Monday, August 3, 2009

It's cold inside, so we might as well be outside

Here it is: the long awaited blog about how I had the best weekend ever and saw the most beautiful beaches and waterfalls ever. I know I talked to a few of you (to be precise: mom and pop) and said "It was gorgeous, I'll put up pictures." and TA-DA! Two weeks later here you are. A little disclaimer though: pictures are never as beautiful as the real thing. I wish I could upload video clips of 9 happy Americans and 1 giddy Swede going "Oh my gosh, it's so PRETTY!"

On friday, July 25th we all met down at the local market to get picked up by the rental cars, driven by the only two boys old enough to drive the rental cars. They did great, staying on the left hand side of the road, but they kept accidentally using the windshield wiper instead of the blinkers.

We hit the road with the intention to head north to Mt. Williams National Park, but we only made it about half an hour out of town until we pulled the car over to frolic on the beach. One of the first things we noticed were the SEASHELLS, almost every single one perfectly whole. I didn't get any pictures from that first beach, because we all tripped over each other on our rush out of the car and onto the beach.

Here's a picture of the second beach though:
Even on a stormy day it was beautiful. That's one adjective I could overuse while describing these pictures, is 'beautiful.'

This is Georgia, from Maryland. She wasted no time picking up the sea-life. This kelp is as tough as leather, and as heavy as a car tire.

This is Malwina. Malwina is from Washington, and she goes to Western too. That's how we met each other, was in an orientation class for study abroad students. Malwina has lived in the U.S. since she was 5, but before that she lived in Poland. The one Swedish girl we had with us has a Polish dad, so she could speak fluent Polish too. They would talk in Polish all the time, and it was really beautiful to listen too, but we were all really jealous!

This is Jack, also from Western, and I also met him in the orientation class. It's a funny experience to meet someone and go "Hey, I guess we'll be in a foreign country a couple months from now." And then that first day of orientation the three people from Western caught up with each other and went "Can you believe that just happened? Can you believe we're actually
here?!"

We found a monster's foot on the beach. No big deal.

The third beach we stopped at before we hit the campsite. Actually, we never hit the campsite. We spent so long at all the beaches that we realized it would have been around 7 by the time we got to Mt. Williams. Since it got dark at 4, almost right after we left this beach, we just drove to the nearest town, St. Helens, and picked up some supplies. Supplies = firewood, s'mores material (easier said than done, since they don't have graham crackers or decent marshmallows over here), and a few things to cook for dinner. I did all my packing of food before hand, so I was given the task of getting the closest thing to a graham cracker. My Swedish friend, Anna, was following me up and down the isles asking why anyone would think to put a marshmallow into a fire, roast it, and stick in between crackers and chocolate. I told her I would prove it to her later, and I did. She loved it.

We found the campsite close to St. Helen's easily enough, and it was free, empty, and had a prime location. It was called "Sloop's Reef." We drove to a site that had more than enough space for our five tents and two cars, with a lot of shelter underneath Eucalyptus trees. We were also about 50 meters from the ocean, and we wandered down there (don't worry Mom, we had headlamps and flashlights) and saw that yet again, we landed ourselves on a perfectly white sandy beach again. We turned off all our lights, looked up, and for the first time since I've been in Australia I saw the stars really clearly, and for awhile we tried to find Southern hemisphere constellations. The Milky Way was also clearer than I've ever seen it.

That night we just hung out around the fire, stayed warm, made s'mores, and traded stories. Around 9 o'clock my friend Ann and I toddled off to our tent (which we rented from the school's Bushwalking Club) and slept really soundly. Unfortunately during the night it started to rain, and while those of us in the tents were fine, my friend Patrick, from Kentucky, thought he could sleep outside. He was woken up by the rain, and thought he'd return the favor by waking us all up with the car alarm as he tried to climb into the passenger seat to sleep.

The next morning Patrick gave us a much better wake-up call by announcing he was walking out to the edge of our little cove to see the sunrise. Those of us who were coherent enough to understand pulled our shoes on, grabbed our cameras, and followed. It involved quite a bit of climbing over rocks and boulders and such, during which I was kicking myself for not bringing tennis shoes to Australia. We made it out to the point okay, and it was worth it. The above picture is before sunrise.

We had about half an hour before sunrise, and the five of us roamed around the rock, looking at the sea life. The other four were intent on getting pictures of all the sea life, but I was more focused on getting pictures of them.

Patrick.

Jack.

Patrick and Anna.

Hannah.

Patrick. See the bright orange behind him? That's lichen growing on the rocks. We were just north of a place called 'Bay of Fires,' which is named after the brilliant orange.

Sunrise!

Hannah!

