Wild, Wonderful Tasmania

During my first two weeks here, I decided that I wanted to go to Tasmania. Not sure why - just suddently wanted to. Amanda wanted to go as well, and luckily our final exams schedules matched perfectly so that we were able to go together. Why study for finals when you can go to Tasmania instead?


a map of our adventures.

On the night of Nov 1, Amanda and I flew into Launceston. In classic Jetstar fashion, the plane made weird noises and was so rough when we landed that the flight attendant said, “Welcome to Tasmania. We’ve just landed in Launceston, in case you just missed that.” Since we got in late, we went straight to our hostel (which shook every time a truck drove by) to plan for the next day. I made the mistake of calling a tour company at 11pm, thinking they’d have an office with an answering machine, but I think it was the guide’s wife who answered. Oops.

The next morning we rented a car and headed for our first destination: the Marakoopa Cave. As we started driving (through the beautiful landscape of mountains and farms), we spotted signs for a honey farm and decided that spontaneous stops were completely fine on this trip. We pulled over at the honey farm to taste the honey and see some bees going to work. Amanda bought some honey, which was a big deal because we had a big debate about whether or not honey was allowed to cross state lines in Australia (they’re big on their quarantines and food transport regulations here).

We also pulled over to take pictures with a giant statue of a Tasmanian devil. At this point I was convinced that renting a car was the way to go – I’m a little sick of tours and public transport at this point anyway!

We arrived at the sight of the cave in the town of Mole Creek. The reason we went here: glow worms. We had a tour of the cave and all the gorgeous stalactites and stalagmites. They told us the cave was discovered by two boys who explored the cave – by candlelight! – for 4 years before telling anyone else about it. We saw a big Tasmanian cave spider (they can grow up to the size of a dinner plate) and a blind cave spider that is so well adapted to the darkness that it has no eyes at all.

The glow worms were the final part of the tour – they turned off the lights and we looked up at the ceiling to see glowing dots everywhere, kind of like looking at a sky full of stars. The glow worms are really fungus gnats – they glow when they’re young to attract food into their sticky strings. As adults, they don’t have mouths and die after 3-5 days. What a weird creature. Cool to see though. (I didn’t know about glow worm caves until I heard someone talking about seeing them in New Zealand. When I heard they were in Tassie, I decided I had to go.)

After the cave, we continued on our journey to a national park to see Cradle Mountain, probably the most famous thing in Tasmania, besides the devil. Along the way we stopped at a few lookouts to take pictures, so we got to the mountain later in the afternoon. We spied some wallabies in the parking lot, but our ultimate goal for the day was to try and spot a wombat. We did a 2-1/2 hour walk around Dove Lake, with Cradle Mountain as the backdrop (there was still snow up there), looking for wombats all the way. We found some lizards, some birds, and a lot of wombat poop – but no wombats. At the end of the walk, we stuck our feet in the cold cold lake and then got back in the car to head out.



Then, what do you know, but as we’re leaving the park, a wallaby AND a wombat run out infront of the car at the same time! Amanda excitedly parked the car in the middle of the road and hopped out with her camera. The wombat hobbled off the road and turned its butt toward us.

We thought we were lucky then, but when we got back in the car, we found another wombat on the side of the road, one that was willing to just stand there and eat while I took pictures of it. When we pulled in the park’s gas station, there was ANOTHER wombat, which Amanda then chased across the parking lot trying to get pictures. A running, wobbly wombat = one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.



Unfortunately, this gas station had closed at 5:00 with the rest of the park offices. This was a problem as our rental car came with only half a tank and we stupidly didn’t fill it up when we were still in the city. It was now 6:30 or so, and we were off to find the next gas pump.

On our way, we were discussing how Tasmanian devils are probably rarely spotted in the wild. No more than 30 minutes later, do we both notice a crow picking at some road kill… “Was that…?” We both looked at each other. “IT WAS! DEAD TASSIE DEVIL!” We pulled off into a driveway and ran back to check it out. It’s back was flattened by a vehicle, but it was undoubtedly a Tasmanian devil. No way! We decided that even though it’s dead, it still counts as a wild animal spotting. Yes, we took pictures, but no one else seems to appreciate them as much as we do… wonder why…

We realized we might be in trouble with our gasoline situation when we found out the town we were driving to was hardly more than a trailer park. We headed to Sheffield, which we thought had to be real town because it was a bigger dot on the map, and discussed how if the car died, we’d just have to ask the nearest farmer if they had any fuel.

Amazingly, we made it the next 15 kilometers to Sheffield, and the first thing we saw was a gas station! I was so excited, I almost hugged the pump. It was an unattended gas station – just a pump and a credit card machine. I put in my Visa – it said my type of card wasn’t accepted. We tried 4 more cards, all but one of which were Visas. It wouldn’t take any of them. Well this was a cruel twist in the plot. We turned onto the main road of town and found a gas station – it had closed at 7:00. We were 45 minutes too late. There were some feelings of despair at this point. Our stuff was back in Launceston, and we wanted to make it back there for the night.

Across the street I saw a man playing with his grandson. I went over to ask him if there were any more petrol stations that were open. He said the other one would be closed. Our options were spend the night in town, drive to the next city (29 km away), or go find the station owner’s house and ask him to open for us. We were going to go with the last one, as it was the most appealing choice (no way were we gonna make it even a few more kms with the gas we had left), but then the man told me he had just bought some fuel for his lawnmower and we could buy it from him. THANK GOD! WE LOVE SHEFFIELD! We pulled the car over into the lot of the Inn, and he and another guy got a tube out of the shed and filled up our car. The adorable grandson tried to be helpful too; it was cute. We thanked them a zillion times and paid them for the fuel and then looked around town to see if anything was open since we hadn’t eaten an actual meal since breakfast. We noticed the barn-like building that said “Ice Cream” on the side looked open – turns out it wasn’t just an ice cream place – it was a Chinese place! We got our food and ate it in a park filled with murals, which the town’s tourist attraction.

