April 23

I can see the light! The busyness is almost over. Tomorrow is the performance of Seven Deadly Sins and then I have one big paper to research and write this weekend. This weekend is also a long weekend – Sunday is Anzac Day and Australia has adopted Monday as a public holiday. Hopefully I can fit some fun things in over the weekend, or just plain old rest. I’ve been putting in some incredibly long days this week and dragging my violin all over the place. I’ve just returned from the dress rehearsal for the opera and everything went well. The difficult music has gotten much easier, though I only had 2 hours of practice on my own this whole time – hopefully I won’t make any mistakes too loud.

Anzac Day commemorates the triumphant defeat of the Anzac Army at Gallipoli in World War II. Anzac stands for the Australia New Zealand Army Corps. There are going to be memorial services in churches all over the city and a parade through the city on Sunday. I’m going to try to make it down there to see it.

Today in our Indigenous Cultures class we visited the art gallery of NSW and the Australian Museum. The trip opened my eyes to a whole new side of Sydney I’ve been meaning to visit. I’ve been to the Art Gallery before, but all along the street it is on is Hyde Park, which extends over B city blocks with lots of grass, trees, fountains and statues. It’s akin to New York’s Central Park or Chicago’s Millennium Park. Sometime I’m going to have to explore up that side of the city.

Stress Week

This has been by far the most stressful week of the semester. It began after returning from the Outback when on Sunday we had to rush to the Art Gallery of NSW after church to complete an assignment that was due Tuesday. The church we went to was a Uniting church in Double Bay and Brian was filling in preaching so that was cool. I enjoyed his sermon. Double Bay is a really nice area in the eastern suburbs referred to as “Double Bay, Double Pay” though the congregation was only about 10 old ladies. Brian and Sue dropped us off at the art gallery on the way back home.

On Monday I went to school early and got caught up on the Internet and worked hard on one of my graphic design projects. My small ensemble class was cancelled at 4:30 so I went back to the design lab and finished up the project before making it home just in time for tea at 7. On Tuesday we had an Australia class in the morning and then I went to Ashfield for my service placement. Wednesday I spent the whole day in the lab taking time out just for lunch and the Gathering. Thursday I had class in the lab all day, and stayed almost 3 hours later until tea.

Then Friday was a killer also. I was supposed to go to class all day with the ASC and we were going to have a guest speaker teach us to throw boomerangs and play the digeredoo, but I had to go to opera rehearsal at 1pm. I came to class for the first 45 min but the guest was late so I had to leave before he got there to catch a bus to the city. In the city I met the other violinist in my ensemble class and found the Conservatorium of Music where the rehearsal was held. We got lost in the rows and rows of practice rooms and arrived at the room we were supposed to be in 20 minutes late. 1 to 3 was a smaller practice time for the Wesley students plus a few others who agreed to be there. We were handed the score for the first time and could barely play a note of it. Almost the whole rest of the orchestra had had the music for at least a week and we had never seen it before. The first violinist was pretty ticked that we couldn’t play it very well. At 3 we joined the rest of the orchestra – almost all music students – and sat in the back and tried to noodle along. By the end of the rehearsal I was finally starting to get the feel of the piece, but I only have a week to learn it and with all my graphic design pieces coming due I am going to have a very limited time to practice. We have two more rehearsals this week and then the performances Friday and Saturday.

This weekend though things have looked up. Being internet-less and design program-less my nights and weekends are pretty much my own even though if I could I would be doing my work (and I’m so tired I don’t feel like doing much anyway). On Friday night April and I went into the city with Emily, Denise and Laura where we just wandered around and enjoyed the night and got ice cream. Early Saturday morning most of the ASC kids went to Featherdale Wildlife Park. Kimberly had organized the trip but we went together without her or Melanie or Tiffany and it was an optional event. The park was filled with native Australian animals and we could pet kangaroos, koalas and emus. It was a really nice park, not as commercialized as I thought it would be, and there was a lot to see like the Tasmanian devil, dingoes, cockatoos, and the world’s most poisonous snake. We stayed until about 1 and then took the endless trip home (two trains and two buses). Kristin and Abby invited everyone over to their homestay to watch movies for the afternoon and evening so a lot of people went over there. I have a group presentation coming up in two weeks and we had to come up with a thesis to turn in on Tuesday, so our group met at Wesley and did a bit of research. Then we all joined the group at Kristin and Abby’s house and hung out for the night.

