I am alive

Wow, I have a lot to catch you guys up on. Sorry for the long period of nothing…I got pretty busy and had to actually start doing work? It definitely took me by surprise. Well, I guess I’ll start from where I left off…I’ll try to organize everything so that it’s not too overwhelming for me or for you all. So I think my last post was all about my dive trip, which at this time seems so long ago. Since then, I have set up a pretty routine week. Tuesday nights I have been attending a Bible study aimed for freshmen, but since I am kind of like a first year, I decided to join. Everyone is really nice, and we have been having some really good discussions on the role of the church and what the Bible has to say about how a church should run. Wednesday nights I have been playing on an Ultimate Frisbee pick-up team that is part of the UQ league. Most of the people that play are really new to the sport, so the focus is more on understanding the game and having fun instead of being super competitive, which I like. Our team name is the “Good Times” and our cheer is “Let the good times roll!”, but ironically no one knows The Cars song that goes along with that cheer. I started singing it during the game and everyone asked me what song I was singing. I don’t really understand why they think that cheer is cool. Thursday nights I have meetings for the scuba diving club on campus. Most nights I just go to grab the $3 dinner, but sometimes when I feel up for it I’ll do the pool training with a group. We look pretty goofy because we swim with our masks, snorkels, and fins next to all these hard core swimmers. After doing all that stuff plus my school work and some hanging out with friends, I don’t really have time during the week to do anything exciting. My weekends, however, have been pretty enjoyable. The weekend after my dive trip I told you guys I was going to be playing in a frisbee tournament which ended up being tons of fun. I played for another university’s team, and although they had tons of new players, we did pretty well. We lost all our games horribly, but by the end, most of the girls had a pretty good grasp of the strategy of the game. The coach of the women’s team in Brisbane asked if I was interested in training with the team and playing in Nationals with them which made me feel pretty good. Overall, it was a really fun weekend, and I made a lot of Australian frisbee friends which are always fun to have.
The next weekend (21 March) I had my first field trip for my Australia’s Marine Environment class to Moreton Bay Research Station on North Straddie Island. It was quite an extraordinary trip. The research station is on the bay side of the island and is run by a woman named Kathy who has quite a plethora of knowledge regarding the area. The first day we got there we took a beach walk in front of the station, and I learned so much cool stuff! The first area we explored was a rocky shore region, and our tutor Bonnie did a really good job of pointing out different organisms and relationships that are usually found in that region, including mollusc-eating snails and hermit crabs. We then travelled across a mud flat to a sandy shore and a grassy shore. There were tons of puffer fish and crabs everywhere, and by the end of our exploring there, I was able to identify most of the organisms in that area. Kathy helped us do a seine netting, which is pretty much just walking a long net out into the current then pulling it in so that fish get caught in it. We were able to see some really cool animals that way, like a pajama squid and a blown up puffer fish, but it killed a lot of the fish as well so I wasn’t too keen on doing it again. That night we picked our research project (yes we did work), and my group ended up doing a study on natural rocky shore habitats vs. man made habitats and seeing if there was a difference in species diversity. It ended up being a pretty tedious project, but the presentation of our study ended up winning so I got a cool water bottle from the research station. One of the groups decided to look at species diversity on the sandy shore at night vs. during the day, so I went out and watched them do a seine netting at night. They ended up pulling in some really cool animals, like sting rays and pretty big squid, but because the tide was going out, they ended up killing about a quarter of the fish they caught. People were trying to throw the fish out of the net as quickly as they could, but they weren’t throwing them far enough to reach the water, so all the fish were landing on sand. My friend Tina and I had to do an emergency rescue mission to try to save some of the cool fish that were being suffocated on the sand…we weren’t too happy with the group running the project. The last day Kathy took our group to Point Lookout and Cylinder Beach on the ocean side of the island. It was really cool to have a marine scientist’s perspective on all the relationships between the animals and habitats that we saw. The hike took us along the same ridge I walked along when I went diving there earlier, but then we went and walked along a rocky shore on the beach which I hadn’t done yet. Every tide pool I looked in had some sort of cool animal or plant in it, and I was enjoying being able to identify some of the animals and know a little background to them. We saw a lot of fun stuff that day, including some dolphins playing in the waves. Apparently if I go in late winter here, I’ll be able to see humpback whales migrating south, so needless to say I will be visiting Straddie at the beginning of next semester. The whole weekend really made me consider doing some sort of fieldwork as a career, and marine science is looking more and more appealing every time I get near the water.
The next weekend one of the frisbee guys had his 21st birthday party, which they surprisingly have a big celebration for here. It’s considered a family event where they make speeches and tell funny jokes about the birthday boy. It was a really fun night at a cool venue in the city. The next Friday I went with a group to the Brisbane Forest Park right outside of the city. We drove to a point called Jolly’s Lookout which had a great view of the city and all the way to the bay. We went on an 8 km hike through a eucalyptus forest that had tons of birds and beautiful flowers. The hike wasn’t too hard, but it was quite enjoyable and relaxing.