It was now dark and we still had a ways to go. Our route home took us up into the mountains on narrow, windy roads. Animals started popping out at us from every direction! Wallaby here, wallaby there! Around every corner, an owl would fly out in front of the vehicle. When we got down off the mountain, we thought we were safe, but a possum ran out in front of the car. It decided to turn around and run under the car. Crunch.

After that eventful day, we decided that we were in love with Tasmania.

The next morning, we explored Launceston a little. It’s Tassie’s 2nd biggest city, but it has a town feel to it. We went to the gorge and walked around a little bit. We left probably around noon, and immediately started looking for stops to make along the way to the east coast and down to Wineglass Bay. Reading the Lonely Planet guide to Tassie, I said, “Oh, too bad we passed Evandale. We could have stopped at the Gourmet Sauce Company to try mustards and jams and strawberry chili sauce.” Really, I was being sarcastic, but as I read it, we saw a sign for Evandale. Amanda said, “Should we?” “Why not!” We pulled off and saw the sign “Sauce Company 300 M”. We sampled some things. I bought jam and she bought mustards for her dad. Later we saw the jams for double the price at a gift shop.


Launceston

While we were driving, Amanda thought she saw a snake. Then we both saw something we didn’t expect to see: ECHIDNA!!!!! Aka: the spiny anteater. We pulled off the road and ran back to find it. It tried to hide in some long grass. What a freakin cute animal. Was not expecting to see one in the wild! I also kept seeing kookaburras everywhere – you know, the bird that sits in the old gum tree in the song – but I kept seeing them on telephone wires, not in gum trees. Disappointing, haha.

Our next stop was the “White Knights,” the tallest white gum trees in the world – up to 93 meters. To get there, we had to take some backroads, which led us from the farmland (there are so many sheep in Tassie. Ok, maybe that’s all of Australia), to forest, to a logging area, to rainforest. We ate our leftover Chinese by a stream and then did the 20 minute walk to the trees. And yes, they were big.


See. Big.

When we finally reached our turn to head down the coast, we saw that it was May Pole Day in the town of St Marys. Did we stop? Of course. As we watched the kids untangle the ribbon on the pole, one guy asked “Can we get some of the big kids to help the little kids?” and motioned to me to help some kid. I didn’t know what I was doing! By the time I actually looked up and saw the over-under pattern of the ribbons, the little kid was doing just fine on his own. Amanda and I took some pictures and got out of there instead of staying to enjoy the kebabs and the fiddler.

Since our stops turned the 2-1/2 hour drive into a 5 hour adventure, we decided not to go to Wineglass Bay that day (it was cloudy and icky anyway) and went to our hostel in the town of Bicheno. (Of its pronunciation, which we kept screwing up, Amanda said: “It’s like ‘bishop’, with a C-H…. E-N-O.”) Cute town! Right on the shore, no traffic lights. The town is known for its fairy penguin tours, but the guy at the hostel told us about a picnic table, where if we waited around 8pm, we might get to see a few penguins. We got dinner (I had a chicken burger. Since I discovered that Australians put pineapple on their chicken biggers, I’ve been in love), and we ate on the rocky shore looking over the town. We then started on our walk over to the penguin picnic table, taking about an hour to get there, walking over the rocks and boulders along the water.



We reached a spot called the “blowhole” where the water crashed through a hole in the rocks and shot up. We saw a picnic table near here but thought it must be the wrong one. No way would the penguins come up this far from the water, or so we thought. Unable to find the path we had been following, we decided to follow the road to the next beach. Walking towards the road, I saw something out of the corner of my eye – the butt of a penguin disappeared under a rock! I signaled to Amanda and we sat by the rock waiting for the little penguin to come out. He did and stood there looking at us. SO CUTE!! After a few minutes, we decided to walk down and try to find the next beach and see if there were more penguins there.

As we climbed over the rocks and crevices, I spotted a penguin swimming in the water between two rocks. It was pretty dark at this point and getting hard to see. We stopped and sat on a rock, looking towards the water. Sure enough, Amanda spotted the white bellies of a group of penguins exiting the water. I counted 14. They formed two rows, waiting for their whole group to be ready to go. Then all together, they waddled up the rocks. When they came to a ledge, they stopped, waited for everyone, and all slid down the ledge together. Then they continued in their lines. They were coming closer to us. One penguin suddenly turned and bolted for the water, but the others continued on their journey. Pretty much ADORABLE.

We were sitting out on the rocks in the dark and it started to rain. We figured it would be smart to leave before the weather got worse. We climbed up and slid down rocks, trying to make our way back the road, and we realized that we were surrounded by penguins. A group of 8 there, another 5 over there. And then the ones we couldn’t see – they were screeching and making the weirdest noises in the bushes. We found out later that they live in their on land burrows at night and just go into the water during the day to find food. I would guess we saw about 40 penguins. We made it back to the road without falling into any crevices or pools of water. A successful night, for sure.

The next morning, we headed towards Wineglass Bay, which was only about another 30 minutes drive. Wineglass is considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the word, but by land the only way to get there is to hike. It was probably about a 40 minute hike just to the lookout – and perfect timing, the sun decided to grace us with its presence. Amanda decided that she wanted to walk down the beach… which was fine until we had to walk back UP the mountain. And of course it decided to rain on us at this point too. But that’s alright.




