Until Next Time...

The last blog. I’m shocked I kept up with it this well, whether or not everyone reading it did as well. It’s definitely a good record for myself, I should go back and fill in some things though. That may be something to do on my 35 hour journey back tomorrow.

Today was a SPECTACULAR last day. But before I get to that, they end of the week was good as well. I wasn’t pressured to do much, I still need to do a bit of writing but there’s no immediate hurry. I should get it done soon regardless, but yeah. Friday a bunch of us went to get fish n chips on Raby Bay and apparently it turned into a farewell thing for me, unbeknownst to me. There was also a mini get-together thing at the pub that night as well which was good. People that couldn’t make it to the lunch got to come to that so it was good to chat with them one last time. One last time for now at least, I’m convinced I will be back and will see some them at some point. Again, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Today I went down to Byron Bay with the swim coach and a co-worker. SO AWESOME. A ton of people have kept telling me I had to get down there before I left but it just didn’t pan out before the offer to go today. The weather was absolutely perfect and the day as a whole was a definite win. Awesome views, delicious food and fabulous company. Everyone here has been so great, it’s amazing. I’m going to miss them, and this place, and yeah…everything.

I will add a few pictures from the day below, but we went to the lighthouse and walked around a bit there. I can now say that I have been to the eastern-most point of Australia, booya! Haha. As I said, the scenery was fabulous and it was a perfect day. I could definitely live there, as I could with pretty much every where I’ve been here. OH! We saw wallabies!! Good thing, I hadn’t seen any here yet. So cute, I really want to bring one home. There were a few that had little joeys in their pouches, adorable! Got a couple of good shots of them.

As a short side-note it’s been really cool to be here on my own and I have definitely learned a lot from it but overall I think I prefer travelling with people. Just based on my weekend trips travelling, it was good for independence and time to myself but with that, it’s also nice to have someone to share it with. This trip overall was perfect in that I was here on my own, working at CSIRO during the week and only travelling on the weekends. It ended up being the perfect amount of time to myself before heading back to work the next week. So that wasn’t bad and a couple weekends I found people to go with/hang out with (like the past couple weekends, definitely awesome). But in terms of going to another country just for holiday/travelling I would definitely want someone with me. But it does depend on the circumstances and who you are/how long you are going to be away/what you plan on doing. I have talked to heaps of people that say it is best to travel by yourself, you are more open to meeting new people, other travelers and/or locals, as well as just having that time to yourself and having a better or potentially more meaningful adventure. So yeah, I guess it can go both ways. I definitely want to try traveling with friends and seeing that I’m already antsy to get going somewhere else when I haven’t even made it home yet, it needs to be as soon as possible! Hence the beginning plans for the next adventure. Watch out Europe, here we come.

Fun Fact:
Australia and New Zealand have opposite possum problems. Australia, where they are native, is losing them to other large mammals and New Zealand, where they are introduced, is doing anything/everything to get rid of them. Interesting how that works.


Wallaby and a joey! SO ADORABLE!!!




Eastern-most point of Australia, if you were curious, haha




Lighthouse!

The Final Week

Here I am, final week, one day of work left and only 2 days left total. My final week hasn’t particularly gone as originally planned. As I think I mentioned in the last blog, I spontaneously joined in on a 3 day boat trip with a couple guys from work as they were short one field person. Monday and Tuesday were the most gorgeous days EVER. Well at least they were the best in the past few weeks. Perfect temperature/weather and the ocean was really flat. The project I was helping with was deploying underwater recording devices in a bunch of different areas. Each was out for 45 minutes, so it was a lot of putting them out, switching the cameras, and putting them back out. Pretty simple and the videos are cool. They are looking at species composition and abundance between marine parks and control areas around Moreton Bay. We were on the eastern side of Moreton Island, so not inside the bay.

The 3 days we were out there FLEW by. Oh! On Tuesday we saw so many humpbacks! I think we saw some every 5 minutes at one point during the day, so awesome :) There was one whale that was ~30m away from the boat and did a spiral breach! SO AMAZING. I’ve never seen one breach that close much less a spiral one. Of course I didn’t grab my camera on the way out to the bow, assuming that it would just come to the surface and go back down a few times. But even so, one of the guys on the trip took a video on his ipod, hopefully he will send it to me. Later that day we saw another humpback a bit off the stern do 5 breaches in a row. FIVE! Crazy.

Last night a co-worker and I were invited to dinner with the masters swim coach and his wife. They cooked us an awesome South African dish, SO GOOD! It was a good night. I’m really going to miss them. :( I’ll just have to come back soon I guess. I potentially might be going to Byron Bay on Saturday with the coach depending on how a few things pan out in the next day, like packing. Haha

Oh! I think I forgot to mention in the last blog. Last week there were like 3 koalas around work all at the same time. SO CUTE! I took like 100 pictures. I’ll include one below. We sat there and watched one for like 20 minutes attempting to get from one tree to another on a branch. I thought he was going to fall like 5 times (it was really windy), I was a bit nervous. He was ok though, after his failed attempt he just sat there staring at us. Sooooo freakin adorable. I wish they were in the States. Also, I’m going to miss seeing cockatoos in the wild, not with clipped wings in cages. It still catches me off guard when I see them flying around.

This has definitely been an experience and adventure of a lifetime, that’s for sure. I’m torn about leaving, but definitely ready to go home for a bit. It will be interesting to see if I need much adjusting or if it will all snap back quickly. One of the weirdest things will be the driving but a few car rides and drives should fix that pretty quickly. I might freak out a little bit though, so just keep that in mind if I start hyperventilating in the back seat (just kidding). I will be happy to go back to the prices of things, especially groceries, but not so happy that taking $100 bucks out of the ATM will actually be $100, not like $120.

I’m not really looking for the travel back though, apart from potentially hanging out with Liz in Auckland. The rest of it is going to be pretty sucky, hopefully I will somehow be able to sleep on the last leg of the trip though. Overnight flight post an already 30 hour travel ‘day’. Oh dear, I would hope I would sleep. I’m really hoping that customs in the States won’t be too bad, I’ll have to go through it in NZ too so I’ll probably be pretty fed up with it at that point. I guess I’ll see what happens! Let’s hope it all goes smoothly.

Fun Fact:
There are apparently more than 150 million sheep in Australia, only 20 million people. And they poke fun at the Kiwi’s…


Underwater camera contraption--> BRUV (don't remember what it stands for...)




North point on Moreton Island


Sunset Tuesday night


Koala!!! Love them.

