May and End of Semester

I started writing this two weeks ago in bits and because I never have enough time at any one point and also like to get all the names and details right, it's taken me a long time to finish. Get ready for a long one!

On the first Friday of the month I went on another day field trip with Australia's Terrestrial Environment to Lamington National Park. This World Heritage listed rainforest reserve contains some of the world's oldest trees, way back from when Australia was still part of the supercontinent Gondwana, the most common being the southern beech. Arriving at the Binna Burra lodge we split into 4 groups for our bushwalk excursions. I went with the longest one (21km) simply to have the opportunity to see as much as I can in the given time. Even though we went up to a lookout at Mount Hobwee, there was minimal elevation gain on the hike. Nevertheless, it was still a pleasant walk filled with lots of gorging on Walking Stick Palm berries and highlighted by sightings of a pademelon and a beautiful sunset to cap off the day.

Scenic Rim

In what I believe is a Brisbane Saturday morning tradition, the next day I went to the West End Markets again with friends. Third time is the charm as the weather was perfect (the first time it was blistering hot and the second time pouring rain) and we got there just in time to score the closing fruits and veggie bargains. Afterwards we had lunch at Govinda's, an great little vegetarian buffet place that someone told me about at the UQ Cultural Fiesta a while back, where my friend and I proceeded to get our monies worth.

Missing this place so much

Sunday it was back to the Gold Coast hinterlands, this time with QUEST. Our first stop was O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat for a spectacular Birds of Prey show where we got close and personal to raptors such as barn owls, peregrine falcons and wedge-tailed eagles. You would not want to mess with these birds.


Look at those muscles!

After lunch, we hopped through various sights in Springbrook National Park, including Purlingbrook Falls and the Best of All Lookout (which was suppose to be a panorama of Mount Warning and the border of Queensland and New South Wales, but unfortunately was entirely clouded over and hence didn't live up to its name). As it got dark, we made our way to the Natural Bridge and glowworm caves. These glowworms, which are only found in Australia and New Zealand, are like little green LED lights and some hang off the ceiling in threads.

Glowworms

The weekend after I went on a camping trip at Girraween National Park with QUEST. Located in south inland Queensland about 3 hours drive from Brisbane, this park is dominated by giant outcroppings and boulders and features a bunch of cool hikes and wildlife. Over the three days we went on multiple day hikes to Castle Rock, Mount Norman, the Pyramids, the Junction and Granite Arch, all of which rewarded beautiful views of the Great Dividing Range and surrounding farmlands. The most amusing thing was crawling for a good 15min through a tiny pitch dark "wombat hole" being led by little kids. Although it was chilly at night (probably the coldest I've been in Australia up to that point), I loved that it was sort of in the middle of nowhere and am so glad to have gone.

Castle Rock

Enroute to Mount Norman

Literally sleeping beside these guys!

May 23-26th I went on a sailing trip to the famed Whitsunday Islands. I was really happy to be heading up to the warmth in the north after a few "freezing" nights in Brisbane (6 degrees inside your house thanks to the lack of heating is not exactly ambient room temperature). After a bit of a crazy rush from Proserpine to Airlie Beach with the boat leaving two hours ahead of schedule due to the tides, it was all smooth sailing from there on. Our boat the Atlantic Clipper was the largest of the lot with 40+ people on board and I hung out with some interesting people from the UK, Germany, Brazil and Canada. A few hours after boarding, we docked at one of the island inlets and spent the afternoon jumping off the onboard diving platform and chuting down the slide.

Life at sea

The next morning we started our day with a 6am wake up call followed by a snorkel with the vibrant fishes of the Great Barrier Reef. Afterwards we sailed to the Whitsunday Island where we went for a short bushwalk up to a lookout of Whitehaven Beach before going down to revel in the 98% white silica sand and crystal clear blue waters.

Supposedly Australia's most photographed spot

Whitehaven Beach

Another refreshing dip and a million photos later, dinghies transported us back on board for lunch. Then it was time for another snorkeling session, and for some including me, scuba diving! Being an intro dive, we started in very shallow waters at Luncheon Bay, where the instructor led us slowly further out and then down to the bottom. Although the visibility was not perfect, the underwater world is an entirely different realm and just absolutely incredible and left me longing for more. What better place to dive for the first time other than the Great Barrier Reef! While the subsequent groups dived, I snorkeled some more and played with Elvis the giant resident Maori Wrasse as well as several batfish. When we were eating dinner on the top deck that night, a pod of dolphins came and started swimming and porpoising right by the boat. Late in evening we had some fun and games to crown the king and queen of the boat.

