Photos from Rubyvale

Look at these photos from the bottom up. I mean, look at them any way you want...but the chronological order is from bottom to top.


Our Sapphires (courtesy of travis)




The "town"


Sorting through the rubble looking for Sapphires


Our friend we found on the wall


Learning how to cut sapphires


Yes, my father will undoubtedly put this on the family calendar next December


And not so hard


The crew working hard


The Inside


Peter's Mine


The back of our campsite (for Rachel)

The Crew w/ the rainbows

Rainbow Lorikeets at the campsite

Rubyvale

Rubyvale…what is there to say about Rubyvale? What a fucking experience. It is a tiny little mining town population….maaaaaaaaaaaaabye 40. We drove in and set up camp at the little rv campground. Some people chose to put up tents some people decided to sleep under the stars. We jumped in the pool which was probably about 38 degrees, but it felt good as it was about 95 degrees out. We met with Peter, a sapphire miner who came to rocky from New Zealand in the 70’s when he was 21 and never left.
The next day we split into two groups, one that mined in the morning and one that would mine the afternoon. I went in the morning group. After we got to the mine, we split in half again and half of us went down in the mine to jackhammer and fill wheelbarrows to take up top, and half sorted through the dirt and rocks already collected panning for sapphires. We then switched. We came back, had lunch, and went for a walk around the “town” which was essentially a number of shacks or campers hastily scattered over a number of mining sites.
We came back and jumped in the pool again. Zoe was determined to start a whirlpool and so about 8-10 of us got in and started jogging around the rim of the pool. It actually worked pretty damn well. We got a fairly strong current going and when we stopped I did two laps around the pool without moving a muscle.
The afternoon group came back and we went over to Pete’s shop where he sorted out all the sapphires for us. He put them all in plastic bags in a big Tupperware and we pulled them out without looking. Mine were pretty cool but not that good. Some people got really really nice ones. Then they took the most expensive/pretty looking ore and did a raffle for it. Zoe got it. Damn.
Then the night really began. We went across the street to the bar/restaurant in town, we got ourselves some delicious greasy pub grub, and we started drinking. Like miners. There were a lot of old bearded men in the bar, and there was a one-man-band who played a lot of classic rock/countryish type songs. We kept buying Jen drinks. And I think I had two beers before dinner, 3 after, and then a number of jack and cokes after that (lost count after 2) needless to say when midnight rolled around I was pretty much trashed. The funny…or disturbing…(we’ll go with disturbingly funny) thing was that I was one of the most sober people at the bar (keep in mind some people did leave early…can’t imagine why). We bought Jen some more drinks. She confessed after I gave her a Jack and Coke that “this is the most drunk I’ve ever been in my life,” which is funny, because I have been able to witness/have been responsible for the 3 out of the 4 times that has happened on this trip (the first two times were back-to-back excursions to the AB hotel way back in Sydney).
Anyways people disappeared, shenanigans occurred OH MY FUCKING GOD I FORGOT ABOUT PEDRO! Peter (our Peter, Peter C, our professor) got Spenny to convince the one-man-bad to allow some harmonica accompaniment with the next song. Peter had apparently been trying for a while but wasn’t quite as intimidating as a 6’8’’ 20-something year old Amurican.
I saw Peter approach the mic. Saw him whip out the harmonica, and I thought: “Oh, no. This will not end good.” Peter had been keeping up with us drink for drink, and while he might be a veteran, he is certainly not 20 years old.
He then proceeded to blow my mind. I have never heard harmonica that good. Probably because I have never been that drunk listening to harmonica…but all the same. It was AMAZING. It was a proud moment for us, and it was probably the peak of the night. It all went downhill from there.
Well, not as downhill as it could have been knowing our group. The “drunk bus” headed out at around 12:00. I should explain. The bar hired a local kid to drive his van around on Friday nights and take everyone home from the bar. Hence, “the drunk bus”
Jen wanted to spend some more time with this local young chauffeur, and so she decided to take a seat next to him on the drunk bus. Then she met the witch.
The witch was, essentially, Caitlin Smythe in 40 years. She was a 60 year old lady in…..robes….that kicked Spencer’s ass in pool, and when he asked her what she wanted to drink (they had bet the outcome of the game on a drink) she just told him to let them know that she wanted a drink and they would know what to do. Spencer pointed her out and the bar whipped up a drink for him. He asked them what was in it, but they wouldn’t tell him. He noticed that at least three different hard alcohols went into it. When he asked her what it was, she told him it was a witch’s potion.
She threatened to put some curses on people later in the night. Before selling some weed to the locals. In the bar.
Anyways. She ran out of the bar to get a spot on the drunk bus and shooed Jen out of the front seat because that “is my damn seat missy!” She made a wild gesture at the crowd outside, and shouted “I’ll see you all next Friday!” or something to that extent. Some raised their glasses to her, others merely shook their heads.
As Jack said: “When you have a permanent spot on the drunk bus, you know you’ve got a drinking problem.”
ANNNNNYWAYS. I left around 12:30 because we were going to go try and find this bonfire that some guy had invited us to. I realized that half of our group had disappeared with him some time ago, and everyone I was with didn’t have a fucking clue where they were supposed to go. I half contemplated wandering the pitch-dark roads in search of the party for maybe a minute. Then we heard a splash and saw two figures emerging from the pool, and hop the fence over towards us.
It turned out that they were to local kids who had managed to find someone (no naming any names but SOMEONE from our group) to buy them alcohol. They were 14 and 17. They wanted to hang out with us and go to the party. I decided it was time for me to go to bed.
I took a pee, (killing a few cane toads for Kelsey C along the way) and went to bed. I had slept for a bit when I was suddenly awakened by the sounds of Ke$ha BLASTING ALL AROUND ME. “Did the jackasses bring speakers to the campsite? Are they actually partying around all these old people in RV’s who are trying to sleep?”
I emerge from my tent ready to yell at my peers, only to find that the campsite was completely deserted. There was no one out but me. I squinted into the surrounding areas to try and find the glint of a bonfire. I couldn’t see it. It sounded like a pretty good party though. I thought, “hmmmm maybe I should try and find this…..” then I remembered “ITS 3:15 IN THE FUCKING MORNING” I took another pee and went back to bed, and fell to sleep about an hour later. I was dreaming peacefully in my intoxicated sleep before I awoke to the sounds of NPR’s Australian equivalent thundering around me:
OBAMA REFUSED TO MEET WITH RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS YESTERDAY OVER THE RECENT COMPLAINTS OF
“oh fuck.” Went my hungover brain, “The U.S. declared nuclear war on Russia, and someone is letting us know”
The radio was quickly silenced, however, to be replaced by a shouting Australian. “Eh!? How do you like it when was wake you up! Tryin to sleep are ya? We spent all of last night awake because of you so I thought we’d return the favor!”
Oh. Whew. No nuclear war. Just an angry Australian. Much less formidable.
I thought about going to talk with him, but I decided to let him fume in his self-righteous anger as it was probably more conducive to some level of forgiveness. Pointing out the flaws in his argument would probably not help our case when one is old, grouchy, and deprived of sleep.
I did hear the mutterings of conversation after the outburst though, possibly Aukeem had gone to talk to him? (it is something that Aukeem would do). As I fell back asleep I hoped Aukeem or whoever it was would point out these details (and some extra that I add now based on additional information):
1.) Apologize for the noise, it was inconsiderate and made it impossible for anyone in the area to sleep, however:
2.) Point out that half of our group was in bed by midnight. Some didn’t drink, others drank too much and had to pass out early.
3.) The party was a half-mile down the road. Where we are from, if you walk a half mile down the road, the noise is insulated by buildings, trees, natural structures, and music won’t carry well enough to seem like a party is in your own backyard when it so far away.
4.) No one realized how loud the music was until they reached the campsite after returning from the party.
5.) The music and noise from the bar continued until 2 am. We weren’t at the bar then. If your campsite it literally across from a pub on a Friday night, you can’t really complain too much about noise.
6.) Most of our group, apart from a few stragglers, came home before 3:00. Which means the party, THROWN BY LOCAL PEOPLE AND NOT US, raged on a while after we were no longer participants.
7.) You just successfully woke everyone else up in the campsite not from LC and probably just got to sleep a few hours ago. Thanks for ruining their day.
8.) Apparently, Lewis and Clark has been coming to Rubyvale for over 10 years. The townsfolk know almost one year in advanced the date at which our group will arrive. The town is actually quite dependent on our patronage as part of their local economy. If you know that the LC group is coming then that is probably not the best date to set up your camper in their campsite. Apparently problems like this have occurred in the past.
9.) It is easy to blame us as we come into town, as foreigners, and leave in a few days. But the reality is, the party was thrown by locals, probably the relatives of those in the campsite, and though some LC kids did participate, they were not aware of the consequences until they returned home.

