Around Wollongong

Weerona

A lot of people refer to Australia simply as "Oz."  It's perhaps fitting.  Though in many ways Australia does not feel that foreign, in other ways it feels like the kind of world one would only find in a fantasy film.  The natural world in Australia seems so wild and different from back home - from the jungle-like calls and bright colors of the parrots to the predominance of marsupials in the animal kingdom to the tree fern outside my second-story window. 

Wollongong is more of a city than I've ever lived in, but it doesn't defeat the wild feel of Australia, and the University of Wollongong campus, in particular, does a great job keeping the natural world around.  I thought people (or, more to the point, my mother) would enjoy seeing what it's like around Wollongong where I'm living. 

Weerona's main courtyard

I live in Weerona, which is just a standard dorm complex.  We have three different buildings (blocks) connected by a courtyard, with a front office and a dining room.  Three or four options are available for dinner and we pack sandwiches for lunch when we go to breakfast.  The food seems familiarly American or British, aside from an ample supply of vegemite available for toast.  I have a single room on the second floor of B-Block, with, as I mentioned, a tree fern that brushes up against my window.  In the morning the birds emphatically wake me up with repetitive, loud cries that are hard to sleep through.  I've noticed that students here get up earlier in general than Colgate students - I think it's just because nobody can sleep through all of the bird calls. 

Pond at the botanical gardens

Weerona, and all of the residential colleges, are separate from the university campus, referred to simply as "uni."  It takes me about twenty minutes to walk from college to uni.  There is a good bus system that is nice on rainy days, but I really enjoy the walk (or bike ride) to class.  If I detour by about a block, I can walk through the botanical gardens, which are spectacular and huge.  I haven't really explored them fully yet - but I definitely enjoy wandering through and seeing all of the plants and birds.  They're very spacious, usually not crowded at all (which is kind of sad, actually), and the exit is right at the bus stop next to uni.

The building where I work

Little creek in the middle of campus

The campus itself is one of the prettier ones I've ever been on.  There are several small duck ponds, with ducks tame enough that you can walk up to them and pet them, though they tend to hiss a bit, and nibble.  The girl I'm working with in lab said that a few of them will even sit on her lap sometimes.  The ponds have been naturally colonized by large freshwater eels, which apparently manage to wriggle across the grass somehow to get to new ponds.  There are little creeks connecting the ponds in places, and they've done a great job keeping thick greenery around the campus.  Apparently they tried to make it so you can never see more than two buildings at a time - that is, they want enough greenery around to block your view of buildings so the campus doesn't seem too developed. 

Mount Keira

Along the trail up Mount Keira

A three-minute walk to the west from campus brings you to the beginning of a trail leading up Mount Keira, a 500-meter peak, which is part of the Illawarra escarpment.  About two weeks into the semester, several of us spent a Sunday morning climbing it together.  There are an impressive number of steps that are tiring enough for me.  But the trail is beautiful, cutting through a lush forest full of ferns, eucalypts, and woody vines.  Eventually the trail connects with a road, and this leads up to an overlook over the city.

Walking twenty minutes in the opposite direction from campus brings you to a harbor with lots of moored sailboats (though, apparently, nobody in all of Australia rents out small sailboats...) and two lighthouses.  You can walk along a bike trail in either direction to get to beaches.  Headed to the north, you come to a rock pool, with man-made walls but filled naturally by the tide.  It is about four feet deep all the way through, and there's a palpable swell, but the walls make it safe and easy to swim in (though you may be joined by a few fish).  I went swimming at the end of flood week.  Australians thought this was crazy - it's mid-winter here.  But since that means it's usually in the mid-sixties and sunny, it doesn't seem so bad to me!  Continuing from the rock pool brings you along a beach full of interesting pebbles (including petrified wood from the Illawarra Coal Measures) and lots of shells.  This gives way to a rocky tidal pool area, and finally to a sandy beach that the surfers enjoy. 

I was able to get a cheap but nice bicycle off of the Uni Classifieds a couple weeks ago, and finally got to explore the bike trail along the beach.  It continues for about five miles from North Beach, leaving the coast to follow some roads, but soon returning.  At the end is a really beautiful beach that I had a lot of fun wandering.  Better yet, it was a five-mile ride each way, and there were no hills to speak of.  Definitely a nice way to relax!

I'll have some more interesting pictures to post soon, but that will have to wait until after my geomorph test this week!