Fall 2011 Update

David and I spent September and part of October traveling around various parts of the Midwest to visit friends and family. Although this is the largest chunk of time I've spent in the region since the last time I spent a summer home from college (2004), it still went by way too fast.

After flying in from Australia, I was met at the airport by my lovely chauffeur Aunt Ellen. I spent the next few days visiting with my family in Deerfield and raiding grandma's stash of dark chocolate. The next weekend, David and I, along with some other Earlham friends headed to Asheville, North Carolina for the wedding of our friends Lydia and Walker. Then, I was off to St. Paul, where David met me after a few days. We went to a Twins game, hung out at our cabin in Northern Wisconsin, and ate tons of yummy mom cooking. 

At the twins game with Dad - they actually won, breaking a 12 game losing streak.

Canoeing in northern Wisconsin

 We then headed to Pittsburgh for a wedding of another couple of friends from Earlham, Zach and Melissa. After that, we chilled out for a bit in South Bend, indulging in more delicious mom food. We swung up to Michigan for one last lovely wedding, which was the last stop on our 2011 Midwest Tour.

Upon returning to Portland, we were lucky to nab a nice little apartment in the southeast of the city, not too far from my sister Leah and her approximately 20 roommates, half of which are animals. I tried to make progress on my thesis, while David tried to convince me to go hiking as much as possible. 

Returning from a hike on Mt. Hood

We also spent a day on the Oregon Coast and visited the Tillamook Cheese factory, where I picked up an unseemly hitchhiker.

We took a little mini winter vacation to the Wallowa Mountains in northeast Oregon. We staying in a yurt in a state park and went snowshoeing a lot. 

Wallowa Lake

We're now back in Minnesota. Mom put me to work right away making cookies.

Best to all of you in the New Year – we'll be in touch!

The Last (Australian) Supper

Well, after an awesome three months I finally parted ways with my old buddy Australia. It was a shock to find myself in LAX, surrounded by people with American accents. I flew a lot in Australia, where security is pretty easy going, so I was also a little unprepared from the ‘warm’ welcome I got from TSA.  

Aside from nicer airport security personnel, some things I think the US should adopt from Australia are:

-          All water fountains also have spouts for filling up water bottles.

-          Plastic bags cost 15 cents at grocery stores.

-          Incorporation of pumpkin into almost every dish - pumpkin soup, salads and pizza are widely available.



Some opalized pliosaur bone pics I got from the internets.
Looks way cooler and shinier in person, especially when

seeing an entire articulated skeleton of this stuff.



Adelaide really grew on me, and I’ll miss the city but especially all the friends I made there. It’s the kind of big city where you only know 30 people, but you keep on running into them around town. In my last visit to the Museum of South Australia, I found a really awesome exhibit I had somehow missed on my previous trips. It contained a pliosaur skeleton – but get this, it’s opalized! So not only is it a kick ass swimming dinosaur bones, but it’s all colorful and shiny! I was very sad to say goodbye to the Central Market as well. So much yummy food, cheese and bread. And unlike some farmer’s markets in the US, it’s much, much cheaper than the grocery store.

My last week in Adelaide was marked by even more delicious food and more liberal consumption of local beers and wines than usual. Some friends won the weekly Thursday Meat Raffle at the Uni pub, so we grilled up all the food the following weekend. That’s right, I said Meat Raffle. Once a week, everyone at the bar buys raffle tickets in the hope of taking home a giant Styrofoam tray of assorted (and sometimes unidentifiable) meat. Of particular interest to me, though, was the presence at this BBQ of large chunks of grilled haloumi, which my faithful blog followers will know as my most recent obsession. The chunks were at least one inch cubes, and were accompanied on a skewer with a delightful combination of cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and basil. That weekend, I also managed to fit into my busy schedule a short yet thorough inspection of several new Adelaide pubs.

The bruschetta

Early in the week, Amy managed to bake me a surprise apple pie. The real feat was not baking the delicious pie, as she is a very accomplished baker/cook, but that I was literally sitting ten feet away the whole time and that it was still a surprise. I don’t know if this is a testament to her sneakiness or my general state of obliviousness. Thursday night, my supervisor Mick took a bunch of us out to a really nice dinner in Glenelg. Of course, I had to sample the restaurant’s grilled halloumi selection, as well as an assortment of wine and pizza. Friday was a delightful day. Mick and I worked on our CMT paper for most of the day. We actually managed to get a fair amount done, despite my best efforts to distract both him and myself with random comments and observations. We then retired to the Uni pub so I could bid a fond farewell over a couple pints to the oft-frequented establishment. Amy then really outdid herself with a super yummy last supper of bruschetta and grilled haloumi. The next morning, I woke up really early, and Amy dropped me off at the airport. And that's the end of that story.

