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!

Cairns Part I

On September 3rd, after my few blissful hours of sleep, I woke up, caught the bus to Civic and caught my next bus to Sydney. Too tired to pay attention to what bus I was getting on, I tried to board the Murrays bus with people I knew and nearly missed my Greyhound bus.

For this trip, I was traveling with Helena. She’s from Sweden and two of her friends, Hanna and Karin, came down to visit her. Hanna was a nanny in Chicago for a year and has been to the US twice since then, and we got along exceptionally well during the trip.

Cairns (pronounced "cans" - Australians remove the R from things like Cairns and Melbourne and put it where it doesn't belong in idea - "ideera") is in the state of Queensland… “tropical north Queensland” to be exact and it’s the main gateway to both the rainforest and the great barrier reef. We stayed at a place called Traveler’s Castle, where Helena stayed 7 years ago. We got an amazing price since she’d been there before (less than US$200 per person total for 11 nights) and we stayed in an apartment – 2 little bedrooms, common room with tv and futon, and a kitchen – hurray to no hostel bunkbeds!!

We had a plan that originally had us doing the big activities every other day, but we pretty much threw that out the window by making Tuesday a zoo day. We went to the Cairns Tropical Zoo to see all things Australian… Kookaburas, cassowaries (world’s most dangerous bird. It looks like an emu but has a thing on its head and it can jump at you and stab you with it’s big toe. Protect yourself by running behind a tree), dingos, crocodiles, etc. The best part was getting to hold the animals… my sole purpose for going to this zoo was to hold a koala! They have strict rules for holding the animals… I’m not sure of them exactly but it’s something like, a koala can only be out for 10-20 minutes at a time, held by each person for so long, and only used for photos once a day or something. But yeah, the koala’s name was Lucy. There was a kangaroo petting and feeding area as well, and I also got to hold a 7-year-old crocodile (they feel rubbery), and pet a wombat named Lulu. Did you know both wombats and koalas have bony things in their butts? Keeps the koala’s legs from falling asleep when it sits and the wombat uses it for protection… burrow in, stick its butt at the predator, and it won’t feel a thing.



Wednesday we got up bright and early to start our tour to the rainforest. We went with a company called Cape Trib Connections. They take you to and from your rainforest accommodation and stop to do activities on the way. Our first stop was Mossman Gorge. We had about an hour there. Our guide walked us through the rainforest, explained that vines wrap in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres, explained that we’re in the dry season now. In the restroom I encountered a HUGE spider. By “HUGE” I mean the size of my hand. So I took a picture and ran away. Nearby the gorge is an aboriginal community. I had noticed walking around Cairns at night that this was the first place I’d been where there was a noticeable aboriginal population. Really, they are only 2-3% of Australia’s population (you know, killed by settlers, forced into missionaries, they still have a significantly shorter life span that the rest of Australia), so I guess this isn’t too surprising.

We also stopped at a lookout where the Daintree River (this is the Daintree rainforest we were heading to) meets the ocean. Then we went to the Daintree Zoo where the guide just showed us a few animals and let us pet things. We pet some sort of glider squirrel thing, watched a cassowary swallow its food whole, saw a python, and got to hold a baby rufous bettong – it’s a small relative of the kangaroo. Adorable! The best part however was when we were looking at their crocodiles. One was on the bank by the fence where we stood and one was on the opposite bank. While the guide was talking one of the crocs silently slipped into the water – I didn’t see it and couldn’t figure out where it had gone. The guide decided to poke the water with a pole to make the croc near us lash out at it. He sticks the pole through the fence and BAM!! The other croc lashes out from beneath the water – he had been right there in front of us and we never would have known it. It was awesome because it wasn’t like the croc show at the other zoo where it was controlled (as much as you can control a croc) and predictable – this was a total mistake on the guide’s part. So after that, the two crocs weren’t too happy with one another and the guide made us not to tell the zookeepers what had just happened. It was the highlight of the trip for me!


