Camping and Rock Climbing in the Grampians

After the Dunkeld horse races, Zack and I spent the night camping in the Grampians with Todd and Alena. I was excited to have found American-style marshmallows at the South Melbourne Market, so we could make proper S'mores!

The boys went scrounging around the campground for some wood and came back with several dead trees. In no time at all, they had a huge fire going!

We enjoyed our S'mores and played with some sparklers before going to bed. We also enjoyed stargazing, as there were thousands visible from our campsite. And I finally found the Southern Cross constellation in the sky!

In the morning, I caught this kangaroo licking the leftover chocolate from our S'mores off the tray. Yum!

We spent the morning rock climbing. As usual, I was not very good at it, but I made it up every route I tried (just a lot more slowly than everyone else!). Here's a picture of Zack doing a climb, but the camera was on a weird setting, so that's why it looks strange.

After some climbing, we hiked over to where we were going to do some abseiling. On the way, we found an echidna, and our rock climbing guide said we could pet it (I had always thought they were too sharp to touch). It felt like running your hand over a bunch of little plastic knitting needles.

Then we did some abseiling in the same spot we had done it when we visited the Grampians in March. It wasn't scary at all this time, and I went a lot faster on the way down. That's me at the top of this picture!

It was a beautiful weekend for camping and climbing, and we ended our time in the Grampians with a delicious lunch at a little cafe at the Mount Zero Olive Grove. I bought some of their delicious oil, along with lentils and falafel mix. So yummy. Though it's more than a three hour drive from Melbourne, we love spending the weekend in the Grampians!

Dunkeld Country Cup

A few weekends ago, we went to the Dunkeld Country Cup horse races. It was less crowded than the Tatts Cox Plate we went to back in October, and a little more laid back in that we could get right up to the fence and see the horses run right by. Thanks to Alena for loaning me her fun hat/fascinator!

Nigel and Zack placing bets.

We went with our friends Adam and Emily (who had Colorado friends visiting), Nigel and Kristy, and Todd and Alena. Everyone brought food, so we had a nice picnic to enjoy between races. Zack and I would usually place $5 bets on each race. As usual, we won some and lost some-nothing too major in either direction.

Alena organized us getting an "umbrella package," so we had a table and seats reserved for us to use all day. It was nice to have a place to set our stuff and relax and eat.

Depending on the length of the race, sometimes they started right in front of the audience. In this particular one, a horse got pretty rowdy in the starting gate and the jockey fell off and hurt her wrist. She and the horse had to drop out of the race.

It was a beautiful Saturday in a very pretty setting, and we had a great time at this country race. Along with Todd and Alena, we spent the night in the nearby Grampians National Park, camping and then rock climbing the next day. But I'll leave that for my next post!

Nigel, Kristy, Scott, Cierra, Emily, Adam, Alena, Todd, me, and Zack

Jon Visits

The South Melbourne Market Tram 96 stop near our place-here I am sending Jon off at the end of his stay.

Back in September, our friend Jon came out to Australia for a three week trip. Before and after his tours of Sydney, Western Australia, and Tasmania, he stayed with us in Melbourne. I've known Jon for about seven years. He was one of the first people to join the soccer team I started back in Denver, and he keeps the Smurf team going today! The Smurfs used to do a lot of camping, karaoke nights, parties, and BBQs together back in the day. It was good to reconnect with a Colorado friend.

Jon and I biked down to Brighton Beach on the afternoon he arrived, with a stop in St Kilda. We got some takeaway from Bala's and enjoyed our lunch on the beach. Luckily, we had a nice, sunny day for our ride.

The next day, I drove Jon down part of the Great Ocean Road. 

He was lucky enough to get to see several Australian animals all in one day!

I spotted this echidna on the side of the road; it looks like it got its nose stuck in some sort of ring!

We saw plenty of kangaroos on the Anglesea golf course.

Jon has a pretty sweet zoom lens, so I used his camera to get this shot of a guy at Bells Beach.

We didn't go all the way to Cape Otway Road, but we saw plenty of koalas near Kennett River.

And while we were out of the car looking for koalas, I spotted a kookaburra!