Today now is Sunday and I am not doing anything but church tonight if I can help it because early tomorrow it begins all over again. May is supposed to be a big project month and if it gets any worse than this I don’t think I’ll survive. I also have absolutely no idea what my grades are because I’ve received no grades back. But I’m hanging in there and hoping there’s an end to this work. I’m very stressed, but I’m always aware that this is such an amazing opportunity and no matter how much work I am doing, I’m still here in Australia and it’s awesome. And I have some great company around me and they are going through the same things.

Outback, April 10

I've just completed the craziest two weeks of my life. I have done more in the last two weeks than I have probably ever done in two consecutive weeks. But it’s been awesome. The things I’ve seen and done have amazed me and I’ve seen so much more of this amazing country than I thought I would.

So much has happened that it’s overwhelming just thinking about writing it all down. I’ve just returned home from the Outback. We got up this morning and headed out of Bathust at 8:30am. Around 10:30 we stopped in the Blue Mountains at Catoomba to see the Three Sisters. I had read about the Three Sisters before and I didn’t think I would get to see them, but here we were on a morning tea break. The Three Sisters are three large rock formations that stand out the side of a cliff. There are many stories that surround how they came to be there, but they are highly sacred to the Aboriginal people and the most common story is that their father changed his three daughters into rock to protect them from a witch doctor. It was a bit like being at a lookout in the Grand Canyon with a great view over the Blue Mountains.

Last night we finished life stories. I went first and told a bit about my spiritual journey to this point. The rest of the stories of the night turned out to be quite emotional and by the end of the night everyone was crying and the like so it was a good bonding experience. I’m exhausted though now and glad to have the weekend to get some rest. I’m afraid I wasn’t very social the last couple of days since I was so exhausted. However, Sydney is kind of a letdown after all we’ve seen and done. It’s back to the school work and everyday life. But this was the trip of a lifetime and I’ve had so much fun. I can’t believe that so few Australians ever even make it out to the outback. They have no idea what they’re missing – the peace and quiet, the wide-open spaces, the wildlife, and the simplicity of life. We all left wishing we could stay much longer.

Outback, April 9

We’re camped at another motel on our way back to Sydney tonight. We spent the last 2 nights at Mt. Boorithumble as the place is called and the whole experience was AMAZING. We slept and lived in a little out-building with its own kitchen where the Dykes host their large extended family for family reunions. Two brothers named Kevin and Murray own the 200,000 acres or so of land where they raise cattle and sheep. Their sister is a host mom for 4 of our girls and Ian is connected to them as well. They aren’t a tourist joint like Trilby and the ASC was the only big group that came to stay. The property is up for sale now though so Kimberly can’t make plans to stay there since it may sell at anytime and I heard something about there not being enough water to support us either. Wasn’t the case this time.

The afternoon we arrived we had some time to walk out in the bush. After walking around for a bit, you feel like you’ve seen it all. The dirt is covered with biting ants (don’t stand in one place for too long) and thistles. When you walk, millions of locusts fly up in front of you giving you this perpetually grand entrance. They are not very nice when they land on you or your food though. Between them and the flies and the frogs at night it’s a pretty gross experience, but I was surprised at how quickly I got used to it. On our walk Amy, Christina, Kristen and I found a little lamb by itself bleating away and weren’t sure what to do about it so we left it out there hoping it would find its herd.

At night we cooked dinner and ate it around the campfire and continued life stories. Later Ian took a small group of us out roo spotting in the dark. The Dykes have these rustic utes with metal cages on the beds for hauling things around. One of them has a spotlight on top of the cage that can be twisted around to spot things in the dark. We all climbed up in the cage and Ian drove us around the dirt roads in the middle of the night shining a spotlight into the bush. We didn’t see any kangaroos, but we got drenched with water from the puddles on the road and had a pretty amazing ride on the bumpy roads at top speed. A lot of us slept outside that night on a tarp. I opted not to seeing how tired I was and the stars were covered by clouds. I got a good night’s sleep in an almost empty room and enjoyed it very much.