I don’t know what was said but we packed up camp quick to avoid the any angry glances (none came our way) and when our bus pulled out, angry Australian man, waved us off with a big smile.

And here is what I learned about the rest of the night after I had passed out:

The crew I was with had taken the little miner kids under their wing and let them tag along as they looked for the bon fire. They thought they found it when they saw a flickering light in one of the fields nearby, but apparently it was a fire that someone had started and then abandoned. It was a good thing they found that fire when they did because it had started to spread a ways about its boundaries and most likely would have developed into a bush fire if our crew hadn’t stomped it out.

They found the real bonfire a few minutes later when they music started up, and met up with the rest of the LC kids. Apparently there was a good deal of dancing that went on sur la dance floor, mostly by Kelsey C. People kept asking her how much she had had to drink, or asked what she was on, because it looked fun. Little did they know that Kelsey was probably one of the more sober people at the bonfire and “just wanted to dance”

Apparently when the bonfire was getting started, a couple of rednecks decided that instead of looking for firewood for the fire, they would just use a chainsaw (keep in mind they were very much drunk) to cut down a tree nearby. A living tree. That is, a tree which was full of water and very green. When it—for some reason—didn’t light very well, they dumped a half a can of gasoline on the wood and that started the party right up.

Also, a few of the guys showed off their donut skills in their 4x4’s all over the field next to the bonfire. I guess drunk driving isn’t as big a deal when there is nothing to run into but a stray tree every 100 yards or so.

All in all it made for a pretty crazy experience, and not one that I will forget in a hurry. The funny part is, this is actually the censored version of the story. All of the dangerous things are included, but none of that juicy personal information gossip that so many back home want to hear. Looks like you’re gonna have to drag it out of the people themselves when they get back.

