 It took me a while to get up the courage to climb over that cliff, but after I had done it once, I was hooked. (Click on photos for larger images.)
Abseiling or rappelling
Since I still haven’t started classes here in Australia, I will write about the many activities which we have been doing to stay busy. I’ve been in Australia for a week and we still have another week of orientation before classes start. In my last entry, I wrote about taking a trip to the Margaret River, so I guess I should explain all of what that entailed.
On Tuesday morning, our entire group made up of roughly twenty Michigan Tech students, one from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one from George Washington University, boarded a bus and began our journey. Along the way we stopped at a small town and a beach to stretch our legs. After a little more time on the bus, we arrived at the town of Margaret River and then continued onto our lodging. After settling in, we got the chance to walk around in the woods behind the rooms and many people got their first look at kangaroos in the wild. Since it was dusk, I wasn’t able to get any clear photos of them, but I’m sure the opportunity will arise at another time. We then settled into our rooms, and prepared for the next day.
Much to my surprise, when I woke up on Wednesday, it was not very warm outside. I know that it would be a heat wave if it hit sixty back at home, but after multiple days in the eighties and nineties, sixty felt pretty cold. We dressed in our warm clothes and set off on our canoe trip up the Margaret River. On this trip, I was given the opportunity to eat a worm paste, kangaroo meat, emu meat, as well as many other fruits and plants native to the bush. Traveling roughly seven kilometers, we were all pretty tired when we were finished. Since the weather still hadn’t cleared up much, we relaxed back in our rooms for the rest of the night.
 Thursday was meant to be the most exciting day as far as planned activities. After waking up and getting ready for the day, it was again not incredibly warm, but the weather forecast was for it to warm up nicely. After eating breakfast, two men, Allen and Bruce, had arrived from a company specializing in extreme outdoor sports and began to give us a brief lesson in abseiling, which is known to many back in the United States as repelling.
Our gear, including a helmet, harness, gloves, figure eight, and carabineer were issued to us, and we boarded the bus. After a short ride, we unloaded all of our gear and walked roughly two kilometers into the abseiling site. The walk into the cliffs was amazing, it didn’t even seem like we were close to the ocean and then we walked around a corner, and there it was! The bright blue ocean which went on for miles was only a short distance from us, the only thing between us and the ocean was a fifteen meter (~50 feet) cliff that we were all meant to climb down. We were strapped into our harnesses, given instructions, and then the abseiling began!
It took me a while to get up the courage to climb over that cliff, but after I had done it once, I was hooked. I was completely in control of my own speed when climbing down the cliff, yet I still felt completely safe, thanks to the person at the bottom of the rope, ready to brake for me at a moment’s notice. I then went on to abseil down a sixteen meter cliff and a thirty-six meter cliff at that same site. After a short bus ride to Giant’s Cave, I abseiled down a forty-five meter cliff and a fifty-five meter (180 feet) cliff, both of which led directly into the cave. What an incredibly different feeling this one had, due to the fact that abseiling at the beach left you with a feeling of openness and freedom whereas the caves forced you to be much more controlled and careful in the abseiling. After everyone descended into the cave, we took a short tour of the cave which included many different rooms, connected by ladders or walkways, and finally arrived back at ground level, pretty dirty but filled with some amazing stories. Everyone was pretty tired after our long day, so we went back, ate dinner, and relaxed.
 Friday was going to be another beach day in a town called Busselton after we stopped at another beach, called Yallingup, known for its large waves. After packing up and leaving our home for the past three days, we stopped at a beach which had strong surf that attracted surfers and other outdoor sports participants. I walked down the beach and got the chance to see some amazing wildlife and scenery. We only stayed at this particular beach for an hour, but the waves and rocks were beautiful. Only a short bus ride down the road was the beach town of Bussleton. Here, there were virtually no waves at the beach, so the water was populated with little children learning to swim. I swam for a bit and then ventured into town which with all of its many shops reminded me of the small towns back in the states. Our group spent the rest of the afternoon there and made our way back to the University where we spent the rest of the night unpacking.
The trip we took was an incredible experience in that I had the chance to do some things completely new to me as well as become better friends with some of the other Tech students experiencing Australia with me.
Again, if you have any ideas, comments or questions about my adventures, please don’t hesitate to email me (jlchrist@mtu.edu)!
Until next week,
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