Being a free citizen never felt so good, and yet giving back to Australia never felt so painful.
I just spent the weekend at the Tidbinbilla National Refuge with the sole purpose of helping the native animalia and vegetation restore their dominance over imported creatures. As we left on Friday morning, picked up by a semi-toothless old man named Rodney — whose stories ranged from watching mountain gorillas in Uganda to, uh, well nothing else; he really knew how to keep to himself — I sat through the four-hour ride, half-asleep, thinking of all the smiling wallabies and thankful ferns awaiting us.
But feet of rock-hard mulch, skin-piercing thorns, and piles of porous pitchforks later, I ended with a different view on the experience.
Nope, the convict life — replanting Lemura grasses, spreading piles of weed-repressing mulch, and reppin’ neon-yellow vests — is not for me. Of course, my obstinacy stems from my actual history of volunteerism. In high school, I scraped by riding shotgun as my Mom drove to the homes of the senile and handicapped, walking from the car to the door with hot food in tow. The worst part about that gig was probably the sour-milk smell I could never shake from my nostrils, but, in hindsight, listening to the radio and talking to my Mom about her family history are undoubtedly favored to Tidbinbilla.
But for all the hands full of blisters, arms full of burns, and legs full of bull ant bites, it’s safe to say I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Aside from the dancing brolga, territorial koalas, games of charades, magnificent stir-fry, star-blazed nights, and rampaging kangaroos — more on that later — this trip finally allowed me to escape the cabin fever that’s infected me the last week. After my mid-semester break allowed me to escape the confines of suburbia, I returned to find myself inundated with newfound internship options. So with approximately 1,932 hours of staring at an unrelenting computer screen over the last couple days, I was ready to head out.
An uneventful drive landed us at the Tidbinbilla National Refuge, only 37 clicks from Canberra, the capitol city of Australia. Finally, I’d arrived in the elusive, mythical, tiny Australian Capital Territory! Maybe I could finally see my favorite politician, Kevin Rudd! (Alas, that didn’t happen — he was probably too busy saving the Australian economy to visit the Tidbinbilla sanctuary.) We saw the rewardingly-elaborate displays of ACT animals, checked out the stuffed echidnas, and, as a treat for waking up so early, bought ice cream cones — little did we know, Rodney was going to buy us all ice cream tomorrow. (Although quieter than a wombat, Rodney was a champ.) And I finally saw my first wild emu, unblinking eyes and everything!
The packing list called for a sleeping bag, so, being the Northwesterner I am, I figured a camp and a Coleman stove would be in order. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in actual cabins, with a mess hall, shower, and ropes course all within shouting distance. But what the refuge lacked in rustic amenities it made up for in sheer volume of kangaroos.
They were everywhere. Everywhere. Since they were wild, they never got within rasslin’ proximity, but when you hear a kangaroo snuffling around your door at 3 a.m., you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. Ok, I guess this is a good spot for the rampaging ’roos story. The second day of the trip, after we had mangled mulch for the last four hours, we were resting at base camp. The typical tourist, I left the cabin with camera in hand, seeking to get some good shots of the kangaroos out there. Doing my best ninja impression, I stalked a “mob” of kangaroos (that’s actually the proper term, hilariously enough), coming close enough to gain their attention in my camera lens. As I began to snap my shots, the kangaroo in sight turned his head to my right, facing a low rumbling noise that had just caught my ears. I looked to the hill on my right, unable to discern whether a semi was rumbling by or if a rockslide was taking place. What I saw made me catch my breath, for this was no rockslide.
These were kangaroos. Dozens of them. All leaping down the hill, only 100 meters away.
All leaping right at me.
I’d lie if I said I didn’t turn and run — have you seen their claws — but I soon realized that they weren’t pursuing me directly. Instead, they were creating a horseshoe, blocking my exits and forcing me away from camp.
They’re organizing my demise, I thought.
Crap.
With some 75 kangaroos all on their hind legs, boring me down with their eyes, I rationalized my situation by reminding myself that this would at least me a story my friends would love to tell. But then, putting to use the thousands of dollars my parents had invested in my education, I remembered that horseshoes aren’t connected — there’s always a way out. So with my knowledge of shapes in mind, I found the far exit of the mob, meandered through the woods for a bit, and finally found a dirt path that would lead me back to base camp. Yeah, my heart was in my throat, but better that than a joey’s teeth.
The dangers, fortunately, stopped there, although we did see a Red-Bellied Black Snake, one of the most poisonous in Australia, smashed into the asphalt outside camp. (Some others in the group saw its cousins in the park, but on three separate occasions, I missed it quicker than you can say “How are the Rays still in the playoffs?”) The bull ants, each a couple centimeters in length, weren’t necessarily life-threatening, but boy, did their bite — through my jeans — make me yelp.
But not all the animals were out to get me, I swear. A sighting of a rare Brush-Tailed Rock-Wallaby, a species with only ~20 left in the wild, provided a reminder of the fragility of the ecosystem we’ve taken over. (The one we saw was in captivity, where about 100 more exist, so its sighting was still something remarkable.) And while we didn’t see any platypuses, we spotted some Australian Pelicans outstretched in the sun, a Black Swan and her brood, and a gaggle of emus hiding while we refilled their grub selection.
At camp, while we weren’t busy reenacting scenes from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — that only took about, oh, 30 hours to guess — or elbowing each other in the nose during a violent game of Spoons, we found ourselves exploring the landscape, or at least what the kangaroos would allow us. On the second day, me, Mark from Colorado, and Danial from California scaled a 1,000-foot hill, out of breath from both the hike and the views we found atop the hill’s crowning granite boulders. The weirdest part? With no service in the base camp, I was still able to receive a drunk dial at the top of the hill.
Volunteering is what we came for, and, thus, volunteering was the focus. But as you can see, there was so much more.
And I didn’t even end with the sour-milk smell in my nose.
[I’ll have some more pictures on Facebook tomorrow.]
Videos of the day!
I just can’t get enough:
…and again…
And for those handful of you who don't share my schoolboy crush on Sarah Palin, here's something to satiate your Caped Crusader appetite. The parallels are...uncanny? eerie? absolutely, unequivocally, clear-as-glass true?
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