camping in kangaroo land

Crikey! Almost a whole month with no updates? Shameful, shameful. I certainly have my work cut out for me, to properly chronicle the past two weeks... they were phenomenal!

The real excitement begins on Friday, September 14th with Macquarie's annual celebration of Conception Day. As far as I'm aware, this is the "conception" of the university. Naturally, it's become a giant outdoor concert and drinking fest that over 6000 people show up to. In short: awesome! Bright colours, beer, sunshine, live music, dancing, and tonnes of people... can't go wrong with that. We started the day over at Ola's backyard--I trekked across campus with all my camping gear and Mat and Ian, then we chilled in the sun for a couple hours before heading over to the lawns to see the main event. We mingled all afternoon, did a bit of dancing, had a sausage sizzle or two, and enjoyed our beer. We spent some time talking with Ignacio, one of my neighbours who opened the music (he's a fantastic guitar player!), ran into our badminton coach Mark, some of the rugby guys, and roommates of roommates and friends and neighbours. I spent the night at Ola's in their spare room, so as to be up on time for camping the next day.

Annabel and Nicki outside of Ola's


Ian and Mat just chillin...


myself and Anna, one of Ola's Swiss neighbours


me and Ian inside Conception Day!


random crowd shot...


mm, beer




Ola and I with Ignacio, the fantastic Chilean guitar player =D


oh the clappy hands...

demonstrating how my new shirt allows me to camouflage into Ola's watermelon walls... hehe!

And then... camping! We were up at 6 am, out the door at 7 am, and then it was a series of buses, trains, and vans until we got to our campground at Pebbly Beach in Murramurrang National Park, about 150 km south of Sydney. The campground was pretty average--flush toilets but only cold showers, dirt tent pads, etc.--but the beach was amazing... and all ours! The wildlife was endlessly entertaining, too; wild kangaroos who let you pet them and their joeys, parrots of ten varieties, birds, wallabies, possums, and even a sand goanna meandered by us on the beach. They were all pretty intent on stealing our food, so we had to get a little aggressive in defending it... thinking of an instance where we had to poke a king parrot with a fork to keep it out of our peanut butter! And an attempt at a midnight raid of our food by a mummy possum... tsk. They kept us on our toes!

We had about four days camping; two were spent in transit, one day we (Sarah, Ola, and I) spent at the beach doing our own thing, and the other we went on a 15 km trek to a nearby town, lake, and shortish hiking trail. It was absolutely beautiful scenery!

For the sake of bandwidth (and my sanity), this is just a selection of my photos from camping... you can check out the rest in my Google Album. I love Picasa!

on the train!


a king parrot perched on our tent


our very own beach!


Ola cooking on my glorious fire...


the forest around our campsite


our "fearless" leader stopping for directions


Lake Durras


the group! moi, Ola, Sarah, Dari, Jaun, Joy, Andrea, and Matt... just missing Vivienne, who's taking the photo


still tree hugging in Australia!




I felt like I was walking through the Amazon Trail computer game...




a biiiiiig gum tree




lobster, anyone?








on our way home...

swimmingly

Just a couple new pictures because I actually need to get going to badminton. :) I know, the pressure, the pressure...

On Thursday Ola and I voyaged downtown to see what we could see of APEC. We didn't see much, though as we had to cut right by the conference centre to get to Jeremy's house, we had the distinct impression of not being able to joke about terrorist acts. Really, the closest any of us got to the action of APEC was Sarah and Ryan mooning people as part of a protest, and us watching press conferences between John Howard and George Bush. And seeing a couple more police downtown. It was kind of anticlimactic, if I do say so myself. Still, it was a good excuse to go downtown and chill at Jeremy's! Then, last night we went for very very yummy sushi over in Epping, because of Ian's birthday and a general craving for raw fish. Mm, sushi.

Waterloo Road, right next to the Village

downtown at Darling Harbour, looking at the conference centre where APEC was held

we were there!

boats at the maritime museum

more Darling Harbour and downtown Sydney

it may be a bit blurry... but it's picture #6000 on my camera! who says I don't get my money's worth out of digital products?

