03.31.09
Return to the Upper Left Coast
Since I am no longer in Australia I thought that I would move to a more appropriately titled blog. When I return to Australia either to visit or to live I will be returning to Adventures in Oz. Until then please visit me at:
Love!
02.27.09
Australian Institutions
As I’ve been living in Australia I have noticed ( and participated in) a few Australian traditions or institutions.
The first: Everyone is either an immigrant or their family was an immigrant. The first thing they want to know is where you are from and not just the country you were born in but what is your families nationality…right down to the village/town name if they can get. Responding, “German” on gets me quizzed on which part, where from, etc. I am beginning to feel resigned when ever Pete introduces me and tosses out “Her family is German!”. Le sigh. On the upside, Melbourne is amazingly multicultural with downtown rush hour sounding like some exotic world market, people babbling along in all sorts of languages, sometimes even groups of people all talking away amongst each other in different languages, no one really knowing what the other is saying but all smiling a bit madly and having a great time. This is also common in the multitude of ethnic restaurants….which is every restaurant I think.
Second: Speaking of restaurants. My first morning in Australia and I had purchased no food as yet. I decided to walk up to the main street for some brekky. I order the basic eggs, toast and sausage. It was really eggs *ON* toast with sausage. How am I supposed to eat this? Why is my toast under my eggs and where is my jam? I carefully moved the eggs so I could pickup and eat my toast like a civilized upper left coaster, with your hand. The next weekend again I ordered breakfast, this time in a posh little cafe downtown, and again eggs on my toast, wtf! I glanced around to see how other people were handling this outrage and they were all calmly eating egg on toast with a knife and fork. Eat with a knife…..hmmmmm. It does in fact work, quite well really. The next weekend was 4×4 training and my breakfast experience got even better. It was while staying at Marapana that Judy (the hostess) introduced me to the “Big Breakfast” (actual name, you can order it anywhere). It went something like this
“How would you like your eggs: scrambled, fried or poached?” “fried, thank you”
“And toast? Wholemeal, white or multigrain?” “Multigrain please” as I turned to walk away, thinking that was it.
“Sausage, bacon or both?” Having experienced some strange snags (sausages) already, “bacon is good”
“Tomatoes and mushrooms?” “ummmm, tomato sounds lovely, no mushrooms please”
Oh My God! How was I going to eat all of this? I didn’t make it through that first big brekky but since I have fallen in love with it, especially the mushrooms. I adore a big pile of sliced grilled mushies. Our last trip to Beechworth resulted in a lovely brekky cooked by Peter.
Australian Big Breakfast
Third: Australian Rules Football. Footy actually has very little in common with either American football or soccer aside from sharing the name football. It’s more a bit like rugby mixed with a bit of soccer and a dash of hockey violence (or maybe that’s the rugby). Really you have to watch it. The pace is really fast, there aren’t a lot of timeouts or standing around. The ball moves incredibly quickly and the guys are amazingly fit and coordinated. Where as American sports athletes tend toward the portly these guys are all magnificent specimens of elites athletes….and just generally pretty hot with glistening muscles and tiny shorts. 
I went to my first game last night and I think I have finally found a sport (aside from hockey) that I can love and watch! Check back for a photo.
Random Stuff:
As promised here is the lovely bruise I got from my first crash wearing silly cycling shoes. Keep in mind this was taken more than a week after the accident:
Results of First Fall with Clipless Pedals
And two more pictures. Peter and I visited Beechworth alt weekend and drove through the fire path (it was out and safe of course). So many houses gone, it was really hard on both of us. I ddin’t take many pictures because I didn’t feel it was appropriate to be snapping photos as if I was a tourist (which I was) so I grabbed a couple as we were driving
Stanley Forest after Black Saturday
Pine plantation after Black Saturday
02.19.09
Cycling Adventures
As many of you may know I have taken up cycling since arriving in Australia. Everyone in my office cycles, Garreth and his wife have 8 bikes between them, Dave has more bikes and bike parts than I can count and Peter has 3 just for himself ( one of which he has loaned to me). I invested in a new helmet and an awesome cycling shirt right away (for safety and style) but decided that I would just wear my jogging shorts and running shoes. What I discovered is that:
- Maybe cycling shorts have those funny pads for a reason. The seat is hard, it chafes and my ass hurts.
