Perth Edutrip: Day Seven: School Excursion

In the Monday, all ten of us, plus our buddies and the teachers, went out of the school for an excursion around Margaret River. Being the tourist town it is, there were many other attractions in the place that were constructed by man, and not nature, which I have visited through the weekends.

All photos taken with my Canon EOS 600D, and sadly, I still have no time to go over all my handpicked photos (still a thousand remaining of two) and edit them.

The first place we went to was Amaze'n Maze, a place where there are mazes and puzzles all around. First we went to the big hedge maze, where we must find the center, plus several garden benches dotted around.

Shame I have no pictures good and proper enough to share here. There were only green mazes and embarrassing pictures of our group. That being said, we still had some interesting time in getting lost and retracing our steps--and failing, where finally we exited through an emergency exit. 

We also played some of the more puzzling games, including one which even our math teacher could not solve, before coming to the cafe for a snack of more scones. Funny, some of our Aussie friends do not know the traditional way of eating scones: split in half, a dollop of jam, then smear cream.

The second place, one that I liked best for its... let's say, alluring beauty, was Lake Cave.

Lake Cave is the deepest cave system in Western Australia. By judging the age of fallen trees around the mouth of the cave where the ground had crumbled down, it’s over seven hundred years old.

Now, at this point I just realized that I forgot to charge up my battery the previous night, and it had two bars left--I should only be able to take some more pictures, say a hundred or two.

Along that time, rainwater seeped in slowly, depositing dissolved calcium carbonate as stalactites, which hang tight to the roof, and stalagmites, which might reach the ceiling, and countless little hollow stalactites known as straws.

Where the stalagmites and stalactites meet they form columns, this one already broken of age. In the light of the flashlight, we could see the white calcium, which we aren't allowed to touch of fear of being discolored.

This formation is called Dragon’s Head, for an apparent reason: it does look like a dragon drinking from the puddle beneath. From where we stood, looking at the dragon, our guide switched the lights off, producing a total darkness. It’s not often you could experience nature’s handicrafts such as this cave, which made the cave so interesting for me.

After a lunch of soggy chicken and chips (with flies buzzing around in the park, instead of birds), we headed to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory. We were only given twenty minutes to pick our chocolate.

The free samples were immediately attacked by us and other visitors. Some of them barbaric.

Until now, I really hoped I bought more chocolate. They were freshly made from pure chocolate there, but as I said before, food there is expensive.

Finally, there was the Sunflower Animal Farm. I have no idea why they only gave us 25 minutes there to run around and see all sorts of animals. We rushed to grab a bucket of animal food--veggies and grain and bread--then immediately looked at each pen. The one immediately next to the entrance was some little goats.

There were also all sorts of avian creatures: ducks, turkey, some geese too, I believe, and more Aussie birds I didn't have the honor of identifying. 

Now, this was the moment where my camera battery died. Thankfully, I could still squeeze around two dozen shots by ejecting and re-inserting the battery.

More goats, which I fed. Think I took too long here, so that I rushed several of the last pens.

Aww.

And surely, I need to spend time with the kangaroos. There were some in my homestay, but they were quite far away, and photographing with binoculars is out of question.

Yet another must-see animal: the emu. This one was quite hard to take a picture, always moving around, seemingly always about to break into a run, such the flightless bird it is.

These two similar animals, the camelids, llamas, and alpacas. I put down my bucket of food to take a picture of the emu, who was in the same pen as the llama, and it just emptied that bucket while I wasn't looking. Dang.

The alpaca could be differentiated by that tuft of hair. I got lucky to get a good shot of Alf as my battery became really critical.

And, while entering the bunny pen, my battery died for good. People were all there, hugging several bunnies and some guinea pigs, who were munching at veggies. I had none remaining.

Meanwhile, some went to the pigsties. The pigs were massive. Even the little ones--a dozen of them--were the size of big household dogs. And stinky, and eats everything that smells, including their own digestive remnants, and your hand if you're not careful. No pictures of them, sadly, for the camera must rest.

We went ten minutes overtime, when we must return or be left behind (though it is not that long of a walk to the school). That was an immensely fascinating trip, though, seeing more places of interest in Margaret River. Shame our time was crunched and my battery was dying or dead.