Yarah - Day 18 (23.3.)

Today we were at the Royal Botanical Gardens to take part in the Aboriginal Heritage Walk.

My day started at 7:30am when I woke up. That is a little bit later than normal because I usually have to leave the house at 7:15am to catch the bus to the Keilor Campus. But today we [Georgia, Ryan (who is my host brother) and me] were driven with a car by my host dad Shane because yesterday we had house performances. I really enjoyed the house performances and wish we have something like this at our school, too.

We arrived at 8:45 at the Canowindra Campus, which is the Campus for students of year 9, and the meeting point for the German students when we drive into the city.

We took the tram at 9:13 am in the direction of Flinders Str. Our group was complete except for Enrico and Irina who missed the train. At Flinders St., we took the number 8 City tram to drive to the Royal Botanical Gardens. As we arrived at the Gardens, we met our guide and Irina, Enrico and Mr Eicker (who had waited for them at the tram station).

The name of our guide was Ben.

First of all we had a smoking ceremony with different leaves that represent the three generations: grandparents, parents and children.

This ceremony was to welcome our group. It was something the Aborigines did when someone new arrived at their place. Wominjeka!

I liked the smoking ceremony because we were part of it by lying eucalyptus leaves into the fire which Ben made. However, the smoke was disgusting. It did not smell very good. After the ceremony, we went to the lomandra plant and three of us (Nikita, Bruce and Yasmin) ate some of them. They said it taste like celery. In earlier times, the Aboriginal women used the Lomandra grass to make wattle baskets, so it is very flexible.

After the Lomandra grass, we went to the Paper Bark Tree which only exist in New South Wales and Queensland in the nature. The tree is very dry and before we left it, we had to hug the tree. (Comment Mrs Otten: Each guide in the Botanical Gardens has a special "hugging tree" that guests have to hug. There is a special bond between the guide and tree. One of the guide had a giant redwood tree as his hugging tree and when he retired, that tree died within three days. I think that is pretty impressive and shows the connection between the Aborigines and their land.)

Then we went to a Tea Tree. The leaves smell a little like lemon and eucalyptus. It is a medicine tree that is good for headache and migraine.

After the Tea Tree, we went to a eucalyptus tree which was older than 300 years old. There are ca 1000 different sorts of eucalyptus, but only 40 of these sorts can be eaten by the koala.

After this interesting news we went through the “rain forest” which was very beautiful.

At the end of the “rain forest” we stood near to the lemon myrtle tree. It is used to make tea and its leaves smell like lemon.

Right after seeing the tree, we drank the tea of the lemon myrtle tree. While we were drinking the tea, Ben showed us the original map of Australia and the flag of the Aborigines, which is like the German flag with black, red and yellow. In the flag, the black stands for the people, the yellow for the sun and the red for the blood (or the sand). At the end of the tour, we had to say what we liked most about the tour and what we learned. We talked about Ben’s origin and how his childhood was as an Aborigine.

Then we went to the shop of the Botanical Gardens and bought some gifts for our families. On the other side of the road was the memorial monument, the Shrine of Remembrance. It remembers the people who died in the first World War, but we weren’t allowed to go inside. Then we bought something to eat and drove back to the Canowindra Campus. Bruce, Janna, Elena and I took the bus from the Canowindra to the Keilor Campus at 3:30 pm. I met Georgia at 3:45 pm at the Keilor Campus, drove with the bus at 4 pm to Sunbury and from Sunbury to Gisborne. We arrived at our home at 5 pm.

At 5:30, Georgia and I ate a little snack. After that we drove with Shane to Colleen, who is a friend of the family, and made a silk painting of Australian animals and landmarks. I had so much fun even though I couldn't draw well. Georgia and I will finish our painting on Monday and I’m very exited to see our “masterpiece”. We came back at 8 o'clock and ate dinner. After the dinner I started to write the blog post.

I really enjoyed my day today it was very interesting and I had a lot of fun.

Three words I learned here in Australia:

Creep: It is a synonym for crawl. I learned it while I was playing “Pictionary" with Georgia, Georgia C.and Janna. I had to draw it and had no idea what this word means.While I was trying to draw it, they often said ‘crawl’ but never ‘creep'. At the end, I had to say the word because they didn’t know what I was drawing. We laughed about my drawing and the word, and so I learned this word.

Random Tree: I learned the word today, and it denotes a tree that is over 300 years old.

Obsession: I took this word because I didn’t know another new word, so I asked Georgia for a word. It means if you like something too much then you have an obsession for that thing.