3/25/10

Last day of Noosa (3/22/10) was pretty great. We got up, went to get some iced coffee (iced coffee here is two shots of espresso, ice, and a scoop of ice cream) and then Anna, Emily, Kelsey and I hiked up to the nude beach. It was the most liberating feeling I have experienced since dropping chemistry and becoming an English major. It felt much better though. We set up camp and I stripped in .05 seconds and sprinted to the ocean. It was cold but it felt great. The girls soon followed. We laughed and talked and I made sure to stare down any creepy old men that came by (and there were certainly a few). We walked back on a sandy path barefoot, had a late lunch and then we went to go see Men Who Stare at Goats. Hilarious. I've never had any sort of inclination to do acid before, but after watching an incredibly entertaining scene where they spike a military base's eggs with LSD, the whole thing doesn't seem quite so serious.

We went out for a couple of drinks afterward and Kelsey and I headed home and fell asleep at 9:30. Anna and Caitlin came home smashed and woke me up. Like..literally poked me awake. I was needless to say, fucking furious. I left for a few hours to go to the beach, and I didn't talk with them until I had to the next morning. Their version of events was slightly different then mine, but seeing as how I was not drunk off my ass, I ended up winning the argument.

We headed back to Brizzy the next day (3/23/10), hung out with my host family one more time. Then headed to Rocky (Rockhampton) the next day (3/24/10).

In Rocky we met Robby, our delightful host at the hostel where we were all staying. She showed us some phenomenal "Northern Hospitality". I loved the town (about the size of Marysville in Washington, with even more hicks), I spoke with a local bloke @ this restaurant called Nando's. He had learned about beer pong from his American mate. He loved it. We talked with him for a long time. He was cool. He worked in the meat processing plant in town (as well as Nando's) and he met all sorts of international people there. We talked a lot about different cultures and such before his boss came over and made him actually work. Lame.

Passed out early again and now we are headed to Rubyvale!

p.s.
trying to pee standing up on a bus is probably one of the most difficult feats I have ever attempted. I was impressed with my abilities.

(found scribbled on a loose piece of paper from my journal. Think is it about this bus ride):

Driving into a setting sun which takes up the entire windshield. A deep, fiery, orange ball 20 square feet in size, is where we are headed. Rolling bushland on all sides, tall grasses, sparse trees sprinkled like dandelions across the wide open fields.

Listening to pop-country on Kelsey's ipod and missing home. Loving where I am now.

A dusty orange sphere falling behind distant hills, brushing the high clouds with a soft pink blush. It ignites the low hanging clouds and I watch the embers smolder.

3/21/10

Last night we were planning to go out but after a day @ the beach/in the sun we were too pooped out to go anywhere so we bought a bottle of rum, a bottle of tequila, and 2 1.5 liters of passion/mango/orange/pear juice, watched finding nemo, and drank.

Our German hostel suitmates asked if were were Irish, we said no but asked why she would ask.

"Well," said the tall blond with a sly smile, "it is just...you are drinkeeeng so mauch. We just assumed..."

Moment of pride for us. Emily came into town while we were watching the movie and after we went over to the apartment peeps to ask if she could sleep there, we went to the beach again and the girls drunkenly chased the waves in and out by the light of a restaurant a block behind us.

Now, I hadn't had THAT much tequila...but I was feeling the need to relieve myself, bladder-wise. so I took a little jaunt over to the ant-bushes and (making sure I was facing sideways so as to not pee into the strong winds and risk self-splatter) peed freely into the night air. There is nothing quite like a cold sea breeze sweeping by your bait and tackle as you relieve yourself. What with the 2 liters of beverages I had to exhume coupled with the gale force winds coming at me, I felt as if I may just float away with the breeze.

Then I stopped peeing and felt how fucking cold it was. zipped that shit up in a heartbeat and ran back to the group to tell them to go in because it was cold out.

Since the request for Emily to sleep on the couch was met with....begrudging indifference, she decided to sleep w/ us in our concrete box.

Anna woke me up at 7:15 by putting her face about...1/2 inch away from mine, and staring at me. Since I didn't wake up she blew on my face and I woke up to Anna's eyeballs consuming my entire vision.

I wasn't pleased.

I had planned to go on a run with Kelsey early in the morning anyway, and we had gone to bed around 11:30 because we were still tired from last week, AND most of us were still on the 9pm-5:30am sleep schedule...but Anna was not my friend this morning and left after about 30 min later after some repeated tiffs.

Apparently she made a friend in the National Park and hasn't been back since 8 am. (it is now 7:30pm).

The run with Kelsey was good. She kicked my butt by about 5 min (on a 30 min run) we did abs later and it felt great to finally be tired. Haven't felt that way in 2.5 months. Caitlin, Kelsey, Emily and I went for a hike in the National Park after that. It was really pretty and the coastline path we walked took us through a nude beach.

It was a lot of old man dangle. It's funny how similar nude beaches resemble gym locker rooms. A bunch of 60-90 year old (looking) men wandering around buck naked without any apparent goal or purpose, looking like they own the place.

Emily wants to go back tomorrow. We'll see if the sun comes out or if it rains again. I guess the naked men will probably be there either way. Might have some stories to tell tomorrow.

3/20/10

We packed up camp today. It was a lot more work then unpacking it. But the bus Driver came about 1.5 hours early so we actually headed out a little before we had to. We unpacked again @ the storage facility, and then the bus dropped most of us off at the Roma street station. Kelsey, Anna, Caitlin, and myself took a 6 hour Greyhound to Noosa (Peter and Lilia were on the same bus) and we finally made it to our hostel in time for dinner (12 hours of more or less straight traveling).

We share a kitchen/living room with 4 other people. We live in a concrete box but the town is amazing so it's more than bearable. The other 6 kids here (from the trip) cut a deal with the resort to fit 6 people in a 4 person "apartment" for a discounted rate. The rate we four in the concrete box are paying. And the apartment is fucking sweet. Like...Giant leather couch and full kitchen, 1.5 bath, two double beds in separate rooms upstairs with their own balconies...sweet.

