Adelaide’s Finest: Fantasyland, Santa’s Cave, and Christmas Lights Galore

The lead-up to my first Christmas abroad has been quite jam-packed and awesome! Chris and I left Naracoorte for Adelaide on Wednesday afternoon, after a bit of last minute gift shopping and a slight disagreement about which way was the correct way to go (not to rub it in, but I was right). After an uneventful four hour car ride, we arrived at Chris’s family’s place in Mawson Lakes. In the evening his mom took us to Fantasyland at the West End Brewery, a delightful collection of Christmas lights, large statues, and fantasy characters. My favorites were a whale sprouting water from its blowhole, a rotating disc with various toys on it (like a dragon, a cowboy on his horse, and a ballerina on top), and Santa being pulled in his sleigh by his reindeer. Among the strangest ones were a volcano with a cave man inside and an extremely creepy Frosty the Snowman (a young child confirmed this assessment when he asked his parents, “Why is the snowman so creepy?”). Lots of people had come to see the Adelaide tradition, and I was so happy to be a part of it.

 

The nearly beached whale (the river level was lower than it’s been in quite awhile).

 

I liked the dragon and ballerina the best.

Merry Christmas from Adelaide, Australia!

 

I have yet to figure out the link to Christmas here...

 

The creepiest snowman I have EVER seen. It’s right up there with creepy clowns.
 

On Thursday Chris and I headed to the Harbour Town outlet mall with his mom and two sisters. I justified a few purchases, including a red belt (which I’ve been looking EVERYWHERE for), a leopard print dress, and a polka dot skirt, with the consolation that I didn’t bring many “nice” clothes to Australia. When I was packing for my year here, I planned for lots of field work and not much going out, so I budgeted a lot of field clothes and left most of my nicer things at home. Also, I know that when I get home I will reassess my wardrobe and purge the things I no longer want/need (at least that’s what I tell myself). So I figure I can buy a few items of clothing while I’m here. After a few hours walking around in the BEAUTIFUL weather (mid-80s) at the mall, Chris and I went to the South Australian Museum to meet up with Terry Reardon, one of my project collaborators and a big bat guru. We gained access to restricted areas and followed him to his office. He copied over some thermal count files from my external hard drive that I’ve been having trouble analyzing. Hopefully he can shed some light on the problem. He then took us around for a tour of the specimen collections. First up was the wet collection, consisting of preserved critters in jars of alcohol/formalin. Some of them looked other-worldly, like little shriveled up aliens. Some of them were collected over 100 years ago. It’s amazing to think that they can still extract DNA and find out many things (like diet, taxonomy, etc.) from samples so old. We moved on to the dry collection, consisting of animals that had been collected and preserved through taxidermy. Chris’s favorite was the Ghost Bat (Macroderma gigas). I didn’t realize just how big these guys are until I saw a specimen with its wings outstretched. The body length was about 8 inches, and the wingspan about 24 inches. Ghost bats are carnivorous and eat fish, birds, insects, and even other bats.

The highlight of our tour was the Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) specimens. Also known as the Dog-headed Pouched-dog, Tasmanian Tiger, or Tasmanian Wolf, these animals were large carnivorous marsupials now believed to be extinct. Many factors led to their distinction, including a bounty established by the Tasmanian government from 1888 to 1909. The last wild thylacine was killed in Tasmania in 1930, and the last captive thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. The specimens we saw (which came from the Adelaide Zoo) are considered the best taxidermically preserved specimens in the world and are the pride and joy of the museum. I felt honored to be among the few who get to see them.

The last known thylacine photographed at Beaumaris Zoo in 1933. Look at how wide it can open its jaws!

Outside the South Australian Museum

 

I wish I could get this as a painting!