Overall we walked for 2 or 2-1/2 hours. We didn’t think this put us behind, but after a lunch stop in Swansea which took a lot longer than we expected and a back road route which, we got to Port Arthur at 4:00. (By the way, we had another echidna sighting.)

Port Arthur is a penal settlement. Back when Australia was the place to send Britain’s convicts, Port Arthur was the place to send convicts who committed more crimes on mainland Australia. When we got to Port Arthur, the guy told us we could pay less if we went in after 4:30, although all tours and boat rides will have stopped by then. That was fine by us, although it would have been really nice to get there early enough to do everything.

The area is actually really beautiful. It’s weird to think that it was a prison when you’re looking over a nice harbour. Most of the buildings are gone thanks to bush fires, and many of the remaining ones are most destroyed. It was really cool though. We toured the asylum, the chapel, the church, the hospital (built on a hill to catch “healthful breezes”), the penitentiary (originally a flourmill powered by a convict-driven treadmill), some cottages, and the gardens. Australia’s convict history is always kind of amusing: although you occasionally find crimes like “assault with an axe,” it’s more likely that the people sent here stole fruit or something equally minor.



We left before dark and headed to Hobart. Had fantastic pizza in the town of Sorell (a big deal, as most of the Americans think most Australian pizza skimps on the sauce).

After our three days of “nature,” it was time to spend some time in the state capital, Hobart. First thing in the morning, we made our way to the Cascade Brewery and got booked for the first tour. It was fantastic! Cascade is the oldest brewery in Australia, as well as the oldest still-running industry. The building was originally a sawmill, but while the guy who started it was sitting in jail, he decided that Tassie needed some good alcohol. We got to wear super sexy neon vests and safety glasses during our tour, and our tour guide was amazing. Plus, I didn’t know exactly how beer was made or what makes one beer different from another, so it was really interesting. At the end of the tour, we got 3 samples of beers, apple ciders, or fruit syrups. I talked to some Tassie local who was excited that we were from PA because he did a tour in Europe with a Pennsylvanian couple. He told me that three swimming days in a row in Tassie means the summer weather is going well, haha. We could have spent all afternoon relaxing in their gardens, but it was time to head off to tour #2…


Amanda & I in front of the brewery

… at the Cadbury chocolate factory! We were excited for this one because they actually take you inside the REAL factory unlike at Hershey, haha. The rest of our tour group was a biker gang (ok, maybe they were a club, not a gang), and they were a bit rowdy. Amanda and I thought it was hilarious, but our tour guide was not so amused. She spent most of the tour telling us what we CAN’T do in the factory and what we’re not allowed to see, thanks to tour groups breaking the rules in the past. I think we learned more about management’s gripes with tour groups than about how chocolate is made. It was still cool to see inside though… like Willy Wonka, minus the Oompa Loompas. I learned one machine can wrap 700 little candy bars in one minute. And 800,000 is the magic number as that is the maximum amount of chocolate blocks produced in one day, as well as the most bottles of beer bottled in one day at Cascade! They also gave us a whole box of little chocolate at the end, so that was sweet. I just wish we’d had a different tour guide.

When we left Cadbury, we pulled into a winery that we were driving by. We did a tasting and it was incredibly awkward since we had no idea what we were doing. The guy had to explain everything from “Now you’re supposed to finish your wine or dump it in the barrel because I’m not supposed to approach you until your glass is empty” to “In a wine cellar you’re expected to buy; if you pay for your tasting, you’re not as obligated.” He was nice enough, but Amanda and I still felt weird. Then he started quizzing us on what flavors we could taste and whether the wine was dry or sweet. Did I think the wine tasted like leather? I have no idea, but that’s what he told me I might taste.

The rest of the evening, we wandered around the city, checked out some historic buildings, and got dinner. We headed to bed early as we had to get up to catch our flight at 4am. Turns out the other girl in our room was actually a guy who snored like crazy. We got our revenge at 4am because both our beds and the floor boards squeaked. So ha!



Tassie was the perfect 'last hurrah' to my Australian adventures. I had originally planned to spend a day and a half in Sydney to do museums and shopping and a beach, but I was feeling sick and ready to go home. I spent a few hours there though. It was Melbourne Cup day, the biggest horse race in Oz, “the race that stops a nation,” and everyone in the city was dressed up, the women with their big hats and feathers in their hair. It was fun to people watch.




More photos from Tassie?

http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2106575&l=17ede&id=15600311


PS -
Check these out from the beach on Tuesday:

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting there

I've been meaning to write about my trip to Tasmania, but there was that whole final exam thing getting in the way... now that that's done, I'll get to it soon. But not right now. You know me: I'm long winded and I don't have the concentration or energy to describe our excellent Tasmania adventure right now.

Other than that, what's been going on in my last month here?

The last week of class was what's known as Stoneweek: a week of activities leading up to a 2 day music festival. For those of you at Mason, it's like Mason week if every event involved alcohol - and if we had a radio station and a brand of bourbon sponsoring the bands. (The former concert committee chair that I am, I of course stood there wondering how much the stage alone cost.)

Of course, the Arscott courtyard was a complete trash heap all week, and dumb people caused thousands of dollars of damage at some of the bars. And people had swimming races in the bacteria-infested lake. Each residence had its own tshirt to be worn all week - shirts displaying slogans so foul that I'd be too embarrassed to ever share them with my family. My floor also had rules for the week, such as "Each night you must use the pick up line 'If you were a new hamburger at McDonald's, you'd be McGorgeous.'"

Overall, I had a fantastic week, sometimes spectating more than participating, because people were just so entertaining. And the music festival was fantastic. (As was the John Butler Trio concert held on the same stage the following Monday.) And oh, I must tell you the highlight of Tuesday's trivia: Each person on the team could earn 5 points by peeing in a cup - as a special bonus, they'll call you in 2 weeks to let you know if you have chlamydia.

