Monday, September 26, 2005
a lucky kat.
what a lucky girl I am to have such good friends and family. Here I am, less than 3 weeks in a foreign country, and on my birthday I wake up to a homemade birthday cake, I am sent a homegrown rendition of happy birthday on the guitar, I get a birthday card, a birthday phone call, a many other birthday greetings. you are all wonderful!
this past week was a good one too. I found an ultimate team, participated in my first disc golf tournament, and tried to take out the lights on another squash court.
it started with monday. monday wasn't exciting. moving on.
tuesday. I went to my first disc golf practice with real disc golfs. I tried to throw a couple of them once before, but this was this first time I didn't give up straight away and go back to the ultrastar. eventually a security guard came around and told us we couldn't play anymore. he said there had been complaints. the little group of spectators that had formed protested on our behalves but we were only granted permission to play on a big open field which really wasn't nearly so interesting.
wednesday. I had seen on a website that there was ultimate down by the airport. So I biked down there as darkness descended (luckily there was a pretty good bike route most of the way). I found the field, which was large and lit and seemed like a good place to play. I saw a group of rugby players. And that's about it. I biked up the hill where there were more lights - that was a driving range. It was now around 6:30 and the games were supposed to start at 6. And then I saw 3 people sitting on the field. Something told me they were ulti players. And I was right! Slowly they showed up and I started tossing a disc with someone and much later the beginnings of organization appeared. I found a team in need of girls (as I suspected, it wasn't hard), and had a good game.
thursday. I couldn't believe the amount of muscle soreness I experienced from the running and throwing of the previous 2 days. Just biking to work was rather excruciating.
friday. after work I met a guy that I had met on, believe it or not, an online dating site :). I had better make sure I make it clear to him that I am not so much interested in dating him, but we had a good time playing squash anyhow. he also insisted that my home country is named (or should be named) "Canadia" and thought that disc golf sounded like a ridiculous sport - a bit of a nutter, but he seemed nice enough. as in my previous (limited) experiences in a squash court, I managed to hit the lights multiple times and hit the ball compeletly out of the court twice.
saturday morning I went down to wander around the botanical gardens and look at the flying foxes (maybe some pictures will appear in my gallery soon?), then to the art gallery, then to see some street performers down by the waterfront. I then wandered across town and managed to find the neighbourhood of Redfern, where I asked a few random people on the street where the street I was looking for was and got blank looks from most of them. I forget the name of the street now, but the reason I was looking for it was that that was where kurt and his wife live. kurt is the swedish disc golf fanatic I had met the previous weekend. And the reason I was going to his hosue was to get a ride down to Canberra for the tournament. what a funny way to say that. anyhow, I managed to find his house and just about right on time as well, and soon we were a carload headed to the ACT (Austrlian Capitol Territory). though it was too dark to see any of the scenery and too cloudy to see many stars, the ride proved to be a bit of an adventure. we were merrily zooming along the highway at around 110km/hr when suddenly everything went dark. no headlights. none of us had ever had such a thing happen before. luckily, there wasn't too much traffic, no kangaroos in our path, and the emergency flashers still worked. we pulled over and had a look at some fuses but couldn't really find anything wrong, though it was hard to tell with only the light from my little headlamp. luckily again, we were only 2km from an exit and a town, so we slowly crept down the shoulder and pulled in to a gas station. after fruitless consultation of an electrical wiring diagram and the largely erased lid of the fuse relay panel, we made a call to roadside assistance. an hour and a half of gas station merriment pursued before a scruffy man pulled up in a truck to take a look. as it turned out, we were on the right track with the fuses, and by pulling a fuse from the A/C he managed to get the lights going again.
sunday morning after a tour of kurt's inlaws' solar-powered house, we were off to the park. I didn't really know what to expect and was a little bit nervous about the tournament. I definitely didn't expect to do very well given my experience with throwing disc golf discs on tuesday. and everyone I played with could immediately tell I was normally an ultimate player based on the way I threw. We were divided into groups of four and assigned a starting basket (the targets in disc golf are baskets, not holes like in regular golf). we then went through playing an 18-basket course before lunch. With some wild and uncontrolled throws, I ended up with a fairly dismal score of 102 on the par-70 course. At lunch I went off to do some practicing and finally really started to get the hang of how to throw relatively straight. I also practiced a little putting, which is rather difficult since you had to throw high enough and hard enough to land in the basket and yet try to avoid the back-and-forth that can come from missing the target. by the time the second round began (using the same baskets but with completely different tee-off points so that the course was completely changed), I was starting to feel like I had a chance at competing. well, as it turned out I did do Much better (82/par 69), but still did not have sufficient consistency to keep up with everyone else. but now I was really excited about disc golf and eager to play again - I think I am hooked! on the way home, I saw the famous Lake George, we discussed appalling uses of grammar (particularly apostrophes), found "flavour" in orange juice and subway sandwiches, and learned some new Aussie lingo. The biggest discovery was the -o suffix, which seems to be nearly as popular as -ie/-y (Chrissy, Rellies, Aussie, Tassie): common examples include servo (service station/gas station), agro (aggressive), and mando (mandatory).
