Monday, December 5, 2011
Uluru (Ayers Rock)
My trip started early Monday morning to catch the 6:30am train from Wollongong to International Airport, a $19.60 train ride. Which is extremely annoying because it cost $7.80 to go anywhere except for the airport which they charge you a fortune to get to by train. Once at the airport, about an hour train ride I had plenty of time to relax before my flight left at 9:50am to Northern Territory. It was a 3 hour flight into the red center and it was a pretty cool flight. The fist half hour you could see Sydney and the suburbs, then we crossed the blue mountains and on the other side was not much, mainly just green/brown fields with occasional houses. The last hour and a half of the flight was nothing but red soil, it sounds boring but it was kind of an amazing sight.
Upon landing you could see Uluru and the Olgas in the distance and they looked huge, it was an amazing sight. Once out of the plane I was hit with the hottest wave of heat i think i have ever felt. It was approaching a 40C day which for us americans is nearly 105F. I then went to the Avis rental desk to pick up my car which to my surprised had received a free upgrade from a crappy sedan to a 2011 RAV4. I couldnt have had a better car to be whipping around the empty outback roads in then this. I was a bit nervous at first after seeing all the posters at the Avis rental company warning you to drive safe and to watch out for kangaroos, dingos, buffalo, and camels crossing the road which could all damage the car as well as myself. Fortunately i didnt come across any while i was driving and didnt even see any the entire time there. All the wildlife I saw was a ton of rabbits, and a few lizards.Ayers Rock airport was the smallest airport I had ever been in as well, it had one landing strip and it was a good day if they saw more then 2 planes a day. There was only two planes a day going from sydney to ayers rock each day, one by Qantas and one by Virgin Australia.
My first stop was Ayers rock which was 12km away down the one road there was leaving the airport. You could see it the entire way but it once I pulled up to the very edge, after stopping at the kind of useless info/cultural center which was basically just promoting the aboriginals, you could not look away. It was amazing, it was so big, and red. I have never seen anything like it. After starring for awhile I found where the spot was to climb about a quarter mile high up to the top of the rock; however, it was closed due to extreme temperatures. So i decided to drive to the Olgas which are a bunch of smaller monoliths and went for a hike/drive through them, then on the way back stopped at Uluru to watch the sunset. The next morning I woke up early and saw the sunrise at Uluru and then drove to the climb but once again the climb was closed, this time due to the chance of rain. So instead i hiked the 10.7km around the rock with these two guys who drove there from Perth. It took approximately 2 hours to hike around it. By then it was about time i headed back to the airport in order to catch my flight back to Sydney at noon. It was an expensive flight but it was well worth it, i have never seen anything like it.
Spot where you climbed up!
Panoramic of the Olgas
Kangaroo Crossing
Olgas
Canyon in the Olgas
Olgas hike
Uluru
Uluru at sunset
Uluru at sunrise
Final Exams
Well im home now but theres still a lot of things I didnt add to the blog in the last few weeks...
After classes ended on October 28th we had a full week for "stuvac" or a study week before finals. I wasnt planning on studying at all but I got a little bit done, more then I expected because everyone else was studying and there wasnt much else to do. Anyways the next two weeks were exams. I had four exams. Biology practical, biology lecture, locating australia lecture, and psychology of sport lecture. All of them went pretty well i thought. Psych was definitely the worst because it was full of random statistical questions which were nearly impossible. The exams were a little stricter then here in America, they had large rooms with a few hundred desks with atleast 50 old ladies walking around with those bright orange construction vests on. I swear they just rounded up them all from the local nursing home because honestly none of them couldve been under 60 years old, but they took their jobs seriously. Once you sat down you had to fill out two forms of all your information and leave your student id on your table as they came around and checked. They took what seemed like 2min at each table to verify that the person sitting at the desk was in fact the person on the ID card, idk if they were almost blind or if they were super suspicious that someone was trying to have another person take the exam for them. Also you had to take everything out of your pockets and put them in a plastic bag beneath your table and your backpack must be left outside the lecture hall in another room or building.
Anyways I survived the exams and have already received my final grades which were:
Biology - D
Psychology - C
Locating Australia - C
Now dont think I did horrible by looking at those, remember we are using the Australian grading system which goes...
HD - High Distinction = 100-85
D - Distinction = 85-75
C - Credit = 75-65
P - Pass = 65-55
F - Fail = 55-0
So i did fairly well, considering it is really hard to get an HD in Australia. The grade equivalent for an HD at UMass would be an A+, a D would be a B+ to an A, a Credit would be C+ to B and so on...so ill probably end up with an A and two B's which I am happy with for trying to study while in Australia.
After classes ended on October 28th we had a full week for "stuvac" or a study week before finals. I wasnt planning on studying at all but I got a little bit done, more then I expected because everyone else was studying and there wasnt much else to do. Anyways the next two weeks were exams. I had four exams. Biology practical, biology lecture, locating australia lecture, and psychology of sport lecture. All of them went pretty well i thought. Psych was definitely the worst because it was full of random statistical questions which were nearly impossible. The exams were a little stricter then here in America, they had large rooms with a few hundred desks with atleast 50 old ladies walking around with those bright orange construction vests on. I swear they just rounded up them all from the local nursing home because honestly none of them couldve been under 60 years old, but they took their jobs seriously. Once you sat down you had to fill out two forms of all your information and leave your student id on your table as they came around and checked. They took what seemed like 2min at each table to verify that the person sitting at the desk was in fact the person on the ID card, idk if they were almost blind or if they were super suspicious that someone was trying to have another person take the exam for them. Also you had to take everything out of your pockets and put them in a plastic bag beneath your table and your backpack must be left outside the lecture hall in another room or building.
Anyways I survived the exams and have already received my final grades which were:
Biology - D
Psychology - C
Locating Australia - C
Now dont think I did horrible by looking at those, remember we are using the Australian grading system which goes...
HD - High Distinction = 100-85
D - Distinction = 85-75
C - Credit = 75-65
P - Pass = 65-55
F - Fail = 55-0
So i did fairly well, considering it is really hard to get an HD in Australia. The grade equivalent for an HD at UMass would be an A+, a D would be a B+ to an A, a Credit would be C+ to B and so on...so ill probably end up with an A and two B's which I am happy with for trying to study while in Australia.
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