The final days and thereafter

By this point in the semester we had alot on our plates. We had finished our three classes, and were about to finish up our directed research projects! We had a Thanksgiving meal at the center, where we invited our host families for dessert! It was successful-- we had good food and dishes that different people made that they usually have on their Thanksgivings at home.  My favorite dish was made by our cook, Iris. It was an asparagus dish... I got the recipe from her, but I lost it! Thanksgiving was on the 25th this year, so I was thinking of my mom that day.


The dessert table was 25 feet long and filled with pies, cookies and Pavlova, an Australia delight. We watched Modern Family on the big screen in the back of the center, played cards and just chatted. Tim brought his baby Grace! She was so adorable. I got to hold her tiny self. She was so small that her entire hand hardly wrapped around Marcus's index finger! Holding her really made me miss Christian, Jack and Aiden.

Everyone was starting to go just a little bit crazy trying to deal with the stress of the internet being spotty and only two readily-available computers with internet on them, with people getting in others' personal space, and with deadlines soon approaching! We still had yet to present our research to the professors and interns, to create a poster and get graded on it at a poster presentation session at the center, and to present our research to the community at a local pub for community night, all on top of trying to pack and say goodbye to Australia and to the rainforest that we had been living in for the past three months. I would say that the last two weeks of the program was the most emotional that I had felt for the entire semester. I had a hard time deciding a research topic and project, then difficulties arose in the lab, when I found out that other methods should have been used in my data collection but not having enough time to go back and fix it, and lastly my computer crashing my microsoft word program and deleting about five hours worth of editing and writing of my DR that was due in the next hour. 

The first on the list of graded items was the presentation of our research to Moni, Siggy, Tim, Rohan, Leslie and all three interns! This was so nerve-wracking! We had a mock presentation the day before our actual presentation so that we could practice timing and get used to presenting in the room with such few people. My practice presentation didn't go so well-- it ended up being 8.5 minutes long, when it was supposed to be 20 minutes. After that I practiced and practiced and edited and practiced until it was time to give my actual presentation. I even practiced it out loud to Marcus (a very good listener and suggestion-giver) until I felt pretty confident of giving the real deal. My actual presentation went well! I wore my flower dress and was confident in what I had done and made.

The Deans were scheduled to arrive on the last week of the semester, just after our presentations. They were nice. They would eat with us, and we got to have extra-awesome food from Moni because they were there! We had an amazing brunch that had sausage, bacon, eggs, quiche, huge muffins, JUICE, and all sorts of fruits! If we had eaten that well for the entirety of the semester I have a feeling that all of us would have been a little bit rounder by the end of the program...

We had a crazy rain storm that just completely soaked everything. This was the biggest rainstorm I had ever seen, with the loudest thunder. It had been predicted that this was to be the wettest dry season that Australia has seen in many years, and I believed it! Every day it would be nice out and the sun would shine, but come 3 or 4:00, the rains would come and wash away everything. The puddles would be constantly filled to the point where frogs would lay their 1000s of eggs in them. The puddles started to look like they had tapioca balls floating in them, until those tapioca balls started wiggling around as the eggs turned into tiny tadpoles!

The day that we were to hand in our DR (Saturday, 4 December), everyone was freaking out. Those who had turned it in on Friday were relaxing, and the rest of us were scrambling. As mentioned above, my computer crashed my word document and deleted everything that I had been working on for the entire morning of that day. I immediately started to cry and ran into Rohan's office to explain what had happened and that I wouldn't be able to hand it in on time. He was very nice about it. He looked at my computer and tried to get it back, and granted me an extension. I was a bit relieved but still upset that I had lost all that information. So I went back to the computer lab to begin working on it again, and sure enough, I found a copy of the most recent document that was the one I had lost! Word somehow recovered it. I was SO relieved! The next obstacle to overcome after that dilemma was trying to print out my DR. The trouble was that the printers were connected to PC computers, so all of the labels on my graphs were missing and the formatting was all changed. So I had to spend another hour or so going through on a PC and fixing it. Finally, I was able to print out my DR and bind it with a backing and a plastic cover-- so official! It was a great feeling knowing that I had created the document that was in my hands, and that it looked so professional. Hooray! Only a few more things left to do...

The Monday before we left was our last day before we had our "disorientation" workshops and evaluation days. We got to go on a magical mystery tour where we went to Barron Falls, Kuranda, the Butterfly Sanctuary, The Humpy Nut World (a small little market with peanuts, icecream and veggies), Atherton and finally Tinaroo Dam to play frisbee for one last time with Tim. It was a nice day and was completely worry-free. I had a great great great time!

The disorientation workshops were really quite annoying. We had one day where it was a beautiful day and all I wanted to do was go to the creek and play around int he forest or go on a hike, but instead we had to be inside talking about alumni connections, putting SFS on our resumes, reverse culture shock and the details of the rides to the airport. It was exactly what I did not want to be doing for the last daylight that I had in Australia. 

Next on the list was to present at community night that Tuesday night. This event was held at the pub in Yungaburra, where a pretty good amount of people attended the talks and poster presentations. Four people, Joanna, Jake, Rhiana and Alaina were all chosen to present their powerpoint presentations, and at one point all of us had to stand next to our posters while the community members walked around asking questions about our research projects. It was nowhere near as nerve-wracking as when we had our poster presentations at the center, because this time we weren't being graded. We had finger foods and cake and I got a beer. Tim was presented with a promotion to Associate Professorship, and Tim and Siggy gave presentations saying goodbye to our interns Leah and Ian. It was a very successful night!