- It’s really hard to keep my feet on the pedals when I am on rough dirt trails
Giving these two discoveries I decided that I needed both a pair of cycling shorts and a pair of clip in cycling shoes. Fortunately they have “shy shorts” here which are nice loose shorts covering the tight spandex padded shorts so I got those. Then for the shoes, as I was trying them on Anthony and Peter gleefully discussed how much I was going to fall over and that I should wear gloves and don’t forget to loosen the clips on the pedals and so on and so forth until I began to have second thoughts. “Peter”, I said, ” can we go someplace nice and easy?” “Sure, he says. We’ll go to Lysterfield!” Well now I know better. Lysterfield is lovely, nice lake, beautiful plantation of eucalypts, hills, lots of trails, tree trunks, switch backs. In other words a mountain bikers paradise…. unless you were a complete duffer AND using clipless pedals for the first time in which case it was a beautiful hell. To be fair, in the beginning it wasn’t bad, well within my skills when not wearing my new deadly shoes. Sadly, Immediately I had a terrible and spectacular accident. I was executing a brilliant jump over a tree trunk on a downhill………actually I had gone around a corner, quite slowly mind you, and then….I fell over, landing on my hit and shoulder, one foot still clipped in. I laid in pain, waiting for Peter to return and help me. I continued the ride, doing some trunk jumping, some technical switch backs, and some painful hills. Finally though I just couldn’t continue, going uphill required pulling back on the handle bars and that just killed my shoulder.
I went in for Xrays the next days and was relieved to discover that I didn’t break anything, though surprisingly I had previously cracked my collarbone and was unaware of it. It must have been when my shoulder got slammed by a steel storm door in Wyoming, who knew? The doctor feared then that I had torn my rotor cuff and referred my for ultrasound. However, it’s healing so quickly I have decided not to have it done unless a couple weeks from now it still hurts. In the mean time my hip has turned the most spectacular colours.
I went for another ride, just here in town, and my final results are:
- Cycling shorts with the funny pads are wonderful. My poor sore ass feeling better and my shafed thighs are soothed. I did get a pair of padded 3/4 length tights that dont have the “shy” part…haven’t had the courage to wear them yet.
- I *LOVE* my clip in shoes, more power and more control and they are comfy and cool. I wont ride without them and the while they feel a little scary still they are brilliant.
02.13.09
The sun is red ….
ash drifts down from the sky and an entire country cries. The fires are slowly dying down but not fast enough.
02.09.09
Bushfire
The temperature had reached 46 degrees and Peter and I were congratulating ourselves on the decision to stay where there was air conditioning instead of spending the weekend in Beechworth. As we walked into Leo’s (a grocery store) we noticed that a thick column of smoke, greasy blue along the edges and yellow brown in the center, rose over the hills of Melbourne. Bushfire. Wow, it’s so close, where is it? We speculated as we gathered ingredients for dinner deciding to check the news later. I didn’t think it would be that bad. I am from the Pacific Northwest, we have raging forest fires and everyone goes about their day but here it is terrifyingly different. The forests are so dry from the drought years, eucalyptus shed bark and branches at an amazing rate and it goes up in flames like it has been soaked in petrol.
It was worse than bad, it looked like the end of the world, a war zone, the inferno found in hell. Sadly this weekend has seen the worst bushfires in the history of European settlement in Victoria. At the time of writing this the towns of Maryville, Narbathong and Kinglake has been wiped out, burnt to the ground with no building left standing. Entire towns no longer exist and sadly many of the residents as well. The death toll has risen to 108 people with more than 5000 people not only homeless but with absolutely nothing but the clothing they had on. No wallet, no id, no precious things and sometimes no family, no pets. It’s not even over, fires are still raging and the bodies of people that didn’t make it out of their houses, that died trying to escape in their cars are going to be found for weeks. Terribly, it is thought that some of the fires were set by arsonists and some fires have been restarted by arsonists after the firemen have put them out.
I cannot begin to describe how tragic and moving this incident is. The news from a Whittlesea emergency center showed a man break down in tears while talking to Kevin Rudd, the prime minister. Mr. Rudd won my eternal respect for wrapping his arms around the man and letting him cry on his shoulder. How many heads of state would do that, how many would be there, without security surrounding them, comforting people in this most basic of ways.
I know that most (if not all) of the people who read this are poor, either students or suffering from the economy, but should anyone want to help please check the following website:
For updates on the fires:
02.04.09
Chinese New Year
Nothing Super interesting has been happening here for the last couple of weeks. We had a week of 40+ degrees with a couple of days cresting 45 degrees. Even a sun/heat lover like me was wilting. It was just too hot to do anything. It didn’t even cool down enough to sleep at night. This week is much nicer being in the low to mid 30’s.
I started work in Jane Elith’s lab on Thursday and Friday last week and will continue until I depart from home. It is a nice lab almost exclusive populated with women (which feels strange) but I feel more comfortable at ARI. I will be learning to apply Jane’s boosted regression tree method and possibly also multivariate adaptive regression splines to the flora data that I have been working with. She has had some good feedback for improving the data set by doing some basic cleaning and collapsing.