Haloumi - yum yum

The pie was as delicious as it was cute.

Adelaide Buddies

In my three months in Australia, I’ve made lots of really great friends, which make it really sad to leave. The past few weeks, I’ve been really, really lucky to be staying with my friend Amy, who lives in Glenelg. Among other good qualities, she is a fabulous cook. We’ve had lots of fun hanging out drinking wine, eating, watching movies, and being goofy. I’ve also met Lulu, a neighborhood dog that Amy takes out on walks. Last night we made about 6 dozen adorable mini cupcakes. They go down very easily.

Amy and Claire with a pizza we made.



I knew I would be attacked by a shark at least once before leaving Australia!





Yummy coconut prawn curry that Amy made.




Bruschetta with pumpkins soup that Amy made.  



Lulu the dog.

How to Speak Australian

Seeing as I haven’t been up to much this week beyond statistics, GIS, and hanging out at the University pub, I decided this would be a good time to talk about general aspects of Australian life. Before I arrived here, I (like any freedom fries loving American) knew very little about ‘down under’ other than it is a large island populated by crocodiles, kangaroos, and drunk people who talk funny. After two months of living here, I can say that all my conceptions of Australia were entirely accurate, except I now know they also drink a lot of tea.

Australia is, indeed, a large island. Almost unimaginable large, in fact. It is the size of the continental US, but has one tenth of the population. There are huge expanses of land crossable by only a few dirt roads and dotted with a gas station every couple hundred kilometers.

Tank at a roadhouse on the Cape York Peninsula. Amy took this photo.

Early morning at the Weipa Mission site

 Crocs and kangaroos really are all over the place. Most of the kangaroos I’ve seen, however, have been roadkill. Australia is also – literally – crawling with poisonous spiders and snakes.

This spider was at our campsite.

And here's how to speak Australian. This is all you need to know to get by for a couple months:

Winge – Complain

Struth – Damn it      

Pissed – Drunk

Stonkered – Drunk

Bowgie - Shower

Tosser - Jerk

Cobber – Friend

Bewdy – Nice, man

Taking the piss – Making fun of

Beanie – Hat

Jumpah Leads – Jumper Cables

“What are you after?” – What can I get you?

“I can’t be bothered to…” – I don’t feel like…

“How ya goin’ mate?” – How are you doing?

Lollies – Candy

Tah - Thanks

Glenelg

Picture of Glenelg that I took from a hot air ballon.
Just kidding, its only stolen from the internets.

This week, I moved from the Adelaide CBD (central business district) to stay with my friend Amy. She lives in Glenelg, which is a suburb by the beach – this means there is a lot of fish and chips and ice cream shops. We’ve been spending a lot of time with another one of our friends, Claire, and fun times have ensued. They’ve introduced me to a delicious cheese called Haloumi, which has quickly become an all too plentiful part of my diet. We hit up a couple of the local bars this weekend, and ended one night by playing pool. I managed to play even better than average, sinking about five balls – in the course of three games. 



Claire and I having a morning cup of tea while on the Cape York road trip.

The weather here is similar to Portland in October – fairly chilly, and it’s been raining quite a bit lately. I’ve been getting into a regular schedule of working on my project at school, but every time I I’ve gotten a chunk accomplished, we have a new idea or want to incorporate more data. Anyway, I’m well into the statistical analysis, and we’re starting to plop the locational data of the scars into GIS to see what comes up.

Sydney

I just returned from a loooong weekend in Sydney (this post will be short on pictures - I didn't take any, due to an unfortunately timed losing of my camera cord). The purpose of the trip was for all students in Australia on the EAPSI program to present their research and basically prove we haven't been only drinking and sleeping on the beach the whole time. After my presentation about culturally modified trees was over, I celebrated by drinking and sleeping on the beach for three days.

Well, actually, those two activities made up only a small portion of my time in Sydney.
My first night in Sydney was spent in a neighborhood called The Rocks, which was the first European settlement around Sydney. It has tons of super cool historic buildings, lots of little stairs and alleyways, and heaps of old pubs. Our hostel featured a rooftop view of the opera house and the harbour bridge. Neither of these landmarks disappoints! Our hostel was built on top of a massive historical archaeology project called The Big Dig. A few house foundations are preserved on the ground floor of the hostel, and some of the one million+ artifacts found are on display in the hostel. Pretty cool!
After a night inspecting some of the aforementioned historic pubs, we headed (via train) to the Blue Mountains for an all too short day trip.

The three sisters, at Echo Point, Blue Mountains. Picture stolen from the internets.

 

On Sunday, my friend Jon, who is a marine biologists, was nice enough to let me tag along with him to collect data for his project, which concerns sea star populations. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was tons of fun to walk along the tidepools looking for the little guys. We took a ferry back from the beach into Sydney, pulling into the Sydney harbor past the opera house right at sunset. Perfect timing!

