Camping in the Outback. Crikeys!!

G’day Mates!

I know that everyone is mad I written for a long long time! I’m sorry, I don’t know why I am so bad at this. It’s like homework … I just keep putting it off and finding better things to do instead. I really will try harder J I haven’t sent any post cards either which I plan on doing too. Anywayyys…

The Northwest trip was Awesome! I took a bus with 30 other people (and our guides Barry and Al) into the bush. My brother actually had Al as a guide when he was on the NW trip 4 years ago… I didn’t figure this out until after though. We went from March 13^th-22^nd. A lot of the trip was riding the bus (literally and playing the drinking game… for those of you under 30 who would know what I am talking about).

The night before we departed: Chemistry books spread about my room, clothes all over my bed and me sitting at my computer trying to finish all of my assignments before the morning is what my room looked like! It was not a fun night. I finally was packed and ready to go by 4am, so I went to be for 3 hours…

Day One: I dragged myself out of bed at 7:00 am so that I could make the bus by 7:45. We took attendance, got explained the rules and were on our way by around 8:00. From there we slept…. the bus ride was so long – around 700 kilometers (500 something miles)! Stopping every 2 hours so that the driver could rest and we could go to the bathroom definitely didn’t make the ride go faster. There were 2 buses, about 16 people in each.  Occasionally I would look out the window to see the same thing for miles and miles and miles or should I say kilometers and kilometers. We finally arrived at Wogarno Sheep Station. 

Everything looked great until we stepped off the bus. The flies were HORRENDOUS. Every spot on your body is covered with little annoying flies. Seriously they flew up your nose, into your eyes, down your shirt, and loooooved the food you were eating. Good thing everyone bought fly nets before coming on the voyage! (Im the only one who had mine on below!)

Another animal that we were greeted by at this sheep station was Andy. He was the dog  - I think Australian Shepherd. Andy loved to play fetch with anything he could find, no matter the size – it would have been a little more fun for the person throwing it if he ever returned the stick. We had the choice to either sleep in tents or sleep in the shearing shed in sleeping bags on the floor.  A couple (6) of my friends and I decided a 4 person tent would be a great choice…. Until the morning when they discovered I snore hahaha. That night for dinner we had a chicken apricot curry dish. It was amazing! It was almost like a stew on white rice. This was one of the few spots we were  allowed to have a campfire, but it was so hot that night that noone wanted to sit by it! This was also the place that I received by nickname for the whole 10 days…. BARBIE. I know, weird! I don’t look like a Barbie or act like a girly girl but yes I was Barbie. The only reason: I love pink. The guides thought it was funny that I had pink sandals (because I guess Australians don’t have pink sandals?? ..they do) and then a pink binder (because I had a chem. Test the Monday I got back, so I had to study!) and a pink ipod case and a pink pillow case I thought it was funny so I went along with it.

Day Two: Another very long bus ride, although not as long as the day before. We drove through the mining towns of Cue, Meekatharra, and resided in Newman Caravan Park. This place we all slept in tents right in the middle of where the miners “homes” were. The showers were very nice here especially because the next 3 days there was no running water. At this park the guides told us we had to be careful (girls mostly) because it was all guys. And we all know how guys can be who are only with other guys for months at a time. So everyone went as a group... to the pool! It was very salty though, which I wasn’t used to… oceans yeah, but pools? No. All 30 of us were in this pool at once, just kind of standing around until someone had the brilliant idea of making a whirlpool! So there was 3o uni aged (university aged) students running around in the same direction in a pool. Classic. What was even more classic was when we all turned around and the current held us back. Oh to be young again hahaha. That night for dinner we had lamb, sausage, mash potatoes (my favorite… weren’t as good as yours though dad!) and coleslaw. I could be forgetting a few things but oh well. I was on kitchen duty today, which I was glad I got it over with early but I wish I wouldn’t have had to make and clean up this dinner. I had to get breakfast and lunch out also. Breakfast and lunch were easy… the same thing everyday. Breakfast we could have cereal ...healthy kinds like sultana bran (raisin bran). We could make toast (over the stove) and sometimes we had fruit. For lunch we had sandwiches and salad (this got old really fast).In this town the guides told us that there was a tavern we could go to if we wanted. The guys wanted to go so the girls stayed and played some drinking games. I was happy I stayed because it turns out the guys walked for a long time to find the bar closed and an aboriginal man. I haven’t had any bad experiences with aborigines but this guy told them that “this is not your country, be afraid”. I am glad I was not there.