The next morning we snorkeled for one last time before sailing back into Abel Point Marina around noon. In the afternoon I went for a long walk along the seaside boardwalk from the Airle Beach lagoon to Cannonvale Beach and back. Then I went to a fun didgeridoo lesson at an Aboriginal art shop courtest of the cruise company. It was quite a show with about 20 of us newbies all blowing our faces out in the store. Playing the didgeridoo really isn't difficult and you can make all sorts of sounds.

Flying back to Brisbane and all of a sudden 12 weeks had whipped by and it was the last week of classes. That week we had a wrap up BBQ for the two Australia's environment classes. I also went to the School of Biomedical Sciences Thanksgiving Service to show my gratitude for the families of the donors we used for our dissections. Hearing some of them speak about the lives of their late father or sister was truly inspiring but also really hit hard home the crude cyclical nature of life and death.  

The last day of May (and of "classes") was spent at the Australian Zoo for my final field trip. Now even though each and every one of us had seen these creatures a dozen times, our first stop was still the Roo Heaven where we all proceeded to hand feed them and take a million quintessential 'roo photos. We then had a bit of free time which I spent at the koala and rainforest aviary walkthroughs as well as the echidna and snake enclosures. At noon we all converged at the Crocoseum for the croc show. Despite all the dangerous creatures in Australian that can harm and kill you, crocodiles are the only ones that actually want to eat you. They hunt by being especially good at hiding in shallow water and then swiftly pulling their ignorant prey into the water. Watching them devour whole chickens and charging after the zookeepers made you appreciate their prowess and voraciousness.

Somebody is hungry

 The rest of the afternoon was filled with elephant feeding (such a merry experience!), trips to Africa and Asia, , marveling at wombats, and more. All in all, a splendid day with the animals and there's no place to make you feel like a little kid again!

Rivals koalas in cuteness

On my last weekend of freedom before living inside a hole for exams for the next two weeks, I went down to the Gold Coast for a whale watching tour on Saturday with a friend and then stayed at Surfer's Paradise for the Color Run on Sunday. Unfortunately we didn't see any whales as it was still too early in the season but it was still a magnificent sunset cruise (along the Nerang River we saw some of the wealthiest houses in the area, including Jackie Chan's vacation home). And with the sighting guarantee I could come back for another cruise (which I did in July after my marathon, more on that eventually).

Sunday morning I met up with my friend Stephanie and some Americans and ran in the happiest 5k on the planet. So much cheering and laughter was to be had and we were covered in a rainbow of colours in no time.

The next two weeks was admittedly very difficult to sit still (but had to be done) especially as I watched many of my friends go away on pre-exam excursions. The huge month of travel ahead though was a huge motivation. UQ was also awesome with the exam support, providing everything from petting zoos on campus to free midnight pancakes in the libraries. In between studying, I met up and said goodbye to a few friends, and went to the newly opened and renovated city hall (which has a pretty cool exhibit and clock tower). The last Sunday before I went away, I did the City to South 14k which was right on home turf, going from Southbank along the river through St. Lucia to West End. Running through all these places was a great way to wrap up my stay in Brisbane.

Stay tuned for my post-semester crazy month of traveling! I know I said mid-semester break was the best two weeks of my life but I didn't know at the time that the best was really yet to come.

Autumn in April

You know your soul is still in the Southern hemisphere, when you repeatedly inadvertently walk on the left side, see flashes of cars turning into the wrong lane, and mistaken squirrels for flying foxes and/or possums.


After riding a high from two incredible weeks of travel and fieldtrips, I had to pull in the reins slightly back at school, with three mid-semester exams and two papers just waiting for me to get started on. Somehow I managed to finish everything, albeit not with my best effort (you have to understand that I never do things this last minute and therefore have no experience cramming). But hey, everything worked out fine in the end as reflected by my grades this semester. In between all these assignments, I still managed to go on some awesome day trips, proving that an exchange student has the innate ability to always find time to explore.