The next week, some of the Americans hosted a Halloween party. Australians don't really do Halloween - they sell decorations and costumes everywhere; they know what it is; some of them celebrated when they were little, but it's not really a big deal here. (This makes absolutley no sense to me as they take every other opportunity to dress up!) I dressed up as a boxer who always loses, and my fake bruises scared a lot of people who really believed that I got beat up by some Arscott hooligans.


Bob was a printer.

In other news, the huge Christmas tree and wreaths and garland have all been up in the mall since mid-October. Geez.

Saturday the International Office opened a $400 bar tab at the Lighty for an Exchange Student goodbye party. It was great - almost everyone came, dressed up, and stayed a long time. Jeremy put together a slide show of photos, which was played on the big screen in the bar, and he made copies for everyone.

People started leaving Sunday. So far, I'm not liking this whole saying goodbye thing. Nope, not liking it one bit.

Oh yeah, exams... they were fine. Both kinda took me by surprise - one because it was actually a decent test, unlike the poorly written excuse for an exam that was our midterm, and the other was the only exam of the semester so I had no idea what to expect. Exams were held in the gym. I've been told it happens other places, but I still thought it as weird.

Best looking exchange group ever:
(click image to enlarge)

love love love love love love love love love

Uluru

Uluru. Ayers Rock. That big reddish rock that's featured on the cover of plenty of Australian guidebooks.


Look familiar?

It's in the middle country, in the Northern Territory, about 450 km from the town of Alice Springs (population less than 30,000). Alice Springs itself is 1300+ km from any major city. Qantas is the only airline that flies to the resort near Uluru or to Alice Springs. Which means EXPENSIVE.

But I'm in Oz and with dad's encouraging thought of "What could be better than sleeping under the stars in the middle of the outback?" I spent October 10-13 in the red center.

I went with a company called Wayoutback, which was pretty fantastic because instead of getting crammed on a bus with 40 tourists, it was just the guide, me, and 4 other people in a 4WD vehicle. My fellow travelers were:
Rachel, 22, a recent Amherst grad who's traveling as much as she can to avoid beginning "real life"
Sally, 21, an English girl who already has a job and "real life" waiting for her at home but is traveling until that starts
John & Annis, probably my parents' age, a Dutch/Belgian couple who now live in France and are traveling around Australia for the fun of it, probably because their kids are finally supporting themselves
Wolly, 45, our tour guide and former children's counselor, who has finally escaped Melbourne city life and is working as a tour guide in order to see his country

I don't know how to make the trip sound as fantastic as it was, as I know the pictures can't do it justice. In our three days, we walked around Uluru, hiked though the giant rocks of Kata Tjuta ("many heads"), and explored King's Canyon. We watched Uluru turn from dull brownish-red to glowing orange at sunset. We saw sunrise. We cooked delicious kangaroo pasta and chicken stir fry on our campfire. We slept on the ground, outside, under the stars on a night when there was a new moon, so it was the best view of the night sky, the milky way, and shooting stars that I will ever have. We saw wild camels, lizards, and dingo footprints. We woke to dingoes howling (because there were caged ones near the first campsite, but we thought they were wild at the time, haha). Our second campsite was in the middle of a cattle station, overlooking red rock ranges, and miles away from any other campers - and it's hard to explain but at one point, when there was no wind, no flies, no one moving, I heard the most SILENCE I've ever heard. The walks were beautiful. Days were hot (approaching 100F and it's only spring! plus they haven't had rain since January) but there was almost always a breeze.

Here's my photo album, complete with captions:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2102515&l=c51b0&id=15600311

After our tour, we met up in Alice Springs for dinner at this place called Bojangles where the bathroom doors had fake handles and turning the handle of one sink turned on a different sink's faucet. I ate a mixed grill of camel, buffalo, kangaroo, and croc. The camel was tough. The kangaroo was good. The buffalo was my favorite. I insisted the croc tasted like chicken while Rachel and Sally insisted it tasted like tofu, vegetarian meat, and lobster.

The next day I wandered around Alice, climbing some hills to lookout over the town and the empty land surrounding it and laughing at the "Botanic Garden" that looked like the rest of the outback, but with boring brown dirt instead of red.

I flew into Sydney, where I stayed at the University of New South Wales with my friend Jocelyn, the girl from Mexico that I met on the Melbourne bus trip. I love that campus (it's so big and clean compared to where I am! There aren't broken beer bottles everywhere!) and I love that girl and I love that city. I even made my way to the famous Bondi Beach, where I took a surfing lesson, managed to stand up on my board, and absolutely freakin' loved it.

There's no photographic evidence that I surfed, but this is pretty much what I looked like:

Aboriginal Culture Trip

Back on October 5-7, I went a field trip for my Indigenous Politics class. Although it was for class, only one other girl, Brionee, from my class went. The others were exchange students - Jess, Josh, and Laurissa. So it was a small trip. My lecturer Terry drove and some of the women from the Ngunnawal Center on campus came along too. It turned out to be a great trip: interesting, educational, relaxed, and some new experiences that I wouldn't have had otherwise.


It took us about 6 hours to get to our camp in Wollombi, a town of 1000(?) people maybe, but that was with stops on the way. When we stopped at McDonald's Terry magically dropped the price from $100 to $60. We don't know why he did it, but we were glad!

