AFL Keg Night

Last weekend was a big one. Thursday went until five, Friday was an awesome bar crawl, and Saturday, that was the Fenner's AFL team keg night. Only about eleven people made their slow way to the Moose, first years still feeling the effects of the Thursday night interhall ball, myself still shaky from the previous two nights. The beers tasted like nails - and 120 schooners is a lot for eleven people to get through. Luckily a few latecomers turned up to help us out and the afternoon started.

Here are some of the boys, while the beer was still a bit harsh.

Miles and my flatmate Paulie

Charlie and Hugh, both deep in thoughtTimmy, Paulie and Donnie - the nips are getting bigger.

Then Irish, an ex-ressie from Burgmann myself and Matt we chatted about interhall soccer and why I was still living on campus.

Next the girls unexpectedly joined us, they had found free cocktails at Academy.

Yee ha

And the drinks started tasting better

The night ended well, I ran into Bec and Megan. Aren't they beautiful!

Bec's ovaries started hurting so she got a ride home in a trolley.

On the way we found some old letters the Beaurepairs bin (B,U and A). They joined Bec in the trolley and finally found their way into the flat.

Oh, what a Night!

The House that Phill Built

Here are some updated photos of the building site. It doesn't look like much has been done, but now must of the walls are filled with cement instead of being hollow polystyrene. Some rendering has been done out back as well.

This is my work space, I spend nearly seven hours a day right here.

Here I am, workin' hard to make a living.

The house - bird's eye view.

The Highway to Uni

The motorbike ride from Albury to Canberra has long since lost its appeal. I now find it three to four hours of boredom. However with all the freeway and bypass construction taking place I realised its about to get much worse. There a lots of fantastic sights along the way so I thought I'd document them.

First up is the Ettamogah pub, just out of Albury and slightly off the road. This pub was built to look like one from a great Australian comic strip

Then there is Holbrook. This inland town is the proud owner of their very own submarine.

And only a few k's out of town their very own castle

Next up we have the Tumblong pub. This pub has a truck on the roof, it has always amazed me. Sorry about the bad photo but I didn't want to run across the freeway.Of course I can't leave out the Dog on the Tuckerbox just outside Gundagai. We used to love stopping here as kids.The Coolac Hotel. You have to love a pub on the Freeway. I've always wanted to stop here for a few brews.

Last but not least, the tractor graveyard at Bookham. This always fascinated me when we used to drive past on the way to Sydney as a little tacker. All Bookham had was a shop and the graveyard.

The Boys are Back

I went back home for my mothers birthday last weekend. While I was there I took the opportunity to meet up with a few old friends from High School. Here is my weekend in photo form.

We started at Trent's house. This is his driveway. That is Kleemo, who after a few beers demonstrated his penismanship by writing Frank Boulevarde in urine. This is a skill he has been practising since high school.

We quickly went to the Commercial Club to watch Hawks-Roos final. Here is Trent baring all for the world to see.

Unfortunately Roos were vctorious, but we doubled our money betting on the game. So we took our winnings and moved to the Albion to squander our money. Kleemo 's pretty happy about his following win on the Pokies.

The next day we went back to Trent's house for a barbie and a kick of the footy.
All that meat was for five people. Good on ya Chef

It was the most fun trip home I've had in a long time. Thanks boys, see ya next time.

Oxfam Trailwalker 2007

For those that don't know, the Trailwalker is a 100km trek through the nature reserves of Sydney. It is a large charity event and teams need to raise $1000 in charity just to enter. One day I plan to finish in under 16 hours. This year it was raining the entire time, ensuring river crossings were incredibly exciting and making my feet fertile places for blisters. It was also really, really cold. This is the fourth year I've done the event, but the first time I haven't completed it.

Here are a few pics. Most are taken early on. This year the course was run in reverse. That won't mean much to many people, but those of you you have been a part of my team previuosly these two photoa show what used to be mentally the hardest section of the track (its not to bad after 20 km in the sun, but after 80km, 14 hours and at night it is 12 km of hell).

This year my team consisted of three people I didn't know. They found me on an online database. We were going well until about the 65 km mark when my team started to feel sick. By the time we got to the sixth checkpoint (69 km) two of them were throwing up and the other was suffering from major dizziness when we went up the larger hills. Unfortunately we had to pull out. This means I'll have to be back on the trail next year, already people from Fenner are lining up to join me. Fools!

