Christmas Aus-ventures
The last few days have been entertaining domestickiness: after the Cricket on Wednesday, I caught up with Bruce and we cavorted around a little pub in Sunbury for a few hours. I was on the last train and he finished early from his afternoon shift and we happened to catch up to each other on the street after I got in to Sunbury.
Thursday was a day trip up north to help Helen move out of her weekday flat - she works 1.5 hours northwest of Sunbury during the week and Thursday was her last day as she's now retired. We were hoping to drop some stuff off at the the 'tip' as they call it (garbage dump), but, surprisingly, the only days the tip isn't open are Wednesdays and Thursdays.
After that, we attempted to make ourselves fatter and stopped at an ice cream shop. Then got back to Sunbury, unloaded a bit, Helen got home and we went out for dinner. But that wasn't all: due to a now thoroughly ingrained passion for construction and destruction - imbued by you-know-who, and coupled with the productive presence of Helen, Bruce and I bashed apart an old stero cabinet. When trying to decide how to use this new storage space, I suggested using it as a linen closet, inspired by some other you-know-whos in my life. It will soon be enjoying its new function once we get around to making a backing for it.
Friday was a scorcher - the thermometer was a Kyle-melting 36 degrees. Contrary to anything we've ever lived with (meaning me and you guys), a northerly wind here brings the hottest weather imaginable. The outback is somewhere above 40 degrees right now, so the air simmering over the sand there, when blown south by northerly winds, takes its heat with it and spills it over the southern reaches of Australia. Any of you who know me know just how much I love the sun and hot weather, so I hid out in the shade as much as I could. Bruce and I travelled in the air conditioned car and did a series of errands in town, then tried to stay cool until the evening came. Then, in a dramatic demonstration of the trust Bruce and Helen place in me, they asked if I would cook 'tea'. Since I love eating, when it is my responsibility to cook, the first thoughts of dinner usually hit sometime before lunch. Given such short notice, I tried something that combined spaghetti, pumpkin, peas, carrot, olive oil, and leftover sweet basil & tomato pesto sauce. As I try not to have the same thing twice, you can guess that this certainly fit cleanly within those criteria. Somehow, everything meshed and nobody died, so I guess that was a success. Just like 'every landing you walk away from is a good one...'
Today has been the most peculiar, however. We were in town with the hoardes of imps and orcs about finishing their Christmas shopping and stocking up on supplies for what is uniquely Australian - Christmas lunch. Turkey is available, but pork, ham, and lamb is much more common. I hear that cold cuts and wine while lounging in a park is also popular. I travelled about with Helen picking up all the sundry items required to successfully host said lunch. Oh, for the first time, I finished an entire container of sunblock and had to buy somemore! You wouldn't believe the sunshine here...
When it came time to cook fish for 'tea' (can't get used to that word), I flicked on the oven and five minutes later, there still wasn't any heat. A quick inspection showed that a nearly shorn element is almost certainly the culprit. Luckily, there is a separate grill that we could use to heat up the fillets, but that doesn't solve the problem of cooking the leg of lamb, pork roast, and roast potatoes... Has anyone ever cooked a roast by microwave before? Well, now we have... It's fast, but I must admit that it made me cringe at the thought of it. Tastes fine though, so I guess those thoughts were unfounded.
Other than that, most of Melbourne is out this evening in shorts and the like watching 'Carols by Candlelight' in an outdoor music bowl. We're watching it on T.V.
Presents are wrapped and I'm patiently awaiting Santa... I'm glad to hear that cricket is starting to make sense. T-dawg: I miss you too!
I'm wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a safe (please!), happy, and prosperous New Year. Miss you tons. All my love to all of you!
Pain on a Cricket Pitch
Back in familiar digs, again! On Saturday, I left Hobart on a jet plane headed for Melbourne. I wistfully waited for my ride while staring out at the tarmac... A Royal Flying Doctor Service King Air-200 zipped past, a Virgin Blue 737-700 sat on a jack getting a blown tire replaced. That was some jack. JetStar flew in with the only Airbus - firmly outnumbered by Boeings.
The flight was only about an hour long and on the descent to MEL, we went through a cloud bank probably 7000' thick and came out in a rainstorm. Bruce and Helen kindly met me at the airport. In fact, Bruce met me almost at the gate when I came out! In several airports here, I found many people without boarding passes, but they are allowed past security to see their passengers off. They have to do the standard checks, but after that...
The next day, we went into the city to a 'Christmas Spectacular' in an entertainment complex. It was definitely geared towards the little ones, what with moving robots and some flashing lights. It was very packed - chockers as an Aussie would say! The show runs every 30 minutes betweeen 1000 and 0000 for 41 days from late Nov to 8 Jan... that's 1148 shows. I can imagine what the staff think about the 'Christmas Spectacular'. After that, we went to a Baptist Christmas Carol service. From an Anglican background, I can only describe Baptist services as 'unique'. Every one of them. I enjoyed it though.