April 21st, the day after my Saturday anatomy practical exam, I went on my first scramble in Australia with the UQ Mountain Club to Mount Tibrogargan, one of the Glasshouse Mountains in the Sunshine Coast hinterlands. At 364m, Mount Tibro could hardly be called a mountain by Canadian standards. Then again, the entire continent is extremely flat and Mount Co-otha (which I have ridden and ran up a few times) in Brisbane is only 287m. The scramble itself was fairly difficult (at times you were basically free climbing) but the benefit of a low mountain means that it took only about 45min up and you can see very clearly the views below.

Group photo at the top

Two of the other Glasshouse Mountains



After descending, we still had the better part of the day (it was only 10:30am!) and so some of the Aussie locals in the group suggested checking out this cool waterhole in the surroundings. We drove inland through Woodford, home of a famous folk festival in December, and after some directional uncertainties, found this gem of a waterhole at Stoney Creek.

We spent the afternoon swimming, doing synchronized jumps, and rock hopping across creeks to check out a hidden waterfall at the suggestion of a little boy. Easily one of my favourite days in Brisbane that makes feel so at home that I wonder if I had really only been there for a few months.  

 

 

The following weekend was dedicated to climbing more peaks. My friend Stephanie and I had planned on doing a camping trip to Mount Warning in order to ascend it at sunrise (because it is the first spot the sun hits in the morning in Australia). Unfortunately Mount Warning was still closed due to flood damages in January and so we scrambled to change our plans. In the end we decided on doing two day trips, one in the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast hinterlands respectively.

 

On Saturday April 27th, after walking 4km from St. Lucia to Woolloongabba (including a short cut that involved climbing up the side of a bridge), waiting around to pick up our rental car and then stopping at Coles to buy lunch, we finally arrived at Mount Maroon (966m) in Mount Barney National Park around 1pm. Some hikers who had come down and were leaving told us that it took about 3 hours return so we were still really good for time. Who would have known that within 10min of walking I would run into a friend who I'd met on last week's trip to Tibro? The hike itself was amazing, fabulous views of the hinterlands and we hardly saw anyone else on the track, granting a sense of serenity.  

 

Not that the popular places that I went to are are any less beautiful, but looking back, it's days like this that make my stay in Australia extra special knowing that I went off the beaten path to go somewhere that most visitors would overlook.

 

The next day we headed north to the 208m high Mount Coolum. This time it was more of a hill walk as we made it to the top on these well-formed stone steps in less than 10min. Don't judge the summit view by the elevation however, as I have never seen anything as cool as that on top of a mountain. On the east there is a unobscured view of the entire Sunshine Coast beaches. And stretching expansively on the other side are the Sunshine Coast hinterlands, and further away, the Great Dividing Range.

 

 

We took our time soaking in the view, and because we obviously didn't get enough hiking in, drove to Noosa National Park to do the Coastal Track. Because it was such beautiful weather and there was also some event going on in Noosa, we could not find anywhere to park and had to forfeit the walk in the end, which was really sad because Stephanie's friend Chris was leaving Australia in two days and had really wanted to see it. In its place we decided on just going to hang out at a less crowded beach in Caloundra on the southern tip of the Sunshine Coast. We set up camp at King's Beach, and my friend Kayleen and I went playing in the water just like the many little kids that were there. Just another perfect beach day in Australia.  

 

 

 

Oh Wicked cars!

More to come on May!

The end of an era

Eight flights (two more coming soon) including three nights airport sleeps, a marathon, countless magnificent scenery all over Australia and New Zealand later, I'm sitting here in my last few hours down under going through pretty bad nostalgia as I muse over all the epic pictures and memories. I have been bitten badly by the traveling bug, to say the least. Traveling is such an enriching and wonderful thing and never have I grow so much as a person in such a short amount of time. Maybe it's the fact that I have been a lot more open but many friends that I have made here I feel like I have known for ages. It's amazing how you can feel so at home and at ease in a place so isolated from the rest of the world that you have only been in for a few months. To say that I am going to miss everything would be an understatement, and part of me is anxious of the readjustment to normal life that is imminent. 

When I get home I will take the time to thoroughly finish writing about what has been the grandest adventure of my life. Until next time Australia, and don't you worry, there definitely will be a next time.