Coming to an end...again

Yet again, it’s hard to believe, really. Even everyone at work is shocked that I have already been here for 9 weeks and only have 1 to go. Insaneeeee. Looks like the last week is going to be jam packed as well. Within the last 45 minutes of being at work on Friday my last week went from primarily writing/making plots and potentially some histology to all of that and a 3 day trip helping out a couple people on field work out on a boat. So yeah, it will be interesting fitting it all in but it should be good.

I’m not actually sure what I did all last week at work, haha. I think I was pretty much still working on plots and graphs. Refitting the model and such, a bit of writing. All of which I need to do more of. My knee is doing shockingly VERY well, it’s kind of weird though. Good, but weird that it seems to be healing so well. Like it almost feels ‘normal’ again, after a week…it usually takes 3-4 weeks. Strange? Not complaining though. Hopefully I will be able to ride the bike into work this week and not have to hassle anyone for more rides.

This weekend I went to Moreton Island with a co-worker and we stayed in a villa, it was nice. Right on the beach, woke up to the sound of the waves, good weather. It was fun. We didn’t really do too much, just relaxed and wandered around. A bit of ping pong in which I lost all games for, haha. I have gotten better though! I hope so at least. There were these cool wrecks off the western coast of the island near where the resort/villas were. I think there was something like 5 or 6 ships that ran aground (pictures below). They looked like they were pretty popular for divers and snorkelers.

So I have been trying to wean myself off of tim tams lately. Everyone keep their eye out for them in the States, the last I heard that they are only available at a certain time of year (I think around Christmas?). I’ll have to find out that’s for sure, and teach everyone the tim tam slam. SO GOOD. I’m going to get everyone hooked on them. If I have room in my luggage I’m going to bring back a package (or two). :)

Speaking of luggage, I have no idea when I am going to pack. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is going to be the night before which would be interesting. I should have started a week ago, especially since I’m going to be gone for 3 days this week. I guess I’ll see what happens. I have gotten epically better at packing though, I pack in like 5 minutes for the weekend now…amazing. Haha

It’s interesting talking to people about the differences in Australians vs. Americans, personalities and lifestyles. I always have to think about it a bit because right now the differences seem pretty subtle and I think it depends on the region of either place you are in. Obviously I’ve only seen one small part of Australia, but I think I’ve seen a good portion of the States to have a good idea of that part at least, haha. I also think that I might find differences a little more obvious when I head back to the States, I’ve just been down here for so long it all has pretty much become second nature to me. One thing I was talking about with Shane once that was interesting was the way people act towards each other when you tell them you are doing something cool or got something awesome. For example, when I told him that I got invited to swim in a meet (which sparked this conversation in the first place) he was like ‘oh that’s cool!’ He also said that in normal situations between Aussie’s, friends would be more likely to say ‘why in the hell would you do that, you’re not up for that’. He said that they kind of put each other down before the other person gets over-egotistical or thinks they are better. It was interesting that he said that and it reminded me of a story I read in my Anthro class that was about the same exact thing. A guy was studying a tribe by living with them for a year, participating in hunting, cleaning, preparing. He said that the biggest thing he learned while he was there was within the last few days, around Christmas. He noticed throughout his time that every time they came back with food, people of the tribe never seemed satisfied by what the hunters brought back. It was always ‘this will never feed everyone’ or ‘this meat isn’t fresh’ even though there was always enough food and obviously fresh from the days hunt. So every year people of the tribe get a large bull and share it amongst the people at Christmas. This guy decided that, as a gift for their hospitality, he would buy the biggest bull he could find in the area. Once he brought it in and the meat was distributed he thought everyone would be really happy and find him to be doing a great thing. However, everyone in the tribe kept saying things like ‘could you have found a smaller bull, why would we want to eat this, the meat is dry’ even though there was more than enough food for everyone, the meat was perfect and everyone enjoyed it. Later, upon his confusion, he learned from his closest friend in the tribe that this behaviour is part of their custom so that no one person thinks they are better than the other. In doing so, it keeps everyone at the same level, whether someone may be a better hunter or something, it didn’t matter. This story was one of my favorites from the class, hence the reason I actually remember it, and it was really cool to find out that Australians are slightly the same way. Maybe not quite to the same extent, but yeah, kind of interesting to think about in relation to most Americans, who often take advantage of something that may set them apart or make them better than a counterpart. Interesting to think about which one you would prefer…

Fun fact:
-Australia currently has their first woman Prime Minister but she wasn’t actually elected by vote, the last guy just decided to leave. Apparently an election is to come though.


Pelican! I liked him


Sea star :)


Ship wreck




Sunset

Fail.

That’s a way to start off a blog eh? Yeah, well it’s definitely true. So the swim meet was today and what happens? My knee goes out off the start of my second event. Eff. So yeah, it was the 50 free and I was really excited to get a time for it and I was in a good competitive heat. I kept swimming despite the knee since I was already in the race, I just didn’t kick. Afterward, one of the guys from the club was like 'yeah, you were the first one off the blocks but the last one to surface on the water'. Usually that could be a good thing, but not this time. So my time for the race sucked needless to say and I didn’t swim the remaining 3 events. Boo.

I guess I can’t be too angry though. It’s been 8 ½ months since it last went out, a whole 2 ½ more than normal, woot. Ugh. Well I got to swim one race, 50 back, haha.

Finally did a little bit of repro work this week, but I mean a LITTLE. I set samples in wax for sectioning later. It was actually kind of fun, I like playing with wax, haha. I should have a few days the last week I am here for some more histology hopefully. Lots of data analysis and writing for this week though. Meh.

I had a good dinner with the coach of the Masters swimming and his wife on Friday. It was fun. Good food, good conversation, good time. Awesome doggie too. I miss being around dogs! :( Other than that not much else has happened since the last blog. Thought I would have a bit more to update on from the meet but not so much. Owell.

Fun Fact:
- Milkshakes, here and in NZ, are pretty much flavoured milk. If you want an actual milkshake, ask for a thickshake. Unfortunately it costs more. Oh, and they make them with flavoured syrup and not the respective kinds of ice cream…boo.

Captain Koob...?

Time is FLYING! It's crazy. I feel like I have so much to figure out too, which I do, but I still keep thinking that I have plenty of time to figure it out in, which I don't. AH! Goin' with the flow though.

