Last Week of the Semester!

The close of the semester has brought with it loads of work on final assignments and hours of studying for exams.  Since my trip to Wilson's prom, I've had several decent days of surf, one nearly 30-hour straight writing/study session, and the best food of the semester, among other things.

The week after our Wilson's Promontory adventure, I studied hard to catch up on the reading for the whole second half of my logic class.  With that done, I headed down to Bells Beach for the last weekend in may.  I took along an American friend, Steve and we surfed Bells and Winki Pop a couple feet overhead and perfect.  Super fun waves.  The water was freezing.  Steve is from Santa Cruz, California, and even he got cold out there.  So while he slept in the car, I surfed for 7 hours straight with one quick break to grab a pbj, a banana, and some cookies.

My Aussie friend Darcy showed up as the swell was dying so we got to spend the night at his house in Bellbrae again.  The next day we drove south and surfed my favorite wave again, the little a-frame slab dumping onto barely submerged rocks.  Always an adrenaline rush.

Faker's mom showed up from Singapore the beginning of last week and had a few of us over for dinner at her apartment a couple nights.  It was without a doubt the best food I've had since leaving home.  One night we had pasta and then crepes for dessert.  The next night I think I had the best hamburger I've ever tasted.  No lie.  I looked over at Abhi and he looked like he had reached nirvana or something, just sitting there with his eyes closed and a peaceful smile across his face.  That food was something else.

I had a bioethics exam on Thursday so a couple days of studying proved helpful in writing two essays examining the ethical implications of xenotransplantation and nuclear-cytoplasmic chimeric embryo research.  I decided that the risk of xenozoonosis, if it is not eliminated, rules out xenotransplantation as an ethical practice.  Whatever that means.

I signed up for the scuba club at the beginning of the semester but I've surfed instead of diving every weekend.  I still get the emails though, and when I got one from some guy who I had never met about diving some springs in South Australia, I decided to respond.  So 4:30 am Saturday morning saw me out of bed after three hours of sleep.  5:00 saw me at Aran's house loading up Cal's car and trailer with dive gear, having just met Aran when I arrived that morning and Cal the day before when we filled up tanks.  I passed out in the car for a while on the drive, and every once in a while we would stop so Cal could try to photograph birds of prey we saw along the way.  Even after you sneak toward them and they don't mind, they always fly away as soon as you lift your camera.  I think I heard one or two laughing mischievously as they took off, 'humans are suckers'.

We got to Ewen's Ponds, our dive site, a little after noon.  When we pulled into the parking lot there were like three cars there, but as we put on our dive gear a convoy of about four more pulled up with a bunch of PADI divers.  'All right guys, everybody got their buddy?  Warm enough in those 20 millimeters of neoprene? Those drysuits working alright?  Let's go then!'

So when Cal, Aran, and I got in the previously crystal-clear water was full of silt from people jumping in and kicking their fins too close to the bottom.  It was alright though.  Still pretty. We followed the group through the canal to the second pond and then doubled back and swam through the first pond again when it had cleared up.  The water was freezing but beautifully clear, a lot like the springs back home, but with more fish and big crayfish.  The little creek that ran between the ponds was like an underwater garden.

We were underwater for a couple hours before hypothermia passed the first stage and we got out of the third pond shaking uncontrollably and walked back to the car to warm up.  As soon as we had finished warming up the sun was setting so we put the cold wetsuits right back on and got ready for our night dive.  When I jumped in, I could see the sliver moon perfectly through the clear water, and it gradually grew dark so that by the time I reached the bottom of the first pond about ten metres down, I could look up and start to see stars.  We cruised through the ponds as it got darker and darker, looking at big freshwater eels, and lots of fish and crayfish.  At the bottom of the third pond, the three of us turned off our lights and just sat there and looked at the stars for a while.  When I held my breath long enough for the surface to calm down, I could see the milky way perfectly, along with several constellations.

Then another group came into the pond shining their bright lights everywhere and stirring up silt.  I didn't mind so much though - it was kind of like a laser light show with their lights bouncing off the surface and shining through our streams of bubbles.

We had permits to snorkel Piccaninnie Pond the next morning, where the bottom of the little pond drops from 1 metre to 100 metres.  Straight down.  The visibility was once again a little stirred up in the first chasm from two divers who were there, but the crevices were really cool.  We weren't allowed to dive since none of us are cave certified, and we couldn't wear weight belts either due to restrictions.  Let me tell you, it is hard to freedive with 8.5 mm of neoprene on.  You float like a balloon.  I was kicking hard just to get 5 or 6 metres down into the second crevice, where I could see the bottom 20 metres below.  I found one cave to swim down into but every time I came out from underneath the ledge my wetsuit would buoy me up into the rocks and I would stir up a bunch of silt.

In the arvo, we drove down to Portland on the way home, in hope of seeing one of the right whales that come through this time of year.  None had been sighted that day, but we did get to snorkel with some seals and a giant stingray.  Seals are amazingly graceful and fast underwater, and also a little aggressive when you approach them while they are feeding.  Some things have to be found out firsthand.  It wasn't until we got out of the water that we saw the sign that told us we could be fined or go to jail for swimming with those particular seals.  I think they're slightly dangerous or something.  Oh well.

Now I have to study for my last exam on Wednesday.  Right after the exam, I leave for a few days surfing at Margaret River, WA with Darcy.  Should be fun surfing the heavy waves breaking over shallow reefs out there.  I didn't want to hear about people breaking their necks at North Point, where we are staying, but Darcy told me anyways.  It doesn't look like it'll be that big when we get there though.  Maybe double overhead plus?  I'll let you know when I get back.