well, that covers my week. another one is now underway. I think I will treat myself to a birthday dinner at the tasty thai place I was introduced to by Amber and Norbert a couple of weeks ago.
happy trails!
kat
this past week was a good one too. I found an ultimate team, participated in my first disc golf tournament, and tried to take out the lights on another squash court.
it started with monday. monday wasn't exciting. moving on.
tuesday. I went to my first disc golf practice with real disc golfs. I tried to throw a couple of them once before, but this was this first time I didn't give up straight away and go back to the ultrastar. eventually a security guard came around and told us we couldn't play anymore. he said there had been complaints. the little group of spectators that had formed protested on our behalves but we were only granted permission to play on a big open field which really wasn't nearly so interesting.
wednesday. I had seen on a website that there was ultimate down by the airport. So I biked down there as darkness descended (luckily there was a pretty good bike route most of the way). I found the field, which was large and lit and seemed like a good place to play. I saw a group of rugby players. And that's about it. I biked up the hill where there were more lights - that was a driving range. It was now around 6:30 and the games were supposed to start at 6. And then I saw 3 people sitting on the field. Something told me they were ulti players. And I was right! Slowly they showed up and I started tossing a disc with someone and much later the beginnings of organization appeared. I found a team in need of girls (as I suspected, it wasn't hard), and had a good game.
thursday. I couldn't believe the amount of muscle soreness I experienced from the running and throwing of the previous 2 days. Just biking to work was rather excruciating.
friday. after work I met a guy that I had met on, believe it or not, an online dating site :). I had better make sure I make it clear to him that I am not so much interested in dating him, but we had a good time playing squash anyhow. he also insisted that my home country is named (or should be named) "Canadia" and thought that disc golf sounded like a ridiculous sport - a bit of a nutter, but he seemed nice enough. as in my previous (limited) experiences in a squash court, I managed to hit the lights multiple times and hit the ball compeletly out of the court twice.
saturday morning I went down to wander around the botanical gardens and look at the flying foxes (maybe some pictures will appear in my gallery soon?), then to the art gallery, then to see some street performers down by the waterfront. I then wandered across town and managed to find the neighbourhood of Redfern, where I asked a few random people on the street where the street I was looking for was and got blank looks from most of them. I forget the name of the street now, but the reason I was looking for it was that that was where kurt and his wife live. kurt is the swedish disc golf fanatic I had met the previous weekend. And the reason I was going to his hosue was to get a ride down to Canberra for the tournament. what a funny way to say that. anyhow, I managed to find his house and just about right on time as well, and soon we were a carload headed to the ACT (Austrlian Capitol Territory). though it was too dark to see any of the scenery and too cloudy to see many stars, the ride proved to be a bit of an adventure. we were merrily zooming along the highway at around 110km/hr when suddenly everything went dark. no headlights. none of us had ever had such a thing happen before. luckily, there wasn't too much traffic, no kangaroos in our path, and the emergency flashers still worked. we pulled over and had a look at some fuses but couldn't really find anything wrong, though it was hard to tell with only the light from my little headlamp. luckily again, we were only 2km from an exit and a town, so we slowly crept down the shoulder and pulled in to a gas station. after fruitless consultation of an electrical wiring diagram and the largely erased lid of the fuse relay panel, we made a call to roadside assistance. an hour and a half of gas station merriment pursued before a scruffy man pulled up in a truck to take a look. as it turned out, we were on the right track with the fuses, and by pulling a fuse from the A/C he managed to get the lights going again.
sunday morning after a tour of kurt's inlaws' solar-powered house, we were off to the park. I didn't really know what to expect and was a little bit nervous about the tournament. I definitely didn't expect to do very well given my experience with throwing disc golf discs on tuesday. and everyone I played with could immediately tell I was normally an ultimate player based on the way I threw. We were divided into groups of four and assigned a starting basket (the targets in disc golf are baskets, not holes like in regular golf). we then went through playing an 18-basket course before lunch. With some wild and uncontrolled throws, I ended up with a fairly dismal score of 102 on the par-70 course. At lunch I went off to do some practicing and finally really started to get the hang of how to throw relatively straight. I also practiced a little putting, which is rather difficult since you had to throw high enough and hard enough to land in the basket and yet try to avoid the back-and-forth that can come from missing the target. by the time the second round began (using the same baskets but with completely different tee-off points so that the course was completely changed), I was starting to feel like I had a chance at competing. well, as it turned out I did do Much better (82/par 69), but still did not have sufficient consistency to keep up with everyone else. but now I was really excited about disc golf and eager to play again - I think I am hooked! on the way home, I saw the famous Lake George, we discussed appalling uses of grammar (particularly apostrophes), found "flavour" in orange juice and subway sandwiches, and learned some new Aussie lingo. The biggest discovery was the -o suffix, which seems to be nearly as popular as -ie/-y (Chrissy, Rellies, Aussie, Tassie): common examples include servo (service station/gas station), agro (aggressive), and mando (mandatory).
well, that covers my week. another one is now underway. I think I will treat myself to a birthday dinner at the tasty thai place I was introduced to by Amber and Norbert a couple of weeks ago.
happy trails!
kat
Monday, September 19, 2005
a hike! a hike!
