Student Bloggers
Grampians National Park Weekend
Date
March 20, 2017
Wow what an incredible weekend we just had! A bunch of people in the house went on an Arcadia-sponsored trip (which means it was free and therefore even more awesome) to the Grampians National Park. We started with watching a film on the aboriginal dreaming story, which is how they viewed the creation of the world, followed by a short film on Australian geology, which I must say was actually more interesting than I thought it would be. We then got the throw boomerangs (again!) for a while before going and painting our own. After that we had lunch, where we ate kangaroo, emu, and crocodile, all go which were amazing. Once we finished lunch, we drove to Mackenzie falls, where we relaxed and took a dip in the river. We stayed in a hostel near the park, in which the lobby had multiple snakes, a baby crocodile, and a monitor and dozens of kangaroos grazed in the field nearby. We ate dinner at a local cafe, and had enough money in the budget to get ice cream after.
The next day we woke up early and went rock climbing and cliff repelling (or abseiling according to the Aussies) on some of the mountains in the Outback, which was by far my favorite part. After than, we stopped at Macca’s for lunch and then drove to the J Ward Prison in Ararat, which is an old asylum for the criminally insane. We heard many stories about various criminals, both dead and alive, one of which (scarily enough) just got released from prison, so needless to say after the tour we happily scurried to the bus and left that town for good. Although last time the man got out of prison, he went to Melbourne, so I plan on being on high alert for the rest of my stay or until he is back in prison.
So that was the weekend! It was a ton of fun, but extremely exhausting, so I’m sorry if this post is short or doesn’t sound very exciting. I promise it was.