"The traffic is stuck, and you're not moving anywhere"

Bono's words blared from the stereo right as I slowed to a stop behind three other cars and saw the traffic on the other side of the construction zone begin to move toward us down the road, which was narrowed to one lane.  I just started laughing along with Doc, who had chosen the song on my ipod before we turned the corner and saw the construction zone.  I love it when coincidences like that happen. In the two hours since leaving Melbourne, we had only had to stop at one light in Cranbourne. There was no traffic... I guess not many people were keen to leave their beds like we had at 6:45 am when it was literally freezing outside.

It was still dark when we left school and started driving southeast to Wilson's Prom.  The sunrise through the fog was amazing. Faker had never seen frost before - I guess they don't get it too often in Singapore, seeing as it's right by the equator - so I stopped the car when we found a good patch and Doc and I took her frost skiing.  We wound our way from Melbourne down the highway to Cranbourne, between fields and over hills to Leongatha as day broke, and finally arrived at Wilson's Promontory National Park.  My buddy K-Train at school had recommended the Sealer's Cove hike, so the three of us went for it, all 10 kilometres there and 10 more back.  

We had such a blast!  I still hadn't seen a wombat, so I was pretty stoked when about 3 k's into the hike, we found one of the fat little bear-looking things waddling around on one of the saddles between two mountains.  The trail went along the side of one mountain and then around another one, and in every fold of the mountain the air grew humid and the path was muddy.  The sun doesn't hit that side of the mountain in winter, I guess.  It was perfect hiking weather, with a perfectly blue sky and a high temperature around 15 (60 fahrenheit).  After a couple hours we got down to sea level, where a boardwalk ran for FOREVER (like between 2 and 3 ks) over swampy ground, over a couple little billabongs, and to the beach.  When we finally got there, the view was stunning.  The water was a clear green, the beach ran for hundreds of metres either way, and at either end a rocky headland rose up where the bay opened into the ocean.  The northern headland was more like a mountain.  At the south end of the bay the beach became a bunch of boulders sticking out in the water, so we decided to go have our lunch out on a rock in the water.  To get there, we crossed the tidal river where the Billabong we had crossed ran into the bay and then we had to rock-hop our way from the beach out to the boulder with a flat top.  We were aware that the tide was coming in, but went for it anyways.  We called Faker a little mountain goat because whereas Doc and I could easily step from rock to rock in most cases, Faker-Goat had to jump to reach them.

What a view!  From the rock, we could see the mountains all around the bay and the whole beach.  I had brought bread, peanut butter and jam in my backpack, so Doc had his first pbj for lunch (they don't usually eat pbjs in Oz.  It's an American thing).  We just sat on the rock and ate (we were famished and tired after the 10 k hike with only one stop) and talked.  When we decided that we had better head back if we wanted to see the sunset from the other side of the Prom, we discovered that the tide had come in faster than we thought.  The water was a good foot higher than when we had started.  I took my shoes off and rolled my jeans up, but Doc and Faker both made the mistake of getting their shoes wet.  I just tore the soles of my feet up on the sharp rocks.  Faker-Goat and I soaked our jeans up to the knees (Faker up to mid-thigh), even though we rolled them up. So with wet jeans, we hiked 10 ks as fast as we could to beat the sunset.  It still took about 2 1/2 hours.  Faker also made a pretty solid effort of rolling her ankle but hung in there and we got back to the car and drove down to the beach on the west side of the Prom, barely in time to see a gorgeous sunset over the coast and strait.

I don't know what the kangaroo was thinking standing right in the middle of the bridge on the way back, but seeing one of those massive things in your headlights does a good job of waking you up.  I clocked him hopping down the road at pushing 50 km/h, and he looked like he was going easy.  We stopped for KFC when we finally reached a town, then continued the drive back up to school.  When we needed a break, we braved the freezing cold to step out of the car and look at the stars and the milky way for a little bit.  Faker said she doesn't really get to see the milky way or sunsets in singapore, which made me really thankful for being able to see them back home.  Getting up a little after 6, hiking over 20 kilometres, and not having gotten enough sleep sure does wear you out, so I think we all slept really well last night.

Other than that, I was mainly studying and writing papers this week.  One of my Canadian friends had her boyfriend here for a few weeks, and last weekend she had to go on a camping trip so I took James surfing with me.  He said he surfed some back home and could handle cold water, so we headed down to Phillip Island.  James said he hadn't even seen waves that big before.  Express was probably about 6 ft.  He rented a board at Smith's Beach and we went to surf the smallest beachbreak I could find at YCWs, which was still about 3 ft.  I caught some good 3-4 ft. waves on the beachbreak left and then paddled out to a little right point breaking off the rocks at the south end of the bay.  It was a little sketchy sitting about 10 ft. from the dry rocks and waiting for the 4 ft. set waves.  The drop-in was fun - 3 ft. overhead waves ledging onto some shallow rocks - but there wasn't much ride because the wave broke into deep water.  Being out there by myself surfing a shallow break surrounded by deep water still kinda throws me off, so I went back in to where James was waiting on the beach and we went down to Summerlands, the little right point on the beach with the penguins.  I wish I had my quad here because even though that wave was overhead, it is pretty soft except for a couple barrel sections.  James struggled a little bit getting out in the crashing waves and the currents, but I was really glad he had a go and he was stoked just to be there.

I'm down to the final week of class with two final assignments due next Tuesday.  It's hard to believe that I'm going to be leaving so soon.  I've gotta work really hard during the week so I can take advantage of my last bits of free time in Melbourne.  And I'm dying to surf Bells again.