12 Hours West

4/12/2012

Thursday. Today we are heading to the outback! More specifically, we are going to Mt. Burithumble which is in Euabalong west, which is close to condoblin. Basically it is straight west of Sydney. Or as it looks on Google maps:

We are going to my most mom’s brothers farm. Her two brothers, Murray and Kevin, have a 40,000 acre farm out there. They have sheep, and cattle, and emus and some crops. So we’ll get to see all that stuff.

Anyway, we got to school bright and early. Braedon was a peach and drove us to school so we could be there by 6:30. We got on the bus and were on the road by a little after 7.

I ended up not having a seat buddy, but that was quite okay with me, because that meant that I got to spread out and take up two seats worth of room. So I slept quite a bit.

The problem with taking a bus, is that they have regulations on the drivers. They are required to stop pretty much every two hours and have a break. This means that a drive that should really only take 7 or 8 hours turns into 12-13 hours. So we stopped in the blue mountains for morning tea.

Three Sisters. Not that impressive when it's super early and gray outside.

We kept going, then stopped in Orange for lunch (subway platters again! Yes!). Then drove some more, then stopped somewhere else for afternoon tea. Then went a little farther, then we stopped at an aboriginal site where they have built an education centre. It isn’t quite open yet, but we got a tour and got to have a look at the facilities. It was pretty cool actually. The entire building is made of different types of mud. And the doors all have super ornate stain glass pictures in them. Every aspect of the building was designed with a part of wiradjuri (aboriginal tribe) culture in mind. The tables for students at shaped like boomerangs to promote group work and community participation.

The last leg of our trip was when we really got into the outback. As we were driving the sun started setting over the bush horizon. Probably the most Australian sight I’ve ever seen, driving on a red dirt road, sun setting over the horizon, dry yellow grass, and a sole Kangaroo hopping along side the bus. Yeah, I’m in Australia now. (If only my eyeballs could take pictures). But here’s the sunset:

When we finally got to the place we unloaded the bus and put our stuff in our assigned rooms. We stayed in the sheep shearer’s quarters. Which is exactly what it sounds like. When the people who sheer the sheep come to the farm, they come for about a week and these are the barracks where they stay.

After dinner Kimberly offered us some time to share things about ourselves. Because there are so many of us, she gave us three rocks, to symbolize 3 things about us or our past. We could go as deep or as surface level as we wanted to. So we had a bit of time for people to share some things about them. It was cool to We ate dinner and had a little bit of time to hear some things about people I haven’t gotten to know that well yet.