Mammoth Post of Ridiculous Proportions

So I’m sorry I haven’t updated in ages and ages. Lots of things have been going on!

Denmark

Last Sunday Berenice, Sam, Perrine and I woke up at the crack of dawn and drove down to Denmark to do the trip in one day instead of two. A little ridiculous as it was something like three hours away, but that’s okay.

It was FREEZING that early in the morning. I saw my breath! In Australia! It was so wrong. The ride down was absolutely gorgeous. I love roadtrips. I especially love driving here and just looking out the window at the landscape that is so…Australian! I love it.

Our first stop was the Valley of the Giants Treetop Walk. It’s a huge suspended walkway among Tingle Trees - giant eucalypts whose roots are extremely delicate so you can’t walk on them. They’re beautiful! Also I cannot accurately describe how amazing eucalypt forest smells. It’s fantastic.

(I’m sorry, I had a bunch of pictures to put here, but in the interest of getting this up in anything remotely resembling a timely fashion, I’ve taken them out. Everything will be on my Facebook or maybe Picassa or something once I get home!)
The balcony was very thin and very wobbly and very high up. The pictures really don’t do it justice. There was another part called the Ancient Empire Walk where we got to walk on boardwalks around the base of the trees. Equally awesome, in a different sort of way.

Then I went on the Treetop Walk again. It was really beautiful. And I saw a fairy wren! Not a bright blue male, just a female who is not as bright, but still cool.
On the way in I had stopped to talk to this very friendly guy who had a little table at the front with information about the wilderness in the area. I told him about my studies and he showed me maps of the area and told me that this area had been largely free of logging and was completely free of invasive species – both incredibly rare in Australia. On the way out I waved to him again and told him I thought the walk was wonderful, and he made me a deal. He gave me a big book full of pictures and writings about the area as long as I went to this website and voted for Walpole as the “tidiest town in Australia” or something like that. So obviously I agreed, and here is where you come in. Go to this website: http://navmanpeopleschoice.com.au/ and vote for Walpole, WA if you have a couple of seconds, please! To help the nice man who gave me a beautiful coffee table book for free!

Next we went to Denmark to an alpaca farm that Berenice loves. Along with alpacas it also has kangaroos, goats, sheep (who are mean! It kept attacking the tiny goat!), bunnies, koalas, parrots, emus, donkeys, highland kuhs, etc. I cannot decide whether or not I felt guilty about being here. It wasn’t a terrible place, but it was like a petting zoo kind of a thing and I felt sort of weird about it. But, on the other hand, I talked to the owner guy who said most of the kangaroos were rescued babies after their mothers were shot or run over or something. Also, they were ADORABLE.
I felt weird about petting a koala and having my picture taken with him, but on the other hand he was mostly asleep. They do sleep for 20 hours a day, and I didn’t disturb him by picking him up and didn’t try to make him pose for a camera or anything and he probably didn’t really notice. I don’t know. I couldn’t decide if I thought that place was ethical or not and I felt a bit weird about it, but I got to pet a koala and a kangaroo and a bunch of other animals so what’s done is done I suppose.

We got lunch from a grocery store and ate it at a lookout overlooking a gorgeous beach. After a little while Sam told me that it wasn’t just any beach, I was looking at the Southern Ocean! Somewhere in that general direction was Antarctica. I got really really excited about the idea of the Southern Ocean. I had no idea that we were that far south! So I asked if we could go down to the beach. They didn’t take me to the one in that picture, but to a different one a little further away. Also beautiful.

And so now I can say that I have been swimming in all but one of the oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Southern. All I’m missing is the Arctic! New life goal.

The day was perfect and totally worth working longer hours and the ridiculously long drives. The drives were beautiful, anyway.

I did end up getting 200 hours in and on the last day Berenice and I went on an eco cruise to see the dolphins one last time. We didn’t get nearly as close as we did on the research boat, but it was still good to see them one more time before I left Bunbury.

Riding my bike back to Valissa’s house to give it back I was just thinking how glad I was that I hadn’t hit anything, messed up the bike, or myself in the course of the month and then the wheel caught on something and the bike went flying. Somehow I ended up on my feet with the bike seat wrapped around my leg. I got a scrape and a couple of big bruises that are still there, and the bike got a bent back wheel so it didn’t turn anymore. I had to carry it the last two blocks to Valissa’s. But I got it there and we talked for a bit before I left.

