Down Under (Australia)

After the Qantas plane ride I felt as if I warped through time. The time change from the western hemisphere, where my hometown in Pennsylvania rests, to the southern hemisphere where Brisbane, Australia rests, was an unexpectedly subtle one. A few nights before, I started staying up late, to adjust to the 14-hour time difference. I watched re-runs of The Fresh Prince and was busy making memories with my Pittsburgh family before my departure.

I left Pittsburgh July 19, and arrived, finally, in Australia on July 21.

Factually, I was the farthest I had ever been in my life from home. The opportunity to encounter kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, and whales were now tangible. One of my first stops was the Great Barrier Reef.

To say the waters of Australia are beautiful would be an understatement. Nothing, except for a few glossy covers of magazines, can rival these waters, and still the magazine covers could have been photo-shopped.

The top of the water glistens a bright blue color and on the edges a deep green takes life. I made up in my mind that I would have to get in the waters. I was in the ocean, far away from the Highland Park swimming pool that I went to as a kid. I was a representative of all the people who could not take such a journey, and I wouldn’t let it go in vain.

I was given a skin-tight wetsuit. I have never had to wear anything that tight. The neoprene stretched it’ way over my body in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. The snorkel went on next. This weird breathing apparatus was apparently my key to survival.

I took a quick practice swim with one of the instructors. I hooked my arm on the orange lifesaver and delivered a few futile kicks. What ever fears I had were now pushed aside for curiosity. I looked down to the world that is so close to us, yet so distant.

A strange fish swam by on my left. It was blue, magenta, and looked like an impossible mixture of neon and metallic. A few inches on my right a school of small fish swam in sync.

Sea anemones rule the ocean floor. The coral reef is beautiful to look at, but as the instructor of my group warned you must be careful, “the ocean is rife with bacteria.” The spaghetti-like arms of the sea anemones petrified me, because I knew they stung over-ambitious divers. I would later learn from a fellow student studying in biology that not all sea anemones stings.

Crammed in the middle of the anemones was a giant clam. It had soft fringes on the outside of its opening. The brave put their hand in the mouth and watched as the clam slowly closed.

The winter months of Australia were not suitable for box jellyfish. They would be out in the summer months which is sometime in November. I won’t be there.

Now it was my turn to venture on my own.

The choppy waters of the Great Barrier Reef swallowed me whole. In fact, the last time that I went swimming I referred to my education level by number. I was in 11th.
In high school, I would imagine that the waters of the school’s pool had somehow transformed into artic oceans or bellowing seas. This time, I wasn’t imaging.

My snorkel had tilted so far that water was constantly entering my mouth. Instead of oxygen, I breathed salt water. My arms felt like they had transformed to stone, and I started to sink.

I managed to make it shore and shake the overbearing weight of paranoia. I stood on shore and thought the only thing to be thankful for was that I didn’t get sunburned in the harsh climate.

I was wrong. I had that, and so much more to be thankful for.