I decided to take a break from the weekend travels and chill here in Cleveland. I ended up getting invited sailing though and it was awesome! Despite having absolutely no wind for the first half the day, it picked up a bit after lunch and we got to raise the sails. I steered! And seeing that I am on here and not in a significant amount of debt, I didn't run into anything or sink the boat. Score. It was really fun though. It's a little freaky when it feels like its just going to fall sideways into the water since you are leaning so far over. Anyways, the boat was really nice, rather large too (10m) and could sleep like 8 people if you squeezed 2 on each bed-type surface. The skipper was really awesome too, he had tons of stories of all his travels. The boat club we went to is apparently one of the most exclusive boat clubs in the area, oOOoOo. We went to get drinks afterwards and everyone (except us) was really dressed up and fancy, we were a little out of place. It was funny. Definitely a good day. :)

This week has been pretty good. I'm into week 8, ahhhhh. Only a couple left. I was supposed to start the reproduction work this week (again) but it still hasn't happened, HOPEFULLY tomorrow and Friday then a bit my last week here or something. I don't know, I'm not holding my breath at this point anymore though. I've started a bit of the growth model fitting and it seems to be going well. Shane did it all really quickly on whatever program he has but he is having me go through the long hand way. Not too bad actually and for some reason I find it interesting and exciting. Whats wrong with me? Haha.

I went to go see Toy Story 3 last night with a few co-workers. SO GOOD! So you better go see it, it's not very often that sequels can live up to the previous movie, much less as the 3rd one. We went to an Indian restaurant beforehand that was really good. Haven't had Indian in awhile, except for the lame excuse in a packet that I used for dinner one night. Obviously I haven't improved too much with my cooking or my will to cook for that matter.

The rest of this week should be rather chill. Still swimming a bit to get ready for the competition on Sunday but I’m still really out of shape. Owell, hopefully it will be fun! I was thinking of going to North Stradbroke Island this weekend for a couple days (if I took Friday off) but the weather looks like crap and I figured I could use a couple extra days of swimming. I will need all the ‘training’ I can get. :)

Fun Fact:
-School outfits here = epically stylish. Complete with grandma shoes, pleated skirts/pants, names on shirt pockets, sunbonnets (male and females), knee high socks and matching bags. REALLY glad I didn’t have uniforms in the US.


Really cool clouds all day


Sails up!


The extra pretty sail




The harbour, there were literally thousands of boats. So huge!

Things I miss...

I decided to make a list of things that I do miss or would if I were to live far far away, such as here, since all I have been doing is saying how awesome it is. But there are definitely things I miss. Obviously above all else by far would be all of you guys, family and friends, and pretty much everything on this random list I threw together has to do with people anyways. This list could be 10 times longer, but I held back a lot, haha. Oh and it’s not in any particular order.

1) Dance parties
2) Spontaneous snowman making/ snow in general
3) Pillow fights
4) Duckling lines in Spring
5) Greasy delicious pizza
6) Oreos with peanut butter and sprinkles
7) Laying in the middle of the road in the rain
8) Holly’s laugh
9) Trying to see the liberty bell 5 times and still failing
10) Seasons, especially the fall (leaves and apple picking) in the NE and a white Christmas
11) Sugar highs off of pixie sticks and mountain dew
12) Watching Save the Last Dance, Sister Act II and Stepmom like 500 times
13) Dancing with the dancing santa
14) Watching Billy Bob Thorton Christmas movies
15) Tropical themed apartments
16) Late night talks
17) Chocolate/peanut butter candy
18) Florida spring break
19) Dominating cranium
20) Stores open past 5pm
21) Embarrassing dad moments :P
22) Is, not, is, not! (you know who you are)
23) Team Mary
24) Rent/Disney sing-a-longs
25) And oh so much more :)

In other news, I still haven't started the reproduction work yet which I was a bit annoyed by yesterday, BUT I found out today that the samples have already been processed, so there isn't any pressure on me to try and finish them by the time I leave. I am still going to do some of them just to get a bit of experience with the whole process. I was told the other week that you can't call yourself a biologist until you've done some histology work, so I guess I better get on that eh?

Apart from yesterday (got completely soaked riding into work and just a bad day all around), this week has been a pretty good one and has actually flown by. Last night a bunch of people from work went out to a bar and later a restaurant to celebrate a birthday. It was a lot of fun and definitely needed after the day yesterday. We went to an Italian restaurant and basically packed the little place with the 16 of us, we were a little loud too. All in good fun though.

I am having a seafood pasta dinner tonight which should be fun as well. I also got invited sailing this weekend!! SO EXCITED! I love sailing and I am really excited to learn more about it. There will be 7 of us and the boat looks like its pretty big. The guy we are going with has been sailing his entire life and apparently owns several boats, yes...several. I guess building contractors make a lot of money. There's also apparently potential to go to a club with some woman I met last night from work...? Who knows, I'll see what happens. Look at me with a social life...whoa! Who knew.

Fun Fact:
It’s generally acknowledged that work ends at 3pm on Fridays.

Gold Coast

I have learned to NEVER listen to forecasters; if I did I probably wouldn’t have gone down to the Gold Coast this weekend and enjoyed the GORGEOUS weather on the beach. So much for the rain, which I’m glad it didn’t but if I decided not to go because of the forecast of rain all week I’d be ticked, haha.

This weekend was completely random actually. I was thinking of going down there (weather dependent) and then I found out on Tuesday that there is a family friend that lives there. What?! So yeah, I stayed with her for the weekend and it all worked out awesomely. Saved a bit of money and got to socialize a bit/meet someone new which was great. She lives outside of Southport so I took the train to Nerang and biked to her house from there, ~45 minutes. Little did I know that there were going to be San Francisco-like hills on my way. Okay, maybe not that bad but still, I thought I was going to die. Definitely got my workout this weekend.

Saturday I biked to Surfers Paradise, which ended up being 20-30 minute ride with traffic and everything. As I said, the weather ended up being gorgeous so I lucked out again. Once I got there I decided to do one of those amphibious vehicle tours around the area (Aquaducks). That was pretty cool and a good way to see the area in a short period of time since I only had the day. I chilled out on the beach for awhile after that getting some much needed vitamin D.

I went up into the Q1 tower a bit before I left Surfer’s and caught some awesome views of the entire area. The building itself is one of the top 20 tallest buildings in the world and it has one of the fastest lifts in the world. We went up 78 floors in like less than 30 seconds. Talk about ear popping. It was really cool, fastest elevator I’ve ever been on. The views were awesome, 360 degree glass encased floor with a bar/café type thing in the middle. Apparently it turns into a cocktail lounge after 8 on Fridays and Saturdays, too bad I wasn’t going to be there, it’d be cool. I took like 100 pictures but just put a couple below. It was hard not getting glare from the glass in the pictures though, bummer.

