Magnetic Island

As per the plan, last Saturday (May 22), I woke up, took the bus downtown, and got on the ferry to Magnetic Island. The weather was beautiful. It's getting to be 'winter' down here, so it's been a little cooler, which means that it's pretty much perfect. (Although it gets a bit chilly at night.)

There are four main places on Magnetic: Nelly Bay, where the ferry lands, which has some cafes and a grocery store, Arcadia, which has a bar and the hostel I stayed at, Picnic Bay, which had a few houses and restaurants, and Horseshoe Bay, which is the main drag with the bars. They're laid out Picnic, Nelly, Arcadia, Horseshoe, in a little half-circle around the island. The rest is pretty much nature preserve.

Anyway, I tried to take the hike to from Nelly to Arcadia, which the brochure said would be 2.5 hours, but I accidentally stumbled across the short path to Geofrey bay, which took me 20 minutes. I found a specialty grocery store there and bought a papaya and a dragonfruit for more than I should have because I wanted some exotic fruit for my day on the beach. Then I walked back to Nelly and found the real hike.

The fake hike:

And the real one:


A little marsupial of some sort... possibly a kangaroo?


The hike took a while... also my papaya did not take kindly to being stuffed into my backpack all day. I checked into the hostel, which was quite nice. There were some British students (or just tourists) in my room. At least, I think they were British and I think they were all together. I didn't talk to any of them, and that was fine with me.

Next day I went to Picnic Bay for the 8 km walk to West Point, which is the closest to the mainland you can get. It's not really a hike, just a long unpaved road. It ends at a little beach with a few houses, but it goes through a nature reserve and some salt marshes, so I wanted to check it out.

There was an abandon building with this totally unsuspicious message scrawled on it:

But it was a little too dry for the waterfall to be running... I guess this is what they meant.


Salt Marsh:


I thought this was just a creek until I noticed the mantaray. It's an inlet.
Yes, it's salt water. I tasted it.



There were also some really interesting black and white striped fish in there, but I don't have pictures of them.

The eucalpyt forest part of the walk was also nice...

I saw a real, moving, awake echina! Sadly, it was not keen to have its picture taken, so you don't get to see its snout.


When I got to West Point, the tide was out, so there was a huge mud flat filled with various interesting invertebrates, so I played around there.

I also ate my now very-bruised papaya for lunch and relaxed for a while. I started walking back around 2:30, when a nice older-ish couple drove up and offered me a ride, which was nice because by that point I was a little unhappy about walking 3 hours to get back. They dropped me off at the grocery store, and I picked up some microwavable soup for dinner, which I made when I got back to the hostel.

Spent the evening in the hostel internet lounge (not on the internet, just in their comfy chairs), writing. (I'm working on a novel, but I don't like to say that aloud because saying that you're working on a novel when you're a blogger is about the most pretentious action imaginable.)

I realized some point on Saturday that I prefer to do things like this on my own. Once I get over being scared at being alone, I really like it much more than clinging to someone that I kinda know, or even than going with a good friend. But I also keep thinking "Oh, I'm so going to tell everyone about this! I'd better get a picture!"

I know that I'm from the most self-centered generation yet, what with our facebook pages and status updates and broadcasting our stupid thoughts on twitter all the time and getting blogs so we can tell EVERYONE ALL ABOUT how awesome our lives are. I wonder if Generation Me needs a poster child...

Anyway, Monday I woke up way too early, checked out, and took a bus down to where I went on my first trip, except this time I spent the morning doing the hike to "the Forts." The Forts are a trail up a small mountain to where the Australian WWII military base was, since you can see approaching ships from it and all. There are a few signs up with the history. Most of the buildings are complete ruins.

