Last week was a regular school week, class, doing homework, hanging out. The weekend, however, was not as typical. A group of students from my marine science class had the opportunity to go to Stradbroke Island in Moreton Bay and do “research” of some marine life. We left UQ at 7:30 Saturday morning, and took a bus to Cleveland and got on a ferry out to the island, arriving at the research center around 9:30 I think, I don’t really remember, I was sleeping. When we got there, we got a safety speech, about all of the highly poisonous things that we could run into while we were there. After that we got settled into our rooms, which were pretty small with 4 sets of bunk beds, and then had a quick lunch. We then went out to the shore, where one of the instructors had put out a net of some kind and was in the process of dragging it in. Once it was in, he went through and talked about all of the different species of things he had caught. There were a few different kinds of fish, a couple rays, and a little shark I think. They were all really cool, and we could touch/hold some of them. After that we had our afternoon tea, and then went out to the rocky shore to explore. We walked around the rocky shore, looking at different crabs, oysters, snails, sea cucumbers, all kinds of crazy things. The rocky shore slowly turned into a sandy shore, and once we were there we saw starfish, eels, more crabs, more sea cucumbers, and a blue ringed octopus, which was one of those deadly things we were talked about earlier. Its poison shuts down certain voluntary muscles, including those that allow you to breathe, so rapidly that we wouldn’t be able to make the 5 minute walk to the health center before we would have been in serious trouble. So we didn’t touch it.

Our evening activities were cancelled because of the rain, so we got to start working on our research projects. We were divided into groups of 5 or 6, and our group could do any marine life related research we wanted. Our group decided to look into where on the shore hermit crabs would prefer to live, and if there was any correlation to that with size. After deciding that, we had dinner, and then the rest of the night to just hang out. There were some people from Austria on our trip, and I ended up hanging out with them that night, and learned two new card games that you play with some weird German playing cards, called Schnapsen and Trousers-Down. They were both pretty easy to pick up, and a fun way to pass the time.

Sunday morning we had breakfast at 7, and then had all day to work on our projects. The morning we spent doing research, as we were waiting for the tide to go out. After lunch, we went out to the shore and collected data, and then came back to the research center to analyze it and put together a presentation. The presentations started after dinner, and took a couple hours to go through. After they were over, we again had the night to ourselves, and I ended up playing more cards and other games, but with a different group of people.

Monday started early as well, as we had to clean our rooms and the research station before leaving at 9:30. Our bus left a little late, and it took us across the island to Lookout Point, where we hiked around the edge of the island looking at cool rock formations, beaches, and little islands. The hike took a couple hours, mostly because we were all taking so many pictures along the way, and ended at a beach where our lunch was waiting for us. After eating, we had a few hours to hang out on the beach or swimming. I went swimming, and the rip of the ocean was the strongest I have ever felt. I was trying to walk out to deeper water, except the rip was so strong I could barely walk forward, and the water wasn’t even over my waist. But once we were out a little ways, the rip calmed down. We left the beach around 3, and took a bus/ferry/bus combination to get back to UQ around 6. Now I have a lot of assignments due this week, and only wrote this blog to procrastinate, so I have to go do that now.

So it’s been a couple weeks since my last post, so there’s quite a bit to catch up on.  The first week of classes went well.  There were some mix ups with rooms/finding my way around campus, but that’s all been straightened out now.  Classes are a lot different here, they may meet 3 or 4 times a week in 2 or 3 different buildings on campus, and they vary in size from 45 to 180.  Some classes are more interesting than others, but they have all had parts of them that have been interesting so far.  I was originally left out of the trip to the Great Barrier Reef, but there were a lot of students left out so they made a third trip for us.  It isn’t as long, but we get to stay in a resort and spend just as much time in the water at the reef, so it sounds good to me.  The second week of classes was less eventful than the first, still haven’t had to hand in an assignment yet, my first is due in next Wednesday. 

This past weekend was the Dickinson paid trip to Byron Bay.  Byron Bay is a small town on the coast, two hours south of Brisbane in New South Wales.  We got on a bus Friday morning at ten and started our trip.  During the trip, our guide Matt asked us if we would rather sky-dive today because the weather was supposed to be better than on Sunday, when we had planned on going.  So we all decided to go right after we checked into our hostel.  Since there are seven guys in our group and 22 girls, the seven of us were put in one room.  After we got settled in, we went out to Byron Bay Skydiving (www.skydivebyronbay.com) and filled out the paper work.

