Australia!
I've shared this with a few of you, but my plans for Australia are finally falling into place. I leave Minneapolis on July 2nd and get to Sydney early in the morning on July 4th. A wonderful stranger whom I met via a Facebook group for female travelers has kindly offered me a place to stay for the first few nights in Sydney, and I'll be getting dinner with her my first night in Australia. She is actually the person who recommended my first site in Australia- Wangat Lodge!
(http://www.wangat.com.au/)
Wangat Lodge is located in Dungog, New South Wales. The description on Wangat's website reads:
"Wangat Lodge, set on the Chichester River amongst the forest in the sub-tropical foothills of the Barrington Tops, means, in the local Gringai dialect, a place where whispers are heard. The lodge was built in the early 80s by retired foresters Geoff and Isabel Armstrong, their vision being to create a place where people could connect with nature, learn about ecology and have adventures! Through their efforts, degraded pastoral land was rejuvenated into a fertile forest now home to an incredible array of native animals - koalas, echidnas, wallabies, platypus, quolls, frogs, bandicoots, pademelons, goannas, bettongs and over 100 species of birds... the list goes on! Its establishment as a conservation area and wildlife refuge will help ensure it remains so for many years to come."
(These are some photos I found on Wangat's facebook page)
I reached out to Dan, one of the people that currently run Wangat, and he's agreed to let me spend ~1 month volunteering with them (assuming all goes well). I'll help run outdoor education programs for families and school groups, and get to experience how Wangat encourages engaging with nature to develop insights about intra- and inter-personal relationships. It looks like paradise there and I am so excited (but much less excited about all the creepy crawlers I'm inevitably going to meet)!
In August, I will be attending the Australian Association for Bush Adventure Therapy conference in NSW! Plus I've signed up for a pre-conference Bush Adventure Therapy (BAT) 101 training day, which will give me a fantastic overview of what BAT is all about, its history, models and practice frameworks, intended population targets, etc. I'm stoked!
After the AABAT conference, I'm not sure what I'll do. I'm hoping to have made connections at the conference that I'll follow up on in other areas of Australia. I've got something tentatively in the works with another organization in NSW, but that's to share later (:
Planning and getting things on my to-do list done is going by very slowly, but I get more and more excited (and nervous) to begin my Watson year each day!
-Andi
(http://www.wangat.com.au/)
Wangat Lodge is located in Dungog, New South Wales. The description on Wangat's website reads:
"Wangat Lodge, set on the Chichester River amongst the forest in the sub-tropical foothills of the Barrington Tops, means, in the local Gringai dialect, a place where whispers are heard. The lodge was built in the early 80s by retired foresters Geoff and Isabel Armstrong, their vision being to create a place where people could connect with nature, learn about ecology and have adventures! Through their efforts, degraded pastoral land was rejuvenated into a fertile forest now home to an incredible array of native animals - koalas, echidnas, wallabies, platypus, quolls, frogs, bandicoots, pademelons, goannas, bettongs and over 100 species of birds... the list goes on! Its establishment as a conservation area and wildlife refuge will help ensure it remains so for many years to come."
(These are some photos I found on Wangat's facebook page)
I reached out to Dan, one of the people that currently run Wangat, and he's agreed to let me spend ~1 month volunteering with them (assuming all goes well). I'll help run outdoor education programs for families and school groups, and get to experience how Wangat encourages engaging with nature to develop insights about intra- and inter-personal relationships. It looks like paradise there and I am so excited (but much less excited about all the creepy crawlers I'm inevitably going to meet)!
In August, I will be attending the Australian Association for Bush Adventure Therapy conference in NSW! Plus I've signed up for a pre-conference Bush Adventure Therapy (BAT) 101 training day, which will give me a fantastic overview of what BAT is all about, its history, models and practice frameworks, intended population targets, etc. I'm stoked!
After the AABAT conference, I'm not sure what I'll do. I'm hoping to have made connections at the conference that I'll follow up on in other areas of Australia. I've got something tentatively in the works with another organization in NSW, but that's to share later (:
Planning and getting things on my to-do list done is going by very slowly, but I get more and more excited (and nervous) to begin my Watson year each day!
-Andi
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