Back to reality!!!

Back to the reality of work!! The jetlag on Friday was bad for me, I felt totally discombobulated!! I think part of my body stayed over the Pacific for a couple of days.
The weather here is cold, windy and rainy but I know spring is just around the corner.

The Inbound Team should be in our District today, so hopefully they will have as great a time here as we did down under.

All just memories now...

Hello All!
We arrived back at the Seattle Airport a little after 2 pm on Wednesday...nearly 24 hours of travel (even though we left Melbourne Wednesday morning!). See...we even got to expereince "time travel" on this trip!

As I hope you've seen from the blog, the expereince was incredible. To spend 35 days of doing 4-8 new & exciting things every day, meeting new people and learning something from everyone, is an adventure I truly wish everyone could have. So, for those of you who are NOT involved with the Rotary Club, or not family members of anyone who is, and are between 25 and 40 years old, I encourage you to research your local Rotary Clubs & District to see if you can apply for a Group Study Exchange trip. Rotary International has other great travel programs as well, including Youth Exchange for kids in high school, and Friendship Exchanges (I think for older adults, but I don't know the specifics). This is in addition to the community and international service projects they organize and make happen. The amount of goodwill we encountered from Rotarians along the way was impressive.

I haven't downloaded pictures yet from the last stop on our trip, Ballarat. For folks who may not be seeing any of us for a while, I will still try to do that in the next few days and upload some with captions. While in Ballarat, we:

• Attended a welcome reception for Rotarians at City Hall.
• Went to the sound & light show "Blood on the Southern Cross", depicting an uprising of miners in Ballarat in the 1850s. It was a very unique depiction of the story, with recorded voices and narration simultaneous with the selective lighting of historical buildings and miner's tents at Sovereign Hill (more to come about that on Tuesday).
• Explored the city including the art museum, historic buildings, and shopping,
• Enjoyed a leisurely BBQ lunch at a host's home, since it was still raining (!)
• Toured the Botanic Gardens, including viewing their sculptures & begonia display.
• Attended the Rotary 9780 District Conference Dinner; Dave, Ben, & Koshare went out dancing afterwards with outgoing GSE team members Shana & Jane.
• Gave our presentation at the District Conference Sunday morning.
• Went to the "Trash & Trivia" market, a Rotary Fundraiser of the South Ballarat Club.
• Lunched at the District Conference, with the opportunity to re-connect with "families" from along the trip & say good-byes.
• Went to the Ballarat "Wild Animal Park", where we saw and, in some cases - touched, local animals such as kangaroos, emus, koalas, tasmanian devils, crocodiles, snakes, and more. There is a HILARIOUS story that goes along with this about Dave finding the pouch on the kangaroo...but words on paper won't do the story justice!
• Monday was our last vocational day. We went to the Mt. Cole State Forest with 2 professors from the local Forestry School at Creswick and discussed native ecosystems, native forest management, and forest roads. It was still drizzly, so the short hike did not have a view from the top, but felt more like home to us.
• In the afternoon we went to the Creswick School of Forestry and toured their facilities, and talked with one of the coordinators of the program.
• Monday evening was our last presentation to a Rotary Club - the Wendouree Club, and guests.
• Tuesday we spent the day at Sovereign Hill, a re-creation of the historical mining town that became Ballarat. The "town" includes schools, bakeries, blacksmiths, candle-making, wheelwrights, etc. We got our picture taken together in old-time clothes, went on mine tours, watched wheel-making demonstration, saw gold-pouring, watched school kids in their 1850s environment, went bowling, watched candle-making, had a drink at the pub, saw a special tug-of-war between the Catholics & the Protestants in honor of St. Patrick's Day, and did some gold panning (Jill was the only one who had the technique down and found a few flakes).
• The end of the trip was a BBQ at Kim's hosts' home, with our host families joining us. We all had a good time - good food, good drinks, and fun conversations!

Thanks so much to all the families who hosted us and drove us around during the trip, to the people who coordinated the schedules, and especially to Rotary International for providing the funds for such an incredible program. The personal and professional growth has been tremendous for all of us, and I believe we have created some contacts (and learned some phrases!) which I reckon will remain throughout our lives!

Where we have been hosted

View Larger Map

It's raining!

Ballarat, Saturday, 9:30 am...it's been raining for nearly half an hour!

