WEEDS!!!!!

In New Zealand..I was known to many as the bird lady. In Australia...I will become known to many as the weed lady. After completing my first two days of work, I am already so tired of weeds. Yesterday, we arrived at the wetlands to spend the morning with ice picks...hovering over prickly sharp weeds that were going into my pants and my skin...digging into the soft, wet earth, tearing out these poor plants from the roots. This tedious job lasted for about an hour and a half. After a wonderful morning tea (it was special because it was someones birthday so we got fresh fruit and cake), it began to rain so we spent the afternoon in a large shed taking apart large native plants, and putting them into little planters and filling them with soil. This job was more my speed and I got pretty into it. We probably made 300 baby plants to help regenerate this dying native species.

Today, we went to the forest. The ground was covered in tall grasses and there were small, thin trees sporatically located throughout the vast land. While we were on the off-road track to get to our weeding spot, we saw two kangaroos hopping off in the distance. It was very cool to see my first kangaroos! When we stopped, I knew we were going to spend only a short time at the woodsy location because we could see the mosquitos buzzing around from inside the car. I loaded up on a half a bottle of bugspray and braved the tick and mosquito infested woods. We worked for an hour and a half total before Jesse, our team leader, told us we would head back in order to watch the Melbourne Cup (the annual horse race that makes the entire country stop for five minutes). The weeding today was not as tedious as the day before, but still was not very fun. We had to cut beautiful vines that were growing on trees, and poision them...something I was not very fond of. We ended up standing around for most of the morning...although we had some laughs because some of the non-residential volunteers are hilarious..they are more or less the Aussie version of the three stuges! After, Jesse took us to the Blackbutt Reserve to see birds, koalas, and kangaroos. This was the highlight of my day and I got to take some great pictures.

Over the weekend, I got to know Newcastle a little bit better. It is a pretty small and boring city, but has some great beaches. On Saturday, all of the volunteers went to the beach for the day. At night, we went to a free outdoor movie, The Blindside, and then out to a bar which closed at midnight. On Sunday, Tom (the other new guy) and I walked for a few hours to explore the city.

Sorry that I couldn't make this more interesting/entertaining perusual! I am running out of internet time (stupid library)! I will try to write again over the weekend!

More weeding adventures to come!