The Work of Waves, Woy Woy, and Wallabys

Very busy weekend.

Friday night was a study-break (funny to call it that when studies hadn’t really started yet) hosted by the senior IH students, basically an opportunity to mingle and get to know some of the people we hadn’t met yet, with hot chocolate and the screening of a terrible Jim Carrey movie called the Number 23. I only watched a smidge of the movie, but did get the chance to have longer conversations with a few different residents. I have always found it easier to get to know people one-on-one than in a group, I guess I just become shy when I feel out-numbered, so any opportunity to have individual conversations is a good one. It also led to some MST3K-esque heckling of Jim Carrey’s performance, which is always a good time (“I even wrote it down, ‘breach hull all die,’ and I went ahead and did it anyway”).

Saturday was the IH picnic at La Perouse, right by Botany Bay, where both Captain Cook and La Perouse himself first landed on Australia, causing Cook to say that Botany Bay would be a decent place to inhabit…though it wasn’t, no fresh water and he also arrived during an atypically verdant season, not very representative of what it is actually like. Even so, it was lovely. We finally got some sun and the water was very blue. Although the WWII fort on the site wasn’t open for tours, we were able to walk down to it and around the rocks it is built upon. They showed some really interesting patterns of wear from the tide and surf, many deep circular impressions, almost as though someone had been carving a set of soup bowls directly into the rock.

There were snails and what looked like barnacles all along the rock as well. We even found a few crabs in the tidal pool areas. Some of the residents played soccer and Frisbee, while the rest of us just stretched out on the grass and soaked in some of the much-missed sun (don’t worry Mom, I wore sunscreen). When lunch arrived (a very American seeming mix of Subway sandwiches and Dominoes pizza) the Master of IH, Bob, told us about some of the history of the area, including the fact that if it weren’t for the American Revolution, Australia may not have ended up getting inhabited by the English when it did. When the US began the fight for freedom from Britain, one of the consequences for the English was that they had to find someplace else to send their convicts; hence the British convict colonization of Australia.

Sunday ended up being quite the endurance battle. The MConBio program (Master of Conservation Biology) was hosting a BBQ featuring meat from the native biodiversity on the Australian emblem, namely kangaroo and emu. However, this is the first year that the BBQ was hosted at the Cowan Field Station, about a 45 minute train ride north of Sydney’s Central train station. Now, I have not had a lot of experience using Sydney public transit yet so, naturally, I contacted a few other MConBio students to see if we could go out to Cowan as a group. I managed to plan to meet two of them in Randwick to catch the bus to the Central train station, and then a train on to Berowra, the nearest stop to Cowan Field Station. From this decision onwards, the trip was entirely ruled by Murphy’s Law. First, we missed the bus we had planned to take out of Randwick because we were at the wrong stop. This happened because there were two stops with nearly identical names, except that in one name the cross streets were listed “X at Y” and the other was “Y at X.” The next bus to where we wanted to be was almost an hour later, so we ended up walking all the way back from Randwick to the bus stop that is right across the street from my dorm, checking the schedules at the few stops we passed on our way there, just to be sure we couldn’t catch one earlier. From the stop near IH there are a few actual sections of sidewalk at which various buses will stop. It took us a while to figure out which one we had to be at but, finally, we got onto the right bus and we were able to get to the train station. From there, we were able to buy round trip tickets to Berowra and we asked a few different CityRail employees which train to get on. All seemed well. We were making good time, passing the right stops and we had been assured that the train would actually stop at Berowra. Well…it didn’t. In fact, the train kept going another 20 minutes, taking us over water where oysters were being cultivated until we reached a fairly backwater stop called Woy Woy (apparently a famous Australian comedian once said of Woy Woy that when he used his electric shaver there, all the lightbulbs throughout town would dim). We were stuck in Woy Woy for about 20 minutes waiting to catch a train back the way we had come, but the quickest train would again pass the stop we wanted. In the end, we had taken three trains back and forth to finally get to Berowra. We arrived at the field station almost 2 and a half hours late.

Even so, it was completely worth it. We met the rest of the new students, ate some native wildlife (this emu was much much better than the last emu I had at a restaurant called Woodruffs in Royal Oak, Michigan. The emu here tasted a lot like steak, even though emu is a bird. Des said it’s because the emu is a runner, like it’s relative the ostrich, so it builds up red meat like cattle, I’m guessing something to do with the mitochondria level in the cells?), and then had a tour of the field station, including wallabys, and red and gray kangaroos. For those of you who have requested cuddly souvenirs of my trip, I checked with our guide and he said they keep a pretty close count of their animals, at least enough to notice if one is missing, so sorry, I won’t be bringing any pouch-toting furry ones home…how about a boomerang?

The trip back was much less eventful, although it was late enough that I missed dinner at IH. I stopped at the Subway in Randwick to get a sandwich instead and a guy who worked there guessed my nationality based solely on the fact that I asked for provolone cheese. FYI, Subways in Australia do not have provolone cheese. Nor do they have oil and vinegar. It was a very Royale with Cheese moment for me.

Le Big Mac

Monday was my last day of idleness. Sadly, the rain returned so my grand plan to reach Bondi Beach has been postponed yet again.

Whatever, I saw kangaroos and wallabys.

Also:

Top Five Reasons why the UNSW library is my new favorite place:

5. It has an IT desk on the main floor to resolve computer issues.

4. The librarian gave me a free “UNSW Library” shoulder bag to carry the books I was checking out, similar to what you’d buy at Whole Foods or the Hardware store.

3. It offers lots of places to sit inside and connect to the university wireless network, particularly useful because when it’s sunny outside it is too bright to be able to see anything on your computer screen in the courtyard and when it’s not sunny outside, it’s probably raining.

2. It has an on-line catalogue that is fairly easy to search and navigate.

1. The Sixth floor is off the Funking Chain! They have almost any Biology-related text you could possibly want for class, as well as bound back issues of Copeia! (for those not as bio-nerdy as me, Copeia is a journal on Ichthyology and Herpetology) It is also quiet and has lots of desks, so I’m sure I will retreat there for study purposes in the future.

Awesome…just really awesome.