The Hinterlands

On Sunday, I went to the Gold Coast Hinterlands with QUEST. The Hinterlands is a rainforest region that is near the Gold Coast, but a bit further inland. The trip was really cool. It only took us about 1.5 hours to get there, the sun was out all day, and the waterfalls were particularly nice since it has been raining here recently. In the same trip, we drove 20 minutes to The Natural Bridge. The bridge itself wasn't too spectacular, but the river and rainforest around it were so awesome. Everything is green, green, green. You don't always see the wildlife around you, but you can definitely hear it. Anyways, here are some pictures from that trip.

Status update

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't posted a blog recently, things have been pretty busy down here, but in a good way. Everyday there is something different going on and there are new people to meet. I've spent a lot of time learning about different events, both on and off campus, and trying to take part in as many as I can.

The picture that I have posted here is the front of my house from the street. There isn't much to see, I know, but it's actually a decent house on the inside. My address is 18 Fifth Ave, St. Lucia, QLD 4067, Australia in case anyone wants to Google Map it or something. If you do that, you can also see what the other houses in the neighborhood look like. The big fence in the front is there to keep people out of the pool just on the other side. Seems odd since the pool never gets cleaned and nobody wants to swim in it anyways.

Last week Tuesday, my roommate Charles invited me to go bowling with his friends and it turned out to be a great decision. Virtually everyone there (9 people) was also French and absolutely terrible at bowling. They had done the same thing last week and knew what types of scores to expect, so they asked me how good I was. I hadn't bowled in 2 years, so I didn't think that I would be so good. Well, the first game I bowled a 111, the next highest was around 90, and the average was probably 60. Already, the French were heckling me and telling me that I'm a terrible liar, etc. In the second game, I bowled a 169 almost entirely by accident. Meanwhile, I watched gutterball after gutterball. I would have felt bad for laughing, but everyone was enjoying themselves. That game, my Charles bowled a 38. In the end, all the French people just assumed that all Americans are great bowlers and I made a few more friends.

Now that I've finished my third week of classes, I'm beginning to form a routine of sorts. I go running whenever I get a chance and there is still light out, which is suprisingly rare. It gets dark around 6 pm here, so I've only gone about six times so far. I also try to go a different route each time to see more of the neighborhoods, so it actually serves two functions. One thing I noticed on all of my runs is that it smells like food everywhere. Bacon, chicken, BBQ sauce, cucumber, pasta are some that I can identify. It's strange, yet soothing at the same time.

My roommates are all very nice and we get along quite well. I have had similar experiences with everyone in the house so it's easy for me to have conversations with them, with the exception of Leandro the Indonesian guy. We talk about variety of things; from TV shows, to US colleges, to evolution, to medicine, to engineering. Mostly, though, we swap stories about our"lessor" Alice and the animals that she has running around. Occasionally I will see them on campus, which a nice relief from the sea of unfamiliar faces that I'm accustomed to.

Even though things are busy now, they will continue to get busier. The projects and homework assignments are starting to kick in and so are some of the plans that I had made. This Saturday, I'll take part in the 4's volleyball tournament put on the UQ Beach Volleyball club. Then on Sunday, I signed up to go to a lunch/rugby game with QUEST. The weekend after next is the beginning of our Spring Break. I'll be spending the entire week in Cairns and partaking in a 3-day/2-night scuba liveaboard. I haven't planned for the rest of the days, but I have a feeling it will be filled with sightseeing/hiking, swimming, and possibly whitewater rafting!

Australia Zoo!

This past Saturday, my other WI friends and I went to the Australia Zoo with the QUEST (Queensland University Exchange Student) Society. Actually, I almost didn't go. I had found out about the trip on Wednesday, but didn't realize that you had to buy a ticket ahead of time until Thursday. On Friday, I got some information about QUEST from the UQ Union and gave the treasurer a call. And, well, they were sold out. But then I received an e-mail later that night from some one else saying that they actually did have room and that I should just show up on Saturday morning. So I did end up going in the end.

