To the Grampians

Troy gave me my first ride! - 05/10/2009 10:03:58 - 62 mm - 1/1600 - f/4.8 - ISO 500

Adventure begins. Waiting for bus to take me out of the city centre and all the way to Mount Barker.

10:30am Troy dropped me off at Murray Bridge with his garbage truck. He is from Murray Bridge.

Sun shining. Hills are nice.

11:00am Picked up by Emil. Willing to drive me all the way to Stawell or Grampians itself!

Treats me lunch and cookies.

Got to the main entry point of the Grampians! Goodbye to Emil. Very nice of him, unbelievable.

made wood fire and dinner. My back hurts, dunno why. Didn't lift anything heavy today except my backpack for 30ish minutes. Had my first nightly kangaroo mob encounter while was searching for fire wood. Tomorrow start making dinner before dark.

Today has been terrific. I don't realize enough how friendly my 2 rides where. Once in Melbourne I will give him a present. I got his address. Today been very tiring and feel unenergetic. Really wanted to sleep in the car. Maybe beginning of a cold...

Alright, who knows what tomorrow will bring.

bed time. hope not to cold.

Adventure!

Stawell, a little town near the Grampians. - 04/10/2009 21:26:59 - 200 mm - 1/100 - f/5.6 - ISO 640

So this will be my last post for the next week to come. Well, if everything turns out as planned. I will be leaving tomorrow instead of the day after. My backpack is still heavy, mainly because of the food and the water. I left a lot of clothes, camera objectives, laptop and other stuff behind here at the hostel. Olivia will hold on to it and send it to me when I'm in need of it. Thanks again, so nice! I only have one backpack and no day pack now. It feels kinda good not having to many things. Roughly I have packed a little amount of clothes, my camera, a tent and sleeping gear, washing and medical stuff, personal documents, water, water filter, food and 'cooking gear'. Seems little but it's a hell lot :/

The goal now is to hitchhike my way to Melbourne and hike the Grampians along the way. It's kinda thrilling and adventurous because it's all new for me. I 'never' hitchhiked and I never hiked for several days. I'll be writing down daily brain spins into a little notebook. I'll see if I will post them later on.

I'm going early to bed today. I will be escaping the city centre towards Mount Barker at about 8.30am.

Adventure awaits!

A night with friends

Olivia in the Belgian Beer Cafe. - 03/10/2009 00:44:41 - 82 mm - 1/60 - f/5 - ISO 2500

Max dropped me of at the bus stop around 9.15am. We had our handshake, goodbye and we parted. I had to wait 20 minutes for the bus. It was drizzling and dark, hope it's better weather in the city.

After a 40 minutes drive I arrived in the city centre. I got info about how to get to Tailem Bend. It would be the point where I would start hitching my ride towards the Grampians. It's a 2 hour drive but the city buses don't reach that far. I'll be needing to take a private bus to get there. But they don't ride early on weekends and Monday is a holiday so I'll be leaving probably on Tuesday.

So back to the Shakespeare hostel! I soon as I walked in I met Richard and Olivia. Good to see them again xD. A lot of people left the hostel already and that amplifies my desire to leave Adelaide asap. I have been here a long time and I feel that I need to move on.

After the hello's and hugs I headed out again to do some shopping. Because the Grampians don't have any drinkable water at the camping sites you'll need to bring your own. (don't see any reason why you wouldn't go wild camping then...) It's impossible for me to carry water for several days with me so I'll need to filter the water. So first stop to the outback store to get a water filter and a bowl for cooking. Next stop Woolworths to stock up on pasta, tuna, peanuts, reasons, and all that munch I'll need to live from for the next couple of days.

Back in the hostel I began to pack my backpack. 2 Times in total, leaving more stuff out every time. I did a test walk with my backpack to see how it felt and how my foot and knee responds. After 1 hour I realised I'll be needed to loose a lot more weight. Really, I will have to loose another 4kg at least... It was already getting dark when I returned back to the hostel. So I'll just decided not to hurry up and depart on Tuesday. Olivia, the nice gal she is, asked me if she could hold on to stuff for a while. That's great, she'll be sending it over as soon I will settle again. But now the question rises what do I leave out. I know the 2 biggest pieces are my camera and my laptop. There is no way in hell I leave my camera behind. Maybe my prime and macro lens and maybe my laptop + adaptor. So I'll need to strip down more clothes, (yea I know people think I'll have only one t-shirt, as for now it is true), books, folders, toilet bag, cd's, etc. Repacking stuff into lighter containers. But all that will be for tomorrow. I don't have the place to repack anyway. There is no space in my room so I need to use on of the tables in the common room to pack my belongings.

