There are plenty of different sport clubs in our university. I joined the mountaineering club which seemed to be a good decision. In addition to normal outdoor/indoor climbing the mountaineering club also arranges kayak, alpine and mountain bike trips. I also heard about canyoning which combines bushwalking, abseiling and many other outdoor activities. There's also a scuba diving club Newcastle University Dive and Exploration Society(N.U.D.E.S.). I probably join that too, because it's only 80aud for a year and I'm keen to get under the surface. The best thing is that you can lend the scuba diving gear freely and only pay for filling the scuba tank, cheap.
I had my first trip with mountaineering club on saturday. We went to Watagans national park to have some training in abseiling and rock climbing. Abseiling means that you come down from a cliff with the help of a rope and a suitable device to give you some friction.
Watagans was a beautiful place and it was actually my first time to see some real Australian nature. Lots of eucalyptus trees blackened by bushfires, leeches and even a wallabi which I unfortunately missed. We had two nice spots to practise the abseiling. The first was probably around 7meters high and the second one was around 20meters. The view from higher cliff was amazing. The valley was covered in blue 'fog' which is probably caused by vaporizing oil from eucalyptus trees. That's why there's also place called blue mountains west from Sydney. Matti has some nice pictures at his picture gallery.
I had no bigger problems with abseiling, gravity did the most job. We tried climbing after abseiling...All I can say is that I need to spend few weeks climbing indoors before taking another try at Watagans.
I just won a bidding in ebay and bought 2nd hand 8.6foot/2.6m surfboard for 285aud. Let the surf begin!
(I probably need to buy a car to move the board around...)
4 comments:
wow~~ this one sounds sooo cool. I never tried before. Come on!
btw, lucky you brought a good surf board :)
yea the board is great. I went to surfing yesterday and I'm going also now. I'll write more about it later. Enjoy the winter ;)
Sweet deal on the surf board, I might go that route to. I live so close to the Great Ocean Road, and Ill likely go there for a week in which case it makes economical sense to jut buy the board because that wont be the last time I use it.
Yes, I did enjoy the winter. This weekend I'll go to Sappe with branch of friends and colleagues. Actually I really miss the hot days. It's still cold here, and snowing sometimes.Well it's good for ski after snow.
I feel like after experienced -25 walking outside, I won't say -5 is cold anymore :)
Have fun!
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