Tsehaye and I at dinner last night

roommates and so forth (aka, "the crew") out for Japanese--Tsehaye, me, Sarah, Anne, Harry, Julian, Ryan, Edgar, and Mat!

peachy beachy

So, I emailed SFU yesterday about what kind of things I would need to do to stay at Macquarie for another semester--what paperwork, who to contact, etc. Ola was telling me the other day that when we first met, I said that a semester would be the perfect amount of time abroad--and oh, how wrong I was! Time is zipping by too quickly!

I must say that we had a marvelous weekend. I was up at 6:30 on Friday to finish off my REM paper, but then had the rest of the day off to hang out with the girls and to help Jeremy set up for the party at his place to celebrate his parents' departure to Europe for three months. That night we had a lot of fun doing a sausage sizzle on their rooftop garden and hanging out with all of his friends. Sarah, Ola, Tsehaye, and Ryan were all there as well--and together, we've come to the decision that we need to spend more time with Australians in Australia. (I know, novel concept, eh?) Being exchange students, we tend to stick with exchange students... which needs to change. Now just to contrive how! Anyway, on Saturday we meandered around Darling Harbour a little bit, did a bit of tourist shopping, and admired the two metre-high fences that are being put up around the conference centre for APEC. Ola and I are actually going to head down there on Friday to see what we can see; well, to be specific we're going down on Thursday and enjoying an evening in the city without having to transit home (Jeremy's apartment is just too convenient!). Hopefully we won't get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time... like in a protest or something. Oy vey.

I'm getting sidetracked. On Sunday Ola and I went over to Manly Beach for the afternoon, to soak up some rays and splash in the surf. The day wasn't anywhere as warm as it should have been (considering Thursday and Friday of last week were 27-28 C), but we still managed to lie out in our bathing suits and coax ourselves into the water. Being Canadian, however, we were able to handle the cold water quite well... and I think it was my first time swimming in the ocean that I can remember. (Hawaii and Florida when I was 3 and 5 respectively don't count.) Pictures!

Ola on the bus first thing in the morning


there was an hour and a half of bus to fill up...


random Sydney view


my expression for most of the ride... just imagine me chanting, "beach beach beach BEACH BEACH beach beach beach beach beach beach BEACH!!" to go along with the grin... Ola hated it at first and then she got into it. mwahaha.


arriving at Manly




we contrived to have one of the most delicious and satisfying lunches ever. crackers, yummy yummy olives, and a half-round of creamy brie cheese. it fulfilled cravings we didn't even know we had!


mmm....


in the water!


it's the Pacific!


this was before we got owned by the waves...


looking north from Manly


looking south


Ola, post-waves


also post-waves


a nice guy took a picture for us :)


(requisite foot photo)




to finish off our delicious lunch we had Tim-Tam Balls. seriously, how does it get any better than this? even if they did melt and get sand in the gooey chocolate... but then, what didn't get sand in it...


looking south at around 4 pm


north!


back in Manly


bracelet love!


we went on an adventure to find tea (Ola had no voice by this point, weirdly similar to how I sounded a few weeks ago)... and discovered that Australians don't know how to make London Fogs... woe!

our $2 dinner which we almost missed the bus for... heh.

and last but not least, I'd like to share a picture of the newest member of our household! his name is Ernie, and of course we're not supposed to have him, but Mat's breaking the rules anyway. yes, his feathers are a little mangled at the moment--the bird he was sharing his cage with previously plucked out his tail feathers, and his wings are clipped. but in a few months he'll be beautiful again. Ernie is probably around 6 months old, and is still a bit shy and moody around us--but he's bonding with Mat and will with me, too. lorikeets are wild here, and there are plenty around the Village, so we've been able to see what the wild ones eat and have been bringing him flowers daily. we <3 Ernie! (and how cool is it that my dream of having a parrot has finally been realized? it's only been--what--a decade? hah!)