Stupid Kat and negotiating skills. We got to see their apartment because their train broke down so they had to take a public bus through the mountains and didn't know if they were gonna get there in time to check in, so we did it for them, before the office closed @ 8.

Sat on the beach last night and drank "wine" (is boxed wine "wine" if it tastes like over sweetened grape juice?) and watched the giant waves crash in. There is a class 4 hurricane that is supposed to hit the coast up North so we may see some rain and showers in the next week.

Had the best brekky of my life this morning: bagel with salmon and cream cheese, eggs with pesto, tomato, and some other greens all sandwiched together. Monstrous, but delicious. The cafe was super cute too.

off to the town/beach


The apartment crew - robin and + Zoe

Back in the U.S. of A.

Hey all, I got back to Portland a week ago, and have been staying at my girlfriend's house sleeping, eating, and taking care of a number of key issues that need to be taken care of. I have a job (most likely) and a house for the summer now, and I'm working on writing up all of the stuff from the last third of the trip. I have about half of it written in longhand and about half in bullet-point form. I'm heading back to Seattle on Sunday, where I will type it all up and get my pictures posted. They are pretty damn good.

sorry I didn't have time for pictures. I'll try and get them up whenever I can! See y'all in a 22 days!

-Chris

Farting

The camp food was delicious and filling. It was also camp food. Every time I farted anywhere withing 10 meters of Tali she would ask who farted within 30 seconds then get mad at people for farting. I didn't own up to it because they were--as I am half-selke--fucking terrible. Impressive and worth congratulations around my male friends...worth excommunication from the dining area amoung our group.

The camp food caught up with everyone else eventually though.

People kept complaining about people farting (50 percent of the time it was me) until they realized everyone (or at least all the boys) were letting them rip whenever and wherever they wanted. At the dinner table, in the tents, while hiking.

Now it was a competition. We got so much closer and (as a group of about 15) had a hour long discussion about bodily functions in the tent after dinner one night. It is these type of things that really bring a group together.

New idea for pre-trip retreats: Everyone camps in one giant tent after Burrito night.


Ben, Kat, and Caitlin responding to either a Joke by Spencer or my flatulence.

3/17/10 continued:

OH MY GOD. Today was so fucking amazing. After dinner, which was plentiful and delicious, (curry chicken w/ rice. better than the indian take-out AND dine-in we had in sydney. It was made on a camp stove. Ulla our cook is amazing) We went on a hunt for bugs again, this time for glow-worms. We took the same path we've been using for every field study, the wishing tree track. (named fot the giant strangler fig you can walk though because the tree it strangled has decomposed completely).

We stopped to look at a huntsman spider (Claire was not a fan) and saw some GIANT snails along the way. Went through the huge wishing tree (over 30 m tall and hollow almost all the way up) and down a path that went to the creek running @ the bottom of the hillside. There was a suspension bridge along with way, and since I was lagging behind I turned off my headlamp and did it in the pitch-black (and I mean PITCH-BLACK). Could cover/ no stars and in the middle of a dense, sub-tropical rainforest). It was awesome. I bounced up and down with each step and it was so fun. I told Claire to do the same when she came after me, but i turned on my light when she was 1/2 of the way across because she had started to hyperventilate.

Then I got up to a vine that KT and Annie were swinging on (u-shaped but about 6-8 cm thick) so I did THAT in the pitch-dark and that was fucking freaky/AMAZING. I was swinging back and fourth until Claire came down (about 2 min) and I waited until she was fairly close before I let out a loud cackle of "MWAH HAHAHAHAHAHA" and scared the shit out of her.

When we got down to the bottom of the creek we could see little green lights everywhere along the rocky protrusions from the track above. It was like a night sky full of green constellations. Our entire trip into the woods was a Nocturnal Disneyland.

We learned about how the worms live in mucus hammocks that they make, and catch prey in the mucus w/ their lights. The extra mucus looked like hanging icicles. So beautiful. Travis got some great shots of them but I can't put his photos up because i can't download anything on this computer.

Everyone headed back but Emily, Kelsey, Anna, myself, Rob, and Susan (our entomologist). We made out way back very slowly, stopping at all the bio-luminescing things, giant snails (baseball-sized), and critters. When Emily and I got to the suspension bridge we turned off out lights and we could see the stars up above us, and the green bio-luminescing constellations below.

THEN on our way back Susan saw a reflection off of her headlamp on a tree and pointed it out to Kelsey and myself. We thought she was insane. She kept describing where it was (on a tree 25 m away) we couldn't see anything on the tree. We walked off the trail to the tree and after a couple of minutes we spotted a gecko in the side of the tree. Impossible to see apart from the "eye reflection" (which I still couldn't see) and a very faint white line on its underbelly.

Rob caught up and got the spotlight on it and we moved around to see it from the front, but we lost it in its camouflage. we eventually saw it, though we still couldn't see the tail (it was a leaf-tailed gecko). Rob scampered up 8 m on the tree holing on to nothing but vines and grabbed the gecko. An amazing feat as he is aged-looking (65+?) and there were no branched low enough to grab on to.

We passed it around and IT WAS SO AMAZING. It loved me the most. It stayed still in everyone else's hands, but he licked me twice and then scaled my chest up to my neck.

What a night. When we got back i finally broke down and showered, (as my foot-funk was reaching biohazard levels) and I put on my old spice deodorant because it is cool enough to use it here without it melting.


