I went camping recently in the Grampians National Park. The park is roughly a 3.5 hour drive from Melbourne and is located in a hilly part of Victoria. We got in pretty late on a Friday night. My tent mate and I decided that because the weather was so nice and we wanted the nice summer air floating through that we wouldn’t put the fly on the tent. Unfortunately, the weather knew our plan and started raining in the early morning — we raced to put on the fly and cover our stuff. My bag wasn’t completely covered however and most of my clothes would be wet for the rest of the trip. A mistake I really should have avoided, oh well.

The camping trip was with the mountaineering club through uni, and the activites for the weekend were bushwalking (read: hiking) and mountain climbing.  The views were amazing. The bushwalking was fantastic because I ended up going with a small group who wanted to go on a difficult, long path and keep a quick pace while doing it. I think our walk was just under 20km for the day.

We proceeded to go climbing on the Sunday. Rock Climbing is an interesting activity for me.. I enjoy the challenge, but am not very good at it. Rock climbing is something of a skilled art in balance — not brute force as I consistently try to do.

Overall, it was really nice to get outside again, it’s something I haven’t done enough of. I hope that when I return home again I remember to make time for the wilderness.

The Moomba Festival is a huge festival kind-of carnival in Melbourne every year. It’s dubbed a “Water Festival”, and surrounds the Yarra River which runs through the middle of the city. Melbourne has been in a drought for 12 years (though it’s rained the past few days…), and they take their water conservation quite seriously. Most of the would-be grass is dead and not allowed water. The festival had plenty of stands for education on water usage and water paths. Water is something I can take relatively for granted at home, it’s amazing how different that is here.

The festival was a good time, there were guys wake boarding from riding a winch, and all sorts of rides. The highlight for me however was the “Birdman Rally” — a fundraising event where the participants attempt to make a flying contraption and test it off of a platform in the middle of the river. Often times this contraption involved little more than a cape, and was very entertaining. We saw fireworks one night too, they were pretty awesome because they were shot off from the middle of the river.