Back from the Outback

My trip was a lot of fun and learned quite a bit as well. Very cool company, cold weather, two showers with brown water, lots of roo's, too many pictures, nice and chill, good conversation and beer.

We left about 7:30 or so Saturday night on a Greyhound bus and got to Idalia National Park around 10:30ish on Sunday morning. We stopped twice on the way up for dinner and brekkie (breakfast). Swamped by the other group that was already there we got our bags off and set up camp. There were around 30 students in all. Some sharing tents other not.

I borrowed a 3 person tent from my housemate but I barely fit in it diagonal. So it was really a Brandon person tent. I'm not sure how they can fit three in there but it would be nice and cozy. Two would be alright though. But it did the job so I can't really complain. My sleeping pad was nice and comfy and my sleeping bag was just barely warm enough. It got down to around -2C on Tuesday and I think Wednesday night. The other nights it was around 2-6C, so it was a little better. But I had enough layers on to stay warm including hat and gloves and on some days a little beer.

Tent city

This is our scientific field lab/station/homestead with a beer stocked fridge, showers and chef. All just as important as the microscopes, binoculars, mortar and pestle, bomb calorimeters and dissection tools.


A place called wave rock. Just some of the erosion found at the park. Wish we could have spent more time but the sun was going down and wanted to get a better view from higher up.



Everyone was divided up into 4 groups. Our seven included: James, Ludo, Sally, Steve, Bec, Hilary and me. John, one of our tutor/teachers is in the hat. Felt kind of bad because by the time this picture was taken we spoiled all of his jokes he had prepared.

We were kept busy all week until the last night. We had 3 different projects to complete which usually started around 8 am and went all day. One day was a little more relaxed when we went to see some wallabies.

Endangered Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby

I think there is a little joey in mum's pouch on the left.

Found this guy up there as well.

Black Headed Python. He was about 1.25 meters or around 4 feet long. We got him in a bag and took him back to the field lab for everyone to see then let him go the next day.

The first project was collecting some plants to determine their caloric content and water content for an energetics study to determine if the roo's at the park need to drink water. Second project consisted of measuring the amount of erosion and plant cover between a few different types of habitat. The third project was a survey on the population numbers of the different types of macropods (roo's, wallabies, wallaroo's ect.) from the back of a pickup and also from roo poo found on the ground.

We also did a dissection of a wallaroo one of the nights as well. Don't click on the picture if you get queezy. He didn't have a lower jaw by the time we got him. Hopefully I'll get some more pictures from other people to post that are not as bad.

Hilary with our wallaroo.

As the region receives about 1 3/4" or 450mm of rain a year there is not too much of this out there.

One of the dragon's we found. Not to big only about 15cm long.

I finally played my first cricket game. It was hard to get use to the ball bouncing on the ground before you hit is but after a few times at bat it wasn't too bad. It's cool how everyone gets into it. A lot better than baseball. Too many acronyms to remember though. Now I just have to play rugby and Aussie rules football.

During our off time we usually sat by the fire because it was usually cold even during the day, played soccer, cricket, hacky sac, ate, went hiking and just hung out.

Thankfully I packed enough clothes to last the week but my jeans were getting a little rank on the last day or so. Fortunately I had conserved a pair that was somewhat clean and thankfully everyone else was just as bad as me.

Arrived around 1:30 am on Friday night after a 14 hours bus ride with about an hour of sleep. Maybe less. But I was quite comfortable. I can't sleep on plane either so it was cool. Me and Hil watched The Princess Bride and 95% of Spaceballs on the way back, until my Ipod died on us. So it went a little faster than usual. I think everyone wanted to get home and get clean because we forgot to get phone numbers and such from everyone. Took a cab back to the house and took a nice, long (by Briz standards) 10 minute shower then crashed.

Saturday I went to the "Pig City" Festival at uni with Erin, John, Erin's Dad and some of his friends. It was mostly bands from the 70's during the civil rights movement. Great music and a lot of fun. Then we headed into the valley for some more music at one of the clubs then came back to the house.

An amazing week here down under. School starts next week and as far as I know I'm allowed to stay here. For last semester I received 2 7's and a 6, with my Outback class still to be determined, which equates to around a 3.8 GPA or so, I think. So I guess the nights with 3 hours of sleep, lots of coffee and typing my fingers off pays off in the end. I have to make sure about a few of my classes but my work load shouldn't be too bad.

When I feel like posting again I'll get some more of my 604 pictures up here for everyone. I'm going to chill the rest of this week and veg for a few days before the mayhem starts again. That's all I've got for now.

Later,
B.