10-11 November 2012
A week after my hike through Royal National Park, I headed west with two friends from Uni, Louise and Ben, to the Blue Mountains National Park. A few days beforehand we were talking over lunch and decided to do a one-night camp out in the mountains - which I had been to before, but either just driving through or staying at a hostel in Katoomba. But I love camping and really hadn't ever gone backcountry camping - especially since I am terrible at starting fires or doing any sort of reasonable cooking over them - so I typically just camp out of my car...
We drove up into the mountains on a Saturday, stopped in Katoomba to pick up some last minute groceries, and then parked our car near the Golden Stairs and started hiking. The thing about the Blue Mountains is that to do any bushwalking through them, you have to descend from the rim of the valleys along very steep paths, often involving steps hewn into the strong sandstone or very steep metal steps. Going down wasn't too rough, really - at least for Ben and myself. Louise's knees started acting up, though, which plagued her the rest of the trip.
Once down in the bottom of the valley, the walk is long, but fairly flat. The path took us through gumtree forests with an undergrowth choked with ferns that blocked the sunlight giving us a fairly nice cool walk. There's the saying, though, that what goes up must eventually come down, and well, the converse is true: what goes down must eventually come up. Clearly, a place called Mount Solitary is not going to be at the bottom of a valley and soon, our flat, valley-bottom walk ended and we began to climb back up through a gumtree forest with a more open undergrowth and flowering waratah - the state emblem for New South Wales. Ben said he'd seen koalas here before, and you could definitely see evidence that they live here (aka poop on the trail), so for the next hour or so, I was straining my neck up into the trees to see if I could catch a glimpse of my first koala. We had no such luck, and with a strained neck, we reached our lunch spot at the bottom of the trail ascending Mount Solitary.
After lunch, our arduous climb up a fairly steep ridge, over boulders, between rocks, and alongside sheer drop-offs began. Louise's knees were not helping her out much, but we didn't really have a choice to turn back at this point. I grabbed her pack to ease her carrying load and slowly but surely, we reached the top, stopping at a few flat lookout points along the way. But the trek to the campsite wasn't over yet. We were at the top of Mount Solitary (a plateau, really) but the campsite was on the other end of it and a little ways down the other side! But at least the hiking here was flat.
Soon enough, though, and with only another hour or two of daylight, we reached the campsite and chose our spot underneath an overhanging rock ledge nestled down in a little valley. Even though it was kind of gray and threatening all evening, a lot of hikers run into trouble here because they don't bring enough water and expect to find some they can purify once they reach the campsite. Ben had hiked this area extensively and showed me a creek bed, that even during dry spells, usually has some water left in it, but this time around it was bone dry. Good thing we had plenty of our own water with us!
We dropped our belongings off at the campsite and walked a few hundred metres to a rocky lookout facing south toward Lake Burragorang. Like all areas in the Blue Mountains we were flanked by high and steep sandstone cliffs jutting up out of the eucalypt forest below. The sun was setting and you could really get a sense of why this area is called the Blue Mountains - oils in the eucalyptus leaves gives off a haze that appears blue in the right light. We sat there for a while, taking photos, watching birds fly around the trees and branches growing out of the cliff walls below us. Eventually we headed back to the campsite where Ben and Louise started a fire, but then Ben and I (Louise's knees wouldn't let her) walked to the opposite side of the plateau and looked north toward Katoomba and the Three Sisters - a very famous and sacred Aboriginal rock formation on the opposite side of the Jamison Valley. We found a few more rocks to climb for an even higher view of the cliffs and valleys shrouded in mist, but soon headed back to camp before it got too dark.
The next morning we woke up fairly early and I took the chance to catch the sun rise over the mountains. I was hoping the valleys would be filled with morning mist like the year before, but I was out of luck this morning. Nonetheless, there were some pretty spectacular views here. Back at camp, we packed things up, but took Louise over to the rock ledge facing the Three Sisters Ben and I were at the night before, and after a few more photo ops, went back to our bags and started the trek back out.
Once again, getting down the bouldery slopes off of Mount Solitary proved to be slow-going, but we safely made it down, all accounted for into the open eucalyptus forest. Louise insisted Ben and I go ahead of her since we also wanted to climb the shorter Ruined Castle - a big rock outcrop rising off the valley floor. The climb up to the Ruined Castle was rough. It was a lot steeper than it looked, but we eventually made it to the rocks at the top and followed a group of 20 senior citizens (at least in their mid-60s for sure!) up the side of the outcrop to the top where we all took turns climbing up to the highest point. Now, I don't know what is it, but I am terrified of heights like this. It's not that I'm unsure of my footing or looking down, but I am just afraid that I'll do something stupid and loose my balance and fall off the rocks. Getting up to the top of the outcrop was fine, but it was getting from my knees onto my feet that really did me in. But after seeing these old fogies climbing up there like it was nothing, I was determined to do it - no matter how ridiculous I looked in my photos! Well, I did it, and I did look ridiculous, but what can I do about that now?
Ben and I finished up at the Ruined Castle and we made it back to the valley floor just as Louise strolled up to us - good timing, eh! We stopped for a wee bit of lunch and had fun taking photos of a curious little bird who was scrounging around for snacks. Louise lured the bird pretty close to her hands with some broken crackers, and the bird was calm enough to give it a go...once, but he he was too suspicious otherwise and nothing more than a blur in most of my photos.
Soon enough we were back at the base of the Golden Stairs and the long climb back up to the car. Again, Louise insisted we go ahead of her so we each took our own pace getting up to the top. Ben is an avid hiker and reached the car well before me and we waited a little while longer for Louise, but we all made it in one piece and all very eager to take off our hiking boots. Overall, it was a great weekend with awesome people in a beautiful national park. Can't go wrong with that!
Showing posts with label Blue Mountains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blue Mountains. Show all posts
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Australia: Fieldwork on the Tablelands of New South Wales
**I am way behind in updating my blog. I have about 10 mini-trips that I need to write about, so here we go with the first**
In August, I moved down to Australia from Glasgow, Scotland, to start the next stage of my PhD, studying landscape change of the Tablelands of southeastern Australia. The crucial part of my research is based on the samples I collect in the field, which I was finally able to start doing in October 2012, after a preliminary trip in August to scout out potential sampling sites.