Inside the wishing tree


Jack

Jack

Travis

Jack

3/17/10

........we woke up at 5:30 to catch birds. Sorry. We LEFT at 5:30 to catch birds. we woke up earlier. It's wet and cold. We saw one. It was pretty cool. Worth getting up for. I got to hold it and its heart was going so fast that it felt like it was vibrating in my palm

-Passed out from 10-12:30

-Lunch was delicious

-Entomologist was SO AMAZING
*we set traps for bugs
*we netted bugs
*we whacked trees and collected bugs with those spider-sheet things
*we ripped apart logs and picked out the nastiest looking ones with tweezers

-20 different spiders
-Ants
-Isopods
-Gumball-sized rolly-polly bugs
-Snails

-SO FUN SO COOL. Could do that for hours. Now I kind of get my girlfriend's ability to sit in a lab for hours on end. If it was with bugs maybe I could do that too.

-Speaking of my girlfriend learned about the giant woodmoth. Gets as big as a Sparrow (maybe 300-500 grams?) thought she would love that one.

3/16/10

-I am NOT a fan of waking up at 6 am to go look at things we trapped. Great its a possum. Great its 20 fucking rats. Oh, some of them aren't rats. They are "carnivorous marsupials". IT'S GOT A FUCKING RAT TAIL AND IT SMELLS AND IT SCAMPERS AROUND. ITS A FUCKING RAT. and its 6 am I don't want to watch this old bearded scientist man-handle a bunch of small furry things before I have breakfast. Oh, I also am not a fan of the 30 min hike to the start of the traps, and the 20 min it took to find all of them and the HOUR we spent looking at them, while Rob told us the same things over and over again.

-I hate scientists. They have so many rules. Especially Rob. He is a crotchety old man that likes things done EXACTLY how he has done them (since the dawn of time) and god forbid you put the traps in any other order besides elliot, (big fucking one I forget the name of), elliot. If you go elliot, elliot, (big fucking one) then you are essentially ruining the ENTIRE experiment. Because.... well I never really found out why despite my attempts to ask.

-Also, when tracking possums at night, I recorded the pacers steps when they we saw the possum. Not when we were directly under where It had been. Big mistake. everyone knows that the distance of 5 kelsey paces could ruin the entire fucking trip especially since WE WEREN'T EVEN TURNING IN THE DATA SHEET THAT I HAD TO WRITE ALL THE FUCKING INFORMATION IN. I COULD HAVE DRAWN A GIANT PENIS AND ROB WOULDN'T HAVE KNOWN.

-don't worry, only 3 more weeks of field study with Rob in charge.

-BIO-LUMINESCING FUNGI IS FUCKING AMAZING I WANT IT IN MY GARDEN AND IT WAS LIKE AVATAR BUT BETTER BECAUSE IT WAS REAL LIFE.


Courtesy of Travis


This was a pretty sight walking back to camp for breakfast (courtesy of Jack)

3/15/10

-I hate being awake before 9 am. I hate being awake with other people around at 9 am. My only consolation is that Kelsey, who I am sharing a tent with, is even more lethargic in the morning than me

-Strangler figs are SO COOL.

-One of the reasons that humans are so prosperous is that we have very little body hair and we can sweat. Therefore we can track prey for a long time and when it finally has to stop to pant in order to cool themselves down, we just spear them.

-There were bush turkeys screaming, (yes SCREAMing) in the middle of the night last night. I wanted to get up to go pee, but it was too dark to see and I didn't want to risk a pecker to my pecker. I held it til morning. Also, rats tried to get into our tent, I could hear them scurrying under our rain fly and trying to get the velcro up, but I was too sleepy to care.

-Leeches are everywhere.

Lamington Plateau

Ok. I've got 1 hr until my bus leaves and just enough money to pay for the internet. I'm gonna bullet point my week at Lamington, w/ a few extended descriptions, then post up as many pictures as I can. I've got much more to say on this past week in Noosa, but you'll have to wait until I get back on the 15th to hear it all because I don't have enough time.

3/4/10

-There is no point in stargazing in the Northern Hemisphere. Looking at the other side of the milky way sparkling like a million grains of sand blown across the cloudless night sky is enough to make oneself lost in space and time.

-PADEMELONS! OMG OMG OMG WITH BABIES!

-That was one of the VERY few times the sky was cloudless. It was fucking wet and cold al goddamn week. I left portland because it was 50 degrees and raining. I don't want any more of it now that I am here

-Bower birds= amazing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bower_bird

(Photos courtesy of Travis/Jack/myself)





Bower bird nest @ our campsite. This things are amazing. Rob said that there was a study done where a group of scientists broke up a bunch of blue glass bottles, and scratched the surface to identify them. Then then tracked them and found that each piece of glass could move up to 3 different nests per day. That means that the male bower birds (during mating season) are constantly stealing each other's "blue treasures"

Ramblin Man

Alright, well, I am about to store my computer. I won't have any internet access for the next month while I travel around all over the bush. I will try and write as much as I can down in my journal, but we have non-stop activities scheduled from 7 in the morning to 7 at night for a good portion of the locations that we will be in, so I will most likely be exhausted and tired and not wanting to write. I will take as many pictures as I can.

T-minus 30 days and counting til my arrival back in the states. Thanks for those of you who have kept up with this so far. I think I had a lot of unintended readers, so I hope y'all weren't offended by anything I said. If you were, tough shit. There is no such thing as political correctness in Australia.

-Chris

Last week

*whew* This past week was crazy.

