Blue Lake and Wildlife

Blue Lake, which was formed from a collapsed volcano

Yesterday, we rented an RV which we will be living in for the next three weeks as we drive up the east coast of Australia.  We bought groceries for the caravan and then began our drive.  We drove for six hours while I did some schoolwork and eventually ended up in a town called Blue Lake.  Blue Lake is named after a lake that formed in the crater of an extinct volcano.  (Tens of millions of years ago, the whole area was covered by a shallow sea filled with plant and animal life.  Over time those organic materials built up and, with large amounts of heat and pressure became limestone, a white or grey sedimentary rock.  That is the white layer at the lowest part of the coast.  Above that is a black ring formed from lava seeping out of the volcano and covering the surrounding ground.  The black rock is basalt, the most common extrusive igneous rock.  It has little to no crystals because it cools quickly outside Earth.  The top layer is compressed ash from an eruption of the volcano.)

Emus eat by turning their heads sideways to the ground.

When we found the local caravan park, we pulled in, plugged in our battery to recharge, and went to bed.  When we got up in the morning, we refilled the water tank, emptied the dirty water, and started to drive again.  We were hoping to get to around Melbourne by the end of the day, but because we stopped at a wildlife reserve, we made it only to a town a couple hours west of Melbourne.  We found a caravan park, pulled in, and did all our maintenance. At the wildlife reserve, we saw two Australian animals: Emus and Kangaroos.  Emus are large, brownish, flightless birds similar to an ostrich.  Kangaroos, as you probably know, look like wallabies (see earlier posts) but larger, and can be more aggressive.  The emu and kangaroo are the two animals on the Australian seal.

Kangaroos counter-balance with their powerful tails

A Little Bit of Everything

Uluru, a sacred Aboriginal Australian sandstone dome.

Yesterday, we flew into Uluru, a very, very, very, very small town in the Northern Territory of Australia.  You may have heard of Ayers Rock or Uluru, the large sandstone formation for which the town a named.  We woke up bright and early at five AM to ride camels around the rock and enjoy the beautiful sunrise.  The camels we rode were single-humped camels (dromedary camels) which have adapted differently from their bactrian camel cousins (two-humped camels) to live in hotter climates.

My mom and I rode a camel named Pete.

Camels were brought to Australia by explorers in the early 1800s and were used to carry humans and goods across the country.  When railways replaced the camels, the government declared that if you owned a camel, you either needed to pay for a camel permit, or shoot the animals.  The farmers, who didn't want to do either one, let their camels go in the wild where they lived without any natural predators.  The camels have thrived and now, today, the rule for acquiring a camel is, "If you can catch it, you can keep it." You don't need to pay anything.

Quandong seeds: Best spread by Emu droppings, not camels.

After that, we took a nature tour where, among other things, we saw a native peach tree called Quandong.  It grows lipstick red, dry fruits similar to peaches.  Naturally, the emus would eat the fruit and swallow the pit whole, releasing and planting the new plant through its waste.  Unfortunately, camels also love this tree, but when they ingest the fruits, they crush the seed so it can't grow a new tree.  This has lead to a decrease in the population of the tree and put it on the endangered species list.  Ty contrast, there are about 750,000 wild camels in Australia, more than any other country.

Today, we also took an Aboriginal art class.  Aboriginal art uses symbols to represent things from people to animal tracks.  Another part of this style is using small dots to color the painting.  These are made traditionally with sticks, but today with the end of a paint brush.  Most Aboriginal art is painted from an aerial view, with different colors representing the different landscapes.

Kata Tjuta in the afternoon light

Next, we took a bus out into the desert (which is actually considered semi-arid because they receive over 200 ml of water a year) to see two rock formations.  The bigger of the two was called Kata Tjuta (kahtah jootah), a conglomerate rock formation formed from the erosion of mountains.  It consists of four main domes and many smaller domes and boulders around them.  The second rock formation was called Uluru, or Ayers Rock, as the fist European explorers called it.  It was formed in the same way as Kata Tjuta, but because it is made of sandstone, it eroded much quicker.  It is a monolith, unlike Kata Tjuta.  All of Uluru is sacred to the Aborigines, while only parts of Kata Tjuta are sacred to them.  However, woman don't even like to look a Kata Tjuta, so only men go there.

The Southern Cross, as viewed from Uluru, Australia

To finish our day, we went star gazing, and looked at some things from a telescope.  We started by recognizing constellations, some of which were upside down because they were named in the Northern Hemisphere by the Ancient Greeks.  Some 70% of the sky is visible in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and the rest are specific to one or the other.  For example people in the Southern Hemisphere don't see the big or small dipper or the North Star.  On the flip side, people in the Southern Hemisphere see a constellation called the Southern Cross, which appears on the Australian flag.  We also saw the MilkyWay and another dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan.  Through the telescopes, we saw two nebula, two star clusters, Jupiter (plus two moons), and our own moon.

