Five days and counting

AND a visa?

I leave Wednesday. Yes, Wednesday. Am I ready? Peek into the madness.

I decided to visit Australia maybe a month ago and this was during the time I was actively working four jobs. Morning, noon, and night, I was somewhere doing something with somebody, pausing only to eat and sleep it seemed. I figured I would still have plenty of time to put together an itinerary in the coming days and didn't start fretting until those days raced into weeks. I peeked at Sydney between working hours, perused travel forum boards for tour ideas, glanced at tours, brushed up on lingo, read about bunyips and drop bears--but it wasn't until I started doing the gritty research that I really began to knuckle down.

-Unless you're a New Zealand native, you need a visa to get into Australia. Huh, I didn't know that.
-Flights out of Honolulu don't fly directly to Sydney. They route through Guam to Cairns. Interesting.
-Those flights only go out every Wednesday and Saturday and there is a 50 minute sprint to board the      connecting flight so if, for whatever reason, I miss the connector then I'm trapped in Guam for three days.
-Cairns to Sydney via the Pacific Highway (and beyond) is about 1600 miles long.
-Nearly 48 hours of my time in Australia will be dedicated to strictly moving down the coast.
-Crossing borders between states/provinces requires you dump whatever fresh food stuffs you might be carrying.
-Sydney is hosting a writing festival! (Most of the workshops I foamed at the mouth for are already sold out, unfortunately, but I might swing by some free events yet.)
-Drop bears are as dangerous as they are legendary.

The details of my itinerary get me down to Brisbane. That's only halfway down the east coast. I'm stuck on Brisbane because I'm just overwhelmed on the sheer size of it. There's just so much to see! But my first two weeks or so have been plotted out from hiking the Daintree National Park to snorkeling or diving the Great Barrier Reef; camping on one of the Whitsundays islands to tearing around Fraser Island--I'm pretty freaking excited. But I'm still trying to leave myself some elbow room to be spontaneous should I find rapport with other hostel occupants. Beyond the enriching experience of something new, the point of this trek is to sate that sense of adventure stitching my side and I fully intend to make new friends along the way.

I applied for both my ETA (Electronic Travel Authority) and STEP (Smart Traveler Enrollment Program) today. The ETA application was rather quick and painless and I received a confirmation immediately at a $31 fee which is wonderfully convenient and a load off. Apparently, I won't need a visa stamp. The ETA attaches to my passport number in Australia's immigration database. Neat. I registered with STEP just to stay up to date with the U.S. embassy on any emergencies the country might experience while I'm out there. Hopefully this foresight will nix any such events. 

And while I scrabble to close on the last details of my itinerary, I'm still rushing about trying to finish errands here. I think I'll be working right up to the hour my flight leaves this Wednesday. Yes, Wednesday. Am I ready?