I can certainly say I never expected to go to the most beautiful place I've ever been to on a school field trip. But that's exactly what I did last Tuesday for my integrated marine systems class. I woke up around 5am Tuesday. That was rough, but I was SO excited! My friend, Emily, is in my class, so we made a plan the day before to meet at 5:40 at the pavilion since we didn't exactly know where we were going. On our way over to the uni the sun wasn't even up from behind the clouds yet, so the sky was really pretty (I have yet to see a good sunrise though- that's on my Australia bucket list)! We walked around for awhile trying to figure out where to go. We finally found two girls from our class, Hannah and Ruby, and eventually more people showed up (people are never even on time to class, including our professor, it's kind of ridiculous). There were around 10 students (everyone except me and Emily was Australian, which was awesome!), 2 honors students (I think that's the same as grad students in America), and our professor, Thomas. The grad students drove 4WDs owned by the school and Thomas drove his own. We all just piled up in the cars, and I was in one of the school 4WDs with Emily, Ruby, Hannah, and Dave, an honors student. I dozed for the two-ish hour car ride and it passed by really quickly. Then we stopped at Rainbow Beach. Rainbow Beach sounds like some magical place, but it really isn't, or at least the part we saw wasn't. Don't get me wrong, the beach itself was beautiful, but the town was pretty dead. I looked it up and this is what I found about how it got its name: "The town takes its name from the towering coloured sand cliffs nearby which are part of an aboriginal legend. The legend states than an ancient aboriginal god threw himself into the sand cliffs in a fight over a woman, colouring them forever." Pretty cool! Anyways, Emily and I went and checked out the beach, which was BEAUTIFUL. Then we sat and talked to Joe, one of the guys in our class, about how ridiculous Thomas is (he is funny and extremely intelligent but is not one of the best professors I've ever had... I won't even get into it, but he really makes me miss my teachers from Latin and App!!!)
Sky on the walk over to uni
One of the 4WDs
What I believe is the main part of the town of Rainbow Beach
At least there was some cool art!
Rainbow Beach!
When we finally left Rainbow Beach we drove through some sand to get to the shore where the ferry picked us up. We drove the 4WDs onto the ferry and then got out of the car and some of us climbed the stairs to get a better view. While we were gazing out at the ocean we saw a few dolphins, which was so exciting!
http://www.rainbow-beach-holidays.com/image-files/fraser-island-map.jpg
This map will help you understand where we were!
From the looks of the map, I guess this was Inskip Point- where we left mainland to head to Fraser Island
"Queensland- The Smart State"
That's a dolphin!!!
The southern tip of Fraser Island!
Once we drove onto the island, we began our research. I knew we were going to be counting birds, but I had mistakenly been thinking we were going to be walking around the beach counting birds. But instead, we rode for hours in the 4WD. I thought that was a little weird since we had learned about all of the negative impacts 4WDs have on the island, but that was really the only way to conduct our research. In fact, 4WDs are the only way to get around the island since there are no roads. That's why you basically can't see Fraser Island without paying for a 4WD tour, which costs at least $200, so the fact that we got to do it for free for class was AWESOME. Anyway, we drove up the beach for probably about two hours identifying and counting birds. We saw hundreds of Crested Terns and a ton of Red-Capped Plovers, which were all really cute. We also saw people dragging dead fish in bags across the sand. Apparently that makes huge worms come out of the sand and the people catch them and sell them for a lot of money to fishermen! Not long after we started counting, we saw a wild dingo! Fraser Island is known for being home to a good number of wild dingoes. The dingo didn't seem phased at all by our car, which makes sense considering how many 4WDs go up and down the beach everyday. I know they aren't friendly animals, but he/she was SO cute!!! The beach itself was absolutely incredible because it seemed endless. It's actually called 75 mile beach, so I assume it's 75 miles! We kept going for miles and miles (or I guess I should say kilometers and kilometers!) and all we saw was vegetation on one side, white sand, and the most beautiful blue water. I can't even describe that color, and pictures certainly can't capture it. It's surreal. It has to be the most beautiful color that exists in nature. Sometimes I forgot to look for birds simply because I was so mesmerized by the ocean. Plus we had the windows down so we could also hear the ocean. At one point I actually almost fell asleep I was so relaxed!
How adorable is that face?! AHHH
We each got our own bird ID books!
This is what we used to keep track of the distance we had traveled. We wrote down the number and species of birds (and also people and cars) we saw each km.
We saw a lot of big groups of Crested Terns!
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http://home.vicnet.net.au/~vwsg/pics/crested%20tern%20(ind).jpg
Since we were only in the moving car, I couldn't get any good pictures of birds. But here's one I got online of a Crested Tern!
I think this is a Caspian Tern! He caught a fish and flew away with it!
