1. Sydney

g’day mate! you might be asking yourself “duck, why did you go to australia?” dude i don’t know like why did nsync break up… it just happened, don’t ask questions. maybe i wanted to go somewhere that was going to be really hot in the summer (it’s not) or maybe its because i wanted to see for myself just how good this vegemite stuff was i had been hearing so much about (it wasn’t) or maybe i wanted two christmases this year or it’s because i watched finding nemo one night and thought you know what just keep swimming. the fact of the matter is i have no answer for you other than why in the crocodile dundee not.

but imma tell ya this for free, that flight… that flight was loooooooooooong. not like long long but long like a labubu pop up shop in los angeles long long. i slept, i ate, i read some new moon, i slept again, i played tic tac toe with emily (the six year old girl sitting next to me on the flight), watched fellowship of the ring, slept again… and we still weren’t even halfway to sydney. so yeah, breaking news… the ocean be big.

so once i finally got here… wouldn’t you know it my bags were missing… well not missing but just didn’t make it from san francisco so i guess they just didn’t make it to the plane like kevin mccallister. but fortunately i wore my lucky shirt so until my bags arrived i just had to go with no pants.  

the sydney oprah house looks like if you took a snowball and cut it up into a bunch of orange slices and then told those slices to look like a sailboat. i like it.

i needed pants (the bags were still over hawaii so i was told by a local named “bogan” to go to a place called budgie smugglers. they weren’t the pants i needed). i went to a beach called bondi beach and i DiDN”T need pants there, or a top. it was a topless beach, so, i obliged. those lifeguards are really fast and came and told me to go to another beach.
 

i guess they couldn’t handle how manly i was. instead i went to manly beach, and there were a bunch of kids around, so i decided to keep my shirt on and hang out with some wild cockatoos instead. that’s not an australian nickname for a type of person, they were just actually just wild cockatoos flying around and eating pastries.  

back in CBD, which stands for central business district. i KNOW RiGHt? i found what i was looking for. an entire CHRiSTMAS iN JULY FESTiVAL. i knew it. all my studying has paid off and i’ve done the impossible. i earned TWO christmasses in the same year. bazinga.  

i’m weeeeeally starting to like it here in australia. 

— duck

2. Cairns

okay so yeah i may have gone a little too hard in the paint on the whole christmas in july thing a little… did i drink my body weight in coco last night? did i eat double my water weight in cookies, doughnuts and crapes? did i dance the night away to all i want for christmas is you by a cover band that had no business playing that song that well that many times? did i nearly miss my flight again because of all the fun that the night had brought me? i’ll never tell. but i digress… i was ready to head north… to the heat, the “real” beach, the city that never sleeps, the land of the reef… cairns. or is it cains? cons? karens? idk i can’t read.  

obvi the second i got off the plane i had to head straight to the beach to see what this east australian current was all about. i was told the only way to get there was by way of a ferry. i thought id be pretty good at finding ferries. but i didn’t see one anywhere. and let me tell ya i looked around for them for a MINUTE. but since they never showed i just got on this giant boat instead.  

word to the wise… read the signs posted on the beach… all of the signs and everything on the signs. cuz the name of the beach i arrived at was nudey beach (spoiler alert it was NOT an all nudey beach) and boy was that awkward even with there being so many french people nearby.  

i knew from that finding dory movie that there is great snorkeling here at the great barrier reef. its literally in the name. and i tell ya. it is GREAT. and thank goodness gracious for sara at the beach market store having a pair of goggles in my size because i saw so many cool things when snorkeling. i saw fish, more fish, some other fish, but not phish. sadly no sea turtles. some coral, a lil seaweed, so much sand…….. lots of sand… so much sand. sand got everywhere and in all my nooks and all my crannies i’ll tell ya that for free. so much sand im starting to not like sand because its course and gets everywhere.

they say that water rolls off a ducks back and i don’t know who THEY are but THEY are wrong. water does not roll off my back. it soaks into me and ruins my weight goals. needles to say, it took me some time to dry off and i left a little bit of a puddle on the ferry (not fairy) boat. sorry. 

also i’m new to this rain stuff… like i’ve never heard of her b4 but like when it’s raining here why is it hotter than a jalapeño’s armpit? the math ain’t mathin here. someone said it’s the humidity… well someone should turn the humidifier off then because i feel sticky and i don’t like that even though i just got done swimming it still feels like im swimming. in air.  