Earlier in the week I vowed I would get out of the city this weekend. I decided to make my first trip easy - Royal National Park is just south of the City and very accessible by public transit. I opted for the "Coast Track" since it is longish and you can get to both ends by train so I wouldn't have to retrace my steps. Also since there was the option to camp in the middle of it which I thought I would do even though it's only a 25km trail - just for the fun of it.
Things ended up going a bit differently than planned, which you already know if you have read my previous blog entry.
You see, it started with friday evening. Friday evening it poured. Though the forecast for Saturday was fine, it was hard to believe it at the time, especially being a westcoaster as I am and therefore skeptical of any weather forecasts (as it is turning out, Sydney forecasts seem to be in fact very good, but it's still hard to believe them sometimes). Anyhow, friday evening. I didn't really like the thought of setting my alarm for sometime before 7am on a weekend day, and it was raining and I didn't feel like packing (not that it would have been difficult given that I have so few things to pack), so I decided to just get up whenever I woke up in the morning and decide what to do then. But also I made plans to go see Charlie and The Chocolate Factory on Saturday night with my flatmate, so I guess I had already made up my mind.
You can refer to the blog entry below for what ended up happening on Saturday, so I will jump right to sunday now. Seeing as this post is supposed to be all about Sunday, it's about time I got to it anyhow.
Sunday. To get to the trailhead, I was to take a bus to a train to a ferry. The first ferry was at 8:30am. Which meant I ought to leave my house around a quarter past 6 in the morning. Accordingly, I set my alarm for some ridiculous hour. When it went off, I decided I wanted more sleep, so I snoozed for another half an hour. Surprisingly, especially since the trains had been replaced by busses due to track work, I still made it to Cronulla (that's cruh-NULL-uh, not CRON-you-lah - if you say it the second way, people will look at you like you're crazy) in time to see the 8:30 ferry pull away from the dock. The next one was at 9:30. So I wandered a little bit and had some juice.
The ferry ride was pretty, but rather cold in the wind when I stood up front. It was a lot like taking the Newcastle Island ferry. On the other side, I wasn't really sure where I was going, but I followed my nose and found the trailhead without any lengthy detours (which is more than I can say for my skill at finding my way home from work, even now that I have had a solid week of practice, but that's another story).
Up to this point, I had looked at a couple of not-especially-helpful trail maps online and that's about it, and I was rather hoping for some sort of information centre near the trailhead, although I new that the main information centre was at a different park entrance. Well, all I got was a big sign including a map behind slightly pock-marked, graffitied plexiglass at the trailhead. I studied it briefly, but since I only intended to hike the coast track (which I figured would be pretty easy to follow), I started off on my way.
About 50 metres up the trail I realized that I had with me both a digital camera and a journal, both of which could be used to produce some sort of portable reproduction of the map, just in case I wanted to refer to it later on. Wisely, I heeded the voice which told me to go back.
The trail was broad as were the vistas - on one side, endless shubbery (the more distant stuff was trees, but standing tall above the nearest ones made it all appear as bushes). On the other, blue water roared in great waves, pounding against white sandstone cliffs and into sandy beaches. The path itself was mostly along the sandstone where there was much freedom and the going was easy.
And so it continued.
It was beautiful. But it was all the same. The only wildlife I saw were birds (though there was a huge one and also many small ones with lovely songs - some of them sounded like they were whistling little tunes) and ants. Small ants and one big one. I have seen many ants before.
I wanted change. I wanted the chance to see a broader array of botanical specimens. Though I thought it unlikely so close to the city, I thought that just maybe if I got into the forest I might see something like a kangaroo. I wanted to take the road less-travelled, as the coast track was a bit of a highway.
Luckily, I had my map (I had taken pictures of it with the digital camera). And even more luckily, my examination of said map showed me that the trail branched very close to where I found myself at that point, which was at Eagle Rock. I had already covered about 15km of the 25km trail since my start a little after 10am, and it was only 1ish. I decided that I had time for the longer route to the train station at the town of Waterfall. (Even considering the risk factor of taking unknown trails on a map, which I have come to be rather distrustful of).
The first section of trail was not especially exciting - it led away from the coast and scrubland into groves of increasingly larger trees (though still not large enough to shade my aching eyes, leading to the creation of some interesting bandana headwear - I need to get some sunglasses!).
The next section was exciting, but only because it was along the side of the highway with cars flying by.
But then I turned off onto the Wallumarra Track. It was spectacular, and incredibly varied. It started off on a broad desertish plain where the scars of a fairly recent (well a few years ago now) forest fire were still quite evident. It then descended among huge hunks of granite into a first dry forest of eucalypts then to a greener land of big palms and tree ferns. There was a little bench at a stream crossing where you could sit and listen to the cries of the birds (and the occasional passing airplane since this wasn't so far from Sydney airport, but that doesn't fit into this picture, so we'll ignore it).