So Tuesday night and Wednesday morning we packed up all of our cabins and cleaned everything out. We had one last huge Warrawork and a cabin warrawork. We drove all of our suitcases up to the trailer, and brought our bedding to the common room. On our last walk to the center form the cabin, I heard the cicadas singing loudly and the frogs screaming behind the laundry area. I decided to go see them for the first time and take some pictures. They were stunningly green and cool! After that, I passed out asleep on the mountain of bed covers and pillows until it was time to take that last drive in to Cairns and to say "see ya later" to Australia.

I was dealing with the stresses of schoolwork, and while other people were starting to show their frustrations and sadness regarding leaving the forest, I held it all in expecting to be fine. I knew that I was frustrated and ready to leave, but I didn't know that I was sad and happy at the same time. One day I just sat on the steps, facing the entrance to the forest that leads down to the creek and started thinking and letting my emotions run free. I didn't realize how much emotion I had been holding back and had been refusing to let free until that moment. I thought and thought and thought not only about schoolwork, but finally about me. I thought about how much fun I had, and all of the times that I laughed so hard I cried, or cried so hard I laughed. I thought about the trips we got to go on, and how lucky we were to have seen all that we did. We saw the outback, we saw the rainforests, we saw the ocean. We saw kangaroos, snakes, spiders, cassowaries, coral reefs, pademelons, Boris the bandicoots and Charles-es. Thinking back on it, we saw what some people may never get the chance to see in the wild in their entire lives. We got to ride in awesome vans with our head out the window whether it rained or whether the sun shone down. We played sport with our professor Tim, collected rocks on the beach at Cow Bay, chased a cow down a dirt country road in a ute, went snorkeling in the desert, got to sleep in a cabin with 7 other people where we were kept up by the orange-footed scrub fowl and woken up by Ron or the figbirds and got to swim in an ancient crater surrounded by beautiful forest.

I know that I will always think about Australia differently than any other place I've visited, because I didn't just visit, but I lived there. I spent time learning about its animals and about its culture. It was definitely a great experience for me to have had, and I know that I will learn from it. So now, looking forward, I am about to finish up my last semester here at Smith College and gain more amazing experiences as I move into the next part of my life.

DR, DR, DR!

The day after we came back to the center from break we began thinking about our directed research projects (DRs). This is what we will be doing until the program ends. We previously chose which professor we would like to work with, and now it was up to us to come up with a research question to start tackling. I was so lost for this! I felt like everyone else had squared away their ideas, and were all set on choosing a question, while I was still in the process of deciding what it was that I was even interested in looking at. There were restrictions as to what I could research, too, because we couldn’t have too many people on one given topic. It ended up being that I chose to look at herbivory (the act of eating leaves, for those who don’t know) in relation to leaf pH and leaf thickness among 13 tree species. Soon after deciding this, my group headed off to Undara Volcanic National Park and the 40-Mile Scrub National Park to begin our leaf sample collection and to take notes on herbivory.

Undara and 40-Mile Scrub
10-11 November 2010


Undara was a lot of fun! Eleven of us squished into the van for a 3-hour drive into the dry rain forest. Along the way we collected firewood, which we later used for a bon fire that we roasted marshmallows over and told stories about ourselves and our past experiences. It was great to sit next to the warmth of the fire and breathe in the smells of summer, hear the crackling of the wood and see the smoke from the fire be swept into the sky and consumed by the stars. While collecting wood we found a skull of an animal, which we were pretty sure was a pig because it had tusks. That was neat… it was just like what I imagined to see when I think of dry, desert-like areas.


When we pulled into the camp site we saw a group of wallabies foraging in the grass. There were small ones, bigger ones and even some with little babies in their pouches! They were very watchful. The stopped and looked at us, waiting, and then continued eating the grass. There arms are so short, which I guess is an adaptation that suits them well. They lick their forearms to obtain subcutaneous evaporation to cool themselves down. That’s pretty neat if you ask me!


After checking in, we headed out to our sampling site, where we walked quite a bit off of the path to begin our research. We did this so that people wouldn’t see us conducting research. It’s a typical permit regulation thing that has to happen… we don’t want to bother others by sampling within a National Park. When we arrived, we were in a section of semi-deciduous dry rainforest. We broke up into our groups and started collecting data! I paired up with AJ, because we are both looking at herbivory, and started going around to all of the trees that we needed data for, including the python tree, lantana and brachychiton, among others. I had fun getting to know the trees and being outdoors doing actual research. It became a lot easier to identify the different trees from a distance and with ease by the end of the day!


After the 40-mile scrub we went to another site to find the same species. This place was more difficult to sample because the ground was covered in rocks, which made it difficult to walk without rolling our ankles. We had to be very careful of that and also had to be especially careful and mindful of snakes.


We then took a nice walk up a volcano to watch the sun set. It was a pretty quick hike which took only about 20 minutes total. When we looked out into the distance we could see miles of continuing dry rain forest and the sun setting across the horizon. We watched the sky turn from light blue to purple to orange to red and finally dark blue. We sat on a bench at the top and watched, letting our minds go free.


That night we had a barbeque and sat around the fire, as I described earlier. We were pretty early to bed because we had such a tiring day. The next morning was one of the best mornings that I’ve had in Australia. I loved waking up to the warmth of the sun on my face, to the pretty-faced wallabies and the grey kangaroos foraging outside of my tent, hearing the cacophony of the kookaburras from a nearby tree, watching the rainbow lorikeets talk across the bushes and searching for berries and hearing the click of the cicada wings before they started their song. It was so peaceful that I couldn’t help but be happy and be living in the moment.


