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.