The cries of the birds. Some of them are downright terrifying. It's the pretty birds like the cockatoos and the parakeets that squak and screech like something horrible is happening to them. The little ones and those feathered in gray and black are the ones with the beautiful songs. At UNSW a couple of weeks ago, I walked through a grove of trees at sunset and was surrounded by a chorus of haunting sounds of a bevy of Australian Magpies (they're not so ugly in fact) - it was amazing.
But on this part of the walk it was cockatoos that prevailed. I shrieked up at one as I passed under its tree and it sqwaked back at me indignantly.
Still I was not at the end of my hike. My legs were rather weary by this time, but the trails were still mostly easy, and so I carried on. I had come to the last segment - the Couranga Track which would lead me up to Waterfall. The sun began to sink lower in the sky, which meant it glared directly into my eyes as I walked westward (at least I knew I was still on track!).
I started to hear more noises in the bush around me. And suddenly, I heard a loud sort of thump. And another, behind me. I froze and brought my hand up to try to block the sun so I could see. Another step forward, and another thumping - I spotted it! A cute little wallaby looked back at me, before a final thump and a hop as he scurried away.
That really made the hike complete. I kept my ears open the rest of the way to the train/bus station, but was not so lucky as to see another.
As if I had not had a fabulous day already, a friendly-looking fellow came to wait for the bus with me. He read the back of my tshirt and discovered that I was an ultimate player - turns out he too is into frisbees; in fact, he claimed to be quite a good disc golf player from Sweden. He lamented that there is very little in the way of disc golf here in Australia - in the first tournament he went to, there were only 8 competitors! So we talked about discs and such things and I said I would be happy to play disc golf, which I will be doing tomorrow afternoon and again in a tournament at the start of October! Hooray for new things to do and with new people too!
I have put a few pictures from the hike in my gallery - enjoy!
Things ended up going a bit differently than planned, which you already know if you have read my previous blog entry.
You see, it started with friday evening. Friday evening it poured. Though the forecast for Saturday was fine, it was hard to believe it at the time, especially being a westcoaster as I am and therefore skeptical of any weather forecasts (as it is turning out, Sydney forecasts seem to be in fact very good, but it's still hard to believe them sometimes). Anyhow, friday evening. I didn't really like the thought of setting my alarm for sometime before 7am on a weekend day, and it was raining and I didn't feel like packing (not that it would have been difficult given that I have so few things to pack), so I decided to just get up whenever I woke up in the morning and decide what to do then. But also I made plans to go see Charlie and The Chocolate Factory on Saturday night with my flatmate, so I guess I had already made up my mind.
You can refer to the blog entry below for what ended up happening on Saturday, so I will jump right to sunday now. Seeing as this post is supposed to be all about Sunday, it's about time I got to it anyhow.
Sunday. To get to the trailhead, I was to take a bus to a train to a ferry. The first ferry was at 8:30am. Which meant I ought to leave my house around a quarter past 6 in the morning. Accordingly, I set my alarm for some ridiculous hour. When it went off, I decided I wanted more sleep, so I snoozed for another half an hour. Surprisingly, especially since the trains had been replaced by busses due to track work, I still made it to Cronulla (that's cruh-NULL-uh, not CRON-you-lah - if you say it the second way, people will look at you like you're crazy) in time to see the 8:30 ferry pull away from the dock. The next one was at 9:30. So I wandered a little bit and had some juice.
The ferry ride was pretty, but rather cold in the wind when I stood up front. It was a lot like taking the Newcastle Island ferry. On the other side, I wasn't really sure where I was going, but I followed my nose and found the trailhead without any lengthy detours (which is more than I can say for my skill at finding my way home from work, even now that I have had a solid week of practice, but that's another story).
Up to this point, I had looked at a couple of not-especially-helpful trail maps online and that's about it, and I was rather hoping for some sort of information centre near the trailhead, although I new that the main information centre was at a different park entrance. Well, all I got was a big sign including a map behind slightly pock-marked, graffitied plexiglass at the trailhead. I studied it briefly, but since I only intended to hike the coast track (which I figured would be pretty easy to follow), I started off on my way.
About 50 metres up the trail I realized that I had with me both a digital camera and a journal, both of which could be used to produce some sort of portable reproduction of the map, just in case I wanted to refer to it later on. Wisely, I heeded the voice which told me to go back.
The trail was broad as were the vistas - on one side, endless shubbery (the more distant stuff was trees, but standing tall above the nearest ones made it all appear as bushes). On the other, blue water roared in great waves, pounding against white sandstone cliffs and into sandy beaches. The path itself was mostly along the sandstone where there was much freedom and the going was easy.
And so it continued.
It was beautiful. But it was all the same. The only wildlife I saw were birds (though there was a huge one and also many small ones with lovely songs - some of them sounded like they were whistling little tunes) and ants. Small ants and one big one. I have seen many ants before.
I wanted change. I wanted the chance to see a broader array of botanical specimens. Though I thought it unlikely so close to the city, I thought that just maybe if I got into the forest I might see something like a kangaroo. I wanted to take the road less-travelled, as the coast track was a bit of a highway.