The first trip in August was fairly relaxed. My supervisor from Glasgow came down for the week and we were joined by my supervisor from Australia and a local colleague of my Glasgow Supervisor's for a few days each. The Tablelands is a landscape dominated by rolling hills - sometimes mountainous - with gum tree forests and flat open grazing pastures in the valley bottoms. They spread a good distance, over 500km from north of Bathurst to south of Cooma, and almost 200km wide from Goulburn to Gundagai - roughly. When the European Australians first arrived to the Tablelands, the valley bottoms were soggy swampy meadows with sometimes large ponds in them. Water flowed through the landscape, though not in defined channels. With the introduction of grazing agriculture came lots of deforestation, which, paired with Australia's variable drought-dominated and flood-dominated climate regimes, led to the incision of these waterways into the valley bottoms, carving out deep gullies. As gullies were eroded in some parts of the landscape, the sediment released from them was deposited further downstream, covering the swampy meadows. Whether the cause of this widespread landscape degradation came from introduced grazing agriculture, from natural cyclical processes that happened to start at the same time as European grazing, or from fire-agricultural methods employed by Aboriginal Australians, we cannot be sure, and that is the purpose of my research.
So fieldwork involved me, and one of a handful of great field assistants, going into these gullies and collecting sediment samples from the gully walls and later I will determine burial ages for the sediment which will help me interpret when widespread gullying and sediment deposition on the Tablelands began.
While this region of Australia is arguably not all that scenic - there are no rough coasts, rainforests, mountains, or outback deserts - the rolling hills are beautiful and we frequently drove in and out of Australian bush land which provided plenty of opportunities to see amazing Australian wildlife.
In August, I was more focused on tuning my eyes to what was happening on the landscape. At one of our first stops, near Bevendale, we visited a site my Glasgow supervisor had previously worked on. A few years ago, to get to the landowners' house - we always asked for permission to gain access to land and let them know we were there - you'd just drive over a bridge spanning a 5 metre-deep gully. My supervisor was shocked to see when we got there that the bridge had been totally wiped out. We forded the stream and when we found the homeowners, they told us that the bridge had been washed out by the biggest flood they'd experienced. The water level rose up those 5 metres to the bridge and just plucked it up, carrying it downstream. This was not in any sort of gorge or steep landscape, nor was the upstream area all that large, but seasonally, this part of Australia can be subject to massive floods!
A few days later we visited another site along a stream called, Birchams Creek, and it ended up being one of my favorite sites that I returned to a few times. At this site, just 40 minutes outside of Canberra, the Australian capitol city, I was guaranteed to see at least 20 (sometimes upwards of 50+) kangaroos! Australians kind of see kangaroos like we, in Michigan, see deer. They are everywhere and often end up crushed by cars on the side of the road. But here, back in the countryside, they were everywhere and each time I visited, I would see them hopping up and down the hills, in and out of the paddock fences, and sleeping under trees in the middle of the day. So cute to see, too, when the little joeys are sticking their heads out of the mothers' pouches!
Overall, August field work was kind of dull - more driving than work. But I did get one experience most Australians do not: I was in the middle of a snowstorm! It was the second to last day of field work and we'd kind of exhausted the options of places to visit, so my supervisors and I took a drive to a peat bog on the southern slopes of the Brindabella Range which makes up the border between the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales. We drove up through the mountains through Namadgi National Park, through a snow gum forest, and stopped at a scenic overlook where you could see the flat valley bottom below, surrounded by steep mountains. It was windy and cold, so we didn't stay long and kept driving down the other side of the mountains. We stopped at the Yaouk Peat Bog on the other side of the mountains and discussing how we might use it in my research and while we were there it started to snow. It wasn't really a blizzard, that would be exaggerating, but there were plenty of small specks of snow falling all around us as we got back into the car and drove toward Adaminaby for lunch. By the time we arrived and sat down in the small town's cafe, it was near blizzard conditions - big wet flakes of snow were swirling around outside and even the woman who ran the cafe ran outside with her camera because she had never seen anything like it! It cleared up enough as we left for me to see the Big Trout (Australia, like the US, is proud of their BIG roadside attractions) but then we drove back into the storm as we headed to Cooma and up to Queanbeyan.
October eventually rolled around and it was time to head back out into the field to actually collect some samples. I had two field assistants lined up to help me out over the two and half weeks of work and they were both great (we will call the first Britney and the second Tracy). Both were gung-ho undergrads who wanted to get experience with field work and couldn't have been better suited for the work. Britney was more interested in biology but hadn't had any field experience before and was curious to know what it was like and while I got excited about sediment and rocks she got excited about all the different animals we came across from sheep and horses to cats and puppies. Tracy was a seasoned environmental science undergrad who had a keen eye for approaching geologic problems and often kept me on track for what I was supposed to be doing. Both were Australians, which was important for me because I would be talking to landowners, asking their permission to go on their land, and knowing how suspicious Americans can be about people coming on their property, I didn't want to say the wrong thing or ask the wrong question, so it was good to have Britney and Tracy as field assistants. Also, both had excellent taste in music which was important for the long car rides.
Britney and I went into the field first, sticking around the Goulburn area. We visited a few streams nearby and collected samples, and scoped out a few more sites I could potentially come back to. But after a few days, Britney had to be back in Sydney so we drove the two hours back, I stayed the night in the city, and then picked up Tracy the next morning and drove back out to the field. Tracy and I went a bit further south, more toward Lake George - an inland lake with a large surface area (so it looked big) but a small depth of only 2 metres (so there wasn't much water). While at one of my sites, situated right next to a wide and long section of the stream that was more like a pool, we saw a few splashes and this little brown-backed critter with its nose just sticking out of the water, zig-zagging back and forth across the pool, spending a lot of time under the banks where sticks and weeds were all mashed together. It was mid-day, and though we both knew that platypuses are typically out in the evening and at night, we were sure that is what we saw! It was difficult getting photos of the animal (which I desperately wanted!) and when we asked some landowners further downstream if they ever saw any platypuses we were discouraged to hear that they'd only seen one platypus, thirty years before. They tried convincing us we saw a water rat, but the animal we saw did not have the white fur on its back like a water rat would have had and water rats swim on the surface whereas this critter spent most of its time underwater. Though unconfirmed, we decided that we had been some of the lucky few Australians who have seen the elusive platypus out in the wild and I got to check another Aussie animal off my list!
