girlrock | aus 25 log

i said i would write this before the end of the year and it is december 29!!! i have never lied ever in my entire life. i barely remember anything so this is mostly a photo dump with my vague recollection of past events.

INTRO
after austin 2023 and montreal 2024, australia 2025 was me and risa's third race and our first outside of north america! we were intrigued by this race for many reasons: season opener due to ramadan timing, oscar's homecoming, lewis's first in red, a new crop of rookies, me having never been to australia before, etc...

healthwise, i was doing a lot better this year than i was during montreal (when i was dealing with my chronic insomnia and could barely carry my own luggage from fatigue), so it was really fun to explore a new country and feel more energetic! we did 4 days in sydney and then flew to melbourne tuesday morning so that we'd have 2 days in melbourne before f1 weekend events. imo we divided our time very well and i'm pleased with all the things we got to do; of course there are other places in australia and surrounding that i would still love to visit (have never been to nz either) and it wasn't that much time, but given our limited agenda i'm very happy... and i ate lots of tasty things.

FRIDAY — MARCH 7
dying i'm looking at our travel doc and i literally penciled in making oscar gifs at the hotel after dinner because that was when dts s7 dropped. anyway traveling to australia wasn't bad at all, but our plans were immediately derailed by risa experiencing a delay and missing her connection to australia (we were originally meant to arrive around the same time on different flights). instead i arrived in the morning by myself and had a whole day alone—thankfully i was the one who booked the hotel so we had no issues there—and i ended up doing a lot of low-effort touristy/food stuff by myself, like trying out pastry places and going to qvb/westfield area. which we returned to later on... i'm MEEQPILLED. oomf who we were going to hang out with at the race was also going to do syd-melb, but they had visa issues and ended up only being able to come for the melb leg :( Australia Is A Struggle. but we still had a lot of fun in melbourne!

anyway australia has a lot of little trinket stores but my favorite one is meeq, which i love specifically for carrying decole concombre figurines (there was another store we went to in syd where i obtained a few too but i forget the name). if you know me then you know that this is my fav figurine brand/line, but since it's from japan and not super popular abroad it's almost impossible to find authentically in the usa where no one imports it!!! i was also really excited because at the start of 2025 i decided to collect my favorite line of jellycats (the jollipop line), but they were already retired and impossible to find for face value, and nowadays they sell for like $80-100 usd on mercari :/ thankfully meeq had a few still in stock at face value + import fees. obviously jellycats are way cheaper in the usa if you're buying new stock but it was just serendipity that they had rare retired ones left...

our hotel was in the haymarket/chinatown area which was perfectly located. I LOVE HOW CHINESE SYDNEY IS!!!! there was a chinese grocer right down the street with the cutest orange bodega cat who has (had?) his own gmaps landmark and it always made my day when we passed him on our way out. also this trip really validated my malatang obsession...

overall i took it pretty easy because i was exhausted from traveling, but i got to grab a drink and hang out with oomf for a bit which was sooo crazy and fun 💗 and they gave me the most gorgeous prints T__T

also i had never seen an ibis before in my life and was so charmed at their pervasiveness throughout the city. i want a bin chicken...

SATURDAY — MARCH 8
this was such a packed day!!! risa arrived in the morning and we headed out to glebe with another oomf (who so kindly acted as our tour guide) for the saturday market. it was really crowded and kind of stressful but i still enjoyed it. we also visited the usyd campus, went to broadway for lunch, and then checked out this taiwanese art gallery called white rabbit gallery which was very cool and immersive.

i don't remember where we were at this point but we then had to take a bus to bondi beach, which is on the eastern coast of sydney. i was very impressed with myself for surviving this whole walk (it was like 30 minutes. i'm exaggerating) because i was like ok we can do bondi to bronte but that's IT, but i think we actually ended up walking all the way to clovelly? it was a very beautiful view and i had a great time.

finally we met up with yet another lovely oomf in surry hills which is where all the trendy food spots are (i think) and had a delicious fusion dinner at tokki. apparently they closed permanently in june!? i don't remember what kind of gnocchi this was anymore (something miso) but this + the okonomiyaki fried rice were delish. another thing i loved about australia is the true depth of asian food like although sydney is heavily chinese you can just get anything... for example i enjoyed trying several indonesian places with risa and her family.

SUNDAY — MARCH 9
we also took this day pretty easy! the thing about sydney is that it's So shopping-centric, or at least it Can Be if you want that to be your experience, because downtown has one hundred million malls and galleries within 2 minutes of one another. i'd already been to the galeries for my first hit of black star pastry, but i returned with risa to try different flavors. they sell croissants and regular baked goods but the REAL star of their show is the layered cakes. i came in with tempered expectations since they're ~instagram famous~ but they actually were that good... my favorite flavors in order are:

strawberry watermelon (has actual watermelon in it) > origami lemon (has pistachio dacquoise) > raspberry lychee > mango yuzu. the only one i wouldn't get again is mango yuzu... it was meh.

after finishing up downtown we took the train to the sunday kirribilli markets which is in north sydney. i bought my croissant hair clip and a skirt there! this year i really went out of my comfort zone and learned how to start wearing skirts which i have never done before and i feel like i've come a long way since the start of 2025... anyway it was sooo sunny and beautiful that day and we ended up in this little park area with a perfect coastal view and i was really like waow sydney is gorgeous. i really loved sydney i'm sorry but melbourne did not compare at all... maybe i did not have a proper experience though.

in the evening we also took a train to circular quay so we could see the opera house, which was very much just Fine but it's like you have to do it as a first-time tourist. the actual best view is from the ferry though because you can't really get a good shot when you're way up close on the steps.