{cassowary guarding its eggs at the zoo}

We soon arrived at Crocodylus, our in-the-middle-of-the-rainforest accommodation. It’s considered a hostel, but it’s really tents on platforms. We took a walk to the beach, which turned out to be a 45 minute walk. Still exhausted from Melbourne, I fell asleep for an hour and woke up to it getting cloudy. Cool beach though. Maybe 10 people there, pretty nice. We walked back and arrived in time to beat the rain, at which point I crawled into bed and slept for another 3 or 4 hours.

I almost didn’t get up for our nighttime rainforest walk, but I’m so glad I did! The German guy I was talking to during dinner laughed at me when it started pouring right before our walk, but it was still good. Our guide, a nice old man named Possum who kept telling me how cute I was, suited us up with huge raincoats and flashlights, and our group set out on the path. Possum pointed out different types of ferns and trees and plants – figs that kill other trees, pepper plants – while our group scoured the ground and trees for animals.


{Possum, Hanna, Helena, Karin, me}

We started off slowly, but we were more successful as we got deeper into the rainforest. We saw huge cane toads (not native to Australia – brought here to eat beetles but they turned out to be pests), huge huntsman spiders, different birds, snails with 2-3 inch shells, rainforest mice that are so big they look more like possums, a beetle that must’ve been 8 inches long plus 10 inch antennae, a forest dragon (iguana?), and something called a velvet worm that looked like a weird caterpillar – Possum was exceptionally excited about this rare find. After about 2 hours we emerged from the rainforest onto a paved road and Possum had us shine our flashlights in the air to attract bugs which in return attracted bats (and yes, he called them microbats). It was a really great time and I was very glad I managed to stay awake for that! We even saw a possum outside our tent before going to bed. (Note: We went to bed at 12:30 this night, since the tour didn’t end till after 11, and that was the latest we were up the whole trip. We progressively went to bed earlier and earlier, so we were all in bed by 10:30 on some nights!)


{toad, worm, spider & dragon on the night walk}

The next day, before getting picked up by our Cape Trib guide, we went on another walk around Crocodylus. I gave up and turned back after the millionth mosquito bit me in the face and the path looked exceptionally muddy – but not before we realized that there in the mud was a fresh cassowary foot print! (A guy in another tent told us he saw two of the huge birds outside his tent the previous morning.) On the way back I saw these weird chicken things that make huge piles of dirt (which, if by rivers, will be used by crocs who lay their eggs in them). Back at the camp I saw a wallaby hopping around one of the tents. It was just really cool to be staying right in the middle of the rainforest, with all the animals running around us.

Our activity for the trip home was a river crocodile cruise. First we spotted a dead python that had been killed by a croc, then a feral pig running along the bank. The feral pigs are pests as well. They destroy riverbanks and release chemicals from the soil into the water, which can even impact the reef. The government pays people to shoot them from helicopters. Our first croc was a juvenile, then a female in the water, and then we found Big Al, the head hauncho in these few miles of water. He was BIG! The guides didn’t interact with or feed the crocs – our guide said in the Northern Territory it’s legal to feed them, but that area has the most croc attacks as well. Getting off the boat, someone spotted a tree frog hiding under a bench.



We had heard it might be windy over the weekend, so instead of taking a day of rest, we scheduled our trip to the Great Barrier Reef for Friday. We picked the smallest boat we could find at the cheapest price. This had it’s plusses and minuses: We were only with 20 people, but small boat = sea sickness, even on what was the calmest day they had seen in a while. It took us about 2 hours to get out to the reef and at least 5 people on the boat got sick. I just continued to stare at the horizon and tell myself, “Throwing up is not an option!”