Tracy couldn't stay more than three days in the field, so off we drove, back to Sydney, where the next morning I exchanged field assistants again and Britney and I headed back toward Goulburn, but kept driving and eventually steered north toward Cowra. The next few days were fairly uneventful, and wet. Also, I was getting frustrated because I hadn't been to this part of the Tablelands before so I didn't really know where to go to find appropriate sample sites, so there was a lot of driving around. I felt so bad for Britney because she was so patient and tried to be helpful, but sometimes my stress got the better of me. But we got some good samples over those few days and met some friendly landowners who couldn't have been more helpful for us. It wasn't long before a few exciting things happened. We were driving in the hills around Mandurama and off in the distance, on the high hilltops, we could see snow. Britney had never seen real snow in her life before so I drove back up into the hills until we crossed the snow line and stopped the car. Now, I've been in real blizzards, buried under feet of snow, and spent so much time in good snow that I was pretty unimpressed by the light dusting of white we saw on the ground, but it was real fun to watch Britney get out and stomp around in it, packing it into a little snowball and throwing it, and I got a good kick out of her answer when I asked, "Well, what do you think?" and she responded, "It's so WET!" Haha. It was a great moment and on the way back down the hill we crossed paths with a rural postman who was also stopping to take some photos of the snow. It was definitely a rarity for that time of year and a rarity for Australia in general! The next day we got a bit more excitement when I saw something unusual in one of the grazing paddocks - a small flock of weirdly gangly, 8-foot tall, dinosaur-like birds was strutting across the field a good distance away from the road, but I knew what they were immediately: Emus! I pulled over and grabbed my camera to take about one million photos of them. I wanted them to come closer and even though they didn't, we watched them for a good ten minutes or so!
And then November came around. It was time for me to head back into the field and collect some samples from sites I hadn't focused much time on before. I started off on my own this time, driving through the Blue Mountains north, back toward Manduarama to a site along Grubbenbun Creek I'd been to before, but didn't take samples. After Grubbenbun, the landowners gave me directions for the back-road route to get to Crookwell. It was already the evening and the two-hour drive took me through some beautiful dirt roads through tiny hill-towns with names like Thalaba, Abercrombie River, Peelwood, and Trunkey Creek. I would be sampling the next day north of the town of Laggan, so I stopped at the site to see if I could introduce myself to the landowners. The old couple who answered the door were so nice and and man had been living on the land since his family settled down here, the first European Australians to graze the land, way back in the 1830s! The next few days were standard work days. I'd go to the creek, clear off a fresh sediment surface from the gully wall and remove my sediment samples. After Laggan, I drove down to Queanbeyan where my Glasgow supervisor's former colleague, Jane, lived. Jane had been out with us for a few days in August and was happy to help me over the weekend. We went back to the Birchams Creek site, where again we saw dozens of kangaroos on the hillsides, and we also revisited a site on the western boundary of the Australian Capital Territory. Jane is a geologist and has had a bit of experience working on the Australian landscapes, so it was fantastic to work with someone who brought a professional geologist's perspective to my research and helped guide my field work strategy to be able to collect samples that would best answer my research questions.
But Jane could only help out over the weekend, so Monday I worked by myself again, and on Tuesday, I drove into Canberra to pick up my next field assistant, Drew. Drew had just finished his Honors Thesis on river erosion and sedimentation and happily, for me, was willing to give up a few days of surf to come dig around in the mud and dirt with me! I had a few hours before Drew arrived, though, so I checked out the Australian War Memorial on the outskirts of the city. Canberra isn't much as far as cities go, but it is chock full of museums! I only had about ten minutes in the War Memorial museum, but I will definitely be going back to spend more time there!
I retrieved Drew and we headed south for an hour or so and turned off down a long dirt road. I wanted to collect a different type of sample, mud from the valley bottom of a modern swampy meadow, one that hadn't been gullied through or buried yet. We saw a house that looked like they might own a bit of land and as we drove up, dog started running toward us and a very imposing man stood on the porch of the house. We exchanged hellos as we walked toward each other, and the mood changed immediately. This guy and his wife had just moved out into the country from a small town nearby and were in the process of building a Sabbatical Recording Studio in some of the sheds out back. I forget what his name was - MC something-or-other - but MC was really into his music and worked with local and international recording artists and he and his wife wanted to be surrounded by peace and quiet while working with artists who wanted to get out of your typical city sound studio and into a more relaxing setting for recording their music. They gave us a tour of their recording studio, which was a work in progress. And though I believed their story and liked MC's enthusiasm for music, we were still a little wary to follow them into these sheds where the studio was being built, though MC was so excited to show us the sound-proof rooms and a bathroom with a microphone built into the shower head so the artists could sing before their session and get rid of the jitters. I was actually pretty impressed and excited for their business. It was just such a cool combination of beautiful land, quiet scenery, and high-tech modern recording equipment! Though I do have to say, Drew and I both felt like we'd just stepped onto the set of a real-life horror movie when they took us on the tour of their studio. "Sure, come check out these sound-proof rooms. I won't knock you out with this hammer we're using to install the keyboard. Wait 'til you see the sound booth shed!" But really, MC and his wife were great people to chat with!
Drew and I carried on with our work, and the next day drove south from Cooma to a little town called Dalgety and turned down a road that ran a 20 kilometre loop through grazing country. We were headed to a town on my map called Jimenbuen, which was at the far end of the loop road. The road we were on went from being paved to dirt and eventually it turned into a small two-track that wound through wide open grazing pastures. Eventually, though, the road stopped and we were definitely not in any sort of town but in front of a creepy old house. It didn't look like anyone was home and it didn't seem to be near anything else, so we decided we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and started to head back. While on that little two-track, though, we spooked three emus which were only about 30 metres away! Drew told me to stop the car and roll down the window. Apparently emus are notoriously curious and sure enough, they started toward the car. I couldn't believe just how massive these birds are! They're at least 8 feet tall, with spindly legs, and a relatively small body compared to their long necks which are covered with thick, tufty feathers. Honestly, they just look top-heavy and like with any step they will tip over! They got bored with us after just a few minutes and took off in the opposite direction, but it was so cool to be so close to these amazing birds out in the wild!