Once our tour concluded, Chris and I walked to the Botanic Gardens to look at the flying fox colony (it has about 400 bats). We watched and listened to their squabble for a few minutes and then headed off for Rundle Mall, the main shopping area in downtown Adelaide. I got my classic souvenir spoons and some other trinkets, and I also got to play with some puppies and watch some rats at the pet store! That was definitely one of the highlights of my day. I sorely miss pets and having contact with animals. 

 

The puppy that Chris and I are getting. Just kidding. But I do wish...

We then hit up Santa’s Cave in the David Jone’s department store. It’s just what it sounds like: a kitchy Christmas display targeted at children, which of course appealed to me. Chris and his family used to go when they were kids, so I just had to see it. It was full of laughing and playing children and lots of Christmas cheer. I bought a “Lucky Dip,” for which you pay and then pull a surprise gift out of a hole in the wall. When I asked for a girl gift, the cashier asked, “How old is she?” to which I answered, “It’s me”. Haha, I was a teeny bit embarrassed, but I love kitchy things like this so I had no problem admitting that. Of course the cashier found the most “mature” gift she could, and I walked away with a Rubik’s Cube and a pretty ball. Well worth the $6 I payed!

Outside Santa’s Cave. Only 3 days until Christmas!

We took a train back to Chris’s place, which is still something new to me. I’ve never lived in an area where I needed to use public transportation, so taking buses and trains is still a novelty. We did get to witness a belligerent man on the train mouth off to the security guards and then take a swing at them (he was promptly removed from the train, struggling the whole way), which made the experience a bit more exciting. Once home, we headed back out to the Tea Tree Plaza, another big shopping area, to have dinner, get Cold Rock white chocolate ice cream with Rocher (the Australian Cold Rock is the same as the US Cold Stone), and see a movie. I also bought my first can of spray-on deodorant, a big thing here but not something I’m used to. I guess I’ll give it a go. We also bought some marshmallow fluff at a novelty/international sweets shop, which they don’t have here in normal stores. When we got home I introduced Chris to the Fluffernutter, a wonderful combination of marshmallow fluff and peanut butter on bread. He’s now a big fan.

On Friday evening Chris and I drove around the area looking at Christmas lights. There were some really elaborate decorations at some houses. The pièce de résistance was a display that had a sign saying “Tune to 94.3,” which of course we did. We then watched as the music played on our car radio and the lights flashed in sync with it. I’ve seen videos of these kinds of displays on YouTube, but I’ve never seen one in person until now. It was one of the coolest Christmas things I’ve ever seen! Of course my camera battery died in the middle of filming it, but I recorded most of it (see video below). What a great way to end the day before Christmas Eve!

The most elaborate (still) display. The owners had a collection bin out and were raising money to support local disabled children. What a great idea.

One of my favorite displays. I love the blue lights!

 

Christmas lights flashing in sync with Trans Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards in Winter”

Baking Extravaganza

Chris and I spent the day today baking treats to take to his family for Christmas. I have discovered that while I’m not yet a fan of actual cooking, I quite enjoy baking. We made my Nana’s burnt sugar sour cream cookies (which I haven’t had since she passed away when I was 12; see recipe below), regular chocolate fudge and caramel chocolate fudge, and chocolate chip cookies. 

 A sample of the result of our day-long baking session (the chocolate chip cookies are hiding). 

We made everything from scratch except the chocolate chips cookies (we bought the dough pre-made at the store). I wanted to get those Pilsbury sugar cookies that come in a tube, the ones with the Christmas trees on them, but apparently they don’t sell those hear. What a horrible day when I found that out...

Burnt Sugar Sour Cream Cookies

Beat well together 1 stick salted butter, 1 ½ cups light brown sugar and two eggs.  Add 1 cup sour cream and 1 teaspoon vanilla.  Beat in a little at a time of 2 ¾ cups flour and ½ teaspoon EACH baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Drop by teaspoon fulls onto cookie sheet.  Bake at 350°F (~180°C) about 8 to 10 minutes until golden brown.  Make icing using 1 stick salted butter - heat until brown.  Add 2 cups confectioner's sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla.  Beat until spreading consistency. Add hot water bit by bit if you need to thin it out any.  Ice the cookies and enjoy! 

