Outta Here

Its Spring Break…again! So I’m getting out of Melbourne with Barry from Hartford. We’re flying up to Brisbane tonight, to begin a trip down the coast towards and into Sydney. I’m lazy, so I stole Barry's map of the key stops on the trip.
I should ignore the part about being eaten by a shark. Not because it wont happen, but because I wont be posting a blog anytime in the next 13 days. I also have an extra part tagged on to the end of this trip, down to Adelaide in South Australia being as i have two weeks off for break and Barry only has one.

Phillip Island

A 45 minute ferry ride (or if one of you engines, say, breaks down an hour ferry ride) is the small (or, say, what you thought was small but really 26 km) island of Phillip Island; Home to some awesome sand beaches, the Phillip Island grand prix, fur seals (on rocks), a wild life park, a koala reserve and the penguin parade. With a weekend we looked to do some of the most well known parts of the island, including the koala reserve and a must see, the penguin parade. On the first day we experienced Cowes (apparently related in some way to the Cowes on the Isle of Wight) and headed to the penguin parade in the evening. The parade is essentially the fairy (or little) penguins heading in from the sea at sunset. They wait off shore for the sun to set behind the island before heading onshore to their nests on the cliffs and dunes. They’re nervous, and timidly run part way up the beach before running back to the waves and trying again. Unfortunately picture taking and camera recording is prohibited, but i managed to get some film so that will be around soon.
On the way back up to the car park you walk up through the dunes where there nests up, a chorus of penguin calls (barking, squawking, singing…I don’t know what you would call it) greats you. Oh, and the stars were so clear it was absolutely unbelievable.
We spent the night in a camper caravan before getting up to go to the koala reserve. We rented bikes in Cowes and rode there as it was a pretty good distance out of Cowes. At the koala reserve the koalas live (almost free), they have large sections of land full of eucalyptus trees. In between two sections there are wooden skywalks that bring you to the level of the koalas. Koalas sleep most of the day, but we did get to see some actually moving about through the trees and along the walkways and even eating. We were also informed that koala poo smells of eucalyptus, which is incredibly true (and it’s incredibly potent).
On the way back to Cowes to meet the ferry we rode through a forest like reserve. Actually we rode through it twice after reading the map wrong and doing a complete circle. Apparently there were really wild koalas out here, but we only managed to spot some wild wallabies and what I think was a kookaburra. It was good to be out of the city again, and into a place that could easily be mistaken as any English country side if one didn’t look too hard. The weekend went quickly and gave us the chance to be tourists again, and see something that is fairly unique in the penguin parade and koalas up close.

Conservation Volunteers Australia—Final Thoughts

read the first and second posts before this, the third.
Out there the weather changes so quickly and sharply that it would be easy to get stuck, and was evidenced by spectacular downpours we saw on the drive back, opposite bright blue skies. Rainbows appeared every 10 minutes on the road, as we passed through showers and storms. It actually snowed in Melbourne that weekend, something it hadn’t done in a while. While working on the site we could noticeably recognize and impending storm, the temperature dropping considerably as one of the most noticeable signs. Also It should be noted that Australia’s sky is incredibly high, which is even more present when you can see for miles under the great blue thing.
Out there we saw things that we could never have in the city. The wildlife for one, but also the dramatic landscapes that make up Australia. Out here the hills are numerous, and nature abounds. There were cows, this was truly farming country. The ground was hard, filled with rocks where it hadn’t been tilled. Though the hills were green, it was deceiving; this wasn’t grass, rather a weedy substance that meant that livestock could only be kept in small numbers.
I’ve probably made this out to sound like the most miserable place on earth, but the rain is desperately needed in this area (like the rest of Australia). Badger pointed out that for every centimeter of new plant growth was a centimeter of rainfall. The amount of rain we had had in the proceeding weeks had been bizarrely abnormal, and as a consequence there were several inches of new plant growth on the already established trees.
And finally a short note on Badger. This crazy dude has been all over the place. Fighting wildfires, playing baseball in America (he’s serious obsessed with this terrible sport), and meeting random celebrities like WWE’s Rick Flair, the Game and Batista. He was full of stories. And I mean busting at the seams. He was energetic and a generally good person to be around, truly amicable. This guy’s crazy.

Conservation Volunteers Australia—the Days

Continued from below click to read.3 days, 800 seedlings and more than 2000 guards. Friday went quickly, the threat of rain and being stuck in the bottom of ‘the island’ (all the roads are mud—environmentally friendly!) meant that we would only do a half day. We drove onto Ballarat where we would be staying in camping cabins for the two nights. Ballarat was the site of a gold rush in 1851 and quickly blossomed into a large town/city. Its only contribution to everyday life nowadays though is two McDonalds and Eureka (a life-size model minor’s town). It rained. All night. The Olympics opening ceremony was on, so we watched that. The next day we awoke to the sound of the most annoying bird ever (a cross between a car alarm and something inconsiderably worse). We made out way back out to ‘the island’ to continue doing what we had done the previous day. We hadn’t managed to see any kangaroos the day before but on out way out that say we say a group of them bouncing along the hillside. It was cool to see Australia wildlife out in the open instead of inside cages or parks (and the kangaroos were actually large for this reason—up to 6ft tall in one case). By lunchtime we’d planted the remaining space, making up almost 800 trees planted. They were on their own now—I asked but they didn’t have numbers for how many seedlings survived. We went down Werribee Gorge to eat lunch and make some guards for the next day. During the days we had begun a working knowledge of the native trees we were planting (like the salt bush, which smells terrible and tastes the same). On completion we went back to the caravan site where it proceeded to rain well into the night again. During one rain free period we made a quick trip to the closer of two McDonalds, walking through the rain soaked town past the giant Southern Cross sail-like flag (the Southern Cross is the symbol of minors) at Eureka. The final day we got out to the island to discover it was absolutely freezing, threatening rain (or possibly even snow) and windy too. In as many layers as we could possibly put on we went to plant some guards where sheep had broken in and eaten whole rows of them. As the rain came in again we made a quick escape from ‘the island,’ when finished sticking over 2000 guards. Cold and muddy but still dry, we made our way back to Melbourne, seeing snow (I thought I was in sunny Australia), rain and rainbows on the way. In the distance we could see Melbourne, growing steadily, but neat to see the city we live in from afar. We played a game of ‘wave to drivers’—turns out Australians are VERY friendly.