That night Berenice, Perrine, Sam, and I went out bowling. This is the only thing I have found that is cheaper here than it is back home. Partially because they don’t make you rent shoes as long as you are wearing flats. Perrine had never bowled before, so that was exciting, and I am not very good but it was still fun. I got a strike! And a spare, and I ended up in second place. We went out to dinner and it was just a really nice last night. Then I packed like crazy and woke up well before dawn the next day to catch the train at 6:00am.

Perth

The train ride was lovely. I really enjoy trains. I finished my book, which was wonderful. I got to watch the sun come up, too, which I rarely if ever get to see. I love the Australian countryside. There is something so magical about watching fields of cows and sheep roll by when suddenly there’s a flash of pink or green and you realize there’s a flock of parrots flying past.

I also didn’t have my glasses on so I got to play a fun game that I started calling “Is that a Kangaroo?!”. It is an easy game to play. Here is how it typically went: I would see something off in the distance in a field (which is where kangaroos like to hang out, especially in the mornings and evenings). “Is that a kangaroo?!” I would say to myself. As it came closer I would realize that no, it was just a cow. Or a horse. Or a sheep. Or a tree stump. Or a hay bale. Sometimes I would think it was one of these things only to find out it was another. I did this almost continuously for two hours.

At one point the train stopped. They never did explain why, but only for fifteen or twenty minutes and then we got rolling again. We weren’t too late getting into Perth and I didn’t have anyplace particular to be, anyway. Perth is having construction right now on the two worst places to have extensive construction: the train station and the airport. I had to go a couple of blocks down the street to get to the taxi bank but I found it! The taxi took me straight to my hotel which was nice but not as fancy as it had looked on the website.

I got there at about 9am so of course no rooms were ready yet. The woman behind the counter asked me to wait and said one would be cleaned and ready anytime now. So I sat and drank tea and waited impatiently. When she noticed me fidgeting and being impatient she brought over a couple of guidebooks to Perth for me to pass the time.
“French or German?” She asked sweetly.
“What?” I responded a bit dumbly.
“The language you speak. French or German?”
“Um…English?” I was utterly confused, considering I had already had a conversation with her in which I spoke. Is it not immediately obvious that I am from the US?
“Oh, are you English?” She asked, surprised.
“No, American.” I said, completely baffled.

I am perplexed when people ask me where I’m from in this country, but to actually think I am from somewhere – anywhere but the US is just ridiculous! The only thing I can think is that my accent is so midland and un-accenty that it ceases to be recognizable as anything, even American.

Anyway, she brought over some English guidebooks for me, one of which she actually let me keep, and I perused for a while, trying to figure out how best to maximize my one day in Perth. I decided to go to King’s Park and Fremantle, and maybe the Perth Museum if I had time.

Just when I was getting antsy and went up to the front desk to ask if I could just store my luggage and leave, she handed me my key. My room was on the “first floor” she informed me (which means the second floor here. What.) and I had been “upgraded” from a single room to a double with two beds – not exactly an upgrade for a single person, but whatever. The room was nice and the hotel was extremely liberal with freebies – including free movies! But for the time being I dropped my stuff, rubbed some sunscreen on my face, and headed out for the town.

The woman behind the desk showed me a few key things on the maps they had there, including a free bus system! It goes around the whole city area and stops right in front of the hotel every seven minutes all day every day. Brilliant! Five minutes later I was on a bus around the town, heading towards the harbor where I could catch a ferry to Fremantle, the nearby city that everyone raves about as being cute and artsy and generally hippyish and worth an afternoon’s wander around.

The ferry was nice, although we had to walk pretty far from the dock into the town. It was a cute place to wander around. There were a lot of fairly silly shops. Lots of fairies and wizards and stuff like that, which I was not expecting. And I found a gaming store, first I’ve seen in Australia. Apparently all the nerds are in Fremantle.

There were a couple of buskers, too. One who was playing the drum started talking to me. He could talk and play, which was impressive to me. He said he was from New Zealand (and I couldn’t believe I didn’t realize it before he said it, his accent was exactly the same as Bret’s from Flight of the Conchords! This has not been true of any of the other Kiwis I’ve met) and his name was Jason. When he said that I got a huge wave of homesickness and wanted to hug my big brother. You’d think with how common the name Jason is supposed to be that I would be used to this by now, but actually I haven’t met very many Jasons in my life and every time I do I still sort of think “No, you’re not, he’s in Minnesota!” Anyway this Jason was very nice and a very talented drummer. We chatted for a bit and he gave me his card so I could Facebook him. I still haven’t done that yet, which makes me feel bad.

