Gellibrand Hill and etc.

Today we had our first outing of the trip, up to the park and Gellibrand Hill for a view of Melbourne, and also to try and imagine what the land was like when the explorers first “discovered” it. It was quite a fine afternoon all in all. The weather turned out to be gorgeous and we actually had our first chance to see some kangaroos. I was really surprised by how large they were, they stood at least as tall as one of us, or perhaps taller. The park itself was interesting. (Dr. King told us that the hill had probably been formed by a volcanic outcropping, and as a geologist, I can confirm his hypothesis. The boulders were usually composed of a pink or white kind of granite, with some longer, flatter deposits of what may have been basalt. Some of the granite also seems to have gotten some air into it during formation, because of the little pockets or holes that exist in it’s surface, though I’m not sure how that would have happened, since it must have formed beneath the crust. At any rate…) I think if this park area was actually what Australia used to be like, much of what has been said about it has been rather unfair. I have heard so much of what a barren and desolate place it is, and while it’s true that it’s no tidy English pastoral landscape, it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at. The plains of tall grass remind me of Nebraska, but the branching jigsaw of the eucalyptus trees are certainly unique to this place. I can understand why the explorers would have found the land an alien place. It’s so open and windswept and some things do seem kind of off. Like the kangaroos, for example, they seem to be a strange combination of deer and manatees and jackrabbits and I don’t even know of anything else that has a tail like that. And they have an image of just being a cute and friendly little animal, but out in the wild they can be savage and strong fighters that could rip you apart, and then people think of them as a nuisance and hunt them like deer. It’s things like that, where you just don’t get what you’re expecting, that make this place seem so foreign and alien.