Conservation Trip: Wild Mountains

I know I havent posted in a while! Ive been busy!

Two weekends ago I went on a volunt

eer trip with a few other American students. We all headed over to the headquarters with our

sleeping bags in tow and piled into a Landy... which they called a Troopie. There were ten of us in this thing for two hours into the boondocks of Australia! I personally loved it... and rural Australia looks like rural anywhere USA plus kangaroos. There are broken down utes (pickups) in the front yards of doublewides. No worries :) But we did see some roos just hanging out in the shade. When we finally got to the last turn in our directions we went down this little cow path road which climbed and climbed up a crest of this huge ridge. There were really spectacular looking mountains just jutting out o

f this fertile pasture land. We passed two vehicles that had been left because they couldnt make the 20% grade. We made it. Slowly.

When we got to the top we were greeted by the caretakers of this camp and shown to our A-frame tent/cabins for the weekend. We had a spectacular view! Even the toilet/outhouse had a view! But we changed and hung out for a while before dinner and some work. We built two bridges out of logs and railroad ties to finish a fire track across the mountain. Occasionally they do controlled burns of the mountainside so that wildfires dont get out of control during the arid months. So finishing up the access track was sort of important as summer approaches. We made good progress the first day and finished up easily the second which was awesome.

The only complaint I really have about the weekend was that the whole place was vegetarian. Sort of sad but we did alright. We made our own dinners and got pretty creative. Plus they gave us chocolate cake and we whipped our own cream for dessert! We also saw the most spectacular stars I have ever seen. The Southern Cross is a little smaller than I would have expected, but still impressive. Side note. Koala noises are terrifying. It is a weird cross between a bear growl and a wild boars grunting in the middle of the night. Honestly. You need to go to youtube.com and search "koala noise". It will astound you.