Bushwalking

To start, let me first define the term bushwalking, so no one is confused. The "Bush" is basically the outdoors, as in nature, or the wilderness. Whereas the American frontier was a bountiful land ripe for settling, the Australian bush has a richer history of drought and dying, stemming especially from Burke and Wills who were too gentlemen turned explorers who tried to cross central Australia and, unlike Lewis and Clark's eventual success in America, died. But while the bush has an association with death, it is also seen in the way nature is generally, as a place of getting away from the city and feeling connected to the land, etc.

My journey into the bush began in Melbourne. Simon was going to come but had to cancel at the last minute. It took us about five hours or so to drive up there. One of the guys I met on the trip (oh yeah, I went on the trip with Mumc, Melbourne Uni Mountaineering Club) was a guy named Eng, although he has always been called Egg, even by his family. Theres a picture of him towards the end. He did a mandatory year or two in the Singapore army, and was a very efficient outdoorsman, and had some cool gadgets, such as a mini flamethrower thing to toast sandwiches. Altogether there were three carloads of people. We stopped in a town called Yea on the way up and ate some food. They put your chips (fries) on a 24"x 18" piece of paper and rolled it up into a bundle for you to take. The guy working the counter had a pretty good mustache too, it was slightly pointy at the ends. They were closing so we had to sit outside on the curb, and some local guys passing by jokingly told us to get out of the gutter, nicely enough, although I couldn't understand much else of what they said because their accents were so thick.

The hut we slept in the Saturday night, near the top of the mountain.

We had to drive down this dirt road for almost an hour to get to the campsite, and by then it was almost 2am (we had gotten lost on the way as well). We set up tents and camped. The guy with the stick in the photo above was my tent mate. He was from Thailand, his name is pronounced like My, but I'm not sure how to spell it. Anyways, we awoke the next morning to the final car pulling up, they had left really early that morning to drive up. Most importantly, this character Gary enters the story. The driver said that when he called up Gary at five in the morning (when they were meeting up), he was still at the pub. I thought this was a joke at first, because Gary is the last person I'd expect to stay up partying all night before a bushwalking excursion. Hes fairly quiet and simple, and strikes me as a studious type. It turns out it was true, and although he hadn't been drinking, he had been dancing for five hours. He had managed to get some sleep in the car, but all the water he had brought was inside a McDonalds cup. I think he managed to get some before starting the bushwalk though. He couldn't fit all his stuff in his pack and asked James, the guy driving his car, to carry some of his stuff. He also had brought a pack of 40 frozen Dim Sims, but didn't bring it up the mountain when he was informed there wouldn't be a microwave at the hut.

hors d'euvres! Tuna and oysters.

The trail started out pretty flat. There were lots of Eucalyptus trees. I didn't see any kangaroos, but I did see on by the side of the road on the drive up, although it was dark out so I didn't get a good view. Eventually the trail got steeper. Overall, it was a pretty steep hike, but it was worth it for the sweet views. A fast group emerged and charged ahead while a slower group developed at the back. At the top of the mountain Iain and I, who had got there first, waited around and ate lunch for an hour, and then kept going on to the hut, where the others didn't show up for over an hour. The other fast bushwalkers had taking it easy and stayed back with the slower group. There isn't really much to say about the hike itself, just look at the pictures. There were good views, cool dead snow gum trees, mossi's, etc.

This is "the worlds best toilet" as the group leader said. I thought I was slightly clever by getting this angle with my camera, but then I got totally showed up by this guy with a tripod who took a photo of himself using the toilet, while turning around giving a thumbs up, with the view in the background.

We cooked up some pasta bolognese outside the hut, after are hors d'euvres. It was delicious. Iain is the guy staring down the camera. This one guy who had recently graduated with a degree in chemical engineering had brought up a bottle of ethanol he had made. He used to be president of the schools beer brewing club as well. Through some process you can remove the bad poisons out of the ethanol so you just have a bottle of 90 something percent alcohol that won't kill you (unless you drink more than a cup of it and get alcohol poisoning, since its so strong). It didn't taste much worse than cheap vodka (Vitali, Popov, etc.), and its not like I wanted more than a few swigs. Luckily the spring by the hut had water flowing, so I didn't have to ration my water as conservatively, but I still didn't want to be hiking with a hangover. Egg also brought up a goon cask (aka box of wine) of port and that helped cleanse the palate after the ethanol. We sat around a campfire for awhile, I got to relate some stories about California. One guy was interested in our medical marijuania laws, so I told him about the vaporizer bar at Berkeley Patients Group, not that I've been in :( .