The next morning we collected more data at the 40-mile scrub and then made our way back home. Shortly after we returned from Undara, our project proposals were due, and we began collecting data on the samples we had taken. I spent the next week in the lab taking pH readings of about 300 leaves and leaf thickness data of about 400 leaves. Needless to say, there were some nights during that week that I started confusing time with pH readings… and would read the time on the clock as 9.30pm and the pH readings as 5:04… that’s when I knew it was about time to put the meter down, unplug the microscope and go to bed.

Winding up to wind down...

so it's been twenty one days since I've last written... which means that it's been about twenty one days since I've had a moment free. We've started our directed research projects, which means that we've been spending the majority of our time in the lab... I am with Rohan's group, and my project is looking at leaf thickness and leaf pH in relation to herbivory. So far it has been really difficult setting up my own experiment, researching appropriate methods and finding time to do approximately 15 million pH readings with one single moldy pH meter. It's been interesting though... every day I find another problem with my experiment, and have been forever expanding upon my problems and experimental error section of my paper... hopefully everything will turn out alright, though! The other day I had a break down as I was counting the amount of hours I would need to spend in the lab collecting data on the samples I've collected... it turned out to be 600 hours. I got so overwhelmed that I just started crying. Rohan helped me to alter the experiment so that I am only collecting data on 2 leaf samples per species instead of 30 pH leaf samples per species and 150 thickness leaf samples per species. That made my life SO much better. So I spent most of yesterday and all of today in the lab taking pH readings and going crazy. 

I do believe that I owe a post about our mid-semester break trip to Magnetic Island, about collecting samples in Undara and about our last Cairns weekend trip…so here it goes!

Magnetic Island

30 October- 4 November 2010

 

So we got home from the Daintree, and then had approximately one day to study for our final exams. Friday we had our final exam for Tim's class, and then Saturday we had Siggy and Rohan's exams. They went pretty well, except they were all so crammed together that it was really stressful. After our last exam we all hopped in the vans and headed out to Cairns (haha, that rhymes!). On the way I felt so relieved that classes and exams were over and that I was going to get a break from almost everyone at the center and enter into real life again! In the van ride into Cairns we were driving along the road being followed by thousands of flying foxes (spectacled, grey and red) leaving the city to go find food in the forests. It was awesome watching their silhouettes fly by. The sun had just set so the sky was a rich bright blue. I had my head out the window just to feel the wind and watch the bats, the mountains and the forests roll by. I felt relieved by the end of that ride. 

When we got to Cairns we found a locker for our big bags because we weren't staying overnight. We ended up going to Gilligan's for the live band and 2 for 1 drink specials! It just so happened to be Halloween night, so all of the crazy costumes were about! At one point we danced with a man dressed as I don't know what, wearing assless chaps... it was ridiculous! So at about 11:45 we headed over to the bus station, where we got onto the midnight bus to Townsville. As soon as I got onto the bus I passed out... I was asleep before we even moved! The ride there was miserable... although I slept through most of it, all I wanted to do was be in a bed asleep with a pillow and a blanket, and not on a bus sitting up straight.

When we arrived in Townsville (at about 5:30 in the morning), Marcus and I walked through Townsville to find a place to eat. It was pretty early, so nothing was really open and we had to walk pretty far. We walked across a bridge and ended up at a small min-mart convenient store type of thing. We got two meat pies each and sat down on the curb in front of a hotel and ate them while we watched the town wake up.  We only decided to settle for meat pies because 1) we're poor and 2) the awesome buffet breakfast next door cost $22.00! That's ridiculous... while we were on the curb Marcus noticed that I had lost an earring... I must have lost it on the bus... it was the one that I had just bought at the Yungaburra Folk Festival, too. :(. Oh well! After eating, we went inside the hotel and fell asleep in the lobby chairs for about 20 minutes. After that we decided to mosey back and fall asleep in the park under giant fig trees filled with Australian king parrots. We had alot of time to spare, because our ferry wasn't scheduled to leave until about noon. It was a very relaxed morning.

So we boarded the ferry and made our way to Maggie Island. When we arrived (about 25 minutes later) we got on a bus to Arcadia, Alma Bay. The ferry docked in Nelly Bay. We walked from the bus stop to our house, which took about 5 minutes. The house was called Magnetic Blue, and it was indeed magnetic blue colored! It was beautiful inside! There was first a car port, and a downstairs with two bunk beds and a queen-sized bed and a full bathroom... and then an upstairs with a very open deck, kitchen, dining area and living room, and a room with two bunk beds, a room with one queen-sized bed and another full bathroom. It had all wood floors and had cool colored accent walls. There was artwork all over. The deck had a dining set and a hammock, where we often sat and had a drink and talked for a while or just took a nap. The kitchen had a garage door type of thing that allowed there to be a breeze throughout the entire house. It was gorgeous!

The first day Marcus and I took the Nelly bay walking track from Alma bay, which took us about 2.5 hours and was about 5.4 km. The hike was surprisingly hot! I didn’t realize that the vegetation there was more similar to Chillagoe than the rainforest I was expecting. It was a very up hill walk, with a small dirt track and a lot of rocks. We heard rumors that there were a lot of death adders at that time, and to be careful… luckily we didn’t see, or feel, any! There were a couple of lookouts every once in a while… the view was fantastic! We could see out across the sea for miles and down below at the few roads, and the beaches and bays…for  the entire walk we were surrounded by ocean views. 