Exams were a piece of piss. Short short short essays on topics that required no studying at all (I know this because the only "studying" I did was to wiki the Australian parlaimentary system, which it turns out I didn't need to know). However, the next two days were brutal. Tuesday Lauren and I worked all day making our presentation power point show, and finalizing our paper (/working in a giant quote that we found THAT DAY which made the Howard government's policies in the Intervention look stupider then they already are, which is saying something). Basically the quote gave a bunch of recommendations for solving the issues of violence and abuse in the NT, which the government completely ignored. The report stated specifically that "there can be no one-size-fits-all approach to solving these issues" What did the Howard government do? Make a giant discriminatory one-size-fits-all program.

Anyways. We worked on those two things for about 10 hours on tuesday. Wednesday was the first day of presentations, and we sat through 5.5 hours of presentations with one 20 minute break from 12:00-5:30. I nearly died. Most of the presentations were really interesting, but my body is not meant to sit still for that long. Lauren and I went to the library after getting dinner at a local restaurant, and then we worked on finalizing our presentation (and getting our works cited in the proper format...bleh) and we practiced once before I told her that I couldn't take it any more. She went home to practice, I went home to go to bed. I was not nervous at all. I was ready to be done.

Well...I never feel nervous for any sort of public speaking thing. I mean, I guess it's not conscious. I went to the bathroom 4 times in the three hours between when I got up and when I had to present. I guess my body was telling me something. We were the second presentation, and all throughout the first presentation I felt like I was going to be sick/faint/pee myself. Which is weird, because we've got a really nice group of people who all want everyone to do great. But they ask so many goddamn questions! And I had never given a 20 minute long presentation before, especially about a topic that was so broad and had so many factors influencing it.

Right before we got up to talk Lauren ran to the bathroom to take a pee. I would understand, but she practiced like...20 times the previous night, I just sort of made up how I was going to phrase things on the spot.

It was a decent presentation. I kept myself from jumping around and fiddling with things and spoke loud and clearly. I only got hung up once, and I dug myself out of it before Lauren had to jump in. It felt great to be done. I also liked flopping our 13 page monstrosity onto Peter's desk. I told him that Lauren had put me as the first author, but she really should have had that spot. He laughed and said "You are very generous Chris, you would never make it in academia."

We went over to the storage area where we are going to store electronics and unwanted stuff til the end of the trip, then I walked past this clothing shop with a really good-looking button up that I had been eyeing for days, and I decided to use some of my $650 travel stipend on it. Totally worth it. Then I got a haircut from a nice young lady who laughed at all my jokes and generally thought I was hilarious, which is weird, because no one tips in Australia so she must have just genuinely thought I was humorous. win.

There were supposed to be big plans for a giant party on thursday night, but everyone was too exhausted, so I ended up going over to Kaitlin and Anna's and we drank Cider, watched LOTR and dished out massages.

Friday was a different matter. We went to a rugby league game, got really into it(read: intoxicated) and then nearly everyone on the trip minus Kelsey C, Maren, Kaitlin, and myself went to a hotel room to celebrate Shandarra's 21st birthday. I would not be surprised if there are 20 American's in Brisbane police headquaters today.

The rest of my troupe headed out with Haley and Drew (Kelsey and Marens 26 year old host parents, for the past two weeks. Kelsey and Maren's original homestay had a family emergency, so Kelsey and Maren moved in with Haley and Drew. Haley is the daughter of Helen, who is Anna and Kaitlin's host mom).

We went to a 4 story bar with a live band and 5 or 6 different bars and a ton of different rooms.

We had a good time.

This morning I made the odyssey back home. I am having a family BBQ for the last night, and then I am going to run my computer and some extra clothes and presents down to storage.

If I had one photo to some up the past week it would be this one:




It was taken at the party Claire thew for her half-birthday last friday. This is our attitude now that exams, papers, and presentations are done.

This one isn't bad either:

Exaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaams

So we have round one of our final exams tomorrow. We are taking two written tests (i.e. in class essays), for two of our International studies courses. The paper/presentation counts for the final of the cultural studies, and we have one more exam at the very end of the program on ALLLLLLL of the science from day one until then. (not really fair because most of that stuff is the stuff that I pay attention to). Anyways. I read the wikipedia article on the Australian parliamentary system, and called it good, as far as studying goes. I am really sick now (especially after a wild party on friday night). I slept 10 hours last night, napped for three today, and I am exhausted now that it is past 9 pm. Additionally I am quite the snot factory. Hopefully I will recover a bit for tomorrow, otherwise I will probably fill up the trash can with tissues by the end of my first exam.

It took two months. But I'm finally homesick. I want to be back where beer is 15 dollars a case and you can get a decent burger for under 20 dollars, and people are fat and lazy and I can drive wherever I want whenever I want and I can lift weights and play footie and tennis and just generally do something besides sit on my ass.

Sit on my ass on my morning bus ride. Sit on my ass for 4 hours in class. Listen to how the world is fucked. Sit on my ass in the library for another 2-3 hours using the internet. Sit on my ass on the bus ride home. Go home and sit on my ass for another few hours to write my paper. Go to bed with a sore tailbone.

It's also rained for about 5 days straight. You have to wear flip-flops, not because its warm, but because you're shoes with soak within 45 seconds when you step outside. There are puddles that are a foot deep on the city streets.