November was a warm month to be doing field work in and the days were hot and sweaty and Drew and I were bothered by flies wherever we went those few days, but as quickly as field work started, it ended for the year and we drove back to Sydney after a few days in Cooma. So now, with samples in hand, I was ready to start getting some data back from my samples and the story of when landscape change started on the Tablelands was beginning to take shape. The story continues, but I am waiting to be trained in the laboratory to process the rest of the samples, and while I have a few weeks of field work in the books for 2013, nothing yet is planned.
In August, I moved down to Australia from Glasgow, Scotland, to start the next stage of my PhD, studying landscape change of the Tablelands of southeastern Australia. The crucial part of my research is based on the samples I collect in the field, which I was finally able to start doing in October 2012, after a preliminary trip in August to scout out potential sampling sites.
 |
| View from the lookout in Namadgi National Park in the Australian Capital Territory |
The first trip in August was fairly relaxed. My supervisor from Glasgow came down for the week and we were joined by my supervisor from Australia and a local colleague of my Glasgow Supervisor's for a few days each. The Tablelands is a landscape dominated by rolling hills - sometimes mountainous - with gum tree forests and flat open grazing pastures in the valley bottoms. They spread a good distance, over 500km from north of Bathurst to south of Cooma, and almost 200km wide from Goulburn to Gundagai - roughly. When the European Australians first arrived to the Tablelands, the valley bottoms were soggy swampy meadows with sometimes large ponds in them. Water flowed through the landscape, though not in defined channels. With the introduction of grazing agriculture came lots of deforestation, which, paired with Australia's variable drought-dominated and flood-dominated climate regimes, led to the incision of these waterways into the valley bottoms, carving out deep gullies. As gullies were eroded in some parts of the landscape, the sediment released from them was deposited further downstream, covering the swampy meadows. Whether the cause of this widespread landscape degradation came from introduced grazing agriculture, from natural cyclical processes that happened to start at the same time as European grazing, or from fire-agricultural methods employed by Aboriginal Australians, we cannot be sure, and that is the purpose of my research.
So fieldwork involved me, and one of a handful of great field assistants, going into these gullies and collecting sediment samples from the gully walls and later I will determine burial ages for the sediment which will help me interpret when widespread gullying and sediment deposition on the Tablelands began.
While this region of Australia is arguably not all that scenic - there are no rough coasts, rainforests, mountains, or outback deserts - the rolling hills are beautiful and we frequently drove in and out of Australian bush land which provided plenty of opportunities to see amazing Australian wildlife.
In August, I was more focused on tuning my eyes to what was happening on the landscape. At one of our first stops, near Bevendale, we visited a site my Glasgow supervisor had previously worked on. A few years ago, to get to the landowners' house - we always asked for permission to gain access to land and let them know we were there - you'd just drive over a bridge spanning a 5 metre-deep gully. My supervisor was shocked to see when we got there that the bridge had been totally wiped out. We forded the stream and when we found the homeowners, they told us that the bridge had been washed out by the biggest flood they'd experienced. The water level rose up those 5 metres to the bridge and just plucked it up, carrying it downstream. This was not in any sort of gorge or steep landscape, nor was the upstream area all that large, but seasonally, this part of Australia can be subject to massive floods!
A few days later we visited another site along a stream called, Birchams Creek, and it ended up being one of my favorite sites that I returned to a few times. At this site, just 40 minutes outside of Canberra, the Australian capitol city, I was guaranteed to see at least 20 (sometimes upwards of 50+) kangaroos! Australians kind of see kangaroos like we, in Michigan, see deer. They are everywhere and often end up crushed by cars on the side of the road. But here, back in the countryside, they were everywhere and each time I visited, I would see them hopping up and down the hills, in and out of the paddock fences, and sleeping under trees in the middle of the day. So cute to see, too, when the little joeys are sticking their heads out of the mothers' pouches!
Overall, August field work was kind of dull - more driving than work. But I did get one experience most Australians do not: I was in the middle of a snowstorm! It was the second to last day of field work and we'd kind of exhausted the options of places to visit, so my supervisors and I took a drive to a peat bog on the southern slopes of the Brindabella Range which makes up the border between the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales. We drove up through the mountains through Namadgi National Park, through a snow gum forest, and stopped at a scenic overlook where you could see the flat valley bottom below, surrounded by steep mountains. It was windy and cold, so we didn't stay long and kept driving down the other side of the mountains. We stopped at the Yaouk Peat Bog on the other side of the mountains and discussing how we might use it in my research and while we were there it started to snow. It wasn't really a blizzard, that would be exaggerating, but there were plenty of small specks of snow falling all around us as we got back into the car and drove toward Adaminaby for lunch. By the time we arrived and sat down in the small town's cafe, it was near blizzard conditions - big wet flakes of snow were swirling around outside and even the woman who ran the cafe ran outside with her camera because she had never seen anything like it! It cleared up enough as we left for me to see the Big Trout (Australia, like the US, is proud of their BIG roadside attractions) but then we drove back into the storm as we headed to Cooma and up to Queanbeyan.
October eventually rolled around and it was time to head back out into the field to actually collect some samples. I had two field assistants lined up to help me out over the two and half weeks of work and they were both great (we will call the first Britney and the second Tracy). Both were gung-ho undergrads who wanted to get experience with field work and couldn't have been better suited for the work. Britney was more interested in biology but hadn't had any field experience before and was curious to know what it was like and while I got excited about sediment and rocks she got excited about all the different animals we came across from sheep and horses to cats and puppies. Tracy was a seasoned environmental science undergrad who had a keen eye for approaching geologic problems and often kept me on track for what I was supposed to be doing. Both were Australians, which was important for me because I would be talking to landowners, asking their permission to go on their land, and knowing how suspicious Americans can be about people coming on their property, I didn't want to say the wrong thing or ask the wrong question, so it was good to have Britney and Tracy as field assistants. Also, both had excellent taste in music which was important for the long car rides.
