Homestay weekend

Well, I'm feeling rather distracted and unable to work, so I suppose it's time for another blog update. Today: the story of my homestay with an aborigional family. I stayed with a guy named Phil who is a professional digeridoo maker. The morning after the first night, I took a walk and took the first and second photographs. The light was pretty good, and the grass was dewy. Not much else to say about that. Phil was a very nice man, and so was his wife. His house was full of kids; 1 child and four grandchildren, two of which were to young to talk. It was an interesting weekend, to be sure.

Phil took us to some local waterways and waterfalls, where we saw some more rainforest and stuff. One of the kids, Jayden, discovered this tiny turtle on the riverbank. Freshwater turtles are some of the very oldest Australians, having been there since the Gondwonan era.
Here's a waterfall that Phil used to jump down as a kid with his friends. It had to be 10-20 meters tall.
And here's a digeridoo that Phil made, which he called a "story stick". He played it for us and it has a very nice sound. It was ridiculously decorated, with his entire family history on it from "before the white man came" (his words) to the present. On the underside of that gnarled part on the bottom was some cave-painting style stuff... really cool. He said it took a year to paint. The guy standing to the left is Justin, who also stayed with us. Oh, also the bottom has five depictions of the seasons... the aborigionals used to have five seasons based on which berries were ripe at the time.

Ok. Next, Directed Research.