Yesterday we woke up at the crack of dawn in Warrnambool to hit the road once more. We had our usual bakery breakfast which have quickly led each member of the team to discern their feelings about meat pies. A treasured favorite of Australians, these meat-and-veggie-filled pastries have either won the hearts of or thoroughly disgusted each person. I don't mind them personally, but some mornings I am really thankful I smuggled a supply of clif bars into the country. We had one stop before our long drive, a neat collapsed volcano site called Tower Hill. We entered through a steeply declining dirt road that passed through an enormous collection of kangaroos. That's right: I FINALLY SAW KANGAROOS. They're the Australian form of deer, they're so common and skiddish. We actually had to wait a time for them to clear the road, they were so content just hopping along in front of us. Then we got out and hiked up this very steep hill to find a spectacular view of the volcano turned crater turned lake, surrounding mountains and fog, plains, the sea, it was a lot. That was our only stop for that day, the rest was driving our two vans and a sedan to the next town on our scenic route to Sydney: Narranderra. This town was even smaller than Warrnambool [extremely impressive]. We ate dinner in an ex-servicemen club that was a little empty but served tasty grilled chicken! It was also one of the first times all 16 of us fit around one table. I talked to the sweet lady at the bar for a while, who emphasized the deadness of Narrandera and was just so kind.
That night back at the Fig Tree Motel there wasn't much to do but lose consciousness in preparation for waking up early this morning!
Thus day 8 began. We assembled at 7 to hit up a bakery [where 98% of us got the same chicken avacado cranberry sandwich, mostly for its non-pieness]. We then wandered around the 2 streets of Narrandera for a long while as Geyer sorted out our activities for the morning. He came out of a corner building with two people and 16 hats. These were distributed as we learned about Landmark, a crop and fertilizer company that is partners with the American company that just hired one of our team members. Those two representatives took us to two different farms to question the farmers and ask about anything ranging from Australian farming practices to beliefs on gun rights [Australians have none]. We also got to pet a really sweet farm dog named Meg. Then we saw some irrigation practices, stopping at a river, a dam, and a weir. It was cool to see that these structures were so similar to ones in America, only this country [and many of the Asian countries it trades with] truly depends on its irrigation. Then it was driving driving driving until we arrived this evening in he slightly larger town of Katoomba. We're in the comfortable blue mountains youth hostel, where I'm currently falling asleep on a couch in the ballroom. The drive was similar to he hours the last two days, only tonight we drive longer into darkness, so I finally got to see the impressive collection of stars available to Southern Hemisphere gazers. I was also shocked by the number of visible stars. Even with so many cars around, it was a far more populated sky than I have found in Blacksburg. Just wait for the outback! We went to dinner [more Thai!] soon after arriving, and got to see the adorable mountain town of Katoomba. A classic mountain town, the shops here alternate between mountain gear and food, except being an Australian town all the food shops are Asian. The mountains that rule the town are the Blue Mountains, most famous for the Three Sisters, which we Well supposedly hike tomorrow morning! That'll be before we head off to Sydney finally, so day 9 should be a really excellent one. I'll keep you posted.
Things different about Australia: the bathrooms have exclusively blowy hand dryers, no paper towels. There's a serious hostel and backpacking scene here, a really cool thing to have in most cities. There are sheep absolutely everywhere. They put butter on everything and serve it with French fries. Since their one and two dollars are coins, a wallet full of change could easily be over $10, which is always a really exciting discovery. Also an interesting note: because of the persistently luke-warm showers available at Nomads, I'm now accustomed to shower temperatures somewhere between painful and removing layers of skin. I wonder If this will persist. I'll Probably just let go of the necessity of showering entirely in the outback. I just can't wait for that night sky!
Tune in next time for the first taste of Sydney and a report of the hikes of the Blue Mountains!
No comments:
Post a Comment