Sydney/Jervis Bay

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We spent St. Patrick's weekend camping in Jervis Bay, New South Wales, a national park along the Eastern Australia coast. After celebrating our favorite holiday early at Scruffy Murphy's in Sydney and then waking up early enough to run 10 blocs to see the Bridge and Opera House, we drove 3 hours to the Park. This was my first camping experience and I was excited to meet the Aboriginal community that lived in the area and were organizing our camping trip.

Much to my dismay, it ended up raining for the majority of the weekend and was much colder than I ever expected. While on a walk with one of our guides, Unlce Barry, we got caught in a downpour and even though I was wearing a raincoat I was eventually soaked through. Needless to say I was NOT a happy camper.

However, we did see some pretty neat stuff, like Wolf spiders (which I almost unknowingly touched and it had a massive egg sac so it was not happy about that) and Funnel Web Spiders (only one of the deadliest kinds) and there was a kangaroo that liked to just lounge around our camp area and really freaked me out a couple of times trying to find my way in the dark to brush my teeth.

While the majority of our trip was spent under a tarp playing card games, the last night the rain did finally clear up and some of the elders from the community came and told us their Dreaming stories and taught us a few of their dances while playing the didjeridoo. One of my favorite stories that was told by Aunt Julie and explained why there is a tsunami on the Eastern Australia coast every 6,000 years or so. During the Dreamtime, or the creation period, two brothers lived up in the sky and were fighting. One brother got so angry he pushed his brother out of the sky and his impact created the ocean. Eventually, the brothers began to miss each other so they schemed to find a way to get the fallen brother back to the sky. They decided that the ocean would gather all of his strength and try to leap up to the sky where his brother would catch him and pull him up the rest of the way. The tsunami is the brother trying to reach back up to the sky and that is why waves build up and crest, always trying to reach the heavens. After we heard more Dreaming stories we got a quick lesson in a few dances, some just for girls (the Emu dance) and some just for boy (the Kangaroo dance). Check out the videos attached to see it as well as hear the didjeridoo!

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Photos

Harbour Bridge
Sarah, Maggie and I spending the morning in downtown Sydney

St. Patty's in Sydney
Posing with the bouncers outside Scruffy Murphy's

Our campsite
The tents were already set up for us, thank goodness! And we had cots in them too. Now that's my kind of camping

Inside the tents
Cots! It rained so much and our floor was so wet I don't know what I would have done without them

Headlamp!
This "torch" ended up being a lifesaver at night. And so convenient!

Parrots
You had to be careful or they would swoop in and steal your dinner

Dinner
Emu sausage and Kangaroo steak. I preferred the emu. Who knew?

Our neighbor
Woke me up numerous times in the night as he moved between tents

Ancient Stone Carving
This is a 3,000 year old carving site - they worked the stones against the ground to make spear blades

Carving
We were encouraged to try it out

Wolf Spider!
I almost touched her and her massive egg sac. Would have been the end of me!

Campfire
It finally stopped raining long enough to have a campfire. We took advantage of the opportunity to dry out our sneakers but one girl's sock got sacrificed to the blaze.