24 Hours in the Bush

This past weekend, we did a 24-hour rogaine in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. We did a short 4 hour rogaine before in Victor Harbour, but for those of you who don't remember, rogaine stands for Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance. It is essentially orienteering on steroids and has nothing to do with the similarly-named hair product. Typical rogaines last for either 12 or 24 hours, and always involve navigating at night. This was a 24-hour rogaine, from 4pm Saturday to 4pm Sunday in the central Flinders, just north of Wilpena Pound. We’re heading into fall here in Australia, which means that the dry summer has yielded to a cooler and wetter autumn. The thin green carpet covering the hills, the sideways orientation of plants in creek beds, and signs warning of water on the road provided ample evidence of recent rainfall in the area. It was our first time to this part of the Flinders, but others mentioned they had never seen the Flinders as green and lush as this, and indeed, it was stunning to see the red rock cliffs abutting the green landscape below.

The goal in a rogaine is to navigate your way to as many controls as possible. You are given a map with the locations of the controls, which have varying point values, ranging from 20 to 90 points each. Teams get the maps 3 hours beforehand in order to make a flight plan appropriate to the speed and skill of the team. The idea is to get the highest amount of points by visiting as many controls, and the highest valued controls, in the 24 hour period. Additionally, there is a hash house and a soup kitchen, which provide food and warmth for competitors during and after the event. Some teams decide to stay out all 24 hours, perhaps making a quick stop at the soup kitchen for some nourishment at 0-dark-thirty in the morning, while others make their way back to the hash house for dinner, a few hours sleep, and breakfast before heading out again at dawn.

As this was our first 24 hour bush event, we thought it might be a good idea to head in for dinner and a sleep around midnight, and then head out again around 4 or 5 in the morning to stay out for the remainder of the event. With our flight plan lodged with the course directors, we headed off at 4pm accompanied by just the slightest drizzle. We immediately found ourselves in a creek bed – an excellent place to locate rock outcrops. Having spent nearly two weeks in the southern Flinders doing geological mapping in early April (blog post coming soon), we were tempted to abandon our navigation, and start looking at the rocks. Fortunately, we resisted, and headed up the hill to our first control. (The geology here is really cool, but I will let Dave tell you more about that in a later post.)

Things were really going smoothly. The late evening light was beautiful, kangaroos and wallabies hopped occasionally ahead of us, and we had made it to three controls as the sun started to set. We looked at our game plan, and realized we were more than two hours ahead of our plan, so decided we would add an additional loop. We made it to a control on top of a hill just after we lost the light, and got ready to navigate in the dark. Usually rogaines are held with a full moon, but there was only a half moon, which was often partially obscured by clouds.

Despite the relative lack of light, we were navigating reasonably well in the dark without our headlamps, letting our eyes adjust to the dark, taking compass bearings and using distinguishable features like hills and streams to figure out where we were. We had even devised a way to avoid walking through the enormous golden orb spider webs that seemed to stretch between nearly every tree and bush. Dave would walk with a stick held out in front of him (he sort of looked like a tour guide holding up an umbrella for people to follow), and if the stick met stretchy resistance, he would back up and we would go around another way. I followed behind. This mostly worked, except once when he must have been carrying the stick a bit low, because I suddenly felt a spider web on my head. Fortunately, after shrieking , jumping backwards, and frantically brushing myself off, I realized there were no spiders on me. Phew. You’re probably thinking I’m a major wimp, but you should see these spiders. Some of them are at least as big as your fist, with their legs extending out further. They’re the closest thing to Shelob that I ever want to encounter in real life, that’s for sure. Fortunately, their webs are so strong, that when you walk into them, they stretch, and if you just walk backwards, they don’t stick to you.

Dave and I actually had a discussion about these spiders and their webs before the Rogaine, and we decided that surely the spiders must go somewhere warm at night, and leave their webs. During the pre-event brief, the course directors warned us about the spiders, and what to do if we got one on us since they don't actually leave the webs at night. The directors suggested staying calm and having our partner flick the spider off – we should be OK, they said, because they were pretty sure the spiders weren’t poisonous. Not terribly comforting advice, but I was glad to know I wasn’t the only one concerned about walking into a spider web.

Anyways, apart from the web encounter, things were really going well, so we decided we’d go for a few more controls and get to the soup kitchen just after it opened at 9pm. We planned to head back to the hash house/campground after that for some sleep, figuring we’d get there around 1 am or so.