I slept on a loft in the hut, with about four other people but it was roomy. Laying on your back while drifting to sleep, you could see out of a slanted window and look up at the stars which were plentiful in the bush. I had lugged up a tent and didn't even use it, but oh well, it was a sunk cost. I didn't have to carry it down either because I had taken it most of the way up (I was sharing it).


Cool bundle of trees. All the eucalyptus reminded me of home, as did the overall landscape, but it did have its own Australian charm. An Aussie girl on the trip was surprised when I told her we have a lot of eucalyptus in California, until I said they were imported. According to John Steinbeck (in East of Eden) they were used to block wind from blowing seeds away on farms.


Egg, chillen. In the army he learned that it was better to use your pack as a backrest, because you saved energy by not removing it and putting it back on, you get more time to rest, and its like leaning back in a chair.

The second day we walked along this ridge for a good ways. It took a few hours coming down after the ridge walk, and my feet were pretty sore, but it was nice to get out of the city and into the bush and see more of Australia. Often, I reluctant with club activities because its not the same as going out with a group of friends, but everyone was pretty cool and I met some new people. Also, it was my only real way of doing something like this, since the club gives me access to more resources, and to meet people who also like hiking... or bushwalking.

This last week after getting back was a return to working long hours writing about the homoerotic qualities in Donatello's bronze statue of David, but I just got that done, so now I have time to concentrate on the other papers due next week. Rita Diamond from Berkeley has been traveling in Australia, she was also with Kat and Kathleen who opted to head over to New Zealand after being up in Queensland, but Rita's been hanging out in Melbourne for a few days. I just bought a plane ticket for Tasmania during Easter break (I hate refering to it as Easter break, since Easter is only for Christians and children, not that I didn't love chocolate rabbits. I don't regard Christmas as strictly a Christian holiday though). I'm flying into Hobart, the capital (pop. 400k, so about the size of Oakland). Theres two really cool looking skateparks there. Ones a snakerun and bowl from the 80's, and one is a modern street plaza deal. From there, I'm not quite sure on my plans yet. I'm bringing a tent and sleeping bag, and there are bus lines linking the various towns throughout the state. I'm probably going to go down to Cockle Bay, a small port town on the south coast (its the southern most city in Oz). Theres a free campground in the town, and across a bridge from that is a national park. I might go to some tourist spots, like this old convict settlement in Port Arthur (I think). In Tassi's second biggest city, Launceston, theres a river with some cliffs you can jump off into the water, that could be cool. I'm pretty sure I saw some footage in an Anti-Hero video (skateboarding) of them jumping off the bridge in downtown Melbourne into the Yarra river, but I'm not sure if its it, but it was in a clip on Youtube labeled Melbourne tent city throwaway footy or something. I don't know how deep the water is, or how clean. Melbourne is supposed to be one of the cleanest cities in the world (probably judged by air quality), but after I mentioned that my friend Aref pointed out every single piece of littler we passed for the rest of the night, when he wasn't staring down girls.

Once again, these photos will probably get cropped weirdly, just click on them for the full view (and I insist, if not just purely for the composition and framing). At least I figured out how to do the layout better. Theres some more photos of the bushwalk on my photobucket site. I'll try to update my blog sooner next time. Later.

First Week of Classes and the Weekend

First off, I've posted some more photos on this blog entry, but when your done you should cruise over to my new photo bucket page if you want to see more pictures.

http://s629.photobucket.com/albums/uu15/Nathan_DP/


Classes have been pretty good. Modernism is interesting, although so far it has been a little too theory driven, but I'm assuming were going to start analyzing more images starting next week (week 3). Starting next week we'll be looking at specific schools week by week, like Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, Cubism, Expressionism, etc. My renaissance art class is a bit boring, but I think it will get better. Overall, theres isn't a whole lot of time spent in class, compared to America, but there is a lot of readings, and I'll start having to write papers and stuff. Even so, I seems like I'll have plenty of free time. I met a kid in my philosophy class who skates. We might skate this weekend if it doesn't rain (I don't have class tommorow so I was planning on going to this huge rad new skatepark an hour and a half outside of Melbourne by train and bus, but it just started pouring and thundering, so I doubt it will happen now. Just what happened last week...maybe Friday will be dry).

