It has been a busy couple weeks since we arrived in Melbourne and a lot has happened in the world. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the atrocities that are currently happening in Minnesota as they hit very close to home. The acts of violence that are being committed against the people living there are not political. Their basic human rights are being attacked. With all the places that we have traveled in the world the commonality we have learned is that most humans just want to love and to be loved in return. There is no love or human decency in murder. I have had several conversations with friends and family that are there, that are living it daily and that have personal stories about events that are based on facts and not lies. I’ve heard heartbreaking testimonies during conversations I’ve had with teacher friends from the district that I most recently worked in. One was about a parent who was taken by ICE at a bus stop while they put their child on the bus. Another student came into my friend’s office had a panic attack because their brother who just dropped them off at school was taken in the drop off lane and was choked out. My friend who now works with the EL students at the school where I worked was telling me about students who haven’t come to school since before Christmas because they are too terrified to leave their homes. Many of these acts are happening to US citizens who have lived legally in the country for years. It isn’t political, it is wrong. All of this causes one to feel paralyzed by helplessness.
In spite of things feeling like a big old dumpster fire, there have been some good things happening as well. I am very proud of and grateful for my friend who is breaking through the paralysis and making a difference for those in need. She is shopping for the families that are not able to leave their homes. It feels good to support her in that effort and know that our contribution is going directly toward who needs it most. I know there are many more stories of people fighting for good. Those who are trying to help however they can by supporting their community. They are definitely a light in the darkness. My heart is with the collective state of Minnesota and I pray that everyone stays safe.
Some good news. Last week we found a new renter. Having a tenant is a huge part of how we’re able to live this life and now we know that we can continue to do so which is a huge win! In my last post I wrote about trusting that the universe will lead us where we’re meant to go and we are grateful for the sign that our adventure isn’t over yet. This is the first leg where we don’t know where we’ll be going after we return to the Midwest at the end of April and we’re trying to embrace the excitement of the unknown.
This past Wednesday I took a break from the news and went on a truly magical tour of the Great Ocean Road. Throughout the ten hour adventure I saw and learned SO much. I tend to get a little motion sickness on the tour vans so I was able to sit in front and chat with the guide the whole day. The following are some of the amazing things I learned that I didn’t want to forget. Our first stop was in the coastal town of Torquay. Torquay is the heart of surf culture in Australia and is where many of the surfing companies like Rip Curl got their start. Back in 1969 a couple friends started making surf boards in their back yard shed and realized there was a need among their friend group for wetsuits in the local cold surf and so they expanded. Here is a link that talks about their origin story if you’re interested in a little bit more detail. https://www.ripcurl.com.au/pages/the-beginning?srsltid=AfmBOoq7Iehz0D8eAqdnaNsYhGF4QDKZ5AFImMxvM_KcUaHMdP0LFjG9
One thing I noticed right away at our first stop at Bells beach in Torquay was the cliffs along the shore. I’m always curious about the geological make up of cliffs like that that have the striations. Most of them looked sedimentary like sandstone but every now and then you’d see a darker clay color that made me think there might be some iron in there as well. I asked and my guide had such a great answer. He talked about the tectonic plates and how at one point modern day South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, India, Madagascar, and New Zealand were all one massive continent. I looked it up and learned it was called Gondwana. This was 1 billion to 542 Million years ago. “The fragmentation created distinctive geological provinces, such as the ancient cratons of Western Australia, rich in minerals like gold, iron, and nickel.” So cool!
I was also chatting with the guide about how much fun we’ve had being birders in Australia and he told me that he and his friends have a birding group. They call it twitching which is actually the extreme hobby of traveling long distances to go bird watching. He said they changed the name to bitching because when they’re done they drink beer, and sometimes bitch. 🤣 Continuing with more bird information I learned that the Ibis, which we saw so many of in Sydney, is called a bin chicken or bin chuck by the Aussies because they are often found scrounging through dumpsters. I saw some birds that I’ve never seen before on the tour but wasn’t able to capture pictures of them. They were the Wedged-tailed Eagle, Black Cockatoo, Eastern Yellow Robin, and the Corella. I’ll Google images and share them below.
The second stop was at the Great Ocean Road Memorial Arch which honors the 3,000 returned soldiers from WWI that built the road from 1919 to 1932. The arch has been rebuilt many times because of fires and accidents but the story that struck me as interesting was, one of the first renditions of the arch was too narrow for two cars to pass underneath at the same time so a local drove their truck into it and knocked it down. The current memorial arch is kind of in the middle of nowhere so I took that as a, “if you want a thing done well, do it yourself,” kind of thing. 😉
On our way to our lunch stop in the cute beach town of Apollo Bay we stopped along the Kennett River where a koala colony can sometimes be spotted. It was pretty cool to see my first koalas in their natural habitat. And of course I learned so much about them. Some of the information I may have learned back in school but they were still fascinating to be reminded of. There is really no way to tell if a koala is pregnant until you can spot a joey (baby koala) inside its pouch. They don’t show any symptoms otherwise. When they give birth to the joey it is only about 2cm long. It is blind and doesn’t have ears but it has well developed front limbs that help it crawl on the outside of the mother’s body from her womb to her pouch. Mother koalas can sometimes have more than one joey in her pouch and she is able to make different kinds of milk depending on what the joey needs. I had heard that the eucalyptus, which is their main source of nutrition, has side effects. They don’t know if it makes them seemingly drunk or just sleepy but there are toxins in the eucalyptus. Notice: If you are sensitive to poo talk please skip ahead a few lines. When the babies move on from milk they actually eat their mother’s feces so that, in theory, they can build up a tolerance or immunity to the toxins. After the baby moves out of the pouch it goes straight to the mother’s back until it is strong enough to be in the tree on its own. They spend almost zero percent of their life on the ground which is good because they move so slow they wouldn’t be able to escape a predator if they had them. The koala’s biggest threat is actually wildfires. There were wildfires in the area where we were on our tour primarily because of the 107 degree day we had had the week prior, and the strong winds. They were no longer burning by the time we took our tour but you could still see a lot of smoke in the air and it smelled like a campfire in parts. I learned that often animals like the koala and the wombat will take in orphaned animals after a fire, which touched my heart and reminded me of one of the many reasons why I love animals so much.