I’m not sure I can really say what happened during those next few hours because we didn’t make it to the soup kitchen until midnight. And, by the time we got there, I had a blister on one foot, with a second developing on the other. We had some warm pumpkin soup, bread and cake, and then reluctantly left the soup kitchen to make our journey back to the hash house. Things went rapidly downhill after that. My feet, and the blisters in particular, were really starting to hurt. We found one more control, and then I was suddenly overcome with extreme exhaustion. All I wanted to do was lie down – it really didn’t matter where. My eyes were closing as we were walking, and I was just hanging on to Dave hoping to avoid falling over. Turns out, we were about 13 or 14 miles from camp, and we ended up getting back at 5:30am. Thank goodness we didn’t realize how far away we were at the time, because I definitely would have stopped and taken a nap right there in the bush. Oh gosh.

There were a few positive parts of the evening, which I’ll recount here, but I’m currently trying to forget the rest of that never-ending walk, and so won’t share any of the unpleasant details. It turns out that there was a meteor shower, so on the way home, we saw several 'shooting stars'. Fortunately, we were walking in the direction that pointed us to the part of the sky where the meteors were, which was excellent. The stars were also good. It wasn’t too cold, we didn’t walk into any spider webs, we didn’t get lost, and the moon didn’t set until 4am, so we only had to walk in complete darkness for about 1.5 hours. When we got back to the hash house, they still had some hot food. So, after eating some pasta Bolognese, we headed straight for the tent. I was so tired, I fell asleep immediately, completely unaware of the hard ground, and slept until 10:30am.

We ended up not going out the next day to look for controls (I was not really keen to put my shoes back on with blisters), so we instead enjoyed the campsite, read, took a little walk, and waited for the rest of the competitors to return for the finish. We even helped the admin team at the end, noting the time teams finished, and having them add up their scorecards before turning them in to the scorers.

To give you an idea of what’s possible in these events, the top team made it to every single control and finished with 40 minutes to spare. Without measuring, it’s safe to say that they covered at least 100kms, probably running most, if not all of the time. After all of that, they cleaned up a bit, had a bite to eat, and drove 5 hours back to Adelaide for an early flight the next morning. They were in a league of their own and are in fact the current national rogaining champions. However, a number of teams ran a fair portion, and many more actually stayed out for the whole night (we realized that if we had been thinking a little more clearly, we probably should have rested for a few hours at the soup kitchen, and then stayed out the rest of the time, rather than trying to make it back to the hash house.)

Our outcome was a little bit disappointing (though we were the top American finishers!), but the good news is we’re excited to try another rogaine, and to actually stick to our plan this time. And, we got to spend the weekend in the Flinders, which is never a bad thing. It is a magical place, and I do hope we’ll have a chance to get back there again before we leave. (We've posted a few more photos here, if you're interested.)

Chile, te echo de menos

This week, I had the immense pleasure and privilege of making empanadas—Argentinian style. My friend Laila is from Argentina originally, and when she told me she was thinking of making empanadas sometime this week, I was thrilled. It’s the second time I’ve ever made empanadas—the first was when I was in Chile with this wonderful family who more or less adopted me when I was down there. Making empanadas takes work, especially if you’re going to make a lot of them—Laila said her family makes them at home only 3 or 4 times a year. Of course, in Argentina and Chile, you can buy an empanada anytime you like.

To have the chance to make empanadas with someone who really knows what they’re doing is a special opportunity. And, I can attest, Laila really knows what she is doing. At this point in my life, I feel pretty comfortable in the kitchen. But sometimes, when I’m learning to cook new things, I feel like I did when I first started cooking for myself after college, which is to say useless and overwhelmed. Fortunately, in the time it took me to make one empanada, Laila would finish three of four. Dinner would have been especially later otherwise!

Empanadas are similar to pasties, which are common here and in Britain as well. However, one difference is that in empanadas, you’ll usually find one olive, a piece of hard-boiled egg, and a raisin (though I think Laila said they don’t use raisins in Argentina). I remember the first time I had an empanada. I took a bite, and suddenly there was this enormous olive in my mouth. I was happy to see Laila chopping up the olives into little pieces for our empanadas. They were, by the way, sensational. Laila took some over to her neighbors, and they returned promptly for more! To accompany our empanadas, we even had a tomato and avocado salad, which is the salad I was served most often in Chile. They have so many wonderful avocados there, all you do is slice them up and the tomatoes, add a little lemon juice, salt, and perhaps a little olive oil, and there’s your salad.