The zoo is about 1.5 hours straight north of Brisbane (or so I'm told, I was asleep about 15 minutes after we left). Now, I had heard that the zoo was massive and that it was jam-packed with so many amazing animals that it would be impossible to see the whole thing in a single day, even if you were that from 9a-5p. That definitely wasn't the case, although I will say that it was fairly large and the animals were really amazing. When we got inside, we broke up into smaller groups, thinking that we would be able to cover more ground. It was only a few short minutes later, that the low battery warning showed up on my camera. Bummer. But, I got some good pictures in before it died. And then when it did, I was standing right next to one of the executives, so I ended up meeting some new people as a result.

Definitely, the highlights of day were feeding kangaroos, feeding elephants, seeing red pandas, petting koalas, watching the main show at the Crocoseum, and seeing the tiger show. Overall, it was a complete zoo experience, except this zoo has mostly animals that are native to Australia, plus some other Southeast Asian animals. No penguins, polar bears, monkeys, giraffes, or lions. The hyena exhibit was soon to come. It wasn't just the animal selection that made this zoo experience different, however; the way in which the animals were exhibited was different as well. The two kangaroo pens were large areas, sparsely populated by trees, in which you walked through. The kangaroos came up to you or hopped away as they pleased. Feeding them was wild as well. They immediately recognize you as a potential food source and make their way over to you. The signs in the hut said to put the food low to the ground so it was easy for them to eat. I think they wrote that there so people don't get scratched when the kangaroos try to pull your hand when it wasn't low enough for them. Either way, they diligently eat the food and then perk up when they hear some one coming. Many times you will see their ears independently swivel towards nearby footsteps and their heads would remain perfectly still. Then when they walk around, they use their tail as a "fifth leg". Well, all I have to say is that it was a neat experience.

The main show in the Crocoseum was a one-of-a-king experience as well. The handlers started off with a bit of humor and then began bringing out the animals, from small to large. A majority of the animals were birds and they just kept squaking and flying circles low overhead after they were introduced. The only types I remember were the macaws and the only native Australian crane. But there were about 10 or so species total, all with different shapes and colors. Then they walked around with different species of snakes (all of them extremely venomous, of course). After that, they brought out the elephants and showed some diving birds. Predictably, they finished up with a crocodile, but it did not disappoint. The crocodile's tail is much large than I imagined it to be and is the source of much of its killing power. I would guess it's about half of its body mass. It helps launch itself out out of the water and swim really fast when it needs to. But on land, the tables are turned. It can barely walk at all with the stumpy legs that it has. Still, crocodiles haven't really changed in about 200 million years (an amazing fact, considering that dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago), which goes to show how specialized they are at water's edge feeding.

The show also had a very strong message of environment conservation. So strong that they even had a warning to the parents before the show. I though it was a bit odd at the time, but after watching the show, I understood why. After each animal, they explained how it, or its habitat, was being destroyed and how we can take steps to prevent that from happening. And then they would throw in a quote from Steve Irwin. It was another thing that I thought sounded funny at the time, but after hearing about Steve Irwin over and over again, as if he had taken the day off, I realized that Australia may have an unhealthy obsession with the Irwin family. I guess the bronze cast of their family with a crocodile and a dog should have been a tip-off, but I thought that it was nothing more than a commemoration (albeit an odd one). The handlers in the show would relay opinions and thoughts of Steve as part of the show. Turns out that he coined the term "Crikey" and they don't want you to forget it. Its obvious that he was a very positively influential person and now that I've seen some of the things that he has done for the wild animals, I'm considering watching the Crocodile Hunter Diaries.

At the end of the day, I really felt as if I had stepped millions of years into the past. Even though the crocodile is actually millions of years old, everything felt so foreign to me. The emus, kookaburras, macaws, cassowaries, and kangaroos all seem fairytale-ish. It was a good experience and I would encourage everyone to visit there if they come to Australia.

Second week of classes

March 11

Nothing major happened since the last time I posted except that the rain has stopped and the sun is out. The combination of heavy rain followed by sun has made everything exceptionally green. I've been trying to get out and take pictures of the campus and St. Lucia area so that I'll be able to capture my neighborhood at its finest.