We had a rest stop in a town called Mittagong where there used to be an aboriginal orphanage where the kids were trained to be servants. Our first real stop was along the Hawkesbury River. Terry told us a story about the creator asking the Rainbow Serpent to make a place for man to finish, so he ran into the land, creating the Sydney Harbour and then dug in further, creating rivers. Terry explained that he really shouldn’t be telling other peoples’ stories. He also said it’s considered disrespectful to speak one Indigenous language on another language group’s land (there are/were hundreds of language groups in Australia). Two language groups would have been separated by this river, but they would marry people from the other group to mix blood lines and make sure they didn’t marry someone they were related to.

Next stop was Somersby Falls, where we could see the grooves in the rocks where people had carved out tools and weapons. We climbed around the falls, rested in the shade, and had lunch. Terry’s brother was our chef for the weekend – and we ate well the whole time. I noticed the burgers looked a little different, but didn’t think much of it until someone asked, “So have you had roo before?” Jess said she would have rather waited till she was finished eating to know what it was! It was my first kangaroo burger… don’t know how to describe the taste, but it wasn’t half bad!

When we arrived in Wollombi, we did a smoking ceremony – they’re supposed to do certain ceremonies when entering someone else’s land. For the smoking ceremony, branches of eucalyptus leaves are burned over the fire and each person takes a turn to stand in the smoke to breathe it in and let it cleanse you of harm and worry.

The first of our guides, Mick, led us up the hill behind camp. I was second behind Mick and he stepped off a little ledge, I went next, and Laurissa behind me yelled, “Snake! Snake!” I turned around to see two flashes of slithering body beneath some brush… about one foot from where I had just stepped. I said, “Where? Where?” cause I 1. wanted to make sure to back away in the proper direction and 2. to confirm that I really had just seen –and almost stepped on – a snake! It slithered away under the leaves and twigs. Mick didn’t see it but from our description, we determined it was a brown snake – one of the world’s most venomous. I'll be honest - I think that's kind of AWESOME!!


don't worry, I didn't take this picture, but this is the type of snake we think we saw.

Mick took us to a cave to see the hand paintings. He didn’t know how old they were, but the small cave was filled with the shapes of hands and boomerangs. In this area of the country, most of the hands were in white ochre. Ochre is a clay-like substance they use to paint. In this area of the country, white can be used by anyone. Yellow is for women and red for men. This cave was a family cave, although they don’t know if it was mainly a home or a temporary residence for ceremonial stay. Putting up a handprint is like signing a guestbook. The paintings also show how knowledgeable a person was – the more arm they show, the more wisdom they had. One hand was painted to point towards women’s caves somewhere on the mountain. Mick said he and another guy wandered up that way once, but the blue sky turned gray and there was a clap of thunder – a sign they shouldn’t be there, and they bolted down the hill.


hand stencils

Another guide, David, who was a great storyteller and pretty much awesome, showed up, and before our dinner of steak and lamb chops, they took us for a walk along the river bed, which was pretty much destroyed from a huge recent flood. David brought along ceremonial boomerangs and sang a song about the wind, which he said is important to his mob (tribe).

That night around the campfire was fantastic. David did most of the story telling. I really wish I could have recorded all of those few hours. He talked about Biamie, the creator. Most of his stories ended up being about hairy men. He mentioned the small human-like skeleton found somewhere – which I knew from the National Geographic special about “Were hobbits real?” that Ivicic and I have watched and laughed at – and how indigenous people think it’s rediculous that scientists are shocked by this little person because small hairy men are talked about in most indigenous cultures. He told us about the small ones – about an aboriginal elder that was trying to a heal a woman when the little hairy men came to him, spoke to him in a foreign tongue, and helped heal her. There was also the old farmer missing an arm that someone met in a bar who said he lost his arm when attacked by a hairy man after he had whipped an aboriginal servant. The little hairy men are also mischievous… they told us stories about the disbelievers at their camps for aboriginal boys, and how those are the ones who find hairy men at the windows, get dragged out of their cabins while they sleep, or wake up to being attacked by giant bed bugs.

They also told us about big hairy men... yetties, big foot. A lot of their stories involved Uncle Paul, who runs the camp for boys. David talked about a time he and Uncle Paul tracked giant footprints through the woods. They said there’s a nearby stretch of highway that Mick won’t drive through at night because sometimes truckers get flat tires there and when they get out of their trucks the yetties, taller than a tractor trailer, will shake the truck. They also talked about a farmer whose cattle were being slaughtered on one corner of his property. Uncle Paul found an elder who could help the farmer – the problem was that the cows were walking over the portal between our realm and the yetties’ realm.

David and Mick all night referenced their own little hair men incident, which they finally told. During a camp at a night, they were hiding from the boys along the river, right where they had taken us for a walk before dinner. David was hiding behind a tree when he heard a rustling in the bushes beside him, then footsteps getting closer and closer. He then heard whatever it was jump into the water, and he knew it wasn’t the kangaroo he was hoping for. So he moved his hiding spot and offered the tree to Mick. Mick said he wasn’t there long when a pebble hit him in the back. He didn’t turn around, as you don’t want to actually interact with a hairy man. Then two small shadows started circling the tree and him, running around and around. Then one of them scurried up the tree, and in the fork of the tree one of them perched and he watched its silhouette lean back from the trunk of the tree, almost like doing push ups against it. Soon David made a noise and they were found by the campers. Noticing that Mick was obviously shaken, David asked what was wrong and they discovered they both just had a run in with the hairy men.

They also told us three rules for night: Never whistle because you might communicate with the spirits. Don’t draw in the dirt because you’ll disturb the dead. Don’t throw bones or meat in the fire because you’ll attract the hairy men. Of course, as he told us not to whistle, we all heard a loud strange whistling from that corner where they had encountered the hairy men…

The next morning on our drive to another cave, we stopped and looked where one tribe carved trees or rocks on mountaintops to look like men acting as sentries to scare off rival tribes. We also saw the mountain that was believed to be the goanna (lizard) that turned into rock after not returning to heaven with Biamie. The cave we went to was a large open cave with a huge painting of Biamie, the creator, looking out on the land below. They said the painting was a bit faded since no one keeps up with it any longer. They said certain elders were responsible for painting Biamie and restoring the painting every couple hundred years. Because Biamie is above everything, you weren’t allowed to paint anything above his picture and there would be punishments if you did.