We could actually see where the reef was out in the ocean, because there was a thin strip of clouds above it, from where the reef was producing aerosols. We didn’t think to look for koalas, but apparently the island has heaps! I reckon there were a few, but we just weren’t keen enough on finding them. We did see a rock wallaby, though… and cool lizards and skinks. When we finally arrived in Nelly bay, we walked around for a bit, had lunch at a picnic table and went swimming at the other group’s house! All-in all it was a pretty perfect day!

The next couple of days we made lazy days and took our time going to beaches, going to Nelly bay and getting groceries, and going to a place called the X-base at night. We explored the island by hopping on a bus with our day passes and going to Horseshoe bay and Picnic bay and having a drink on the water. I got an apple margarita, which was very sweet, but very good! At Picnic bay we went to a thrift store where I found Drop Dead Fred in VHS form! Hopefully I’ll be able to convert it to DVD and then have Drop Dead Fred, only one of my favorite childhood movies of all time!! The X-base is a whole other story! It’s located right on the beach, so you can see the stars and the ocean from just about every table. They have various games and competitions where you can win discounted or free drinks. It was fun twice, but then got sort of boring.

We had great meals every night… Marcus cooked delicious stir fry one night, and even wore an apron. I cooked penne alfredo another night, and it was delicious. Thanks, dad for teaching me that one!

The end of mid semester break came all too soon… although it was so much fun I guess we had to go back. We left on the 6:00am bus to go to the 6:20 ferry to catch the 7:15 Greyhound back to Cairns. On the way we saw a cassowary, and I found $5 in change! When we got to Cairns we just walked around… had lunch (tuna, again…), and just chilled. We went to an art museum. It was pretty interesting… there were a lot of prints and movies and such. I’ve definitely seen better… but it was a good way to spend a good chunk of the afternoon! While we were there there was some sort of controlled burn off in the distance… smoke and ash was rolling through the city, making it somewhat difficult to breathe. We couldn’t even see out across the ocean it was so smokey! We decided to duck into random stores to get away from it… and ended up having fun even doing that. 

Then it was time to meet the vans at the esplanade, have pizza and head home… we were very tired by this point, but also pretty refreshed. I wished it had lasted about a week longer... but it was an awesome break anyway!

I think that my favorite part of the trip was taking that long hike. It was really challenging for me, but seeing the beauty of everything really pushed me along and made me push through to the end. My shirt turned a different, darker shade of purple by the end from all of the sweat, and it was extremely hot and dry, but we made it. It was invigorating!

More excursions!

Yungaburra Folk Festival

22-24 October 2010

Friday night we had dinner at Moni’s house. Her house is very nice. She has 2 cats and SO MANY PILLOWS. The food was great!! We had fajitas with cheese, sour cream, chicken, CILANTRO and guacamole! We also had chicken wings that Charlie, Marcus and I basically devoured. Later that night we went out to the Folk Festival to check out the town of Yungaburra for a while. We had some drinks at the pub and met some friends that we know from the Peeramon. We were back at Moni’s by 10 in order to leave for the Center, because we were to be up early the next day to go back to the folk festival in order to set up our tents and begin our volunteer work.

Saturday morning we arrived at the camp site in Yungaburra at about 8 am, set up our tents, and then went to the volunteer desk to check in. We volunteered for 8 hours so that we could camp for free. The weather ended up being perfect! Sunny and warm and perfect weather for wearing flowy skirts. The Yungaburra markets were going on again because it was Saturday, so we strolled around there for a while, and we also checked out all of the other tents and festivities that were set up. There was an awesome tye-dye tent where I got an awesome long-sleeved brightly colored shirt. I also got awesome leaf earings from a little jewelry stand! They were so pretty… and then I lost one on the bus ride to Maggie Island L. There were food tents set up, lots of jewelry tents and very hippie-dippie styled clothing, artwork and jewelry stands. There were so many different venues where live music was constantly playing, and people we to be found every where you looked. It was such a happy, relaxed time! Saturday I worked at the Whistlestop café, where our artwork from the environmental art project was hung up! They looked so great all laminated. I also worked at the ticket booth selling tickets and at the Chapel checking wrist bands. I met a lot of cool locals who were all there volunteering with me. At night Marcus and I sat with a bunch of people listening to a band called the Blue Ruins. They were so good! This girl played guitar (backwards… she played a left-handed guitar on her right side…?) and her father played back up guitar and she sang. Her voice was amazing! We danced on the lawn and just enjoyed the music. We also got to dance on a HUGE dance floor to a live band. We danced like crazy! We were jumping and spinning and sliding, and having so much fun. I didn’t want it to end!

Sunday we did more of the same… we ate, we drank, we volunteered and we just had fun in the sun. That night there was a free volunteer party at the end of the festival, with live music again and free food! We all went, ate, chatted with the people we had met that weekend and then were brought back on a bus.

What a great weekend!

Daintree

26-28 October 2010

The drive to the Daintree rainforest was a little bit longer than the Chillagoe trip, but actually felt shorter… we stopped in the town of Mareeba, in another town for a field lecture from an Aboriginal woman named Robin, and at Mossman Gorge before arriving in the Daintree. She talked to us about Aboriginal land use agreements and the native title claims that her tribe went through in order to acquire rights to land and such. It’s such a difficult process that I guess I never really thought about before. Currently they are working towards dividing up the Cow Bay area into various land use agreements and such. While at that town we went to a thrift store and I bought an Australian flag hat for only $0.50!