Anyways, on the subject of skating, on friday night Simon and I went out to the pub in Fitzroy because I'm sick of hanging out at the Uni bars. Basically, you get a more 'alternative' crowd in Fitzroy then the preppy college kids at the pubs we have been going to. Some older guy was there with a board so I started talking to him about skating. He started skating in '87 and used to ride for 'Koala Skateboards' back in the day, and apparently once knew Julien Stranger slightly. Anyways, that was interesting enough, but where I'm going with this is that he informed me of a big annual Skate Party happening the next day (last Saturday), the "Shred for Shane" skate jam. It was in memorial for Shane Cross, who for the non-skaters reading, was a young up and coming pro from Australia, known internationally, who tragically died in a drunken motorcycle accident in the past few years. The photo at the top is the guys painting the bowl for the event. It was supposed to start at 4:20 in the afternoon, but I showed up early to skate before it got crowded, but couldn't skate the deepend of the bowl, but still got to skate a bit, drink some beers, and talk to some of the other skaters. In Australia, the government doesn't try to control skateparks as much as in America. Instead of building large cages around the parks so you feel like your in prison and handing out tickets for not wearing pads, the cities generally let the skaters take control of their own park, which means no city permission was needed for painting the bowl, or for the event as a whole as one guy told me. A totally different scene from when the riot police showed up at the Berkeley skatepark, complete with shields, helmets and batons, when Roughneck did their Bay Area BART day tour and chose Berkeley for their final destination point/BBQ area (unfortunetly I don't have a photo handy, there was a good one in an old thrasher though).
To the left is one of the locals (Da Fitzy Crew) doing a noseblunt. You should be able to get a larger image if you click on the photo, or just see all of them on my photobucket page (I'm also learning how to layout the page a bit better now, I just have to move the HTML code around). Anyways, once the painting was finished, the real shredding began and the music started up. Dudes were killing it, so at that point I mainly sat back and watched, cracked open a few more beers and chatted with some more skaters. AC/DC was on the tunes for awhile, then they moved on to some other stuff.

After the Skate Jam, I met back up with Simon and headed over to the "Art House", a bar that I had gone to for a bit the night before on a exchange student pub crawl. The guy who runs the punk/oldschool skateshop told me about a show happening there after I small talked him at the shop. The first band were from Adelaide, called Paper Arms, and sounded sort of like Fugazi. They were good, and Simon really liked them which I was glad about since I had convinced him to come to the show (not that he had anything better to do). The second band wasn't as good, but we were caught up playing pool anyway. I don't care much for TV in general, so when the times at UniLodge get boring I've been playing pool, even though you have to pay. (I'm constructing some cardboard rings to place in the pockets so we'll get unlimited games during each pool session). We played some guy and his girlfriend from Sydney and won, which was different from the night before when we got are arses kicked by these two older guys. Theres also a pool tournament happening at Uni Lodge soon, which I'm entered in. Simon is too self conscious to enter, even though I tried to convince him. I rarely see anyone else playing here, and I can't imagine the competition will be too fierce, but it should be fun regardless, and hopefully free. But I digress, back to the show. The third band was more indie, and they were okay. The last band, A Death in the Family, were pretty good, although the singer was maybe a little too whiny, but it was hard melodic punk. No one was really moving in the audience, but I could still feel the energy. It also turned out the guy from the skateshop was the bassist in the headlining band. This upcoming Sunday I plan to return to the Art House to see Team Rad play, a skate rock/thrash metal band. The bassist skates the Fitzy Bowl heaps, which is how I heard about them, and I hope to do some thrashing to some metal.

