Meditations On Wallabies, Wind-Caves, Marshmallows, and Mountaintops

I'm not quite sure whether to begin my tale of the past couple weeks with befriending wallabies, surfing, running over kangaroos, climbing through caves, or sleeping on the ground.  But I guess I'll just go chronologically.  

The Great Ocean Road never ceases to amaze me.  I was down at my buddy Darcy's house in Bells Beach a couple weeks ago and the waves were absolutely flat.  A little over an hour down the road, north of Apollo Bay, we found a solid overhead right barreling across some really shallow rocks.  There were just the two of us out getting some sick waves.  A wipeout involved bouncing over the rocks (I'm very thankful for the cushioning kelp) and getting pounded by about four more waves before making it back out to the lineup.  The wave was super rippable though.  It's just a little scary to see the rocks just under the surface as you free-fall back down the face after a vertical turn. We also surfed Bell's Beach southside when the swell came in, a sick little left that runs right up to the cliff.  I definitely have to go back down and get some more barrels at Apollo Bay.

Darcy's family was great.  Instead of a lawnmower they have a few sheep and they were all just really nice and relaxed.  Every time I go to visit somebody's house they tell me to come back any time I want.  I'm gonna have to talk to Darcy cause I think I might take them up on that soon.

I worked really hard for a week to get a couple of assignments done, then last Monday Shanna came back down from Sydney for part of her winter break.  We had a great time playing frisbee with everybody and hanging out in Abhi's (My RA) room watching a few movies.  Shanna and Faker got to be really good friends, which doesn't surprise me because they're definitely two of the coolest girls I've ever met.

So after I got out of class on Wednesday, Shanna and I packed up some warm clothes, food, ad lots of water bottles, hopped in rexy (my car, which roars like a t-rex when you turn because the power steering is almost all the way gone) and headed up through Melbourne and Ballarat to the Grampians, a mountain range in western vic.  We got into the national park in time for the sunset through the smoky haze that was hanging over the mountains.  Despite the limited visibility, the views were amazing.

We drove to Stapylton Campground, in the Northern Grampians, found a spot to make a fire, and cooked some dinner.  I'd say we're definitely getting to be pretty decent campfire cooks.  After eating, we roasted some marshmallows and ate them between chocolate chip cookies, which is great.  Go try it right now and come back and finish reading once you've experienced it. Oh yeah, the cookies should be "heavenly chocolate hazelnut" for best results. It's our aussie version of a s'more because there are no graham crackers here.

Soon after dinner, a few wallabies and little kangaroos hopping around our campfire.  At this point we discovered that wallabies are crazy about heavenly chocolate hazelnut cookies, and probably just as in love with marshmallows.  We named the one who came up to eat out of our hands Chester.  He tried to climb up in the back of my car to grab the loaf of bread.  He was an eating machine!  Somehow he even managed to make a loud munching sound when eating a soft uncooked marshmallow.  How he could crunch a marshmallow is beyond me.

When the fire started going out, Shanna and I grabbed our sleeping bags and cowboy-camped on a little hill, just beyond the "no camping beyond this point" sign.  Do they always put those right in front of the best spots to camp or what?  The hill was covered with little pine needles, so the ground was really comfortable.  I woke up every once in a while to the sound of a wallaby or a 'roo hopping close by.

Thursday morning we drove to the start of the Mt. Stapylton trail and started to hike.  As we walked up the massive rock face, there were some black wallabies that hopped away in front of us.  We hiked beneath a massive red cliff and up the mountain, which looked like a sinking ship from far away.  We made it to the top after a couple kilometres.  Right beneath the top, there was an awesome wind cave in the sandstone.  Apparently these caves are made by salts that wear away at the rock when it rains.  From the summit, we had an incredible panorama of the surrounding mountains and countryside.  We ate a couple pbj's and some lamingtons (my new addiction) and just enjoyed the scenery for a while before starting back down.  We were the only ones on the whole mountain until we were almost back to the car park, where we passed a few other hikers just starting out.

