Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road

Hello All,

Melbourne was great! And over a month ago… nevertheless, presenting Melbourne:

Melbourne was a last minute enterprise borne out of Easter Day ticket sales, spontaneity, and a final frantic internet scramble. Caroline and I bought the tickets, and then didn’t see each other again, due to different travel and field trip schedules, until four days before we left. It was going to be quite an adventure.
Melbourne is known as the multicultural city of Australia, which basically translated into (at least for Caroline and I) an opportunity to eat a lot. We gorged on Chinese, Italian, assorted cakes, and a LOT of gelato. We somehow missed the Greek “district,” though I would contend that it looked more like a block than a district on the map we had.
Melbourne is also, as we found, filled with a lot of weekend markets. There was the big Queen Victoria market that sold everything from fruit to clothes to Australian chatkes. I made an exciting purse purchase, which I “bargained” for. Actually, I asked what the price was and he told me the price, then lowered it before I even said anything. Nevertheless, I was very proud. There were also some fun crafts fairs on the other side of the city that we poked around at.
Of course, we had to see the Crown Casino, which is the biggest Casino in the southern hemisphere. This was the first time I could legally gamble, so of course I had to “give it a go.” I was only planning to gamble $2.50, but ended up gambling away $6. Worried that I was developing a problem, we decided I should cut my losses and run! We also met up with Zoe, a friend from New Trier studying at the University of Melbourne, and caught the last night of the International Comedy Festival. It was great to see Zoe, and the guy we saw was pretty funny, even though some of the local humor went over our heads. Other highlights in the city included meeting up with Caroline’s friend Chris, the botanic gardens, the Shrine of Remembrance and riding around in an old fashioned trolley.
Caroline and I also decided to take a day trip to the Great Ocean Road. The GOR runs from Melbourne to Adelaide along the south coast of Australia. When they built it, they were trying to create something like Route 1 along the California Coast. Not quite ready attempt left-side driving for the first time on a winding cliff road, we decided to join an all-day bus tour. The views were amazing, and I quickly overcame my annoyance at being herded like a sheep (By the end I was thinking “herd me more places, please!”). It was an entire day of looking at rocks and water, so I really couldn’t have been any happier.


Hooray!


Melbourne! (Complete with old train station and tram)




Caroline and I.








Morning tea at the Royal Gardens.




Cool tree.




Old observatory built outside of the gardens. The observatory was built for one night to observe the passing of Venus, in order to make some sort of important astrological calculation. Thankfully, it was done in time, otherwise that would have been a huge waste of effort!




As a side project, they also decided to build a magnetics house to study the Earth's magnetic field. Iron would throw off the instruments, so they built the entire house out of copper nails. Of course, less than a year after it was finished, (iron) electric tram tracks were laid right across the street from the building, generating more electromagentism than anyone had ever seen before and rendering the building useless. oops.




The Shrine of Remembrance was built to honor the fallen from WWI (the war Australia has lost by far the most troops in). I actually was there the day after ANZAC day, which is Australia's WWI memorial day, so the entire inside of the shrine was covered in flowers. (ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corp.)




One of the many neat little alley ways lined with cafes.








One of many gelatto runs we made. yum.




Caroline and her friend Chris, who was studying for the semester outside of Melbourne.




At the Queen Victoria Mall.




One of the many chalk drawings on the sidewalk. Melbourne's having a big problem with the drought.




Zoe and I after a successful night at the comedy festival.




Begin the Great Ocean Road. Stop 1: Bells Beach.








I think Bells Beach is in a famous movie, so I decided to take a picture of the sign as proof of my visit there.




Next stop, the lighthouse. First, I had to get a picture of myself infront of a particularly good rock.




The lighthouse.












A "wild" koala. I think it's chained to the tree so the tour buses can say they showed people a koala. Call me cynical.




In keeping with the great Andrew Ratoff tradition, I had to stick my feet in the body of water I was looking at. It was a little colder than expected...








The Twelve Apostles. Actually, in this picture, the 4.5 Apostles.




Big sky.








