore. We tucked ourselves in and went to sleep around 2, then awoke again to a beautiful sunrise for the second morning in a row. We packed up early and headed back to the hustle and bustle of the city of Brisbane. It was truly an awesome weekend that was jam packed with fun, adventure, and amazing memories! Thanks again Esther and Carole for a hell of a time :)