Week 9- Wilson's Promentory- Take 2!

Elaine, Me, Brian, Mike, and Dawit!

 This weekend I took a trip with a carful of people to Wilson’s Prom: Elaine, Mike, Dawit, Brian and me. It was the first time Elaine and Dawit had ever been camping and was a very eventful trip. We drove down on Friday night, arriving about 7 pm which was after dark. The entire 3.5 hour drive it had been pouring rain which made the camping newbies a little nervous about the trip, especially when it came to light that one of them didn’t have a sleeping bag (just blankets) and the other only had a sleeping bag but not mattress pad. Everyone got a little more excited when we entered the park’s gates and began to see wildlife. We saw about 10 kangaroos on the side of the road, including one that wouldn’t get out our way in the middle of the road, and a half million wombats. Unfortunately the rain didn’t stop to let us set up our tents and since we had never put up one of the tents before (and it was a really odd tent) we ended up quite wet by the time we finished. Leaving the tents behind we drove to the site where we though the BBQ was. Somehow in the dark we completely managed to miss it and had to find another BBQ across the camp site (it should be noted that this is a huge camp ground, it holds about 300 spots). The rain lightened up enough for us to get our cooking supplies out of the car and under the shelter. We began to cook a tasty dinner of BBQ chicken, roast potatoes, and fresh veggies. After dinner we drove back to our camp site. The rain had stopped and everyone quickly realized that we weren’t ready for bed. The moon was incredibly bright and we all admired it for a while and several people attempted to take photos of it. Everyone quickly realized that it didn’t work with a normal camera so Brian took out his fancy camera and took several amazing photos of the moon that allowed us to see the craters on it and everything. We then did several long exposure photos of the sky that allowed us to see the stars and made the dark night sky look like day light. After that we began to have fun with long exposure or multiple flash photos that captured us moving around or haunting one another (I’ll post a few so you understand). At last we were tired and went to bed.

    The next morning we went to Squeaky Beach, Pillar Point, and Tidal Overlook. We had expected some serious rain but got only one light shower. We climbed a ton of rocks and took a huge number of photos. After a brief rest at camp we went to Lilly Pilly Gully which was supposed to have amazing native Australian Flora (Mike and Elaine are taking a course on Australian Flora and Fauna and wanted to put their knowledge to the test). Mike guaranteed that we would see several special types of plants. Unfortunately there was a fire that took place in February and had  destroyed a good section of the area which made it next to impossible for Mike to spot anything. For the rest of the trip it became a joke that when Mike guaranteed anything, it was sure not to happen. That night we had BBQ’d kangaroo, corn, and broccoli. I was a little grossed out by the kangaroo for several reasons; firstly I don’t particularly like eating red meat and kangaroo is about as red as it comes. Secondly, you take it out of the package and it drips blood, you put it on the grill and blood sizzles out. You can’t cook it too much or else it gets incredibly smokey and way too chewy to eat. This was probably the first time I’d ever eaten medium-rare meat and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the experience. It tasted like stake but wasn’t quite as tough. It didn’t melt in my mouth but it wasn’t as “meaty” as I expected. We talked to some Aussie’s who were using the other grill and gave them tips for their upcoming trip to the US. When we were getting ready for bed we happened to notice a large hole in the side of our tent. After puzzling over it for a while we realized that a wombat had just charged through the side of our tent in order to put footprints on my pillow. After a long day of hiking, we tucked in early. Everyone was in their sleeping bags before 9 pm. At about 9:15 we hear loud snarling right outside of our tent. We think it was the wombat, angry that we had re-inhabited our tent. I almost jumped out of my skin.

    The next morning dawned bright blue and sunny. We decided to climb Mount Oberon, the highest peak in Wilson’s Prom with an amazing 360 degree view. It took about an hour of uphill climbing on a fire road, then another 10 minutes of walking up stairs cute from stone before rising above the tree tops and seeing the ocean on three sides. It couldn’t have been more of an amazing view. We took lots of pictures and ate snacks while marveling at how blue the water was and what an incredible place Wilson’s Prom is. We hiked back down the trail and went to Tidal Beach for lunch. We had a flock of sea gulls standing near by, waiting to see if we would throw anything to them. Everyone was pretty disconcerted by them because their eyes were light blue and ringed with a red circle (they also had bright red beaks and feet with black wings). There were also two larger sea gulls that had black wings and bright red beaks and feet who seemed to be in charge of their smaller companions. We were all tired so we decided to do a short hike to another beach, Cooper’s Beach, where Mike one again made the fatal mistake of guaranteeing that we would see kangaroos and emus. I swore that I wouldn’t speak to him on our return journey if we didn’t see an emu (probably the last epically Australian animal that I hadn’t seen yet).  We had an easy walk to the beach in which we saw kangaroos and wombats. The beach was beautiful with large waves and a very slight breeze. Everyone took of their shoes and splashed in the water. I was taught to skip stones! We made a game of attempting to skip a stone right into a wave crashing, causing the stone to jump 5- 10 feet in the air. It was pretty awesome. We walked back and I started to threaten Mike about breaking promises. We got back into the car and I stopped speaking to Mike. After about a minute of driving down the dirt road which was to lead us back to the main road, I start shrieking. On the side of the road is an emu! Brian breaks sharply, having no idea what was going on, and I jump out of the car. Everyone else follows me out quickly, figuring out what I must have seen but the emu finally notices us and runs away before everyone saw it. They are so HUGE! It’s like a giant ostrich. I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem like the right size in comparison to anything else in the world. It was amazing how well it blended in with the environment considering how large it was. We got back in the car (I was told not to shriek again, to instead calmly alert everyone to the presence of emus if I saw any more) and kept driving and a few moments later I let out another squeal that was probably too loud and this time everyone saw the two emus that were just slightly hidden in the woods. As we continued our drive we saw another 5 emus. Needless to say, I apologized to Mike and we had excited conversation all the way home.

    One interesting thing about the drive home was a brief history lesson from Dawit. He goes to UC Berkeley and lived for  the last ten years in Santa Rosa, but before that had grown up in Ethiopia. Even so, he considered himself to be Eritrean. I learned a lot about the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a conflict that I hadn’t known even existed. He taught us a lot about the culture and religion and how the older generation and the younger generations deal with the conflict and the politics of the country. It was also fascinating to hear the story of his family fleeing Ethiopia. As Eritrean citizens living in Ethiopia they would have been arrested and deported back to Eritrea, however they missed the officers by 12 hours and came to the US (his father and brother were caught but were able to come to the US soon after going back to Eritrea). It was a lot to think over and made me very thankful for the peaceful life I’ve lived.