The grand finale, part 3: Heron Island

Yes, this is wayyy overdue. Between the last post and now, I went away on two little weekend trips (to the Whitsundays and then the Gold Coast Color Run, details and pictures will come eventually), classes ended, and since then I have been basically holed up to catch up on all the studying I didn't do during the semester. Thank god for SWOTVAC  or I might seriously have trouble passing all my classes. Now I'm generally pretty good with avoiding procrastination but this is probably the closest I'd ever come to cramming. I can finally breathe a half sign of relief (before going back to tackle my last two exams next week) after getting through two back to back exams today.

Anyways back to Heron. Way back on April 6th, after returning from Fraser Island at around 4:30pm, I boarded another bus at 11:30pm that same day for an overnight 11 hour drive north to Gladstone (a good portion of the route which we had just driven back from), where we took a 2 hour extremely choppy ferry ride to the Great Barrier Reef! Heron Island is a tiny coral cay (you can walk around the entire island in 25min) at pretty much the most southern tip of the GBR, and as one of my lecturers said, the best place in the world. I have never come face to face with much marine (or any for that matter) wildlife in my life, and am so grateful to have gone there as it is a place unknown to most visitors to Australia.

This was my first encounter with the World Heritage Listed Great Barrier Reef and needless to say, I was blown away. Over the next five (really four) days, I went snorkelling 10 times. It became a routine to hop out of bed at 5am everyday to jump in the water and every snorkle is filled with turtles, stingrays, sharks, a multitude of beautiful fish and of course the grand creator of it all, the coral reefs. The busyness and intricacy of the reef communities is absolutely fascinating and with each snorkel, I felt more and more at one with everything in the ocean. In between swims during low tide, we also went on many walks to check out the organisms on the reef flat, search for turtles nesting, and simply hang out at the pier watching the turtles and sharks frolick.  

We did have to do a research project somewhere in between as well and my group looked at the distribution of different types of algae on the reef flat. Not quite as interesting as another group who could use snorkeling as an excuse to examine the feeding patterns of butterfly fish, but it was relatively easy and we got it done quickly which allowed more time for exploration.
     
Here are some underwater pictures taken by others. Even these great pictures don't do it justice.

 

 

To culminate this amazing experience, on the last night, we did a Harlem shake, at the suggestion of the lecturer.

Part 2: Fraser Island

To all my Canadian friends who want a laugh, the high was 18C yesterday and some Australians that I met called it icy. People were decked out in thick hoodies, beanies and nothing more appropriate than... uggs.

Anyways, my exam schedule came out about two weeks ago and so this whole time I have been figuring out travelling plans afterwards along with school stuff (oh and a camping trip thrown in there too, will get to it eventually!). I now have a pretty solidifed itinerary (and it will remain a surprise until the time comes) but am still needing to sort out all the logistics. Needless to say, the next two months are going to be crazy and I can't wait!

Back to a month and half ago on April 2nd, I went on a 5 day field trip to the World Heritage listed Fraser Island with my Australia's terrestrial environment class. The journey to Fraser, the world's largest sand island, involved a bus to Inskip point and then a barge across the Great Sandy Strait. Imagine lots of lots sand and then some more and that was my first impression of Fraser. Quite fittingly, we were greeted upon arrival on the main beach by three wild dingoes (Fraser has the most pure breed of dingoes due to its isolation from the mainland and a ban of bringing domestic dogs to the island). There were no paved roads on the island, with the main beach being the highway and sand tracks traversing through the forests to get across the island. We stayed at the University of Sunshine Coast's campground, Dilli Village with some in tents and others in bunkhouses. The first night we had an Aussie trivia competition (questions that nobody could understand) with alcohol being the top prize (only in Australia).    

Sand, sand everywhere

First glimpse of a wild dingo

Is this even English?

Over the next few days, our schedule loosely consisted of doing ecological sampling for our assignment for half of the day and exploring some part of the island for the other half. Our work included doing transects on the sand dunes, sclerophyll forests and rainforests (Fraser is the only place in the world where rainforests grow on sand, and I can tell you a lot more about why that is so because I wrote a 2000 paper on this but I will spare you the details), bird watching, small mammal capturing and insect collecting. Even though the trip involved quite a lot of work , it was really cool doing all these activities that were completely out of my field and I loved every minute of learning. There were so many epic memories (such as watching the goanna steal people's food and getting stuck in a mangrove swamp) but if I only had to pick one it would be driving back from Lake Mckenzie on the second last day along the main beach as the tide was coming in. I will let pictures do the rest of the talking.

Lake Wabby, a beautiful freshwater lake perched at the bottom of sand blows.

