Well, it’s been a couple of weeks since I checked in last, so let me recap what’s been going on for me here in the Land Down Under. A couple of Saturdays ago I went up to Lake Mountain, a couple hours northeast of Melbourne, with a group of people from Christian Union. They were having a “Snow Day,” and decided to go up to Lake Mountain to experience some of the white stuff. Once we got high enough up the “mountain” (an overgrown hill, really, just like all the “mountains” in Australia) for the rain to change to snow, it finally started feeling like winter for the first time since I got here. But several people in the group, including Kieran, the guy who was driving the car I was in, had never seen snow before in their lives, so it was really cool getting to see their reactions to it for the very first time. Since Aussies aren’t used to driving in snowy/slushy/icy conditions, the park rangers made everyone pull over and put on tyre chains (for better traction) shortly after we crossed the snow line. It was pretty amusing really, and nobody can understand how we can possibly get by back home without tyre chains during the winter. And while they all like visiting the snow, they can’t imagine how we can tolerate living in it and dealing with the snow and the cold for 5-6 months each and every year. But it was snowing heaps all day long while we were up there, which made for really good conditions for tobogganing (in Australia a toboggan isn’t wooden, but instead is what I’d call a plastic sled) and snowball fights! :-)It was very cool to get a chance to play in the snow again, and we even had some adventures along the way too, like when Kieran got his car bogged in a snowbank in the car park, hehe.
Last week I started getting a bit of Olympics fever. On Monday night I stayed up till after 3am so that I could see what was being dubbed down here as the “race of the century,” the men’s 200m freestyle final (swimming), in which the “Thorpedo,” the incomparable Ian Thorpe of Australia, held off “Hoogie” from The Netherlands and Phelps from the US. I was barracking for Thorpie anyway, and now he’s the most successful Aussie Olympian in history, with five golds. There were another three swimming finals on right after that, so I stayed up a bit longer. And then on Tuesday night I went to bed early (midnight) so that I could wake up at 3:40am for the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay final, pitting arch-rivals Australia and the US together in a race for the supremacy of the pool. There were a few Aussies that woke up to watch it too, but I was the only one barracking for America. And I have to say that it was one of the most fantastic and exciting races I have ever seen in any sport, definitely better than the race the night before, with Klete Keller and the US holding off a hard-charging Ian Thorpe and the Aussies. But right after the race we all went back to bed. I love the Olympics!
I didn’t get around to writing a post last Thursday because I was a bit busy getting everything ready for my 3-day camping trip to the Grampians (four or five hours WNW of Melbourne) over the weekend. It was the first of two field trips for my Experiencing the Australian Landscape class, the other being a 4-day excursion to Wilson’s Prom in mid-September. We left Monash at 8am on Friday and didn’t get back till 7:30pm Sunday evening, but it was an awesome trip. It was also the first time I’d ever really been hiking or camping too, so pretty much everything was a new experience for me. On Friday afternoon we went to Brambuk, the Grampians National Park & Cultural Centre, where we all had a couple go’s at throwing a boomerang, sampled some native Australian berries, herbs and meats, including emu (a bit dry), crocodile (very dry, a lot like chicken breast that hasn’t been given enough water in the oven), and kangaroo (a very distinctive taste, very gamey like venison). We also learned some about the culture of the separate groups of Koori (Aboriginal) peoples that used to inhabit that area, and watched a couple of movies depicting their dreamtime stories of how Gariwerd (the Grampians) was formed, so that was pretty interesting. And the Brambuk centre was a very interesting building, as it was built to be reminiscent of a cockatoo, the totem of one of the local groups of Koori people. Inside it had a winding ramp up to the second level which symbolized an eel, the totem of another local group.