cairns (cans) has a rainforest. and a cool tram that looks like a skilift from hoodoo but its not snowing. its raining and everything looks like that movie with the dinosaurs and jeff goldblum that i cant watch because im not old enough yet BECAUSE I AM 8. it ended up being really cool floating over the top of the trees, which i dont know what the science word is for tops of trees but if i knew it would have been a really good story. at the top there was a cool waterfall called barron falls which looked a lot cooler in the pictures. they said when theres more (MORE?) rain the falls look way bigger. i can’t imagine this place with more rain. we’d have to find dory up here in them mountains.  

when i got to the tip top of the rainforest (i think thats how it works) they took a picture at the end of the tram ride… most people treat it like a photo op at the end of a ride at disneyland, but for me… for me it was my moment. and that moment was the beginning of my modeling career. i went full hansel… like full on blue steel. not even milan would have been able to handle me. if you need evidence of my work or are with ford models, sports illustrated swimsuit edition, or people magazine for sexiest man of the year, you can see my photo on display at the top of the skyrail rainforest cableway in cairns at the giftshop desk.  

i took the tram back and had a nap in my sandy bed because i think that im going to have that sand behind my ears forever. 

— duck

3. Tasmania

come to tasmania, come to tasmania, come to tasmania. some people assume im not a big fan of the wb universe seeing as i am frequently confused for that other guy. but the tasmanian devil has got it figured out. he spits out gibberish, throws a tantrum and spins around in a chaos tornado destroying everything in sight. its looney. we hung out once at a john stamos party back in 99.. that was a time… and he told me “GAHB A RAFFLE SLAFF TAGH BAFFLE RAUGH”. i vibe with that. i figured i was in the neighborhood so id go look for my good buddy.  

i landed and found this cute little port of a town called hobart and was told i could find taz “out there”. there being what google maps referred to as deep in the tasmanian “bush”. which is more than one bush. its like a lot of bushes. so i guess you could call it a bush if that bush was made of a hundred bushes and that bush also lives with all of its bush friends and extended family… then times that by 10. turns out tasmania is wild. like ferns the size of beach umbrellas and waterfalls that would make multnomah blush. IT COULD NEVER. i saw wallabees, which are like pocket sized kangaroos but fatter and they also don’t try to fight you and cockatoos from that movie rio.  

i spent the night under one of those beach umbrella sized ferns because it was soaking wet. apparently… there are southern lights, that are like the northern lights but they are southern. i looked for those, but…alas…the lights were not on the menu this evening as the weather was cloudy and rainy. also the space weather wasn’t doing its thing either. so i guess thanks for nothing neil degrasse tyson. also did you know there is space weather? i was today years old when i learned that little bit of tid.  

guys. sleeping outside in australia is no joke. there are A LOT OF THINGS OUTSIDE. not all of these things are friends. i needed to get off the ground. like way off the ground. like the ewoks on endor off the ground. luckily, australians also thought of this and built a airwalk through the trees. i spent another day exploring an upper canopy of the rainforest and never found my guy the taz. a wallabee who told me that back in the 90s he moved to LA and got REALLY into essential oils. just goes to show, some people change.

sophia, a local told me i should go see the city from above so the only way to do that was to go to the top of mt. beef wellington… nothing like the moon being made of cheese, don’t lick the rocks up there. and she was right, it was cool seeing the entire city of hobart like i was simba standing atop pride rock looking at everything the light touches. but thats only when i wasn’t trapped in a cloud. yes a real life cloud… like the fluffy puffy things sheep jump on at night time. stuck right in the middle of it and can’t see anything anywhere for idk like 5 minutes… maybe 10… sometimes 30… depends on the cloud i guess. but irregardless i guess it was kinda cool to have my head up in the clouds for once since people be sayin that to me all the time.

well just like taz used to say
“TAZ HUNGRY”

— duck

4. Adelaide

i went to adelaide.  

— duck

5. Melbourne

im not allowed to have coffee. someone told me it stunts your growth and also makes your head explode or something like that. my usual order is a hot chocolate or a decaf frappo with extra foam and a splash of vanilla. biiiiiig decaf guy here. if i had caffeine it would probably be like if you threw cotton candy gasoline onto a sugar cookie fire. but when i heard that melbourinianites were serious about there coffee i though id make an exception and try it out. they got this thing called a flat white, and it wasn’t very flat like the earth but it was frothy bean water with milk. it wasnt really white either. more like a half decent spray tan with white on the top on. they drew a little heart on the top with the milk part which i thought was SOOOOOO KA-YUTE. i was really excited and tried to snap a photo for the sinsta and i bumped the table with my widdle foot. it spilled. all over. and on the ground. and the guy next to mes newspaper. the nice ladies at the cafe were busy laughing and taking pictures at something to get another one. oh well. i guess ill have to wait until im older to try coffee. or not. it seems like a husky thing anyway.  

i wandered around and walked down a street called hosier lane. nice guy hosier. he sings that song too sweet. but i think this was a different hosier because there wasn’t any sweets, or black coffee and 3:00 bedtimes. just lots of graffiti. but cool graffiti. way cooler and more sanitary than a gum wall. It was like a 90’s sketchers commercial down there. i took a promo photo for much upcoming EP “dont cry over spilt bean water”. parental advisory warning.  