Although she may not have realized it, Laila topped off the experience for me when I had the chance to listen to her speak with her mom on Skype. It really made me miss Spanish (castellano), and also the challenge that a different language poses. On one hand, it’s really wonderful that I can understand (almost) everything here. I can have more interesting discussions with people, and have no trouble navigating stores, restaurants, or anything else. On the other hand, it almost feels too easy since living here hasn’t felt like much of an adjustment at all. There are certainly some major differences, but on the whole, our time here has been pretty smooth, and many of the things we do here are things we’ve done at home.

I know that I’m here to experience Australian culture, and I’m certainly not complaining, but I have to say, a welcome wave of recollection swept over me spending time with Laila these past few days. (We also went to an awesome concert last night with Bela Fleck and Oumou Sangare, a diva from Mali.) I’ve definitely developed a soft spot for the countries I’ve stayed in for extended periods of time, and Chile is no exception. Which is why now, somewhere in the deepest, darkest, most back spot of my mind, I’m starting to think, “Hmmm… how might I manage to get back there some day?” And, Argentina would be nice, too!

Horizons broadening

I imagine by now that at least some of you are perhaps interested to know a little bit more about what I’m actually doing here on my Fulbright Scholarship. I promise to start including some more details in my blogs, and here is the first, albeit little, taste.

One of the things I’ve been most surprised by here in Australia is learning about all of the differences between water policy and river restoration in the US and in Australia. I certainly knew there were going to be differences, but I was surprised by what those differences were. In fact, it took me quite some time to realize some of them. I suppose it’s because I’ve been learning about water policy in the US for so long, and many things that are essentially given in the US either don’t apply at all, or are completely different here.

One of the most interesting differences for me was what environmental flows are used for in each country. For so long, I’ve thought of environmental flows as being in the river, providing habitat for fish and other creatures, and also somewhat mimicking the natural flow regime of a river, with floods and periods of lower flow. However, here in Australia, environmental flows are not really used in the river, but are really set aside for wetlands and floodplains adjacent to the river. Essentially, when these areas are flooded, birds and amphibians will breed, and also vegetation gets a good long drink, which enables it to survive through drier years. So, here, you can actually store environmental flows in a reservoir and then release them to piggy-back on a natural large flow event to either increase the duration or size of the flood.

I was having so much trouble understanding things here because I had a completely erroneous assumption about what environmental flows should be like. Once I figured it out, so many things started to make more sense. I guess the point of this blog and what I’ve realized is that it actually is really good to learn about situations different from the ones with which you’re most familiar. I think it helps you to break out with your thinking a little bit, because you can begin to see a wider world of possibilities.

Of course the differences can also mean that solutions to an issue in one country won’t work in another, but on the whole, I think differences can help all of us think more broadly about these similar threats, and brainstorm together to find better solutions.

Without going too far into the weeds, I thought I’d share a few of the other major differences between the US and Australia. First, there is a minimal NGO (non-governmental organization, usually a nonprofit) presence here, but NGOs play a major role in the US, influencing policy and increasing environmental flows by getting legal recognition for them or by purchasing water rights. Here, the Government fills that role, and people are really OK with that.

Also, there is no Endangered Species Act here, which is a major cornerstone of environmental law in the US. Most of the push for improving environmental health in Australia comes from public discontent with the current poor health of the Murray Darling Basin.

Finally, the states of the Murray Darling Basin recently decided to surrender power back to the Commonwealth so that the Federal Government could develop and implement a Basin Plan for the River that will determine environmentally-sustainable extraction limits. This is likely to result in a substantial reduction of existing water rights, and furthermore, is something that I can’t imagine ever happening in the US. States in the US are extremely protective of their power to regulate water rights, and the likelihood of several states agreeing to let Congress decide how water should be shared amongst them seems utterly impossible. This isn’t to say the Basin Plan will be a major success, but the concept of states ceding power to the federal government nearly floored me. I suppose this demonstrates again the value of studying in a different country—things you never thought possible suddenly become realities, even if they aren’t entirely adaptable to your own country.

Flat out

I've been feeling that we're a bit behind on our blog posts since we went to Melbourne. It took us long enough to write about our trip down to the Victorian capital, and we still haven’t posted about our trip home via the Great Ocean Road or anything else since our return. I was trying to figure out how we still haven’t written about our 108 km Coast to Coast ride, which we did before we left for Melbourne, when I took a look at our calendar. It suddenly became clear why we are behind in posts--we’ve had something on nearly every day since we got back from Melbourne. As they say down here, we’ve been flat out!