Picture of the sea star Jon studies, stolen from his webpage.

Monday, I went to Bondi Beach, where (apparently) Australian celebrities often hang out. Luckily, as its wintertime, crowds were thin and I was able to escape without any paparazzi being alerted that I was there.

Picture of Bondi Beach stolen from the Internets.

 I took a beautiful walk along the coast for a couple kilometres and generally lazed around in the sun for the day before heading to the airport back to home sweet Adelaide. 

Picture of the coastal walk stolen from the internets.

Northern Queensland

As promised, here is a longer version of what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks. In the beginning of July, I headed up to the West Coast of the Cape York Peninsula. I joined the professor I’m working with in Adelaide (Mick) and two other grad students (Amy and Claire) for some field work, primarily at a mission site that was inhabited from 1898-1932. We were working outside of the town of Weipa, which is mostly populated by people working at bauxite (aluminum) mines in the area. Lots of the area is basically being strip mined, which obviously has a huge impact on the ecosystem. The field work was really interesting, and I learned a lot. We were mostly focused on mapping the mission and an old cattle homestead, but I also spent some time surveying for and recording culturally modified trees around the sites. One highlight was working with traditional owners of the land the mission site is located on, who still manage the land with burning.  Another highlight was not being eaten by a croc. We did spot a TON of wallabies and kangaroos while working though! It was really fun to be out in the bush with Mick, Claire and Amy, who know all the secrets of camping in Australia, such as how to make damper (bread cooked over the campfire) and how to make a mean pot of tea. In turn, I managed to impress them with the amount of cheese I consume. 

Can you spot the kangaroo?

Looking at not so old stuff.

There were also tons of termite mounds!

Salt pan by the mission.

Measuring sugarbag scars!

The traditional owners often burn the under bush, which was common until the land was used for cattle grazing by Europeans. 

Spider - so cool!

The soil was beautiful - super red.

 After field work finished, we spent a couple days driving from Weipa across the Cape York tip to Cairns. This area is very lowly populated, with most of the land either held by Indigenous peoples or cattle ranchers. Just about the only thing for 1000 or so kilometers are a few small road houses (facilities that sell gas and snacks) and a couple tiny towns. Makes Wyoming seem like Manhattan. There is a lot of rock art found in this region, and we stopped at the only site open to the public, which was pretty amazing. It is around 14,000 years old, and there are many depictions of people, animals such as fish, and turtles, and stencils made with hands. Awesome!

Queensland is very flat by Weipa, but it got quite hilly in the eastern half of the peninsula.

In Cairns, I immediately booked it for the Great Barrier Reef. After one night as a paying guest on a boat that stays out on the reef, I ended up getting hooked up with a short work exchange job cleaning and helping out in the kitchen. I was able to spend four days and three nights in an incredibly amazing spot, eating great food, working really hard, and jumping into the water with my snorkel every chance I got.  I saw a couple reef sharks, some turtles, and lots of colorful fish, but the really incredible part was the coral. There are gazillions of species of hard and soft corals and anemones in bajillions of different shapes and colors. It was just as awesome as I hope for, they definitely had to pry me off the boat to get me back to Cairns! 

Yup. Didn't want to leave. Did I mention we saw dolphins?

You can pretty much see the coral from this one.

I’m now returned Adelaide, ready to get back to crunching the numbers for our scarred tree data!

Great Ocean Road and Melbourne

Last Thursday, I rented a car with three friends and headed of on the Great Ocean Road from Adelaide to Melbourne. I read an article about this trip in the New York Times last spring and I've heard a lot about it since getting to Australia - and it was just as awesome as everyone says. I'll try to refrain from putting too many pictures up - if your interested ask me for a slide show when I get back to the US!

Twelve Apostles rock formation along the Great Ocean Road at sunset.

Basically the same view without my ugly head blocking the view.

Beach on the Great Ocean Road just after sunrise.

London Arch as the first sun of the day hits it.

Cove along the Great Ocean Road.

We stopped at a park and saw about two dozen koalas. Most were napping and some were munching away on leaves - that's the life.

Koalas - Totally cute.

The bad news: I still haven't seen a kangaroo. The good news: we didn't hit one with the car!

Just off the road are national parks with some sweet rainforest.

Bell's Beach, which is super famous for surfing.

I hung out in Melbourne for a day and left intensely grateful that I don't live there for the summer. Not because it sucks - but because it is so awesome. Melbourne is one of the best cities I've ever been to, jammed with cafes, restaurants, museums, parks, tiny bars, and totally hooked up with public transport. I'm pretty sure I would achieve no work, and blow through all my money in a month.