That’s about all I did that day (or all weekend, haha). I went back to the beach with a chicken kebab for a late lunch and watched some surfers and such. Awesomely chill day. I biked back and Pam made me a lamb roast dinner that night. SO YUMMY! We watched a movie called Happy-Go-Lucky, which I had never heard of before, and it was really good. I want to try and find it but I might have to order it since it’s a British film. It was really funny and I liked the lead actress a lot, it’s kind of different from other movies. Watch it if you ever get the chance.

I left around lunch time to get back home and do some laundry/grocery shopping. Turned out that part of the railway wasn’t working for whatever reason and I ended up having to take a bus in addition to the trains. Wasn’t that bad though, they had everything set up well, it was just a little annoying and took a bit longer. Could have been much worse though.

I am starting reproduction work on the trevally this week! Hopefully all goes well and it’s not too hard, it will be a good break from those otoliths let me tell you.

Countdown: 4 weeks…AH!

Fun Fact:
You need exact change for vending machines, it is rather annoying actually.


Surfer's Paradise


Aquaducks tour


BEACH!


View from Q1 tower, awesome!

THE Great Barrier Reef!

I made it! YAY! Needless to say I was/am really excited that I got there since I didn’t know if it was going to happen. I went to the southern end of the reef, off the coast of Agnes Waters and the Town of 1770, because there was no way I was going to make it up to Cairns (which I still eventually want to go to at some point in my life).

I took the Tilt Train from Brisbane to Bundaberg but got stuck on the later train Friday because I didn’t book it when I should have (eventually I’ll learn), so I had to stay in Bundy for the night. Right after I booked it I found out that it has derailed, several times. Great. It was fine this time though, obviously. I usually attract weird people on trains but I was actually seated next to a really cool woman and had great conversations for most of the trip. Also, they are all about onboard entertainment on transportation here. They played Alice in Wonderland on the trip up and Julie & Julia and Invictus on the way back (although they cut off the end of Invictus, the BEST part, ugh).

The backpackers I stayed in was very accommodating with times for checking in and out. I didn’t get there until 9:30pm and had to check out at 6am, which for most other hostels here it wouldn’t fly. Despite that though, it was my first legit creepy hostel experience. I’m glad it was only one night. The building itself was sketchtown at its finest and I was in a room with like 6 other girls that didn’t seem to enjoy talking, at all. But regardless of the sketchiness, I only needed it to sleep in for a few hours, I emphasize the few hours though. People were up at all hours of the night and I didn’t really sleep. Boo. The reef cruise I was did Saturday picked me up at the hostel in the morning and drove to Agnes Water which was cool. I was SO excited.

So I thought I was going to be doing my first scuba dive. I HATE ASTHMA. Just going to throw that out there. I would be ever so slightly more accepting of it if there was a logical reason as to why I have/had it in the first place. But no, no one in my family has it (good thing, I obviously don’t want anyone else to have it) and it’s not like I smoke 3 packs a day or even have smoked at all for that matter. But enough ranting, basically all you need to know is that they wouldn’t let me dive because of my history with asthma, regardless of the fact that I haven’t used my inhaler in like 2 years (maybe once). Note to self, go to the doctors, get a note and carry it around everywhere…

The tour I went on was to Lady Musgrave Island. The ride out was about 1 ½ hrs and the weather was pretty good. Nice and sunny but a little windy/chilly. They gave us morning and afternoon teas which the US really needs to adopt. After morning tea we took a glass bottomed boat out to the island for a guided walk around the island. It was really nice, beautiful beaches and apparently you can camp out there which would be awesome. After the island walk we headed back to the pontoon/boat for a buffet lunch, yummy! On the way back we looked over some other areas of the reef that we wouldn’t be allowed to snorkel by, we saw some impressively large sea turtles getting cleaned by little fishies. So cute.

I basically shoveled food in and B-lined it to the water for snorkeling. I decided to rent a wet suit since it was a little cool and windy, and based on recent snorkeling events, I stay in the water for awhile. I took so many pictures but my battery still died before I left the water. And of course it died before I got to swim with a sea turtle. So cool! He was just like Crush from Nemo. :) The reef was SO AMAZING! It’s not even the best parts of the reef and it was still awesome. So many cool fish and corals (some pictures below). A lot of the fish were really friendly/curious and came right up to me, they were so cute. Oh, so apparently they grow sea cucumbers here to epic proportions. I’ve only ever seen small ones that can fit in one hand, these were HUGE in comparison. At first I didn’t know what it was because it was so big, haha. But yeah, I could go on forever so I’ll make this brief so that this blog won’t be quite as long. I will put a few pictures up here but most will be on facebook.

The water was SO blue, and the shades of blue changed so dramatically. It was intense and really awesome. We went back out on the glassbottomed boat once more before we left and got to see more turtles and cool corals. There was one coral that was literally the size of a truck. Apparently the type of coral it was (I think boulder coral..?) grows 2 mm/year, so for it to be that huge it had to be ridiculously old. Crazy to think about actually. We headed back to shore at 3:30 and got back around 5, in time for sunset.

I stayed at a cool hostel for the next two nights that, in season, would really be hoppin. They named their cabins after countries, I was in Denmark with 3 cool English guys the first night, then 2 German guys and a really nice English girl the second night. The first night I was absolutely exhausted from the day so I was going to crash early but the English guys were really into the soccer game that night, which of course was the England vs USA game. Good thing it tied 1-1, haha. I got free breakfast the next morning (crepes!!) and then went to ‘town’ for a couple hours. I pretty much just went to the beach and got lunch. The English guys said that they had done the scooteroo tour the previous day and that it had been awesome. I didn’t have any way to get to the sunset kayaking place I was going to go to so I decided to do the scooteroo’s…bahahaha. Absolutely ridiculously hysterical. They gave us leather jackets to wear, complete with flames. Let me tell you, if you had any doubt, that riding motorcycles (or morotcycle/scooter hybrids) is not my calling in life. I was really fun though. The first thing they guy said that you need to ride these things were balance and coordination. Um, fail and more of a fail. haha We all looked ridiculous and there were like 55 people, apparently the biggest group they’ve had in awhile. I got off to a slightly rocky start (it’s hard to go slow) but I got a hang of it after a little bit.

