Cairns

We have a total of 5 days in Cairns to do whatever we want, which is a nice break from the super stressful and structured days of classes. Some people rented cars and traveled around a bit, but most of us stayed at the hostel and are just hanging out around the town. There is a mall near our hostel with a grocery store, butchers, and bakers, as well as the all the normal mall shops, and free wireless at McDonalds! I went the first day to see how much dredlocks cost – they’re a crazy and irreversible hairstyle, but I’ve always wanted them and I figured, why not just get them while in Australia? But it turned out that even with a backpackers discount and looking sorrowful, the cheapest I could get them for was $350 so it was a no-go, and I still have my normal curly hair. Oh well! If it had been cheaper, I would have dredlocks right now and someday face the prospect of shaving off all my hair. Crazy!!

After hanging out at the mall, I walked around the main streets of downtown Cairns and saw lots of cute restaurants and touristy shops. It’s a peculiar town – there are very few buildings over 2 stories high, and most are single-story. There’s also a lot of empty shops, which gives the town a big of a tired feeling. But the downtown area is really cute, and I went to the beach with Kaia, Hannah, Lauren, and Razz to hang out at the public pool. The actual beach is very muddy and lagoon-ish, so they installed a swimmable area overlooking the shore and it’s actually really fun to hang out at. Lauren got a bit sunburned but the rest of us put on enough sunscreen, and I gave her some of my magical Olay lotion to help her recover.



Polynesian dancers and singers at the pool:


I also saw a scouting building on the way to the mall, so I figured I’d snatch a photo! It wasn’t actually open or in use as far as I could tell, but I liked the look of it:


We also visited the night market, which is a bit of a misnomer because it starts at 4:30. We got 40 minute full-body massages for $15, which was GLORIOUS!! We also had a free wine tasting from the one of the stalls, where they had combinations of mango, strawberry, lime, chili, lichee, and banana flavors in different wines. Delicious! I had a great time, and Razz and I capped off a really nice day with local fish and chips. I really enjoyed every part of the day and am so glad that tons of really fun people are in the program!

The next day, I went to Kuranda with Jocelyn, Ryan, Will, Helen, Ilan, and Jen. It’s a small town that overlooks Cairns and has a lot of touristy shops, but also a lot of aboriginal artwork sold by the artists themselves. It’s a really cute town and the markets were a lot of fun – I found my present for Dad! We had delicious fruit smoothies and bought these awesome friendship bracelets. At night, I saw Inglorious Basterds. I’m not sure how I feel about it, the movie felt more like “The Departed” than other Quentin Tarantino films and there was a lot of very graphic and explicit violence. It was definitely a really good movie, and it’s grown on me as I think about it more, but I just don’t think I was fully prepared for the craziness of the movie. Phew!

I went back to the public pool with Lisa and Razz today. I’m reading a book that one of my tutors recommends and I’m loving it so far! It’s a good fantasy novel, and after Inglorious Basterds, it’s exactly the entertaining and not-so-serious kind of literature I want to be reading. I’m actually torn between reading that and listening to my book on tape – “The Clocks” by Agatha Christie. I’m also waiting at the mall right now before seeing “Fame,” a movie about showbiz kids. We thought it started at 2:30, but alas, it actually starts at 4:30! Apparently this movie theater changes movie times without warning sometimes. Straaange! I hope it’s good!



And tomorrow – I DIVE! Yay Great Barrier Reef!

Yungabarra and Undara

Our Terrestrial Forest segment was 4 days long, and took place in two locations. The first two days were in the Atherton Tablelands, where there were rainforests and dry schlerophyll forests (eucalyptus-dominated forests). The rainforests in Australia aren’t necessarily super wet like the ones in Hawaii - the defining characteristics of rainforests here is that there isn’t any grass on the forest floor, there’s a closed canopy, vines grow, and the trees have bigger leaves. This section of the class involved lots of short hikes, drawing pictures, taking measurements of forest characteristics, and 3 swimming events! The first was at Lake Echam, which was a water-table fed lake nestled in the rainforest, and it was beautiful!