Day Three and Four: This was a short bus ride.. only about 4 hours. For these two days we were at Karijini National Park. This national park was so beautiful! On the first day we got there we set up camp had some lunch… and found some spiders. Then we put on our ‘walking shoes’ and hiked down the gorge. It was gorge-ous! haha.

At the bottom of the gorge were fresh water pools. I felt like I was in a movie, they were beautiful. It was over 1oo degrees the days we were here so we would spend the day down at the pools and then once the sun was starting to go down we hiked back up. The waterfalls going into the pools and little streams were our only source of water so we had to bring our water bottles to fill up! While at a pool just sitting around we looked down and saw a snake (the only snake I saw the whole trip). It was a water python!...but not poisonous. I guess you can tell if they are poisonous but the size of their head. Interesting. Although that was the only snake I saw, some of my fellow campers saw either a brown snake or the taipan snake. Whatever one is was… those are 2 most venomous snakes in the world! 

The 1^st night for dinner we had chili and the 2^nd night we had steak and sausage – I forgot what the side dishes were. Here there were not many flies (the worst was the first day). Instead of flies we had other insects. When the sun was down a lantern would be lit and everyone knows that bugs are attracted to light. Before this, I never knew how much bugs really did like the light!.... or that some grasshoppers could fly! Bugs would be flying at us… literally flying at our face. At an average of about every 2 minutes or so someone would squirm around and swat around their face – meaning a grasshopper just landed somewhere on their body. Since it was dark we couldn’t tell what was touching us, which freaked everyone out even more. Also at night we would see dingos! The dingo ate my baby! The guides would tell us to throw rocks at them to go away because all they wanted was our food. We wouldn’t actually hit the dingo but we were tring to make them afraid of us. These dingos are used to people so they aren’t afraid to come into the campsite and see what is for dinner. One night a dingo even took one of my friends shoes…. It was later found in the weeds by someone taking a leak. Lets just say the shoe had a dingo bit taken out of it! We could not have a camp fire here so we all sat in a horse shoe and had a dingo hunt to see if we could spot them. We never saw a dingo during out hunt. At night they would howl in the middle of our site. Everyone complained about the noise – I slept right through it. For me hiking was a little rough. I developed an in-grown toenail the day before we left and it was a very bad experience hiking with tennies on. The guides took care of my though, they had me soak it in salt water then pick out the toe nail… I almost cried! Currently it is infected so maybe I will have to get my foot cut off.

Day Five: This was by far the longest bus ride. I think it was around 14 hours. For some reason though the bus rides were really not that bad. The people on my bus would play tricks on each other when the other people were sleeping. For example, I guess I sleep with one eye open and my mouth wide open haha and so everyone thought it would be funny if they put a gummy worm by my mouth and took pictures. It actually was funny.

If someone would actually enjoy it if they liked sitting in the same seat for hours and had only a little vent above them. For the first couple hours of the trip  (and usually we were up and on the road by 8am) the guide (Barry) who was driving my bus wouldn’t let us sleep. He kept pointing out communication towers… literally every 30 minutes or so. The communication towers really had no significance to us he just didn’t want us to be able to fall asleep because we would keep them up at night sometimes. Funny at first  - not funny when you are actually trying to sleep! I know I said that the bus rides really aren’t that bad just a few seconds ago ... I forgot about this day (haha I’m reading other peoples blogs to remind myself of what we did everyday because I lost my itinerary!) This day was by far the hottest day we had. Barry and Al told us it was 117 degrees in the shade!!! After we were done riding the bus for hours and hours we arrived at Wogarro Station. We were there right as the sun was setting and driving into the place we saw kangaroo! Definitely cool haha they would hop along the side of the bus as we drive but we drove much faster so the few that hoped on the said of the road couldn’t keep up. The nice part about staying at Wogarro Station is that ½ of us got to sleep in an old house, with actual beds! The other ½ slept in little 2 person rooms. I was in the house and it was great except for the mice! If you know me, you know me and mice do not get along. I handled it though. There were also bats that came out at night. I did not notice the bats because I was asleep right as I hit the pillow. But I guess Australia is a continent completely void of rabies so there was nothing to worry about anyways– very interesting! The fifth night is the night we met up with the other group that was traveling in the oppisite direction of us (they were traveling from the coast inland and we were inland to the coast). While by the campfire and just hanging out we found a scorpian! It was dead by the time I saw it but I think it was alive at first. The fifth night for dinner we had burgers. This was my least favorite meal.