We were supposed to see kangaroos but I think we scared them off. :( Owell. We rode around for a couple hours then went to go watch the sunset on the coast of 1770. We got seasoned potato wedges with sweet chili sauce and sour cream, SO GOOD. Literally one of my new favorite things. YUM! Well, that was pretty much the weekend. I had to get up early for the Greyhound Monday and catch the train from Bundy back to Brisbane, then another train to Cleveland. Long day of traveling.

Back to otoliths tomorrow, although maybe some repro work, I guess I’ll see what happens. At least it’s a short week. If I didn’t mention it before, we got Monday off because of the Queen’s birthday, haha. Rock on.

Fun Fact:
Panini’s here don’t have a top piece of bread, just for future reference.


Lady Musgrave Island


Yes the water was really that blue :)


THE REEF!!


Gigantic sea cucumber


Awesome fish, one of my favorites there


Cool coral


That's what you call a clam


More cool corals


Agnes Water Beach


Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself...this is one of those times.

Randomness

So I thought I would write a quick blog before my exciting weekend coming up. I will no doubt have a long blog coming back with a TON of pictures. Let’s all hope that I remember my camera battery charger this time. I think forgetting it once at a world class diving spot is enough.

I am almost done with daily aging of otoliths! Shocking. It helps that I ‘only’ have to do 30ish of them instead of the 150ish that there are. I still have to re-read all the larger ones I already did, which were about 200 of those…woooo. Oh and do marginal increment analysis on all of those as well. So needless to say I still have my work cut out for me. I should be starting some of the reproduction work soon, so that should be a nice change to things and another chance to learn something new!

I finished another book! For those of you that don’t know, I don’t ‘read for pleasure’ all that much, haha. I finished The Time Travelers Wife when I first got here and I just read The Lovely Bones. For some reason I didn’t seem to like the latter as much as the rest of the general public. I mean, it was ok, but not really what I was expecting and not in a particularly good way, haha. I still want to see the movie though.

It seems as though the shuffle on my Ipod knows exactly what to play at certain times, it’s getting weird actually. The most recent occurrences include when I was walking to the train station the first weekend, got lost and ended up walking around for an extra hour. About 5 minutes before I actually made it to the train station, the song ‘I would walk 500 miles’ came on. Ridiculous. As I mentioned in the last blog, the Circle of Life came on right as the sun was rising, which (not going to lie) was just epic. And today, I was reading the last otolith before lunch (and as it turned out for the day) and I was just about the start the second and last reading of it when Daft Punk’s ‘One More Time’ came on. The best part of the latter was that they lyrics say ‘we’re gonna celebrate’ right after which I had never particularly noticed before. Haha.

I’ve started cooking a little more since I actually have some time. They made this awesome bulgar wheat chili in NZ and somehow I semi reproduced it using couscous instead. It actually turned out really well! Yay! I also made meatballs for the first time and they were SO good. I know, nothing impressive or that exciting, but hey…I’m starting slow…

Fun Fact:
Australians shorten any words that can possibly be shortened and even some that shouldn’t be. For example, uni instead of university and ta for thanks. The latter might be primarily a British thing, but it took me forever to figure out what people were saying and why..haha.

Swim meet?! And the Sunshine Coast.

I was going to write a blog before the weekend but I ran out of time since I didn’t actually plan the logistics of the weekend until Thursday night. But since not too much actually happened last week, I decided I would just add a paragraph or two to my weekend blog.

The only thing of consequence that did happen last week was pretty cool actually. As the first part of the title of this blog suggests, it has to do with a swim meet. Now, let me remind you, I haven’t actually swam competitively in roughly 4 years. Keeping that in mind, if all goes well, I will be swimming in a meet on July 4th. What?!

So Wednesday night I decided to go swimming since the pool is open until 7:30 during the week and I didn’t think I was going to be around during the weekend to head in. It ended up being awesome just in the fact that it was a really warm night, again I was swimming outside in a 50 m pool except that this time it was at night under the stars. SO COOL. Anyways, so there I was minding my own business when all these people start coming in to the lanes around me and then a random guy in my lane (when there were still 4 lanes completely open). I realized that it was some sort of group and my first thought was masters but I didn’t know if they had that here. Apparently they do. I asked the woman that was one of the ‘coaches’ if I should move but she assured me just to stay. A couple of laps later we randomly ended up getting into a conversation. Long story short, she gave me references to some cool marine bio places, the email of a science education person and invited me to swim in a carnival (meet) on July 4th with them as a guest. I don’t really know how all that happened, but I’m excited! I think I need to register by Tuesday so I hope she emails me back soon.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. The daily lunch ping pong games came to a screeching halt. Probably because Mark isn’t here and he usually initiates and because apparently it’s the end of the financial year and everyone has to reorganize their projects for the coming year, aka its hell week. Unfortunate for me, however, is that the ping pong was one of two things I had to look forward to in a day, haha, the other being going home to eat dinner. Especially now that I started daily counts on the otoliths, I really need something to break up the day. I think I am slowly going insane, or maybe not so slowly. Just to say, the next couple weeks at work are going to be interesting. I am now counting hundreds of tiny little rings in each otolith, oh dear.

Now for the weekend, the fun part. :) As I said, I did basically all the planning the night before I left. It took me like 4 straight hours after work to get all the bus and train schedules sorted out as well as directions and where I was actually going. But it all worked out well! I ended up cutting out a couple things that I was going to do but it was probably all for the best.

So all in all I ended up taking 8 buses/trains in a day and a half, which was actually 5 less than I had originally planned on, which is basically at least 25-30 bucks. Transportation is pretty expensive here, along with everything else. I guess I don’t really know how much public transportation is in the states, but it just seems to be pretty expensive here. Anyways, I left work early on Friday (although apparently leaving at 3 is normal on Fridays here) to catch a train to Nambour then a bus to Noosa Heads. Once I got there I decided to walk around the town a bit to see what was there and to try and locate the general direction of the National Park. The town was hoppin and there were people everywhere. The hostel I stayed in wasn’t like any other hostel I’ve been to. It was all lit up and colorful when I was walking up the hill towards it and it sounded like there were a hundred people there, haha. It was nice though, too bad I was only there for a grand total of 8 hours only 2 of which I was actually asleep. For some reason I was tossing and turning all night. It could have been due to the fact that one of the guys in the room was a mumbling sleeptalker, but still, I usually sleep like a rock. None-the-less, I was getting up at 5 am anyways to try and make it to the Eastern Coast of the National Park to watch the sunrise. Talk about early. It was an awesome walk through at that time though. I thought that walking there in the dark would suck because I couldn’t really see anything, but it actually made it better. 1.) I saw a koala and actually got a picture of it (below) and 2.) I got to see everything on the way back anyways so it was all new. The view walking along at twilight was amazing too. I somehow made it to Hells Gate in 45 minutes when they said it would take 2 hours. Good thing because it was just in time for the sunrise. Let me tell you, if Hells Gate actually looks like that, I’d have no problem going. I went down to Alexandria Cove and stayed there for awhile and took 239401923 pictures. Its amazing how intensely active some people are. At 5:30 in the morning I had 10 people pass me running, by 6:30 there were large groups of runners and by 7 there were runners, walkers, kayakers, swimmers, surfers, etc. Holy crap.