Britney and I went into the field first, sticking around the Goulburn area. We visited a few streams nearby and collected samples, and scoped out a few more sites I could potentially come back to. But after a few days, Britney had to be back in Sydney so we drove the two hours back, I stayed the night in the city, and then picked up Tracy the next morning and drove back out to the field. Tracy and I went a bit further south, more toward Lake George - an inland lake with a large surface area (so it looked big) but a small depth of only 2 metres (so there wasn't much water). While at one of my sites, situated right next to a wide and long section of the stream that was more like a pool, we saw a few splashes and this little brown-backed critter with its nose just sticking out of the water, zig-zagging back and forth across the pool, spending a lot of time under the banks where sticks and weeds were all mashed together. It was mid-day, and though we both knew that platypuses are typically out in the evening and at night, we were sure that is what we saw! It was difficult getting photos of the animal (which I desperately wanted!) and when we asked some landowners further downstream if they ever saw any platypuses we were discouraged to hear that they'd only seen one platypus, thirty years before. They tried convincing us we saw a water rat, but the animal we saw did not have the white fur on its back like a water rat would have had and water rats swim on the surface whereas this critter spent most of its time underwater. Though unconfirmed, we decided that we had been some of the lucky few Australians who have seen the elusive platypus out in the wild and I got to check another Aussie animal off my list!
Tracy couldn't stay more than three days in the field, so off we drove, back to Sydney, where the next morning I exchanged field assistants again and Britney and I headed back toward Goulburn, but kept driving and eventually steered north toward Cowra. The next few days were fairly uneventful, and wet. Also, I was getting frustrated because I hadn't been to this part of the Tablelands before so I didn't really know where to go to find appropriate sample sites, so there was a lot of driving around. I felt so bad for Britney because she was so patient and tried to be helpful, but sometimes my stress got the better of me. But we got some good samples over those few days and met some friendly landowners who couldn't have been more helpful for us. It wasn't long before a few exciting things happened. We were driving in the hills around Mandurama and off in the distance, on the high hilltops, we could see snow. Britney had never seen real snow in her life before so I drove back up into the hills until we crossed the snow line and stopped the car. Now, I've been in real blizzards, buried under feet of snow, and spent so much time in good snow that I was pretty unimpressed by the light dusting of white we saw on the ground, but it was real fun to watch Britney get out and stomp around in it, packing it into a little snowball and throwing it, and I got a good kick out of her answer when I asked, "Well, what do you think?" and she responded, "It's so WET!" Haha. It was a great moment and on the way back down the hill we crossed paths with a rural postman who was also stopping to take some photos of the snow. It was definitely a rarity for that time of year and a rarity for Australia in general! The next day we got a bit more excitement when I saw something unusual in one of the grazing paddocks - a small flock of weirdly gangly, 8-foot tall, dinosaur-like birds was strutting across the field a good distance away from the road, but I knew what they were immediately: Emus! I pulled over and grabbed my camera to take about one million photos of them. I wanted them to come closer and even though they didn't, we watched them for a good ten minutes or so!
And then November came around. It was time for me to head back into the field and collect some samples from sites I hadn't focused much time on before. I started off on my own this time, driving through the Blue Mountains north, back toward Manduarama to a site along Grubbenbun Creek I'd been to before, but didn't take samples. After Grubbenbun, the landowners gave me directions for the back-road route to get to Crookwell. It was already the evening and the two-hour drive took me through some beautiful dirt roads through tiny hill-towns with names like Thalaba, Abercrombie River, Peelwood, and Trunkey Creek. I would be sampling the next day north of the town of Laggan, so I stopped at the site to see if I could introduce myself to the landowners. The old couple who answered the door were so nice and and man had been living on the land since his family settled down here, the first European Australians to graze the land, way back in the 1830s! The next few days were standard work days. I'd go to the creek, clear off a fresh sediment surface from the gully wall and remove my sediment samples. After Laggan, I drove down to Queanbeyan where my Glasgow supervisor's former colleague, Jane, lived. Jane had been out with us for a few days in August and was happy to help me over the weekend. We went back to the Birchams Creek site, where again we saw dozens of kangaroos on the hillsides, and we also revisited a site on the western boundary of the Australian Capital Territory. Jane is a geologist and has had a bit of experience working on the Australian landscapes, so it was fantastic to work with someone who brought a professional geologist's perspective to my research and helped guide my field work strategy to be able to collect samples that would best answer my research questions.
But Jane could only help out over the weekend, so Monday I worked by myself again, and on Tuesday, I drove into Canberra to pick up my next field assistant, Drew. Drew had just finished his Honors Thesis on river erosion and sedimentation and happily, for me, was willing to give up a few days of surf to come dig around in the mud and dirt with me! I had a few hours before Drew arrived, though, so I checked out the Australian War Memorial on the outskirts of the city. Canberra isn't much as far as cities go, but it is chock full of museums! I only had about ten minutes in the War Memorial museum, but I will definitely be going back to spend more time there!
I retrieved Drew and we headed south for an hour or so and turned off down a long dirt road. I wanted to collect a different type of sample, mud from the valley bottom of a modern swampy meadow, one that hadn't been gullied through or buried yet. We saw a house that looked like they might own a bit of land and as we drove up, dog started running toward us and a very imposing man stood on the porch of the house. We exchanged hellos as we walked toward each other, and the mood changed immediately. This guy and his wife had just moved out into the country from a small town nearby and were in the process of building a Sabbatical Recording Studio in some of the sheds out back. I forget what his name was - MC something-or-other - but MC was really into his music and worked with local and international recording artists and he and his wife wanted to be surrounded by peace and quiet while working with artists who wanted to get out of your typical city sound studio and into a more relaxing setting for recording their music. They gave us a tour of their recording studio, which was a work in progress. And though I believed their story and liked MC's enthusiasm for music, we were still a little wary to follow them into these sheds where the studio was being built, though MC was so excited to show us the sound-proof rooms and a bathroom with a microphone built into the shower head so the artists could sing before their session and get rid of the jitters. I was actually pretty impressed and excited for their business. It was just such a cool combination of beautiful land, quiet scenery, and high-tech modern recording equipment! Though I do have to say, Drew and I both felt like we'd just stepped onto the set of a real-life horror movie when they took us on the tour of their studio. "Sure, come check out these sound-proof rooms. I won't knock you out with this hammer we're using to install the keyboard. Wait 'til you see the sound booth shed!" But really, MC and his wife were great people to chat with!