I’m not complaining—we’ve been having a great time these past few weeks, but I can hardly believe how busy we’ve become in what seems like such a short time. In the past two weeks, we’ve played our first Frisbee league games (Dave is playing for Ultimate Evolution, and I am playing for Envy); visited with Dave’s friend Gabe who was in Adelaide again for a work training; attended a dinner with my department from UniSA (University of South Australia); went to see the new French movie Micmacs; ate a delicious three-course dinner along the River Torrens with the South Australian Fulbright Association; supervised a geology field trip to the beach; attended a Rotary dinner; and, went scuba diving at Seacliff Reef where we saw huge cuttlefish, blue devils, and a diving cormorant down in 40 ft of water! And, that doesn’t even include what we did for the wonderful 4-day Easter weekend.

Which brings me to the next list. This past weekend, we had hot cross buns and tea with our neighbors Ryan and Liz and Liz's family; made dinner and dessert with our friends Brad and Laila, who just got back from the US; went to an Easter Saturday BBQ at our friend Margaret’s house; went on two bike rides in the Adelaide Hills; took our friends Chris and Trudie to breakfast for Easter Sunday in Glenelg as a thank you for the wonderful trip to Melbourne and back; went to see the Sydney Swans crush the Adelaide Crows in a footy game; and ate a delicious curry dinner with our neighbors Ryan and Liz.

As I said, it’s been a busy few weeks! And, here’s the other crazy bit. I won the movie tickets to see Micmacs. I won the boat dive to go scuba diving. And, I won 6 bottles of wine at the Rotary dinner. When I brought the bottles of wine home, Dave just laughed. I’m not sure what it is, but I seem to be especially good at winning things, particularly in foreign countries, and just in time for Easter. When I was in London in 2008, I won a big box full of organic fruits and veggies which featured heavily in our Easter dinner that year. I also won a box of marine-themed prizes, including a stuffed puffin that sounded like a cow.

It’s a bit strange since the only thing I’ve ever won in the US was an extremely bizarre 3D picture of a poodle. It’s tempting to say I’m really lucky when I go overseas, but in truth, I think I’ve won these things because I’ve participated. I won the movie tickets by responding to an email; I won the boat dive by going to the monthly scuba club meeting; and I won the wine because my friend Margaret invited me to the Rotary dinner and taught me how to play heads and tails. I know it’s sort of a cheesy message, but I think you do win when you get out there and interact with people. It feels like Dave and I are continually blessed by all of the activities there are to do and people there are to meet here, and I’m feeling really grateful for that, even if it means we don’t post blogs as often as we’d like.

Speaking of which, Dave left Monday morning for two weeks in the Flinders Ranges on a geology field trip. I’ll be joining him this coming Sunday for a week, which means the blog will probably be pretty quiet next week. I may get around to writing another blog or two this week, as there is definitely more to share about our activities the past couple of weeks. But, I have to get a draft of my literature review into my advisor by Friday, so I should probably focus on that, even though I love writing blogs. Too bad the Fulbright Commission isn't sponsoring me to write blogs : )

Anyways, I'll leave you with a photo of me and Dave at the end of the Coast to Coast ride. If this is how we feel after going flat out for 108 kms (well, not quite flat out -- there was a good chunk of downhill!), then I'll take it!

The Place To Be

Visions of Washington, DC traffic were stop-and-going through my head, and all I wanted to do was turn back for Adelaide. As we drove into Melbourne on Thursday afternoon, the similarity to the US—particularly the traffic and sprawling suburbs that characterize so many of our cities—quickly stifled any feelings of homesick I may have had. My first impression was grim, but fortunately, it was also wrong.

Dave told you already about our drive down to Melbourne. The Fulbright dinner was nice. It was perhaps especially notable because it was part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Australian-American Fulbright Commission. We ate in the Great Hall of Victoria’s National Gallery, which was absolutely beautiful. The ceiling of the Great Hall is all stained-glass, and really stunning. The food was good, but the best part was having the opportunity to meet some of the other Fulbrighters from the US and those from Australia who will head to the US later this year. There aren’t any other Fulbrighters from the US here with me in Adelaide, but I did get to meet 3 South Australians who are going to the US on Fulbright Scholarships later this year. One is even doing water law, so it was great to be able to meet some new faces.

The real highlight of the trip, however, was our time spent with Geoff and Rosemarie Dale. I went to school with their daughter, Catherine. On our way over here, we stopped in Hawaii for our friend Heather’s wedding, which Catherine was attending as well. As soon as she learned that we were heading to Australia, she told us we should definitely stay with her parents in Melbourne. And, indeed, when Dave first met Geoff in Adelaide for the Tour Down Under, he immediately invited us to stay with them if we happened to be in Melbourne.