We stopped at Mossman Gorge and were allowed to tour the place on our own. We took a free bus to the gorge from the parking lot, because it is illegal to walk on the streets. It was so beautiful there! Although Marcus and I went off on our own on what we thought was a circuit path… and then ended up getting somewhat lost. But it was alright because in the end we met up with Kenyetta and Natascha, who knew the correct way back. We followed the path along the rapids of the river where there were rocks and boulders, and saw huge golden orb spiders again and crazy, winding fig trees that looked like they would provide the perfect hiding places for hide and seek.

Once we arrived in the Daintree there were so many cassowary signs and speed bumps with rocks in them to seriously deter people form speeding. We got our rooms and our roommates and had some announcements. We were staying at a hostel, where Sophie was my roommate in a two bunk bed room. It was nice to have the room to ourselves! That afternoon, though, I saw a spider crawling on the wall… not a small spider, but a HUGE spider with orange stripes on its legs. I tried to catch it with my disc, but then it crawled SO FAST up the wall that I couldn’t reach it… and then once it was nearly to the ceiling, it lunged itself off of the wall and onto my pillow! Ah!

We got a chance to go to the beach, where I took some great pictures and we played some Frisbee and went for a long walk collecting rocks and shells… it was so beautiful and looked like it was exactly out of a movie. I actually started singing “born free, as free as the wind blows…” at one point, because it looked just like the scene from Madagascar where the rainforest meets the ocean, and the first sight you see are palm trees, white sand and blue waters.

The next day we got a chance to get a welcome to country ceremony performed by Robin at Cow Bay. It is a very rare ceremony that doesn’t often happen to such a large group. She brought us over to the creek that flows into the ocean a little way down the beach. First she stepped into the water, showering her arms and face with water while she spoke to her ancestors in her Aboriginal language. She then asked each of us to step down into the water. When it was my turn, she asked me to step down, and then asked for my name. She continued speaking to her ancestors, telling them my name and showering my arms and face with water. When she was finished, I stepped to the other side of the creek, and she did the same thing for each person in the group. Now her ancestors know each of our names, and will allow for safe passage through the Australian land. What an amazing experience!

Later that day we got to go to the Discovery Center, where we saw an absolutely beautiful rainforest! It was type 1b, which is very complex and has highly specialized life forms like palms, ferns and epiphytes. They had metal diprodonts and crocodiles that roamed this rainforest millions of years ago scattered along the boardwalk. They were absolutely massive! The flat-faced kangaroos at the time were something like 3 meters tall! That’s a 9-foot tall kangaroo!

We got a chance to walk through a type 3b rainforest, which is dominated by fan palms, and is a part of Siggy’s property. She has been maintaining it and catching feral pigs on the property for a while now. It was really amazing to see such a difference in the rainforest types… the fans completely closed the canopy, and radiated bright lime green light throughout the forest. Also on Siggy’s property we got a tour of her house, which is completely sustainable. We learned about how they built their solar panel tower, how every wall in the house makes a difference with the amount of sunlight that can penetrate, their use of few resources to build the house, and how leaving out unnecessary walls can save money and resources! Their bathroom consists of a lone toilet on their veranda and a lone tub. The septic system is all completely sustainable, and they use the compacted sewage for fertilizer on their land! Apparently after 6 months it no longer has a smell… hmm.

Then we went to the mangrove boardwalk, where we saw tons of mangroves with their prop roots, which they call stilt roots here. I had never seen rainforest mangroves before. We walked on a boardwalk through a swampy area littered with snorkel roots and other roots and soft-looking deep brown mud and a low tide. The walk ended at a sort of look out, where the swampy area that we had been walking through met the river, and crocodiles could often be found. 

We also got a tour of an exotic fruit farm. When we arrived there he had fresh squeezed lime juice ready for us, and gave us a brief history of the farm and how difficult it is to grow fruits because of changes in the weather and economy. We got to taste the Davidson plum, a very tart deep red fruit and the jackfruit, which sort of smells like wet socks and feels like goo, but actually tastes pretty good! There was one other fruit that was the best one there! It was called rollinia, and tasted like a mixture of banana and mango. It was so good! After the tasting, we walked through the farm and looked at the sugar banana trees, the jackfruit trees, and many more.

On the way back to the hostel we spotted a cassowary on the side of the road! We stopped the vans for about 10 minutes to get a good look at it. It was eating a dead animal on the grassy area on the edge of the forest, and had a baby cassowary next to it! The cassowary has such a beautiful color to its crest—majestic blue and bright red contrasted with a dark black body. The baby was light brown with black stripes. 

The next day we went on a board walk of the 1a forest, where we spotted bryophytes, relict species and a red-bellied black snake. Awesome! We also went on a boat on a crocodile tour! We all hopped onto this boat, which brought us up and down the Daintree river. Our tour guide taught us about the tree species, the mangroves and all of the different types of fauna that can be seen there. We got to see a tree snake first, which was cool… but then we spotted a female crocodile! She was hanging out in the water next to a log. She was very difficult to spot at first with her perfectly camouflaging brown, black and tan coloring pattern. I was glad that we got to see that! 
As we continued up the river, I just watched the passing trees and looked back at the wake we were making in the water. I was so happy just to be there and was enjoying every minute. The next bit of nature we saw were tree frogs hanging out in a tree by the water’s edge. They were such a bright green! It was a perfect picture—something I only ever imagined in picture books or on TV shows, but some how it was real life and I was seeing this with my own eyes… I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was! All-in-all we had an amazing trip and got to see and explore so many things. That was by far my favorite excursion yet!

and still  more to come...

Sensory overload!