Today was  a busy day, but everything we did was absolutely amazing.

Hobert: Day 2

Me, sitting in the judges chair in the jail court

A Tasmanian seagull, guarding an aircraft carrier in Hobart

Today we saw a convict-built chapel (built in 1831) in downtown Hobart.  Hobart and the rest of Tasmania was populated in the early 19th century by British prisoners and a few free colonists.  This supplied cheap labor and a rapid way to  populate the new colony.  The building that we saw was originally the chapel for the Old Hobart Gaol ("gaol" is the old spelling of jail) and some of the innocent free colonists (most of the rest of the jail doesn't exist any more, but when it did it was unsanitary and infamous for its filthy state).

The chapel floors were at an angle and below the floors were solitary confinement cells, some only big enough to lie down in.  Prisoners would spend up to 4 weeks in those tiny cells as extra punishment.  Two of the three wings of the chapel were renovated in 1859 into separate courts for the jail and the rest of the town.  The third wing remained a chapel with cells in its basement.  While we were in the existing chapel I got to play the old organ.  Attached to the church were the gallows where up until 1963 (when the jail closed) people were being hanged.  It was incredible to learn that people were kept in such inhumane conditions up until about 50 years ago. This last picture shows our tour guide explaining how the gallows worked.

Our guide explained how convicted murderers were hanged

Hobart: Day 1

32 of the 2 million sheep in Tasmania

Today we drove from our hotel in Cradle Mountain to a hotel in Hobart.  Hobart is the capital of Tasmania and is located on the southeast coast.  It's the second oldest city in all of Australia and is the largest in Tasmania.  It was a 6 hour ride through windy roads up and down mountains.  As we approached the East Coast, the lush vegetation turned into low brush and farmland with many sheep and cows.  (Tasmania has 500,000 people and 2,000,000 sheep and 650,000 cattle.)  Eventually, when we got to our new hotel, we walked around Hobart a little.

The inner harbor in Hobart at night

As we walked, we saw piers with many fishing ships and sailboats as well as different restaurants at every turn.  Of the restaurants we saw, most had either fishing-related names or prison-related names because.  British prisoners used to be banished here and their forced labor helped construct many buildings here.

Cradle Mountain

Cradle Mountain's double peaks, with Dove Lake

Today we took a day hike to Cradle Mountain in Cradle Mountain National Park, the mountain for which the town is named.  We walked around a lake at the base called Dove Lake.  While on the trail, we walked through rainforests, eucalyptus forests, and tundra-like vegetation.   It was incredible to see all the diverse plant life in such a small area.  The mountain itself was quite different from the Appalachian Mountains.  

It was very steep and rocky and had jagged peaks and cliffs, like many other mountains in the region.  Cradle Mountain has two major summits, and in between was a curved valley, the “cradle.”  The mountain was probably formed millions of years ago by volcanic action. The reason the mountain looks so jagged is because of how erosion has occurred.  Rather than having rain slowly smooth out the pointy rock, the seasonal cycles of freezing and heating have caused sharp pieces of the mountain to break off.  Like other mountains in the area, it's made of dolerite, an igneous rock that forms in columns.

Sava and I inspecting different rocks at the base of Cradle Mt.

We also saw many metamorphic rocks, rocks that form from other rocks deep under Earth’s surface.  This would hint that the tectonic plates had pushed those rocks up, but all of Australia is now in the middle of a tectonic plate, the Indo-Australian Plate.  Whatever first pushed up Cradle Mountain happened a long time ago, probably during the Jurassic Period.

Cataract Gorge

Cataract Gorge in Launceston

A Wallaby that we saw at Cateract Gorge 

This morning, we flew out of Melbourne and landed in Launceston, Tasmania.  Tasmania is an island of the southeast coast of Australia, about the size of the state of Maine (90,000 square kilometers).  We rented a car at the airport and drove into downtown Launceston, a quaint little town with old buildings at the head of the Tamar River Valley.  This region is known for its vineyards.  We spent the morning at Cataract Gorge, a large chasm right next to the town.  We walked around it and took some great photos.  It was amazing to see something so colossal and different from the landforms in New England.  