Luckily, I had my map (I had taken pictures of it with the digital camera). And even more luckily, my examination of said map showed me that the trail branched very close to where I found myself at that point, which was at Eagle Rock. I had already covered about 15km of the 25km trail since my start a little after 10am, and it was only 1ish. I decided that I had time for the longer route to the train station at the town of Waterfall. (Even considering the risk factor of taking unknown trails on a map, which I have come to be rather distrustful of).
The first section of trail was not especially exciting - it led away from the coast and scrubland into groves of increasingly larger trees (though still not large enough to shade my aching eyes, leading to the creation of some interesting bandana headwear - I need to get some sunglasses!).
The next section was exciting, but only because it was along the side of the highway with cars flying by.
But then I turned off onto the Wallumarra Track. It was spectacular, and incredibly varied. It started off on a broad desertish plain where the scars of a fairly recent (well a few years ago now) forest fire were still quite evident. It then descended among huge hunks of granite into a first dry forest of eucalypts then to a greener land of big palms and tree ferns. There was a little bench at a stream crossing where you could sit and listen to the cries of the birds (and the occasional passing airplane since this wasn't so far from Sydney airport, but that doesn't fit into this picture, so we'll ignore it).
The cries of the birds. Some of them are downright terrifying. It's the pretty birds like the cockatoos and the parakeets that squak and screech like something horrible is happening to them. The little ones and those feathered in gray and black are the ones with the beautiful songs. At UNSW a couple of weeks ago, I walked through a grove of trees at sunset and was surrounded by a chorus of haunting sounds of a bevy of Australian Magpies (they're not so ugly in fact) - it was amazing.
But on this part of the walk it was cockatoos that prevailed. I shrieked up at one as I passed under its tree and it sqwaked back at me indignantly.
Still I was not at the end of my hike. My legs were rather weary by this time, but the trails were still mostly easy, and so I carried on. I had come to the last segment - the Couranga Track which would lead me up to Waterfall. The sun began to sink lower in the sky, which meant it glared directly into my eyes as I walked westward (at least I knew I was still on track!).
I started to hear more noises in the bush around me. And suddenly, I heard a loud sort of thump. And another, behind me. I froze and brought my hand up to try to block the sun so I could see. Another step forward, and another thumping - I spotted it! A cute little wallaby looked back at me, before a final thump and a hop as he scurried away.
That really made the hike complete. I kept my ears open the rest of the way to the train/bus station, but was not so lucky as to see another.
As if I had not had a fabulous day already, a friendly-looking fellow came to wait for the bus with me. He read the back of my tshirt and discovered that I was an ultimate player - turns out he too is into frisbees; in fact, he claimed to be quite a good disc golf player from Sweden. He lamented that there is very little in the way of disc golf here in Australia - in the first tournament he went to, there were only 8 competitors! So we talked about discs and such things and I said I would be happy to play disc golf, which I will be doing tomorrow afternoon and again in a tournament at the start of October! Hooray for new things to do and with new people too!
I have put a few pictures from the hike in my gallery - enjoy!
Friday, September 16, 2005
september 17th
Yesterday was gray and rainy. Which is what makes this beautiful sunny day all the more wonderful! I decided that this was a day for a slow, easy morning followed by a ride and some exploring.
So, I woke up, had some breakfast, made some cookies, lounged around, then packed a few things in my backpack and set off, generally heading South.
My first big find was a mere 10 minutes from my house, and looked a little something like this:
.
It's called Malabrar Rock Pool, and the water temperature seemed just right. I strongly regretted not having my swimsuit. I took a look at a few tidepools then carried on, planning to come back soon to swim.
My next stop was at the northern end of Botany Bay National Park. There was a little boardwalk trail leading through a grove of banksia scrub. I saw a kookaburra sitting in a youngish gum tree and suddenly felt like I was really in AUSTRALIA, and really in another world. The upper branches of the gum trees danced gracefully in the breeze to bid me farewell as I returned to my bicycle.
I carried on, generally following the coast as closely as the roads would allow and soon enough came to a park and some sandy beaches with kitesurfers zooming across the waves. There was a little cafe selling fish and chips so I decided to get some to eat by the beach. I'm not sure exactly what alerted the seagulls, but I was swarmed as soon as I sat down. Since it was so windy, they could just hover above my head facing into the breeze - there were at least 20 birds and some of them were flying a foot or 2 above me. As I failed to drop anything, they slowly came down and settled around me on the beach, still keenly watching for a chance to dine. Eventually one of them decided he had some sort of claim on me and started to chase away all of the other birds, squaking loudly if a new one approached from the air. It was then I remembered that I had had a similar experience eating by a beach in Australia before, back on my bike trip. Then too I had had a seagull protector who took it upon himself to chase all of the other birds away. They can be very helpful, especially since they are so busy chasing the others that you end up without anyone eyeing your lunch at all. Many pictures of seagulls followed.
From lunch, I proceeded down the bay (it is Botany Bay I had started following) until I came to one of the many enormous seaside cemetaries I have noticed around town. This one seemed to be segregated with streetsigns pointing out Catholic and Anglican areas.
My last stop before turning back towards home (on an inland route this time) was the Botany Bay Port where you can follow a road out the peninsula for some pretty views around the bay.