Last time I left to go to the UQ Beach Volleyball meeting which turned out to be just playing volleyball for about three hours. And it was a lot more fun than I was expecting. Turns out that this level of volleyball requires you to be tall and you automatically have an advantage. So I've been doing pretty well and meeting people in the process. About 60 people were there last Thursday and there have been between 30-50 people at the two meetings since. We meet every Tuesday and Thursday nights for two hours, but usually some of us stick around for a third hour. It's crazy to think to that these types of college clubs exist and are active year-round. UW beach volleyball? Sorry, not happening. But as one might expect, very few participants are not exchange students. One of the executives said that around 10% of any semesters participants are still there for the next semester. So far, I've met people from Australia, Barbados, Zambia, California, Indiana, New Hampshire, Germany, and Florida.

We had heard about this place downtown that was having a Free Bucket of Wings promotion tonight, so we decided to check it out. The wings were great and the South Bank side of the downtown area is much less crowded and somehow harder to navigate than the main downtown portion on the north side. The most interesting part of the night, however, was taking the CityCat to get there. Travelling the river at night is really awesome. All the car and foot bridges are lit up, plus all the lights from downtown buildings make it very photogenic. I will try to bring my camera along the next time I take the ferry at night.

A Slow Start

This first week of school wasn’t quite as action packed as I was expecting. I knew that most of my class meetings were weighted towards Thursday and Friday, but I didn’t realize what it would mean for all discussions and labs to be cancelled for the first week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were all reduced to a single lecture and today, Thursday, has been nothing short of nodding-off in class mixed with sitting on park benches. It seems all fine and dandy for now, but almost all of my classes have very highly weighted final exams and final projects with only one or two graded assignments in-between. I’m afraid that things will go very slowly at the beginning and come crashing down at the end. But it’s a different learning style and I’m interested to see how things pan out.

So far my favorite class is Popular Music from Elvis to Madonna. Today we talked about 8 famous blues musicians and the influence that they had on most of the big rock music from the 60’s to the 90’s. Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Big Mama Thornton, and Willie Dixon were the headliners. So many people played with, covered, or wrote tributes to the blues heavyweights. There were clips of the Rolling Stones playing with Muddy Waters in an old Chicago bar basement and then U2 at some stadium playing with BB King. Then he put on a clip of Kurt Cobain covering Where Did You Sleep Last Night by Leadbelly at an MTV Unplugged thing in 1990. The clips were from all over the place. My favorite part, though, was that Leadbelly went to jail for murder in 1925, went back to jail for attempted murder in 1934, and then went back again in 1939 for assault. You may be wondering how the Texas prisons could let a convicted man escape, especially if he’s the type of guy that’s going to get caught again. And I agree, you make an interesting point. Well, Leadbelly supposedly wrote a song which was so moving and “bluesy”, that the guards let him walk. And it worked. Twice.

The weather here has been very wet. Wetter than most Australians can remember. I was told that huge thunderstorms hit with a week or more time gap between them, but recently it has been almost non-stop rain which fluctuates between drizzles and downpours. Actually, aside from today and the first 3 days I was here, it has been raining almost constantly for 2 or 3 weeks. Many towns in Western Australia and in southern Queensland set new 24-hour rainfall records over the weekend. A Brisbane meteorologist said, “Most of western Queensland has now received around 500mm of rain since December, which has caused flooding over every river basin in the state’s southwest.” I don’t really care so much about the records, but it made me realize that I’ve never experienced such extended rainfall. In the Midwest, it rains hard for overnight but then it stops by mid-day. Here, it stops for about 2 hours at night and then pick up again for the following few days. Even though it seems like normal sub-tropical weather, just about every Aussie will tell you that they’ve never experienced anything like the past month before.

Things are also starting to settle down on the home front. The final room was filled by a French garcon named Charles, who is also spending his last semester of college at UQ. He’s an IT engineer and a personable fellow, so I think we will get along nicely. Once Charles moved in, we crammed into Alice’s tiny car to go shopping at Aldi’s for food. I didn’t realize that there were Aldi’s in Australia, but the fact that they exist and that Alice is driving us to the store is helping me save money on food. I think my best purchase of the night was Breakfast Biscuits. They’re basically thin corn flakes layered together and cut into rectangles that are basically the size of two Nature Valley granola bars. So you can break them up in milk to make cereal or just eat them dry on your way to work/school. More news on the food front to come.

Now I'm off to UQ Beach Volleyball club.