Pictures from Horsham

As Ben mentioned, we left Horsham yesterday & are now in Ballarat, on the last leg of our journey. I think we each had some moments of being tired last week, but the energy level seems revived now. We were taken on a 4-wheel drive tour by "Lockie", which included a nice hike to the top of the cliffs (Dave has the best picutre from the top of there, hopefully he'll be able to post it), had a lunch cooked on an open fire (very carefully watched and put out!), and drove around in the sand on a dry lakebed. We had a presentation on the pipeline being constructed to deliver water to areas north of Horsham, and the environmental mitigation they do.

short on time now, but here are some photos.
sampling wine...

Lockie making "bush tea"...you have to swing it around!

near the top...Ben & Dave

Dave & Ben pretending to waterski in the bottom of Green Lake, which I mentioned when we first got into Horsham.

Our team at the top of Mt. Williams. It was our first hike the day we transferred from Hamilton to Horsham. from left: Koshare, Jill, Kim, Ben, Dave.

Ballarat tomorrow

I just wanted to let you all know that we're moving to our last host location tomorrow.

Goodnight y'all.

now in Horsham

We arrived in Horsham this evening, after getting an early start from Hamilton this morning so we could fit in an extra hike. Our first stop in Horsham gave a glimpse of what the next few days will be like: the lake where the locals used to recreate (swimming, boating, water-skiing) is COMPLETELY drydand has been for several years. There are weeds throughout the lakebed, and a dozer firebreak has been cleared where several meters of water once stood. It is quite scary, and made all of us feel that even though we live where the water feels plentiful, as individuals and as a society we need to be much better at conserving and managing water use.
Earlier in the day we hiked to the top of Mt. Williams in the Grampiens (not Gambier, thanks Naomi, I was tired...!) Mountain Range, and experienced the first big scenic vistas of the trip...we could see for many miles (ok, kilometers) in every direction. On our journey between Hamilton and Horsham we made stopped several times to hike to scenic overlooks...it was great to get in quite a bit of exercise.
For me, the vocational highlights from Hamilton were the Arborline nursery, where around 50-100 different tree species are grown for outplanting in both commercial forests and restoration projects, and an afternoon with Ron "Yonda" Elliot, a one-man red gum sawmilling operation. He was quite a character! We also had an informative morning with the local Catchement Management Authority (CMA), and went to several alternative farming sites as well as an ITC blue gum plantation and a joint venture restoration project they did with Greening Australia. Once again, we saw wetlands that were no longer wet. An interesting note from the restoration project was that they actually seeded the tree species in 2002...and now they are 6-10 meters high. They did some overplanting as well, but the vast majority of the site had been machine-sown directly onto the site.

a few from Hamilton...

Our final picnic along the Glenelg River with the Hamilton Rotary club...a peaceful end to a fun day. I will post pics of Yonda Elliot, the redgum one-man-milling-operation, later.


The red gum trees are more than gorgeous...they are enchanting, intricate, unique, splendid, elegant, statuesque, magnificient...each one individually.

(I might not have gone on so much, but Dave gave me grief about using the same word over & over again, so I tried to come up with a few more.)

It is quite scary how low the reservoir levels are. This one is just under 4% of full capacity.

Jill enjoying the eucalypt scent at the Arborline nursery....

here is one picture of a trick from the band Dave raved about in the last post - unfortunately several of the others I thought would be great are actually blurry. They were incredibly talented kids!

later, mates!

Yesterday I had the finest cultural experience yet! That is partially what this trip is about. Our hosts figured that we should be experience the Port Fairy Folk Festival. And yes it was here that the hippies were out in droves and as we say came out of the wood work. I was particullarly impressed by this 1972 VW Van with the Roo Bar and lights. I guess if you are to travel this country as a Nomad the bar becomes a nesscessity. Additionally the van had the manditory dashboard filled with shells and spiritual pieces of wood and of course the tie dyed curtains and bongo drums.

The crowd was sizable and we saw only a prtion of the event. We saw only the 'Fringe'. There is a primary Festival Grounds where another 5 stages and over 10 000 more paying folkies spent there weekend. The smell of 'Nag Champa' incense was in the air and the venders were out in force with the usual assortment of stuff. Venders are known as Spella's here (I.E giving you the speel on there goods and wares)

We (Koshare and I) had no idea who any of the band were so our plan was to 'giver' in the classic sence and see as much as we could. There was a good selection of musicains and much talent. Our favourites were AlMack'nJack. Three teens who made us laugh with their stage act and talent. They switched instruments constantly and never ended up playing the same one by the end of the song. The music went from rock to folk to rap and spoken work. There was even the techno dance beats throw to keep lively. they were so good i bought the shirt and had it signed. All in all a fantastic day in the sun - great food, good people, beautiful setting and enjoyable music. maybe Koshare can add a pcture of the shoulder stand stunts of the band. Rock on. till later - Dave

a few pics from Mt. Gambier

Here are a few pics from our stay in Mt. Gambier. Tonight we are headed to a picnic in the park in Hamilton, and we are going to attempt to play cricket! Had a great day today...I think 7 stops total on our tour today...!
The GSE team playing dress-up with the kids at our last BBQ in Mt. Gambier!
from left: Koshare, Jill, Kim, Ben, & Dave.