On Thursday morning, Kevin and Murray showed up early in their Toyota utes, loaded us up in four of them (Kimberly drove a closed one with a few people inside that switched on and off with the rest of us) and took us on a drive around the property. Once again, we got drenched and dusty, RED, and beat up a bit from the bumpy roads. Grace, I wonder if that is what Haiti felt like. We say some kangaroos and emus. At the end of the way out there we stopped and spent time on a hill alone reflecting on our application essays that we wrote a year ago about how we would challenge ourselves on this trip and how we hoped to grow. Then we wrote letters to ourselves that we will read at the end of the trip.

On the way back I was in Murray’s truck and we came up behind two kangaroos. Our ute chased one along a fence for a good 800 meters until it decided to try to hop the fence and didn't make it. It bounced off the fence, got on its feet and kept running. Then it tried again and this time it fell over and we must have run over or nearly ran over its tail. It got back up and ran the other way down the fence. We of course were screaming with excitement the whole time and somehow I managed to get some pictures. A couple people got some video footage so watch for it on Facebook (which now that it is Easter I can use!).

At some point during the drive back a tree passed over the top of the cage and scraped my thumb. It was a small cut but it was bleeding pretty bad and just before we got back to the camp we stopped at the original homestead of the land and I asked Kimberly for a band-aide. It turned into a big production – the whole wash and disinfect thing and I washed it out myself. Then Kimberly started putting cream on it, turned away for a second, and I was gone. I fainted in the middle of the outback and was out for a couple of seconds. I didn’t see it coming and I woke up with Kimberly and Melanie hovering over me. I’m not exactly sure what made me faint, but it was hot of course and I hadn’t drunk much water so that must have contributed. Ironically, I was not the first to faint in the outback and the other person who did was also a Spring Arbor student.

Amy and Kristen and I took another bushwalk that afternoon and found the same lamb we found the day before. Someone else had found a lamb that night and had led it back to its herd, so we were hoping it was the same one. Turns out he was still out there by himself bleating away so we decided we better do something. He turned out to be really docile so we picked him up and I carried him back to camp. We took him back to the sheep pen where they had just been gathered up for the lambs to be tagged and neutered the next day and while I was there we saw a lamb be born! It was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen and a bit disturbing, but we happened to be there at just the right time to see it.

For dinner we cooked lamb (I know right?) and sausages, ate s’mores, and shared embarrassing stories around the campfire. I slept out under the stars that night, which were so beautiful and you could see every one. I didn’t stargaze long though because I was so tired again. For the whole time we were there we competed in the “no shower challenge,” trying to get the largest percent of any group to avoid showering the whole time and everyone made it without showering for the three days. Some people were so dirty after the truck ride they had to jump in the creek to clean off.

The next morning we got up for breakfast and cleanup, then went to the sheep shed to watch Kevin and Murray and some neighbor boys tag the lambs’ ears and put rings around their tails and testicles that will make them fall off eventually. Given my lovely fainting episode the day before, I wasn’t exactly in a state to watch for very long. Then we loaded up our belongings, left Mt. Boorithumble and ended up here, in Bathurst at the Gold Mines something Inn. A shower has never felt so good.

Outback, April 7

Things have certainly changed since yesterday. I continued raining on and off yesterday and stormed and poured last night. 30 of the last 50 kilometers to Trilby Station are on dirt roads and the rain made them impassable. So, we stopped at a small copper mining town called Cobar, visited their little museum, and stayed the night at a motel, hoping the rain would stop and we’d get through to Louth the next day. We had a good night in spite of the setback and starting sharing what Kimberly calls “life stories” of everyone in the group.

Well today not much has changed. Liz at Trilby said they got 3 inches of rain and the roads were still impassable. The soil is all sand and clay, so it gets very slick and the rain will take weeks to drain. No one can take a vehicle anywhere out there. So today we had to form a new plan. Ian, who plans the accommodations and all for this trip, called up the place where the ASC used to go in the outback that is connected to one of our homestays. We had a worship and devotion time at the motel while we waited for the reply. The woman at the house had to drive out an hour to find her husband and brother-in-law out tending the sheep. The answer was yes so we packed up to go. We have to make our own food at this place, which we weren’t prepared for, so Kimberly and Melanie bought out the entire Cobar grocery store and we finally headed out to the outback.

The place we’re going now is south instead of north and this place is supposed to be much more rustic than Trilby, so that’ll be cool. Cobar turned out pretty cool too, even though we were all disappointed not to be going anywhere. Some of us put on a game of ultimate frisbee last night and the food was really good at the motel. My busy week is catching up with me though. I am exhausted.

