Nearly a Death: Nearly a Sport

Greetings and salutations!
So it has once again been ages since my last post and this has an inverse correlation to how much has happened since.
Currently I am a town called Ayr just south of Cairns and am about to head out tomorrow to start my new life as a grape vine trimmer. We'll see how that goes. But FIRST, time for a quick play by play of the past month or so...

After being stuck in Eildon for much longer than I wished to be after my last program for the first half of the year JR, Emily, Claire, Andrew (Cluster) and myself spent 4 or 5 days in a town called Rye. It is a little surf town on the southernely side of the bay on which Melbourne resides. Our plan was to spend these days hanging out on the beaches both bayside and ocean side, trying our hand at surfing, and general beach going activities. We'd gotten in touch with a holiday house via a friend and all was good. After a day sizing up the area and hanging out on the beach (it was only like 50 degrees) we decided surfing was a great idea for our second day. Claire got intouch with her roommate Lisa, who lives half an hour north of Rye (and who more importantly owns heaps of surf boards lol), and invited her to come down for our surf session. The next day we got to Rye's ocean side beach which is a renowned surfer beach and despite the bit of a chill in the air (and worse in the water). From the car park the surf does not look particularly stellar nor does it look dead. There is even one other surfer out and catching some waves; we decide to have a go.
Lisa, JR, Cluster, and myself all sported surf boards at first while Claire and Em took up boogy boards. Now let me be quite clear here, Lisa is the only one who has any idea what she is doing at this juncture. Claire and Emily both have lots of beach experience but are not pros whereas JR, Cluster, and myself are pretty clueless. But that all aside we fearlessly run to the water surf boards in hand.
Pretty quickly things are pretty strange. The waves are really choppy and very difficult to stay on board the surf boards while stroking out to behind the breakers. I suppose "trying to stroke out to behind the breakers" would be more appropriate. Not quite accustomed to balancing on a board to begin with the rough, foamy water makes it doubly hard. And embarrassingly soon starting to fight the waves I am not significantly futher from shore and my arms are already starting to burn. But determined not to give up I persist. Then in only a moment of paddling I look back and all of a sudden the shore seems miles away and I find myself practically on the break line. Now here is a fact I learnt that day. Waves are always much larger when you are in the water than they appear from shore. These waves that seemed pretty tame from shore were anything but. They were large, they were unevenly spaced, and they were breaking on my head practically. To be able to see my struggle would have been hilarious. For about ten minutes I just barely held ground but the whole time was a bobber. Wave would come I would swim hard into it (I learnt later you should go under them...) the wave would knock me from my board, I would flounder a second, recover, regain my position on the board and just in time for the process to repeated. As I said this lasted for about 10 minutes. Eventually I found my board and myself had been spun 90 degrees so that my broadside was to the wave. This is not a favourable position to be in as in this position you expose the most surface area for the wave to pound on. What happened next is not entirely clear to me as most of it was spent underwater but I am quite certain that the number of flips, twists, turns, and contortions that happened would have impressed even the most stoic of gymists. However, for me this was one of those "and this is how it ends, huh?" moments. For a second I can remember forgetting which way was up and not being quite sure when how I was to get my next breath. But fortuitously waves pretty much always end up on a beach which is a good foothold to stand back up, cough up the litre of water you inhaled, stagger back a little sheepishlywhat seems like a mile you got pulled down beach to where the group's made homebase.
The sheepishness soon passed as upon arriving at the base I found JR already there as well as Claire. JR and I laconically discuss the conditions until we each realize that we both got our asses kicked equally and both were near death on at least for a moment, at which time we freely admit to our humilations. Claire, whom probably acted most prudently, said she only needed a couple minutes to realize it was a bit much for her. The three of us gaze out to watch Emily on her boogy board only to realize that she has enlisted the aid of the only surfer to tow her in because as she told us later she was paddling as hard as she could be was getting nowhere. The surfer chastisted her for "not wearing fins like you always should" but ultimately gave her a lift back in. That leaves Cluster and Lisa who we loose track of for quite sometime but are seen again ages down the beach exiting the water. Cluster was taken for a ride much like JR and I were only perhaps with a little more violence and Lisa simply said that the waves were too big for her. All in all we were in the water for no more than 45 minutes. And I, luckily (stress on the this part), can happily say it was an absolutely stupid idea to go out that day.

After another days and evenings spent on the beach (playing bocce or going for a late night swim) or at the house (watching the LOTR triology on 3 consecutive nights) our crew departed for a couple days in Melbourne.