Drew and I carried on with our work, and the next day drove south from Cooma to a little town called Dalgety and turned down a road that ran a 20 kilometre loop through grazing country. We were headed to a town on my map called Jimenbuen, which was at the far end of the loop road. The road we were on went from being paved to dirt and eventually it turned into a small two-track that wound through wide open grazing pastures. Eventually, though, the road stopped and we were definitely not in any sort of town but in front of a creepy old house. It didn't look like anyone was home and it didn't seem to be near anything else, so we decided we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and started to head back. While on that little two-track, though, we spooked three emus which were only about 30 metres away! Drew told me to stop the car and roll down the window. Apparently emus are notoriously curious and sure enough, they started toward the car. I couldn't believe just how massive these birds are! They're at least 8 feet tall, with spindly legs, and a relatively small body compared to their long necks which are covered with thick, tufty feathers. Honestly, they just look top-heavy and like with any step they will tip over! They got bored with us after just a few minutes and took off in the opposite direction, but it was so cool to be so close to these amazing birds out in the wild!
November was a warm month to be doing field work in and the days were hot and sweaty and Drew and I were bothered by flies wherever we went those few days, but as quickly as field work started, it ended for the year and we drove back to Sydney after a few days in Cooma. So now, with samples in hand, I was ready to start getting some data back from my samples and the story of when landscape change started on the Tablelands was beginning to take shape. The story continues, but I am waiting to be trained in the laboratory to process the rest of the samples, and while I have a few weeks of field work in the books for 2013, nothing yet is planned.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Sydney: A City Best Seen from the Water
It's been five weeks to the day since I first arrived in Sydney and I've only posted one blog post and it didn't even have photos. I am a lousy tour guide! Well, part of the reason is that I just haven't felt like I've done a whole lot. Sure I've seen things, but Australia is much different than Scotland in that there just aren't the centuries of tangible history that is so evident in Scotland. It's not to say that Australia doesn't have its own unique history, it's just a different kind of history.
My first week in Australia, after getting acclimated to the chilly winter was spent at Macquarie University, where I am now studying, planning my first excursion out into the region of New South Wales that is my research area. I am here to study a bunch of sediment that has caused quite a stir. The sediment has been deposited over the last few centuries, but when it actually started to be eroded from its original undisturbed sites and why or how are not well understood. That's where I come in. I'll sort all of that out in the long run, but after reading about this sediment for five months while in Glasgow, it was about time I actually went out to see some of it!
We were in the field for a week, and pretty much just driving around visiting different rivers and looking for the type of sediment we are interested in. We would drive to two or three potential sampling sites each day, and with breakfast and lunch in there, we somehow always managed to fill the day with things to do. Often, though, we would also get stopped by the scenery, or wildlife (kangaroos and a real live echidna!), or other roadside oddities. Lots of time was spent on farms, or in rural areas, looking at creeks. The Australian landscape, even where vegetated, is harsh and demanding. Much of the region surrounding Sydney was deforested for sheep and cattle grazing, but even that was beautiful in its own way. Of course, paddocks can't compete with the natural landscape, and I got my fill of both, driving through a few National Parks along the way.
Here are some more photos from the field:
Once we got back from the field, I realized I needed to put a budget together for my research over the next year and a half (something I'm still working on!). It's a tedious process, and right now, while I'm still settling down, there's not much else I've really been able to do around the city, and since I don't know too many people yet, it's been a slow-going process checking things out. Over the last few weeks, I decided that while I like the apartment I am in right now and my flatmate, I really longed to be somewhere near a park, the water, or some semblance of nature. Sorry Parramatta Road, just not cutting it. Also, I'd love to be closer to a train line or one of the ferry terminals. Somewhere that is just easier to move around. So in looking for other apartments, I've seen a fair bit of the city.
My first week in Australia, after getting acclimated to the chilly winter was spent at Macquarie University, where I am now studying, planning my first excursion out into the region of New South Wales that is my research area. I am here to study a bunch of sediment that has caused quite a stir. The sediment has been deposited over the last few centuries, but when it actually started to be eroded from its original undisturbed sites and why or how are not well understood. That's where I come in. I'll sort all of that out in the long run, but after reading about this sediment for five months while in Glasgow, it was about time I actually went out to see some of it!
We were in the field for a week, and pretty much just driving around visiting different rivers and looking for the type of sediment we are interested in. We would drive to two or three potential sampling sites each day, and with breakfast and lunch in there, we somehow always managed to fill the day with things to do. Often, though, we would also get stopped by the scenery, or wildlife (kangaroos and a real live echidna!), or other roadside oddities. Lots of time was spent on farms, or in rural areas, looking at creeks. The Australian landscape, even where vegetated, is harsh and demanding. Much of the region surrounding Sydney was deforested for sheep and cattle grazing, but even that was beautiful in its own way. Of course, paddocks can't compete with the natural landscape, and I got my fill of both, driving through a few National Parks along the way.
 |
| TONS of kangaroos near Canberra |
One really cool experience I had in the field was getting stuck in a snow storm! Most Australians have told me you never see snow in Australia (though I swear I saw some downtown a few weeks ago - not many flakes, but definitely snow!). Anyway, we were driving through Namadji National Park in the southern end of the Australian Capitol Territory and the weather and scenery were beautiful! On the other side of the mountains, however, it started getting blustery and as we drove into the small town of Adaminaby, there were big, puffy, flakes of snow blowing around! It was such an experience that even the woman who owned the cafe we were eating at ran outside with her camera saying that she had never seen anything like it in her life before! Well, from Adaminaby to Cooma and almost all the way back to Queanbeyan, where we were staying, we had to drive carefully and slow to a creep just to get through some parts of it! An awesome experience that extremely few Aussies have had the chance to see!