Cataract Gorge is up to 60 meters high and about 2.5 kilometers long and is made of dolerite, the most common igneous rock in Tasmania.  It had vegetation like that out of a fairy tale.  Some trees were scraggly and others were densely covered in leaves, some were dry-looking and others appeared as though they belonged in a rain forest.  As you can see, there were also wallabies!  When we got to the end of the trail, we had lunch in a park and then went back to our car to drive to our hotel in a town called Cradle Mountain in Cradle Mountain National Park.  We will be staying here for two nights, and then drive to Hobart, the capital of Tasmania.

Melbourne

A beautiful flower in the Fitzroy Gerdens

Downtown Melbourne with the Yarra River

An Arcade

Today, we spent the day walking around Melbourne and enjoying this beautiful city.  We started the day by getting together with my mom's friend Petar.  We had breakfast with him and his family and then began our exploration of Melbourne.  We walked around lane-ways, which are like American alleyways (but with shops and restaurants, not just cars and trash cans) and arcades which are lane-ways that are covered by a roof.  Melbourne is known for these hidden little streets that bisect blocks and ramble through the city.

We also visited two public gardens, the Fitzroy Gardens and the Royal Botanical Garden.  We saw plants from all over the world including many varieties of the eucalyptus tree (or gum tree) native to Australia.  (There are more than 300 species of eucalyptus trees.)  There were also plants from Africa, Asia, and Europe. By the end of the day, we were sore from all the walking, but glad we got to see and learn so much.

Wildlife in Victoria

Koala

A wallaby watching us watching him.

Cape Baron Geese

Today we took a tour of Phillip Island, an island southeast of Melbourne where there is a large amount of protected land and forest where people can walk along boardwalks and see the wildlife. We saw many wallabies, which look like a smaller kangaroo.  They eat grass, eucalyptus, and other plants.  We also saw a few koalas which, over 30 million years, have evolved from a common ancestor with the wombat (which we didn't see today).

Koalas evolved to eat only eucalyptus leaves, which are 50% water.  Therefore, koalas don't need to drink.  However, the leaves are low in nutrients.  In fact, the koala's diet of a pound of leaves a day has about as many calories as a bowl of cereal.  The animal has adapted to this low-nutrient diet by sleeping 20 hours a day and by having a cranial cavity filled only 60% by it's brain (the rest is cerebral-spinal fluid).  In other words, the koala conserves energy by thinking less.

Also in our journey today, we saw many birds including cape baron geese, magpies, purple swamp hens, black swans, egrets, herons, and ibises.  We also saw sheep, and watched one get sheared.  At the end of the day, we watched penguins come out of the ocean after a day or more of fishing to go back to their boroughs for the night.  They leave and return to land during the night because the predatory seabirds can't see well in the dark.  The penguins we saw were actually called "little penguins," and are truly the smallest species of the bird.  They are on average about a foot tall and weigh about one kilogram.  (Their weight doubles after extra feeding before molting.  They need to survive for about 17 days before returning to the ocean, while their new feathers grow in.) By the way, little penguins are the only type of penguins with blue feathers.

Possum Punctuates Big Day

A Possum that we saw on our walk

Downtown Melbourne and the Yarra River

St. Patrick's Cathederal

Today was another big day of travel.  Starting in Boston, we flew to San Francisco, continued on to Auckland, New Zealand, and finally, flew into Melbourne, Australia.  All together it consisted of 24 hours in an aircraft, a few hours of layovers, and we skipped Wednesday, April 15 crossing the international date line.  In the Auckland airport, there were many gift shops selling wool (New Zealand is one of the largest exporters of wool in the world with more sheep than people), and Kiwi bird related items such as stuffed animals and bottle openers.  The kiwi is a small, brown, furry, flightless bird distantly related to the ostrich, which is the national bird of New Zealand.  When we got to Melbourne, we went to our hotel room to drop off our luggage, and went in search of  lunch.  We easily found a small restaurant on one of many tucked in pedestrian streets called a laneway (similar to the US alleyway) where we had a sandwich before continuing on to do some more sight seeing.  We saw a Gothic revival cathedral called St. Patrick's and walked along the Yarra River promenade where we saw many restaurants lining it's banks.

A Good Last Day

Nikola (left), my mom (center) and me (right):

Today, we walked around with my mom's cousins, Boris and Tamra, the former of whom Mom hadn't seen for 30 years.  We went to a famous hotel in downtown Belgrade called Hotel Mosva (Hotel Moscow) for cake.  I had a Dolce Lete caramel torte, which was absolutely delicious!  After that, we met with my mom's friend, Nikolas Aleksic, who is a violin professor at the University of Novi Sad in Belgrade.  He gave my brother and me some instruction on the pieces that we are practicing for our auditions.  After that master class, we went to a restaurant for lunch, where we ate a traditional Serbian meal.  After that, we went to a cafe for me to update my blog.