OH YEAH. TRAINS!  

so melborune has a city tram that goes around the cbd (AGAIN I KNOW! again that means downtown for you statesiders). Its a model w6-class electric train car with cream on the bottom and a kelly green on top. a real doozy if you ask me. i was THRILLED to hop on board and ride the full loop around the city. We even stopped at a train station called flinders street station and it looked like a CASTLE.  

trains and castles? man my mood was up to 20 beans. probably not coffee beans, but maybe jumping beans. but i was ALL full of beans.  

— duck

6. Translations

i learned a bunch of new words on this trip and some of them were too spicy to write down. here are a few translations you could probably say on bluey.  

Buggie - golf cart  

Bungee- that thing that you go boing in the air after you jump from real high up in the air  

Budgie Smuglers - speedo  

Bush - the countryside  

Bogan - not a nice thing to call australians  

Kiwi - also not a nice thing to call australians  

Kiwi - a fruit  

Kiwi - a person from new zealand  

Kiwi - a potato bird  

Kiwi Eating a Kiwi - a horrifying cannibalistic act  

Footy - football (not football or the european football either)  

Footsy - kicking people under tables idk  

Hire - rent (I tried to hire a snorkel and got confused)  

Footsy - kicking people under tables idk  

Barbie - a bbq, not the margot robbie movie  

Prawn - shrimp  

Shrimp on the Barbie - def not a nice thing to call australians  

Rocket - spicy salad  

Oz - australia not the emerald city  

Rocket - spicy salad  

Hip Hip Hurray - the thing you scream at the top of your lungs three times at the end of the singing of happy birthday and you best not forget to do so.  

Arvo - afternoon  

Avo - avocado  

AIRE - the letter A, I or R im not sure.  

ARARARARAR- a sound a seal makes or a concierge spelling the word air.  

Ute - a pickup truck… not from utah  

AIRE - the letter A, I or R im not sure.  

Maccas - McDonalds  

Uni - college  

No Worries- no worries  

No Drama - no worries  

Hakuna Matata - it means no worries  

Primo- still have no idea what that means  

7. Brisbane

listen... i didn’t wanna leave melbourne. the people are so so so nice but like also hear me out, i forgot to pack soap so i like been tryna track down my girl sydney sweeny because she lives here i think and i know she can hook me up... that makes sense right? so can you blame me for not wanting to leave?!?!? but anyhoosiers i was unsuccessful in that matter and truly almost forgot about my flight and had to SPRINT to my gate... was i sprinting in slow motion to look like i was in baywatch?... yes. was that the reason they closed the doors as i ran on the plane?... also yes. but thats besides the point, i made it on the plane to brisbane.  

woke up the next morning and decided to give the australian breakfast a go...tim tams, coffee and veggimite. not sure how i feel about vegimite in coffee, but im open minded. and tim tams are FIRE.i know this because i housed six packs of them... i had to try every flavor obvi. belly full and caffeinated, i hit the road.  

so two words... i went to freakin bluey world and met bluey and bingo and played keepy uppy and had dance mode and had a sausage roll and it was all real life. again, two words.  

adventure is out there and i had to keep exploring so after a much needed visit to the giftshop and a tactical wee i was back on the open road. again, australians are really nice...... until you start driving. i don’t understand why they keep telling me i’m not on the right side of the road. but i totes am. i am literally on the right side not on the left. right. write. rite. riiiiiiiiight. i dont know i cant drive.  

OH YEAH, THE ZOO.  

charlotte met me at the zoo. we drove around in a buggie, which is what australians call a golf cart and we met so many new friends. heres a list of new friends i met at the zoo. paddles the sea turtle. good name my dude. crush #56 the sea turtle. jacob. not a sea turtle. forrest the giraffe, who was really tall. like even for a giraffe. henry the koala. rosie the boa constrictor who wasn't allowed to be next to henry the koala. I guess they don’t get along, which is weird because when i met rosie she gave me a big hug. jacob told me they would name a sea turtle “duck” and I think that’s a good name too. dj the rhino. The plural noun for rhinoceruses is a rumble. beth told me that. beth is also not a sea turtle.  

