back from the bush
caelon vs the australian bush... who won? ...the southern accent.
so i've returned from the bush (obviously) where we were camping on Aboriginal Mbabaram land and my group got to do an epic biocultural survey on plants. so i thought i ought to update my blog on what went down.
so basically we all packed up in three inconspicuous white vans and drove off. HOWEVER, before taking off Reese (Donald Maurice Farrow III) brings a HUGE bag and drops it in the car. FULL of these lil crackers called shapes (for all you not-in-touch-with-australia folk, they come in all kinds a different flavors and... SHAPES) and I almost cried tears of joy.
We GET there and it looks totally different from the rainforest (go figure). Its all trees and grass - no funny business. We set up camp and its me, Ellory, and Jaly in a tiny lil tent. We set it up all happy. We look back like 20 minutes later when we are chillin by the tables and BOOM. our tent has a pole that broke and it is sticking straight up. lookin like an isosceles triangle. oh well, no matter our tent will just be pointy.
we then go on this epic bush walk with our Aboriginal tour guide Allan (i hope i spelled his name right) and he leads us around pointing out a bunch of cool plants, their name, and their aboriginal uses. Now because my group (the best group) is on plant duty (other groups did moths, birds, or mammals) I had my clipboard writing what this man said. meanwhile, Dr. David Tng was running around tagging these plants and iNating things.
We finish the bush walk and then we go out AGAIN, this time just the cool kids in the plant group + David. He leads us around and we mark with metal tags important trees and I write data down on a sheet. david loses the trail and all of a sudden we all start talking in a southern accent.
in a southern accent "Oh David, never in awl my days have I been lost in the bush" and "Oh sugar, d'you mind givin' me those dear old GPS coordinates of this ol' tree here?" etc. it was hilarious. we get back on the trail but the southern accent comes with. and tbh i KNOW David thought we were funny, I saw him LAUGHING.
we then go to the creek (or called the crik?) and after a wrong turn we get there but there's a sign that says it is hazardous to swim because of mining runoff or something. whatever, people swim in the cadmium creek but because I forgot my swimming gear i sit on a nice dirty rock with all the other non-swimmers
we get back and driving back on the campsite our ugly tent looks even WORSE. halfway blown over and the pole lookin hideous as per ususal. so we get a new one. the BRAND NEW TENT is luxurious. it can actually fit 3 people. but then we lose ellory to the bush so just me and jaly are in our tent.
nighttime comes and along with our dinner of hawt dawgs we try Mbabaram fried eel and a turtle curry. Oh my lord! it WAS delicious! Then we have smores.
BUT australians don't have like normal marshmallows... they only have marshmallows that 1. are a different texture and 2. are oddly flavored slightly like raspberries. Nonetheless, the smores were #delicious.
while stargazing by the campfire, we see some shooting stars. but THEN there is this HUUUUGGGEEE shooting star that was like green and bigger/closer to us than all the other shooting stars. That was legendary.
DAY TWO we talk to the elders about some plants we thought were special and they give us some nice stuff to write about in our report. we also got to try some jam, syrup, and a sour dried fruit and BOOM SHAKALAKA yes GAWD that was delicious.
well, stream of consciousness over. time to analyze my bird data
bye