Our only real mishap was when I ran out of the icing I had made for the sour cream cookies. Chris valiantly volunteered to make more with the leftover butter and confectioner’s sugar. However, things didn’t turn out quite like they were supposed to. The result was basically toffee/brittle and was DEFINITELY unusable as icing. Ah well, we have another tasty (albeit accidental) treat to take to his family!

 Chris’s attempt at making more burnt sugar icing...

Girl Guides Adopt-A-Bat!

A few weekends ago the Naracoorte Girl Guides (the unit I help with) came to the park for their annual end-of-year campout. I took them to the Bat Teleview Center, where we watched, in real-time, the bats in the cave with infrared cameras. The girls were surprised to learn that the bats do not sleep through the entire day, and they enjoyed watching the bats grooming and flying around. Later that evening, we sat outside Bat Cave and watched the emergence. The girls were thrilled to be so close to the bats as they flew out of the cave. By the end of the campout, they had decided they wanted to use some of their unit money to Adopt-A-Bat (they chose the Vampire Bat) from Bat Conservation International (BCI), which will help BCI preserve and protect bats around the world.

If you’re looking for a neat gift for someone who’s interested in bats or wildlife conservation in general, Adopt-A-Bat is a great idea. See the link below for more information:

Bat Conservation International Adopt-A-Bat 

Laser Beam System Trial

This week Terry and several engineering students from the University of South Australia came to the park to trial a new laser beam counting system at Bat Cave. They brought four lasers along to test. The overall goal is to have 12 permanently-installed beams running across the entrance of the cave. The lasers will record all night, every night. They cannot tell if a bat is flying into or out of the cave, so we cannot get actual numbers. However, we can get an index of activity, which will give us information about when the bats return to the cave in the spring, when the activity peaks in the summer (at which point we can use the thermal imaging cameras to take actual counts), when the pups start flying, and when all the bats have left Bat Cave for their overwintering caves. It’s pretty exciting stuff!

Of course the field testing didn’t go quite according to plan (does it ever?). The lasers were very difficult to align with the receivers since the beams are infrared and we can’t see them. The students had to use a neat night vision application on their smartphones to see where the laser was hitting the receiver, and then try to relay directions (up, down, more left, a tiny bit right!) to the person moving the laser. And then we had the problem that the lasers kept double-counting. After fiddling with them a bit, the students got them ready enough to trial at an emergence at the cave. We got to see them in action, even if they still needed a bit more work. Terry decided to take them back to Adelaide to work on them so they are easier to align (and also to figure out a more stable mounting design), but hopefully they will be back soon and we can begin using them!

Trying to align the lasers (left) and the receivers (right). A harder task than it may sound.

Using a night vision application on their smartphones to align the lasers, this time at the cave.

Stars are bright / Trees are green / Christmas is coming / And my knee is clean!

Christmas is almost upon us! Last week Chris and I went Christmas shopping. We visited Trev’s, a super awesome bargain store that has pretty much anything you could ever want. We got a cheap $10 mini-Christmas tree (it stands about chest high on me), some generic ornaments, lights, and garland/tinsel.

A few days later, we spent the evening putting everything up. My mom had sent me some ornaments in the mail: a Grinch ornament that says “‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas—perhaps—means a little bit more!’”, an ornament with “snow” in it that says “The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of mid-day to objects below”, and a Dorothy (from The Wizard of Oz) ornament that says “There’s no place like home.” Aww. Chris’s mom also sent me three Aussie ornaments: a kangaroo, a koala, and a kookaburra. I’m finally starting my own ornament collection! Chris made tea and we listened to streaming Christmas music online on Warm98, a radio station I used to listen to back home in Cincinnati, while we decorated. I did miss the tradition of putting the tree up with my mom, but for a moment it felt almost just like home. Until I went outside the next day and it was in the 90s...
 