Felt much better after we stopped at the reef. The coral looked brown under the blue water and bits of it stuck up in some places. I had planned to just snorkel, but the boat was offering intro scuba dives for $24 (less than half the normal price) so Hanna and I decided to do it. We got to snorkel for about 15 minutes while the first group did their diving. I jumped into the water and swam away from the boat – coral and fish galore! Really, it was kind of overwhelming. They gave us no restrictions on how far or what direction to swim, so really I was out in the middle of the ocean allowed to do water I wanted. The only fish I could name were the parrotfish. They bite the coral, so I would listen to the sound, find a school of them, and follow them around. Plenty of other fish as well – blue and yellow and neon and purple.

Hanna and I climbed back on the boat to get ready to scuba. Our scuba guide was named Mischa. He had explained everything on the boat ride over. We hopped in the water and he had us practice our breathing and what to do if we got water in our mask or lost the mouthpiece. Then we started lowering ourselves to about 10 m down using a rope attached to the boat, making sure to adjust the pressure in our ears by pinching our noses and blowing out. We weren’t even all the way down the rope when Mischa started flailing and pointing over to my left. I turned and a few meters away there was a reef shark! What luck! It stuck around only a few seconds before swimming away. Once we were set, Mischa held on to our hands and swam us around. It was cool to swim between two walls of coral, or along one wall with nothing but blue ocean on the other side. And I did find Nemo! We passed over two clown fish hiding in their anemone. At one point, Mischa pointed to something I didn’t see. He signaled something which I thought meant crab and he dragged us down towards a crack in the coral. I panicked a little bit since I didn’t know what was happening and I was afraid of getting too close to the coral. I watched a giant that open and closed as we swam towards it – turns out Mischa was having us chase after an octopus. I was right on top of it and didn’t even see it!


{clam, some fish, parrotfish, clown fish, some coral - my photos turned out not so great, so I stole all but the last of these from Jeremy - he was in Cairns at the same time with his dad. I only stole pictures of the things I actually saw myself - he saw sea turtles and I'm jealous}

Overall, we were under water about 20 minutes, which seemed like a good length of time. The scuba was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. We had lunch after that – some sort of curry, tuna salad, potato salad – Helena was disappointed that it wasn’t the “tropical buffet” she expected, but it tasted good to me! After lunch, we had more than an hour to go snorkeling again. So I hopped back in the water, with my camera now (of course there weren’t any sharks this time), and swam around and followed some more fish. I didn’t feel cold at all in my wet suit – but apparently I was since I discovered that my face and lips were purple when I got back on the boat.

Luckily the trip home was pleasant and no one got sick. I must say, it was hard to pick a favorite between the rainforest and the reef!

To be continued.....

See more photos from Cairns here:

http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097757&l=5e3fd&id=15600311

this weekend and oh yeah 3 weekends ago

Well, I had a sufficiently touristy weekend in Canberra. On Saturday, some of the girls and I went to Questacon, the kid’s science museum. It was awesome! Games to play, a free fall slide (you hang from a bar and fall through the air before the slide catches you - Jess screamed), a roller coaster simulator, a spy mystery to solve, the mission impossible laser security to sneak through! (Of course I lined up behind the 7-year-olds to do all this.) We were there for hours. Good times.

Sunday Josh, Alex, Madeleine, and I went to the War Memorial. I expected it to be JUST a memorial, like you see in DC, but the inside of it is really a museum… huge, exhibits for WWI & II. Full size planes and submarines. Tomb of the unknown soldier. We definitely didn’t even come close to seeing everything. It was really nice though. My favorite parts were all the aircrafts and one memorial which was a wall with pictures of all the Australians who died on the Death March (over 1700 died, only 6 survived). It was also interesting to learn about the landing at Gallipoli in WWI - that battle is pretty much what formed Australia's national identity. We had dinner at the Pancake Parlour. Yummmmm, nothing like banana cinnamon vanilla ice cream pancakes after a day of getting frustrated with the weekend bus schedule!


(war memorial)


(faces of those killed in death march)

SOOO three weekends ago was the start of our 2 week break. First stop was Melbourne, the most "European" city of Australia, known for its cafes, shopping, and black being in fashion.

