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.