A Quiet, Peaceful Day

Left to right: Me, my mom, Aunt Vojna, my brother

This morning, we were practicing for our upcoming orchestral auditions in my grandmother's apartment.  Afterwards, we had lunch with my mom's Aunt Vojna  and walked around Knez Mihajlova, a large pedestrian street in downtown Belgrade.  Later, we went to a café and had dinner with my mom's old school friends.

St. Mark's Church

Saint Mark's Church

Parliament Buildi

Today we didn't walk around Belgrade much, but we had lunch and dinner with friends.  The place where we had dinner was close to a traditional Orthodox church called Sveti Marko (Saint Mark's).  I took the first picture at night when the church was lit up.  The second picture is of the Serbian Parliament building, taken as we were walking to the restaurant. Many political protests have taken place in front of this building.

Belgrade and Kalimegdan

Sahat Kula

Kalimegdan

Me editing this blog

Today, we got together with our friends from Leipzig who were also traveling to Belgrade.  We walked around the Kalemegdan Park, which is a fortress built mostly in the medieval time. There are also parts built earlier in the Roman Period (as early as 385) and later during the Turkish Ottoman Empire (as late a a the mid 1800s).  It was built to defend the settlements inside its walls from intruders and enemies.  Because of this, parts of it have been destroyed, but much of it is still intact, even after it was bombed in World War II.  Here is a picture of us in front of the Sahat Kula (clock tower) near the main entrance to the fortress, as well as some other pictures of the castle. After our walk, we had lunch at a traditional Balkan restaurant. My dad and I had baklava for dessert.

Belgrade and WWI

Staircase damaged in WWII

Gavrilo Princip (right)

In the past few days, we have been in three countries.  We flew out of Prague, Czech Republic on Thursday, landed in Munich, Germany (the capital of Bavaria where BMW originated, and lederhosen are traditional clothing), and continued on to Belgrade, Serbia.  We will be staying in Belgrade for the next eight days with my grandmother.  Today, we visited a fortress called Kalemegdan, where on display were pictures of Belgrade after World War 1 and 2.  Above is a picture of a staircase damaged in WWI, and the same staircase today with my brother, mother, grandmother, and me standing on top.  Some other photographs depicted what sparked WWI.  The tension in Europe was already high, because many countries wanted to expand their boarders.  As soon as the Turkish Ottoman Empire was forced out of Bosnia (which is next to Serbia), the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed it.  That made the members of the organisation called "Young Bosnia" (Mlada Bosna) angry because they wanted independence.  They had meetings in Belgrade, and eventually , a member named Gavrilo Princip shot the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia which marked the beginning of WWI.  In the photograph, Princip is sitting on the right of a bench in Kalemegdan park, very close to where we are standing in the picture with the staircase.

Prague

A selfie in front of the Charles Bridge

Timer shot in front of Saint Vitus Cathedral, Prague Castle.

Bits of hail atop Prague Castle walls; Prague in the distance 

Today we got up early to get on a train to Prague (Prag, Praha)  from Berlin.  We arrived at the train station 15 minutes before our train was scheduled to depart (the first time we were early in years to anything except an airport) only to realize that the train was 10 minutes behind due to "a storm."  Now we needed to wait for about 25 minutes for the train to arrive, but it wasn't a big deal.  We waited in the almost freezing temperature for about another 10 minutes only to hear another announcement telling us that the train was again delayed by 10 minutes.

This continued until our train was 60 minutes behind schedule, and we had about another half an hour to wait (the train was supposed to arrive at 7:53 with the delays).  We decided to go to a cafe in the station and were back at the platform by 7:45, eight minutes before our train's (newly scheduled) arrival.  As we looked around the platform, we noticed a peculiar absence of life (except the occasional pigeon) which indicated to my mother that we had missed the train.  It turned out that the train arrived at 7:43 and promptly left ten minutes early.  After some arguing in "Czech-lish," we finally transferred our tickets on another train to Prague at 8:50 (which was also delayed, but by 20 minutes) and we boarded gratefully and in a few hours, ended up it Prague.  This proves that the saying "set your clock to the German train" is undoubtedly, unquestionably false.

When we got to Prague, we checked in to our hotel and went to see the Charles Bridge over the River Vltava and the Saint Vitus cathedral within the ornate Prague Castle.  Both were gorgeous, Gothic landmarks made almost entirely of stone.  As we walked back to our hotel, though, it started to hail.  What a great April fools joke... NOT!!