So I'd say it was a pretty successful day trip down to the Great Ocean Road and hopefully a good start to Jon's Australian experience. He has some cool pictures of the other parts of his trip (and all his trips-he's quite the world traveler) on his website-check it out: www.sunlightpeak.com/travel/

Thanks for the cool pictures Jon, and I hope you enjoyed your time in Australia!

It wasn't easy, but we found a place in Melbourne that serves kangaroo for dinner!

Last Day in Litchfield

We woke up to our final day in the Northern Territory after a great night's sleep in our cute little hut. We still had things to see in Litchfield National Park before driving back to Darwin.

Buley Rockhole is an awesome place in the park. It's a series of waterfalls and naturally created rock pools. You have hundreds of personal little pools to choose from, and we had fun climbing around in many of them.

Playing in Buley Rockhole.

See the tiny termite mound?

After playing around for awhile, we walked the path to Florence Falls. It was a pleasant walk with informational signs and rainforest-type plants along the way.

Overlook of Florence Falls

We did our last waterfall swim in the Northern Territory here in Florence Falls. There were several other people there (you can drive to it as well), but it wasn't overly crowded. Can you spot Zack's head in this picture?

Zack of course wasn't content with just swimming and relaxing; he had to do a jump.

There were tons of fish underwater. These might be barramundi; I'm not sure. I do know I ate barramundi a few times on this trip-yum!

We enjoyed swimming under the waterfall for awhile before heading back toward Buley Rockhole and our station wagon. We had to go drop off our car in Darwin and catch our flight home.

Our final waterfall swim!

Flying out of Darwin.

Our trip to the Northern Territory was amazing, and we packed a lot into five days. The Yellow Water crocodile cruise and our hike to Edith Falls were probably my favorite parts of the trip, but I have lots of awesome memories. If you're interested in seeing the "real" Australia, and you love outdoor adventures, I would highly recommend a trip to this part of the country. But be prepared for lots of driving...these national parks are big, and they're not right next to each other! Anyway, that's the last of my posts about this trip, so now I can hopefully catch up with posts about lots of other things we've been doing lately.

Living it Up in Litchfield

After visiting the termite mounds in Litchfield National Park, we checked out the lookout platform over Tolmer Falls. You can't go to the bottom of this waterfall, because colonies of rare bats live down there. It's one of the tallest waterfalls in the park, and though the water volume wasn't large while we were there, the height of it made it quite impressive.

Can you spot the swimmers under the waterfall?

Next, we stopped by Wangi Falls. There were tons of huge spiders in the plants along the banks of the plunge pool, so Zack took lots of pictures of those (he's obsessed with spiders). Wangi Falls is a popular swimming spot; many people from Darwin take day trips here to cool off.

These Aboriginal girls talked to us for a little while. They were very interested in where we were from and why we were in Australia. I asked them if they had ever seen crocodiles in this swimming area. They nonchalantly replied, "Of course, but just freshwater ones," and they didn't seem to be worried about it at all!

There aren't many food options in the park, but we found a place called Litchfield Safari Camp where we could get some dinner. It was a family-run operation. The Australian bloke showed us our options on the whiteboard out front, his wife cooked our burgers out back, and his daughter and son helped run the "camp." We felt like total tourists, especially as I snapped pictures of these kangaroos while we waited for our food.

Our last Northern Territory sunset.

Our original plan was to camp back at Wangi Falls, but the heat was so intolerable that we knew we wouldn't get any sleep. Sweat was literally dripping off of our faces. Plus, we didn't have any sleeping bags or pillows (the rental car company was supposed to supply them along with the tent but didn't), and we were tired of sleeping on our clothes. So we drove and found a cute little place to stay for the night, and on our steps, we saw this cool green tree frog. Actually, there were several huge toads around the grounds.