Monday and Tuesday were sundry days in and around Sunbury and Melbourne, respoectively. I went in to see Andy on Tuesday at Monash to pick up my formal scholarship offers and got invited to an indoor cricket match. Well! That proved to be too enticing to pass up!
Last night, I made the trek back into the city and got introduced to the pounding and rapid game of cricket. I've been watching the test matches on TV quite a bit... I like it a lot more than baseball - it has the meditative qualities of baseball, but is without the fat, tobacco chewing, juiced batters. It's more complex, and crystalline in it's refinement. Elegant in fact. I'll bring back a cricket dictionary when I return to decipher this post for you. I played with Andy, my future supervisor, and three of his colleagues, who were gracious in their patience and understanding that being a Canadian, cricket is firmly without my experience. They got me bowling, the toughest part of which is to get the ball going strait down the pitch. Every time I bowled wide of the pitch, the opposing team got two points. They got me batting, which is a cross between golfing and batting baseball.
The basics: the game is played on a pitch, which is 66 feet long - one chain for you ol' surveyors in the reading crowd ;-). The pitch is about 6 feet or so wide. At both the ends of the pitch are identical wickets (or stumps), which are three posts standing parallel, and supporting little wooden 'sticks' between them. The net effect is that anytime anything even lightly caresses the wickets, the sticks pop out, indicating what's happened. A batsman stands in front of each set of wickets and tries to prevent the other team's bowlers from hitting the wickets with the ball. There are always two batsmen on field and one bowler facing each batsman. The rest of the fielding team is strewn about the pitch trying to snare any hits you make. Bare hands for all, except the batsmen who get big hockey-like gloves to protect their hands, and the catcher who gets funky webbed gloves. The ball is very hard and will easily crack hand bones or bruise anything else. As speed bowlers huck the ball at about 130 km/h, it can get a little hairy. When a batsman strikes the oncoming ball, if it goes far enough, the two batsman have to exchange positions by running between the sets of wickets. There's myriad rules and variations depending on the type of game being played, but the preceding are the basic ones to try to understand what follows.
In indoor cricket, each member of each team must bowl two overs (6 bowls per over for a total of 12 bowls (throws)), and each member of each team when batting much face 4 overs from the opposing teams bowlers. Got that? Furthermore, in indoor cricket, you are contained within a netted pitch, off which you can play the cricket ball. You get extra points for hitting certain areas on the netting, but to get those points, you still have to run between the wickets, exchanging position with your partner batsman at least once.
Anyway, when I got my first chance to bowl, somehow my festering nervousness (read performance anxiety) went to sleep a little and I actually got all except one of my bowls in my first over to go down the pitch! The batsmen didn't score too much and the rest of the team congratulated me, much to my pleasured surprise! I was just bowling this yellow round thing, hoping to do what they told me and not get clocked by it when the batsman fired it back at my head! That was to come a little later. I fielded for a bit, then my second over came up and I bowled okay again, but not as good as the first time... We started batting shortly after that.
I walked tentatively out on to the pitch and assumed the position behind the inactive set of wickets, staring ceaselessly at Andy, my partner batsman, waiting for his signal to run. His first bowl was delivered, THWACK!... Hey that's heading for me. Another THWACK!! Oh ... that ... was ... my ... groin ... uhh. Dang it... run! Andy's heading toward me!! So I ran and realised that the ball had only hit near my groin, saving my child-rearing future. In the course of the rest of the evening, I received cricket balls to my arms, right foot, left leg, chest, and hands. I'm hooked!! High velocity leather balls careening at my body... and it's my responsibility to ensure they don't connect with anything but my bat. I like this game!!
Seriously though, it was an extreme level of fun for the entire evening :-) I look forward to joining the indoor cricket team permanently when I've commenced the Ph.D you've all heard about by now... The comraderie of the team toward me and the novelty and enjoyment I had playing such a foreign game actually helped a little in solidifying my decision.
Anyway, that is completely unintelligible, but I hope you've enjoyed tonight's entertainment. Forgot to take pictures, but I'll get some next time I play.
Love you all and miss you all just as much as ever. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Picture requests? Let me know.
Update Complete!
Lazy Days
After the Walls, things have settled down a bit. Charmaine and I got all organised-like and went to see The Brothers Grimm... not bad; highly entertaining, but I found the dialogue hard to understand. I think I'm spoilt by the DTS theatres we are graced with back home and the 'small' screens and non-digital sound I watched BG in threw me off... Or something like that. Maybe I'm going deaf.