Our tree, fully decorated and with presents waiting to be opened.

All lit up!

 

 Our Christmas photo :)

Last Wednesday we went to the Naracoorte Caves Christmas dinner at Billy Mac’s in the Naracoorte Hotel. Most of the park staff was there, and it was great to see everyone out of their work gear and celebrating the holidays. We did a Kris Kringle (aka Secret Santa) gift exchange. I got echidna earrings from the park gift shop (yay!) and Chris got a water gun (oh no!). For dinner I ordered the Scotch steak, my first steak since I was 10 years old. It was mighty delicious! 

At the Naracoorte Caves Christmas party

 

On another good note, I had an appointment with a doctor last week and she said my knee x-rays and ultrasound images look good, and that there are no fractures or tears visible. I still have occasional slight pain in it, especially when twisting certain ways or kneeling, but for the most part it’s great. I’ll probably still wear a brace at times just to help it, but it’s nice to finally KNOW that there’s nothing majorly wrong with it.

Bunyips and Bats and Birds, Oh My!

What better way to spend the weekend than catching bats and camping in the Outback! Last Thursday my boyfriend, Chris, and I headed up north to Birds Australia Gluepot Reserve, near Waikerie, South Australia for a bat workshop. Terry Reardon, one of my project collaborators and one of the workshop presenters, invited Chris and me up for a fun weekend of batting. How could we say no?

The workshop started Friday afternoon with lectures about bat taxonomy (current research suggests that bats may be most closely related to horses, tapirs, and rhinos!), the bats of Australia, and diseases associated with Australian bats. We also spent some time looking at preserved specimens of male bats to identify them by their penis shape. Yes, some species of bats (in this case three Vespadelus species: Inland forest bat (V. baverstocki), Large forest bat (V. darlingtoni), and Southern forest bat (V. regulus)) are only identifiable by the shape of their penises. I seriously wonder about whoever figured that out. After some poking around under the microscope, we prepared for an evening of mist netting and harp trapping. I was excited about the harp trapping because I had never used one before. All my previous bat-catching experience has been with mist nets. Harp traps are basically two or three (or sometimes more) rows of taut fishing wire strung vertically between poles. The wire rows sit over a cloth bag that collects the bats when they hit the wires and slide down into the bag. Once the bats slide into the bag, they just crawl up the side (there’s a plastic cover that prevents them from flying out) and hang out there until someone collects them. The cool thing about harp traps it that, unlike mist nets, you can leave them unattended overnight and collect the bats in the morning, although of course it is better to check several times throughout the night. Harp traps are a lot less stressful on bats than mist nets. If it’s a cool night the bats just go into torpor and are quite calm when you collect them. Sure beats removing nasty, biting bats from mist nets! You do have to be careful during the summer when the females have pups, as we wouldn’t want the pups to get hungry without their moms! Over two trapping nights we caught some cool bats: Little pied bat (Chalinolobus picatus), Gould’s wattled bat (Chalinolobus gouldii), Lesser long-eared bat (Nyctophilus geoffroyi), Gould’s long-eared bat (Nyctophilus gouldi), several species of Vespadelus (forest bats), and a freetail bat (Mormopterus sp.). While we did have to get up at 4:30am to check the traps and release any pregnant/lactating females or juveniles, it was well worth it. It was great to see some other Australian bats besides Southern bent-wings. And I got to practice my bat identification skills with my new Australian Bats book!

A harp trap set up in a possible bat flyway (under flowering branches that will attract insects and hopefully therefore bats). The bats can’t see the fishing wire on the harp trap well and fly into them, then slide down the wires into the collecting bag at the bottom.

A bat under the plastic protector in the collecting bag.

