A Trip on the Horizon

For the last several weeks, it's been nothing but research and writing. That's good and bad. It's good because one of my goals with this sojourn in Australia has been to improve my writing skills, but bad because... well, writing is hard work! I am in complete awe of journalists, authors, and professors who do this for a living.

At the University of Melbourne, they have twelve weeks for teaching, a full week where no one teaches and no one studies, then a three week long exam period. For my classes, I've had sizable papers due in all four subjects. None of the papers alone is too daunting a task, but having each of them due one after the other, the mind and spirit start showing signs of wear and tear. I appreciate the ample time they give us to complete them, but I'm just not used to such writing marathons and would almost like to get it all over with quicker. Almost.

I've written about the use of history in a museum gallery about minds and madness for my history of psychiatry class, realism versus anti-realism in my philosophy of science class, relativism in scientific controversies and the sociology of scientific knowledge for my sociology of science class, and the importance of Descartes' mechanical philosophy and dualism of mind/matter in breaking away from Aristotelian world views in my history of natural philosophy class. Not exactly the stuff of everyday life... but interesting and I feel privileged to be thinking about this stuff more than usual.

So while all my family and friends back home are enjoying the longest day of the year, I am experiencing the shortest. It starts getting dark here about 5 in the afternoon and by 5:30, you'd think it was midnight. Winter in June is a funny feeling. I'm certainly not used to dating academic papers in the month of June. Last night on television they were playing Home Alone and The Holiday both of which take place at Christmas time in the northern hemisphere, but I guess when it's winter time you play winter movies.

But enough about school and the weather...

The time has come for a trip. And I intend to use my five weeks of break between semesters to take a few. Tomorrow I set off on a two week trip from Adelaide in the south, to Darwin in the north. A road trip journey through the centre of Australia. A foray through the dry, vast, featureless, barren, and hot Outback. A backpacking escapade from the southern vineyards of Adelaide, through the red centre of Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Alice Springs, ending in the wild and dangerous Kakadu National Park outside of Darwin. Along the way I'll be seeing heaps of kangaroos and dingoes, crocodiles and snakes, sleeping in a swag (an Aussie type of tent for the Outback), riding in a van with a bunch of other adventure seekers like myself, and experiencing some of the most remote parts of the earth. I'm so excited for the trip I'm about to burst.

This should be something to write home about.