I was surprised when I cut back to find that I was far closer to home than I expected to be, so here I am stopping in for a quick break and to pick up my swimsuit. A quick dip in the pool then it will be time for dinner, after which I am off to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with my flatmate Kelly.
What a fantastic day!
ps. I have put some new pictures up in my gallery... and I do have a few others soon to come
So, I woke up, had some breakfast, made some cookies, lounged around, then packed a few things in my backpack and set off, generally heading South.
My first big find was a mere 10 minutes from my house, and looked a little something like this:
.It's called Malabrar Rock Pool, and the water temperature seemed just right. I strongly regretted not having my swimsuit. I took a look at a few tidepools then carried on, planning to come back soon to swim.
My next stop was at the northern end of Botany Bay National Park. There was a little boardwalk trail leading through a grove of banksia scrub. I saw a kookaburra sitting in a youngish gum tree and suddenly felt like I was really in AUSTRALIA, and really in another world. The upper branches of the gum trees danced gracefully in the breeze to bid me farewell as I returned to my bicycle.
I carried on, generally following the coast as closely as the roads would allow and soon enough came to a park and some sandy beaches with kitesurfers zooming across the waves. There was a little cafe selling fish and chips so I decided to get some to eat by the beach. I'm not sure exactly what alerted the seagulls, but I was swarmed as soon as I sat down. Since it was so windy, they could just hover above my head facing into the breeze - there were at least 20 birds and some of them were flying a foot or 2 above me. As I failed to drop anything, they slowly came down and settled around me on the beach, still keenly watching for a chance to dine. Eventually one of them decided he had some sort of claim on me and started to chase away all of the other birds, squaking loudly if a new one approached from the air. It was then I remembered that I had had a similar experience eating by a beach in Australia before, back on my bike trip. Then too I had had a seagull protector who took it upon himself to chase all of the other birds away. They can be very helpful, especially since they are so busy chasing the others that you end up without anyone eyeing your lunch at all. Many pictures of seagulls followed.
From lunch, I proceeded down the bay (it is Botany Bay I had started following) until I came to one of the many enormous seaside cemetaries I have noticed around town. This one seemed to be segregated with streetsigns pointing out Catholic and Anglican areas.
My last stop before turning back towards home (on an inland route this time) was the Botany Bay Port where you can follow a road out the peninsula for some pretty views around the bay.
I was surprised when I cut back to find that I was far closer to home than I expected to be, so here I am stopping in for a quick break and to pick up my swimsuit. A quick dip in the pool then it will be time for dinner, after which I am off to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with my flatmate Kelly.
What a fantastic day!
ps. I have put some new pictures up in my gallery... and I do have a few others soon to come
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
cycling in Sydney vs Vancouver
Today I rode my flatmate Kelly's bike to work. My first time riding a bike in Sydney was.. interesting...
Cycling in Vancouver: wet, rain, wet, cold. But overall very nice bike routes and generally a lack of danger. Except whan it's raining and people decide to ignore red lights.
Cycling in Sydney: dry, sunny, dry. But awfully frightening, at least to a newbie. Sure, there's a dedicated bike trail for part of my ride. But to get on to it, you have to cross 6 lanes of traffic! Also, dooring seems a constant danger (that is when people in parked cars decide to fling open their doors into the bike lane (or pseudo-bike-lane, since there aren't really very many bike lanes that I've seen)). And then there are the jaywalkers. A german would surely be completely shocked by the utter disregard for traffic signals by pedestrians. But here it just seems to be normal. It's unheard of to actually wait for the little green man. Back to biking. There is also nowhere to park downtown. No bike racks anywhere near my work, as far as I could tell. I expected there would be somewhere for me to put a bike in my building (like in the parkade or something), but no. Apparently people pay a fortune for the parking spots down there so no bikes are allowed?? The fortune I can't even imagine.. one of the guys in my office told me he parked downtown for 3 hours yesterday and it cost him $54!! I don't know if that was in our parkade or elsewhere, but I still can't believe it. It's really not a very nice parkade either - they let me put my bike down there just for the day today. Despite their utter lack of cycling amenities, the city of Sydney has some pretty spiffy little bike route descriptions with pretty little yellow bikes and all like this. "the cyclist is encouraged to use the pedestrian crossings at Elizabeth and Foveaux St to reach Mary St. No specific bicycle treatments can be proposed on-road or off-road due to very high vehicle and pedestrian movements." Thanks. Very helpful.
sigh. oh well. the biking is just fine at 6am :)
really I'm only bitter because I didn't exactly retrace my pedals coming home and ending up going around in circles for a while before I made it out of town.
according to googlefight, cycling in Sydney is more popular: googlefight
Cycling in Vancouver: wet, rain, wet, cold. But overall very nice bike routes and generally a lack of danger. Except whan it's raining and people decide to ignore red lights.
