The past two weeks have been really great. I'm all settled down to university life again. The courses I'm taking are: Social Psychology of Risk in Outdoor Recreation, Conservation Biology, Advanced Principles of Ecotourism, and Outdoor Recreation and Adventure Tourism. I am particularly enjoying the Social Psych course, and I feel like if I do my masters in anything, it will be in the psychology of risk in outdoor recreation. I've toyed with the idea a lot, but we'll see where life takes us. My schedule worked out so that I have Thursdays and Fridays off, which means I'll have some time to go on some wicked adventures (and do my homework of course Mom)!
I finally got out on some rock in Australia at a small craig called Felltimber. The craig has some short sport routes and a bunch of really cool boulder problems. Its similar to the Centennial Bluffs back in Tbay. There's heaps more climbing in and around the area and I'm going to be climbing tons more. One of the guys I met and I are planning on either going to the Grampians or Mt Arapiles next week from Wednesday night to Sunday. Hoping for the best!
The last two days, I've been at Mt Buffalo helping to lead an adventure day for the first year Adventure Ecotourism students. A group of us went up on Thursday to set up and do some recon of the areas which we'd be working with. The first year students came up on Friday morning, and we went abseiling of a 50 meter cliff called "Dragon's Foot", took a nice squeeze through an underwater cave, and then went whitewater rafting down the Ovens river.
The cave was one of the coolest parts of the adventure for me. Because of all the flooding thats been going on here, the cave was pumping with water. There was a really strong current pushing through, and there were 4 waterfalls that we had to climb. At one section, you had to slide down on your back on a slippery section of rock where the space was just big enough to fit your helmet through, while holding on to a rock with your hands above your head. Then, you had to go shoulder deep in the water so your helmet would fit through a flaring crack that entered a tunnel which very slowly over ten meters opened up to another room where we could climb out over another waterfall.
I posted more pictures which you can find on Facebook. I think I'm going to start a new album that just includes select photos, because its getting to be pretty excessive.
Hope all is well back home!
Off to do some assignments so I can keep going on sweet weekend adventures:)
Cheers,
Matty
