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Published: March 18th 2011
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Organ Pipes and Hanging Rocks
I'll start updating this blog more regularly again from this week on.
My lectures are slowly getting past de introductory phase. It was about time, because we're already 3 weeks in the 12 week short semester. Especially the neuroscience classes really complement my curriculum. The knowledge from all life science courses (cell biology, biochemistry etc.) that I have been taking at UCU is now used to study the brain, which the big nerd in me finds exciting.
Yesterday, 12/3, Joe, Andrew, Adam and I went on a daytrip together. Everyone else we knew was either at a folk music festival or at the Great Ocean Road for the weekend. The sight of spending all Saturday at the halls wasn't a very good one, so we decided to explore Melbourne's surroundings. The lonely planet on my bookshelf always comes in handy in such situations. We found a few national parks approximately 1.5 hours removed from Melbourne city. I am not allowed to drive a rental car here (too young), but fortunately the others could. Joe is from London, so he was even used to driving on the left side of the road.
Our
first stop was Organ Pipes National Park. Only one other car was standing at the parking lot when we arrived. Probably because it was so quiet, we spotted a kangaroo on our walk to the Organ Pipes. The next thing we spotted was the Rosette Rock (looked a tad different from the Rosetta Stonde in the British Museum). The Organ Pipes themselves were large, vertical, basalt rock formations in the form of -yes- organ pipes! Pretty, but to call the place a national park was too much of an honour for two nice rock formations. Besides kangaroos, also some less nice creatures were present in this park: big, fat, black- and whitestriped spiders in huge spiderwebs. I obviously let the others go first in case there was one hanging above the walking track. As I was the shortest of the bunch, I reduced the chances of walking into a spiderweb near zero.
Next stop was the
hanging rock at the Mt Macedon park. This rock had a prominent role in the famous movie (who hasn't watched it) 'picnic at the hanging rock', which was based on a book about a group of schoolgirls that mysteriously disappeared at this location.
Organ Pipes' Spiders
On this picture the thingie in the middle might not look very impressive, but it really was a fat spider hanging in its gigantic web. After a nice lunch we made the short and quite steep walk up to the group of rocks on top of the hill. From there we had a good view over Victoria. The landscape can be described as British with an exotic twist: hills covered in trees and farms. Not much spiders to be seen round here, but as it is Australia this place had its own creepy insect: flying ants. European ones aren't exactly the nicest creatures to have in your garden, but these ones are even scary. They are about two to three times as long as normal ants and much fatter. Then, add some impressive wings and you have the Australian flying ants.
We weren't quite decided on what to do next (plus we'd been driving without a map all day), so we asked the ranger for some advice on where to go next. That way, we ended up doing a 2.5 hour hike to another viewpoint called 'the camel's hump'. Instead of the normally friendly staff at the cafe at the start of the track, the ones here were terrible. It was 29 degrees outside, the water in the toilets was unsuitable for consumption and
Organ Pipes
Unfortunately, no music to be heard here. at the cafe they wouldn't let anyone get some tap water. Instead they charged $2.80 for a bottle of water. Naturally did not stop for an ice cream on the way back. Instead, we went to the town Bendigo 90 km down the road that the ranger had recommended us. It turned out to be a lovely town with a city centre full of Victorian Architecture. It's incredibly how they managed to build a gigantic church for this town in the middle of nowhere. We had dinner there and then it was time to head back to Melbourne again.
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wilma en jan
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hoi lisa, leuk om ook jouw verhalen te lezen, wij volgen op dit moment 3 studenten, mijn neefje zit in sydney waar ook hij het erg naar zijn zin heeft en mijn nichtje verblijft in Guatemala voor haar stage pedagogiek en van jullie allemaal lees ik zulke fantastische verhalen, wat jou betreft bezig zijn met de wetenschap van de hersenen lijkt mij ook erg interessant. Daarnaast krijg je als lezer en kijker (van de foto's) ook een beeld van al het moois in Australiƫ. We blijven je volgen. hartelijke groet vanuit ons kikkerlandje, wilma en jan