The weekend of the 4th I was supposed to go diving at Flinders Reef, but it got cancelled due to rain and big swells from a cyclone hitting up north. Queensland has had a surprisingly long wet period, and Brisbane has been getting a good watering for the past couple of weekends. Unichurch was putting on a conference that weekend, so I decided to attend that instead. The speaker was from Canberra and is the chaplain for a team down there called the Brumbies. He went through the book of Philippians and did a chapter by chapter synopsis and analysis which was really insightful. I met a lot of people that I hadn’t seen on Sunday nights, and I felt like I am getting more involved with that church family.
I started off my Easter break this week with a fabulous trip to Heron Island. My Australia’s Marine Environment class went on a field trip to an island on the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef which consists only of a fancy resort and a research station. Not many people get to visit there, so I felt really blessed that I got to experience something like that. However, it really sucked getting to the island…we had to take a 7 hour bus ride during the middle of the night, which meant we lost a night of sleep. Then we took a two hour ferry ride of death that made almost everyone on the boat sea sick. Thankfully, the sea sickness pill, sea bands, and ginger beer I consumed allowed me to go on one of my first sea sick free boat rides! Arriving at the island was kind of magical…you could see this small, green island in the distance with a sunken boat nearby and a giant reef flat surrounding it all. I felt like I was in a movie or something. I spent most of the weekend in a wetsuit snorkelling, diving, or just enjoying the clear water. The second day of the trip we snorkelled around the island and got to see some small sharks and huge sting rays. We also did a walk of the reef flat and got to get a glimpse of what a larger coral reef would look like. It was cool how colourful and vibrant everything was…there were so many different hues and textures to look at. The week continued to be full of snorkelling and diving adventures. One day we went out on a boat snorkel, and I got to see my first true coral reef. It was so cool…I loved peeking inside the coral crevices and seeing all the colourful fish hiding inside. My dive the next day was pretty spectacular as well. Our voyage out was guided by a pod of dolphins, and when I was diving we saw a manta ray, a turtle eating, tons of fish, and huge clams. It was breathtaking to float eye level with a coral bommie and look at all the fish hovering on top. I wish it had been just a little bit sunnier so all the colours were more vibrant (we had a pretty wet weekend). We also did a night snorkel as a group, and I got to see an octopus and giant green sea turtles swimming around. The beach surrounding the island was really nice as well. The sand was a little rough and sticky, but it was so relaxing to sit and look out to clear blue water (even when it was raining). I don’t think I could ever get bored of that island. Even though it only takes about 20 minutes total to run around the island, the sunsets were some of the best ones I have ever seen, and no matter what time of day it was, you could always find something cool to observe from the jetty in the harbour. Whether it was sharks feeding on bait fish or meter long turtles coming up to breathe, I was always very impressed with the wildlife in that small area. The island is also a nesting ground for green turtles, so while we were sitting on the beach at night we could see baby turtles hatching and running to the water! It was overall an amazing weekend, and I feel so lucky that I was able to experience something like that. On the bus ride home, I got to watch a lightning storm for about an hour…I could even see individual bolts from the bus. The bus ride still felt like it took forever though. We got in about 1 am, and I had to wake up the next day for induction at a lab I am going to start volunteering at. It took about five hours to go through all the lectures, quizzes, and tours, but now I get to start doing some fun stuff in a lab on Mondays and Tuesdays.
The rest of my Easter break was spent relaxing and not doing too much. I went to Uni a couple of times to use the internet and hang out with some friends, but I didn’t really end up getting too much work done. One of my friends gave me the most recent season of LOST, so I spent a lot of time sitting on my bed catching up on everything I’ve missed. I finally tried a kangaroo steak! It was marinaded in BBQ sauce and was pretty delicious. It was surprisingly cheaper than beef steaks even though it’s one of Australia’s native animals. Saturday I went on another dive trip with the Unidive club. We headed down the Gold Coast to Cook Island which hosts a coral reef and head wall to follow along. We did a double dive, and I got to see some pretty cool stuff including some nudibranchs, a bright purple cuttlefish, a huge lobster, and a turtle. The cuttlefish was actually really cool to look at because it was hiding under an overhang and didn’t move even when we were really close. I don’t know if it was injured or something, but we were pretty much able to touch it without it swimming away. I’m really enjoying hanging out with the people in that club…they all have such cool dive stories and are all really willing to help newer divers get some good dives in. I’m hoping that as I gain more experience I will be able to impress them somehow, but for now I’ll be happy with just being able to identify most of the fish that they can. Now that I am all caught up, I am going to try to stay caught up. This blog took me all week to write! I’ve probably left out a bunch of stories, but I have to have something to talk about when I get home right? My next planned adventure is two weekends from now…I am going to try to get my advance open water certification. We’ll see if I can squeeze some other cool stuff in before that time. Until next time…
-Erin