We were going with a tour group called Extreme Adventures, who specialize in trips for international students. The bus picked us up in the city at 1am, and then we drove down the block... and they told us to get off the bus for our 20 minute break. The Macquarie and University of New South Wales had already been on the bus for 3 hours, but why did they pick us up before the rest stop?! Back on the bus, every seat was filled. I was next to a Mexican girl named Joselina. We were in front of the bathrooms and our seats didn’t recline. Plus the bus was freezing. I was MISERABLE on the 8 HOUR ride.

When we arrived the next morning, we checked into our hostel, Nomad, which was quite nice, and had a nice big breakfast at the café a few doors down. I roamed with Liz and Nell to our first destination, the Rialto Tower, the tallest building in the city. We saw a movie and went to the lookout for 360 degree views.



Then we were on our own, despite the fact that the itinerary said our guides were supposed to show us around. Girls and guys headed together to Federation Square. It’s an architectural landmark… unfortunately it’s kind of ugly and the establishments in the square aren’t too impressive, mostly food and drinks it seemed. The girls lost the guys though when we found the Pixar exhibit, so we took pictures with the Monsters Inc monsters and the Cars car.

After that, we walked towards the arts center and found an awesome interactive art exhibit called Playground Experimentia. After being amused by our morphing shadows and fishtank music skills, we hopped on the free tram that goes in a circle around the city (I wish every city had free transport!). We rode it most of the way around and listened to the narration about the sites. I would have loved to go check out the gaol (Australian for jail, weirdos) where Ned Kelly was hanged. We past lots of interesting buildings and statues (one of a cow in a tree?).

We got off at the Melbourne Museum. It was great! One of those museums I would have loved when I was little cause it was filled with stuffed animals and skeletons... including dinosaurs! We spent a good time there, so we didn’t make it to the famous Queen Victoria Markets, which is too bad considering they were so close to our hostel.

The funny thing is that they say Melbourne can experience 4 seasons in one day, or “If you don’t like the weather in Melbourne, just wait a minute.” It was so true on this day! We’d walk around and it would be sunny, cloudy, chilly, warm, cloudy, raining, sunny, cold, hot.

We were rushed to have dinner (at the hostel bar) and get ready to go because when our itinerary said “hottest night spots,” it actually meant wherever our tourguide Mick has a buddy who will let us in free, so we had to go early with 75 people going. We walked to a place that I forget the name of, but the crowd was too old for us (businessmen after work) and the music too quiet (I even heard a girl say, “I’ve been here before. It’s shit.”) Joselina, Steph, and I left early, intending to go back to the hostel, but instead we ended up in CQ, a club that didn't play bad techno and which no one else managed to get into. A group of Australians needed 3 more girls to even out their guy-to-girl ratio before being let in, so we got in for free and on the guest list. Good times!

We had to be on the bus the next day at 7am to start our Great Ocean Road tour. A beautiful scenic road but a LONG day. We didn’t make as many stops as we all expected. We stopped at Bells Beach to see the beautiful cliffs and watch surfers and apparently this location means something if you’ve seen the movie Point Break. We stopped at a little town called Lorne and at another called Apollo’s Bay for lunch. The bus driver wouldn’t stop, but we got to see WILD KOALAS! That was one thing I didn’t actually expect to see in Oz, but there they were, about 20 of them hanging out in the trees where a river comes out to the sea. One was even hanging upside-down. Jess got the only successful picture of one… of course, she took it through the bus windshield, so there is a nice squashed fly right where the koala’s head should be.


(hahaha)

One thing that ruined the scenic quality of the trip was one of the Macquarie girls. She must have never seen the ocean before or something because she kept screaming about waves and how big they were. She also screamed her lungs out at the koalas, running back and forth to both sides of the bus. She also asked Mick and the bus driver a lot of very dumb questions, such as “Is that wave big?” and other equally irrelevant or obvious questions. Needless to say, the next day I was happy to hear that a bird pooped on her shoulder.

