WACA Warriors + Freo

On Wednesday a few of us went to the WACA stadium to see our first cricket game. Of course, the day turned out to be about 37°C…or a bit over 100° F. Luckily the buses and the train to get there were all air-conditioned! When we finally got to the stadium it was pretty empty so we could sit anywhere. The game was too confusing and to really hold our attention- the Retravision Warriors wore the yellow uniforms, but the crowd seemed to cheer for both teams- that’s how confusing the rules were!

Warriors up at bat.

The scoreboard looked pretty cool but we had no idea how to interpret it. Despite all the confusion it was fun just hanging out, meeting new people and chatting during the game. Later that night we decided to check out the Newport club in Freo for a bit for student night- we didn’t stay for too long but it was really fun and crowded.

The confusing scoreboard- each player appears to have a score and their names

would occasionally light up.

WACA Stadium

Thursday was my second class: Country, Nature, and Identity: Indigenous Sustainability. It was really interesting and the professor was awesome! Looking forward to the semester. It was a small class so there’ll be a lot of discussion and it was nice to be mixed with Aussies. A bunch of my friends from the U.S. are in it with me, so that’ll be fun. There’s such a large international population here that I don’t think you could find a class without a few people studying abroad or from a different country. I decided to switch into the Nature-Based Tourism class on Monday, freeing up my Fridays. There are two field trips during the semester to Penguin Island and Yanchep National Park- very excited for that.

Probably my favorite part of being here so far is going into Fremantle- it’s just a bus ride away and there are tons of fun things to do. There are a lot of different restaurants and bars, shops, a park, a beach, and an amazing marketplace. On weekend nights it’s crowded with people and there are live bands playing in some restaurants, and the overall vibe of area is just amazing. The marketplace is open every Friday to Sunday with a ton of vendors inside this huge building. They have everything imaginable, like clothes, jewelry, didgeridoos and paintings. There’s a section for produce and food, which was fresh and cheap on Sunday so I’ll definitely be back there a lot! Over the weekend there are also a lot of street performers and musicians livening up Freo. They shorten every word in Australia- for example, Fremantle is Freo, Rottnest Island is Rotto, the Salvation Army is Salvo’s (even on the sign), etc. One act we saw last week was the “badpiper”- a guy in a leather-studded kilt playing Queen’s “We will rock you.” There was also a sword-swallowing pirate, and there are always a few didgeridoo players around.

Some stalls in Fremantle Market

Fremantle Harbor

Koalas, Kangaroos, and Wallabies- Caversham Wildlife Park

Today we visited the Caversham Wildlife Park. We took about an hour bus ride there and split into 3 groups, each with a zoo tour guide. First up were the koalas. They were so cute! We were lucky to spot a few with their eyes open and one moving around because they spend the majority of their day sleeping. We were able to gently pet their backs and they were so soft! Also, the keepers rotate them and give them time alone so they don’t have to interact with visitors too much, which is good.

Petting a soft, sleeping koala.

Next we went to the Kangaroo enclosure, the part I was most excited for. There was a bucket of feed for the kangaroos, but they were so tame that you could pretty much just walk right up to them and pet them. They were really soft too, and really lazy in the heat and sun. A lot of them had joeys sticking out of their pouch- it was weird when all you could see were long legs sticking out of the mom’s stomach!

Me with a small white kangaroo.

I loved this one- she was one of the bigger ones in the enclosure.

A mum with a big joey. If you look closely at the baby's toes you can see that they have two small side ones, and one large middle toe. Very strange looking!

The zookeeper told us that many of the kangaroos that interact with the visitors are either juveniles or females because adult males can get up to seven feet tall. Here she is with her orphaned joey, Daniel. She takes him home every night to give him milk and he sleeps in a pillowcase.

Here’s the groups with Big Bubs, a female wallaby. I did not think this is what they looked like- they are adorable! They look like a giant stuffed animal/pillow. Jesse (the keeper) told us they can run up to 40 km/hr…which is about 25 mph. I don’t know HOW that is possible…maybe they can roll that fast? J

That’s another thing that’s hard to get used to here- the conversions. Everyone always tells us the temperature in Celsius and the road signs are all in kilometers, etc.

After our tour of the park we went out and had yet another sausage sizzle, complete with veggie sausages like always. Soda is pretty different here too…I got a Kirk’s “Creaming Soda” expecting it to be cream soda, and opened it up to find fluorescent pink, gross candy flavored soda. Kirk’s also has Passion Fruit flavor, which tastes like cough syrup. The lemon squash kind isn’t so bad. "Lemon Squash" is like lemonade while "Lemonade" labeled soda is more like sprite here. There are always tons of varieties of lemonade at the sausage sizzles.

Slang:

Arvo- afternoon (“good arvo”)

Footy- Aussie Rules football

Thongs- flipflops

Sun Cream- sunscreen