After the National Park, I got on a bus to the Eumundi for the ‘world famous markets’. That was the biggest market I have ever been to, HUGE. Apparently they are the largest in Australia. They were basically the size of the entire town, maybe not quite that large but you catch my drift. It was really awesome, I love markets. Got a few cool things, but probably spent more money on food. I had what was called a potato springy, which was described as chips (fries) on a stick, but was basically a potato cut in a spiral on a stick and fried. So good! I also had a lime macadamia cupcake. Sounds kind of weird but was really good, the lime was in the butter frosting. I met some cool people and heard some didgeridoo music and ended up buying a CD from a guy that played that as well as the saxophone, piano, drums and flute. He also had some of the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, it was crazy. Oh I also saw a guy wearing a koala costume with a shirt on that said ‘butt hunter’ and he was dragging a little red wagon picking up cigarette butts, so funny. I wish I got a picture.

My next adventure was to Nambour which I was going to go to the Big Pineapple, apparently a giant pineapple building with orchards and an animal farm. I didn’t end up going since I only had an hour and a half and according to the bus driver I should spend more like 3 hours there. Also the 5 minute bus ride would have been 7 bucks return and if the bus were late getting back I would have missed the only train to where I was staying Saturday night. So instead I took a bus to Caloundra (instead of the train to Landsborough and bus to Caloundra) which ended up being cheaper, shorter and easier. Since I made it to the hostel in Caloundra earlier than I thought I would, I had time to wander around the town a little bit. Compared to Noosa it was dead, not many people out and about. The hostel itself wasn’t as nice as the one in Noosa but I ended up liking it better. It was quieter and I got a free BBQ dinner and it wasn’t like the ‘dinner’ we had in the hostel in Auckland either. It was literally hot dogs, burgers, chicken and potatoes, pretty much enough food for 3 times the people there. Everyone there was really nice and I had some good conversations with people. There were a couple guys from NZ! Sweet as. I played some pool on the worst pool table that ever existed with a ‘cue ball’ that was more like an oversized golf ball. I eventually got all of them in though. I decided to wake up early again for the sunrise on Golden Beach, I can’t believe I actually got up two mornings in a row, shocking. For future reference, the broadway version of the Circle of Life is an epic song to watch the sunrise too, haha. I had my ipod on shuffle and it came on right when the sun was coming up. Side note, I am still dying to see Lion King on Broadway, it would be SO awesome. Maybe one of these days.

There were also markets in Caloundra this morning. This country really likes markets. What was funny was that some of the stalls that were in Eumundi were in Caloundra, like the same people (the potato springy people for example). I was going to go to the Glasshouse Mountains mid-day, but I ended up not going even though I really wanted to go hiking. But I decided (1) I shouldn’t push my knee, esp since I had been walking so much, (2) I was alone and its generally not a good idea to hike by yourself even though I would have anyways, (3) it would be ~45 minute walk to trail head down a dodgy, in-the-middle-of-nowhere road, again, alone and (4) I was already exhausted from lack of sleep and a steep hike wasn’t really in my cards, haha. Maybe I’ll make it up there at some point, but if not, it’s not too big of deal.

I got home 7 hours earlier than I thought I would so I had time to chill before this week of work which will no doubt be an interesting one. Sorry for the length of this blog! Unless something cool happens this week I probably won’t blog till after my weekend at the reef (hopefully this next weekend)!!!

Fun Fact:
The parking spots along streets here are designed for backing into, some members of my family would epically fail, including myself.


Koala!!


Walk in the Noosa National Park at dawn


Hells Gate




Alexandria Cove




Caloundra

I'm seeing double...

Or at least I will be soon. I now spend my days at work staring down a microscope and at a computer screen counting rings on otoliths that are generally assumed to be unreadable, ironic? Maybe not entirely unreadable, but compared to other fish otoliths they definitely are. Gary, one of my supervisors, got me started on aging stuff mid-week and approximately 10 seconds after focusing the first slide he said ‘Oh, now I remember why I didn’t do these…’ Yeah, well stated Gary, well stated. Not going to lie, it is really cool and interesting but it’s pretty difficult. It’s a bit subjective and makes me paranoid since I will have to redo them all again to see if my second run through shows similar ages (so that I am consistent and not guessing). So basically I am dreading the second run through for that reason as well as the fact that there are a couple hundred of these things. Ha, ha…ha. Oh and with the smaller ones, I get to count daily rings. As in, hundreds of little tiny lines for each otolith. Oh dear.

In other news, last week absolutely flew by surprisingly enough. Even though I am just in the lab all day counting rings, it seems to go by pretty quickly. There has been daily ping pong during lunch which definitely helps break up the day. It’s really fun! I think I am getting better too, that or my moments of luck are increasing in frequency.

A few people at work headed to a pub near work again on Friday, so that was fun. A couple of us ended up staying a bit later just hanging out and listening to the one-man-band. He wasn’t bad actually, just covered songs though, nothing of his own. It was great just hanging out and people watching. A couple hours into it and some people were definitely feeling good. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a large group of adults boogie, rather funny actually. I now know what I will look like in 20 to 30 years. Bring it on, haha

I found some outlets!! Thank goodness because I really needed some new clothes. I have gotten really tired of wearing the same 5 shirts I have here, which I had already been wearing consistently in NZ for 3 months. I actually got some pretty good deals which is good. It ended up raining for most of the day so it was a perfect shopping day. I love shopping. :) Today I did a little more shopping as well. Mostly for food, which unfortunately means more than enough money spent this weekend. It’s seriously ridiculous how much groceries cost here, boo.

