Field Trip Part 1

Since I have so many pictures from our field trip, this will be a 3-part entry.
On Tuesday the Walkabout-ers (plus two friends visiting from home), our teacher Lorne, and our bus driver John departed for our 4 day adventure.

Our first stop was Pirates Bay (arrrrrgh!). It was low tide, so we could see lots of cool animals in tide pools on the rocks (mussels, left). The rocks themselves were pretty cool. Due to differences in height and salt erosion, some sections were flat with raised cracks (above, called pans) and some were raised with lowered cracks (above, called loaves). Then we went to Tasmans Arch, a natural rock arch formed by erosion (above).

After that, we went to Lorne’s friend’s property, called Windgrove. So this guy was from Detroit and went to Harvard, and decided to move to Tasmania to become a sculptor. He bought all of these acres of land years ago for $30,000, and it is now worth millions. For good reason.

His property includes Roaring Beach (above), a beach that made all of us salivate with surfing envy. Well he doesn’t actually own the beach itself, because in Australia all beaches belong to the government. But that is the view from his house. Also on his property was absolutely spectacular coastline, with amazing views everywhere you looked (above). Decorating the landscape were his sculptures (left), most of which symbolized peace and hope. Equally as cool as his land was his house (wooden room, above). He built it all himself, and it is 100% sustainable. He makes his own power from solar panels (above), collects rainwater from the roof, and has a composting toilet (picture a 3 sided outhouse with the fourth side being made up of a bush). He certainly leads an amazing lifestyle, but not one I could ever see myself living.

Finally, we drove to the Koonya Field Center, our accommodations for the first two nights. It used to be a hospital, and probably gets the award for creepiest place I’ve ever been (rotting wood building, above). Lorne said that one of the bedrooms used to be the morgue, though we’re not sure if he was pulling our leg or not. We thought that our room (bunks, above) was a likely candidate for the morgue because there was a hallway behind our room that looked suspiciously capable to hold dead bodies. Adding to the creepiness was the bathroom, whose water was definitely not safe to drink.

We ended our night around a bonfire, completing an awesome day.