Charmaine's airport shuttle was scheduled for 1830 and we got out of the movie at about 1810... lots of time! Anyway, we got to the transit centre just fine, then she left.
After that, I just tooled around a bit... On Tuesday, I did a lot of postcarding, so if I have your address, expect a treat in the mail in 20 days or so. If I don't I've sent an e-mail asking for it. If you didn't get that e-mail, then Shaw crossed wires again and if didn't get to you. In that case, e-mail me with your address!
On Tuesday night, I went to see Harry Potter & TGOF. Fantastic, but I won't talk about it because endless superlatives get boring. Wednesday was spent at the Cadbury factory. In my dreams alone, have I imagined such a place (plagarised
). I felt like Charlie in his Chocolate Factory, but Cadbury doesn't mix their chocolate by waterfall... There were endless samples and fascinating machinery - we ate 20 minute-old Turkish Delight... Then the tour ended and I was let loose in the chocolate store... About 2 kg heavier and $18 lighter, I left it happy and high on coco. When chocolate blocks are under or overweight, they are rejected, but Cadbury wisely packages these bars in white paper, and sells them in packs of 3 for $5. Dangerous for someone with a palate like mine. A dentist's nightmare...
After that, I went to see Peter Jackson's King Kong. It was also highly entertaining, even moving in some scenes, but was still silly. I'm certain that's the way Mr. Jackson intended it, however, so I can't say that it was a bad thing. It was well casted and the effects were good. I was expecting more vestiges from the Lord of the Rings to be apparent, but they were not. I suppose that speaks to his versatility as a movie man. However, I'm certain I spotted my kiwi tour guide that I had when I was there last year... He was one of the ships crew on Skull Island.
Thursday was an interesting trip of hours on the internet. Mom, Bob, Quinn, Shiela, and I were all able to connect at the same time in a Messenger window and we chatted for a long time. Enjoyed that - Thanks Microsoft...
Also, I've been formally offerred those scholarships. I've been thinking that I will take the awards and work by little patutie off so that the project doesn't take any longer than 3 years from this coming June... I'll let you know when I've decided finally.
Other than that, I go off to Melbourne tomorrow evening to reconnect with Bruce and Helen and family. I'm looking forward to that as I've missed them. It will be a pleasant Christmas. Then, I think I'll be off in Perth direction. However, the glory of independent travelling is that I lazed in my room until 1100 this morning listening to music with full knowledge that I wasn't missing anything and didn't have to be anywhere in particular. That means that Perth may change, too, depending on what happens between now and some time later.
Now pictures...
This (the first) is fairly typical of the cool temperate rainforests that I've spent a lot of time hiking through in Tassie. Those are tree ferns (
Dickinsonia antarctica) that are probably about 3 meters tall (on left) and 1 m tall (on right). The trees in the background look like sassafras, but could be gum trees as well.
The second is a swamp gum - these are the tallest hardwoods in the world and also the tallest flowering plants in the world. This tree is about 75 m high or so. That's me dwarfed by it.
The third is a section of the Overland Track from the top of Barn Bluff, a mountain we climbed on the second day. That little snaking line is the duck boarding that covered some sections of the track. That terrain is fairly typical of the Track...
The forth is the West Wall, in the Walls of Jerusalem. Notice the low green mounds... those are cushion plants and they are warm to the touch.
The last is my shaggy & lopsided self, Adam, and Charmaine. I've now hit about 1400 pictures, so I just can't share everything... It will have to wait until I'm home!
Update Complete! Miss y'all a whole bunch, love ya lots, Merry Christmas!!!
Oh, any picture requests? I'll post them next time, just let me know.
Overland Track and the Walls of Jerusalem
Gang, !!LENGTH WARNING!!
The better part of December has now been spent on various and sundry wanderings throughout Tasmania's wilderness. I decided to hit what is called the Overland Track (OT) from 30th Nov to 7th Dec. Then, I just got back yesterday from another, and much more isolated and therefore beautiful place called the Walls of Jerusalem. The OT is an 80.5 km trek across one of Tasmania's insanely beautiful national parks, but due to side trips and a distinct lack of laziness, my party and I racked up 92 km instead. The Walls is an alpine wonderland where we got snow during the first night...
It all started on 28 November when I ran into a girl in the hostel who was starting the OT the next day (29 Nov). It so happened that I was to take the bus up to the Track that day as well. I wasn't scheduled to go on the Track until 1 Dec, but I figured a couple of days camping in the mountains would make it feel a little bit more like home. At the hostel, I also ran into another guy who had just finished a long hike in the Southwest wilderness, and he promptly hawked his remaining food and advice on me. The three of us went out for dinner that night and talked hiking and travelling, both of them having been to Nepal and various other famous trekking countries.
