Strange Rocks

Spring break started on Saturday so the majority of the college has gone home or off traveling.  Since I don’t leave for Perth until Wednesday I spent the day watching movies and basically sitting around my room.  I didn’t want to repeat this on Sunday, so I checked out the Parks Victoria website for a natural place to visit.  With the criteria that this place be close to the city and near a bus or train station, I eventually settled on the Organ Pipes National Park.

After a healthy brunch Sunday morning I took a half-hour train ride out of Melbourne Central to Watergardens.  I saw a Safeway from the train station so I headed over for some trail mix and granola bars to eat on my hike.  The supermarket was at the end of a huge shopping mall called “Watergardens Town Centre.”  I’ll leave discussion of that name up to you.  It had to be almost a mile long, and absolutely full of people.  It took well over five minutes to walk the length of it, and the experience was overwhelming and a little disturbing, not to mention disorienting.  I don’t mean to be melodramatic or high and mighty, it’s just that walking through the mall was not at all what I envisioned for my nature walk.  (I checked the directory and it has two Safeways.)

This field didn't look as big on Google Maps.

Almost there.

I finally made it out of the mall and headed towards the Organ Pipes.  It turned out that the walk to the park was way longer than the actual hike.  It took over an hour to get there and I had to walk along railroad tracks, cut across fields, make it over a couple drainage ditches/streams, climb over barbed wire, climb under barbed wire, and cross the highway.  I think I trespassed three separate times, but I eventually made it to the park.

What I found there after the jump...

Weekend at the Beach

This past weekend I went with my frisbee team to Phillip Island for a training weekend.  There are 18 of us—10 guys and 8 girls I think—that make up MUtation, Melbourne University’s Ultimate team.  We’re training for Uni Games, which is coming up in under two weeks.  It's like the Olympics of Australian University sport.  But back to the weekend.

I went down early on Friday with a couple of my teammates.  On the way we picked up and dropped off a few chairs for an uncle who had recently moved.  He gave us a tour of his compound, which he had purchased a few months ago from a manic depressive potter who apparently had to sell after 35 years of residence because she ran out of money after repeatedly ordering custom furniture then getting it redone when she wasn’t satisfied.  I think he said she redid the kitchen five times.  Regardless, the property was gorgeous; it was situated on a hill surrounded by scrub pines and the four structures were all made of a mud/stucco material.  I wish I had taken photos but I had left my camera in the van.  The uncle also said he had got it cheap because last year the forest fires passed within five minutes of the property and buyers were scared.

Also during the hour and a half drive to the island we stopped at the Wildlife Wonderland, but after we found out the Giant Gippsland Earthworm exhibit was no longer running we elected not to enter the park.

I hate to be the grammar police, but...

That evening we checked out the sea lion sanctuary on the island.  There were no sea lions to be found, but there were plenty of sea gulls.  Multiplying as we watched.  The visit was worth it though, because we arrived right as the golden hour started.  The ribbon light was pretty perfect.  Photos after the jump...

From Frisbee to Footy

This weekend I finally got out of Melbourne for the first time.  On Saturday I traveled to the city of Ballarat with a couple members of the uni frisbee team and a few other people to play in a frisbee tournament.  It took about an hour and a half to get there.  Apparently there was gold discovered around Ballarat a while back so there used to be a lot of wealth in the area, but now it’s just like any other small city.  I was all set to play a bunch of frisbee, head to the local bar where the tournament had a small tab, crash on someone’s floor, then play some more games on Sunday.

That is not what happened.  On our way to Ballarat it started to sprinkle.  When we got there it started to rain.  While we warmed up it started to pour.  When we played it started to whatever comes after pour.  Hands down worst conditions I have ever played in.  At one point I think it started to hail.  The entire field turned into a puddle and in some spots the water was ankle-high and I ended up running around in cleats full of mud.  The school where the fields were at had a small wind turbine, and it was going absolutely berserk.  The blades were only a couple feet long, but I’m pretty sure it could have powered the entire neighborhood that day.

At the beginning of a frisbee game there is the equivalent of a coin toss.  I called it and lost, but miraculously the other team elected to receive.  Baffled, Ben and I quickly chose to pull downwind.  Unsurprisingly, we broke the other team on the first point, and no upwind points were scored.  It was just too hard to work against gale-force winds.  With that advantage we naturally ended up winning the game by one point.  I think the final score was 5-4.  I caught two scores, one of which was the final point.  (Yeah, I’ll stick to frisbee.)

That ended up being the only game we played and since it was so early I took a ride back to Melbourne.  The day wasn’t a complete loss, however, as I met Toby, who had an extra ticket to the quarterfinal footy match at the MCG that night.  He ended up having great seats, too; only about ten rows back from the field in the members section.  

Best seats I've had.

The game was a complete blowout but I still had fun and the atmosphere was great.  Since it was a big game there were over 65,000 fans there.  The reason there were so many empty seats in front of us was because most people were back in the covered seats, afraid of the rain starting again.  It held off for the entire match.  The weekend didn’t go as I had planned, but I still had a good time.