Conservation Volunteers Australia—Who, What, Where

Jumping back to the 8th, 9th and 10th of August (yea, I know a month and a half ago) I went with a group of people from AustraLearn to participate in Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA). To say that we didn’t know what we were doing is an understatement; we didn’t even know where we were going to do this conserving. All we knew was that we needed a pair of good shoes and a sleeping bag and to meet at the CVA office in Melbourne at 9 in the morning. On arrival we found out we were heading to ‘the island,’ this too was an understatement because ‘the island’ is actually just outside Ballarat—a town a good 70 minutes from any water source large enough to contain an island. We were going to plant seedlings in hopes of creating forest on farmland brought by the government to link up existing forestland. As we traveled out we found civilization slipping away and we were greeted by rolling hills and a growing mountain ranges. Being in the water-locked side of the Great Divide the soil is still brown everywhere, but I would still have called this the outback compared to the cosmopolitan life we’d been living for the previous month. As we pulled up at ‘the island’ (in reality a strip of land bordered on one side by a pitiful stream and gorge on the other) it came apparent why AustraLearn provided this opportunity to us pretty much free of charge—to experience life outside the city. An energetic badger came up to our minibus (no, that’s a persons name—not the largest relative to the weasel) to describe exactly what we were doing. As we stepped out we realized that north of Melbourne was (if it was possible in Australia) even colder than actual Melbourne. Shivering—yes it really was that cold—we got to know the basics. The basics: step one) dig a small hole, step two) place seedling and secure and step three) create a guard (biodegradable rectangular paper shields supported by two bamboo sticks) and place around seedling. The trees we were planting were all native to Australia, so that they’d make authentic forestland when they fully matured. We’d be working on a stretch right near the end of ‘the island’, on a downhill piece of land. Oh, and there were wild kangaroos on ‘the island’. This was going to be a cool weekend (physically cold yes, but also enjoyable and we could save the environment after killing it traveling from the states).

Gallery Update—St. Kilda

Following the last post on the Melbourne beach resort cum suburb of St. Kilda, I went in and updated the gallery to include so more St. Kilda pictures.

Sunday at St Kilda

(What I’m going to attempt to do this week is to go through some of the major events that have happened since being here so I can work on being a little more current, interspersed with some anecdotal/random posts)The Sunday before classes started a friend from AustraLearn, Victoria, and I took a tram ride down to St Kilda—the closest beachside resort for Melbourne. Of course, in typical Melbourne style (or at least the Melbourne I know) it rained for most of the morning before trying desperately to break through to sun in the afternoon. The actual purpose of the trip was to go to the Sunday artist festival but because of the rain not many of the artists showed up, so we did the town, beach and pier.
As you get into St Kilda you’re greeted by a giant face, creepy amusing scary it covers them all and it also fronts Luna Park which looks eerily like Coney Island in New York (in fact its modeled after it)—a mini amusement park. There was also one of those human statue people, interesting enough, took a picture. Getting past that you hit the sand, and your first good shot at the sea. And while it is technically still inside the Melbourne harbor due to two giant peninsulas that leave a singular 5 km straight, the feel is still the seaside. The sand was crisp and the water was…ABSOLULTY FREEZING. Turns out the Melbourne Sea, like everything else in Melbourne in winter, is cold and wet. We made our way along the pier (apparently pretty famous) up to the end where there are supposedly little fairy penguins (we didn’t see any—only a load of dead starfish and a couple of fishermen). There’s a reserve up the end for these little critters, and they’re apparently joined with some sort of, and what can only be described as a, sea otter (rakali). We walked into the café on the end of the pier, partially to warm our hands and partially to see the prices—to expensive.
We went back into town to find something a little more pocket friendly and stumbled upon several very good looking cake shops (identified by crowds of people drooling on store fronts). There were lots of other small shops along the street, all small personal business each with their own little culture. I had no idea what the one pictured to the right is selling but it had an awesome shop front. Taking a hot pie and a cup of tea from one of the delicious-looking cake shops, it was just right for the cold weather and rain, and with that the sun began to come out. Yay! With the sun came more people including a couple of people rollerblading—one of whom wiped out spectacularly. St Kilda’s is literally filled with scenic beauty and hinted with grunge attitude. It would probably be a lovely place to live, though we went in the middle of winter and I can only imagine how crazy this place must get in the middle of summer.