So let’s see where I left off… I think I promised an entry about the Chillagoe trip… and then somehow I got distracted and too busy for life, and so I actually have way more entries than that! So we went to homestays, then took a botanical quiz, then went to Chillagoe, then took three exams, had a “mitigation threats” presentation, handed in our third field exercise, then went to the Yungaburra Folk Festival, then went to the Daintree, then handed in another essay for Rohan, took three more exams, finished classes for the semester, and went on mid-semester break to Magnetic Island. whew!

And so it begins…

Chillagoe

12-14 October, 2010

So we all piled into the vans at 8 am on Tuesday, 12 October and headed west towards the dry country. It took only about three hours for us to get there. We drove on a long dirt road dotted with cattle and wallabies, and through red dirt clouds from the vans ahead of us on the "highway". We stopped along the way to talk with two locals who are working towards protecting the Walsh River from being dredged by a local company who wants to take out sand for building purposes. They were very educated about the topic, and were totally against the whole project because of the wildlife that it would disrupt. That was a neat point of view to see...

When we got to Chillagoe, it was very hot. Apparently it was alot cooler than it had been in previous years, though, because it has been so rainy... apparently also the wettest dry season that Australia has seen in years. While in Chillagoe we got to swim at the Weir, which had a very shallow pool on one side, and then the water flowed over an edge to a faster flowing water spot on the other. It was great to get out of the heat, especially after a long day of driving. We played Frisbee and threw around a tennis ball with everyone and Tim and the interns. Tim made up a game called “weir ball”, which was fun.

We saw so many cool rock formations, and got to climb on some that sounded like metal when banged together, we saw other granitic rock formations and green ants that if you squeeze their butts it tastes like lime.

Over the next couple of days we had various field lectures. One was at an awesome cave formation that provides microhabitats and refugia for plant and animal species to go to. We explored the caves and climbed up the rocks and found passageways into other areas. It was very cool in there, which was a nice break from the heat. Also, we had a lecture at the old smeltering facility. That was a fun place to see how the town was once built up on mining and now is a ghost town because the economy couldn't support itself on mining alone... and there was nothing else around it to actually sustain it otherwise.



So now it basically is sustained on tourism and a little bit of farming. The old rocks and such are still at the smeltering place, because now it is deemed a national park. You could see the different colors in the rocks from where it was melted down, and all of the variations in the types of rocks. 

One field lecture that Siggy brought us on was called "snorkeling", but wasn't much snorkeling at all...we had to first climb underneath a barbed wire fence and then up a huge hill to the top of a dry, rocky lookout. All you could see around us were hills with dry grass, dry trees, the hot, shining sun and limestone rocks. This area was once covered completely by water, and the limestone rocks were 400 million year-old coral reefs. So this was the extent of our snorkeling trip... dry... hot... not wet... not refreshing... but still interesting. And, we could see the kangaroos hopping around all over!

The first night we had a basic barbeque... but the second night we got to eat at the pub, where they had all sorts of pasta salads, potato salad, tomatoes, and I got the barramundi on the barbie! it was SO GOOD! Then we stayed out at the bar and had some drinks.. and finally walked back to the camp site later on. Both nights we slept out under the stars with the flying foxes and the birds.. and the spiders... and the ants.  We watched shooting stars and just talked into the night. The first night of sleeping was great! It was warm, and I didn't get eaten by ants or mosquitoes or spiders! But then the next night... some people had been eating Pringles on the tarp that I slept on, and left them there... but I didn't know that.. and I woke up all night from ants swarming on my face and arms and legs! An also, at some point during the previous day I was bitten by something strange. The bite started off looking like a puffy bug bite, and then turned into a constantly growing pussing, swollen, infected mess over the next couple of days.
Leslie was constantly monitoring it by drawing an edge around it to see if it got bigger… and sure enough, it did! It grew until it was hot to the touch, basically consumed the back of my left upper leg and hurt to walk. Once I started feeling nauseous, Leslie took me to see the doctor. He didn’t seem too concerned about it, which was a good thing… but at the same time I was really nervous about my leg! So he gave me amoxicillin with some acid stuff in it, and it went away gradually… the picture isn't even the biggest stage...

I do still have a scar from where it was!

The drive home was pretty fast. Although before we actually exited Chillagoe we spotted a wedge tail eagle eating a dead kangaroo in the middle of the road! Siggy stopped the vans, got out and dragged the kangaroo by its tail off of the road and onto the grass, and checked its pouch to see if it had any babies... Siggy to the rescue!

Adventures, adventures, adventures!

So much has happened since the last time I've written...

So we went to our homestays AND went to Chillagoe! This post will be about homestays.. and my next, when I get a chance, will be about Chillagoe and other things!

My homestay was fun. We got picked up in Yungaburra on Friday at about 4:30 by our host mom, Penny. My first impression of her was that she was a quiet, sweet, old lady. She actually ended up being sweet and old, but not so quiet! So we drove to her house in Malanda (about a 45 minute drive from Yungaburra), which is a cattle farm. We pulled up into the driveway where we were immediately greeted by chickens and a dog named Dot! Although it wasn't exactly what I was looking for for a first impression, all objections had lifted, and I became very excited to be there spending time with an Australian family and doing Australian things. Also in the garage was our host dad Dave, or, Shore (pronounced Shorey) and a couple of his friends. He immediately offered us all (Rhiana, Camille and me) a beer! of COURSE we said yes! So we all had a beer (XXXX Gold) and some cheese and crackers while sitting around the kitchen table chatting. It was so interesting to listen to them all chatting together, because I couldn't understand almost any word that came out of their mouths! The way they speak out here in the country is almost a laid-back type of speech, or a southern accent... except Australian. I just nodded my head silently sometimes to be polite, and interjected when I actually knew what they were talking about! I laughed pretty hysterically at one point when Dave was talking about he never really travels... he has really only been to Cairns... and was saying that if he were to ever have to travel somewhere in a boat he would have to bring a bucket of dirt just to stick his feet in so that he felt like home! Hilarious!

