Geoverse

Last weekend I went for a two day Bush walk in Tidbinbilla national park. Unfortunately I didnt have my camera then and i’m waiting for some one else who did have a very good camera to send me the pics. Once I’ll have them I’ll write a story about that adventure.

This weekend I’ve been sleeping, hanging around the house but this Sunday afternoon I thought i’d do something interesting so I took my bike and rode to Mount Ainslie. With my camera at the ready i took plenty of pics. See the gallery here. I first rode up mount Ainslie which was a tough job over firetrails and loose rocks. I did finally manage my way up to the top of 888m high. The view is incredible from the top as you can see in the photos. Pretty much whole Canberra is visible with the parliament house and Civic as the central business district where the flats are. The Uni is behind those flats. I rode down over single tracks which was awesome but shortlived as the mountain aint that high. Back in the city I was really close to the war memorial so that’s where I headed next. You can see the dome structure of the war memorial and on the inside there is a pond with ever burning fire dedicated to those soldiers that died in WW1 and WW2. On either side plaques are put on the wall with flowers containing all the names of the fallen soldiers (mostly Australian and New Zealanders, hence ANZAC). The museum inside was incredible. Whole aircraft are located inside, a submarine, tanks and artillery from WW1 but mostly WW2, including a bomber that was used to bomb Berlin. I didnt get to see everything because it was 17:00 already and the museum closed. This means I’ll have to come back. The part on the Gallipoli landing of the ANZAC troops was particularly interesting because it was one of Churchill’s biggest mistakes. Basically there were too many Turkish troops and the terrain was very unforgiving. After the museum closed I rode back home.

Go here to see all the various bird species you can find here. I got most of the main ones. Lots of parrot species. The one with the bright red breast is called a crimson rosella which is pictured on the Arnott’s bisquits boxes and tim tams. The white – black bird is a magpie.

Last Wednesday I had a day off because of ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) day. This public holiday remembers the massive loss of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli, Turkey during World War 1. This was Churchill’s biggest mistake. Allied troops were massively defeated by the Turkish/Ottoman army. Anyway, for me it was a lovely day off on which I joined the mountaineering club for a bike ride. There are two big hills here called Black mountain and Mount Ainslie both between 800 and 900 metres high (Canberra lies at around 600m). There are many firetrails going through the ecalypt forests on these hills which are ideal for a mountainbike ride. We had lots of fun and we even found some single tracks in the forest of Black mountain to descent on. Single tracks are the most exciting. My bike performed adequately although it is not a true mountain bike. It has 21 gears but the sprockets are too big to go up the steepest hills. From Black mountain we rode to Mount Ainslie but me didnt climb that hill since some of us were pretty exhausted already. We came back via the war memorial where the ANZAC parades were early in the morning.

Yesterday evening was a special day for all the dutch residents of Canberra because the the Dutch Ambassador here had organised with his wife a get together at his luxurious residence located behind the Parliament hill. So we celebrated queensday (Koninginnedag) in Canberra! There were a lot of elderly people. Many spoke at least some Dutch, however there were also people who must have forgotten the Dutch language as they simply spoke English. I met my Dutch ‘supervisor’ and post-doc from the uni and I met a man with whom I spoke with for most of the one and a half hour. He came to Sydney to do his PhD and eventually married an Australian woman. He said he has been in Australia for at least 16 years. The evening was interesting but it didnt last very long. At around a quarter to eight I wanted to ride back home but fate must have struck me because my bike tires were flat! I called one of my housemates right away to ask if he would pick me up. He could and thankfully I only had to wait for half an hour. I spend 4 hours today to fix the tubes from my bike. There were lots and lots of tiny invisible thorns in the tires that kept punching holes in the tubes ><

I’m also wondering if my nail on a finger on my right hand is ever going to heal since i managed to bust it between the door and frame several weeks ago. There is a possibility i’ll loose the nail… of course it will regrow eventually. And while i’m at it, I burned my hand on the element in the oven today while preparing some food. Argh… Australia is dangerous I tells you.

Here are some pics of our little slimy pets. 🙂 First 5 photos. The tub is standing in the living room.

Woo hoo! I got a new bed from a departing graduated PhD student. It’s not just some bed too. It’s a queeeeen sized bed! Below is a link where you can see it in its natural habitat, i.e. my room. It cost me $300 which includes the matrass but not the bed sheets, fitting, cover and pillow. You’ll see a couple pics with my old bed too, the crappy one i got from the landlord. >_<

Room pics

On Saturday, 25 March 2007, at 8:30
am we set off with 3 cars packed with people for a 100 km drive to Deua National
Park to see the ‘big hole’ and the ‘marble arch’. The drive took a fair while and on our way we briefly stopped in
Captains Flat because one of us, Cheryl, was required to vote in the
NSW state for that days state elections. We had a good laugh when we set off
again and Cheryl’s car would not start so her passengers had to push the car a
fair bit until the engine came alive again. Not much further on Robert, with
whom I sat in the lead car, suddenly noticed a ‘walking rock’ in the bend of
the road. As he observed correctly, however, it was in fact a turtle larger
than the size of your hand! The others of the group soon joined in to watch it
and some took a couple of pictures of it. It was then safely put back on the
ground away from the road.

At last we arrived at Deua National
Park and started a promising bushwalk to see some
of nature’s incredible phenomena. It didn’t take long before we hit our first
obstacle, the Shaolhaven
River. Most people
managed to get across without getting wet, despite the rocks being very
slippery. For those with sneakers however, many opted to take their shoes off
and wade through the water.

From thereon it was a lovely and casual walk to the first
feature of the trip, the big hole. On our way we also spotted some wallabies
and some joeys.

The big hole is a morphological
feature properly known as a sink hole. It is over 100 metres deep. Before its
existence, there must have been a large cave underneath the surface that formed
in a thick limestone layer. The limestone was dissolved and carried away by
underground water probably to the Shaolhaven
River. At some point the
cave ceiling composed of siltstone, sandstone and conglomerate rocks must have
collapsed creating the big hole. These sedimentary rocks are about 350 Million
years old, deposited during the Devonian geological era in a coastal
environment.

We had a short break and then moved on to see the next
highlight of the trip, the Marble Arch. As we walked through the eucalypt
forest massive mounts of dirt were spotted between the trees. These are
presumably abandoned termite mounts. Since we didn’t see the termites
themselves it still leaves me wondering where they went. I had a picture taken
of me on top one of these big mounts.

We finally arrived at the Marble
Arch, which is a limestone cavern followed by a river gorge. We took out our
torches and headed into the cave. The name Marble arch is rather misleading because there is
no marble to be found, just limestone and limestone breccias.

The experience was awesome as we made our way through the
cave and the narrow gorge with cleanly polished rocks caused by the action of
the water over a long time. The rocks were extremely slippery too and it didn’t
take long before some of us lost balance and slit into the shallow pools of
water in the gorge. Although getting wet didn’t hurt, the main scare turned out
to be the leeches in the gorge. I managed to get a remarkable shot of one of
the bigger ones. We had lunch in the gorge where we couldn’t go any further
because of a small lake blocking our way. For some great group pictures with us
all having lunch, see the ANUMC website. That is, if they have been uploaded
already. After lunch we made our way back to the cars along the same path we came
and headed back to the SRA and got back by around 5:30 pm.

All in all, this trip was awesome!!
And I think everyone fully enjoyed themselves as well. Apart from a few wet
feet, nobody took the plunge or got hurt.

I have uploaded the rest of the photos in high res here for your viewing pleasure.