My Sunday night plans were a bit of a mystery to myself. A few days before, Simon and I had been playing pool at uni lodge when this Iranian guy Aref we had met once before came to chat with us. He told us he was going to a dance audition (as a viewer of a performance, I think the word 'audition' might have been the wrong word he was looking for), and invited us along. Simon, always trying to be polite, almost immediately signs on, so I agree to as well. Later Simon told me he figured why not, he had never met an Iranian before, and I guess I found the whole situation so novel, it had to be interesting on some level. Of course the next day we were wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. So, Sunday evening, we met up with Aref and this other guy whose name I forget. Oh yeah, there 28, 25 and 26, so I was the youngest person, not that it matters, but just an interesting fact. Simon is the 28 year old, but I wouldn't have guessed it if he hadn't told me. The Dance Recital was at a place called "The Meat Market" which turned out to be...an old meat market. The floor was cobble stone, but like big bricks, so it wasn't uncomfortable to stand on, with a large stage in the middle. I'm getting ahead of myself though, the event was absolutely nothing like I thought it would be. I imagined some sort of stiff, high society ballet or something. It turned out to be some sort of post-modern disco heaven or hell. There were disco balls creating the lighting effects, and each set of dancers performed one traditional three minute dance, and then one disco version of their style of dance. The first was Indian, then Thai, then break dancers, then middle eastern belly dancers or something. It was all pretty strange, but better than I expected because. The crowd seemed like the typical artsy crowd, some older bourgeois types, down to the hipster students. We must have been an interesting group though, two well dressed, well groomed guys with tucked in shirts, one Iranian, one Indian, and two tall kind of grungy white dudes. There were more dancers than the ones I mentioned, but we left early.

Anyways, it stopped raining, I pray (metaphorically of course), that it doesn't rain tommorow and I can go to the Knoxfield skatepark that I mentioned earlier. Otherwise I guess I'll have to get a headstart on my homework. I'm going to check out a restaurant called "MexiCali Rose" in a neighborhood called "Richmond" this weekend. I assume its Mexican food, although I don't know anything about it other than the name, but what else could it be? Its a little dot on a map I have. Check out more of my photos on photo bucket if you'd like, but post a couple from around town down below.

Later, Nathan.

Typical looking houses in urban Australia.


These are the yellow barriers that are all over Melbourne. It's the first thing I skated my first night here. I got a boardslide transfer thing on it, but haven't been able to do much else since.


Lots of Graffiti and street art around Melbourne.


A view from the top floor of my building, too bad the dental hospital gets in the way.

Flemington Drains

Some guys at this skatepark I was at on friday told me about a ditch called the Flemington Drains, and told me I'd probably recognize it from lots of videos. They told me what train stop to get off at and I was able to find it from there. Basically the place is huge, and full of banks. The addition of the wooden ramp isn't all that skateable, and I'm guessing it was a bikers addition. BMX is big in Australia, probably because they're allowed to use skateparks. In some ways, the expanse of the place, and numerous banks make for immense amounts of possibilities, but at the same time a lot of it is the same kind of stuff, banks.



The layout of this post is kind of messed up, this blog service isn't really good at all for posting pictures. I barely have any control over the layout. Also, I have to pay by the bandwith used for the internet in my apartment, so I can't upload a ton of photos, although I guess I could lower the quality. If you click on the images you should get a much larger image with a lot of detail, which probably explains the reason it took over ten minutes for all these to upload.

You also have to watch out your board doesn't go in the little river. Someone built a little bridge, and by built, I mean they placed a plank across it. Different obstacles are on different sides of it, but when I put one foot on the plank, it bent down considerably, and my guess is either little kids put it there and used it since they don't weigh very much, or little kids put it there as a booby trap. Maybe it could have supported me, but I chose to just jump the five feet across. I guess ollieing over it would have been cooler, but I didn't want to risk my board taking a dunk in the urban creek.

The photos don't even show everything here. There was a demo here on Saturday, but I skipped going. At the Fitzroy bowl one of the locals told me he showed up just as it finished, but it was apparently Chima Ferguson as the star attraction. I would have also been interested to see how many boards went in the sludge water.
I hope these pictures can offer some visual attraction to the non-skaters, as I'm sure this update isn't quite as interesting, but to be truthful, skating was a big factor in choosing to come to Oz. Don't worry though, old victorian houses and cute Europeanesque street scenes will be coming soon, as well as cool gothic looking churches. The provost house at the Uni reminds me of Robyns Sandwiches (RIP), but more like a church than a witches hut.

My Room

I finally got some decorations. Well, I brought the skateboard, but finally got it hung. I found the Renoir print at a thrift store for five bucks australian, but I can't put holes in the wall so its sitting on top of a bookshelf. I like that I have a little sink in my room. Each different floor has its own color scheme. I get a mustard yellow. I also have a really wide desk, about six feet. I like this because I can leave it really cluttered and still be able to shove everything to the side when I need to work.