Olivia and me shopped at Coles, had dinner and finished around 10pm. We headed out to the Belgium Beer Cafe together with Richard. I had my first taste of Belgium Beer, Stella Artois and Hoegaarden. Stella Artois is indeed far better than the Ozzy beer I had so far. After a few beers the cafe was running empty and the night was still young so why not join Richards friends at the karaoke. My first time for karaoke I think... we sang lots of English and Korean songs. My voice was wrecked, not good I know. We had a slice of pizza at 3am and headed back to hostel straight into bed.

A great night.

Bye bye reptiles

Rocksy, the domestic fox.

Max asked me to fill up the wood box in the living room because the stove almost ran out of wood. After hauling a few bags of wood the sawdust arrived. The sawdust is used as a base for the rodents housing. They have a warm nest to lay in and it makes it easier for us to clean the cages after a week. My main chore of the day was to get all the sawdust into bags and move them to a little tiny shed located behind the rodents. I finished at about 3.30pm.

I started to pack my stuff because I'll be leaving tomorrow in the morning. Max will be able to drop me of in a nearby town where I'll be able to get the bus to Adelaide city centre. I'm planning to loose one bag because I want to travel lighter and with more easy. I think I have a total amount of 26kg. I want to go hiking and hitching rides so I will be in need of food and water as well. So if you add that up to the 26kg... It's way to much. I good guide is to stay under 1/3 of your total body weight. Lighter is always better but I will be having a hard time to do so. The good thing is the climate is not that hot here yet so I won't be in need of carrying a massive amount of water.

So this is about it. The last day at the reptiles place. The last night in my cosy room. I placed the guitar back in it's casing. No more playing tonight. :/

Thanks Sonia, Max and Brooke for the great time I've experienced for the last 2 weeks. It was a nice stay, fun work and great food (love your kangaroo marinade Max!).

Snakes on a plane

Baby Koala. - 29/09/2009 11:21:07 - 105 mm - 1/160 - f/5.3 - ISO 200

Slept in till about 8 today :O, had breaky and went to the first shed, giving the mice and rats fresh water and a refill on food. Sonia asked to help her out with the snake boxes. As she is going to leave soon to give another course, she is in need of containers to put snakes in. About 25 snakes are travelling with her. Sonia will teach people at a mining facility how to handle snakes. As it is forbidden to kill endangered species the people need the knowledge and know to remove snakes safely from the premises.

During the day we had 2 furry visits. One was a baby koala. The mum was hit by a car leaving the baby on its own. Very cute! And the other one was a little Schnauzer which was clever enough to get the attention of his owner by sounding the car's horn. xD

Till the end of the day I did some laundry and cleaned the house a bit. I went up to my cosy place to practice the JCB song some more.

strings, frets and some wood

Sonia's guitar. - 29/09/2009 18:43:31 - 44 mm - 1/40 - f/4.5 - ISO 400

My chores for today where diverse. Like every day the rodents needed to be checked on food and water. I had to make labels for the snake cages. I had to cut fabric for the gators. That's protective clothing when you handle venomous snakes. It's looks a bit like leg warmers. They reach from the heel to the knee. Usually if a snake attacks it will be below the knee. Not many bites have been reported higher than that. Max and Sonja sell gators and other attributes to the people that participate the courses.

At about 5ish I went back up my room to have another go at the guitar. I tried to play JCB form Nizilopi. I like the song, it's slow and rather simple. A good choice to start to learn my first song! xD My fingers hurt like a M*f*, maybe I should take the advice to only play 15min at first.

Satisfied getting the intro more or less out of the guitar, bed time.

Friend or Foe

One of the mice awaiting a dark future. - 24/09/2009 12:52:30 - 70 mm - 1/200 - f/10 - ISO 500

I didn't do anything different then most other days. I finished where Kevin stopped before he went to Sydney. After that I helped Sonia out.

(Celine niet verder lezen)

Once in a while there is a student or any other person coming over to help out. Today John came over. He's semi-retired but still likes to hang around reptiles. He helped out with the venomous snakes. It's quit tricky to force feed a snake like that. A lot of snakes that come in are weak, full of parasites, worms and all that. They often don't want to eat so Sonia has to force feed them. It involves getting the head of the snake between your fingers. Once you have a good grip you gently open the mouth with a metal tool. Once the mouth is open you start to shove in a few pinkies (little newborn mice). I don't really like that part but that's how it seemed to be done. It takes many lives to save one...

I won't elaborate on this topic. Let's just say I made a lot of little crosses with my thumb for the last week. I like animals, doesn't matter if it's furred or scaled. So I might leave in the end of next week once Kevin is back. I think it's time to move on.

In the evening we had a other go at the microscope. We had a closer look at the stool of one of the infested snakes. By hooking up a camera to the microscope we could see the visual on the laptop. A drop of fluid seems to contain it's own universe. It's amazing how many diverse tiny things are swarming around in the giant pool.

Max went out to get some chips and burgers for dinner, lovely. I spend the rest of the evening sorting/writing my blog posts out.

gnite.