A trip to Tenterfield

For my Australian Life and Culture class we got to spend the last three days in Tenterfield while the rest of our classes got cancelled. On this trip we got to experience a little bit of the outback and the real Aussie way of life! It was a blast and we all learned a lot from each experience.

Day one: Monday!
We boarded the bus in Lennox Head at 8am and started the trip with a three and a half hour bus ride. On the way we enjoyed Aussie music and movies. Some people slept...we did have to wake up quite early! Around 11:30am we arrived at the Golfer's Inn Motel in Tenterfield where lunch was awaiting us. The girls were taken to one part of the camp and the boys to another and divided into rooms/cabins. We soon found out that the girls got the better end of the stick! Our rooms were amazing...here are some pictures


My bedroom for three days :)



Our living room

The bathroom...my favorite part! The shower was amazing!!!!!

Kitchen...even though we didn't use it

After getting all settled in to our place we departed for Bald Rock! On the way we stopped off at Thunderbolts Cave and a few Tank Traps as well.



The Group in Thunderbolts Hideout!

Hiking up Bald Rock was beautiful and along the way we stopped to look at wildlife including a wallaby! It was a nice moderate hike.

The first wild Kangaroo we saw on the trip :)

Our path up to Bald Rock

It is amazing how big our world really is

Bald Rock!

If only I was a little stronger...haha

Resting after our walk down the mountain!

Next up was a visit to Deetswood Winery! Ball State actually paid for us to drink on a school field trip...pretty awesome!

In the evening we had a delicious dinner at the motel/camping area followed by a BSU concert. A few people put together a talent show for some entertainment! We had singers, jugglers, stompers, comedians, and dancers.

Afterwords we all went to bed...exhausted

Day Two: Tuesday!
Waking up at 6:15 was hard! Breakfast at 6:30 and then we were off for another plan packed day. First on the list of things to do was a trip to Inverell to do some sapphire fossicking at Billabong Blue! It was a hard and time consuming job but it was also very rewarding. I found a few small sapphires and a few other gems...it was neat to find these gems on my own from the digging to the sifting to the picking them out!

Step one in finding Sapphires!

Step two...cleaning the rocks and gems

Step three...picking the gems out from the rocks

Me with the gems I found!!!

When we were all finished fossicking we boarded the bus again and headed off to have lunch and explore an old Australian pioneer village. There were 25 historic cottages and buildings from Australia's past to look at and they were all filled with authentic and historical items. Jess and I even won 5 dollars each for finding our professors name (Lockery) in one of the buildings!

Old Australian Pioneer School House

Pioneer bathroom

I found a phone!

I was worn out!...naps on the bus are a lot better than getting bus sick!

The day was long and tiring but we had about an hour to relax once we got back to the motel. After that we headed off to a Golf Club where we had a delicious dinner! Fish for me...with a brownie and ice cream for desert!

Our group at dinner

Day Three: Wednesday!
Again we woke up around 6:15 this morning to have breakfast and head out by 7:45. First on our day plan was to go on a historical tour of Tenterfield with a guide. There was so much history to learn about that it took us all day...and we got to meet the Mayor of Tenterfield! Finally we were headed back to Lennox Head...our home away from home...after an exhausting three day field trip.

Tenterfield school of the arts museum

Tenterfield Mayor

Railway museum in Tenterfield 

Each state had a different sized railway

I slept the whole way home!

I've learned that everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it!

Let me just tell everyone that climbing a mountain rated "strenuous hiking" is exhausting...but amazingly rewarding! We got on a bus late last night and drove to a camping ground near Mt. Warning. We arrived and piled into cabins where we slept for a total of four hours. In order to see the sunrise while hiking the mountain we had to wake up at 3:30am to start our journey. The crazy part about hiking this mountain was that the hike to the trails (at the bottom of the mountain) was the worst part! We had to hike 5km from our cabins to the trails...all up hill, on a concrete road. Doesn't sound to bad in writing...but let me tell you that there wasn't one person who wasn't in pain and complaining about their calves. Never the less, we continued and made it to the trails eventually. By this point we had split into two groups, my group had about nine people in it in the beginning.


Only traveling by the light of our flashlights we started the 9km hike up Mt. Warning! The highest vantage point in NSW! Along the way we saw some amazing creatures that couldn't be captured in a picture. My favorite were the glow in the dark worms and other various illuminated bugs. As soon as we turned off our flashlights there was a glow from the rocky walls around us of little illuminated bugs. The trails were narrow, rocky, and very wet but we stuck together and made sure no one got hurt. Our group was encouraging and a team but unfortunately two of our group members had to turn back. The trails were getting harder and the lack of light made each step more dangerous. Because we could only see by the light of our flashlights we had a little adventure off the path. At one point we though we were following the path and had to climb over a huge slick boulder (in the middle of a waterfall) to continue on the path...we were wrong. The path didn't proceed on the other side and we had to turn back and get back on the trail. Most people fell but no one was hurt and we all laughed it off once we made it back to the trail. Soon we had been hiking for hours and the sun was peaking over the mountains around us. We stopped at an overlook to see an amazing view of the sunrise. Mt. Warning is the first place in Australia to see the sunrise...and it was breathtaking!



Our first view of the sunrise!

 




The girls at sunrise :)

 




One of my favorite pictures of the sunrise :)

 

Continuing on our hike we were all getting tired and our muscles were starting to give out but we were so close and couldn't give up now. When we turned the corner we could see the last stretch of our trip was to climb up a vertical rock wall using a chain rope to help us keep our footing. This was my favorite part! It was a pretty far climb to the top of the peak but my group made it and we couldn't have been more proud of ourselves! The view was phenomenal! We spent about an hour up top before we headed back down the mountain which took us about three hours to climb.


This was the top of the mountain where we had to climb up the chain! My favorite part :)

 



We made it to the top...ahhh the view is indescribable

 



Love this picture :)

 




The group I made it to the top with!

 
The hike down was a little easier however, worked completely different muscles. Along the way we stopped and took a lot of pictures of the beautiful rainforest and mountain ranges. Did I mention their are leaches in the rainforest?...it was nasty and we check each other frequently and caught them all early on...I even had one in my shoe when we got down the mountain. As we were hiking back we saw a lot of wildlife that we couldn't capture in pictures and to be quite honest the pictures wouldn't have done the true beauty justice. There is no picture that can capture the feeling you get when you get to witness some of these outstanding views, no picture that can capture the emotions that go through your body once you complete a challenging task that you gave your all and no picture that can capture the beauty of the sounds that surround you in a rainforest. I am beyond proud of myself and my group for showing that mountain who is boss!



The leach that was in my shoe...not cool

 


Part of the trail we had to hike...this was an easy portion but pretty

 



The detour we took on our way up when it was dark, you can see the big rock...remember it is slippery and has running water over it






Gorgeous trees!

 


A really cool elbow tree that we saw :) It was a nice resting bench!








Our group on the hike back down the mountain

 



 


Our group resting in the middle of the road...we were almost back to the cabins!



 Its not the mountain we conquered, but ourselves!