MONDAY — MARCH 10
we did our aquarium + zoo combo on monday! iirc the aquarium was in barangaroo which was kind of cursed overall like very corporate vibes it was just evil and stale and there was no good boba in the area. the aquarium was GREAT though they have a PENGUIN RIDE where you get put in a little boat and you go along this little river and pass around the penguin exhibit it's the cutest thing in the world 😭 and they have the sweetest little loser dugong named pig who they tried to rehabilitate but he was so bad at living in the wild and kept getting bullied by the other male dugongs they were like fineeeeeee. you can live here

taronga zoo is a ways out from where we were in sydney (we took a bus to get there and then the ferry back, which i think was a good plan), but it was great and i loved all the koalas. to cap off our sydney trip we then took the train to newtown, which is a kind of hip quirky shopping area (? i think) and has a lot of cute boutiques. we wanted to go there for TOKYO LAMINGTON which has gourmet asian flavor lamingtons but it closes early and we didn't realize 😭 nevertheless i enjoyed tasty skewers and getting black star pastry again.

also at the end of the day oomf who missed syd leg was like Please... i'm begging you... can you go to the hotel from that one free! episode where harurin stay together or whatever... and i was like oh my god. Okay. so we took the tram just so i could take a photo of the hotel front for her LMSFDOSDFIOHSDFLKHSDFLKH

TUESDAY — MARCH 11
we flew to melbourne in the morning and it was so absurdly hot this day i really got a taste of max uv australian sun. we didn't do that much since it was just so hot but before going to melbourne proper we stopped in brighton to see the bathing boxes so i could recreate ojp profile photo LOL. other than that it was really just food/mall/sleep.

WEDNESDAY — MARCH 12
finally saw OOMF! risa and i parted ways this day since she's already been to melbourne so she opted to spend time with family while i explored the city and got food and then went to the f1 fan event where oscar was speaking at. the weather was very variable this week and we got flooded waiting for him to show up which was such an L...

honestly i have nothing interesting to say about this day like we just ate a shit ton of Pastry + got boba + ate malatang (introduced oomf to malatang!!! my favorite thing to do. and then she kept asking to get it again. my other favorite thing to do) + that was kind of it. but seeing oscar ahead of race weekend was fun n cute

i think i need to visit melbourne when there isn't f1 happening because taking the tram was so hectic the entire time that i think it colored my view of its transit system. even though i know that it's the largest tram network in the world!!!

THURSDAY — MARCH 13
although there was no f1 stuff going on we went to the track to check out the fanzones and just get a scope of the place for future reference. fans in melbourne are crazyyyy and will camp at like 2am for the melbourne walk which i really cannot comprehend, like i was exhausted showing up an hour-ish early for just fan engagement and that was already completely crowded and hellish to navigate.

anyway i won't rehash the race stuff too much because risa covers it specifically in her log and this is already getting too long. there was a lot of random stuff on track like an indomie booth? and i committed credit card fraud (used risa's) to get free amex patches LOL. since we didn't have a full day's worth of stuff to do on track we left pretty early to go to queen victoria market and then... i don't remember what we did. but there was probably boba in there somewhere. one thing about me is that i'll terrorize a heytea

also i had a few of my freebie stickers/charms that i advertised on tumblr and i met up with someone who traded me freebies they got from suzuka which was sooo sweet!!!

FRIDAY — MARCH 14
this is when it was still hot as balls. morning sessions were fine esp because we were right below the premium covered sections, but it got rough once the sun came up... i did think the facilities on the track were overall pretty decent though, and the food options were much better than austin (nonexistent, way overpriced) and montreal (they had food trucks but it was overall quite mid). the main thing it lacked was true covered sections!!! the fake tents were fine when it wasn't raining but omg... more on this later.

SATURDAY — MARCH 15
more fan engagement, quali... i don't remember if it was this day that we were stuck behind the most annoying little australian teenagers in line but they were SO annoying i hope they know that!!! we also deeply struggled to get off track this day so we ended up walking the whole way back to our hotel which i dreaded at first but in the end wasn't so bad... about 50 minutes iirc?

SUNDAY — MARCH 16
ya girl was getting rained on... thankfully we are seasoned pros from montreal and risa packed the ponchos! finding shelter was so rough because there were literally no indoor areas to loiter in (available to us broke normal peasants at least) so you kind of just had to let it happen to you. at least in montreal during the freak storm they made us huddle underneath an overpass together ahslkdfhasldfh.

i can't speak too much on the race... no but honestly it was really special to feel the tension and emotions from the crowd as oscar recovered and it really goes to show how special it is to be at the home race for YOUR blorbo where he is the hero and the main guy no matter what happens to him. his perseverance... no matter how sad i am over the championship results i am really glad we went to this race. i also didn't mind our section even if it wasn't the most thrilling (it was convenient from the fanzones at least), and it took 192342384 years to be able to get on track for the track walk. by the end of the day i was sooo burnt out but we did enjoy one final malatang!