I shopped a bit, bought a present for a friend, and managed to navigate the train system back to Perth, and then find the free bus back to the hotel! I’m proud of my public transport navigation skills. Minnesota barely has any, especially not in my area, so it’s all sort of new to me. I love it, though, and I am really getting the hang of it.

I dropped my purchase and a lot of the heavy stuff at the hotel and then wandered over to King’s Park. King’s Park is a huge park on a hill above Perth. One thing that I love about Australia is that every single city has a botanical garden and from what I have seen they are all excellent. King’s Park incorporates the botanical garden of Perth, but it also has lots of bush paths and big open grassy areas where people do exercisey things and tennis courts and playgrounds and war memorials. This is one thing about Australia that I find extremely interesting: you cannot move in this country without running into about six war memorials, almost all of which are for the soldiers from WWI and WWII. They are literally in every town and city across the entire nation, plus the big ones in certain places and all the bridges and roads and buildings dedicated to them, etc. The place where I entered King’s Park had a few really huge ones.

To some extent, I understand why Australia does this. Their contribution to these wars is largely ignored. I mentioned this to Bobby and he said “Wait, Australia was in the World Wars?” and he is not an uneducated person. But it’s true, we never learned about Australia’s contribution in school, there was no Australian character on Hogan’s Heroes (although that would have been highly entertaining, I wish there would have been), no one really thinks about it. Sad, really, when according to Bill Bryson Australia lost more men per capita than any other country and very nearly got taken over by the Japanese. Also, Australia is a very young country and has never had any civil wars (genocide of an indigenous people doesn’t really count as a war) or extreme conflicts with its neighbors, or done any “nation building” or “democracy spreading” so the World Wars are really Australia’s only military history and probably seem a lot more recent because of this. So I understand, and I think it’s actually pretty cool, but at the same time these things are seriously all over the place and sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous.

Anyway, King’s Park was lovely. There were views of the river and the cityscape and the surrounding country. There were flocks of noisy parrots. Because King’s Park is so many different kinds of parks in one it took me a while to find the parts I wanted to see – the bush paths and the quieter botanical parts – but eventually I found them. I had a special interest in King’s Park partially because Bill Bryson saw an echidna here, and I still long to see a monotreme, but alas it did not happen that night. Oh well. It was beautiful nonetheless.

That night I had my first experience dining alone in a real restaurant. I thought about going out but was footsore and tired so I just ate at the hotel restaurant. It was good, and eating alone was not as awkward or sad as I had anticipated. I used my free internet (which it turns out was only 100 mb, barely enough to check my email and reply to one message before I had gone over the limit), pretended to do some work, watched part of The Castle (brilliant Australian movie my host family introduced me to) and fell asleep.

The next morning I caught a cab to the airport, and spent the rest of the day on various aircrafts getting me across the country. I took a lot of pictures out the window and worked on some of the work I had to get done.

Cairns

It didn’t really hit me that I was going back to my friends the whole day. In fact, it wasn’t until I met my friend Gwen at baggage claim that it really sunk in that I was going to get to see them all again. I wish I had written about it at the time because it seems so long ago now. Gwen and I shared a cab back to the Greenhouse and talked nonstop the whole way, trading various stories. About half of the people were already there, so as soon as we dumped our stuff we raced in to the other room and gave everyone hugs. Just after we got back, a few of the other girls came back so we had all but two of our people back. We sat around in the other girls’ room and talked for hours, exchanging stories and news. It was really wonderful. I hadn’t really realized how much I missed all the people in our group until then. We all went out to dinner and then attempted to work on our papers but actually just sat around and talked some more instead. It felt amazing. I really have gotten incredibly close to all of these people in a very short period of time.

The rest of the week is sort of a blur. We were all frantically writing and finalizing travel plans and buying last-minute souvenirs and catching up with each other. Somehow we all finished our papers and gave our presentations. I was actually pretty pleased with how both of mine came out, in the end.

It was amazing to see everyone again and I gradually stopped being quite so paranoid about bedbugs after a few days (although my skin is still really dry from being on the west coast, and Cairns isn’t as humid as it was when I first got here, and so I would have some red bumps or itchiness from that and every time I even remotely have the urge to scratch I am afraid they’re back somehow, even though I did everything I possibly could). As sort of a last hurrah we had one last overnight trip, a mystery trip. We didn’t find out until the day before that we were going to…

Chillagoe

Is a tiny town inland of Cairns. It’s by far the driest most “typically Australian” looking place we’ve been with the group. We stayed at an adorable little hostel and toured a couple of different cave systems. They were really cool, and I have a zillion pictures. We got to get back on the bus, which was fun, and the caves were beautiful. I did have to sit out one part of the cave that had to do with squeezing through a tiny hole. I absolutely hate not participating in things but I know that I would not have been okay in a tiny space like that. It was annoying.

