Well this was a pretty fun weekend, my first-ever real camping and hiking trip. It was the first of two field trips for my Experiencing the Australian Landscape class, and was basically a warm-up for the big four-day trip to Wilson’s Prom in mid-September. On Friday afternoon we went to the Brambuk Aboriginal Centre/Grampians National Park Centre. The Brambuk building was pretty cool, it didn’t have any straight edges or 90-degree angles in it, it was designed to somewhat resemble a cockatoo, the totem of the nation of Koori people (Aboriginal) that used to live there. We all got another go at practicing to throw a boomerang. I still don’t have that down yet, but then again I haven’t had much practice since I got here, only about five throws all together. At least I can get it to turn around, hehe. We also got to sample several native Australian herbs, berries and meats, including emu, crocodile and kangaroo. Croc was really dry and reminded me a lot of dry white chicken breast, emu was kinda dry too, and roo had a very distinctive flavour to it, kinda gamey like venison. We camped at a site in the shadow of one of the mountains in the Grampians, and I tented with a kid named Jin from South Korea, he was pretty cool. I didn’t bother to rent a camping mat for $3, so after about two minutes I felt the cold ground right through my sleeping bag and the bottom of the tent, oh well. It was not a very restful night either, I woke up I don’t know how many times. Halfway through the night I had to put on more clothes as well, it was getting a bit chilly!
Saturday was a beautiful day, mostly sunny basically all day. We split up into three groups and did the Wonderland Circuit, which was over 9km of rather strenuous hiking through the Wonderland Ranges. We got to see cool places like Stony Creek (which we actually walked alongside and over a few times on the climb up), Cool Chamber (an overhang of rock, which also had a nice trickling cold waterfall, it felt so nice to stick my head in that!), Grand Canyon, Silent Street (both are narrow gorges) & The Pinnacle, which is probably the most famous landmark in the Grampians (along with The Balconies, which we unfortunately didn’t go see). The Pinnacle (pictured) is, to the best of my knowledge, the highest point in the Grampians, and it offers a spectacular overlook of Halls Gap, Lake Bellfield and a plain, more than 1300 feet (400 meters) straight down a sheer cliff face. Even with the railings on the point of rock known as The Pinnacle, I still rediscovered my healthy respect for heights, especially since it was rather windy up there. I was just concerned about dropping my camera. 🙂 As hard as the climb up was, the climb down was certainly more jarring for my knees and ankles. When we got back to Halls Gap (where we started the hike), we all hopped in the buses and rode over to MacKenzie Falls, which was also really cool. The downside was having to walk all the way back up (probably another 100 meters of elevation at least), and that I must’ve also dropped and lost my beanie somewhere along the way. Oh well, it was only $5 at K-Mart, and I can always get another one if I want to. Saturday night after supper back at the campsite we split up into four groups (mostly the same as our hiking groups) and talked about the landscapes we lived in back home, and our impressions/preconceptions of the Aussie landscape (we had to write a short paper on that topic before we left). It was really cool hearing about everyone’s home, as in my group we had three people from the US, one from Spain, two from the UK, one from Israel, three from Sweden, one from Germany and one from The Netherlands. Saturday night I slept better, I only woke up a few times, hehe.
On Sunday we packed up all our tents and headed off to the northern part of the Grampians. There we split into two groups, and my group went hiking up Hollow Mountain, which most of us thought was cooler than The Pinnacle actually. Hollow Mountain was a much steeper climb too, but a bit shorter, probably only a 200-300m elevation change. We spent the entire morning up there, it was pretty cool. The picture is of Carmen, myself & Jin most of the way up Hollow Mountain. After having lunch we moved over to Mount Zero and speed-hiked up that. We had a deadline of being back to the bus by 2pm (even though Andrew (our prof, who we all made fun of all weekend long for his incompetence) didn’t bring his group back till 2:30), meaning we only had an hour-ten to do a hike that was supposed to be 45 minutes each way. But we were bookin’ it up the mountain, we got up there in just 25 minutes! Mount Zero is just a couple kilometers away from Hollow Mountain, so it was cool seeing from Mount Zero where we’d been earlier in the day. It was surprising to see from that distance how far we’d actually hiked. The rain held off until the moment the last group got back at 2:30, that was rather fortunate. But it was a pretty long bus ride back to Melbourne, 5 hours on a cramped 24-person bus with uncomfortable seats full of people very eager to get back to uni to take a shower and put on clean clothes. After cleaning up, I went out to Monash Pizza with Sam, Jake, Jen (who all were on the hiking trip and are from California) and a couple of their friends. It was wonderful getting to eat good hot food that we didn’t have to prepare!
I took over 200 photos this weekend, and I’ll be gradually working through those to get them ready for a photo album on the web. Hopefully I’ll be able to get them done this week, and upload a bunch of photo albums this weekend. Fingers crossed. But the hiking trip this weekend was really awesome. I loved it, even though I got a bit sore and more than ready to feel clean again. 🙂 My one complaint was that we were having to go so fast that I usually wound up needing to pay attention to my footing, instead of being able to pay attention to the landscape and wonderful views around us. If we could’ve taken it just a little bit slower that would’ve been nice.
Today I didn’t do too much other than go to class. I did have to make a run down to Cole’s at Burwood to get some groceries, as I didn’t stock up on quickly-perishable things like lunch meat, bread or milk before the camping trip. Then most of the evening has been spent trying to firm up my holiday travel plans with Richard for spring break up at the Whitsunday Islands and Cairns. I’m hoping to buy my plane tickets tomorrow.