 |
| Driving into the snowstorm |
Once we got back from the field, I realized I needed to put a budget together for my research over the next year and a half (something I'm still working on!). It's a tedious process, and right now, while I'm still settling down, there's not much else I've really been able to do around the city, and since I don't know too many people yet, it's been a slow-going process checking things out. Over the last few weeks, I decided that while I like the apartment I am in right now and my flatmate, I really longed to be somewhere near a park, the water, or some semblance of nature. Sorry Parramatta Road, just not cutting it. Also, I'd love to be closer to a train line or one of the ferry terminals. Somewhere that is just easier to move around. So in looking for other apartments, I've seen a fair bit of the city.
The nice thing, though, was that last week, one of my best friends from high school was back in Sydney! Arianne moved to Australia last September though hadn't been living in Sydney, but last week our paths crossed and we spend a lot of our free time checking out different neighborhoods. We had drinks and Indian food in Newtown, shopped at the Glebe Market on a Saturday morning, took the ferry out to Manly Beach, spent an afternoon in the Botanical Gardens, and had a few schooners (rather than pints) at the Fortune of War, Sydney's oldest pub. It was so much fun seeing a face from home.
I think sometimes when you have these big life-changing moves around the world, you almost wonder if the rest of your life leading up to this moment actually happened. Sure, I talk to my friends and family frequently, but you get this nagging suspicion that it's all part of some larger conspiracy theory against you, making you think none of it is real. But then you get the chance to go home and see that everything is, in fact, still there. I haven't had the chance to go home, and probably won't while I'm here, but seeing Arianne really lifted my spirits and somehow I knew things down here would turn out all right.
I'll leave a bunch of photos here, and I've put captions with them to give you an idea of what they are, but there's no real story to them yet. Nice scenery, though, if I can say so.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Sydney Harbor Bridge Climb
I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do it. I walked down the street from my hostel, the Sydney Harbor YHA, to the Bridge Climb office, just to see if there were any tour slots available. Luckily, the last day climb had an opening, so I booked it. Now, I like to say that I have an unnecessary fear of heights. Airplanes? No worries. Ski lifts? Please. Empire State Building? Cake walk. But put me on the edge of the Grand Canyon or up on Middle Teton or out on one of the Sears Tower's glass-bottomed sky boxes? Give me an extra set of pants because I'll probably wet myself!
I did get some good practice this morning, though. Before I left my hostel in Katoomba, I walked down to "Scenic World" which is a little theme park of sorts where you can ride skyways across the Jamison Valley, take the world's steepest railway down into the valley to a boardwalk going through the Australian Rainforest, and then take a tram back up to the top. Maybe I just have a fear of falling because I was fine on the skyways and the tram but the train was a little nerve-racking every time the seating-cars tilted a little more forward:
For the most part, Scenic World was a bust. BUT the skyway paused 270 meters above the valley floor at one point and you could look straight down the entire distance because the center part of the cable car's floor was glass - the frosted kind that turns clear with the flick of a switch.
I left the Blue Mountains and upon arrival at my hostel in Sydney, my Bridge Climb story resumes. I had been told that the Bridge Climb was not an option. I, therefore, without thinking about it too much, purchased my ticket. A few hour later, I was in the preparation room, undressing, and putting on the grey jumpsuit. Our guide, Romeo (no joke), kept attaching things to our belts like a fleece, a raincoat, a handkerchief (weird word), our hats, our radios... I think I was wearing about 10 extra pounds of stuff! I also mentioned to Romeo if he had any tips for people with a fear of heights. He was great and had me be the first one, behind him, in line. He was very perceptive and could tell a few times I was very anxious.
Everyone told me the first part was the worst. They were mostly right. You walk under the bridge's roadway on these narrow gangways with a metal mesh floor, so you can see the ground beneath you. You're harnessed in the entire time with these awesome little gear-ball things which allow you to seamlessly stay attached to a cable that runs the entire length of the walk. So the metal grating was scary, but I got through it. You then ascend four sets of ladders which put you about 30 feet above the road deck. Now you're on top of the top arch of the bridge and from there your walkway is about one meter wide with about 1 meter of flat steel on either side. It actually feels really roomy. We had headphones on the entire time so Romeo could talk to all of us at once and he gave anecdotes about various Sydney sights and landforms. It was cloudy and grey and very windy (gusting up to 40 km/hr), but the views were still amazing! We got up to the top and I had no problems whatsoever. Along the way up and once you're at the top, individual and group photos are taken, and since our group only had seven people in it, we got a little bit of extra time to enjoy the scenery. At the top, however, the wind really started to pick up and in order to get down we had to cross a little walkway over the road to the opposite side of the bridge. That walkway has no buffer zone on either side, so if you look over the railing, you're looking straight down to the roadway! Remember, I'm 134 meters above the water, which is still pretty high above the roadway. The winds really started to pick up at this point and Romeo kept telling us to look down on the roadway to look for "this" or "that" and my knees started wobbling. He took one more photo of everyone (my worst one), and we started heading back down the bridge. All in all, an amazing adventure. Totally worth every dime!
Tomorrow is another adventure! Since I didn't see any Australian wildlife in the wild, I booked a behind-the-scenes tour of the Aussie Animals at the Toronga Zoo in Sydney! They said to be sure to bring my camera since I'd have many opportunities for photo-ops with the animals.
That, AND my two friends from Glee Club who are here are going to meet up with me at some point later in the day! Can't wait to see them!