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4141/4896754575_8144f20196_z.jpg
I didn't take this picture either, but this is a Red-Capped Plover! They are tiny and absolutely adorable!
Can't see it well in the picture, but the man in the middle is dragging a net across the sand to catch worms!
Piece of a shipwreck on the beach
The beach seemed to go on FOREVER
Didn't edit this picture at all, but the water is even bluer in real life!
We stopped in Happy Valley for a bathroom break! It's on the map above if you want to see how far we rode up the beach that day!
Yes, it really was as steep as it looks in this picture, my calves were burning after I climbed it!
The majority of these dunes looked untouched, which was awesome!
After we walked back to the car, we drove to Wanggoolba Creek. The car ride there was so fun, it felt like we were off-roading! Once we got there, there were a ton of incredible trees and the water in the creek was crystal clear. It was so beautiful!
Anybody know what these are called? I asked somebody in my class but I can't remember! They were everywhere and they're so cool!
After this we drove to another small lake. The sand there was the whitest I've ever seen! My camera started flashing low battery though so I didn't take many pictures. I was so mad the battery was low! It was fully charged in the morning but I took SO many pictures that whole day. I'm tempted to buy another battery so that doesn't happen again!
I sat in the passenger seat when we got back in the car and felt SO weird to be in the front on the left side without having a steering wheel in front of me!
Then we drove for probably about half an hour. At first the ride felt like a roller coaster and we all kept laughing. Then it made me so tired that I actually started falling asleep until I almost fell over and everyone in the back seat burst out laughing at me. It was pretty funny! Then we got to the "Dilli Village," which is basically a campground owned by USC with some buildings, including rooms, a kitchen, bathrooms, etc. We got settled in our rooms (I chose a room with Emily) and then made our own dinners. I was super fancy and heated up some microwavable soup. Meanwhile, my professor and his honors students had steak and a whole feast haha! Then Emily and I hung out in our room for a little while. She's awesome! We bonded over our love for all the American restaurants they don't have in Australia. It was pretty terrible because we started craving all of the food they don't have here (like buffalo chicken)! Then we headed for the campfire that the boys had started. We all sat around the campfire and had a beer (I'm 21 now!) and just chatted. I talked about how jealous I was of everyone for being able to live here, and Thomas said Emily and I could be successful if we moved here and started an American restaurant. Sounds good to me! Emily and I went to bed around 10:30. If you know me, that's pretty hard to believe, but I was EXHAUSTED! I hadn't had a good night's sleep in way too many days and needed to catch up on my sleep!
Part of Dilli Village!
The next day we woke up around 9 and left around 9:30 and headed to Indian Head. I'll let pictures help me explain the rest!
You see that little tiny spec in the ocean?! That's a WHALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I saw my very first wild whale and was so excited I seriously almost cried! I got to use the binoculars to look at it and saw what I believe was the flipper and I think I saw its tail too but it was really far away, so it was hard to tell! SOOOO COOL THOUGH!!!!!
A dead Maco shark with maggots all over it...
MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE I'VE EVER BEEN!!!
We saw a turtle and shark in the water (so awesome!), but I'm not sure if that's what's in the water in this picture!
No special effects or editing- this really is what the color of the water looked like!!!
These next four pictures were taken on Emily's camera:
Me and Emily!
I used the super vivid effect on my camera for these two, but honestly the color of the water was closer to what it is in these pictures than in some of the others!
This is the Maheno shipwreck. I really wish we had actually stopped the car and gotten out to look at it, or at least that those people hadn't been standing there so I could've taken a picture without them in it, but oh well, it was still really cool! Here's a link explaining about it:
This is Eli Creek!
Nobody here wears Chacos haha but I've gotten a lot of use out of mine!
Cliche picture, but I had to do it...
This is the ferry that takes all the 4WDs across
The drive back was really pretty!
As you can tell, it was a MAGICAL field trip! I would love to go back, but it's so expensive so I'm not sure if I'll be able to! I'm just so fortunate that I got to go there on a free field trip!
The rest of the week was pretty good. We went to Friday's on Thursday, as always. Then Friday we went to Brissy again for a footy (rugby) game, but I'll make a separate post about that! This week has been the roughest week I've had here, but compared to last year at App, it hasn't been too bad. Plus... I'M GOING WHALE WATCHING TOMORROW!!!!!!!! If you know me well, I'm sure you can imagine how excited I am! Cross your fingers that I actually see some whales! :)
Megan, Helen, and me
Hope everyone is having a marvelous week! Miss you all lots and lots!
Hugs from Australia! xoxo
Dear Sara,
ReplyDeleteGrace and I continue to love reading your blogs and looking at the amazing pictures, I am so glad that you are having such a magical time! We also LOVED skyping with you the other day, not quite the same as seeing you in person but pretty good anyhow!
Miss and love you, Kakee