There were lots of cool outside rock formations, too. This whole area is where the Great Barrier Reef was several million years ago, so there are ancient beautiful rocks everywhere. We got to climb on some of them. One of them is called “Balancing Rock” and looks exactly how it sounds.

At night in the lodge we all sat around and had story time with Jack about crazy stunts other SIT and School for Field Studies groups have pulled in the past. Apparently people are insane and did not get in trouble for a lot of things that they probably should have gotten in trouble for. Wow. But it was lots of fun to just sit around and talk with the group and with Jack. I like Jack a lot. And the group. And everything. I miss them.

On the way home we stopped one last time to look for platypi, mostly because I told Jack I didn’t want to leave Australia without seeing a monotreme in the wild. We watched the river for something like half an hour close to dusk when we should have seen them but we did not. *Sigh*. We tried being silent and then at the end just because it worked with the dolphins we tried singing to them. It did not work, but we got a pretty great song out of it. I think “Build Me Up Platypus” is going to be the next big hit.

Cairns (Again)

That night we all dressed up and went out to dinner. It was good to be with everyone and to eat good food that was completely paid for. We talked and laughed and then got presents! We finally got to see the shirts that we all designed together on Lizard Island. Two of the girls perfected the design and sent it off to the printers and they are basically the best shirts ever. I love them. I’m going to wear mine until it falls apart. We also got beer holder things (called “coozies” here apparently) from Lizard Island and a secret surprise present in a poster tube. It’s a tradition not to open them until we get back to the States, so I mailed mine home to avoid temptation and too many things in my suitcase.

The last day was spent frantically packing, tying up loose ends, and buying presents and souvenirs for ourselves around town. The last night the bartender from the hostel threw us an “American Party” – a hoe-down. It was awesome. He even decorated the bar with red white and blue streamers and balloons and we all dressed up in the most western gear we could muster –which was not much considering none of us packed for costume parties. Each one of us got a drink named after us and Jack even came and celebrated with us. It was so much fun. At one point I believe we sang the entire National Anthem. Afterwards a bunch of us went to get hotdogs from this cart which apparently sells the best hotdogs ever. Obviously, I didn’t want one, but I wanted to hang out with the people that did so I went along. As a joke I asked if the guy would give me just some pineapple (why are they putting pineapple on hotdogs? I don’t know) for a dollar (the only money I had left) and he said yes! Best hotdog vendor ever.
I packed frantically and slept fitfully – we all woke up at 3:30 to see Gwen and Mike off, and then again at 6 to see Katherine off, and then again to get ready to go by 9:30. It was really sad saying goodbye to everyone, but it honestly hasn’t really fully hit me yet (even though – to skip ahead – as I write this I am sitting in the Northern Greenhouse and none of them are with me). I really hope we manage to make the reunion thing work, or at least that I get to see everyone again at various points. I miss them a lot and I can’t believe how close we got in such a short amount of time. Anyway, we were sad but Rachel and I were also really excited to start the next phase of our journey: the Red Centre.

Well this is an absurdly long entry already and I’m tired, so I’ll get to the adventures in Alice Springs and the Rock Tour soon. For now let me say that it was fantastic and amazing and wonderful and now I am back in Cairns and tomorrow I will board my last Qantas flight to Sydney. I will miss Qantas, it is by far my favorite airline ever. To be fair, this was not a hard contest to win. I don’t have a lot of criteria for my favorite airline. I will have flown Qantas ten times after tomorrow and on every single flight they have given me at least one meal, no matter how short the flight was or what time of the day it went. The meals were delicious, too! And they had tea! Hands down, best airline ever.

Goodnight, I love you all, and I will see many of you soon!

P.S. Going back to being mistaken for French or German – tonight in the bar I was mistaken for a Canadian. Twice. Once by an actual Canadian. I was also mistaken for a Swede or Dutch. Granted, the guy who guessed both of those was quite drunk but still! How do I not sound just totally American? Also, I learned that apparently May 17th is Norwegian National Day (or something) from the Norwegian girl at the bar. She was very excited about it. Happy Norwegian Day!