Blue Mountains: Snakes, Caves and Platypus

January 25th

The last few days in the mountains have been extraordinary. Even the pictures can’t do justice to the things we have done. However, I will try to do my best to give you some of the highlights. Let me start by saying that right now as I begin to write, I am sitting outside in the Australian Bush (WHAT!) at our Blue Mountain accommodations called Jemby Rinjah. We are all staying in a eco-lodge, which means that everything from electricity to water use is sustainable. The toilets are compostable, meaning that they don’t use any water and they don’t flush… They are kind of like a really fancy honey bucket. We have been eating our meals in the restaurant in the main lodge and the food has been sooo good. We have been told that this is the nicest place that we will stay on the whole trip.

Jemby Rinjah (I have been walking around saying it with an Aussie accent) is in the middle of a Eucalypt forest. Eucalyptus trees are the most common type of tree here and are well adapted to the Australian environment. The leaves carry toxins in them that are poisonous in high doses for most animals. Koalas are the main marsupials that can eat the leaves. The trees also thrive on fire. The oil that Eucalypt produce is highly flammable so bush fires, which are necessary, can easily travel through the oily air. Some Eucalypt also produce little fruits called gum fruits, which is where the song comes from: “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree…” Also the tree oil produces a blue haze that covers the forest, which is why the mountains have the name Blue Mountains. Speaking of mountains, the Blue Mountains are not really mountains. They are made of many plateaus that are dissected by gorges that are hundreds of feet deep. The highest point is only 1,190 meters above sea level. The mountains look Grand Canyon ish.

On our way to Jemby Rinjah on Saturday we stopped at Scenic World, which is a tourist attraction that sits on the side of a cliff overlooking a huge valley. We took a trolly on railroad tracks down the cliff to the forest floor. The train had a peak descent angle of 57 degrees, or so steep that it felt vertical. I must say it was pretty fun. We walked in the forest for a while and then took a gondola back up the cliff. The next day we got up and drove to the Jenolan Caves. We then proceeded to spend two hours walking through the most amazing system of caves. We were 200 meters below the earth’s surface at some points.

This is the trolly, It felt like it was going vertically down the cliff

Shot of inside the caves
*sorry that the pics are sidewise, if you click on them they get bigger.

Now the coolest thing that happened was after the cave walk while we were swimming in a nearby swimming hole and eating our lunch. We simultaneously saw our first poisonous snake and at the same time a platypus in the wild. Our leader Nat, who is a native Aussie, had never seen a wild platypus before. Also they are nocturnal animals so it was very strange to see one in the middle of the day. I was surprised by how small they are, only about a foot long but sooooo cute. We also saw a Red Bellied Black snake, which is one of the top ten most poisonous. However, I am getting the feeling that they are all the most poisonous.

That night we all sat around a fire at our accommodations talking and drinking grog (beer here is called grog) with our teacher!! Strange. I learned that you can smoke Eucalyptus bark. It doesn’t do anything but taste good. We also did some stargazing. We found the Southern Cross and Orion’s Belt (which you can also see from the Southern Hemisphere). No more Big Dipper and North Star!

On the last day we woke up and got to feed the wild birds, parrots to be exact. They all congregate in one spot each morning to be fed. It was cool to watch them pick up a sunflower seed and de-shell it and eat it in less than a second. After the bird feeding, we went on a Bush Walk and by bush walk I mean the coolest hike I have ever been on. We hiked down into the rainforest to the top of a waterfall and sat and ate lunch. The rainforest is amazingly beautiful. The hike back out kicked all of out butts. It was 1,002 steps up and up, we counted.

Feeding Birds

We ate lunch here on our Bush Walk

It was a fantastic weekend and I didn’t want to leave at all. Here are some other random observations about Australia:

-It is the law to vote in elections. If you reach 18 and don’t vote you get fined a lot of money. It seems like a really simple fix to our voting problems but I don’t think people in the States would be up for it.

-Australia seems a lot more environmentally aware than the US. Every single bathroom that I have been in has been dual flush. Also because of drought here, kids from a young age are taught to use very little water.

-Read our group blog at http://lcaustraliaprogram2011.blogspot.com/ its great!