The busdriver and everyone else seemed to think I would see some koalas, since it was 7:30, but I didn't notice any... I did surprise a snake about the size of my leg. I was climbing around the ruins... I didn't see it approach, but given the reaction it gave, I think it must have almost run over me before it noticed and flipped out and ran the other way... which is a nice reverse of my usual interaction with snakes. (Pretty sure it was this one.)
There were also a lot of magpies:


The Forts were really cool, in a really eerie sort of way. I took a lot of pictures.
This one is a bit creepy... the building itself was the only one that was completely pitch-dark inside, and the smoke was not there when I took the picture. O.o

There were some bats hiding in it, though, so it can't be too haunted.

Mostly it was just foundations hidden by big rocks, though.



And, since it was supposed to be a lookout point, the views were fantastic.



After the hike I went down to the beach I went to last time and had a swim... Then took the ferry back downtown, got a sandwich in a coffee shop, and took the bus home.

I had the dragon fruit when I got back. they're very striking, but not particularly strong-flavored. I see why cooking sites recommend using them in salads.


This was the last week of classes. I was supposed to finish my final lab report on the Boulia trip, but I didn't. I'll have to do it during exams. It's 2 am here right now. My bus for Uluru leaves at 7 am... but the buses don't run on Sunday, so I had to beg a ride from someone else who's going, so I need to be at the Uni at 6:10... so I need to start walking at 5:30. I'm contemplating just not going to sleep.

More views and forts in the Magnetic Island album. Seriously, will someone PLEASE tell me how the photobucket is working for them? ANYONE?

1 month left

No pictures today... I'm just so happy to be caught up with all my adventures that I thought I'd update with babbling.

I just calculated that out of the 19 weekends I've been/will be in Australia, I've only stayed at home doing nothing of interest for 5 of them... and one of those was right after getting back from vacation when I had a paper due, and another one was right after classes started. So I'm feeling pretty productive. It's true that I didn't get to Tasmania or anywhere too far from Townsville, but Australia is a HUGE country that is very time-consuming to travel in. It isn't like going to a European country where you can sprint around the entire continent on weekend trips.

I had my algae practical exam today... the less said about it, the better. Afterwards the professor gave us all pizza and beer, though. Some other American students and I agreed that we were living the Australian dream, right there.

Also I found a tree frog in the bathroom the other day! My housemate was pretty excited about it- he said he hadn't seen one in a while. (Actually, there were a ton of them in the bathrooms in the Boulia camper park... We had to check the toilets before using them to avoid awkward situations). I got to pick this one up, though! They're so sticky and cute!

I only have one month left in Australia... I'm not anticipating the reverse culture shock that everyone assures me students have. I've had a good time here, but I'm plenty ready to be home. I miss all my friends that kinda get me.

But, with only a month left, I've started plotting my final weeks.

I think I mentioned this before, but I'm going to spend the weekend alone on Magnentic Island, exploring. I'm making sandwiches in preparation tonight.

Next week is the last week of classes, and I'm so ready for it. I'm over classes. I've got a lab report due on the last day, but I've already kinda sorta started it, and I kinda like lab reports, so hopefully I won't lose too much sleep over it.

After that is a week-long break. I'm spending mine on the biggest, longest, and most expensive trip of my time here- I'm going out to Uluru (in the middle-ish). It's a two-day bus trip out there. Katie (my cousin) went out there when she was in AU and said it was amazing and a must-do.

After that is two weeks of exams. I only have four exams, though, so I'm looking into interesting day trips for the days when I don't have exams. After exams I'm going out to Mission Beach, which is the closest that the rainforest and the reef get to each other. Immediately afterwards I'm packing up and heading to the airport to go home.

And yes, when I'm studying/working on reports/doing dishes my mind goes straight to that plane ride home. It's getting harder and harder not to dwell on it. Obviously this won't be a problem when I'm traveling and having fun... but I suspect this next week is going to be very, very grim for me.

Townsville Tour!

This weekend (May 8-10) was my things-in-Townsville adventure.

Saturday I joined a group of Uni students going to Billabong Sanctuary, which is a sort-of zoo/ game park about a 1/2 hour out of town.

You could buy food and feed the kangaroos, birds, and other things wandering around, and then they had various Australian fauna in exhibits. I didn't buy any food, but I got to see some little kids feeding things.