Geoff and Rosemarie gave us an excellent tour of the city and surroundings, and helped to completely reverse my first impression of the city. At the Dales’, things began with an amazing seafood spread. We had fried calamari, prawns, oysters, crayfish (lobster—what we would call crayfish are called yabbies here), and bugs (these were sort of like mini-lobsters or large crayfish, and were excellent). The fish was wonderfully fresh and delicious, and the salads were topped with an incredible Japanese dressing. We finished with a beautiful mango cake.

The wonderful dinner was just the thing as the following morning we went for probably the best bike ride since we’ve been in Australia. We got up early and drove out to the Dandenongs, which are quite different from the Adelaide Hills. The road up the hill went through the middle of this lush, green temperate rainforest of towering trunks and high canopy. I couldn’t believe that there was actually a road through this enchanting forest. I don’t think a single car went by us on the way up, which made it even more amazing. And equally amazing was the bike I was riding. Geoff had arranged for me to test ride a Parlee. Never before have I felt so good on a bike—it was like it had been built just for me. We usually have to make all sorts of adjustments when I get on a bike, but not this time. And, the bike itself was incredible. Extremely light, seamless shifting, and a pure joy to ride. In fact, the real reason it took me so long to get up the hill is because I didn’t want my time on the bike ever to end : )

After the ride, we cleaned up and then headed into town to walk through the Botanic Gardens for lunch. We brought the dogs, Jack and Sophie, who were quivering with excitement for the entire ride into town. We enjoyed a lovely lunch and stroll through the Gardens, and then headed out to see St. Kilda. One of the incredible things about all of the capital cities in Australia is that they’re along the coast. I’m not really used to having the beach so accessible, but here, a huge percentage of the population lives close to the ocean. I know that’s probably a function of the fact that the interior of this continent is not a particularly easy place to live, but it’s still a novel concept for me.

After cruising the coast, we headed to the top of the Eureka Tower for an aerial view of the city. I’m sometimes skeptical of these sorts of tourist attractions, but I have to say, it was well worth the elevator ride to the top (it went so fast I was having a hard time equalizing my ears). The view from the top was truly amazing, and it was such a privilege to be up there with Rosemarie, who knows so much about the city.

Melbourne is beautiful, but mostly, you could really see that the city is cleverly designed and planned (though suburban sprawl is definitely an issue). One of the coolest things about Melbourne is that there are pedestrian bridges to all of the sporting venues, which means there are fewer people trying to drive their cars right up to the entrance. I don’t know if Aussies are more willing to leave their car behind because they don’t have a strong tail-gating tradition, but I have to say it seems immanently sensible to increase pedestrian access and decrease automobile access to sporting venues.

The other extremely sensible thing that Melbourne has done is to turn the city towards the river, rather than putting its back to it. The Yarra, which people often refer to as the river that flows upside down since the surface looks so brown and muddy, isn’t the most beautiful of rivers. However, it’s still a lovely place, and really makes for beautiful views of the city. In fact, I was often reminded of London during our trip to Melbourne, with modern buildings, interesting bridges, and even their own version of the London Eye called the Southern Star Observation Wheel. Unfortunately, some structural difficulties have closed the wheel until further notice. I also thought the building in Federation Square looked surprisingly similar to Scotland’s new Parliament building, which strongly reminded me of Gaudi’s Barcelona.

Rosemarie explained that Melbourne had recently decided to pay more attention to the river, and the results clearly demonstrate the wisdom of this plan. I was probably more excited about this fact than most people because I love rivers, and getting cities to view their rivers as important assets rather than as sewers was a major part of the work I did at American Rivers. Seeing how well it has worked for Melbourne was a sort of vindication for me. Furthermore, I realized that despite the issues of sprawl and traffic, Melbourne really isn’t that much like most American cities I’ve visited.

We finished the already incredible day of with a wonderful Japanese dinner. Geoff and Rosemarie lived in Japan for several years, and developed a real appreciation and love for the culture and the food. It was such a treat to share a Japanese meal (with the best sushi I’ve ever tasted, hands down) and to hear about some of their experiences in Japan. It definitely got us thinking about how we might manage a year abroad in Japan at some point down the track…

The end of our time in Melbourne and with the Dales came all too quickly. We were sad to be leaving so soon, but hopeful that we might again find ourselves in Victoria (the place to be, according to the state’s slogan) during our time here Down Under. The rest of the pictures from our trip are online here.