Rainforest on sand, mindblown!



Most exciting ride of my life!

Sydney, Part 1 of the best two weeks of my life

Disclaimer: The following posts and pictures will inflict strong desires to immediately purchase a flight ticket to Australia. Be prepared to control your urges (or not!)

I had the best two weeks of my life over mid-semester break and the week after. It all started with Sydney, which wasn't even planned until just two weeks prior when I looked at the calendar and realized that I could make a trip out of the four days before the consecutive class field trips. After the frenzy of booking flights, hostels and planning what to do, Elsa and I found ourselves on the 80min flight to the largest city in Australia on the last day of classes before mid-semester break. Upon arriving, that first day was pretty uneventful aside from the two hours that it took for the hostel that we stayed in to arrange the airport transfer (at least in the end we didn't pay for it). 

On Good Friday we woke up bright and early but still just barely made it to the pickup area in time for our day tour to the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains are a mountain range about 100km west of Sydney, and called so for the blue haze that appears over them due to the eucalyptus tree oils. Interestingly more than half of our tour group were Indians, although all of them were expatriates. On the road we went and the first stop that the tour guide/driver made was outside of a military reserve for us to look at the kangaroos there.

I was already mind-blown with the incredible view at the 20s lookout stop that we made on the way driving up. The first stop was Scenic World, a touristy place where you could go on these cablecars down to the bottoms of the cliff to get a good look at the Katoomba waterfalls and the Three Sisters. We decided to forgo paying for the cablecars and just hike down (funnily, the tour guide warned us that there would be 1000 steps and to keep in mind of our fitness levels). It was the best decision ever because we had the freedom to go wherever we wanted and the line-ups (queue, as Australians say) for the cablecars were huge.

On top of Scenic World

Afterwards at Echo Point, we got a closer view of the Three Sisters, these three sandstone rock formations that were the icons of the Blue Mountains. You can read about the Aboriginal legend here. I even walked down onto one of the Sisters. After lunch at Katoomba, as a relief from all these people, the guide took us to two other lookout points that were practically empty. My favourite was the last one which was simply this flat piece of rock that juts out off the side of a cliff.

View from Flat Rock

One thing I really wished for was the ability to just explore and hike the area more but obviously it wasn't possible given our time restraints. Definitely an incentive to come back though! Upon returning to the city, we walked around Darling Harbour where there was a circus festival going on and got some good night views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House (our firsts of many!).

The remaining one and half days we were free to explore the city as we wish so I made a really loose itinerary of what we hoped to cover prior to. I have discovered that I loved planning trips and being someone who thinks sleeping is a waste of time, I tried to pack as much as I can in one day without it being overwhelmingly stressful. Honestly there really weren't much that I would change about how things went for this trip because it really was practically perfect.

Saturday started with a run along the Sydney Harbour watching the sun rise over the Opera House. I had planned to run over the Harbour Bridge and spent forever looking for the entrance to go up that by the time I found it, there wasn't enough time to go all the way across and back. At least I went about a quarter of the way and can now say that I've ran on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I felt like a rebel booking it back to our hostel in King's Cross (the entertainment district of Sydney) amidst the serenity of the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Harbour Bridge

Around mid morning, we (there were now four of us including a friend from Brisbane who arrived the day before and another Swedish girl we met at the hostel) boarded a 30min ferry across the harbour to Manly, a beautiful beachfront suburb of Sydney. We browsed through this arts and crafts market there before hanging out at the beach (and of course I played in the waves) and then getting lunch at this cafe that had amazing sandwiches.

Manly Beach

View of the Opera House from the ferry

Ferrying back to Circular Quay, we took the bus to Bondi Beach for our second adventure of the day. There is a reason Bondi is world famous because it really is a beautiful and well maintained beach. We didn't however spend much time there because it was super crowded and we were eager to get onto the Bondi to Coogee walk. For anyone who ever goes to Sydney, this is simply a must! It is about 7km of stunning coastal cliff top views, passing by 4-5 other beaches, rock pools (one of which I jumped in), bays and even a cemetery (must have paid a lot to be buried in such a cool place) along the way. We really took our time to savour everything, starting a bit after 4pm and reaching Coogee just before 7pm as the sun was setting. The perfect ending to a perfect day.