Kangaroo family


There was a show where they brought out a koala, then a wombat, then a bunch of snakes, and then some lizards. You had to pay to hold the koala and the wombat, but you could touch them, and I figured that was close enough. Holding the snakes and lizards was free, though.

She works at a tourist attraction, she should expect to end up on the internet.


The lizard in my hands did NOT APPROVE of me.

Then there was a croc-feeding show, accompanied by a long list of all the things that are more dangerous than crocodiles. The crocs have kind of figured out that they'll only get the food if they don't jump and wait for the guy to hit them with it, then snap, though, so we mostly watched crocs avoid getting exercise.


So that was Billabong. Pretty cool, and it's mandatory to pet a koala before you leave Australia.
Here's the rest of my Billabong pictures.

Sunday I took a stroll down to Palmetium Botanical Garden, which is just down the bike path from my house. It's a really big, nice park, lots of cool things from all over the world... but only tropics, so nothing I recognized from home.
The rainforest section:


Monday I don't have class, so I took a bus into town in the morning and went to the Queen's Garden. It was a good day for it, cool and overcast and drizzling a bit, and Monday, so I pretty much had the whole place to myself.

The Queen's Garden isn't quite as nice as Palmetium, size and diversity-wise, but it's still a nice formal garden. They had a couple of hedge mazes and a rose garden, and some huge fig trees.

They also had an aviary with some exotic birds, like peacocks and... turkeys. OK.


After the garden, I walked along the Strand. Nobody much out there, but the water park was still running. Too cold to go swimming, but maybe before I leave. Also saw a couple of misc. Townsville things.
All the photos of Townsville are up in the General Australian Pics folder.

I stopped at the Aboriginal Culture Center, which is mostly a gallery of local Aboriginal artwork (so no photos allowed, you have to buy them... for way more money than I have).

Next to that is the North Queensland Science Museum (or something to that effect). They had a ship wreak exhibit and some things on coral, dinosaurs, deep sea creatures, and the rainforest. All that jazz. They also had a kids interactive zone with no kids in it because it was Monday afternoon, so I played around in there for longer than I should admit.

Two things from Invertebrate Zoology legend: A giant pyc (sea spider) and a deep-sea sea cucumber.


A magical leopleurodon! (or something in the same spirit.


Botanical Gardens and Museums has more pictures from both gardens and the science museum, including a picture of the butterflies of Queensland, which is a pretty impressive display.

After that I stopped at the local art museum, where the visiting exhibit was made up entirely things sculpted to look like food! I was so happy!
They had one that was "meals for the trades", so it was trade-related objects to look like meals. For example, the upholsterer had a slice of cake made out of upholstery layers.
There were also teacups made out of various things... like, a "frivolitea" made out of party favors.
No pictures. (Well, ok, there are pictures that I took before someone told me that I wasn't supposed to be taking them, but I don't want the museum to get in trouble, so I'm keeping them safely offline.)

And that was my weekend.

I have a lab practical test for Marine Algae on Friday, so my efforts are mostly going towards studying for that. After Friday I only have one more week of classes, and only one month left in AU!
It's getting chilly here. I might have to start wearing a jacket from time to time.

The past few weekends

Almost up-to-date with my travel pictures and things! So you get two weekends in this update, and then I'll fill you in on last weekend (hopefully tomorrow), and everything will be caught up!

How is the photobucket working for you? Is it easy to navigate? Does it crash your computer?
It *is* entirely possible to leave comments on this blog without having a blogspot, just so you know. If you have a problem seeing the pictures or something, you can let me know. That's ok with me.

After Boulia, when I was busy hating a paper, I went down to the post office and picked up my Easter package from Mom! It had a chocolate Bilby, which is a cute little Australian rodent. Apparently a percentage of the chocolate bilby sales go to conservation or something. They're real cute:

(This picture also includes the chocolate frog and eggs from the Easter basket and my Boulia rock collection)
But it's hard to go for Bilby ears:


Anyway, May 1st was a Saturday. My American friend from the Whitsunday trip called me up and invited me to a BBQ on the Strand (which is the touristy beachfront park in Townsville). She and some friends picked me up... and informed me that we were going to a beach out-of-the-way first... not to swim... or even to go all the way down to the water... or even get as far as the sand... they just wanted to look.
I understand that there are box jellies this time of year, but what's the point of going to a beach to sit above the path and look at the view?