On Saturday we woke up bright and early to go on our hike for the day in the Wonderland Ranges region of the Grampians. That was a pretty strenuous hike of almost 10km and an altitude change of over 400m (more than 1300ft), but we got to see lots of cool landscapes and rock formations, including Stony Creek, Cool Chamber (an large overhang of rock with a small trickle of a waterfall), Grand Canyon, Silent Street (both of those are fairly narrow rocky gorges), and finally The Pinnacle, which is one of the most famous landmarks in Gariwerd.
It’s an outcrop of rock that sticks out from the cliff, and overlooks a sheer vertical drop of over 410m to Halls Gap below. Even though there was a railing there, I must say that I regained my respect (not fear) of heights. I was being very cautious up there (particularly with the gusty winds), mostly because I didn’t want to lose my balance or accidentally drop my camera over the cliff. After making our way back down to Halls Gap (which, while not as tiring as climbing up, was certainly more strenuous on the ankles and knees), we drove over to MacKenzie Falls, but in order to see that we had to go down and then back up a steep 200-300m elevation change. It was all worth it though. Then on Saturday night back at the camp, the 44 of us were split up into four groups, and told about the landscapes around our homes, and our preconceptions (and impressions) of the Aussie landscape (we all had to write a brief paper on that before the trip). I thought that was fascinating, especially since in my group there were three people from the US including myself, three from Sweden, one from Spain, one from Germany, two from the UK, one from Israel and one from The Netherlands (this class is really aimed more at international students). And I got to hear some about South Korea as well, since my tentmate was from there.
On Sunday morning we packed up all the tents and moved out to the northern parts of the Grampians to hike up Hollow Mountain (half of us did that, the other half went to Mount Zero and Mount Stapylton). Hollow Mountain was a steeper climb than what we did the previous day to get up to The Pinnacle, but a fair bit shorter, and most of us thought Hollow Mountain was cooler as well. Unfortunately there were lots of low clouds around (some grazing the top of the peak), so we didn’t have quite the visibility we had the day before, but the views were still spectacular. After spending the entire morning up there, we went just across the road and hiked up Mount Zero. Due to time constraints, we had to go fast and made it up to the summit in just 25 minutes on a typically 45-minute hike! It was cool looking over at Hollow Mountain from up there and seeing where all we’d climbed, and how far we’d actually hiked. Fortunately the rain held off until right when the other group was getting back from their hike, it was wonderful timing. The bus ride back was really long though, on a cramped and very uncomfortable 24-person bus with everyone eager to just get back to uni so that we could take a shower and be clean again, hehe. But this weekend was really good in that I got to know quite a few new people, and even met a couple of people who were friends with Karolina, the Gustie who was down here last semester.
The coursework has really been starting to pick up around here in the last couple weeks, with a test a week or two ago in Fluid Dynamics, an assignment due tomorrow (which took hours, but I’m done with it at last), and another test next week, plus an assignment and a test in Weather & Climate next week, a 1500 word essay about the trip to the Grampians due either next week or the week after, and then of course there’s always the big research essay for Climate Change looming over my head that’s due the day we get back from spring break. And I’d really been enjoying my bludge semester to this point too, oh well.
But speaking of spring break (which down here is the last week of September), yesterday I booked some flights to go see the Great Barrier Reef that week. I’ll be starting out by flying to Airlie Beach, meeting up with my friend Rich who’s studying over in Lismore, spending a couple of days in Airlie Beach and the beautiful Whitsunday Islands, and then making our way up to Cairns for a couple of days before flying back to our respective unis. The Reef is one of my “must-sees,” so even though it’s a bit pricey to get up there, especially since it’s spring break, it’s still worth it.
But first things first, tomorrow I’m going to another footy match! It’s the last week of the regular season in the AFL, and I’m going to the Collingwood-Carlton match tomorrow night at the MCG with my friends Rowan, James & Stuart (if he isn’t sick by tomorrow). Neither team is going to make the playoffs this year, but apparently they’re bitter rivals (like the Packers & Vikings), so it’s always a good match, no matter what their records are. It should be a good time!