So I left you guys after friday night. Saturday we headed out to the Hoover House for the morning after a later than normal start on the day (we left at 9 or so). Of course this was an hour/ hour and a half away so we hopped back onto our bus and drove through the outback some more. When we got there we just walked around his house and mining property for a while looking at all of the old stuff. It was interesting while we were there but nothing too exciting. While most of the group headed down for lunch at the base of the establishment Kevin Bell and Joey Rich decided to hop a fence and go on their own exploration of the property. Jane was none to pleased with this decision, as usual, but they got back in time for our bus to leave on schedule. The ghost town at the base was pretty cool. The town had dried up when the gold rush passed, just like so many out in the West of America. After that we headed to the town of Menzies as a precursor to Lake Ballard and its Inside Australia art exhibit. An artist took body scan outlines of the people of Menzies and turned them into statues at 2/3 height. He then stretched them and dropped them throughout this huge dried-up salt lake and called it art. It was actually pretty cool going out onto what looked like Mars a bit and walking to these statues. We had an hour to walk around so naturally there was a group of people that after climbing a big hill at one end of the lake decided to walk at least 35 minutes out to a diferent hill. They stayed out there for sunset, even after we were explicitly instructed to be back at a certain time so we could head back to Morapoi in time for dinner. Luckily getting back and hour later than expected had no real impact on dinner otherwise the group of us who were on time would have been quite upset.
That night was the real entertainment for the day however. After dinner we got taken out to the place were the owners skinned their kangaroos and actually got to see a live skinning. I will upload a video or two when I get back to my room but I am currently in the library wait for a class so bear with me all you dedicated followers who are reading my blog at 3am back in the States. It was so cool to watch and so much better than any dissection I have done in bio ever. Alan had to hold the tail to provide stabilization while the guy skinned and gutted it. After that was done a group of us went out for a walk on our own under the light of the moon into the brush. We didn't really see anything out of the ordinary but just walking through the outback at night without any light except the moon was an awesome experience. Sunday morning we headed back into Kalgoorlie to visit the mining hall of fame where we got to go underground into the first of 13 levels of the mine that was there, as well as see a gold pouring.
Over all the weekend was a very enjoyable experience and something that I probably would not have chosen to do just because it wasn't one of the first things that came to mind when thinking of things to do in Australia for a weekend. Plus it was all free (and by free I me Notre Dame paid for it, who I previously paid to study abroad) which made it even better. The flight back was another enjoyable hour-long flight despite the great in-flight service (getting served a dinner/appetizer dead last on the plane only because I finally got a hold of a flight attendant). Got back to Tommy More and watched Good Willing Hunting for the first time. Good way to end a good weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment