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.