I did get some good practice this morning, though. Before I left my hostel in Katoomba, I walked down to "Scenic World" which is a little theme park of sorts where you can ride skyways across the Jamison Valley, take the world's steepest railway down into the valley to a boardwalk going through the Australian Rainforest, and then take a tram back up to the top. Maybe I just have a fear of falling because I was fine on the skyways and the tram but the train was a little nerve-racking every time the seating-cars tilted a little more forward:
For the most part, Scenic World was a bust. BUT the skyway paused 270 meters above the valley floor at one point and you could look straight down the entire distance because the center part of the cable car's floor was glass - the frosted kind that turns clear with the flick of a switch.
 |
| The Scenic Railway heading back up its 52° incline |
 |
| Scenic World is based around the coal mining operations of the 19th century |
 |
| My first walk through a rainforest! |
 |
| View from the sky tram of "Orphan Rock" |
 |
| The Three Sisters peaking out from the morning fog |
 |
| Looking straight down to the valley bottom |
 |
| The other passengers in the skyway chuckled when I asked to get my photo taken like this |
 |
| Last look at the eucalypts |
Everyone told me the first part was the worst. They were mostly right. You walk under the bridge's roadway on these narrow gangways with a metal mesh floor, so you can see the ground beneath you. You're harnessed in the entire time with these awesome little gear-ball things which allow you to seamlessly stay attached to a cable that runs the entire length of the walk. So the metal grating was scary, but I got through it. You then ascend four sets of ladders which put you about 30 feet above the road deck. Now you're on top of the top arch of the bridge and from there your walkway is about one meter wide with about 1 meter of flat steel on either side. It actually feels really roomy. We had headphones on the entire time so Romeo could talk to all of us at once and he gave anecdotes about various Sydney sights and landforms. It was cloudy and grey and very windy (gusting up to 40 km/hr), but the views were still amazing! We got up to the top and I had no problems whatsoever. Along the way up and once you're at the top, individual and group photos are taken, and since our group only had seven people in it, we got a little bit of extra time to enjoy the scenery. At the top, however, the wind really started to pick up and in order to get down we had to cross a little walkway over the road to the opposite side of the bridge. That walkway has no buffer zone on either side, so if you look over the railing, you're looking straight down to the roadway! Remember, I'm 134 meters above the water, which is still pretty high above the roadway. The winds really started to pick up at this point and Romeo kept telling us to look down on the roadway to look for "this" or "that" and my knees started wobbling. He took one more photo of everyone (my worst one), and we started heading back down the bridge. All in all, an amazing adventure. Totally worth every dime!
 |
| My Sydney Harbor Bridge Climb photo. Making the Michigan "M"! |
That, AND my two friends from Glee Club who are here are going to meet up with me at some point later in the day! Can't wait to see them!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Blue Mountains National Park: The Three Sisters and National Pass
Last Friday I finished the lab work I came to Australia to learn. Things went well and because I finished early, I had four days to explore on my own. Knowing I needed to get some school work done, but also wanting to get outside a bit more, I took the train out to Katoomba, Australia. Katoomba is a sleepy little town in Australia's Blue Mountains. It's built up on top of a hill and the main road goes down to the edge of a very deep valley. The main road is lined with little restaurants and kitchy stores, but it's relatively quiet and perfect for what I needed. I booked three nights at the Kangaroo BakPak and it couldn't have been any better. It's a small, cozy place outside of town with a great host, Mike, and as he said, "There's a difference between a party hostel and a social hostel." This has definitely been a social hostel but I've gotten really good sleep here and the people are very friendly and talkative.
I got dinner the first night with two girls from Toronto and got my first up-close encounter with a kangaroo...on my pizza! Kangaroo tastes a little like tender, grass-fed beef. It's sooo good! And though it's been raining and thundering at least once a day, it hasn't been persistent, and we get great weather both before and after.
Before getting dinner the first day, I walked down to the edge of the valley and had great views of "The Three Sisters" which are basically three sandstone spires (or hoodoos) that have been weathered out of the rock ridgeline near Katoomba. It's one of Australia's most visited natural features every year. Yesterday, I then went hiking with a girl from Germany who convinced me to wake up early (which was very hard because the previous night everyone at the hostel had a lot of fun with Goon - aka boxed wine). We took the train to Wentworth Falls and made our way to the National Pass. This trail starts on top of the cliffs surrounding the valley and crosses over top of Wentworth Falls. It then follows a very steep stairway cut into the sandstone cliffs, which drops down to the bottom of the waterfall. The trail continues along the bottom of one set of cliffs, but not far off the other side of the trail is another very large cliff. Because it rained the night before, the valley was filled with clouds and we saw some amazing, postcard perfect views - which my photos don't do justice!
So tomorrow I head back into Sydney for two nights where I'm going to meet up with a few friends from Glee Club before giving a talk at MacQuarie University. Going to be a fun few days!
I got dinner the first night with two girls from Toronto and got my first up-close encounter with a kangaroo...on my pizza! Kangaroo tastes a little like tender, grass-fed beef. It's sooo good! And though it's been raining and thundering at least once a day, it hasn't been persistent, and we get great weather both before and after.
Before getting dinner the first day, I walked down to the edge of the valley and had great views of "The Three Sisters" which are basically three sandstone spires (or hoodoos) that have been weathered out of the rock ridgeline near Katoomba. It's one of Australia's most visited natural features every year. Yesterday, I then went hiking with a girl from Germany who convinced me to wake up early (which was very hard because the previous night everyone at the hostel had a lot of fun with Goon - aka boxed wine). We took the train to Wentworth Falls and made our way to the National Pass. This trail starts on top of the cliffs surrounding the valley and crosses over top of Wentworth Falls. It then follows a very steep stairway cut into the sandstone cliffs, which drops down to the bottom of the waterfall. The trail continues along the bottom of one set of cliffs, but not far off the other side of the trail is another very large cliff. Because it rained the night before, the valley was filled with clouds and we saw some amazing, postcard perfect views - which my photos don't do justice!
 |
| View of The Three Sisters from Echo Point |
 |
| View of Valley of the Waters from top of Wentworth Falls |
 |
| Starting the descent down the cliffs to National Pass |
 |
| View of Wentworth Falls from the bottom |
 |
| The trail heading under some of the sandstone ledges |
 |
| Valley of the Waters from the National Pass |
 |
| Sandstone cliffs with the clouds going out |
 |
| Valley of the Waters |
 |
| Clouds evaporating in the afternoon sun |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
