SO. Day six. A lot of driving, nothing terribly exciting, except for many more opportunities to push-start our bus, and when we reached our sleeping spot (KARIJINI NATIONAL PARK YESSSS!!!), we saw a ton of dingoes, and we got a constellation lesson from Terry. Here's the deal with the dingoes: SO COOL to see them up close, literally two feet away, and they just look like really pretty German Shepherds or something, but they're totally domesticated. They live in this national park, so people are always camping and giving them food, so now they just associate humans with free meals, and aren't afraid of people at all. No good ): so while it was great to take pictures of such a beautiful creature, we needed to shoo them away ASAP. When it got dark Terry taught us how to find the Southern Cross and the Scorpion and a few others...very, very cool. If he's got grandkids, they're lucky people.
Day seven: Karijini adventures. Our itinerary described this day as "FULL ON!" and boy was that right. The pictures do it much more justice (though nothing compares to the real live thing) than my words can (I put up all the pictures by the way, click the link on the right!), but I'll give it a shot. Took a rough morning hike down into Weano Gorge, which included a lot of steep cliffs, a ladder, and...dun dun dun...THE SPIDERWALK. Basically, the walls of the gorge are only about two meters apart, and the rocks under the water here are too slippery to walk on, so you put one arm and one leg on each wall, and spider-walk yourself through. A little scary to start, but it's easier than it sounds, and tons of fun. Terry and Fi supervised the whole time, of course. Once you get past the spiderwalk, it's cliff-jumpin' time. It's really dark in this part of the gorge because the walls are so tall and block out most of the sky, so the water is FREEZING, and the rocks all around the pool we were jumping into were wicked slippery (we had a few falls), so getting out of the water once you've jumped in is another story, but the jump itself is lovely. Not too high either - 20-25 feet maybe? We had a good time trying to get pictures of people in midair. I took a nice, long, chilly swim down the rest of the gorge with Keith, Gabe, Blaine and a few Danish guys...I felt very small. The walls are so high, the water is so deep...you just look up and can see a sliver of sky between the rock and all around you is more and more rock. What an unbelievable place.
Hiked a bit more to another place to swim (Hancock Gorge? Handrail Pool? I know I've been to these places but no clue which ones are which), where we also found Joffre's Waterfall - the waterfall is situated so that you can climb up the side of it and sit somewhere in the middle, what a nice view.
We were exhausted when we got back to camp that night, and you're not allowed to build campfires in Karijini, so most of us went to sleep pretty early. Fi, our boisterous female tourguide, was lucky enough to have another close encounter with a dingo - one stole her pillows. BRILLIANT. She chased it down and managed to wrestle one pillow away, but he made off with the other. Fi of course found it hilarious, her saved pillow was covered in red dirt, man was it entertaining.
Day eight: another hike in Karijini, this one not as treacherous as the day before...we ended up at Fortescue Falls, a nice place to swim (though also freezing), an even taller cliff for people to jump off of (I declined this one)...lots of great geology to take pictures of, and tons of sunbathing spots for post-swim naps. We swam there awhile, then hiked a few hundred meters to Fern Pool, one of the few spots in Karijini that Aboriginals still have total control over. There are signs everywhere reminding visitors to be quiet, to respect the area, not to jump off of cliffs or trees...and how glad I am that they have these. Fern Pool is paradise. The water is warm and sweet, there's a waterfall on the opposite side of the pool that you can swim to and sit under (you can actually get a decent back rub out of this thing, it's got a lot of pressure), the vegetation surrounding the pool is beautiful...what I would give to be able to swim here every day. I think I'll just move to Karijini, set up a tent somewhere and become friends with the dingoes. Sounds good. Anyway, we swam for a few hours, then had to head back to camp to pack up and get moving. A few more days of driving ahead of us, oh boy. We ended up at Newman that night, a mining town, where we got a lot of funny looks from the locals when we went to buy groceries...we were a huge group and pretty loud, I guess. We went to a bar that night and had some lovely conversations with miners...they're friendly enough, but they're all of the "sailor on leave" mentality - they're cooped up in this town for a few months at a time, not much female contact, so you just gotta be careful. Some of the guys on our trip had a great time trying to get male miners to buy them drinks though.
Day nine: driving driving driving until we got to Wogarno Sheep Station for our last night. I would love to live here - it's a sheep-shearing farm run by a family of parents, 15 year-old son, and a two year-old daughter. The farm is huge, and everywhere you look there's artwork. Most of it is made of rusted metal, probably old farm equipment, in shapes of horses and sheep and chairs and beds, but my favorite was the shadow of a tree created on the ground out of stones. I asked the son how they got there, and he said they invited art groups to visit their farm and do whatever they want. Some of them are kind of creepy (as in, some are made out of bones, and coming across them in the middle of the night by yourself may be scary), but SO creative. A few of us had a wonderful conversation with this kid, he told us about how he and his father had gone hunting that evening for kangaroos and emus, they caught a few. He has to take a week or two off of school (he goes to boarding school in Perth; there aren't any public schools in the area) for the hunting season. It truly is a whole other world out here. We slept under the stars that night, and woke up freezing, but worth it.
Day ten: home again home again. We drove all day long and returned to our wonderful roommates and hot showers.
DONE. Yay. Sorry that took me so long...the pictures may actually tell a better story than the blog, but I felt that I should finish it anyway. Gives ya something to read.
Life since then has had the volume turned down, for sure, but I'm finally back into the swing of things here. Found out I only have ONE exam, and it's on the first day of exams, so I have some travel plans to make for the middle and end of November if I still have money left...may head over to Sydney, who knows. Turned in my first assignment, had a wonderful time rock-climbing last weekend, sang a few more songs with Keith at our Sustainability Week event at the Tavern on campus yesterday (I'll post those soon), going to a Northwest Trip reunion this weekend, GOT TO TALK TO CLAIRE MATHIOT ON SKYPE LAST NIGHT, absolutely made my life...last weekend was audition weekend at BC so I got a lot of emails about that and was feeling pretty homesick, but talking to Claire made everything sunny and happy (:
Rehearsal time - miss you guys, hope you are well!
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