This last weekend was definitely the most enjoyable that I’ve had so far down here in Australia. Friday night I went out to eat with some family friends that live just a half hour down the road from Monash. After watching a bit of Friday Night Footy on the telly, I stayed overnight at their house, so that I could get up before 4am to go surf fishing with James & some of his buddies. We made our way over to Waratah Bay, a couple hours east of Melbourne and near Wilson’s Promontory, to a surf beach called Sandy Point, before sunrise. When we got there the moon was just starting to set over the ocean, it was quite beautiful. But as it was my first time ever fishing, I had to learn how to cast and everything. But what makes surf fishing different from lake or river fishing (apart from the obvious differences in bait/tackle) is that you have to get a feel for the rhythm of the ocean. You have to wait for a decent-sized wave to roll back out to sea, at which point you run up to the edge of the water, cast your line in as far as you can, and then run back to the dry part of the beach before the next wave crashes in (while letting your line have slack, so that you aren’t pulling your line back in as you retreat to dry sand). It’s quite fun actually! I didn’t catch anything, but I guess I brought luck to pretty much everyone else. They were catching salmon, mostly ranging up to a couple pounds and a foot long or so, give or take a couple inches, as salmon are the only fish that can stand the icy Antarctic currents that feed Waratah Bay during winter. In the afternoon we moved to another nearby beach, Shallow Inlet, but didn’t catch anything there. On our way back to Melbourne we stopped at another beach, at Walkerville. While we were there it was around dusk, and the moon was rising over the hills of Wilson’s Prom, which were visible straight across Waratah Bay. It was a sight that none of us wanted to leave. So on Saturday I was at the beach from moonset to moonrise. Pretty cool, if you ask me. But at that beach by Walkerville, there’s a caravan park, where you can pitch a tent or bring your caravan (camper) for pretty cheap, and the sight you wake up to in the morning is the Prom right across the bay. Spectacular! I’m probably gonna bring my parents there when they come for a visit in November. When I got back to civilization, I went to a friend’s house in Blackburn for awhile, to top off an incredibly fun day.
Sunday was a day for another first, my first footy match! I went to the Melbourne-Hawthorn match at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). It was kind of a blowout, as Melbourne won 107-63, but that was to be expected since the Demons are now in sole possession of first place in the AFL, and the Hawks are absolutely dreadful and dead last (there are 16 teams in the AFL, 10 of which are from Melbourne and the surrounding suburbs, and the other 6 are from out-of-state). But footy’s a wonderful game, it’s fast-paced and doesn’t have heaps of rules like American football does (or “gridiron,” as it’s called down here). And everyone in Victoria (the state that Melbourne is in) is footy-mad; about the only thing that I can compare it to is the obsession of Packer fans in Wisconsin. On game days, everyone’s wearing a brightly coloured scarf for their favourite team, and you even see old grannies on the train all decked out and heading for a match, it’s awesome! On Wednesday I finally bought a footy scarf of my own, a navy & white one for the Geelong Cats. I’ve decided to barrack for the Cats first, and the Demons second, but both teams are doing really well, and are in good position for the playoffs, which will come in September.
Tonight I discovered the wonders of Lygon Street — food! Lygon Street is in Carlton, just a couple blocks north of the CBD (Melbourne central business district), and it’s a street that’s lined with all sorts of ethnic restaurants for two or three blocks on both sides. There’s every kind of food you could possibly want, Indonesian, Thai, Nepalese, Italian (including a place that Pete Sampras frequents during the Australian Open tennis tournament that’s held in Melbourne every January), Greek, Japanese, and more! You name it, they’ve got it on Lygon Street. I think I’ll be heading back there a few more times while I’m here in Melbourne. 😉 Tonight I was at one of the Italian restaurants, for a meal and a travel info show put on by IFSA. It was really good food, and I got lots of ideas and tips on what to go see down here in Australia. I’m wanting to see Sydney, Tasmania, and the Whitsunday Islands/Great Barrier Reef for sure, and hopefully Uluru and Kings Canyon in central Australia as well. But now I’m also thinking about trekking over to Western Australia, as they’ve got some fantastic national parks over there, including Karijini and Kalbarri, which I’ve heard are absolutely spectacular. But I know that time and money are gonna probably limit where I can go, so I’m gonna have to make some choices. The nice thing is that domestic flights here in Australia are dirt cheap — some flights are as low as $29 or $39!!
I’m really coming to appreciate the style of instruction at Gustavus, because here the instructors definitely have a tendency to whip through material as fast as they possibly can, without even giving the students a chance to write down everything that they’d just put up on their slides. Fluid Dynamics is starting to get a bit tough, but at least I’m not the only one that’s pretty lost at this point, most of the Aussie students are as well. I’ll just have to adapt to the Aussie style of university instruction and spend a lot of time going back over the notes, filling in the gaps, and largely teaching it to myself. But I’m told that the instructors are happy to answer questions during lectures, but they’re simply used to cold silence whenever they ask the class if there are any questions, so they’ve pretty much stopped doing that. One of these days though I’ll speak up and ask if I don’t understand something, and maybe that’ll get the rest of the class to start asking questions in lecture as well. It’d certainly make things easier to understand. But it’d be boring if classes and everything were just like home! That’s part of the cool thing about studying abroad, adapting to a slightly different style of doing things. That’s part of how you grow, by new experiences. Well that’s all for now, g’night.