ND Trip #2

Hello again!

ND decided that if they were going to pay for us to live in Australia they better make sure we see Australia. Their noble efforts include 3 bus trips for the 30 of us to various parts of western Australia to get an idea of what the people and region are like. This weekend we went to Albany and Denmark.

Friday: After a 1.5 hour bus ride we arrived at the Forest Heritage Centre. They had big trees and sweet flowers there. We saw a logging camp which was pretty dang primitive and probably pretty cold in the winter.Australia has some of the hardest wood there is, from the jerrah tree, so the loggers had to constantly sharpen their saws.  The center also offers a 2 year woodworking degree, so we saw some of their work and it was beautiful.

Lunch at a park, then we visited the Kodja Place Interpretative Centre. This small town museum seemed to share the history of the native Australians and the English settlers. It shared the positives of both, but seemed to skip the battles and the arguements. Maybe it is better to remember history like that, peaceful with out all the fighting.   That is how I like to remember my house.  jk.  sort of.  We had a tour guide Jack Cox who was an animated character and made tea over the fire for us.  Later we found a younger version of Jack in pictures and film clips in the museum.  It reminded me that the white history of Australia is only a little over 100 years old.  (the pictures are of me in an Indigenous house and the links surveyers used to measure huge chunks of land with)

I have never been a huge advocate for sustainable living; it seems like it should be inconvieiant and uncomfortable. I wasn' t compleatly thrilled when I learned that we were going to stay at the Denmark Centre for Sustainable Living.  However a lady talked to us about sustainable living when we first arrived. Some parts were a little odd, she basically uses an outhouse in her house. But some things just made sense.  It was neat to go about the daily parts of living and notice small changes the centre had made to help the earth.  Some things weren't very big, but over a long time or if a lot of people did it it would help.  A lot of the beds had quilts, the toilet water was gray water (reused shower water), and the lights were florescent.  Then today I was at IGA and both of the women in line before me had brought their own cloth grochery bags.  I decided I will need to bring one next time.

Saturday morning we climbed to the highest point in Western Australia.  It took about 1.5 hours (it wasn't really that high).  We had lunch at the top and it was neat to see the farmland on one side of the mountain and the sea on the other.

We drove to Albany after lunch to check out whale world.  It was a great museum for anyone with ADD.  The whaling company had closed when synthetic oils became available and the goverment regulations to protect the whales increased.  The company had donated the land, factory, and 3 ships to the town so that they could make a museum.  I had heard how big the whales were, but have never been up close to one.  The picture shows a skeleton of a blue whale.  That dude is huge!  

The whaling process is actually really interesting, once you get past the fact that they were killing beautiful whales.  The 3 ships would leave in the morning and go to the spot of ocean that the search plane had found whales at.  The whaling company had to catch whales that were within 6 inches of a length set by the goverment regulators.  The captain could be persosnally fined if a whale that was too big or small was shot.  Therefore, the captain was the one to shoot.  So the whale is shot with a harpoon and then air is pumped under it's skin, so it will float.  A light, radio, and tag are attached and the ship left the whale to go catch another.  The dead whales would just float out in the middle of the ocean until the day was over and then one ship went around and collected all of the whales.  They were tied to an island, then the next day one by one the whale were towed to shore to be cut into pieces.

Murrey Arnold, UWA Phd student was scheduled to talk to us about Aboriginal-European contact next.  To my surprise, Murrey was like 60 ye70 years old.  He had completed his undergrad degree from his farm at age 65 or something and now was just continuing his education.  It was remarkable and ridiculous at the same time.

Dinner at the Tanglewood Brewery.  Good food, we followed with cakes from IGA.  Classy yet cheap.  

We went back to the sustainable living place and drank coffee and attempted to watch a movie.  Which means I say the previews and first 10 minutes and fell asleep.  

Sunday was church.  It was a little bitty church with kneelers without cushions.  It was brutal.  The stations were painted onto the walls and the flowers were picked from someone's garden.  It would have been gaudy and cheap...except it was a church.  So it was a simple display of giving "all that you have."  The regular priest was getting some sort of operation in Perth, so they had a visiting priest.  When he went to make the announcements, he was going along fine, but when he forgot something or showed the slightest sign of confusion, the congergation told him the anwer.

We went on a tree top walk next.  Western Australia has these huge trees that only the outer 6 inches is alive.  Which means the inside is dead or dying and creates a cool place to take a picture in or drive through.  So many people were coming to see the trees they were hurting them, so WA built the tree top walk.  They weren't allowed to use heavy eqipment to build it and had to follow other rules, but it turned out really cool and it was neat to see the tress up close.  It was also pretty cool to watch the rail fall that far.  You could watch it all of the way down. 

After the tree top walk it was time to go back to Perth.  We stopped for dinner on the way where I found this sweet bathtub.  It's not just Ohio that uses them for water troughs.  

Sorry for the delay.  I have  a few thing to talk about before we leave for the long trip at the end, but I need to read about AIDS and apartheid right now.  

Have a wonderful evening.

All my love,

Brittney