Talking about koalas lead to a conversation about another marsupial, the wombat. I was talking about how cute they are and that I hadn’t seen a wombat in its natural habitat. The guide explained that they are very shy, solitary animals that are nocturnal and typically avoid humans, so that was probably why. I learned some other cool things about them as well. Wombats, being marsupials, have a pouch but their pouch is inverted, meaning the opening is toward the hind legs instead of the tummy like a koala or kangaroo. This is because wombats are burrowers and if the opening of the pouch was by their belly they would be throwing dirt into their pouch. This also means that when their babies poke their heads out of the pouch they have a high potential of getting pooped on. Notice: If you are sensitive to poo talk please skip ahead to the next paragraph. Speaking of wombat poo, I learned that their poo is cubical. The wombat’s sphincter is actually shaped roughly like a square. This is because when a wombat marks its territory they typically lift their hind legs and poo on a raised service so that animals can see it from a distance to stay away. The cubical shape keeps it from rolling off said surface. Fascinating, amiright?!
Our next stop was the cool temperate rainforest of Maits Rest in the Otways. We took a walk on the rainforest boardwalk and saw beautiful fern gardens and giant rainforest trees up to 300 years old. I learned about the difference between lichen and moss. “moss is a simple plant, while a lichen is a composite organism formed by a fungus and an alga/cyanobacterium living together” think symbiosis. I had never seen tree ferns before and they are spectacular to behold. I learned that they don’t grow rings like a normal tree where the trunk gets thicker they only grow taller. The way to tell how old it is by how many rings of fronds it has. There are three main types of massive trees that grow in the Maits Rest rainforest. The first is the mountain ash which is the tallest tree species in the southern hemisphere. The next is myrtle beech tree. The last tree we learned about was the grand gum tree or the flooded gum which is a kind of eucalyptus tree.
After the conversation we had about the fires, and seeing a lot of burned out trees along the road, I learned that eucalyptus trees are very flammable. Not only because of their leaves but also the oil in their bark. The oil is multi-functional though. It does burn quickly but it also helps to protect the bark. That is why we saw so many trees that looked burned and didn’t have any leaves but were still standing. They actually hollow out and provide spaces for the animals to live. The main way that they “fight” the wild fires in Australia is by controlled burns. They try to get ahead of the fire and burn anything in the path that could be used as kindling. They don’t dump water from helicopters or things like that. I learned that Australia sent several firefighters to CA to help fight the fires since they have experience with similar climates and trees.
After our very informative trip to Maits Rest we made our way to the incredible coastal rock formations called the 12 Apostles which are seven limestone stacks that rise straight out of the water. This begged the question of the name because allegedly there were never twelve of them. I learned that they used to be called Sow and Piglets but they thought it may be offensive to people so in an effort to create better marketing for tourism they changed the name back in the 1920s to make it more appealing. What a sight to behold!
Our last official stop on the tour was Loch Ard Gorge. Yet another geological wonder! With the cliffs and the bays and the arches it was beautiful. We learned about the “tragic story of the British clipper Loch Ard, which sank in thick fog in 1878 near Port Campbell, Australia, killing 52 of 54 people aboard, with only two teenage survivors, Tom Pearce and Eva Carmichael, rescued from the gorge after Pearce found and saved Carmichael from the water, leading to a famous rescue and a brief romance before Eva returned to Ireland, leaving Tom a hero and the gorge named for the disaster” We weren’t able to access the steps down to the beach at either this location or the 12 Apostles but I imagine standing in close proximity to the limestone stacks would be quite humbling. The whole day was.
The awe inspiringness of the day continued when we were making our way back to Melbourne and stopped in the small town Simpson. This is where I saw my first kangaroos in the wild. They were actually in the outfield of school where they were scrounging for lunch scraps left behind by the students. It was truly surreal to see them and caused me to pinch myself. What an incredible day!
Yesterday we experienced a day on the grounds of the Australian Open and we were even able to watch a few matches which was awesome. On Wednesday we leave for five days in Tasmania before we move on to Auckland on the 25th. Tasmania wasn’t even on my radar so I have Dave to thank for adding it to our list. Before he did, the only thing I knew about Tasmania was the Tasmanian devil from Looney Tunes. 😂Tasmania is Australia’s 6th state and is an island right off the southeastern tip. Everyone that we have chatted about our adventures with in Australia has mentioned how we need to go to Tassie and I can’t wait!
I hope this finds you safe and cared for. Sending you a universe of love wherever you are!
♥️Alison
It was fun to try but wasn’t our favorite so we bopped across the street to Four Pillars Distillery to try some of their famous gin. 🙂