Afterwards we hiked up Castle Hill, which is a huge... well, hill in Townsville that all the tourists hike up once and vow never to hike up again. And, of course, I was wearing a dress, so I looked like a particularly pathetic dumb American.
Castle Hill has a "Saint" painted on it... apparently some Uni students did it as a prank, the city got rid of it, and someone else put it up. I'm not really sure why this is such a big deal... I'll have a picture of it next entry, but it's really not that impressive.
The view was beautiful, though.
Castle Hill:

Me and the view:


Then we went down to the Strand and had a swim in the poison-jellyfish-free net, played on a particularly unsafe looking rope toy, and had a BBQ on one of the grills provided for our convenience. It was a good time, all in all.
Strand at night:


Sunday I wrote a paper... or tried to.
Monday I went down to Magnetic Island, which is a 20 min ferry ride off the coast of Townsville.

It's absolutely beautiful. I was there with a local guy that I met at the BBQ, so he showed me this awesome beach that no one goes to. Frankly, I wanted to be alone, but I probably wouldn't have found it on my own, so everything worked out.
The beach:



I'm going back to Magnetic this weekend and staying. It seems silly to pay for a hostel to stay an hour from your home, but the ferry's a bit expensive and it'll be worth it to wake up on the island. I'm going hiking around! Should be fantastic!

Next weekend, I mostly hung out. Two members of the anime club had a joint birthday on Saturday, so I went to that. It was zombie themed... so I was Zombie Laura Croft and a good time was had by all.

One of my better pictures...


The recent uploads to General Australian Pics include more of me posing on Castle Hill, a few of the beach we visited, and some of The Strand.
Magnetic Island has more from the little bay we went to, and will eventually have the pictures I plan to take this weekend!

Belated Boulia

For Midsemester Break, one of my classes went to Boulia until Thursday. (I was going to spend the weekend doing exciting things around Townsville, but I had a paper due in the only class I'm worried about passing. It was not a fun return weekend.) Boulia, however, was AMAZING and is thus-far my favorite of the trips I've been on.

Album

Boulia is on the edge of the Simpson Desert, about 15 hours drive from Townsville. It's also home to the rare and wondrous Waddi Tree, which is only found in two other places, both on the edge of the desert. The class I'm in goes on a fieldtrip there once a year to take measurements on the trees, which in theory will eventually become a published paper.

So our class piled into a van and we drove into bush country. We stopped by the AU version of the continental divide,


We stopped in some very small, flat towns for pitstops:
(This town is bigger than Boulia, by the way).
With interesting tourist attractions:

(The area we were in used to be a giant inland sea... so it produces a lot of dinosaur skeletons.)
We passed some beautiful mesas,



But mostly it's just flat and dry. (Well, actually, this year was wetter than normal, so there was still water and green things.)


It rained in various places around us while we were there, and you could see the storms in the distance. Also rainbows.



It's a two-day trip to Boulia, so we stayed in a camper park in Winton on the way there, which was full of Gray Nomads, an AU phenomenon of retirees who buy campers and tour around the country around this time of year. (One of our profs very generously made excuses for why we couldn't go to their "bush poetry" recital and ushered us safely away).
The first day was after I'd spent all night working on a paper, so I was pretty out of it... but once I'd gotten some sleep, everything was much better.