Day Six: Today we got up early to head to Coral Bay. Here we went on a glass bottom boat tour and snorkeling in Ningaloo Reef (the 2^nd largest reef in the world).  It was kind of a unique experience because for about 4 hours each year(…yes each year) coral release its spawn. The day we came was the day after that happened, so we got to swim around in coral sperm as I liked to put it. This made the snorkeling kind of cloudy so it wasn’t that great but I got to see a sea turtle and some got to see a reef shark.. I didn’t. The rest of the day was spent drinking on the beach. It was so beautiful. The tide came up very high and so we could swim I bet about 100 to 200 ft out and we would still be able to stand. That night we stayed in the same spot as day 5. For dinner we had spaghetti. At night we just played drinking games again and went to bed.

Day Seven: We headed to Hamelin Pool today. This is where the first telegraph station was in Australia I think - something like that. This was also where we saw stromatolites! Aka rocks. I mean actually they are super important because they are like  3 or 3o or 300 (I cant remember haha) billon years old and are the oldest living organisms on earth and without them billons of years ago humans wouldn’t exist today but.. they just look like rocks. Oh something else that is pretty cool is that they only exist 3 places on earth. 

The beach that was surrounding the stromatolites was a shell beach, which was actually really pretty. Other than stromatolites nothing was really that interesting about this place, just another place to sleep. That night we opted to have seven people in the four person tent… very squished but very funny as I guess in the middle of the night the person I was sleeping next to woke up and I was about 2 inches from his face ... probably snoring (in the picture i'm the one in the white - split center). Tonight for dinner we had a curry stir-fry.. very delicious but pretty spicy.

Day Eight: Today we drove to Monkey Mia. We were there by 7am we got to go to a dolphin feeding. This was kind of a hoax because everyday people go and stand about knee high in the water an dolphins come up and about 5 people get to feed them fish. It really was all not that exciting. Instead I was intrigued by a giant pelican in the water. 

As we waited to go on a catamaran ride everybody just laid out on the beach and played volleyball. The catamaran was actually pretty cool. Dolphins swam on the side of the boat there was a net thing in the back of the boat that we could lay in as it went through the water in Shark Bay. You had to hold on pretty tight and hold your swimsuit on because the water would be really strong.

The rest of the day was just spent on the beach and hanging around. On the way back we stopped at a few places to look at scenery. I think this was the best place we stopped that day… it was just a cliff we stopped at. (picture below). We returned to Hamelin pool for another night of drinking games and cuddling in the tent. This night for dinner I don’t remember what we had.

Day Nine: Today we were supposed to stop at another gorge and climb down it but we decided not to and instead we went to the beach. The gorge I guess is nothing compared to the other gorges we saw and there are no fresh water pools at the bottom. We stopped in a little town with a nice beach and spent a couple hours there. We then drove some more to Lynton Station…yet another sheep station. Here there was a pretty big hill… I mean not huge because we climbed it in “thongs” as they call flip-flops here. Which climbing in flip-flops was pretty stupid but whatever. For dinner all I remember is mashed potatoes. It was the last night so all we did was play some more drinking games and reminisce on our journey.

Day Ten: We drove home.

Above is a picture of most of the people from Eau Claire… doing the “I’m an international student” symbol. It really doesn’t mean that you’re an international student I just kinda made it up because I always see international students doing that at UWEC. I later found out that it is mainly just an Asian thing. I didn’t realize we mostly had only Asian international students! I guess they do it because they think it is cute like Mickey Mouse… my Asian friend told me that!

It was a pretty great trip all in all and I am so happy I got to experience everything that I did. I know I am like a month with updating you guys.. and I will do that in another post because this one is like 5 pages long already (Im writing it in word). My sister came to visit last weekend and that as great so I will tell about that and I have another study break starting tomorrow… and I am renting cars with 11 other people and taking a road trip. I will be better at updating because I actually feel bad about not doing it.

 

Love and Happiness,

Me