So then we went out to dinner at the R.S.L (a local pub) where we ate dinner (pork and vegetables, nom!) and then had a couple of beers. We watched a live family band play, who happened to be friends with Penny and Dave (because everyone knows EVERYONE in Malanda). The band was great! The father and 2 sons played guitar, and the daughter played drums. One son was ABSOLUTELY amazing. I couldn't believe my ears when he played this one solo that his dad had composed! It sounded like 2 or 3 instruments were playing, but it was just him... pure talent! but anyway... as Dave was at the bar mingling with everyone (and I mean everyone) we saw our friend Blake from the Peeramon pub! I wouldn't believe my eyes when I saw him... I was like... dude, small world! Anyway, his dad and brother and sister were all there, and so we chatted for a while. Apparently he used to work for Dave and Penny... go FIGURE. Everyone was having a great time! Once the music started really getting going Penny started dancing! It was the cutest thing ever! She had bright pink pants on and a yellow shirt, and she was just such a cute little lady dancing like crazy with her hands in the air without a care in the world. As the night went on everyone was out dancing and having a good time. We finally went to bed at about 1:00 am! What an unexpectedly fun night out!

Saturday morning we woke up at our leisure and had a wonderful breakfast! First we had cereal (as some sort of appetizer) and then had poached eggs on toast with bacon and eggplant rounds. It was all home made AND when Penny needed more eggs, she went out to the chicken pen and got more... amazingly fresh :). We spent the rest of the day with Penny in the town of Ravenshoe (pronounced Ravens hoe). First we stopped at their friends house to see a one-month old baby! He was so cute... so precious! He reminded me of when I took care of Christian, Aiden and Jackalope when they were just brandy new... so cute! At one point Penny actually said to me "it looks like you've done this before..." when I was holding him. It made me miss my nephews REAL bad! So then we headed off to the parade and festival in Ravenshoe. It was fun! We sat on the bleachers and watched the parade go around the fair and all of the activities before we went to the various booths and got food. I goot a cheese Kransky-- a cheese-filled German sausage with sauer kraut and caramelized onions on top! It was SOO delicious! I also got a freshly squeezed pineapple-orange juice! A little ways down the row I got  a bag of 5 passionfruits for $1.00! It was the first time I'd ever had a passionfruit, and the farmer selling them let us each try one for free. They are very good! When you open them up they have a slimy seed that you scoop out and eat. It's sort of sour and sweet at the same time.

Next we went to the Torimba wood exhibit, where there were all sorts of art and sculptures, etc. made of local wood. They were all judged, just like at a county fair, and given prizes for the best ones. Some people are just so talented! The one that one the grand prize was amazing... It was a profile of a whale with its tail above the waves of a sea where there was an empty anchored canoe and beneath the waves was the rest of its body. It was really interesting! In the back of that building we watched a metalworker (blacksmith?) making cool metal trinkets. We also got to see Queensland's highest pub (The Tully Hotel) in Queensland's highest town (Ravenshoe). Afterward we stopped by the visitors center and read a little bit of history about the town. My general impression of Malanda and Ravenshoe is that it is a very large area that has a very small population. Most of the income comes from dairy and cattle farming, and everyone knows everyone. They work together to make their incomes work, and they are very friendly, out-going people just doing what they know how to do. They do seem a bit behind the times... I felt like sometimes I was living in a very patriarchical household-- Penny cooks and cleans, and Dave does the yardwork.

When we got home from Ravenshoe, we went with Dave to go check on the cattle and count the calves and check on a lame bull. Their property is so expansive! They own over 100 acres of land just for their cattle. We took the ute (pick-up truck) to go count cattle... Rhiana and I sat in the bed, while Camille sat in the cab! It was SO much fun! We had the wind whipping at our faces and could smell the countryside. It ended up being a very interesting ride, because we found a cow that was outside of the barbed wire... and so Dave reversed towards the cow to try to coax it into the fence, and when that didn't work we chased it from behind! The cow was sprinting towards the fence... and eventually snuck back under it just like a cat would under a fence. It was hilarious! Then we took the ATV to find the lame bull who had mud rot or something in his hoof. He seemed better Dave said-- he was walking again!

That night we had Barramundi, rice, cabbage and spinach, and carrots for dinner! It was the best meal that I've had in about a month and a half! The barramundi was SO FRESH! It was from a friend of theirs who had just caught it a few days earlier. nom nom!We went to bed fairly early because we were super pooped out from the day and had to get up in the morning to go fishing!

Sunday morning we had another great breakfast except this time we had no eggplant, but had toast with a jam that Penny bought at the festival... it was blueberry cointreau, made locally! It was SO TASTY! So then Dave took us out fishing... what an awesome trip that was! I got to drive the ATV to the creek! That was soooooo much fun! We went right through the meadows and on dirt roads, whil,e we were following Dave on his quad, with Dot on the back holding on! We wore yellow rain slickers and fished with only a line and a hook around a spool! I felt so in my element for the entire day! We first went to this one spot where I caught the first fish of the day-- a black rim! It was small, and we threw it back, but it was still fun! So then we went to another spot down the creek and I caught 2 more fish! They were all the same species and around the same size. I was having a grand old time! It was difficult actually casting out with the type of fishing gear we had and also difficult finding a place where I wasn't sunken a foot deep in mud!

