April 2nd, 2006 - Stupid is as Stupid does?

Saturday Laure and I went on a travellers shopping spree. OK, so our budget doesn't really allow us to 'spree', more like 'bargain hunt'. We spent most of the morning buying travelling towels, which are a fraction of the size of a normal towel and quickdrying, and picked up a bug net for the outback, since we've heared the bugs are unbearable. Then it was off the the Queen Victoria Market for more fresh food! I've eaten like a champ since I've been here and am not looking forward to food in London, frozen and shipped! Sunday, was daylight savings, so as good Northern Hemispherians, we all took for granted the little rhyme "Spring Forward, Fall Back", after miscalculating our departure time thinking it was 10:00am rather than 8:00am and subsequently taking a much earlier train, my roommate Ben and I ventured back to the Dandenong Range to hike to the summit of Mount Dandenong, the largest mountain in the area. Our last visit to the range had indicated a 13km trip to Mount Dandenong (7hours) and so we decided to push our will power. Little did we know that the arrow in the direction of the mountain wasn't as simple as follow the trail. The Dandenong National Park is infiltrated by small private land all along its borders and fringes. There was no continuous trail to the mountain, quite frankly there was no series of trails...we found ourselves wandering through knee high brush, streams, down highways, and worst of all into the backyard of a person with a barbed wire fence all along the front of the property as they were leaving..! We slipped out the driveway after they left, but had to bush wack to avoid trespassing on the way home. Albeit bruised and battered, after a full 8 hours of walking, we finally made it back to the train at dark. It seems our stupid timechange mistake earlier that day, wasn't so stupid after all!