One of the most noteable aspects of Melbourne--and I am finding with Victoria in general--is the masses obsession with one of the stranger sports I've ever come across known as Australian Football League (AFL for short) or lovingly referred to as 'footy'. I got to witness just how strange the sport is first hand when we went with a small crew of OEG folks to the match between the St. Kilda Saints and the Richmond Tigers.
Let me try to explain this sport...
The game is played on a giant ovular pitch. And by giant I mean ~165 yards long by 135 wide! It is played with the bastard child of an American football and a rugby ball: so, oblong like an American football but with the points rounded off and with a fatness of a rugby ball. End result? Strange. About as unaerodynamic as you can get. There are 18 players per side plus...hold on one sec...7 umpires for a total of 43 people (not including bench/coaches) at one time (this is not including that least 8 water boys that run in and give water whenever the ball goes to the other side of the field). They tell me there all have positions, jobs, and duties which I believe intuitively to be true but to watch the sport you wouldn't garner that yourself. Basic rules are this, each team trys to kick it through the other team's goalposts. There are four of these. The four goalposts make three slots to kick through. Kick it through the center posts will earn you 6 points; miss by a bit and make it through the outer posts and you only get 1 point. That's all there is to scoring (as far as I know).
To do this each team naturally has to move the ball close to the other team's goals. This is accomplished three ways: 1-running with the ball. Completely cool except that while in motion with the ball you can be speared by any of the other team's players. Also, every 10-12 yards/steps (how this is enforced is beyond me..."foul. you took one too many steps although i must admit i kind of lost count...umm...too bad!") the player must bounce the ball. This is quite a feat taking into consideration the unique shape/size of the ball.
Way #2: you can while running pass the ball to another teammate. Any logical system (of which there are many) would allow you to in some way throw your teammate the ball. But no not in footy, not in Australia. Logic does not conquer all. To pass the ball players have to hold the ball in one hand and punch the ball to their buddies. Why? Who knows. But that is how it goes.
Third and final way (and I think most bizarre) is the punt. Don't have to be a genius to guess what this looks like. However, the result of the punt is quite singular. Say one dude punts it to his teammate. His teammate goes to catch it (which in the attempt to he can--and is encouraged to do so--literally put his foot/cleat into the other players shoulder, back, head, neck, whatever he can to elevate himself high enough to make the catch. And then, once he does, now this is the strange bit, he gets to land and take it easy. And by take it easy I mean the other team cannot come with one yard where he caught the ball. While the catcher can quite literally walk away from the other team, take his time, find his target, retie his shoe laces, adjust his socks, take aim and then punt it on towards his teammate. What's more it is legal and definitely the best strategy to score from this way. So most often goals are scored by players who have NO ONE EVEN CLOSE TO THEM! Unless this is golf that doesn't seem ok.
Sufficed to say when your only options are bouncing, punching, or punting this overlarge egg shaped ball the outcome is that 75% of the time you bungle your bounce, botch your punch, and your punt sails over your teammate's head. And what follows this fact is that the ball spends a great deal of time on the ground. And it is my opinion that here is where the true fun of this game lies. Anyone who watches American football is familiar with the awesomely unathletic gawky awkward and bumbled heyday that happens when a fumbled football starts bouncing away pell mell. Grown men, the biggest, the baddest, the strongest are reduced to child like ability when determining which way the bumbling ball will bounce. This is, again, 75% of footy. Grown men vainly trying to secure a ball that by all indications should have bounced right but instead chose to bounce left and cause them to fall facefirst onto the turf.

Anyway, the game itself was quite rivetting but I think I was mainly excited the same way a 5 year old does in front of the TV watching the game with their father. Though the wee one has absolutely no idea what is going on, who is who, or even what sport it is, the child will share in their father's highs and lows, mimicing the fierce crys of anger and sharing in the jubilation of the celebration. I was this five year old. I had very little idea what was going on but did my best to cheer when the other supporters cheered and yell when they yelled. It was invigorating.

All in all my stay in Melbourne was short but enjoyable. Still together the gang of Cluster, JR, Emily, Claire, and I took the overnight train to Sydney. Which will be the next chapter of this affair. But no promises when this comes. As I stated at the beginning of this blog, I am going to be pruning grape vines for the next 3 or so weeks. So till then...


Death By Seashell

NO JOKE YOU CAN DIE SEASHELL HUNTING!!!

These cone snails (as they are often called) are nocturnal, meaning they are active at sunset and just before sunrise.
The shells are speckled, with various colors and this can make them pretty enough, especially for unsuspecting children to pick up and this can be deadly.
The Cone Shells have very sharp teeth that have the capability of piercing right through clothing, so beware! Their venom is made up of several neurotoxic peptides that can and do result in death of humans.
The venom works by causing weakness, inability of coordination, blurred vision, and loss of speech and hearing. Severe cases could result in death by causing muscle paralysis or respiratory failure. Less severe cases just cause extreme nausea.
The best way to avoid a sting from a Cone Shell is not to touch a live one. It is not safe to touch the wide end because the extendable harpoon-wielding proboscis can reach most parts of the shell. Wear heavy shoes when walking through the waters of the Great Barrier Reef to protect your feet from harm. And please do not put the shells into pockets or sleeves!
The venom is in the saliva, which comes from two glands, each larger than the creatures brain. The same poisonous saliva that is present in toad or puffer fish is the same type that the Cone Shell uses to kill humans. You may not feel the bite right away, but very soon you will notice numbness around your mouth, followed by paralysis. Death results from respiratory failure!
Cones feed on worms, mollusks, and are know to be cannibalistic (meaning they feed on other cone shells).
To catch fish a snail needs fast acting venom and the cone shells definitely have that. They detect their prey from chemicals in the water drawn through its siphon. Then it extends it proboscis, (a hollow feeding tube) which has a hollow barbed tooth on the end with a poisonous sac attached.
The tooth is driven into the victim, and then poison is injected through the tooth. They can only use the tooth once but a supply of spare teeth is kept in a tooth sac and they are moved into position as needed. The cone holds victims by the tooth and releases poison into them and then draws it into the proboscis to be digested.
The cone shell carries a toxin concoction that is capable of killing humans and the venom from just one cone can kill (in theory) seven hundred people.