St. Mary’s student Kylie Curtis ’16 blogs about her time studying abroad in Australia.
“Just thought I’d tell the quick story of my Crystal Creek adventure at the start of my time in Australia. Actually let’s start with my Age of Cripple-tude:
So one Sunday afternoon, I was attending the weekly Frisbee training for people that want to play a little more seriously and get in some exercise and practice. After a long practice with ladders, core workouts, and sprints we started into a game. Midway through the 2nd or 3rd point, I turned to cut and felt my ankle roll out from underneath me, heard a ripping sound, and felt a searing pain. I immediately began crying, of course, and had to be literally carried off of the field. I got a ride home with someone with a truck who could fit my bike in the back, and decided to just ice it and maybe try a doctor sometime later that week. After an agonizing couple of hours I asked my housemate to give me a ride to the hospital, because if the injury was anything serious I needed to make sure I had crutches or something before Uni the next day. My lovely, fellow SMCM, current housemate Drake came with me to keep me company while we waited what turned out to be a 5 hour wait. They finally saw me and the doctor decided I needed an x-ray and then I waited another whole hour for that. Finally I was given the verdict of a very badly sprained ankle and the slight possibility of a ripped tendon but no broken bones. I was given a wrap for my foot and a pair of crutches, and then headed home for bed. Luckily, my housemate was able to give me rides throughout the next two weeks while I was recovering, so that I did not have to bike to school.
The weekend after this injury, some people from ultimate decided to do a trip to Crystal Creek. Knowing that this was a must-do during my time here, and that they might not go again for a while, I decided to go despite my injury. I spent the day limping/hiking around and up rocks and creeks and the like and although I had to be careful, I did not reinjure myself. We started the trip by stopping at Woolies (Woolworths- a grocery store chain) for some food. Then we drove up the rest of the way to Crystal Creek. We first went to the little creek and hung out around a place where the water pooled and was actually quite deep. I watched the first few brave souls to jump off of the rocks (~10m high) into the water. The competitive and adventurous side got the best of me and I decided I wanted to be the first girl to jump off. Actually jumping was the scariest part, and it took me about 5 seconds of contemplation before I literally “took the leap.” After the 1st time, I could go again and again, but you had to be really careful because there was only one region that was deep enough to jump in. Then people moved up to the next height, twice as high as the 1st. It took me a while longer before I would try that jump, but I eventually did. The rest of the time was spent watching people jumping off and trying to catch discs, but I do not think anyone succeeded. After this we head up to the next creek, but before we went any further, stopped for a barbecue. I got to taste kangaroo for the 1st time, and it was actually fairly similar to beef in flavour, just leaner. It honestly reminded me of ostrich, which I had tried during my time in South Africa earlier this summer. We also had camel burgers, which were pretty great. We spent the next couple hours hiking way up the creek until we reached a huge waterfall. No jumping from there, unfortunately, but we did get some cool pictures and I stood under the waterfall, because waterfall, duh. After hiking back down to a smaller water fall, that was still quite high, I ended up jumping off of the largest drop yet. A guy from the Frisbee team, Dave, told me to go for it, and then just as my feet were leaving the ground yelled “No, stop!” My momentum had me though and I fell the long way down and landed where I had been told it would be safe. I came up fine, but was so mad at Dave because in that time between jumping and hitting the water I was sure I was going to be seriously injured for the rest of my life. It turned out he was just joking, and I did not end up injured, and we all had a good laugh about it afterwards (him more than me). My friends Kate, Alex, and Emily showed up right before we all left (late as always) and took the smaller jumps. Kate brought her Go-Pro camera, so there are some pretty cool videos of us jumping. I had an absolute blast and hated leaving, but the car ride home was spent singing along to Queen and other good oldies, so I wasn’t too upset. All-in-all it was my favourite adventure in Australia so far, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to go back, or to the other creek people talk about called Alligator Creek.”