Outback, April 6

We’re on the way to the Outback! Day 2 on Ian’s bus – just left Matilda’s Motel in Dubbo and are scheduled to arrive at Trilby Station in Louth at 4:30 pm. Today is April’s birthday and she’s turning 20.

Yesterday we left school at 1pm and drove out through the Blue Mountains or the Great Dividing Range. Today seeing Dubbo in the light we can see that the soil has become much more red. However, as a motel worker shared with us this morning, we are going to see an outback that no one has seen in this lifetime, even farmers in their 70s. They’ve had a record amount of rain that happens only every 100 or 200 years! The grass is green and there is water in the creeks. The mossies are going to be bad but hopefully it’ll be worth it. According to Ian, rain usually comes up from the south and up over western NSW, but this time it has been coming down from the north over Cairns. The group of ASCers who were up there last week said it rained almost every day.

April 3

We’ve had a lovely day today up at Forster. In the morning after brekky we went down to the beach – technically called Cape Hawke beach or to Brian and Sue, One Mile Beach. It is a beautiful beach with clean white sand and blue and aqua water. The surf was very strong and rolled up the surfers like a carpet. The waves were so strong it wasn’t good surfing weather but it sure was beautiful. We climbed the dune at the end of the beach and had terrific views of the ocean and even saw some dolphins out in the water bobbing around. When we came down we discovered the rock pools a the rocky point under the dune. I collected shells and we found a red sea urchin. I could have stayed all day hunting for shells but we came back to the house around noon, packed up lunch and took it to a picnic area on Wallace Lake. There are three lakes up here, called the Great Lakes (hah), that are just inland and open out into the sea.

After lunch we took a drive to a little handmade wooden toy shop to buy a little wooden doll for a collection Sue has been adding to for nearly 30 years since she started coming up here. Next we went to a coffee shop along Smith’s Lake’s edge. We had coffee and hot chocolate and walked along the little cove. Then we went to where Smith’s Lake meets the ocean by the breakwater and took another walk out onto the breakwater. There were lots of families out there and some surfers on the beach off to the side though the waves were very calm. Finally we went back into Forster and cruised the little boutiques.

For dinner we had fish and chips in Forster, then crossed the bridge to Tuncurry to see a movie in the local theater. We saw The Blind Side, which lived up to my expectations and was a pretty good movie. The weather is definitely cooling up here with a “blowy” wind off the coast and while I was hot on the beach this morning it was chilly the rest of the day when not in the sun. We even had a few minutes of rain after the shops at Forster but that passed over pretty quick. It’s very peaceful up here and this is a good holiday.

Forster, NSW

I’m up at Forster with Brian, Sue and April. We got back very early this morning to Strathfield on the train after our trip to Melbourne. Michael picked us up at the station and we came back and conked out for another couple of hours. Brian and Sue went to their respective Good Friday services while we slept and then we got up, showered and packed for Forster.

The drive up was fantastic. It was a long drive – at least four hours – but tired as I looked out the window the entire way because I didn’t want to miss a thing. We saw some kangaroo roadkill, koala crossings over the road (basically thick telephone wires surrounded by wire cages that the koalas can grab onto) and some beautiful bush and farming country.

We arrived up at Forster around evening and stopped at some beaches for the view. It is beautiful along the coast here – particularly at a beach we got out at called Elizabeth Beach. The area reminds me of a mix of all the beach places I’ve been. Particularly it is similar to Maine being rockbound (though by red rocks not black and gray) plus Florida’s tropical plants and trees. We saw a kookaburra in a tree at Elizabeth and glimpsed some pelicans down at the estuary on the way to dinner at a little Chinese restaurant in town. You know the kookaburra song? It never even occurred to me that it was talking about Australia until now!

The house where we are staying is Sue’s mum’s old house. She is now in nursing care near the Jagos in Sydney and the house is on the market. It is totally empty except for a lounge and chair, a vacuum cleaner and some kitchen supplies. We were “camping” on airbeds in the different rooms. The house is just up the hill from One Mile Beach and there is a beautiful view of it from the front door. It’s so beautiful and peaceful up here and I’m going to sleep so well tonight.

Melbourne

Melbourne is awesome! I haven't had time to process the whole trip yet, so I'm making this post to revise later.