Our last stop was the 12 Apostles. Only like 8-1/2 are still standing. They’re rocks… sand really… the remnants of cliff that once stood, but the ocean has caused the coast line to collapse so that these parts stand alone. It’s a really beautiful view and such a shame that it wasn’t a sunny day. Some people did a helicopter ride, but it was $80 for 10 minutes, so I passed.



By the time we got back to the hostel, it was after 7:00. We were supposed to have time to explore and get dinner on our own, but Mick encouraged us to get pizza at the bar. It was something like $7 for 3 slices and a drink, so we did that, but it was disappointing that once again, we didn’t get to do what the itinerary said and we were pressed for time. We got ready to go out to another of Mick’s buddy’s clubs. It was an improvement on the last one, but we ended up at another place in some old building in the city.

The next morning we headed out to the St Kilda area to check out the markets and shops. Some people made the mistake of spending their 2 hours being treated with slow, rude service at a café, but the rest of us went shopping! Had a delish Danish from a bakery and bought an amazing pair of boots that were only $30 at a European shop. My most fashionable purchase ever. The market was another great selection of crafts, jewelry, and most anything you’d want. We walked on the beach as well- we wanted to stay here all day!


(Some people I know and some I don't in St Kilda)


But we were off to the AFL game. Melbourne Kangaroos vs Western Bulldogs. Kangaroos won – good, cause I was cheering for them! I tried to learn their team song and sang along when they played it twice at the end. It was a sweet game, with its nonstop action, a few injuries, and guys running up other guys’ backs to catch the ball. It was also good to see a game in a big stadium… I think there were 30,000 people at the game (about 3x more people than the AFL game in Canberra).

After the game, it was back on the bus. Unfortunately, there were fights over seats, so Mick made everyone get back in their original seats, which for Joselina and me meant the ones in front of the bathroom which didn’t recline. Another cold, sleepless 8 hours. I did manage to finish a book (Life of Pi), so that was good. And props to the McDonald’s employees who handled 60 of us in an incredibly short amount of time.

Overall, I liked Melbourne, but I wish I could have had more time to see things in the city - I feel like I would like it more if I really got to experience more of what it had to offer. And I wouldn't do a tour with Extreme Adventures again.

Thankfully, Nell convinced Mick and the driver that we should be dropped off on campus instead of in the city. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO RETURN TO CANBERRA. I hopped off the bus and wanted to kiss the ground! I WAS FREE FROM THE BUS!!!! The funny part was, we were dropped off at a point on campus none of us had never been to. It was 1 or 2am and we just started walking. It was dark, unfamiliar territory. Kangaroos bounded around us (take that obnoxious Macquarie “I’m never going to see a wild kangaroo” girl!). After probably 20 minutes, we were finally at home sweet Arscott. I was super pleased to see my bed. I had a glorious 4 hours of sleep before getting up to start the first leg of my journey to Cairns in Tropical North Queensland…


More photos from Melbourne here:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097751&l=f295f&id=15600311

Don't worry, I'm still alive

I didn't get eaten by a crocodile, attacked by a shark, stabbed by a cassowary, or bitten by a spider. Yay!

So the 2 week break is over and it's back to classes tomorrow. That makes me sad.
I have two essays to turn in tomorrow. I've proofread them to make sure I remembered to put my U's in "rumour" and "behaviour" and to spell "organise" with an S, not a Z.

Lots of adventures and pictures to share from Melbourne, Cairns, & beyond. That'll come throughout the week after I buy more internet credit. Yes, that's right. You pay $70 in the beginning of the semester, but that only gives you $10 of credit, which lasts about half the semester. Even if you use the library computers to go online, you have to sign in so they can deduct from your account. Use YouTube much and you can lose it all in just a few hours. I'm down to less than 15 cents. How I miss Mason's unlimited internet use! And nearly unlimited laundry!

Talk to you all soon!