Bondi Beach

Just a taste of the views along the cliff walk

Elsa and I started the last day with a nice walk to the Royal Botanical Gardens (the best one out of the three cities I've been to), stopping along the way to get a closer look at the Opera House. Maybe it's this ecology class that I am taking or maybe it's the Australia's magic, but I, having never really had an interest in plants before, really got into the trees and flowers that day and wanted to know everything about them. We wandered around for almost two hours there before making our way to Paddy's Markets in Haymarket. If you haven't caught on already, I love markets. Paddy's sold just about everything from produce to clothing to electronics, for good prices too. Afterwards, we had lunch in nearby Chinatown before catching the train back to the hostel to retrieve our stuff for departure. Even though the flight back was extremely turbulent and took twice as long because there was a storm and Brisbane's domestic airport only had one runway (who would have thought that?), nothing would have spoiled this wonderful weekend.

To sum it up, Sydney is an extraordinary city with amazing beauty and climate. The only thing is the sheer number of people that are everywhere, which at times was just too much.

Stayed tuned for parts 2 and 3!

Straddie

I realize that this blog is completely backlogged as I am writing about things that happened about a month ago (wow, has it really only been a month, it feels like eons!), but fear not because I will eventually catch up with the present. Given that how much I've been away in the first half of the semester, school work has piled mountain high which is why I have basically been living in the library earlier this week with no time to write.

From March 23-25th, I went on my first of three overnight field trips with my awesome Australian environment courses. Bright and sunny Saturday morning we took the ferry over to North Stradbroke Island, or affectionately known as Straddie (they really like to shorten everything here: brekky, arvo, barbie...), which is only about 30km from Brisbane. It is the world's second largest sand island, and I can now say I have been to all three of the world's largest sand islands: Fraser (post will be soon!), Straddie and Moreton. Interestingly, they have two sandmines on Straddie, which basically look like a giant mountain of sand, for glass production and beach maintenance. That's one of the reasons that Straddie has actual asphalt roads unlike the other two sand islands.

Upon arriving at the island we went for a walk along the mudflats and rocky shores at Dunwich, which is the "town" where the UQ research station that we were staying at, to gather ideas for our coastal environment projects. Of course everyone wanted to do something with animals but the only interesting animals that we could find easily were snails and crabs. Since it was during low tide, we saw armies of soldier crabs, which are these blue, almost spider-looking crabs that walk forwards instead of sideways like most other crabs, coming out to feed. Needless to say just about everyone decided to do their projects on them. That afternoon I had my first ever seine fishing experience. With a very large net that required 10 people to hold, we walked into the ocean to see what we could catch. The majority of what we found consisted of two different types of fish, neither of which I can remember the name of.

Got to know these really well!

The next day started with an optional bird/sunrise watch excursion at 5am. Unfortunately we didn't find too many birds because the location that the tutor had wanted to take us was closed. However we caught the sunrise just in time at Brown Lake, so called because it is stained brown from the tannins in the leaves of the trees around it. The rest of the day was spent entirely on our project. I have never done a real scientific experiment where I go through the whole scientific method and collect my own data for analysis so it was definitely a neat experience. Our group decided on doing crab races where we collected soldier crabs and another common mangrove crab to test whether forward locomotion was faster than sideways. So I spent a good portion of the day catching, dropping, and then recatching crabs. Given the large numbers of soldier crabs that were in the research station and how good these creatures are at escaping, I am surprised that we didn't find any in our beds that night.

Sunrise over Brown Lake



Crab hunting

On the third and final day after giving our presentations we finally had the day to explore other parts of the island. The bus drove us to Point Lookout on the northern part where we did the amazing gorge walk along the cliffs by the ocean. Besides the absolutely breathtaking scenary, we saw so many pods of bottlenose dolphins and sea turtles. After lunch we had a few hours to go swimming and hang out at Cylinder beach, which remains my top three favourite beaches in Australia (and believe me, I have seen and been to enough beaches probably more than the average person does in their lifetime, not that I can ever get tired of them). 

• The most beautiful beach that I'd seen up until then

Oh I should also mention that I saw my first (and still so far only) wild koala in one of the eucalyptus trees across from the research station!On an unrelated note, the frequency and quantity of meals that they eat here in Australia is something I first got to know at Straddie and then experience really well over these three overnight field trips. At every one of these trips, they feed us five times a day with morning and afternoon teas in between the three main meals. Definitely gained some weight from this constant eating.