We also hiked to two waterfalls and they were stunning and great for swimming. John Hall, our professor, is also AMAZING. He’s the single most inspirational professor I’ve ever had, and his last lecture made most people in the class cry because he’s so passionate about making a change, and truly believes that we can do it. He’s also incredibly knowledgeable about the flora and fauna of the region even though he’s only a botanist by trade.





Fires near Yungabarra:


Claire Baker was one of our TAs, which is a bit of an understatement of her job. She’s an entomologist, and basically discovered everything there is to know about glow worms in Australia. She was the science expert they consulted for the PLANET EARTH “Caves” episode!!! AHHHH she’s amazing!! And she’s published like 15 or more papers and named about 5 species of glow worms. She’s also super enthusiastic, a great speaker, and gorgeous! I want to be just like her when I grow up… minus the bug obsession. She brought in a giant stick bug named Gretel for us to play with:


Platypus:


We also went night canoeing Yungabarra because our hostel offered a guided tour. Lisa and I were AWFUL at canoeing, but I don’t think it was entirely our fault – when we both paddled on the right side of the boat, the boat would still turn right! That’s just wrong. So as a result of this crazy, possessed boat, we ended up canoeing in about 4 complete circles and zig-zagging like crazy across the lake. It was a lot of fun and we saw platypus!! We also saw a baby pademelon (a kind of wallaby). And we saw big fires as well because it’s the end of their winter dry season, and lots of the forests have small sections of fire.





We also went bird watching at 5 AM to hear the “Dawn Corus.” My group of 4 was listening for the call of the Catbird, which sounds like a dying cat. It was a cool exercise, and ended in hilarity because of the discovery of the Cowbird. We heard a strange, low pitched call every once in awhile so we asked John the name of that bird. John said “it is the Cowbird, which sounds a looks just like a cow,” but two of the people in my group thought it was actually a type of bird. Steven ever recorded the “cowbird” call for about half an hour before we realized that he wasn’t joking and actually thought the cow moo was from a “cowbird.” The look on his face when he realized that it was just a cow was HILARIOUS and totally made my day. We still joke about it, and John Hall had a great laugh about it. Jamie and Steven, the two people who thought it was really a cowbird, drew some really funny renditions of what a cowbird might look like.

We saw some amazing things in the rainforest, like strangler figs. They start as epiphytes, meaning they have no roots, but eventually they take over the host tree and grow roots. They can live for multiple centuries and are beautiful!




Next we moved to UNDARA, which is full of dry schlerophyll forests and is basically the quintessential conception of “the bush.” It was fabulously beautiful, and I saw two sunsets and a sunrise while there. So stunning. It’s just amazing how much nature can speak to you – there are definitely people here who have beaten a lot of odds to be in Australia and at Stanford, and several of the group were crying the first night of sunset because it was absolutely perfect. This class had been so intense – moving to 3 locations, waking up at 5 or 6 every day and staying up late, doing crunched assignments and never having time to ourselves – but it’s been 100% worth it.




We saw tons of kangaroos and wallabies and walleroos, as well as the laughing kookaburra and lots of insects. Claire knows everything there is to know about bugs and I found a couple of crazy bugs, so I’m now renowned for ability to see through camouflage. Their defenses do not work on me!!





We went on hikes through the bush, which was gorgeous, and also went into some crazy lava tubes. The swirling texture is made by leeching calcium and the volcanic activity took place due to hotspots beneath Australia. It was really spectacular! At first I wasn’t super excited because I’ve been in an awful lot of lava tubes in the last year after Mount St. Helens and Hawaii, but it was beautiful and I’m really glad we did it!

Calcium deposits:


Star gazing is also UNBELIEVABLY AMAZING in the Southern Hemisphere. We saw 2 GALAXIES with our naked eye in the night sky – you can’t do that in the Nothern Hemisphere! We also saw some cool constellations like the teacup and Scorpio, and we saw the Milky Way at it’s brightest. Since we were in the middle of nowhere, there was no light pollution and no moon, so all the stars twinkled. We also had some amazing binoculars for the program, so we could see far away nebula and star clusters. John knows everything there is to know about everything and was able to lead us through the star chart!