Today was a gorgeous day and I finally got myself over to the lap pool here after walking around town for a bit. Cleveland just got even better. The facility is less than a five minute walk from the house, has outdoor pools that are slightly heated in the ‘winter’ and an indoor gym. Oh and did I mention that they have BOTH an eight-lane 25 meter pool and an eight-lane 50 meter pool. What?! So awesome. I am so out of shape but it definitely felt good to swim, although, half way through my arms felt like lead blocks and I could have sworn that they were going to fall off.

I’m getting a little annoyed because I can’t really figure out if I will be able to make it to the Great Barrier Reef or not. I am DYING to go but I would need to fly to Cairns which is difficult enough when I potentially can only get a 3 day weekend. It will also be relatively expensive, but if I could work it out I don’t really care. I want to go so bad! :( I guess we’ll see what happens, but if it happens it’s most likely going to be one of those spontaneous moments. I really should have planned a week afterwards to travel, I was going to and for whatever reason didn’t end up doing so, boo. I will definitely be coming back here sooner rather than later in any way, shape or form that I can though.

Oh, I finally added pictures to a couple of the previous blogs so go check those out if you are interested. :)

Fun Fact:
Leonard Cohen is going to be in Brisbane for a concert on my birthday, too bad I won’t be here for it…not. I laughed hysterically the first time I saw the commercial for it though. So funny.

Into the City!

I decided I would blog again since I had a sweet day yesterday. That and I don’t want to do the work I should probably be doing and this seemed like a good procrastinator until Bones and House are on. :)

I went into the city yesterday (Brisbane) and it turned out to be a really good day AND I made it back home. I actually had more trouble getting to the train station in Cleveland than finding my way to anything else during the day, fail. If you don’t already know, I am HORRIBLE with direction especially if it is going somewhere I should know how to get to. For example, the train station in town is a 15-20 minute walk from the house but I left with half an hour to spare, just in case. Apparently that wasn’t enough. Somehow I managed to completely miss the train station (which by the way I have walked past about 10 times since being here) and ended up at work (30-35 min walk from home). Good thing the train leaves every half hour that’s all I have to say. Side note, the train station was in view when, for some reason, I decided to walk the other direction…yeahhh.

Anyways, when I finally got to the train station I found out it was only 10 bucks for the ticket, including the return and I could apparently ride the train all day in whatever direction, coolio. I thought it was going to be $10 each way. It was roughly a 45 minute ride to South Bank, which was my destination. A few people at work told me to check out the Gallery of Modern Art both in general but also said there was a cool exhibit going on. Boy were they right. Ron Mueck, a famous Australian artist, had an exhibit going on and it was SO cool! He is described as a ‘hyperrealist sculptor’ and makes oddly sized sculptures of people. I say oddly sized because they are rarely to scale of a ‘normal’ human. They are unbelievably realistic though, it’s crazy. Everything, down to the veins of a clenched fist or goose bumps on bare skin, looks incredibly real. The expressions on the faces of the people spark interest and a ton of discussion. It was one of the things I heard people talking about the most, and a video following the exhibit exemplified his attention to the thought-provoking expressions. It was really awesome. The process for making his pieces is ridiculously intricate too. For example, he inserts every single hair one by one with a tiny little instrument so that it looks like it is actually growing out of the skin. Crazy! I have a few pictures that I will eventually put up here. Amazingly they actually allowed photos which was good due to my history of getting in trouble for snapping a few despite warnings and signs, oops.

After that exhibit I wandered around the rest of the gallery and they happened to have a New Zealand section which was pretty cool. It included 4 flat screen TVs with headsets playing episodes of the Flight of the Conchords, epic! I definitely sat down and watched part of one, love that show. They actually had a lot set up in the gallery but I won’t bore you with everything I saw, haha. I left to head to the Greek festival but got sidetracked by the adjoining art museum. They had a hat exhibit. Yes, hats. Some crazy hats for that matter. It was cool to see though, I don’t really understand who would actually wear half of them except maybe Lady Gaga, but I guess that’s not the point. There was a bunch more art in there too but by that point I was starving and just wanted some Greek food, so I left.

I successfully found the festival and it ended up being a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. It was basically a Greek eating/dancing fiesta with a carnival attached. The food was really good, as expected, and I tried honey puffs for the first time. They are literally what they sound like, fried dough puffs with honey and powdered sugar, yummm. I hung around there for a couple hours, they had some dancers which were cool. The best part was when I came back (left to go to the mall/shopping), a belly dancer picked random guys from the crowd and made them try to belly dance, hysterical! It reminded me of when my dad went up with the hula dancers in Hawaii (I still appreciate that dad, haha), so great.

Either I was in the ritzy end of Brisbane shopping, or everything here really is ridiculously more expensive. Every store I went into had tank tops for like $85. What?! I was on Queens St which was really neat actually. It was a long line of shops that were outside with random places where the bigger mall part went inside a huge building and had like 4 stories but it was still open to the outdoors. Kind of hard to describe but it was really cool. The middle of the ‘street’ had open spaces for street performers and such. There was one guy doing magic tricks when I was there. But yeah, needless to say I didn’t buy any clothes, apart from the one Australia shirt I bought at the souvenir shop. I don’t know what it is but I am a magnet to souvenir shops, it’s not good. Everyone better appreciate their gifts, :P Haha Actually I didn't buy too much there, most of the damage was done in NZ.

I headed back to the Greek festival for another hour or so. Somehow I planned it perfectly that when I headed back over the bridge the sun was setting. Awesome. But yeah, that was pretty much they day. Highlights = Ron Mueck exhibit and wandering around the city on a gorgeous day. Lowlight = seeing a mid-aged woman with a ‘Team Jacob’ shirt on.


Brisbane!


This is what they call a pedestrian detour due to road work in Brisbane. In the US? Most likely a dirt pathway...haha


Greek festival!


I still have yet to go on a ferris wheel...one of these days, haha


The city at sunset :)

Fun Fact:
The money down under is really pretty, yes pretty. It is awesomely colourful with cool pictures and designs on them. The US needs to redesign. Also, I usually hate change, but here a handful of change can literally mean 20 bucks.

Koalas, dolphins and the pit.

I can’t believe the second week is over already! Looks like this little adventure is going to go by as fast as New Zealand did, unbelievable. I have spent most of my time this week in the pit, rightly named so, since once you go in you never come out. It’s actually hysterical that when you tell someone that you’ll be in the pit if they need to find you, they know exactly where you are talking about and are entirely sympathetic. For the most part I don’t mind it, it’s not unlike any other work in labs, but it does get a little lonely in there. I have had a few visitors the past few days though which helps to break up the day. Oh and it smells pretty raunchy but you get immune to that pretty quickly. It’s just the initial wall of stench you have to be ready for walking in. Oh yeah.