There's one other story about camping that I forgot to mention back in the Kakadu posts, but I want to remember it, so I'll put it here. We had set up our tent at an area called Mardugal after doing the Yellow Water crocodile cruise. There were various signs about crocs in the area (though you see those pretty much everywhere in the Northern Territory), and we were literally the only ones at the campground (low season). So we were lying in the tent, trying to get comfortable and get to sleep on top of our clothes and in the heat, when we suddenly heard noises. Not just normal noises...noises of something moving. Something (or someone!) was taking a few steps, stopping, and then taking some more steps. I promise that this wasn't just the breeze or regular camping noises; trust me-we camp a lot, and I know! So Zack and I, who if you'll remember had just seen over a dozen deadly crocodiles a few hours earlier, started panicking a little bit. Here we were in the middle of a deserted campground and something was definitely out there. So Zack, who I think had watched too many YouTube croc videos, decided we needed to get into the car to protect ourselves. Unfortunately, the noise was coming from the direction of the car. This meant we had to make a run for it! So we made our plan: Zack would unzip the tent, and we'd both make a mad dash for the driver's side door and jump in as soon as he got it unlocked. And that's what we did! I ended up on his lap, as there was no way I was going to run around to the other side of the car and get in that way-that's where the noise was! Then there was the dilemma of getting our tent into the car and getting out of there, as we knew neither of us would sleep well after hearing whatever we heard. So we backed the station wagon right up to the tent with the lights on, Zack quickly jumped out and shoved the whole thing into the trunk, and we drove off to the much more populated (and therefore safer!) Gagudju Lodge campground for a decent night's sleep. Well, as decent as can be had when sleeping on the hard ground in 85+ degree temperatures. I actually ended up moving to the backseat of the car for the early morning hours, because my back and hips hurt so much. Anyway, we'll never know what we heard out there in the wilderness...it could have been a wallaby or a big bird or even just a frog hopping around. But we like to think we escaped certain death from a crocodile dragging us off never to be heard from again!

Tons of Termite Mounds

It looks like a strange type of graveyard, right?

One of our first stops upon arriving in Litchfield National Park on our Northern Territory trip was an area where you could see tons of termite mounds. We had already seen several in Kakadu National Park and while driving all around the Northern Territory, but we hadn't seen so many in one place before. These structures are pretty fascinating. Termites feed on grass and plant debris found in areas that are flooded during the wet season, so they have to live above ground in the mounds. Inside the mounds are complex tunnels, arches, chimneys, insulation, etc.

The compass termite is responsible for making the magnetic termite mounds. These mounds are all aligned in a north-south orientation, with the broad faces aimed east and west. This acts as a temperature control mechanism, allowing the least possible surface area to be exposed to the sun. Our guide on the Kakadu tour told us that the temperature only fluctuates 0.2 degrees within the mound!

Below is a picture of a cathedral mound made by woodland termites. Some of these were massive! In the Kakadu post, I am standing next to one, so you can get an idea of the height. These mounds are made of chewed wood, mud, and feces (yum). If humans made a similar structure, it would be over a kilometer high!

Who knew that termites did something besides eat wood and cause problems?!

December 1 Down Under

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How does one spend a Saturday in Australia? Well, here's a little glimpse of how we spent our Saturday, December 1st, which is the first day of summer.

First, Zack and I walked to a nearby restaurant for brunch. Afterward, I stopped by the South Melbourne Market for some fresh fruits, vegetables, and our favorite Tasmanian salmon.

On the walk home, I checked out the monthly Bank Street Market, where I found these colorful flowers.

The weather was perfect, so Zack and I biked down to the beach and drank some ciders on the sand.

Zack jammed on his guitar for awhile, and at one point, he even had a little girl on the path above us accompanying him on the "drums." She was actually quite good at keeping the beat!




















I enjoyed catching up on some reading...

...and found the people watching to be quite interesting. I have no idea why this guy was collecting all these sticks. And you should be glad I spared you the front view. Did I ever mention that Speedos are called budgie smugglers in Australia? I will not elaborate on the reasons!










We met up with our friends Todd and Alena for dinner at a Turkish restaurant near the market. After a huge, authentic meal (Zack's Turkish coffee and gross Turkish delight are pictured here), we headed to a local bar for a drink and to play some cards to end the night. It's nice to have friends from Chicago who know how to play euchre!

So I'd say that was a pretty good start to our summer, eh?