We finished the class with a test, so I’ve now completed the first quarter of my classes in Australia! Crazzzzy. I can’t believe it’s only been about 3 weeks because I’m so exhausted and we’ve done and seen so much, but it’s also going by so quickly! Next we’re staying in Cairns for a few days, and then taking an overnight train to Gladstone so we can catch a ferry to Heron Island and work in the coral reefs. I’m SO EXCITED for the overnight train – one of my life goals is to be on an overnight train! And if a murder occurs and I have to solve it, so be it! Haha it will be just like the black and white movies! We’re going to buy some champagne and drink it in the dining car so we can be classy. I’m just looking forward to everything and am loving Australia so much!

Daintree River Mangroves

I LOVE STANFORD!!! (We're undefeated in the Pac-10!)


We just had the craziest whirlwind mangrove adventure! We flew from Brisbane to Cairns and split into two groups to be more manageable – my group of 24 went straight to the mangroves and the other half of the class went to the tropical rainforest first.

We arrived at our accommodations, which consist of a comfortable outdoor meeting area and tent dorms. It reminds me a lot of camping in Yosemite, except it’s much warmer here. I regret not bringing my water shoes – yet another camping item that I own, should have known to bring, and yet decided to leave at home. Well done, me.

We woke up bright and early on Wednesday and started on the Daintree River Cruise. We were briefed on crocodile safety and begin a 4 hour tour up and down the river. We stopped at different points along the banks to look at mangroves, wildlife, and 4 CROCODILES!! AHHHH!!! It was really cool and we learned a TON. I now know about 8 species of mangroves and can identify at least 3 pretty consistently in the field after one afternoon session collective leaves.






We were split into 3 groups of 8 so that we could really get into the field work component of the class. My group looked at forest fauna - the other 2 groups are looking at estuarine water conditions and forest structure. I’m really glad I wasn’t in the forest structure group since I’ve already done pretty much all that stuff this summer, and this group let me learn some new skills.





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We spent about 9 hours in the field Thursday and Friday doing a total of 4 experiments. I worked with Erikka on each of the experiments:

1. Infauna!
We had to look at any organisms between 0-10 cm below ground. We took 6 cores and put them through 3 seives to see if any mollusks were there – we found 2. Total. Over both days. Meaning that we went through 24 gross muddy samples to get 2 tiny mollusk shells!



2. Epifauna
We looked from 0 cm to 1 meter to see what insects were present. Again, we found very little – lots of ants and flies and mosquitoes (or mozzies as they call them), but not much else!

3. Leaf Tethering!
This experiment was really cool, we tied strings to 33 leaves from 3 species and put them on the ground to see if crabs took them underground and ate them. We still didn’t get much data but it was really fun catching crabs to figure out how many might be present overall. Erikka and I won, we caught 23 crabs! The next best group only caught 11, so Alex (our tutor – which is the Aussie term for TA) has to buy us beer. YAY!!!



4. Herbivory
We looked at the trees to see how much of the leaves were eaten by insects. I ended up tree climbing and looking super awkward but it was still a lot of fun! Again, not a lot of data.

Playing in the mangroves - the Indiana Jones wannabe was our tutor, Alex, a PhD at UQ.




We had the best group!!


We found a light gap in the mangroves! So exciting! We first noticed that the canopy was pretty low relative to the rest of the forest, and then realized that the holly mangroves had spiky leaves which only happens when theres a lot of sun. We then saw some fallen trees and concluded that we had found a light gap. It wasn’t actually a big deal, but it felt nice to work through that reasoning process and come to a conclusion on our own.



View of the Daintree River Mouth:


A frog chillin on our boat:


Fruit bats we saw from the boat:


Photos from the boat that took us up and down the river:





Basically, 2 days of field work was not enough to get any meaningful or even accurate data, but it’s plenty of time to get super grubby and have a great time. We had to present our data for a graded presentation with only 4 hours of preparation because our group spent so much time in the field – the other two groups had about 6 more hours to prepare than we did. But we ROCKED it and had way more fun than them, because we got the muddiest and actually got into the mangroves for a lot longer. I loved it! The first small segment of the class is over, and it was GREAT.