This week also ushered in the year of the ox. Happy Chinese New Year! Peter and I went down to the river front downtown to taken in the Crown Chinese Hawkers Bazaar, which was a little street fair put on by the only casino in the state. We enjoyed fresh coconut juice and then had the coconut cracked open so we could eat the cream inside. This is the first time I had done that and I was surprised at how fatty and oily the juice was, but still tasty.
Fresh Coconut
Lanterns
You may notice in the picture of the laterns that all the leaves are crispy and brown looking, that is how hot it has been. Walking down the street it looks a bit like fall. All of the leaves cooked off of the trees and are piled along the curb. It was so hot the possums were falling out of the trees and animals were burning their feet trying to walk on the pavement.
Strangely enough as the time to go home gets closer I find myself getting more homesick. I really miss friends and family and pets. However, I am already getting homesick for Melbourne! I love this city and I love this country and I am counting the days until I can return as a migrant instead of a tourist. The funny thing is that I always wanted to live in Europe because of the history and the age. Autralia, is young and raw and has none of that feeling but I love it regardless.
Better go hang another lode of laundry now. You can dry 3 or 4 loads a day here even when it’s just moderately warm because of the dry wind. It’s awesome but I am starting to see some sun fade on my more frequently hung items 
love you all!
p.s. The bite healed up! so it wasn’t the white-tail spider I was afraid it was. (go read about it if you’re curious, creeps me out too much)
01.30.09
Bitten!
Well it finally happened. I got bit by one of Australia’s creepy crawlies. The thing is I dont know which one. I haven’t fallen over in agony and my flesh isn’t necrotising so that rules out the nastier ones but I do have a painful, swollen, itchy red blotch on the back of my hip (right above where my low rise yoga pants hit), and a swollen, tender lymphnode and am generally feeling a little wimpy. Maybe I’ll post a pick of it
UPDATE: Here’s the pict! (lens cap used for size referrence)
Mystery Bite
01.27.09
Grampians National Park
Grampion National Park
Lookout
In 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Sydney Bay with the first 11 ships of convicts to plant the Union Jack and begin the occupation of Australia by Great Britain. This day has since been celebrated as Australia Day, filled with barbecues, lamingtons, beer, citizenship ceremonies and cricket. Since it is also a long weekend Pete took me camping at Grampians National Park.
It is remarkably close to Melbourne, only about a 2.5 hour drive. Of course we are in Victoria so we cannot drive a reasonable speed, the freeways here max out at 110 k/h = 68 m/h and you can only go 3k/h over before you lose a point off your license AND they have speed cameras all over the place! Sorry, had to get that off my chest.
We got in and setup camp late Friday evening but that meant we had a full day Saturday to explore and play. We drove every 4×4 track that caught our interest. Visited lookouts, scrambled up granite piles, hiked to view waterfalls (some of which actually had water) went swimming and even got in a cycle at the end of the weekend. To top it all off I saw wild Emu with her littles! It was a lovely weekend and I regretted having to leave.
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- Lookout
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- Grampion National Park
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- Grampian National Park
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- Rock Scrambling
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- Pete & I after a walk
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- King of the Hill
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- MacKenzie Waterfall
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- Getting Ready to Cycle
01.22.09
Reshearing
I got a few comments that my hair really didn’t look all that different. What you couldn’t see was the back which was much shorter than I had ever had it. I tried to leave the longer bits up front but it was terrible, just not working for me. So I went back in and kindly asked Renee if she could fix it. My hair is now officially short. Really short.
Crappy Phone Camera Pict
In the yard
Short Hair
01.20.09
Deliciously Warm reaches Searing Hot
Melbourne has been enjoying a week or so of wonderfully warm days in the mid to upper 20s and even a day of 34 but today it was so hot that breathing through your mouth turned your tongue into parched leather in two inhales. Your lips wrinkle and crack and your skin, even though you know you are sweating, is bone dry. The only place that the sweat is not instantly evaporated from is the shaded valley between your breasts and the dip at the top of your ass. Today, according to The Age weather page, it got to 41 degrees Celsius, 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
The temp itself isn’t enough to cause the instant dehydration of living tissue, it’s the North wind coming off of the vast desert that forms the heart of Australia. The northerlies have only just started to blow here and even the sounds they make is dry. Rustling of shed reptile skin, grains of sand rubbing across flat tables of stone and over the tops of dunes, dry leaves tumbling across the ground, all of these can be heard in the sound of the north wind through a eucalypt tree. And the smell….warm dust with a hint of Vic’s vapo rub.
I love every second of it.