After the second spot we went to yet another spot, where we got to get into the boat and fish in the middle of a river! It was a very quiet, calm river... but was really beautiful. The whole property was really very scenic! Anyway-- we had to roll up our pants and take off our shoes and socks in order not to get stuck in the mud! The boat also had no oars, so we ended up paddling ourselves to the other side with our hands so that we could tie our boat to a fallen tree across the way. This was after Dave shoved us out the the middle of the river about 5 times and then having us drift back to shore... I caught another fish here, except it got away before I could lure it up into the boat! Oh well... It was just Camille and me in the boat, and I taught her a little bit on how to cast her line. It was her first time fishing in her adult years, I believe! It was very nice... it even felt nice to be rained on while sitting in the boat, grubs in one hand, fishing line in the other and without a raincoat. Again, very peaceful and calm!

When we got back to the house, yet another friend of theirs was talking with Penny while she was cooking lunch. She made amazingly awesome chicken and vegetable stir fry with rice! I was so happy to have had such a great weekend and great food! After lunch we gave them their homestay gifts which they really seemed to enjoy! Rhiana gave them postcards and a book from Yellowstone, Camille gave them a nice bottle of wine and I gave them a Smith mug and a Smith picture frame with pictures of Smith inside. Shortly after we headed back to Yungaburra to meet the group again and head back to the center... I was happy that I had such a great weekend doing things I never would have done otherwise! It was really a great experience :).

until next time!

Em

rain, rain, go away...

So more of the same old same old has been happening. I am sick of the food, and sick of being told what to do, and sick of feeling like a four year old. They say that we're supposed to be following Massachusetts state law since this is a Boston University program, which makes sense. However, I am 21 in MA... but am not allowed to drink on site. The interns and our SAM can drink. Does that make any sense at all? no...
I am sick of not having any fresh vegetables, not having normal balanced meals... I just feel so gross about what I am putting into my body. I do feel good, however, about the exercise that I have been getting and the friendships that I have been making.
I am so used to being able to make my own decisions about what to eat, when to eat, where I can go, when I can go to the store... I just feel so restricted in an unnecessary way, since I am here in Australia with open spaces, huge places, etc.

Some awesome sightings have been happening recently! We lost our power at the center because a lace monitor actually got into the fuse box and got fried. Last week a group of students saw a 10-foot python on the way to the cabins! I wish I had seen it so I could log it in my field log book! The other night I was walking up the stairs to my cabin and I saw our friend Doug (who lives under our porch because he loves us) the small-eyed snake. That was a little bit unnerving...


Last Friday my group got to take some pictures around lake Eacham for an environmental art project, and take a tour of a nursery called T.R.E.A.T that is actually an NGO that works to plant rainforest seedlings. We will choose a couple of pictures to be presented at the Yungaburra folk festival in about a month. It's sort of like the photo gallery art project that we did in Belize with our advanced camp... except I'm being the student this time. It's interesting!

This picture is of a lenticil on a tree that I found with a drip of water streaming out of it from the rain.

Tears

Breathing

Crying

Telling

Truth

It rained non-stop starting Thursday evening, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It finally cleared up Monday afternoon while we were in Malanda for a field exercise with Tim. Malanda is somewhat boring... except for the thrift store where I bought a plastic canteen with an Australian flag sticker and Marcus bought an awesome jungle hat with a neck flap! That was fun. The rain was really getting to me... I was sort of feeling blah. Yesterday we went exploring various forest types around the area and looking at landscape ecology type stuff. Last night, though, when the rain stopped, it was a very clear, beautiful night! I could finally see the stars again, and the bioluminescing fungi were dotting the forest floor on my walk to the cabin.

Today we handed in our second field exercise report to Siggy and started our third field exercise of the semester. We set up transects along the edge of the rainforest and a pasture and took data on invasive species composition and % canopy cover of those areas. We'll be compiling the data over the next couple of days and then writing yet another paper.... we also have a forest types presentation tomorrow. Thus far I've already handed in 3 assignments for Rohan, had 2 for Siggy, and this will be the 2nd and 3rd for Tim... This is all within the first month!

Friday we go to our homestays... I'm actually not as excited as I thought I would be. I am going to a house in Malanda with Camille and Rhiana, and we're going to a cattle farm. joyous. But, who knows? It could turn out to be alot of fun, and a great learning experience! We return to the center on Sunday and then have a botannical identification quiz for Tim on Monday... then we're going camping at Chillagoe in the Outback until Thursday! Then that Friday is our first exam... so soon! I can't believe it's already October... and that my every move is planned out until the end of the semester.

It's too bad my every move can't be planned out for me for the next few years of my life... I'm not even sure what I'm going to do starting in January when I'm home. and THEN I have to think about the summer, and then the next year... and GREs... and grad schools. merp. I guess I'm just nervous about going home (which is actually not that far away) and knowing that I have to apply for things very shortly after. I'm glad that I can talk to Marcus about these types of things, though. I had sort of a break down yesterday, that I didn't really realize was coming. I couldn't even explain my emotions to myself at the moment... but I talked to him about it. It's really a relief not to keep things on my mind and have someone who is such a great listener...

Hopefully this weekend and the next week will go more smoothly than this one did.

Also, more Aussie slang to come soon!

Em