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.

Mt. Lofty

Hi everyone!

The highlight of this week was an awesome dinner at the house of Heather and John (who works at the archaeology dept). We started with champagne and a tray of cheeses and olives. For dinner, we had delicious zucchini parsley soup with fresh bread, followed by grilled snap peas, asparagus and salmon. Dessert was incredible: chocolate cake with caramel and homemade honey ice cream. Wow. Everyone at the dinner was really nice, and it was certainly one of the yummiest and funnest meals I've had in a long long time.

Yesterday, I went on a hike with a few friends to Mt. Lofty, which, while probably not technically a mountain, was a really pretty walk up to a great view. Also, I brought croissants and dolmas, which made the whole endeavor 120% more rewarding.  

In other good news, I finally found a beer I really like, Vale Ale.

View of Adelaide from the top of Mt Lofty. Downtown is visible, and so is the ocean.