G'day mates!
In a few hours I will enter an airplane again. No, I will not return back to Germany already, first I have to explore Australia further. The next week we will have holidays here which I will spend in Tasmania. I am already very curious about it and I will upload pictures and post all infos here, naturally. Perhaps I will even catch a Tasmanian Devil which I can domesticate.
But before I run off, I will first report about all the cool stuff I experienced the last weeks:
1st weekend, hiking. I uploaded the pictures from the hiking trip already 3 week ago into my photo album, maybe you have seen them already. It was in Wondabyne, about 40km north of Sydney, at the Broken Bay, the Hawkesbury River's estuary. It was a beautiful 12km long hike between genuine dry Australian bush with so-called Gumtrees (Eucalyptus trees, all without Koalas) and big spiders which had to choose just the narrow hiking trails over which to build their webs, out of all the other places they could have chosen.
The following week I have been to Manly Beach for the first time, another famous beach north of Sydney which is best to reach by ferry. There, I also had to experience a bluebottle sting (jellyfish, see my second blog entry). They are much smaller than they look like on the photo, only about 8cm long, but they nevertheless burn pretty much - the small fire blisters were still visible 2 weeks later.
2nd weekend, caving. Yes exactly, that has something to do with caves. I joined that university club (University of Technology Sydney Speleological Society) which I was so enthusiastic about in Berlin already. And that was really worth it! We abseiled into caves at Wee Jasper, to the northwest of Canberra, and explored everything inside. The "squeezes", very narrow passages through which we tried to squeeze ourselves, were really funny, but also the caves with all those stalactites and stalagmites were very interesting!
3rd weekend, cycling. The next week I went hiking in Wondabyne again, but this time on my own, and I visited the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney again. This time I took my bicycle with me so I could ride along some trails and enjoy the beautiful nature.
4th weekend, surfing! At last I got around to surfing! I went to Manly Beach with a couple of other UTS Outdoor Adventure Club members where we hired some surfboards. After some brief instructions from someone more experienced we all rushed into the waves and gave it a go. After a few failures I already managed it rather well and was able to stand on the board nearly every time, before the 4 hours lending period was over and we had to return the surfboards. But I will certainly try and practice it again soon. Anyhow, I was exhausted to death thereafter! I did not know at all how exhausting it would be, since you have to paddle against the waves every time you want to get out into the water again.
Well, but nevertheless I rode home nearly 40km on by bike afterwards. Unfortunately I could not take any pictures of the nice sights over the Sydney harbour that I had on the way, because I did not take my camera with me (for fear of thieves on the beach), but I will soon make up for that and show you the pictures.
Perhaps it looks like I'm not studying anymore, doesn't it? But during the week I am in the laboratory nearly every day. Currently, Gordon and I are busy building up a setup for luminance spectroscopy of excited semiconductors. It is really difficult to get all the needed parts together. That would be no problem at the university in Berlin, they had a multiple of equipment etc. in the Project Lab compared to what this uni has to offer. And also the Labview program they use here to control the measurement is in a considerable disorder and it did not work properly, but I could quickly make everything work.
However, I have to hurry up now and pack in the remaining stuff and go to the airport! Happy Easter to you all! Cheers!
In a few hours I will enter an airplane again. No, I will not return back to Germany already, first I have to explore Australia further. The next week we will have holidays here which I will spend in Tasmania. I am already very curious about it and I will upload pictures and post all infos here, naturally. Perhaps I will even catch a Tasmanian Devil which I can domesticate.
But before I run off, I will first report about all the cool stuff I experienced the last weeks:
1st weekend, hiking. I uploaded the pictures from the hiking trip already 3 week ago into my photo album, maybe you have seen them already. It was in Wondabyne, about 40km north of Sydney, at the Broken Bay, the Hawkesbury River's estuary. It was a beautiful 12km long hike between genuine dry Australian bush with so-called Gumtrees (Eucalyptus trees, all without Koalas) and big spiders which had to choose just the narrow hiking trails over which to build their webs, out of all the other places they could have chosen.
The following week I have been to Manly Beach for the first time, another famous beach north of Sydney which is best to reach by ferry. There, I also had to experience a bluebottle sting (jellyfish, see my second blog entry). They are much smaller than they look like on the photo, only about 8cm long, but they nevertheless burn pretty much - the small fire blisters were still visible 2 weeks later.
2nd weekend, caving. Yes exactly, that has something to do with caves. I joined that university club (University of Technology Sydney Speleological Society) which I was so enthusiastic about in Berlin already. And that was really worth it! We abseiled into caves at Wee Jasper, to the northwest of Canberra, and explored everything inside. The "squeezes", very narrow passages through which we tried to squeeze ourselves, were really funny, but also the caves with all those stalactites and stalagmites were very interesting!
3rd weekend, cycling. The next week I went hiking in Wondabyne again, but this time on my own, and I visited the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney again. This time I took my bicycle with me so I could ride along some trails and enjoy the beautiful nature.
4th weekend, surfing! At last I got around to surfing! I went to Manly Beach with a couple of other UTS Outdoor Adventure Club members where we hired some surfboards. After some brief instructions from someone more experienced we all rushed into the waves and gave it a go. After a few failures I already managed it rather well and was able to stand on the board nearly every time, before the 4 hours lending period was over and we had to return the surfboards. But I will certainly try and practice it again soon. Anyhow, I was exhausted to death thereafter! I did not know at all how exhausting it would be, since you have to paddle against the waves every time you want to get out into the water again.
Well, but nevertheless I rode home nearly 40km on by bike afterwards. Unfortunately I could not take any pictures of the nice sights over the Sydney harbour that I had on the way, because I did not take my camera with me (for fear of thieves on the beach), but I will soon make up for that and show you the pictures.
Perhaps it looks like I'm not studying anymore, doesn't it? But during the week I am in the laboratory nearly every day. Currently, Gordon and I are busy building up a setup for luminance spectroscopy of excited semiconductors. It is really difficult to get all the needed parts together. That would be no problem at the university in Berlin, they had a multiple of equipment etc. in the Project Lab compared to what this uni has to offer. And also the Labview program they use here to control the measurement is in a considerable disorder and it did not work properly, but I could quickly make everything work.
However, I have to hurry up now and pack in the remaining stuff and go to the airport! Happy Easter to you all! Cheers!