Here is my team. From left to right, Louise, Alison and Ian. This hill was pretty brutal and lasted a kilometre or two, however there is much harder still to come.

We found a rope swing, anyone for a dip?

Into the Pitlands

After Alice Springs we had to start the real work. Danene, Collen and myself packed our 4WD with enough food to last us two weeks and headed south, into the Pitlands of South Australia. The desert is quite empty, as can be seen by this very lonely tree. Poor little guy. The entire time we were surrounded by the lovely desert landscape. My photos don't come close to doing it justice. I tried a few shots of the and these were the best.

This one is outside Imanpa, near the southern border of NT

The next one is about 14 kilometers outside Eranabella. All the communities we visited were founded in fantastic areas of the desert.

And this is Mount Conner, the poor man's Uluru. We got within 200 km of the worlds largest rock but alas we were not allowed to deviate from our path. Only one team was able to visit the national landmark, those lucky sods. Still Mt Conner is pretty amazing.

We also visited a meteorite crater in the NT which was pretty cool, but I've got no photos. It didn't really look much different from the rest of the landscape, just a couple of big dents in the ground. It was the novelty of being there that was exciting.

The roads were pretty empty and it's not really the best of places to break down. However the roads are literally littered with trashed cars. You would come across one or two every kilometre of the way.

Two weeks is a long time to spend with only two other people, even if they are as beautiful as Danene and Colleen. But they helped out by washing socks, which they enjoyed immensly. That said the locals in the aboriginal communities were super friendly. I was never lonely when I wanted to kick a footy. Even when we were ten k's out of town we came across the parents of some of the kids we were teaching and they came for a quick chat and intruduced us to all their friends We conducted science workshops in Imanpa, Amata, Ernabella and Kenmore Park. Everywhere we went we came across friendly faces. Here is one I found at Ernabella. Unfortunately due to privacy I can't publish photos of the students. We had three workshops, one was on the enviroment, one on flight and one on structures. In the structures workshops we got the students to make towers out of straws that had to hold up a container of water.
On our travels we came across quite a lot of animals, including the biggest eagles we had ever seen...

...wild horses......and cows (it was fun chasing them in the car).We also came across a camal, but alas he was camera shy.

Even though we were in the middle of the desert for two weeks there was still time for a bit of R&R.

We were even lucky enough to catch up with another team for a weekend and so we went camping.It was a good thing we had 4WD, we had to engage this fabulous feature once in order to cross a dry river bed, it was very exciting.

On the way back we stopped by Rainbow Valley, where we once again ran into Team 1. We left a nice message in their window (Team 1 sux Team 2 rocks - enlarge the photos for a better view of our handiwork). It was all very mature.

And here we are finally back at Alice, out of the dry zone, enjoying our first beer in two weeks.

Cheers Susan, Chris, and Jacqui

The Science Circus finds Alice Springs

Questacon sent the Science Circus into remote indigenous communities to promote science to the aboriginal students.

We started in Alice Springs, soaking up as much booze as we could before heading to the alcohol free zones. In between our sessions at the pubs we went hiking around the stunning rock formations surrounding the city and we also visited Desert Park for a view of Australia's native flora and fauna.

Breakfast at the YHA for half the team. The rest of the lazy bastards are probably still in bed.

We visited Simpsons Gap shown here. Unfortunately swimming is not allowed. Whilst here we were lucky enough to spot two rare rock wallabies. Unfortnately one had taken a rather large tumble from the top of the rock formation...

The other was happily munching on lunch and didn't mind a few

photos.

We also came across a fellow tourist. This unlucky traveller (sitting down leaning againts the rock) was enjoying a quiet read until he was accosted by the overbearing presence of fifteen circus freaks.

We also went hiking/climbing through Standley Chasm. This became part of my Oxfam trailwalker training, hence the massive backpack. I'm not a huge fan of heights and so it is very rare I see sights like this. Pride spurred me on, I didn't want to turn back while others kept climbing.

Chris and Mon meandring through the Chasm. This was

the lowest point...

...it was all uphill from there.
We got as high as the rocks that I can be seen looking at through the two rock walls.

And here we are. Danene, Emily, Mon, Chris and myself. After a quick break

we decided that we needed thinner air.

Chris managed to find a little hole to stick

his head through, 'Hi Lauf!'

The Desert Park was fascinating. Susan got to carry stuff on her head, I got up close and personal with an emu, and we saw horny devild. They must be look horny becasue that has to be painful.