Biamie

For the afternoon, we went to a point where Mt Yengo was visible – this mountain is very sacred to the people of this region, as it’s believed to be where Biamie stepped up to go back into the heavens. While we were up here, Andrew played the didgeridoo for us, until other people came walking up the path.

Next we went to a map site… rock carvings in the ground that directed people where to go. There was a Biamie carving, an emu woman with emu foot prints heading towards a women’s site, and birds whose feet pointed to the bush turkey people, water hen people, and emu people.


Biamie in rock

Returning to the campsite after dinner at the tavern, 2 fires were set up and burning. We gathered around the one fire while our guideswere running out in the trees somewhere, ready to start a night of dance performances. With the clap of ceremonial boomerangs, their dance began. The first one was my favorite… fully painted, they appeared out of the darkness carrying spears and approached us. They seemed to threaten us and inspect us, then symbolically broke the spears to signal that we seem to be friendly. They then did a welcome dance. After that they started explaining their dances, ones that told stories about people or that imitated animals. They taught Josh to be a kangaroo and the girls to be emus. It was fun! And after they were done we had them teach us the welcome dance and one other one.




The night ended with more stories, including one about Andrew dealing a guy into their card game and then realizing he had hooves for feet – he may have dealt in the devil. They told us more stories, many to scare us I think, including a few about the ghost of the guy from the neighboring property who committed suicide.

That night I slept terribly, waking up absolutely soaked in sweat from head to toe. Josh had been accusing me of being a “grumpy gus” all weekend and now this morning I was REALLY grumpy (I'm sure most of you have had the misfortune of experiencing me in this state). He and Laurissa apparently found this amusing and laughed at me all morning.

David and the guys took us to another cave where we could try to make our own hand stencils. They mixed up some white ochre, we poured it into our mouths, and spit it over our hands. It tasted like dirt, but wasn’t that bad; however, I have no stenciling skills and spit the first batch onto the ground accidentally, got it all over my shirt, and my final stencil was barely visible. Haha, oh well!

On our way home, Terry stopped at one more rock carving site, just so we could see differences from the other ones.

So yeah, a really great weekend.

If you want to see more pictures, including one of the wombat we managed to NOT turn into roadkill, go here:

http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2100804&l=a28c1&id=15600311

On America

Notes, conversations, incidences involving perspectives of America (apologies to everyone I've misquoted here, but you get the idea):


Watching the movie "Mean Girls":
American: "High school was never like that."
Helena, Swedish: "That's what we think American high school is like."


Steph, German: "Really, everyone just hates Bush!"


Me: "Yeah, I didn't realize there was AFL in the US until recently."
Guy in Melbourne bar: "That's cause Americans don't know anything about the rest of the world!"


Same guy in Melbourne bar: "You know, usually, I don't like Americans, but you're not bad for one."
Same guy: "Ah, you laugh loud! Like an American!"
Really, I'm not sure why I kept talking to him...


Australian: "Pennsylvania? Is Scranton in Pennsylvania? Isn't that where the TV show "The Office" takes place?"


Jess, American, commented on small size of McDonald's soda.
Rohan, Australian: "You drink larger sodas? How do you survive as a nation?"


Me: "Kata Kjuta is bigger than Uluru, since it's a bunch of rocks, not one. I think I liked that better..."
Angelo, Australian,: (jokingly) "You Americans! Gotta have everything big!"


On the radio, they discussed a poll which showed that 60% of Australians had a favorable opinion of the US. Those that did not said it was because of Bush and his foreign policy.


Guy at Royal Flying Doctors Service visitor center: "Where are you from?"
Helena: "Sweden, and one from the US."
Guy: "US? Oh, then I better watch what I say."


American girls on bus to Melbourne explained to some Europeans about paying for college in the US, getting loans, going into debt. (I'm pretty sure they were over exaggerating their situations.)
Europeans: jaws dropped


Jeremy, American: "I feel like Australians just like to make fun of us, but if we were anywhere else in the world, we'd actually be disliked. But it's ok: When they make fun of you, you just tell them that they remind you of the British."


Guy who threw beer over our boardgame: "You're American! Who cares!"


95% of Australians who hear my accent: "Are you Canadian?" (apparently it's better to be wrong than to accidentally insult a Canadian)


Jenna, Canadian, explaining herself during a story about yelling at an American guy at a hockey game: "Then I yelled - cause, you see, Canadians don't really like Americans - go home..."


Chasers War on Everything, which is a prank TV show which I would say is a combination of the Colbert Report and Punk'd, did a segment where they asked people who was responsible for the Iraq war: Osama, Barack Obama, or some other American name. They showed all the people who said Obama and the other name. The interviews were in Walmart parking lots. Angelo asked if there are a lot of people like that in America. I said we make fun of them too.


Hanna, Swedish, who doesn't hate America and has been there several times: "A LOT of people don't like Americans."
Me: "Why?"
Hanna: "I guess... well, they're loud."
Me: "Loud as in talk loudly or loud as in obnoxious?"
Hanna: "Both I guess."


Sally, English: "Ooh, Pop tarts! I loved when we went to America when I was little and we got to eat sweets for breakfast! Oh, and I love your big portions! When we were little we thought it was amazing."


Several non Americans: "I want to drive the Pacific Coast Highway."


