Sep 2008

At 6:30am on Friday, the ASCers were off to the Australian Outback. We arrived after an 8-hour bus ride at the sheep shearing farm where we were staying. But the thing is, it was about ten minutes after Kimberly, our director said, "we're here!" that we were actually there. The farm is 35,000 acres, so needless to say there was a great deal of land to explore. The people that owned the farm are homestay parents for the ASC program, and they took good care of us, feeding us all the time and making sure that we had everything we needed. The nights were pretty cold, and the cabins where we stayed were certainly not heated: in fact, the walls were paper thin, and the doors didn't close all the way. Although I didn't sleep outside like many of the brave students did (without a tent, might I add) I felt like I was sleeping outside because of the complete lack of protection from the night air. The outback looked about like what I expected: mostly desert-looking, but with tumble weeds and random thorny shrubs. I guess the outback's most distinctive feature is that it all looks exactly the same; it just goes for hundreds of miles across the whole center of Australia. If you were to get lost in it (which would be very easy to do) you are virtually powerless to find your way out. I considered again and again that the outback looks exactly this way for hundreds of miles around me. In this way, it is not like the desert plain parts of North America, because in the outback, there is no one. While I was there, I felt for the first time that nature did not care about me at all. It was going to do its own thing, and whether or not I was comfortable was my problem.
Unlike the ASC's last "field trip" to Canberra, the outback was a time midway through the semester for us to get away from the stresses of our schoolwork and constant cultural adjusting, and relax. Much of our time was spent sipping tea around the campfire learning about each other. At night, the Townsends (the people on whose farm we were staying) would take us out with a high-powered spot light and use it to spot kangaroos. We saw several, they are SO cute when they just hop around! During the day, we went riding around on the farm property on the back of trucks, and went rowing up the creek and such. Of course, no ASC trip would be complete without at least an hour or two of class discussion a couple more hours of "processing" our experiences. Fortunately though, much of our time was ours to do with what we pleased. We were blessed with wonderful weather. It didn't rain the whole time, and although it was cold at night, it was rather pleasant during the day.
Since the farm was a sheep shearing farm, there were heaps of sheep, fluffy and ready to be sheared. The Townsends do not shear them themselves, but instead bring in a team of sheep shearers who arrived Sunday night. They were kind enough to give us a run-down Sunday night of what their job involves, and then Monday we had the opportunity to watch them shear the sheep. It was a really interesting experience; many of the students got a little lesson and a go at shearing themselves. I had never really been around sheep before, and seeing them was pretty hysterical to me because they are SO dumb. I mean, they are dumber than dumb. They would all just follow each other around the pen, for no reason other than that one sheep was moving, so they all followed. That's about the only thing that sheep can do: follow. This is why they need a shepherd. Some of the students and I were reminded in a very real way of how Christ repeatedly refers to humans as his sheep because, as dumb as we thought they were for following blindly, humans are infamous for doing the same thing. We run around sometimes, confused and not knowing north from south, when we have a patient Shepherd all the while guiding us in the right direction, if only we would follow Him.
Before we got to the farm to begin with, Kimberly asked us to join her in an optional challenge not to shower while we were there. This is becuase water is particularly scarce in the middle of the ouback, and the water that was available to us was brought into the farm on big trucks especialy for us. Now, this was no short trip. We arrived Friday evening, and left Monday morning, and this doesn't even include the 16-hour round trip on a bus of 40 people. Needless to say, I was not up for the challenge to start with. I am proud to say that, now that all is said and done, I did not shower once during our outback trip! I had better hurry and correct any misconceptions: I am glad that I was able to conserve water, but I can't honestly say that that was my primary reason for refraining from showering while I was there. Most people in the ASC group met the challenge as well (it was a pretty stinky ride home if you can imagine), but no one believed that I would be able to go without showering. SO, being as stubborn as I am, I simply did it to prove them all wrong. There were other reasons too, of course. It was pretty cold at night and it wasn't exactly warm during the day, either, so I can't say I was excited about freezing to death to get clean. Also, the dust in the outback is so thick and constant, it wouldn't have done me all that much good to shower once. So now, I can say that I went 4 days in the outback without a shower. I never plan on doing it again.
So now, here I am, safely back in Sydney. I had a memorable time in the outback, and I am so thankful for the experience, but I am so happy to be back "home".