Jill had the chance to practice her trampolining skills, and said the next morning she felt more limber than she has in two weeks!

Regardless of the hemisphere we're from, all foresters love to look at maps & landscapes. This is from Mt. Burr, which we kept accidentally referring to as "Burr hill", much to the dismay of the locals!

The amazing "crusher-roller" that they use for site preparation - it crushes the slash & rolls it into the ground

Looking at a TimberCorp blue gum plantation with Shana, who is a member of the Aussie GSE team headed to our district on March 23rd.

Cheers, mates!

Eat-and-run GSE

As you may have gathered, we've been here, there, and everywhere. We pulled into Hamilton today after some very busy (as Jill in part describes below) days in Mt Gambier. I would like to stand up and say that many places we've been and people we've met I would love to spend an entire day exploring or an afternoon chatting with. That goes for the entire trip. Thank you for having us and excusing my eat-and-run, surface-scratching modus operandi.

Goodnight.


The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Frost, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Vocational Days in South Australia

G'day from the state of South Australia!

We made it to the city of Mount Gambier on Sunday night (March 1st) and have been so busy touring the local forest operations that this is the first time we've had a chance to post! Mt. Gambier is a hub for forest activity in this region. We are in the heart of what's known as "The Green Triangle"- a vast expanse of radiata pine and blue gum (eucalypt) plantations. Here is a list of what we have seen and done since Sunday:

Monday

• Employees of Forestry South Australia delivered presentations to us on the topics of Yield Regulation, Management Systems, Forest Health, and Fire Management in this region;
• A representative of Southern Cross University spoke to us about forest education at Australian universities;
• Tour the operations of seedEnergy's Seed Production facility (included a tour of their seed orchard);
• View a Tree Breeding site and become educated by a representative of the Seed & Tree Breeding Association;
• View the landscape of plantations from Mount Burr (which is not really a mountain by our definition, but somewhat of a hill compared to the rest of the landscape here) and discuss operational mapping;
• Visit a native forest site (similar to what we refer to as old growth) and discuss native forest management as well as water management with a representative from the South Australia Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation; then
  
• Deliver our presentation about BC/Washington Forestry at a dinner of 4 Rotary Clubs.

Tuesday

• Three members of the upcoming inbound Australian GSE team (who are also foresters) took us out to show us their field work of operational forestry;
• Visit a cultivation site where a blue gum plantation was about to be established;
• Visit a site to view active blue gum harvesting and in-field chipping;
• Visit a blue gum site that had just been harvested in December. Blue gum coppices at the stump and the new saplings were already 1m tall! (How's that for regen!);
• Visit a 5 year old blue gum plantation of Timbercorp's and discuss thinning and mid-rotation fertilization as well as forest health management. This plantation was being attacked by the cadmus beetle and would need to be aerially sprayed with insecticide soon;
• View active harvesting of radiata pine as well as the work of a "chopper roller" machine for site preparation- pretty neat!
  
• Winds up to 90 km/hr shut down harvest operations mid-day and blew the power out of the nearby town of Dartmoor. Everything shut down- even the schools- because of the wind and its associated fire risk;
• RAIN is delivered to this landscape! It hadn't rained here since December- we told them we brought it with us!
• As the rain clears up and sun comes, several kangaroo emerge from the woods and jump around as we head back to Mt. Gambier at the end of the day; then
  
• Deliver a presentation about BC/Washington forestry at a dinner meeting of the Institute of Foresters of Australia. Entertain several questions from a group of approximately 40 people.
  

Forestry here is SO different than coastal forestry where we come from. We look forward to sharing information with everyone about the details of these differences. We also look forward to showing the Australian GSE team of foresters what forestry in district 5020 is all about!

That's all for now. Tomorrow we transfer to Hamilton via Casterton.

We'll keep you "posted",
Jill