And I think I have a sinus infection. I can't tell. I've never had one before. But I got sick in November and I haven't really ever cleared up fullly since then. I've gone fore a couple weeks without being sniffly, but it always comes back. And I have tons of sinus pressure that randomly stuffs up a nostril when its least convincing. My back molars are in pain frequently, but I got them checked out before I left and the dentist said that everything looked perfect.

I just want to dry off.

Spiders, Alarms, and Paper Completion

Yesterday was a good day. After two pretty good lectures, one on women’s history of Australia, and one on the history of environmental impacts from European settlers (both delivered by the same history professor from UQ) I begrudgingly went to the library to keep writing my paper. Instead, Kelsey C and I looked up places to stay for our Spring break in a couple weeks, and settled on a place on the Gold Coast called Noosa. We’re going to stay @ a hostel that is 26 bucks a night (for a 5 person villa w/ tv refrigerator and kitchen, that is a two minute walk to the beach. Omg. Win.) It’s about 3 hours north of Brizzy, and a 40 dollar round trip (we’re taking G.E.D.’s free busride to C. Gorge from Brisbane the day after we get back from Noosa).

After we finished scoping that out and decided that we would find 3 other people in the near future, I decided that I would get on skype for the first time in a month (apart from a little convo to the parents to tell them I was alive this past weekend), and chatted with my girlfriend for 3 hours. It was amazing. It made me happy. (So happy in part because she made me realize that the paper that has been consuming my life and stressing me out for the past two weeks was halfway done over a week before it was due, which is for all intents and purposes, a first in my academic career). Also, I love her.
I took the bus home and distracted my host brothers from their homework by telling stories and roughhousing for an hour or two (taking a half hour break to watch the Simpsons in-between) before eating a delicious pasta creation of Donna’s. (It was chicken and sundried tomato with bacon and sweet chilli sauce. I ate about 3 pints of it for lunch today).

We ate a delicious chocolate cake and rice pudding for Tom’s birthday (A fact which I learned about 40 minutes before dinner. He told me it was his birthday after I got home and I didn’t believe him. Partly because of the context. I was giving him a wet willie and he told me that I had to be nice to him because it was his birthday.

“Bullshit” I said.

“No really, it is”

“Yeah yeah, I’ve heard that one”

Then Sam confirmed Tom’s story. Their birthday’s are five days apart. I wonder when Donna and Matthew’s anniversary is? Sometime in the end of May or early June is my guess. Anyways. Tom and I then gave Sam wet willie’s. One person on each ear. That’s what you get for sticking up for your older brother I guess. (I introduced them to the concept of wet Willie’s. They love/hate it)

So we ate cake and then Tom and I talked about girls while we were supposed to be doing homework and Sam put a fake spider on my desk because I told him a story about how I don’t like spiders. Real funny, kid. That son of a bitch. I feel I should mention the story now:

Three days ago I went to go pee in the middle of the night, and as I went to go to the toilet I saw this flash of brown go across the glass of the shower door. I took a closer look and I saw a couple of legs sticking out of the metal framework near the wall. Then the legs started to move upward. I don’t like spiders but I had to see more than just the legs. So I blew on the framework. In about 1/8 of a second, the spider shot out from the framework, around the hinge of the glass door, and stopped halfway between the metal framework and the edge of the door on the opposite side of the glass.

Fuck that is a fast spider. I went pee and went back to bed. The next morning I went in for my shower and scanned the metal framework on the inside. I thought I saw the legs sticking out at the bottom on the inside of the glass so I turned the water on (while standing outside the shower) and tried to point it at the corner of the framework. The shower head didn’t reach that far so I cupped water in my hands and tossed it into the corner. Nothing happened. So I stepped into the shower and bent down to look @ the corner. It was a screw that was sticking out. Not legs. Whew, I said to myself. I turned around to take my shower
AND THE FUCKING SPIDER WAS ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE GLASS IN FRONT OF ME. It’s a good thing I was naked in the shower because may have been need for a carpet cleanup crew otherwise.

Just to give you a mental picture (mostly for my girl Erika Harris on this one, seeing has how I don’t have a photo) the diameter of this spider’s legs are only slightly larger than a 50 cent piece (minimal by Australian standards) but the thing can move probably about 10 inches per second. Squashing the goddamn thing would be near impossible. Anyways. I showered while looking at the bloody arachnid the entire time (it made it real easy to not go over the 4 min limit that the Aussie government suggests to conserve water) and for some reason didn’t really feel the need to do my pushups and situps and yoga that I normally do to wake myself up in the morning. In fact, I was wide awake on the bus and even talked with Katie and Zoe on the bus to school (normally we nod and smile at each other and cease verbal communication until the free coffee @ the G.E.D. classroom is obtained).

SO ANYWAYS, after Donna made Tom go to bed because he wasn’t doing any of his homework, I sat up for about 3 hours and wrote two sections of my paper. It was super easy because I had already read everything, and it was all in language that anyone can understand, so if you have to block quote something, you block quote it…….and then put a sentence after it to recap what was said, and maybe another to say why it was said…….and then YOUR DONE. It is so weird. Normally I have to spend pages deciphering the poetic implications of the language or alternative meanings, or debate about why and where things are mentioned in the literature. And I have to argue a point.

I just have to say shit here. I say it and I’m done. I state like its fact (cause it is I guess) and then that’s it.

I submitted my intro to Peter and he told me to be less biased in it. Meaning that I shouldn’t have an opinion during the opening. You just give background and say what you will discuss. It takes two seconds. And my brain doesn’t hurt at all. I’ve written seven pages and I’ve essentially just been regurgitating what other people say I haven’t had to really think for myself at all. Crazy.