when people think of nice people... people think of henry winkler, elmo, that guy on the corner spinning a sign for discount mattresses. i think of sunshine and rainbows and songs about rainbows. but let me tell you about the nicest people i’ve ever met in my short 8 years of life. there might be more years... i can’t count past my fingers. 

terri, bindi, chandler, and robert irwin are like those nice things i said before but if they were at least three times bigger. i was just chillin with henry the koala talking about overpriced spicy salads when in walks the entire irwin family. did you know that terri irwin grew up in autzen stadium? well not really autzen, but eugene! she told me she had never seen me in the flesh before and it was her birthday and she was so excited to finally meet me. but of course i knew that and thats why i went to australia. SUPRISE. secrets out. thats why i’m here. terris birthday. and also bindis birthday in three days! also jacobs birthday apparently. happy birthday jacob. i’m sorry i didn’t bring any cake for when we were feeding the sea turtles.  

robert is dreamy. but also sweet. but also so gosh darn dreamy... like NO WAY NO WAY he’s just so gorgeous and dreamy. but like he called me an icon. which was crazy coming from someone about to be on dancing with the stars all while in nothing but his underwear. iconic my guy.  

mom... mommy... mamacita... bindi is the best ding dang mother dearest there ever was... the mother goose to all the geese’s... the motherload of love as well as who mother teresa aspired to be. she is like if miss honey, leslie knope and mary poppins all had a focus group to frankenstein a really nice superhuman. bindi is a just amazing. 29/10, highly recommend. chandler is bindi’s boo thang and he was a florida gator. which we’ll let slide considering he is literally working at the crocodile hunter zoo. he was also just really nice so i can’t even be a little mad. they’re all just so kind and so loving of animals and saving animals and are good eggs and genuine people. like you feel like a better person.. duck? idk, being around them.  

so im doing my best to be better too and am going to start telling people they have pretty eyes. or that i like their sweater. or donating cookies to the animal hospital. or here at wildlife warriors.   

crikey. what a day.

— duck

8. Auckland

it was time to say goodbye to oz (thats what the call australia, but i think their just spelling aus wrong). i had heard that new zealand was nearby (spoilers its NOT). the shire is in new zealand and i had to check it out. for frodo. so i flew from brisbane to auckland. which iS NOT a short distance. thats like flying from eugene to minneapolis minnesota. WHO WOULD DO THAT?  

after filling out an entire page in my bluey coloring book we were landing in the land of sheep and lord of the rings. which of course i didn’t want to say because it is reductive. but kiwis (which is a strange fruit to choose to refer to an entire countries people by but im still working it out) kiwis LOVE sheep and lord of the rings.  

new zealand is fake. its a fake place that isnt real. there is no possible way that there is a place that looks like you turned the “nature contrast” dial up to 11 on the cascades and added more sheep. they almost had me tricked to, until i went to the beach and the SAND WAS BLACK! HA!  

ive got you figured out kiwis. you even tried to fake me out with a NOT-space-needle in auckland. but it was actually 471 feet taller (i checked). eat it seattle.  

after spending so much time in cities on this trip i figured i needed to touch grass. so i grabbed my mithril vest and cloak and headed to the shire. another reason new zealand isn’t real, they tried to make it look exactly like lord of the rings. they even have a hobbiton village which is an exact replica from middle earth. now THERES a place i would like to go. middle earth.

on my way back from NOT middle earth i decided to test the gravity in this fake place and some nice ladies in a town called taupo got me all set up on something they swore WAS NOT bungy jumping but just like a big swing. i like swings. swings are safe. (except for that one time a kid swung all the way around the top of the bar and turned inside out) aside from that story ive literally never heard of someone getting hurt on a swing. so like an IDIOT i said okay!

this was a BIG SWING. the strapped me into a harness and clipped me to a rope. and then when they said they would count to three and let me go, they actually only counted to 2. and BOY DID THEY LET ME GO.

i dropped 44 meters (which is about 74 laundry machines for any americans reading this) and then i swung back up and down. my tummy felt like a laundry machine. and i cried a little. but my experiment was a success. they DO, in fact, have gravity in new zealand.

im starting to think i might be mistaken. new zealand is real. REAL PRETTY. these trips do that to you. they take an idea you thought you had and squish it around like play dough. i thought i knew how nice people could be, until i met australians. i thought i knew how green rolling hills could be until i saw new zealand. i thought i knew i could swim. i cant.

i have pretty big eyes. but a trip like this opens them up even more. when i go back home i have a feeling ill start to even see home a little differently too. i’ll still be duck. but maybe ill try coffee… actually thats a bad idea. or research koalas a little bit. maybe ill be just a little bit different than i was before my world turned upside down.

— duck