I saw a koala this week at work! SO CUTE! He was just chillin in a tree outside of one of the buildings. I saw a few random people staring up into the tree and I figured id just go about my business and ignore what they were looking at until Christian called me over. Good thing he did, apparently that was his first koala sighting in the 5 years he has lived here. Lucky me. :) I also forgot to mention that we saw some dolphins last weekend (maybe I mentioned it, I don’t remember, haha) on the survey trip I went on. We also saw one this morning. Apparently Morton bay and outlying regions get lots of cool marine life. Apparently mid-June to July they get whales coming through! Hopefully I will plan a trip to Stradbroke Island around the time they come through. I went on a plankton tow/sampling trip this morning and ended up getting soaked, the one day it was suppose to rain all week they decided to go. It was fun none-the-less though and I got away with not really doing any work all day. We got back at lunch, I played some ping-pong, fluffed a bit then left to come home at like 3. Solid. I then got a call to go out for drinks with some people from work. It was an awesome little place that overlooked the bay, we literally had a table right by the water during sunset. Love it.

Have I mentioned how much I love boats? Because I really do. If they weren’t so expensive and such a hassle I would say that I would own one when I am older, but I think I’ll have to bank on knowing someone that does or having one wherever I end up working. It is literally one of my favorite places to be, well anywhere near or on the ocean in general but being on a boat is awesome. (Sorry for those of you that get sea sick) Even when it is pouring out and you I am getting soaked, for some reason I still love it. Everything is so unpredictable, you never know what’s coming next or what you are going to see. One of my favorite things is crashing over waves at high speeds, not particularly good for the boat or my knees, but it is fun all the same. :)

We went to go see Robin Hood last night, it was pretty good I suppose. A little slow and really didn’t need to be that long but it was entertaining. They did a good job making it a different story or different view from the classic Robin Hood story and it was well filmed. However, it is definitely one of those movies that I would only be able to watch every once in awhile.

I decided I am going to head into the city tomorrow for the day and wander around. First I was going to go just to shop for some clothes at the mall, seeing that I have been wearing the same set of clothes for 3 months already. That and I got rid of several things in New Zealand due to lack of packing space. But I found out tonight that there is a Greek festival this weekend in Brisbane! Literally a 15 minute walk from where I was going to be going anyways. Perfect! Apparently there is also a cool modern art gallery around the area as well. Should turn out to be a good day, just pray that I find my way around and make it back home tomorrow night.

Fun Fact:
Australian’s pronounce the word fillet with the ‘t’ at the end, it throws me off every time. Try saying filleted with the ‘t’, it’s weird. Seriously…try it.

AUSTRALIA!!

The end of one adventure, the start of a new. I don’t know if this will be an adventure per se, maybe more of a journey. I hope to make it around to a few cool places on weekends and such, maybe that will make it an adventure, otherwise it’s pretty much like going to work 5 days a week from 9 to 5. My first week was good, the first few days I met a ton of people I don’t remember the names for and did some computer stuff. Shane (one of my supervisors here) had me do some basic growth modeling exercises. I was lost for a little bit, he literally just gave me some books and was like ‘go at it’, but it actually wasn’t too bad. It was cool to see how to transform data into the growth curve, since I had read about it in some papers he gave me and had no idea what it was talking about. He said he will probably try and get me to do a yield-per-recruit model soon which scares me, haha.

The past few days I have been in the lab chopping up fishies, or more like hacksawing fishies. You have not had an arm workout until you’ve had to hacksaw a dolphin fish, let me tell you. As a general overview for those of you I haven’t told, I am studying basic pelagic fish biology (focusing on Golden Trevally) which is part of a bigger project going on a CSIRO. Right now I am extracting the otoliths, stomach and gonads of the fish as well as doing general morphometric measurements. In a week or so I should be starting the age/growth analysis part of the project which involves sectioning and counting the otolith rings, kind of like a tree. After that I will be doing a bit of histology to determine the stage of reproduction and such so that we can better see at what age (and supposed length with length-at-age models) they mature. Cool stuff, at least I think so. It’s all for fisheries management, so like making sure that the minimum size range they are imposing on commercial and recreational fishing practices is legit or if they need to change it.

To back track a little bit, my flight from Auckland turned out to be pretty awesome. I got food, wine and movies…all of which I didn’t expect. Woot! Before the flight I got randomly picked to do an interview about my time in New Zealand, complete with me describing everywhere we went, how we got there and what we did. It took a bit of time but it was cool to kind of mentally go through it again all the way through. He gave me some dvd thing for doing it but I have yet to watch it.

I am renting a room in Shane’s house for the time I am here and so far it has been good. He has a pool and a massage chair… :) And it’s a 10 min walk into town and a 15 min bike ride to work. Sweet deal actually. I am in Cleveland, QLD which is right outside of Brisbane. It’s basically my ideal place to live, right on the bay, near a bigger city and everything you need within walking distance not to mention mostly warm weather all year round and an island with beautiful beaches a 30 min ferry ride away. Now all I need is my friends and family to come join me, hehe :)

I spent the day today with a few guys from CSIRO doing a rec fishing survey around the bay, so I was pretty much straight chillin on a boat, in the ocean, during a gorgeous day. It was fun! I took some pictures that if I ever get my ident and computer at work ill put up here and on facebook. Also, until that happens I can’t skype either, hopefully once I get the computer that will work, we’ll see! For now I’m going to have to stick with this and email though.

Apparently there is a market Sunday mornings so I am going to go check that out tomorrow, should be fun. Hopefully I don’t buy too much, I literally have zero room in my luggage and I was 0.4 kilos under the weight restrictions for my flight. Phew.

I can’t believe I am here doing this internship, hopefully I don’t mess it up! It will definitely be a great experience and I am beginning to see how many great scientists are at CSIRO doing research, so cool. It kind of blows my mind some of the things they do and new ideas they think up. A little overwhelming and kind of puts a damper on what you think you can do personally, haha. It’s all good though, I will definitely learn a ton.


First bird I saw, it was right outside the house in a bush

Stradbroke Island


Morton Island


Sunset!!

Fun Fact:
From like 5-6 pm there are masses of bats flocking somewhere. I haven’t seen so many bats in my life, kinda cool to look up from my bike ride home from work and see them flying. They are quite large too.