Charmaine is her name, and we stayed together for the bus ride the next day. Upon reaching the Cradle Mountain (OT Start) turnoff, the bus broke down - one of the air pots on the right rear brake had been leaking all day. Thanks to some mechanical education from an unamed party who will likely be reading this, that had been my suspicion all day. Because of that, Charmaine missed her starting date because we didn't get a fill-in bus until 3.5 hours later. Also, sitting around waiting for the replacement bus was great cause to meet another character in this story, Adam. Adam is an affable bloke who Charmaine and I were lucky to have met. Both are Aussies. It turned out that he was to start the Track on 30 Nov; since Charmaine had missed her start day, and since I wasn't scheduled to go until 1 Dec, and since we all enjoyed each other's company so much, we decided that we would all try to get our bookings coincident and that we would do the track together, leaving on 30 Nov. Somehow, that all worked out and we did start the OT on the same day.
The day is now 30 Nov and Char and I are at the start for the OT. Char checks to see that her wallet and important documents are located where they should be, and finds that they are not. The next few hours are a whirlwind of cancelling credit cards, organising re-issue, and checking to make sure we haven't missed them anywhere. With all that organised, we set off. Adam got away earlier than us that morning and we were to meet him at the first hut.
Shortly into the journey, we come upon an emergency shelter, and since it is raining outside, we go in for a snack. Digging around in her pack for a snack, Charmaine finds her wallet. Hmmm... I will vouch for her that she did thoroughly tear apart her pack before we left. Sometimes these things happen...
Anyway, we met up with Adam in the afternoon at the first hut about 10 km into the track. The rest of the week we plodded along, climbed a few mountains, met more cool people, and did side trips. At the last hut, there were 13 people in it and 12 of them were Australian - one was me. Talk about lucky! I go peak season on the premier hiking track in Tasmania and I get to do it with a bunch of Aussies! Lucky! Met a nice family too, all of whom from Aus.
The last day of the OT was a bit of an adventure. It was about 25 km and we did it in sun in the morning and pounding rain for the rest of the day. Charmaine was attacked by gangs of leaches and arrived sodden and bloddy at the visitor's centre for hot chocolate and cookies. Hiking's great!
After that, we all got into Adam's car, which was a treat both for us and whomever was to be our bus passengers had we got that instead. You don't smell delightful after 7 days in the bush... We stayed at a pubby/hostel thing at the track exit, ate big steaks, gorged on sweet treats, then went back to Hobart the next day. After arriving there and checking into the hostel, we decided that a week of carrying a heavy pack wasn't enough - we wanted more! Because Char and Adam both still had some holiday time, we elected to go to the Walls of Jerusalem National Park.
So, we finished the OT on a Tuesday, and left Hobart again on Friday for the Walls. The Walls is an awesome spot to hike - it is in high alpine and is isolated. Where you would often run into hordes of people on the OT, there were none in the Walls. It was magnificent, but unfortunately only describeable (sorry about spelling) in pictures. Since the weather seems to know that Christmas time requires snow, we got a thick dusting of it on the first night! It was wonderful to wake up to snow covering the ground! That was Saturday morning, but the sun during the day cleaned up the white stuff. By the evening, it was patchy cloud and cool, but it cleared overnight. The stars were exquisite and the morning was perfectly clear. We hiked out on Sunday, then got back to Hobart late that night. Adam stayed in Launceston for the night, because he is taking the ferry back tot he mainland tonight. Now I'm here writing to you!
Of greater consequence is that fact that I have will likely be offered about $120,000 to do my Ph.D in Australia doing Hard Rock Geology at Monash University. Decisions have to be made sometime soon, but the uni hasn't officially offered anything yet so I'll keep you posted.
Update complete! If actrs is reading this today, I'll be phoning later on...
Thanks for the comments folks! I really love to read what you have to say. I miss you all a lot and send my love for the Holiday Season. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Oh yeah, Charmaine is starting med school in January and is dating a guy named Nick. I know you guys will ask, so there it is ;-)
Thursday was a day trip up north to help Helen move out of her weekday flat - she works 1.5 hours northwest of Sunbury during the week and Thursday was her last day as she's now retired. We were hoping to drop some stuff off at the the 'tip' as they call it (garbage dump), but, surprisingly, the only days the tip isn't open are Wednesdays and Thursdays.
After that, we attempted to make ourselves fatter and stopped at an ice cream shop. Then got back to Sunbury, unloaded a bit, Helen got home and we went out for dinner. But that wasn't all: due to a now thoroughly ingrained passion for construction and destruction - imbued by you-know-who, and coupled with the productive presence of Helen, Bruce and I bashed apart an old stero cabinet. When trying to decide how to use this new storage space, I suggested using it as a linen closet, inspired by some other you-know-whos in my life. It will soon be enjoying its new function once we get around to making a backing for it.