Patrick again, after we got back to the campsite and got some breakfast. Unlike Hannah, who pulls the goofiest, funniest faces, Patrick is really relaxed around the camera, so I took a lot of pictures of him since he was the only one that would let me.

This is Becca, from Seattle. When I met Becca the conversation went something like this:
Me: "I'm from Seattle."
Becca: "No way me too!"
Me: "Really? I'm actually from Bellingham."
Becca: "No way me too!"
She went to high school in Bellingham and now goes to Cornish in Seattle. I should tell people that I'm from Idaho, but it's a gamble that Australians are going to know where that is. Most Americans don't know where Bellingham or Camas is, so I've just stuck to Seattle, which everyone knows.

Our little cove.

Our bird friend on our cove.

The view of the ocean from our campsite.

The cars, two white Hyundais. I was astounded that they fit enough tents, packs, and food for 10 people, but they're roomy little buggers. So we packed them all up, stopped by in St. Helens for maps, and continued heading inward to some waterfalls!

This is Halls Falls, about a kilometer down a trail that we hiked. It was so green, lush, and wild, I half expected Tarzan to come swinging through the trees. And then I reminded myself that he lived in Africa. 100 years ago. And then I reminded myself that he never really lived at all.

We hiked farther down the trail to get closer to the waterfall. This is looking up at the Eucalyptus trees. In the trees, you will find a delightful little bird called the Kookaburra, who's call sounds just like a primate. This didn't help to dispel the Tarzan theory.

This is Chris, from New Mexico. But I should probably be captioning this picture "King of the Jungle."

Malwina.

Georgia.

Looking up at the waterfall.

Anna, from Sweden.

We drove a little bit farther to a place called "Anchor's Stamper," a piece of an old mine. I forgot what they mined here (I probably would have remembered two weeks ago when I should have blogged this all), but whatever it was would come up behind the machine, and those long mechanical arms would crush the rocks to a pulp.

We drove about half an hour further, along the "NE scenic route" through beautiful countryside, where I saw the highest concentration of sheep in my life. We arrived at this waterfall, named 'St. Columbia's.' Jack, Malwina, Becca, and I thought it was pretty funny that we had traveled all this way to come across the names "Columbia" and "St. Helens."

Malwina.

Our cars at the top of the Columbia trail, about a 20 minute walk strait down a hill, and 40 minutes strait up the hill.

After the falls, we stopped by at this Pub, in the middle of mile and miles of horse paddocks. It was called "Pub in the Paddock." Everyone inside was really nice, 50+, and had lived and farmed in Tasmania most of their lives. It had a very homey feel, with a fireplace, delicious meat pies, and pictures of pigs all around it.

This is right outside the pub, looking at all the farm land. Driving in, all of us decided that the little village, named Pyenghana, could more accurately be named 'The Shire."

Here's a little interesting fact about the Ozone layer here: it doesn't exist. The sun is 4 times stronger here than at it's thinnest point in North America. So you get this weird kind of intense sunlight that makes you squint really hard, but still be freezing cold. On cold, rainy, foggy days like this day turned into, the clouds shift so fast, and the fog doesn't really disperse, and the sun isn't overpowered by any of this. The sun is always the most dominating thing in most atmospheres.

This is Malwina's new best friend.

Once we wrenched Malwina away from her new best friend, we drove to St. Helens again for more firewood, and camped at a site called "Diana's Basin." I can't believe I don't have any pictures of that sight, because it too was really cool. It was a bunch of really scrubby bushes, scrubbly sand and grass, and a little basin, where we found huge (HUGE) birds in the morning. I called them storks at the time, but later I saw a nature show that said Australia only has one native stork, and it looks nothing like the ones we saw. They may have been migrant storks, like a lot of the wildlife here, but I guess we'll never know. It was the same routine as the night before, set up tents, get the fire going, cook food, flap our gums, then head off to bed. We woke up early for the sunrise again.

And here it is: the last beach. From here we piled into our little white cars again, picked up some chocolate milk in St. Helens, drove the four hours home, and surfed the two radio stations the entire way.

That's my camping story! I'll write again soon about life in Hobart. The motto for Hobart is "Hobart, the way life should be." So you'll read in my next entry if I find that to be true!

1 comment:

  1. Oh I loved all your pictures! However, you should tell that girl that touching kelp is gross. I hope she was able to wash her hands quite quickly. I would just love to see all those sheep! I would love to own my own sheep and/or goats.
    I'm glad that you had fun camping, I can just imagine you hiking over a mile in your little ballet flats or whatever. Stinker.
    I love you and I can't wait to visit there myself someday! Keep up the awesome blogging, it is so entertaining!

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