Our first week in Melbourne was pretty laid back. The group spent the first day moving into our single dorm rooms at Mannix College, a dorm off of Monash University, and later spent the afternoon checking out Melbourne’s city centre. The city of Melbourne is big, having a population larger than all of NZ, so I felt a little out of place on the trams and trains. Regardless, the Queen Victoria Markets were fun to meander through and it was fun to spend time with the other Oles.
While at Mannix we were fed breakfast, we received a $10 stipend for lunches, and we had to fend for ourselves for dinner. Skiba, Todd, Ian and I got creative from day one and starting up our own restaurant in the small kitchen of the dorm. For the next week we “borrowed” fruits from the caf to go along with our peanut butter/nutella toast for lunch. We ate homemade stir-fries every dinner, which looked and tasted so good that we had people asking us if they could buy some off of us. We ended up only spending $15 each for the whole week of food. This was good because we were therefore able to fund our past time of choice: Dooley’s. This was an Irish bar at a hotel-motel in the furniture district of Melbourne which catered to people over the age of fifty that like country and mid-nineties music.
During the week we had various lectures on anthropology and ecology. At times they were pure review and boring, but a few were very interesting. One professor spoke to us about the 30 years he spent living with an aboriginal community in northern AUS, documenting their language and culture as he went. He is currently one of three people left to know the language fluently, but he is having success with the younger generations in reinstalling their culture into the community, which was formerly forbidden to practice their beliefs by the whites of the area. On Wed. we went to an animal sanctuary in Healesville. We were able to see many animals, which included; emus, koalas, roos, wallabies, various birds and even two baby Tasmanian devils. On Friday we went to a small biodynamic vineyard and winery, which was fun to compare to Seresin Estate. Though they practiced some of the preparations characteristic to biodynamic practices, the owners were scientists and therefore a little skeptical.
We left Melbourne on Sunday and bussed down to Queenscliff. We are spending this week studying marine biology at The Marine and Freshwater Discover Centre. Monday was spent listening to lectures, Tuesday we had our first field research, in which we investigated inter-tidal species and their distributions along the shore. In one tide pool we found a Maori Octopus, which was exciting since the people from the centre said they had only seen one before. We started Wednesday off by canoeing through Swan Bay. I was able to catch not one, but two bandjo sharks with my bare hands in the shallow water of the bay. They look a lot like sting-rays, but are a harmless member of the shark family. We saw bigger ones, but the ones I caught were probably around two feet long. On Thurs. we went on a boat tour of St. Phillip Bay. We collected a sample of floating debris in the bay and analyzed the contents. We found many feather stars, a few crabs, wandering anemones, sea squirts and even three or four sea horses. On Fri we are going snorkeling at what they call "Pope's eye", and we are planning on diving during our free time on Saturday. After this, we're heading back to Melbourne for the week.
Now that we are actually out in the field I am really enjoying the trip. The first week spent in a foreign school classroom wasn't that much fun, but as long as I am able to break up the lectures with field work, I think I'm going to have a good semester.
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| Todd made a new friend. |
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| Classy blokes sampling wine |
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| Oles at work. We are looking through the brown algae that we collected behind the boat. We found feather stars, anemones, brittle stars, sea horses, crabs, and even a few little fish. |
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| Team Footscray: Disection Champions. |
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