Last Days of Vacation

I’m writing this after a few days, and I’m going to try and remember as much as possible but I may forget some things.

My checkout time at the hostel was 10, but my train didn’t depart Alice Springs until 3, so I had the whole morning to wander around. I left my backpack at the hostel and went into town, where I passed by a sign I hadn’t seen before for something called the Baby Kangaroo Rescue Centre. Well, I couldn’t pass this up, so I walked in. The centre rescues joeys whose mothers have been killed, often by cars. Because they would spend most of their time in the pouch, the centre has volunteers who carry the joeys around in pillowcases close to their bodies so they feel the warmth and breathing. And if you walk in, you can be one of the volunteers! I got there around feeding time, so I saw the joeys be hand fed and then go for a hop around. They were SO CUTE and little!

When they wanted to go back into their pillowcases, which was after only about five minutes, they scratched at your leg and you held the pillowcase down, wherein they dove in headfirst and did a sort of somersault to get comfortable. I was given Nikki to hold, and she was so adorable, but she napped the whole time and had little kangaroo dreams wherein she kind of kicked me in the boob. But I forgave her because of her cuteness, and also I felt kind of bad about eating her elders. I had a picture taken of me with her, but she was so sleepy that just her ears were sticking out. I may as well have been holding a giant rabbit. Here is the picture of me holding a bag of giant ears, and please excuse the incredible squintiness and general frightening-ness of my face. I have no idea why I looked this terrible.

Reluctantly I left the rescue centre to get some lunch, and then it was off to the train station.

I was sitting in the cheapest car, where you only get a seat to yourself, but the seats were really big and I was lucky enough to get a window seat. There was a bit of confusion where someone was sitting in my seat when I got there, but luckily we got that sorted out without any problems. The seats were bigger than airplane seats and much more comfortable. We pulled out of the station and within half an hour we had peeled away from the road and there were no signs of civilisation for miles around, just desert scenery stretching far in every direction, with flocks of galahs occasionally rising from the scrub and cattle scattered on the plains. I took pictures every once in a while to show the changes, but you really had to be there to see it.

After being on the train for three hours I ventured off through the lounge to the dining car to get some dinner. By this time the sun was setting over the desert, and the train would flush kangaroos that would go bounding across the scene. It was incredible to see. After dinner, I went back to my seat to read and fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to see a huge, red moon just coming up over the horizon.

I got up around 8 in the morning to find that we were passing through Port Augusta, close to the water and somehow passed from desert to farm country. I got breakfast and passed the time reading and watching the scenery pass by until we arrived in Adelaide at 12:30, ahead of schedule!

I was very happy to be back, and as I was waiting for the bus in the city I ran into a friend of mine. We decided to go out and have dinner in Glenelg since it was such a nice day (after I showered and did a wash, of course). So to cap off a wonderful trip, I went out to dinner with a friend and then we sat on the beach in the late afternoon, occasionally wading into the water which I was happy to find out was warm, so I plan on spending my weekend there. We watched the sun set, where I saw the green flash for the first time EVER and which induced much arm-flailing, and then we got ice cream and headed back to Flinders.

It was so wonderful to have my own bed in my own room with wonderful clean sheets and not having to wake up until 7:45 the next morning. I had the best night’s sleep I’ve had in ages.

And this morning was good too, because my hot teaching assistant who I have a minor crush on gave a great lecture in my Fiction for Young Readers class on fantasy and speculative fiction, which I love. I also got my first assignment back, 25% of my grade, and I got a D (for Distinction), which I am assured is difficult to achieve and is about equivalent to a low A, although that’s kind of nebulous. So hurrah!

Now that I am not travelling this won’t update as regularly, but if anything exciting happens in my life I will be sure to write about it. I plan on getting my official open water certification this month (finally) and I’m going to Kangaroo Island on 26^th October, so you can look forward to that!