 I was chosen to be in the first group to head up.  After getting our sky dive pants and harness, we were told how to “fall” out of the plane rather than jump, and how to land safely.  We then loaded up the plane, and took off.  As we were climbing up, we kept checking in how high we were, and it felt like we just kept going higher and higher.  After reaching an altitude of 14,000 feet, one of the crew opened the door.  I watched Coleman slide towards the door, and then it seemed like they leaned forward and just disappeared.  Then Emily and her tandem partner went, and the same thing happened.  Now it was my turn.  First my cameraman stepped outside, and was holding on to the side of the plane, so that he could jump at the same time as me.  I slid to the door, and the next thing I knew we were falling towards the ground.  It was amazing.  We were above a layer of clouds, so we could kind of see the ground through the clouds, but mostly we could just see the tops of clouds everywhere.  Then we went through a cloud, and once on the other side we could see everything clearly.  After about a minute of free falling, the parachute was opened.  I was shocked at first because I didn’t know it was opening, but then I was really relieved.  We floated down for another five minutes or so, looking around at the ocean and mountains, still travelling pretty fast.  I saw the plane and Coleman and Emily land, and then we came in to land.  After landing I was glad to be on solid ground, but at the same time wishing I could go back up and do it again.  We hung out for another hour or so waiting for our DVD’s and pictures while everybody else went, and then we went back to our hostel to get ready for our night.  That night we were all exhausted from the rush of skydiving, but we went out to dinner and then out to a bar, but everybody left pretty early to walk around town or go to bed.  I went down to the beach with Kyle and Olivia, had some ice cream, and then went back to the hostel because we had an early morning on Saturday.

Saturday morning our group was split into two smaller groups, half of us going sea kayaking, the other half going surfing; then we would switch after lunch.  I was in the sea kayaking group for the morning.  After signing paperwork, we were paired up and told how to go through waves and paddle most efficiently, before heading out into the ocean.  We paddled out past the waves, and then started going back and forth looking for dolphins and sea turtles, but never saw anything.  A couple hours later, we paddled back in, attempting to ride waves in to save energy.  We flipped right as we were getting to shore, but that was alright because we didn’t have to try to get back in the kayak as we could just walk the rest of the way.  While waiting for the rest of the group to get in, we had Tim-Tams and coffee if you wanted any.  We brought the kayaks back to the starting point and then headed back into town to get lunch.  After lunch, we got on a bus to 7 Mile Beach, which has one of the top 10 surf spots in Australia.  We surfed a little ways down the beach from there, because those waves were too big for us.  We had three instructors, who first taught us how to read waves and find safe places to swim or surf in the ocean.  Then they taught us some safety things about how to carry a surf board and how to fall off safely, and finally how to paddle and get up on to the board.  After all of this, we got to go out and try on our own.  I think everyone in our group was eventually successful and got up on to the board at least once, but most people were getting the hang of it towards the end of the day.  After returning to Byron Bay, we had dinner at our hostel, before heading to Cheeky Monkey’s, a local bar, for the night. 

Sunday morning wasn’t as early as Saturday, but it was still pretty early.  We woke up and checked out of the hostel, and then went on a 5K hike up to a lighthouse.  Along the way we went past a couple beaches and some really nice houses, and saw a lot of surfers.  On the way up we passed the eastern most point in Australia, which was pretty cool to see.  From the trail we could see the ocean, and saw a pod of dolphins playing in the waves.  From the lighthouse we could see pretty much everything; it was amazing.  At the top I had some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had, it was called hokey-pokey, and it was vanilla ice cream with honey comb in it.  After finishing that, we started on our way back down to the beach for lunch.  After finishing lunch, we had a couple hours of free time to swim or explore Byron Bay, and I decided to go do some souvenir shopping.  That didn’t last too long as I was exhausted, so eventually I, like most of us, ended up just waiting for the bus to come take us back to Brisbane. 

So this weekend was jam packed, and really fun.  I have a regular school week this week, and next weekend I’m going to Moreton Bay with my marine science class to check out some marine life.  I’ll be sure to post about that when I get back Monday afternoon.