 

Holding a Lesser long-eared bat (Nyctophilus geoffroyi)

On one of our trapping nights, Terry taught us a “bat dance” he learned while trapping bats in Papua New Guinea. Supposedly it brings good fortune to your trapping so you get lots of cool bats! To prepare, you have to get three branches with leaves, and put one branch sticking out of the back of your pants, like a tail. You hold the other two branches in your hands. You then crouch down low, and begin dancing and stomping around while chanting loudly:

“Jesus is Number 1!

Jesus is Number 1!

Jesus is Number 1!

HEY!” (with a large leap into the air)

I wasn’t quite expecting those words (I was thinking a native chant or something like that), but it was absolutely hilarious to watch Terry do it, and then to do it all together as a group. I’ll have to add that to my bat surveying methods!

The next night (Saturday) we released the bats we had caught in the harp traps. We wanted to get some good reference calls from the forest bats. To do this, we taped small light tubes (about ¾ inch long) to their belly fur. We then released them and I watched as seven little green glowing blobs zig-zagged through the trees in the dark of night, followed closely by a line of glowing Anabat (acoustic detector) screens chasing after them. Quite a funny thing to see!

 A forest bat (Vespadelus sp.) with a light tube taped loosely to its belly fur.

Waiting for my guy to take off. I had to hold him under my shirt to warm him up for a bit before he would go.

In addition to trapping, we also played around with some cool acoustic detectors. Several of the participants had brought their own detectors. These included an Anabat detector connected to a PDA so you could see bat calls in real-time and analyze them in the field, as well as record GPS locations of each call. I must admit I got a serious case of Anabat envy. Maybe that’s what I’ll save my Christmas money for over the next several years...

Serious acoustic detector envy...

An emu footprint, plus a normal foot (me) and giant foot (Chris) for reference.

 A Grey Butcherbird (Cracticus torquatus) visiting our campsite looking for food. These guys prey on small animals like lizards, birds, and insects.

Chris and me at our campsite in the mallee woodland of northern South Australia.

The weekend of batting came to an end all too soon. However, the adventures had only just begun. Chris and I packed up our gear on Sunday and headed off for home. It was about a 5 ½ hour drive, so we decided to take it slow and split it into two days so we could see some touristy things along the way. We stopped for lunch in Waikerie (the Citrus Centre of Australia!), and I was amazed at all the Christmas decorations on the street and in shop windows. Even though the first week of December is over, I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that it’s almost Christmas. It’s so warm out and without the cold and snow I can’t seem to comprehend that it’s almost here. I think it would be much harder for me to be away from home and my family at this time of year if it was more like home outside, with snow and Christmas music on the radio. It will be interesting to see how my first Australian Christmas goes!

With Santa Claus, wearing a tank top. Something’s wrong with this picture.

The main attraction on our return home was the Bunyip, a mythical creature that the Aborigines believed to live in bodies of water and come out at night to devour any human or animal prey in the vicinity. We stopped along the waterfront in Murray Bridge and followed the Bunyip’s giant footprints into its lair, where we inserted a $1 coin into the slot machine and then stood quaking in our boots as the creature rose from the murky water and let out its fearsome roar!

The Bunyip emerges!

So terrifying!

We also stopped at a tiny place in Ki-Ki (a tiny town) called the Recycled Wireworks Gallery. The large wire sculptures on top of the roof had caught our eye on the way to Gluepot. We rang the doorbell and a lady welcomed us into the veranda of the home. Her husband, who makes the sculptures, came out to continue giving us the tour of the pieces located throughout their backyard. He collects old and trash wire and metal from farmers, old fences, etc. and turns them into artistic creations. He had sculptures like a kangaroo, giant dragons, a bumblebee, a coffee table, and the signs of the Zodiac. Pretty neat!

Our tour guide with one of his creations.

Now I’m back home and already missing camping in the mallee woodland, living out of my car, and eating Chris’s delicious bush tucker (no, I don't mean grubs and wallabies and nuts and berries, although that technically is what bush tucker refers to. I just wanted to use that term because it sounds cool). You can bet there will be plenty more camping adventures to come!