Cycling in Sydney: dry, sunny, dry. But awfully frightening, at least to a newbie. Sure, there's a dedicated bike trail for part of my ride. But to get on to it, you have to cross 6 lanes of traffic! Also, dooring seems a constant danger (that is when people in parked cars decide to fling open their doors into the bike lane (or pseudo-bike-lane, since there aren't really very many bike lanes that I've seen)). And then there are the jaywalkers. A german would surely be completely shocked by the utter disregard for traffic signals by pedestrians. But here it just seems to be normal. It's unheard of to actually wait for the little green man. Back to biking. There is also nowhere to park downtown. No bike racks anywhere near my work, as far as I could tell. I expected there would be somewhere for me to put a bike in my building (like in the parkade or something), but no. Apparently people pay a fortune for the parking spots down there so no bikes are allowed?? The fortune I can't even imagine.. one of the guys in my office told me he parked downtown for 3 hours yesterday and it cost him $54!! I don't know if that was in our parkade or elsewhere, but I still can't believe it. It's really not a very nice parkade either - they let me put my bike down there just for the day today. Despite their utter lack of cycling amenities, the city of Sydney has some pretty spiffy little bike route descriptions with pretty little yellow bikes and all like this. "the cyclist is encouraged to use the pedestrian crossings at Elizabeth and Foveaux St to reach Mary St. No specific bicycle treatments can be proposed on-road or off-road due to very high vehicle and pedestrian movements." Thanks. Very helpful.
sigh. oh well. the biking is just fine at 6am :)
really I'm only bitter because I didn't exactly retrace my pedals coming home and ending up going around in circles for a while before I made it out of town.
according to googlefight, cycling in Sydney is more popular: googlefight
Sunday, September 11, 2005
time travel
here we go, back in time to a week ago...
I am sitting in the airport at Nadi in Fiji. Local time is around 7 am – about 15.5 hours ago, I took off on a small and sparsely populated plane from Vancouver. We rose above sparse cloud cover as the sun sunk below the horizon. The mountains ringed with cloud were beautiful. The trip across Georgia Strait which earlier that morning had taken well over an hour was now completed in a matter of minutes, and soon the eastern coast of Vancouver Island was behind us. I think we may have flown over the Broken Group, which I paddled earlier in the summer, but then again, we had started veering south and so perhaps my geography is off. I was hoping we would keep up with the sunset, but as I just said, we turned southwards instead, later making a 90 degree turn westward (after complete darkness had descended). Out of my window, I saw the big dipper low on the horizon.
We touched down in Honolulu sometime in the middle of the night, and the only cultural aspect I experienced as I waited in a small waiting room for an hour and a half was listening to announcements about the designated smoking areas – a presumably Hawaiin word stuck out of the otherwise engligh recorded message – my guess is that it meant something like ‘respect’.
My companion on the plane was a woman named Joy who hailed from Canberra (though originally a Canadian). She knew of WebCT through her work as a sort of librarian at an Australian university. She now works for the National Gallery in Canberra and invited me to drop by and say hello if I made it there in my travels.
I slept for a large chunk of the 6 hour flight from Honolulu to Fiji, after watching a ‘Pink Lady’ become accidentally involved in the deaths of countless Elvis impersonators in the inflight movie: “Elvis has Left the Building”. I awoke to watch our descent into the Figean Islands, where the lights of civilization were far fewer and farther between than they had been in Vancouver or Honolulu. It was like peering at a strange starscape where each island was a unique constellation dotted with occasional stars of light. As me got lower and closer to Nadi, the light sources became closer together and were no longer point-like.. something like zooming in on a globular cluster like you might see in an image from a space telescope.
Though we arrived at the airport before 5am local time, we were greeted by a group of guitar and ukulele players singing a traditional song of welcome, occasionally shouting a warm “Bula!” whenever there was a pause in the lyrics. Joy invited me to be her guest in the members and guests-only Qantas lounge, so I decided to check it out. There were couches and chairs, counters with an array of toasters, bread, and condiments, and refrigerators stocked with juice, water, and other beverages. I picked up a copy of the New Zealand Herald and a tomato juice and sat down to read. In fact, the best part of the lounge was the bathroom – compared to the airplane’s cubicles, it was very luxurious. There was even a shower with towels provided, but having no change of clothes, I did not take advantage of this.
I have now moved back up to the regular waiting area, from where I have a nice view out a window-lined wall of a sunny scene with craggy hills, palm trees, and sunshine. Though I don’t have an internet connection, I thought I would write this up to send off a little later. In a little more than an hour and a half, I will be on a plane again for the final leg of my journey to Sydney!
I am sitting in the airport at Nadi in Fiji. Local time is around 7 am – about 15.5 hours ago, I took off on a small and sparsely populated plane from Vancouver. We rose above sparse cloud cover as the sun sunk below the horizon. The mountains ringed with cloud were beautiful. The trip across Georgia Strait which earlier that morning had taken well over an hour was now completed in a matter of minutes, and soon the eastern coast of Vancouver Island was behind us. I think we may have flown over the Broken Group, which I paddled earlier in the summer, but then again, we had started veering south and so perhaps my geography is off. I was hoping we would keep up with the sunset, but as I just said, we turned southwards instead, later making a 90 degree turn westward (after complete darkness had descended). Out of my window, I saw the big dipper low on the horizon.
