And then I stepped on a snake...

"Australians...spend half of the conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's OK now because he's off the life-support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks."

-In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

Ross on South Jawbone

Last weekend Ross was visiting and I had an extra day off so we went camping in the Cathedral Ranges State Park which is located about 100 km (~60 miles) northeast of Melbourne.  It is a small but gorgeous range with some decent hiking trails and a bunch of wildlife.  We borrowed the work truck from my office and a tent from one of my coworkers and camped in the Cooks Mill campground.

We arrived mid-afternoon on Friday after getting a slow start getting out of Melbourne.  We set up the tent and went for a short hike along the Little River track as it was looking like it was going to rain.  We ended up seeing some kangaroos and a swamp wallaby, plus there were kookaburras all over the place.  The clouds ended up clearing as we were making dinner so we had a great view of the stars and Milky Way.

Swamp Wallaby

Kookaburra

On Saturday we hiked up to both North and South Jawbone from the Cooks Mill Campground.  It is really getting into spring here so there were tons of wildflowers.  Or at least that is the excuse I'm going to use for not seeing a snake on the trail in front of me.  I had stopped to take some pictures of flowers and then started forward again at which point I noticed some motion out of the corner of my eye.  I looked down and was very surprised to see a snake writhing under my foot.  I jumped backwards and the snake slithered off into the bush.  

Cunningham's Skink

Kangaroo Thorn with burnt out tree

Why it didn't bite me is beyond me but after speaking with my coworkers (who were all blown away that I'd stepped on a snake, hence the Bryson quote above), I think that I must have caught it early enough in the morning that it was still pretty lethargic, plus it had been pretty cold the night before which would have added to the slow-snake factor...  Between Ross, my coworkers and I, we came up with a couple options as to the most likely type of snake that it was.  Ross said that it looked most like a Death Adder but  their range doesn't include Victoria (where we were), so that's probably out.  My coworkers said that it sounded like a Tiger Snake but the pictures we found online didn't look quite right.  The final option that we came up with was a juvenile Common Brown Snake.  It was a very quick encounter though, so I'm really not sure.  That being said, all of those snakes have extremely potent venom and, if not treated promptly with anti-venom, can be fatal.  I also learned on Monday (two days after this encounter) at a first aid class that I was attending for work, that in Australia you should apply a pressure immobilization bandage for snake bites, which is not something either Ross or I had ever heard of before.  All in all, I was extremely lucky and will be updating my hiking first aid kit accordingly.

Me on South Jawbone

View from North Jawbone

The rest of the hike (post-snake) was gorgeous and uneventful.  Ross lead on the trail for a while until my heart rate returned to the normal range but we didn't see any other snakes.  We ran into a group of Scouts (in Oz, they are both boys and girls) who were learning to rock climb and had lunch in the sun on top of North Jawbone.  After finishing up the hike we decided to swing by the Yarra Valley Dairy on our way back to Melbourne.  We were both a little sad to find out that it didn't have ice cream (I thought that all dairy's had ice cream...) but we did get a large container of soft cheese, which we proceeded to devour.

On Sunday I did a 10k that was part of the Melbourne Marathon Festival.  We had perfect weather and I even managed to run a PB (personal best).  Clearly it was all of the adrenalin still coursing through my veins from the snake encounter 😉 Ross is next visiting in mid-November and I'm going to really try to get us down to Wilson's Prom for some camping and hiking.  I've been saying that I needed to go there since moving to Melbourne and somehow haven't made it yet.

Mornington Peninsula and Royal Melbourne Show

This weekend was the AFL (Australian Football) Grand Final which meant that I had a three-day weekend.  For reasons that I don't entirely understand, Melbourne (and only Melbourne) gets the Friday before the Grand Final off as a public holiday.  Someone in my office told me that it was an effort to get more people to attend the parade in the CBD (aka downtown) but I'm not entirely sure.  I'm really not going to question why I had a three-day weekend, I'm just going to enjoy it.

One day I went down to the Mornington Peninsula and hiked in the Mornington Peninsula National Park.  The peninsula is about an hour and a half south of Melbourne and is gorgeous.  It almost reminded me of driving around Northern California with the rolling hills and vineyards.  You pass through a number of small, quiet beach towns that I'm sure are crazy during the summer with everyone trying to get out of Melbourne and to a decent beach.  But given that it's still early spring here and that it was cool and rainy this weekend, the Mornington Peninsula wasn't too crowded.

The southern coastline is surprisingly rugged which is quite the change from the Port Philip Bay side of the peninsula which is composed mostly of calm, white beaches.  I started off by the Cape Schanck lighthouse and then wandered west along the coast into the Mornington Peninsula National Park.  As I said, the weather was not amazing so there were not a lot of people around, which was really nice.  It was great to get away from all of the concrete and hustle and bustle of a big city for a while too.  Plus, since it is spring, everything is starting to bloom which was really nice since it has been rather grey and dreary in Melbourne since I moved down at the end of July.

Cape Schanck Lighthouse

Australian Tea Tree

Pink Fairies 

Before I headed back to Melbourne I decided to check out a note that I saw on my park map that said "Kangaroo Viewing Area."  I almost missed the turnoff as it was just a small dirt road and you couldn't actually see the National Park sign until you had almost driven by it.  I was hoping to see one or two kangaroos but there were probably close to 50 just hanging out by the carpark, grazing.  Most were pretty far off from the path that was mowed through the grass but there were some that were grazing right on the path.  Needless to say, I sat on the grass in the wind and light rain and watched them until they all hopped off.  Even if I spend the rest of my life in Australia, I do not think that I will ever cease to be amazed by kangaroos; they are just so cool!

Mom and Joey

So many kangaroos...

Kangaroos sparring

I also went to the Royal Melbourne Show.  For those of you that are from or have lived in the Midwest, it was comparable to the Minnesota State Fair but smaller.  It had all of the standard livestock, deep fried food, rides, and arts and crafts of State Fairs back in the states.  Honestly, it made me miss Minnesota a bit.  But just a bit. ;) One thing that I really liked was the yarn barn (see below).  I was also a big fan of the working dog demonstrations and the wood chopping competitions. All in all, it was an expensive (as all fairs are) day but was highly enjoyable.

Crocheted cow

I'm off to Brisbane for field work again this week - this will be 3 out of the last 4 weeks up there but Ross will be in Melbourne the following week.  It will be really nice to see him and it's getting warm enough that we might go camping (probably at Wilson's Prom) but we'll see what the weather brings.