Ethan's Semester In the South Pacific: Carnarvon Gorge

Sunday, February 10 was our first full day at Carnarvon . The bus-ride the day before was pretty long and terrible, but someone was nice enough to share her iPad and we watched a few movies to help pass the time. We rolled into the Gorge pretty late, well after dark and went to bed not long after. Our accommodations were structures about halfway between tents and cabins. They had canvas coverings and were set up on platforms to keep all the critters out and they even had electricity. Overall, they weren’t too bad; it just got a little hot at night.

We woke up Sunday to the bird screeching around 5:30 AM, so I stayed in bed wide-awake for another hour-and-a-half. When I finally got out of my bed and went outside, I was blown away by the number of kangaroos outside. There were big ones, little ones, and mothers with joeys in their pouches. It was a pretty amazing sight, and we could actually get pretty close to them without them either getting mad or running away.

Around 8 AM, we had breakfast. Our bus-driver, Steve-O, had a duel-role as an outstanding chef. Breakfast was great, and every other meal was awesome too, especially when you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you’re active all day and starving. After breakfast, we had an introduction to the Gorge and all the geological/cultural/ecological stuff we would be learning about (and writing about of course). Afterwards, we did a survivor-like competition where we broke of into 2 teams and competed to see who could make the best cutting tool and water conveyance from natural materials. Afterwards, we had lunch and went on a hike to one of the side gorges for a few hours.

After dinner, we waited until dark and went spotlighting. We saw a couple kangaroos, a couple gliders, and an echidna, probably not the most eventful spotlighting adventure ever, but pretty cool nonetheless. We came back, looked at the stars, and went to bed.

The next day started with an early morning. We had to be ready to go to hike to Boolimba Bluff. The hike was a pretty short hike length wise, but a very tall hike height wise. We had to climb 900 something stone stairs with several ladders in between. The view at the top, however, was amazing. There were several points with wide-open views of the Carnarvon Gorge. I honestly had no idea that there were so many tall mountains in Australia. The hike around the summit was a little interesting. There was a pretty narrow trail, but we had to jump over literally thousands of ants at a time. Once we descended from the top down the steps and ladders, we hiked to the rock pool for a swim to cool off. After being in the water for about 15 minutes, us walking around and stirring up the bottom somehow created a rancid smell. We quickly got out of the water and that was that.

After getting back, we had a free afternoon (not that that really means anything when you’re in the middle of nowhere).. I tried to catch up on sleep, but between the scorching temperatures inside the tents and the massive quantity of mosquitoes outside the tent, that had a hard time really happening successfully. After laying down for about an hour, I got up and tried to work on some school stuff because we had three modules due by the end of the trip. However, for the same reasons of hot temperatures and mosquitoes, that didn’t really happen successfully either. In the end, I ended up just walking around and being off task for a few hours. We had dinner around 6 and then went and looked at the sky. It wasn’t all that clear so we didn’t stay too long.

Once we got back, we were allowed to stay up and drink wine (one of the few occasions we were allowed to consume any form of alcohol). It’s been interesting on this trip being someone who has been able to legally consume alcohol in the United States for over a year now being told when and when I can’t drink. Not that I have a huge desire to drink frequently or a lot at once, but sometimes it would be nice to have a glass of wine at dinner or the end of the day or when we’re sitting on top of a mountain watching the sunset in the middle of summer, a cold beer would be a nice addition. However, the rule is that we cannot drink anything at all until the days activities are over and we’re not allowed to drink in the accommodations. So opportunities are few and far between and that’s the rest of my soapbox.

So anyway, it was pleasant to stay up and have a glass of wine and I went to bed after about an hour because we had to be up pretty early the next day. We got up for breakfast at 7 and began our day hike at 8. Our first stop was to the Aboriginal Rock Art Gallery (pictures below). By art gallery, it’s not what you would expect. It was a boardwalk built along the side of a cliff where Aboriginals had made “art” 3000-4000 years before. I put art in quotation mark because no one knows for sure if it is art or not, but through our Western eyes (as I’ve learned is a common theme), we think of it as art because it looks likes it. Nonetheless, it was pretty to cool all of their engravings and paintings from plant pigments and to think about how old it was. We also made a few stop at some side gorges, which were pretty cool too. One was one of the sources of the creek, which is created by the convergence of sandstone and moolayember stone. Because the sandstone is porous, water seeps into over many years and comes out where it hits the moolayember. It is estimated that water that comes out is over 10,000 years old. We got back to our starting point around 4 and by that time had completely about 9 miles of hiking for the day. We went back to the campsite and had dinner before a night drive back into civilization. Dinner was probably the best yet and I had my first experience eating kangaroo meat. It kind of tasted like a really good sirloin steak and didn’t really have much of gamey taste to it like venison would.

After dinner, we headed off into the night on the coach bus back into civilization where we picked up with a new day (and where I’ll pick up with another blog entry). I definitely didn’t have the best sleep I ever had being on a bus and all, but I did have an entire row on both sides of the aisle to myself, so it could’ve been worse. I did have a really cool experience around 3 AM though when I woke up from a couple uninterrupted hours of sleep and I sat up in my seat for a little bit as we were driving across completely open flat land and on either side of the bus, I could see a bright starry sky to my left and right. Anyway, we arrived in Noosa, Queensland, Australia (city, state, country) around 6 AM. I think looking back on the Carnarvon Gorge experience, the one thing that I’ll really always remember (besides the spectacular views) was how commonplace it became to see kangaroos. I would literally see hundreds everyday. It got to the point where it didn’t even phase me to walk from my tent to the bathroom and walk right past a 7-foot tall kangaroo. So that’s my personal anecdote and read on to see my blog about Noosa.