Did you all hear that report that supposedly 20% of Americans can't identify the US on a world map? (Does anyone know where that came from?) Well, it was big news here.


The Miss Teen USA girl who was asked a question about that 20% and gave a horrible, nonsense answer was also the lead-in story for a radio conversation about dumb blondes.


Hanna, Swedish: "I LOVE New York. New York is my kind of city."


My psyc professor from New Zealand who did grad school in the US: "Say you were doing a study on ethics and torture. What if you had Osama and there was the option to torture him. Of course, they're Americans - they have no morals. I better shut up now..."


There was a big debate on the radio about whether Australian hip hop artists should rap in an American or Australian accent.


I was shocked to pick up the free paper on the train in Sydney and discover 2 bits of news from Pennsylvania: A Carlisle man received a drunk driving sentence 8 years after the incident because his original sentence was lost during processing. A Coke truck driver got into a fight with a Pepsi driver in a Walmart parking lot in the town of Indiana.


What I think is the biggest stereotype about Americans:
WE ALL HAVE GUNS:


Me, after security guards walked through a room of people drinking: "See, that wouldn't happen at home. They would check everyone's IDs, or at least just tell everyone to be quiet."
Security guard: "In the US it's different. Your campus security has to be tighter because you have to worry about guns."
Me, in my head: Guns? They're worried about noise violations, believe me.


Woman in Surfers Paradise: "My daughter did psychology. She went into the police force. Although I don't know if you'd want to do that in America with all the guns."


Josh, American, had a conversation with an Australian about guns. He said he was tempted to joke that he had a hard time getting them through customs.


Me: "Why do you think we all have guns!?"
Brionee, Australian: "It was that Michael Moore movie - Bowling for Columbine! After we saw how easy it was for you to buy them, we figured, Wow, all Americans must have their own guns!"


In Personality Theory, we had to do one of those tests where you look at a picture and write a story. My picture was of a collapsed woman and it looked like the object on the ground beside her was a gun. After I wrote my story, I refused to read it out loud cause I didn't want to contribute to the gun-loving-American image.

My friends

It's a classic. (click to enlarge)

Cairns Part II

[Added a few photos]

On Sat. the 18th, we finally took a day to relax! We said we’d sleep in, but of course everyone was up between 7 and 9 since we’d been getting up early every day (guess who was the one to stay in bed til 9…). We all did our own thing, which really led to all of us doing the same thing… shopping and going to the lagoon.

Cairns, despite the fact that it’s a major tourist destination, is really a small beach town… even though there is no beach. Supposedly the shore used to be beautiful, but by the 1930s it was just a muddy mess, most likely caused by the dredging of the ocean floor to keep the paths for ships open. When the tide goes out, it’s hundred of meters of sludge, where seagulls, pelicans, and other birds peck for food. Bird watchers line up with cameras aimed, but they’re sure to stay behind the crocodile warning signs.

Luckily, Cairns has done wonders to keep the shoreline an attractive place. The esplanade boardwalk stretches from the marina to far out of the main “city” area. The whole thing is accompanied by grassy areas filled with skate parks, exercise equipments, barbeques, snack stands, and children’s playgrounds. The highlight is the lagoon, a community pool with its own sandy beaches and palm trees.


[notice that behind the pool there is mud as far as the eye can see]

The town itself is nothing spectacular. The tallest buildings are the hotels, and it has its mall, shops, restaurants, and one million and one places to book excursions. As Ivicic said, “I’ve seen pictures of Cairns. I’m not impressed.” But looking around, you’re met with the sight of tall rainforest-covered mountains whose peaks are hidden by white fluffy clouds, so you certainly can’t complain about the view. Travel out of town and you’ll pass sugar field after sugar field. They even have a special railroad to carry the crop.

Overall I liked Cairns. It seemed relaxed. True, I didn’t go out at night and I did read an article that called it a party city, but it didn’t seem like somewhere that was totally wound up (it’s no Surfers Paradise). One thing I loved were the night markets. Crepes, Chinese buffets, gelato, crafts, cheap Australian souvenirs, clothing, massages… I ended up there a few nights. Actually, one thing that shocked me about Cairns: it’s the only place I’ve been here where most stores in town are open past 5:00 more than one night a week! Crazy!

Sunday Helena was doing homework, while Karin and Hanna were doing a tour that included the Tjapukai Aboriginal cultural center, the train to the mountain town of Kuranda, and a skyrail down the mountain. TripAdvisor had told me that Kuranda was a tourist trap and that the train was smelly and crowded, plus the trip was ridiculously expensive, so I decided that I would just head to Tjapukai on my own. Karin and Hanna experienced it with hundreds of their fellow travelers, while I got there in the afternoon and saw each of the shows with an audience of 3 to 7 people. There was a movie about the mistreatment of aborigines, a show about Tjapukai people’s beliefs, like how they categorize the world into wet and dry – you are what your father was and you must marry someone of the opposite. Another show was about dance. They showed us how to make fire. There was a presentation on playing the didgeridoo and about bush food. The food one I found pretty interesting – she told us which foods could be eaten fresh and which were toxic unless cooked or dried in the sun or run underwater for days. The woman told us which ones were good for sickness and snakebites. She said that, of course, aboriginal people now eat their McDonald’s and whatnot, but she would try bush food and medicine on her children first and only take them to the doctor if it didn’t work.

At the boomerang and spear throwing lesson, I was all by myself. My spear throwing skills need serious improvement, but I did successfully throw a boomerang. The guide said the small, returning ones are really for practice and fun. Bigger ones for hunting are too big to actually return. I told the guy how I couldn’t find anything but plastic triangle boomerangs at home, and he told me I could buy the type I was throwing in the gift shop. Then after a few more throws he told me I could take one with me, for free. I don’t know why – I think he just felt bad for me that I was by myself, haha!