"London Bridge." There used to be a bridge connecting the remaining bridge to the mainland, and people used to be allowed to walk out there. Then, one day the bridge collapsed, stranding two people on the outside part of the bridge. Tour bus lore has it that when the people were being rescued, they were trying to hide their faces from the cameras because they were having an affair. I think the more exciting part of the story is that someone got to make a phone call saying "London Bridge has fallen down!"

Lady Elliot Island Field Trip

(Photo courtesy of Melissa G.)


Well, I put off writing an entry for my Lady Elliot Island field trip until I could steal a sufficient amount of pictures from other people. (My camera ran out of batteries before I even got to the island and I forgot my charger. More specifically, I forgot the adaptor that allowed me to plug my charger into an Australian wall.) Thanks to some Wash U folk and the class website, I now have a collection of pictures that are way better than any I could have taken.
The field trip was four days of absolute bliss with some occasional moments of education sprinkled in. Originally, my Marine Biology class was supposed to go to Heron Island, a research station owned by the university, for our Great Barrier Reef field trip. Unfortunately, two weeks before we were supposed to leave, the entire research station burned down! We all assumed the trip would be cancelled, but amazingly they booked us at Lady Elliot Island instead. Lady Elliot Island is a resort island at the very Southern end of the Great Barrier Reef surrounded by reef and only accessible by small plane. Hello four days of tropical vacation.
We spent most of the time on the island snorkeling on the reef. It was by far the best snorkeling I’ve ever done. We saw manta rays, black-tip reef sharks, tiger sharks, and lots of pretty fishies and corals. I also saw a bunch of turtles. One was twice my size and swam right by me! It was great snorkeling with the experts (my teachers) who could point out the different animals. We also went walking on the shallow reef flat in low tide where we could look at the corals up close when we weren’t busy avoiding stepping on sea cucumbers.
Part of our trip involved conducting a “field study.” My group chose to do a project on Linckia laevigata, a blue sea star. It was chosen primarily for the fact that it didn’t move. Sea cucumbers also fit this criterion, but the sea stars were prettier and didn’t squirt you in the face when you picked them up. The project involved finding sea stars and measuring them in two areas: the reef flat and the reef rim. We waited for the tide to go down. Then armed only with a clear ruler and a notebook, we went in search for the elusive Linckia laevigata. As it turns out, the clear ruler was the fatal flaw in our experimental design- we only had one and we kept losing it in the water when we tried to throw it to each other across the reef. Luckily, we managed to overcome this challenge (after a fair bit of searching and cursing), and found that the sea stars were, on average, bigger in the reef flat. Why this occurs or even if this matters were, of course, beyond the scope of our study. Still, I feel proud to have added this invaluable piece of knowledge to the field of marine biology.
All in all, it was a successful trip! I can’t believe this is school…


Our plane. (Photo courtesy of Melissa G.)




Lady Elliot Island. (Note how the runway is the entire length of the island. Glad we didn't overshoot...)
(Photo courtesy of Melissa G.)




Begin tropical (educational) vacation. (Photo courtesy of Melissa G.)




(Photo courtesy of Mike G.)




Coral sand beach. Owie.
























Black tip reef shark.




Turtle! We really were that close!




Reef flat at low tide. (Photo courtesy of Melissa G.)




Educational reef walk.




The elusive Linckia laevigata.




Clam. (Photo courtesy of Melissa G.)




Lady Elliot was a nesting site for many turtles. They were hatching while we were there! Unfortunately, some of them got confused by the lights on the island, and started wandering towards the land instead of into the sea. This is one of the saved wandering turtles.




The turtles have to run down the sand into the water themselves in order to imprint the beach they were born on into their brains. So, we gave all the confused turtles a second chance to run to the ocean, and helped them by lining up with flashlights. They were so cute!




I actually missed the sunset by 5 minutes, but I'm glad Mike was there for photo-documentation. (Photo courtesy of Mike G.)




Another excellent sunset pic. Bye bye Lady Elliot! (Photo courtesy of Alex G.)