We touched down in Honolulu sometime in the middle of the night, and the only cultural aspect I experienced as I waited in a small waiting room for an hour and a half was listening to announcements about the designated smoking areas – a presumably Hawaiin word stuck out of the otherwise engligh recorded message – my guess is that it meant something like ‘respect’.
My companion on the plane was a woman named Joy who hailed from Canberra (though originally a Canadian). She knew of WebCT through her work as a sort of librarian at an Australian university. She now works for the National Gallery in Canberra and invited me to drop by and say hello if I made it there in my travels.
I slept for a large chunk of the 6 hour flight from Honolulu to Fiji, after watching a ‘Pink Lady’ become accidentally involved in the deaths of countless Elvis impersonators in the inflight movie: “Elvis has Left the Building”. I awoke to watch our descent into the Figean Islands, where the lights of civilization were far fewer and farther between than they had been in Vancouver or Honolulu. It was like peering at a strange starscape where each island was a unique constellation dotted with occasional stars of light. As me got lower and closer to Nadi, the light sources became closer together and were no longer point-like.. something like zooming in on a globular cluster like you might see in an image from a space telescope.
Though we arrived at the airport before 5am local time, we were greeted by a group of guitar and ukulele players singing a traditional song of welcome, occasionally shouting a warm “Bula!” whenever there was a pause in the lyrics. Joy invited me to be her guest in the members and guests-only Qantas lounge, so I decided to check it out. There were couches and chairs, counters with an array of toasters, bread, and condiments, and refrigerators stocked with juice, water, and other beverages. I picked up a copy of the New Zealand Herald and a tomato juice and sat down to read. In fact, the best part of the lounge was the bathroom – compared to the airplane’s cubicles, it was very luxurious. There was even a shower with towels provided, but having no change of clothes, I did not take advantage of this.
I have now moved back up to the regular waiting area, from where I have a nice view out a window-lined wall of a sunny scene with craggy hills, palm trees, and sunshine. Though I don’t have an internet connection, I thought I would write this up to send off a little later. In a little more than an hour and a half, I will be on a plane again for the final leg of my journey to Sydney!
Friday, September 09, 2005
a home! a home!
yes, I have a home! It is in the suburb called Maroubra (where suburbs do not mean quite the same thing as they do in Vancouver - it's not as if I'm living in Langley!). Suburbs around Sydney are what I would probably call neighbourhoods. And if I had to equate Maroubra with one of the neighbourhoods I know in Vancouver, well hmm I don't know Marpole very well, but maybe something like that. Except with a beach. It's a little way from the city and not so trendy (the equivalent of Kits might be something like Bondi, which is where my hostel was). I expect my ride in to the city (whenever I manage to get myself a bike) will probably take about as long as my ride from Commercial to UBC took (i.e. a little under an hour). I am glad for that. And though I'm not certain what route I will take, at least part of it will be on a dedicated bike trail through some parks, so that will be nice. I have a couple of friendly roommates named Kelly and Cameron, a balcony right off of my room, a deck, an orange tree in the backyard, and some lovely green carpeting. When I get around to it, it will probably take me about 10 minutes to walk down to what I have heard several people call the best surfing beach in Sydney. hmm.. perhaps I should give surfing another try.
Anyhoo, if you want my address and phone number, send me an email with the word kookaburra in the subject line and I will send it to you (assuming I know you :).
kat.
Anyhoo, if you want my address and phone number, send me an email with the word kookaburra in the subject line and I will send it to you (assuming I know you :).
kat.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
looking for a home..
grr for lost connections and interrupted emailings! I already had a good solid 3 or 4 paragraphs and now they have vanished. sigh.
anyhow, as I was saying.. here I am.. my third day in Sydney. I haven't made any postings yet for two reasons. 1. I have an entry that I wrote in
the fiji airport sitting on my work laptop, but I haven't posted it because I dropped the laptop off at the office for safekeeping (rather than keeping it with me in a hostel), and so my blog entry will sti there until monday when I report for my first day of work. 2. I have been really busy with moving from hostel to hostel, looking for a place to live, and generally learning how to live in Sydney.
I never really thought about how much is involved in getting to know a new big city, but it's quite the task. You have to learn how the public
transit system works, where the good and not-so-good neighbourhoods are, where people put up postings for rooms to let, the local lingo (let=rent, city=downtown, etc), where to buy things, where to get things for free, not to mention just how to find your way around!
So far I have looked at 2 potential sources of accomodation - the first was a 2-bedroom flat at Coogee Beach shared by 3 girls (I would make 4), but they might be leaving in a couple of weeks so that's not ideal. The second was a 2 bedroom apartment shared with an indian guy, which was ok - good in a lot of ways. But neither really felt like home. And so the
search continues...
Yesterday I met up with an ex-WebCT employee named Amber and her husband Norbert. We went out for some excellent thai food (yes, I'm sorry Dusit, excellent thai food does exist outside of Lhy Thai), and then I met their cats. A terrific evening indeed.
Ooh, it is past 9am so the hostel front desk should be open finally. I have been getting up at 6am to the chirpings of exotic birds for the last couple of days, which is nice except that it means waiting around for things to open up. As I will be working at 7am, I figure it is a good habit to keep up, however.
Maybe I will find a home today...
kat.
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