The only thing between Winton and Boulia is "Middleton"
This is Middleton, in its entirety:

A group picture outside the famous Hilton at Middleton ("No A/C, No Cable, No Pool, No Charge")


We were in a camper park in Boulia, too, but it was less populated. For food, someone In Charge of This Sort of Thing had taken our field trip fees and given us several giant tupperware containers of food and supplies, so we got to cook for ourselves. I was put in charge of one of the cooking groups (apparently because I look the most alert during morning classes), and we made Spaghetti + Meat Sauce according to some rather-vague instructions. The motto for cooking on the trip turned into "Chuck it in," because that was our default answer for when we found something odd in the bottom of the bins. (This was probably even more so the case for the group who made Tuesday's dinner, coconut curry, because their recipe read "add all the sauces in the bin". I am not making this up. Curry came out ok, though.)

We spent our three days in Boulia driving to different Waddi Tree sights, counting seedlings, measuring diameter, all that science-y stuff. I enjoyed it immensely... ergo my major. The people measuring Waddi diameters were less enthused. Waddi trees are prickly, nasty, half-cactus, half-devil trees, apparently. (Being a little OCD and a little bossy, I naturally end up the recorder who doesn't get her hands dirty whenever I do group projects. This may be why I am not popular.)

Also there are usually flies everywhere in Boulia... not this year, but we were provided with these very chic nets:


On Wednesday afternoon, most of the class left to join up with another fieldtrip, and suddenly there were 7 of us and I was the only American. So we grilled some steaks and sausages and onions using stainless-steel pan lids... after marinating the steaks in random sauces that we threw together. It was both delicious and fun.
Afterwards we went to the Boulia pub. We also saw the illustrious Red Stump, which is what came up when Mom googled Boulia for me. I got someone to take a picture. (And this was even before I'd been to the pub!) It's up on his facebook with the caption "Cecilia's Mum would be proud":


Next morning us Hard-Core Waddi hunters hit up the tourist spots of Boulia, which consists of a gift-shop with info on "The Min-Min Lights", which are apparently ghostly lights that people occasionally see at night. We also stopped at this old Waddi tree that theoretically had some kind of significance to the Aboriginal population. The sign was a bit vague.
You'll notice that Marissa's scarf is in this picture. The Scarf visists Boulia!


The return trip was good. I sat up front with the prof 'cause I'm that kind of sad nerd. (It was a lot of fun, though. The prof's a cool guy) We listened to my extensive Beatles collection because I was the only who brought CDs. They owe me.

We stopped at Middleton again, and I bought a rock with opal in it and a piece of petrified wood for $2. Spent the night in Winton again, this time with a pub run. Then back home... we divied up the unused food, so I ended up with a bottle of hoisin sauce, some vegetable boullion cubes, all-purpose seasoning, a jar of honey, and a jar of instant coffee, which proved Very Useful Indeed when it came time to write that report.

Some misc. things:
The stars are beautiful out there. I've never been able to see the Milky Way before this. Also saw the Southren Cross, but not the North Star. That's a North Hemisphere thing.

We saw some kangaroo herds and some emu herds, and, once, a couple of feral camels. You heard me. FERAL CAMELS. Australia has the weirdest introduced species... Apparently there was some talk of introducing rhinos there to make up for the extinct megafauna. How awesome and ill-advised but still awesome is that?!

No kangaroon, emu, or camel pictures, but the album contains some cows and a few of the lizards we came across in the middle of the road. Note especially Sammy the Suicidal Snake. To get out there with the equipment, we had a truck, a van, and a 12-person van. The truck and the first van ran over Sammy, but fortunately didn't kill him. So our driver stopped the van and the class piled out for pictures. Sammy sat there, playing dead. We tried to get him out of the road, so we poked him with a stick... he didn't move. Someone picked up his tail... he slithered under the van wheel. They tried to poke him onto the side of the road, away from us, and he kept going straight under the wheel.
My theory is that poor Sammy had lost his will to live and had decided to end it all, but that road isn't well traveled and he'd been waiting days for someone to hit him.

So, enjoy the pictures of various views on the way out, some pretty plants, rainbows, lizards, cows, spiders (they have black widows here! Apparently because AU can't stand that we have a poisonous spider of our own.), parakeets, the van after we drove it through muddy roads, and us doing Things In the Name Of Science.