Today, Lauren convinced me that she wanted to write the last section before our conclusion, and I conceded because she had an amazingly well constructed outline of it, and even if her grammar or sentence structure is complete crap, (which is isn’t) it will maybe take 5 minutes to edit. Then I just have to write a page conclusion and WE. ARE. DONE. A full seven days before it is due. Crazy.

The other funny story from today is that I managed to set my family’s home alarm system off. I got in the door, and supposedly have 1.5 minutes to put in the code, so I go to my room to put down my backpack and umbrella (it has been pouring down rain consistently for the past 60 hours). That was a mistake. The thing started beeping angrily upstairs so I went up to put in the code and it got even angrier after I came up the stairs. I went to punch in the code and all hell broke loose.
I’ve never been on a nuclear submarine, but I’m pretty sure that the nuke warning on one of those is much more subtle than this fucking device. My ears were bleeding, so I tried to call Donna on her mobile to ask what to do, but the power had been out since this morning (unbeknownst to me) to I had to parade around the neighborhood at 1 in the afternoon to try and find someone’s phone I could use. By the time I got a neighbor’s cell phone the company had called Donna and she figured that I had screwed up and told them that she was coming to check it out and they didn’t need to send anyone. I made the mistake of hitting the “off” button before punching in the code. You punch in the code, and then hit off, which is different from setting it, to set it, you hit set, then punch in the code.

Honestly I’d rather fight an axe murderer in hand to hand combat than figure out that fucking thing @ 3 in the morning.

When Donna got home she told me the reason it freaked out on me was that I went in to my room, instead of going straight upstairs which makes it freak out automatically. Great. Anyways. Made for a good story to tell people over drinks sometime.

Tonight I am going out to dinner and then to a showing of Avenue Q downtown. I get to enjoy it because I can’t write anything til Lauren gets her part of the paper done. PARRRRRTY!
Live is so good sometimes.

P.S.
I described the spider to Tom and Sam and they told me it was probably a juvenile of one of these guys:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRV4d9LCawU

This video, might I add, was sent to me by Ben Bryant the week we got here. That fucker.

Miss you all and I am looking forward to being home!
-Chris

More pictures from Stradbroke (Props to Shndara)

So here are more photos from straddie. Taken from Shndara's facebook page. See how tasty those crab claws look? Yeah. I wanted to catch that sucker and eat it, but I was advised against it.

Avatar

Just found out why my internet at home has been limping along like a half dead fish in a desert this past week. Turns out that Tom, the eldest of my two host brothers, has been patiently pirating Avatar for his iphone over the past week. That explains a lot. It doesn't explain the Library's incredibly slow internet today, but it makes me feel better that 12 mbps isn't going to be a standard speed for the internet when I am trying to read all the pdf's for my research paper, which, might I add, is due in exactly 14 days. crap. better get to that.

Notes from last week

Here is what I did for the two days of lectures on politics. Needless to say my participation grade wasn't particularly high, but I did manage to sit in a room for 6 hours (over two days) without going insane from boredom.

Internet is impossible here

Ok so instead of the photos showing up as photos in my blog, all I see are a number of letters and number all scrambled together, so I don't know where one begins and another ends, making it impossible to put captions on the photos.

As explanation, the first photo of the previous set is actually mine. It was a little too scandalous to post on facebook, so I needed to share it with an audience somewhere.

Claire's photo of Jack and Spencer's intimate moment on the sea cliffs was an amazing shot as the whole thing lasted approximately 2.5 seconds before they both realized the level of commitment they were bringing to the "gay chicken" table.

The Koala was in a suburban park on the way home, they bore me to death because they don't do anything but everyone else gets very excited when we see one.

The little guppy fish is from our trip to the mangrove forest/tidal pools out on the beach at sunset (which was during low tide). They were pretty easy to catch and really cool looking. Kind of like a throwback to the evolutionary step between when things moved out of the water on to land.

We also got to see a GIANT mud crab when Emily nearly stepped on it while we were wandering around the exposed seaweed forest. You could see her footprint about an inch in front of it (it had its claws up and was staring our group down). Rob--our leader for the weekend--kicked at it so it would snap its claws together at us. He said that they have the power to break a big toe by pinching their claws. He then stuck his foot behind and kicked it over so we could see its sex (it was a male). Overall it was a great weekend out, but again, lectures are getting really boring. (most of the stuff is about BIO which I am well versed in, or politics which I don't care about.

Straddie

Hey all, sorry its been so long since I posted, I've had a very full week of lectures/tours around the city/host brothers and this past weekend we took a trip out to Stradbroke Island off the coast of Brisbane.

The internet is crawling, so I'm not sure how many photos I'll be able to upload but check facebook for new ones, as it is much quicker to load them up there. (If you don't have a facebook, you may be able to politely request that a certain rachel rogers email you some photos. She doesn't seem that busy these days).
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That was a draft that took me three days to get up here. Internet has been failing around my house and life has been hectic. Things have started to fall into a pretty regular pattern here. Classes are long and we have a lot of field trips to different places (some cool, some not) which take up a good deal of our time. I am exhausted when I get home every day, but I am loving my family and we are bonding quite well. Sam and I are halfway through the star wars trilogy and I am tutoring him in the ways of the force. The past week of lectures had a good deal of Australian Politics, which I could honestly give a flying fuck about. I have many pages of notes which I will upload after this post (You will note they are quite detailed).

Here are photos taken by my peers of our trip to stradbroke island. Photography credit goes to Caire, Kaitlin, and Travis.