Wine, Whales, and Walpole

Well I'm back from our 4 day trip down south western coastline of Australia. The trip was wonderful and a nice break from school work, however, when we got back it suddenly hit that there is only a week and a half of classes left in the semester. It is hard to believe that the semester is beginning to near the end. There is still a week and a half of classes, then a study week, and then two weeks of finals, but that will all be over before you know it.

But anyway back to the trip. Most of the details of the trip can be found in the photo album on picasa, which I will link to at the end of the blog in an attempt to avoid tempting the impatient. Here is a rough idea of what the trip encompassed:

Day one

• Tour of Willowdale Mine and refinery
• Visit to Margaret River and beach
• Learned about town planning in fast developing rural areas

Day two

• Explored the Canal Rocks
• Wardan Aboriginal Culture Center tour
• Wine tasting at Cullen's Winery

Day three

• Walpole - Valley of the Giants Treetop Walk
• Albany - Mt Clarence and the Anzac Memorial and Whale World
• Learned about agriculture issues in Western Australia
  

Day four

• Hike in Porongurup National Park
• Tour of Kodja Place indigenous museum in Kojonup

That seems like a pretty loose itinerary when I put it that way, but you have to remember that many of these places were several hours drive apart. We also had to stay at a different backpackers lodge each night. You begin to find that there is definitely a wide range in quality of backpacker lodges, ultimately none of which includes a good hot shower.

There were several highlights of the weekend for me. The first being the Wardan Aboriginal Culture Center. Our tour guide showed us many of the traditional aboriginal tools and weapons and how they are used. He demonstrated the technique they used to make fire. The best part was when he got out a didgeridoo and threw down a good old fashion didgeridoo jam session around the fire he had "made from scratch."



Another highlight was the treetop walk at the Valley of the Giants. Although these Red Tingle trees don't grow quite as high as the Red Cedar trees in North America, I've never seen those ones so the Australian version was just fine for me. The Treetop Walk was amazing in that it took you up 125 feet in air. The walk was built when park rangers realized that having loads of tourists trample the ground around the trees was crushing the roots and killing the trees. And when trees are hundreds of years old, you can't really replace dead ones very easily. The walk keeps tourists off the ground as well as offering a spectacular view.



Probably the best view of the weekend came from Castle Rock. This was a rock formation at the top of Porongurup National Park. It took quite a hike to get to, as well as a little bit of tricky rock climbing, but it was well worth it. It wasn't sunny at the top, and the wind was out in full force, but the rocks were massive and you could see the land in all directions.



So those are just a few things you should definitely look for in the pictures. Also expect to see some video from the trip coming soon as well. I'd put it all up at the same time, but uploading the videos can take forever and oddly has a low success rate even when they are loaded.

Poll: Will the #25 Notre Dame Fighting Irish finally turn the corner and beat #6 USC this weekend?