We saw our first wild Emu when we were driving down a really long dirt road.  It reminded me of a giant turkey and I bet it would taste as good as a turkey too.  Mt. Stapylton was just a 4 1/2 k hike so we decided to go for a little more of a challenge.  Mt. Difficult sounded good: 9 k's and over 450 meters elevation change.  It was a really fun climb that involved lots of rock-hopping and steep climbs.  After nearly two hours of solid climbing, we reached the top, where we were alone with a 360-degree view of the mountains and Lake Wartook, which sits on a plateau in the middle of the range.  Looked like a good place to eat a couple more sandwiches and a pineapple that I had brought along.  It was absolutely gorgeous up there.  The air was a lot clearer than it had been the day before.  I kept thinking of Walt Whitman's "I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world".

We reached the bottom late in the afternoon and headed back up to the foot of Mt. Stapylton, where we climbed up to the top of the first section of the mountain and watched an incredible sunset light the sky on fire.  We cooked dinner right at the foot of the mountain in a little fire pit and then drove down to the southern part of the grampians, where we planned to hike on Friday.

Friday morning we got up early and drove to Mt. William to watch the sunrise.  We were a little late (I'll blame it on the kangaroos that were standing in the middle of the road), but we got there just after the sun had cleared the horizon and the morning light on the mountains was incredible.  Again, no other hikers were up on the mountain that early, despite the fact that it was Anzac Day, so we sat beside some rocks to block the frigid wind and watched the light creep down the mountainsides into the valley.  Four eagles were soaring on the currents blowing up from the valley, and one came and flew right over us--about 15 feet over our heads!

We decided to stop and check out wonderland, where we saw sights such as the "grand canyon" and echo cave, where a signed asked us to "please yell".  We complied without hesitation.  A narrow canyon in the rocks, known as silent street, was really cool as well.  At the end a stairway climbed through a really narrow gap in the rocks.  When we were going back down this older man who was climbing up was like "Good thing we're all thin.  You'd never make it through there if you were a fatty."  Good call dude.

After the pinnacles we went back up north to Hollow Mountain, where we found the coolest wind caves.  The biggest one is a cave about 3 or 4 levels high that cuts right through the middle of a solid rock.  Shanna and I had a blast climbing up through the levels with their ceilings full of holes where the rock was eroding away.  The cave opened up to the top of the rock, where another level of the cave was starting to form.

On Saturday we drove down some really long dirt roads to get to an aboriginal art site.  There were kangaroos everywhere so I wasn't all that astonished at the fact that one jumped out in front of my car, but it still was pretty surprising to see it hop right in front of me and disappear beneath the car with a loud bang.  I braked about as fast as I could without skidding to a stop and as soon as the car stopped moving the 'roo jumped right out from underneath the front of the car, which had been dragging him along, and hopped off into the woods.  I got out to make sure he was all right and he stopped to look back at me and then hopped away.  So we were cool.  The front of my car wasn't damaged at all.

The aboriginal site was pretty cool.  Apparently the aborigines ground up ochre, put it in their mouths, placed their hands against the rock and spit the ochre out over their hand so it left a handprint surrounded by red on the wall.  Primitive airbrush and masking technique!  I guess I don't really need to get a new compressor after all.  There were also some stick figures and kangaroo and emu tracks.

After we left the aboriginal shelter the sky to the west was getting pretty dark.  The day was already cloudy but a big cold front was on its way up from the antarctic so we started heading back to Melbourne.  Shanna drove on the wrong side of the road for the first time.  It definitely throws you off the first time but now I reckon by the time I get back to the US I'll be thrown off driving on the right.

So we got back to Melbourne ahead of the rain and were definitely glad to be able to sleep indoors as the temperature dropped to a humid low-40's fahrenheit.  I have to say though, it's a good break from Miami weather.  I'm pretty content with the high constantly between 55 and 65.  It's good frisbee weather.  I went into the city with Shanna and Faker yesterday for a little bit to have a lunch at the pancake parlor and explore the State Library of Victoria, which is really cool.  There are all these sweet old aussie paintings.

This arvo Faker and I were back to practicing our frisbee and pool skills.  Over the course of my camping adventures I have acquired a massive collection of water bottles so when I go on road trips I have enough to drink for a few days.  I'm up to about 10 drink bottles, ranging from 600 ml to 4 Litres.  Just thought I'd let you know.  It saves me from buying a lot of drinks, I reckon.