According to the people working there, there are probably about 10,000 Tjapukai in 10 communities in the Cairns region. They also assured me that the aboriginal people working there really were from the Tjapukai tribe.

That night, the girls and I went to go get ice cream. We were out past 10:00 – such party animals!



Monday, we decided to take a walk to the Botanic Gardens. We decided to go past the lakes first… sure we saw some itty bitty frogs and some sunbathing turtles, but the lakes themselves were algae-covered and disgusting, and we were getting bit by mosquitoes like crazy. We got out of there as soon as we could and found a café in whatever town we ended up in (Edge Hill?). We asked for directions to the Royal Flying Doctors Service visitor center and the girl working at the café told us they were great people and they had rescued her twice.

If you don’t know, the RFDS is kind of an airplane ambulance. The doctors and nurses visit clinics way out in the middle of nowhere outback, and they also fly out in emergencies to take people to hospitals. Services are free, funded a little by the government but mostly by charity. They fly out about 100 people each month and there are fifty-some stations in all of Australia. There was an airplane we could go inside of, so we sat on the seats and laid in the stretcher. It was really interesting to look at the displays of thank you letters from people they had saved, as well as the equipment used, especially in the early days (it was started by a priest with all the right connections – check him out on the $20 bill): a medicine cabinet where all medicines are numbered so patients don’t have to figure out names, a pedal-powered typewriter that converts messages into morse code. I also liked the information about the school of the air - in the outback, kids who are too far away from civilization get to go to school through radio.

On Tuesday we went to Fitzroy Island. I LOOOOOOVVEEEE Fitzroy Island. There were actually a few things that could have ruined this day – the rude staff, the 6th grade class on the boat, and one other incident I’ll talk about later – but I loved the Island. It was a 45 minute ferry ride there, and we pulled up in Welcome Bay and discover that the beach there is made completely of washed up coral. White coral, while not the most pleasant thing to walk on, looked absolutely beautiful and the water was clear and blue.



We grabbed our snorkeling gear and made the 10 minute walk through the rainforest to Nudey Beach, where, as the name indicates, clothing is optional but luckily everyone kept their clothes on. On the walk, we kept passing skinks – reptiles that I normally think of as the size of salamanders but these things were HUGE. Like a foot long. They kept scaring the crap out of me. I think only 10 of us went to that beach at that time and the 4 of us went around a corner so that we could see no one else. Our own private patch of white sand, coral, blue waters, and the mountainous shoreline in the distance. When I first went snorkeling I went to the left, past some boulders. I was face to face with a few fish as soon as I went underwater, but only found one small patch of coral around that side. I found a school of what I thought were squid (I learned later they may have been cuttlefish) and followed them around, which they didn’t seem to appreciate, but they were fun to watch and became my new favorite animal of the day.



When the girls went to go get lunch, I stayed to snorkel more, and went by the rocks to the right, where everyone else was – no wonder everyone else was here – this is where all the coral was! Fitzroy and the island like it (the more crowded Green Island) used to be mountains on the mainland a bazillion years ago until the sea level rose and “fringe” reef formed around them. I did my usual following around schools of fish and scaring the little ones to go hiding in coral. It was awesome. Although especially open spots, deep spots, shallow spots, or cold spots make me nervous, haha.

I went back to Welcome Bay for our glass bottom boat tour. The marine biologist told us that this area of reef has more species than all of the Caribbean Sea. Crazy.



After that, I went snorkeling again till it was time to leave. I noticed that some of the boats around the island were on the move, but didn’t know what was going on till I was back on shore. Back on Nudey beach, someone had found one of the snorkelers floating in the water. They did CPR on him for 20 minutes on the beach before getting a boat to take him back to shore. A guy on the ferry said he came across the beach while they were doing CPR and that the man did not look alive. They thought he had been underwater for 10 or 15 minutes. They tried to get a helicopter but couldn’t get one right away. Helena especially was really shaken up about it. The next day in the paper she read that he was alive in the hospital. I was sad to tell her that on the 5:00 news they said that he had never woken up and died that morning. A 39-year-old British tourist. They blamed the death on “snorkeling complications” which I think means they don’t know what happened.

So that was a little scary.

There were also 2 girls (from Sweden! The 3rd group of Swedes we’d run into) who climbed down some rocks and got stuck as the tide came up, so they had to be rescued by boat.

The guy we talked to on the ferry though, he started talking to me because of my George Mason shirt. He graduated from JMU a few years ago and lives in Maryland now and does government contracting, something involving NIH. He was in Brisbane the week before on business. Did a Moreton Island tour like we did – except his jeep got stuck during high tide and his tour group had to be rescued! He said he climbed to the summit on Fitzroy and that it was a gorgeous 360 degree view, even though he may have passed a deadly brown snake to get there.

Wednesday and Thursday were more days relaxing in town and by the lagoon.

As far as spending 2 weeks with Swedish girls, I only learned a few phrases, and the only ones I remember are, “1, 5, 6” and “I live in...” I forget "My name is", "I love you" and the rest of the numbers from 1-10. They tried their best to remember to speak English for me, but I let them get away with Swedish probably more than I should have, haha.

After doing so much, I thought I was ready to head back to Canberra, but Friday morning when I woke up and it was once again a 30 degree (around 90 F) sunny day, I had to ask, Why are we leaving?


PS - My birthday, for which nothing was planned, turned out to be great. It was definitely one of those "I am really going to miss these people" nights. And instead of last, we came in second place in trivia! Whoo!!

Thanks to everyone for birthday wishes, cards, money, gifts, and love. :) xoxo!