P.S. These crocodiles were both about 4 meters long. That’s HUGE!!!! If you want to escape from one, you should hit it on the nose. Just so you know!




P.P.S. Now we’re in the rainforest in Yungbarra and it’s beautiful here. We’ll spend the next 4 days trekking around looking at the rainforest. We already saw this huge 300+ year old Cathedral Fig Tree with tons of branches and root systems. It was gorgeous and wonderful – I’m so excited to learn more!

Flash Update

I LOVE AUSTRALIA!

I saw crocodiles!

I ate kangaroo!

I saw a bandicoot!

I went into mangroves!

I got eaten alive by mosquitoes and sandflies!

My professors are AMAZING!

My classmates are SO FUN!

I have no INTERNET!

I went swimming in a crater lake! And a waterfall!

THIS IS SCHOOL!?!?!

I NOW HAVE LESS INTERNET!

The food here is delicious!

I can't wait for today! And tomorrow! And the day after!

Again - THIS IS SCHOOL?!?!

I can identify 8 species of mangroves!

I can identify different types of forests across Australia!

I WILL HAVE MORE INTERNET LATER AND UPDATE FOR REALS!

I LOVE YOU!

Byebye Brisbane

Yesterday (Sunday) we went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, about a 25 minute bus ride from our motel. They had a student discount (yay!) and lots of native Australian animals to look at! It’s pretty small, but it had everything I wanted – kangaroos, wombats, and koalas.

Hanging out with an emu:


The kangaroos were pretty friendly because they’re used to being fed. WE didn’t buy any food, but we arrived around 9 AM as the park opened and ran into a nice ranger who gave us a bucket of kangaroo food. We fed them for over half an hour because they were so cute and soft. A good number of the kangaroos had joeys, and we actually saw joeys jumping in and out of their mothers’ pouches. It was crazy!!

Soooo many kangaroos!





A photo of a joey only partly inside the pouch:


The cutest little boy was feeding the "jumperoo":


I'm not sure if you can see this, but the joey's head and feet are sticking out of its mom's pouch. It was crazy!!


We also got to hold koalas and take photos - here's me and my date! He asked for my number after I put him down, but unfortunately I'll be leaving Brisbane tomorrow so I had to turn him down. He was quite a cutie though!



We also saw a sheepdog show. Julia, you would've loved it! They used two gorgeous border collies!



After Lone Pine, we went to the mall next to the motel and ran some last errands before we start classes and leave for Cairns on Tuesday morning. I’m going to use my sneakers in both the mangroves and the coral reefs since I don’t have water shoes and I can’t find any comfortable ones here. It shouldn’t be a problem, and I know they have reef booties at Heron Island so I shouldn’t have to wear my sneakers too much. We also got some bug spray and a Subway sandwich for lunch. So tasty!

We headed to the library at UQ for most of the afternoon. Since the internet situation is going to be pretty sketchy in Cairns, we’re all trying to find some basic research before we leave and maybe check out a book or two. We’ll have minimal access to libraries for the next month so I’ll have to do my data collection without the benefits of a huge library on site, but I’m sure it’ll be fine! For dinner, we went to the grocery store and I had soup, cottage cheese, chips, and carrots. I know it sounds like a strange combination, but it was really tasty. And of course I got TimTams for dessert!! They’re an Australian cookie and they are SO GOOD. The caramel flavored ones taste like Twix, and the double-coated chocolate flavor are deadly delicious. I’m in danger of getting addicted, and I like it!

Today we have 6 hours of class and then the rest of the day to pack, run last minute errands, and finish researching on campus. Tomorrow we leave bright and early for the airport so we can fly to Cairns and start our field work. We have 8 days of class and then our first final of the quarter – that’s ridiculous. We’ll have final exams every 2 weeks or so as we finish each ecosystem class. It still hasn’t quite hit me that we’re going to be tested on this, it still feels like vacation, but I’m exited and I’ll post again when I get the chance!