Melbourne and the start of Tasmania

Hello again, sitting here at the dock waiting on the Spirit of Tasmania to come into port. There might be a 20 to 30 knot offshore wind coming off the ocean and the security guys here are saying that it is possibly the worse it has been since they have been here. Our guide for Tasmania is with us and he has been traveling to Tazzy for 50 years now and he reckons this is one of the rougher times he has seen. We are all just hanging out in the waiting area, the boat just pulled up (9:38pm) and we were supposed to be leaving port at 8:30 pm. It is an overnight ride so should be an interesting time for everyone involved. The “ferry” is the size of a small cruise ship so the guys are saying that it shouldn’t be too rough of a time while we are on our way.

The sustainability festival in Melbourne was absolutely amazing in every way, shape and form. The talks we got to hear were always informative and knowledgeable. I went to a fair amount of talks but the few that stuck out to me were ones titled: “The Great Barrier Reef On Death Row”, “Mass Media and Climate Change”, and “Climate Change in Australia”. First off, the one on the reef was very sobering in the fact that it essentially told us we have gone too far with ocean acidification and the reef WILL be gone in less than 50 years unless a major change occurs in our behavior. Professor “Charlie” Veron is considered the leading voice for the reef on the scientific front so I was able to fight through my post lunch food coma and stay awake through the presentation. On a food note, I think I have eaten maybe 4 meals with meat in them in the past 2 weeks. This is an extreme departure from my normal, turkey/chicken for every meal. The weird thing is that I don’t miss it all that much when I eat vegetarian. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not becoming a vegetarian any time soon but my tastes have definitely expanded exponentially since I landed here almost a month ago. Back on track, I will definitely be making a trip to the reef to do some diving after the program (ugh...I want to dive now) especially since it is in such dire danger of disappearing for the remainder of our lifetime.

The second lecture I attended was about mass media’s role in the topic of climate change. There was a panel of three media “pundits” who each represented a different medium: a journo from a national paper(Paddy Manning), a radio broadcaster for Australia’s version of NPR (Alexandra de Blas), and a guy who makes environmental documentaries(Dr Homayoun "Hamy" Kheyri). Each had a different view on how the media plays a role in the exposition of climate change. The first two believe that it is not a necessity for scientists to be in the media field and that a good journalist can do the same thing as a scientist in the same field. Hamy (along with me) took extreme offense to this as I am Meteorology major and Communications minor so I plan on using this as my life’s goal. Getting science to the general public is what I am trying to do. A fair amount of people jumped on the first two people for their views on the subject and hearing Hamy speak his mind was a welcome relief.

The final topic was hosted by the Bureau of Meteorology and was very informative on every level and I even met the head of communications for the Bureau (so much cooler than the NWS or NOAA). I hope to work at a weather station on Lord Howe Island or Norfolk Island for my ISP period.

Lord Howe Island

Norfolk Island

Yeah, I want to spend a month at one of these two places (rough) and take weather observations then spend my weekends on the beach or snorkeling. Hopefully the contacts I made at the festival can help all of this go through.

Listening to: Ohio - Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

On our last free day in Melbourne about 7 of us went to an AFL (Aussie Rules Football League) game. This stuff is absolutely insane!!! We tried to describe it and ended up using pretty much every sport in America minus baseball. It was a preseason game but the players were flying all over the field. If you have never seen a game just YouTube some highlights and you will have no idea about the rules but it just looks damn cool!

After two days in Melbourne we had a class day (really annoying), this academic stuff keeps getting in the way of my social life. Geoff (another teacher) gave us a thorough introduction to Tasmania that covered most of everything one would ever wish for. We were now all looking forward to an overnight ride to Tasmania on a ferry that actually turned out to be a smaller cruise liner. (Yes I realize there is a disconnect from the beginning, I wrote this over the period of two days).

She is called the Spirit of Tasmania and it was a great experience! After being a beautiful day in downtown Melbourne, we took a 20 minute cab ride to the port and all of a sudden a 30 knot off shore wind was whipping up. This delayed the ship (refusing to call this baby cakes a ferry) by about 3 hours because it had to be tug-boated in to port. We finally embarked at around 11pm (supposed to be out by 9pm) but this actually worked out for the best because we didn't have to get off the boat at 6am to get our day started. Dave, Jesh, and I stayed up until about 2am when the boat started to get out of port and stuff started to really hit the fan. When we were on Deck 10 and we were getting wet, we decided it was best to call it a night. Jesh and I got back to our berth around 2:30 or 3am (not sure, no cell phone/watch is a great thing) and things started to get rocky, but it felt like a giant baby rocker to me. Woke up to the ship's staff over the loud speaker alerting us to the fact that the boat was reaching port in Tasmania. Little did I know, about 6 members of the group, including one of our berth mates were kept up all night by the "gentle" rocking of the boat. Right before I fell asleep I could feel my stomach jumping all over the place much like what it must feel like to be on the aptly named NASA training plane "The Vomit Comet". I rushed to take a shower and pack up so I could get some pictures of us coming into port, when I came onto one of the lower decks I noticed about 2 inches of standing water on the deck. After talking to some of the group who were kept up apparently water was crashing over the lower decks in the early hours of the morning.

This is our first night in Tasmania, but so far this state is BEAUTIFUL!!! It is what would happen if the Pacific Northwest and Glacier National Park had children and they moved down south. We arrived in Devonport at 11am and took off for a small town called Deloraine which was a nice relief from the hustle and bustle of Melbourne. I guess I really am a small town kid at heart even though my current career path will more than likely lead me to a large metropolitan area. I just need to be able to get away from the sounds of horns, sirens, and rumbling engines every so often. After Deloraine we headed south for Hobart. I know all of you from Valpo reading this are giggling right now. This town is actually a decent place on earth, it is the biggest city in Tasmania. It has just enough big city to make it a big dot on the map but has an extensive suburbia which still gives it that quiet town feeling once the workforce has left the business district.

Listening to: Regret Not - All That Remains

We have a free day tomorrow which JJ "The Jet Plane" and I will be taking a shuttle up to the top of Mt. Wellington to ride down nearly 4200ft.

Sadly, most of this riding will be on the road (no full suspensions rented out here) I guess this might be for the best, although I would like to have the claim to fame of adding downhill mountain biking to the "no-list" as we have so gently named it. Either way, it will be nice to get back in the saddle to pedal around for a bit. The girls room flooded with god knows what (hopefully water) but apart from that I have nothing else to bother you with. Thanks for reading and expect an update after the rest of this little expedition or right before we reach Sydney!

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Part 1

Part 2

Cheers!

-zuey