Remote Area Dive Safari-Pelorus Island

Magnetic Island

Last weekend I FINALLY made it over to Magnetic Island, a tropical paradise, (aside from Townsville) just a twenty minute ferry ride off the coast of Townsville. I went with my friend Rhona, who I was actually surprised wanted to go--just the two of us. Australians here are funny about doing things with just one other person, anyway it was loads of fun--or as she would say "heaps" of fun--just the two of us. We left campus around 9AM--took a bus down to the ferry terminal where we waited till 1030 for the next ferry. In our spare time we asked the info booth guy what was good to do on our first time over there. He recommended several bays where you could swim and a trail--the Forts trail--for a wonderful view of the island and beyond.

The ferry ride wasn't too bad, we sat on top where we got the wonderful breeze in our faces and a good lookout view to all the surrounding islands--beautiful!! We entered Magnetic Island at a place called Nelly Bay. It was very odd to see such an island so inhabitated. The ferry terminal was surrounded by beach side towering apartments. But luckily that appeared to be the only spot on the island so populated. We decided to get a day pass on the bus system there as most of the other spots on the island were at least 2 km away and at most 6km. This was a good decision as we ran out of time to get to all the places in the time that we had using the bus anyway. The first place we stopped was a bay called Picnic Bay. Here there was a long pier out into the water...heaven as you can imagine it to be. WOW, I couldn't believe how amazing this place was and only 20 minutes from Townsville. At the end of the pier we saw some people fishing, one man with his pole strained into the ocean...he must have had something big on the end. What do you know, he did! As he pulled it up we caught a glimpse of a huge guitarfish (at least that is how I am IDing it) probably as long as me. I felt bad for the poor thing, but it was stunning to see. After several strenuous minutes, the fishermen pulled it up onto the pier. After one of them called to the other to get a knife, I decided I had had my share of watching and started to walk away, thinking they planned on killing it. But on looking back it appeared that they had cut the string and threw him/her back in. I was thankful of that.

Rhona and I decided we were pretty hungry so we found a picnic table with a National Geographic postcard view of the ocean and surrounding island and enjoyed our packed lunches there. Then we were ready for the ocean. We suited up in an ant infested bathroom, pretty interesting I must say. The water felt soooooooo good. It was surprisingly much clearer than over at the Strand in Townsville, extremely inviting. I was really in awe sitting there in the water. What could be more perfect than this? Probably having my family there too! : )

We saw a bus pull up and decided perhaps it was time to explore another bit of the island--so we went back to the ant infested bathroom changed and ran after the bus (that was actually not moving so..we didn't have to run far hehe). Then we headed off in the other direction to Horseshoe Bay. The bus ride there was also quite good--so many beautiful bits of ocean--you could see the corals through the water..unfortunately I was on the wrong side of the bus to get any decent pictures. Sorry about that.

Horseshoe bay was a bit more inhabited and more touristy, but quite welcoming. First we just walked along the stores. Rhona was hungry again so we stopped in a shop and got popsicles and chips (aka french fries haha) then we were too tired to do anything so we rested on a tree and did some people watching. We noticed to the right of us that there were people tubing. We decided it looked like fun and went to check it out. It turned out it was just 15 bucks! Sweet deal, we were going to do it. I guess its required by law to have an observer on the boat to watch and make sure people don't fall of the tubes, so for the group that went before us I got that lucky job. This meant for me double fun for what I was paying. I took pictures for the people that went before us, I think they were Irish. When it was Rhona's and my turn another boy went with us because he didn't have anyone else to go with. I think he was like 15 or something. The tubing was AWESOME, we went so fast and laughed so loud. It was so scary everytime we hit a wave from the boat..we'd crash down on the water and get the sensation that we were going to fly off into the water. This wouldn't have been so bad except obviously we'd be scared a shark would eat us! Needless to say my arms hurt the next day from gripping on so tightly. Totally worth 15 dollars. Running off of pure adrenaline we finally calmed down and decided it was probably best to head back to the ferry. It was nearly 430. What a day of fun!

We caught a ferry back to T'ville but just missed the last bus as we pulled in to dock. We decided we really wanted pizza anyway so we took a walk to the touristy street "Flinder's Street" and ran till we found the first shop that had pizza written on the outside of it. It looked like a yummy shop, but actually turned out to be the most tasteless pizza we'd ever eaten. We ordered a Hawaiin Pizza-half with ham for her and half without for me. But you couldn't taste anything. It was soooooooo bad! Luckily we were so hungry we ate it easily, but I haven't touched the leftovers in over a week..and probably should just throw it away. We also had garlic bread, which was a lot better, but surprisingly not even as good as the cafeteria food. haha.

Full to our limit, we took a walk to the next closest bus stop and on our way passed Mackers (McDonalds!). For 50 cents I got a soft serve icecream and cone that was over 6 inches high. Thats by far the steal deal of Australia! When we finally got back I think I clonked out on my bed by 930. Good Day all around : )

Paluma Rainforest

This week flew by. After getting back bright and early from Cairns on Monday I spent most of the day recooperating. Tuesday was a good half day of classes with my first reef fishes practical where we had to ID a reef fish. My partner and I got it no problem (but only because the key feature was the fish's blue teeth!) Wednesday was a long day filled with classes and to top it all off I got a few laps in at the pool and had a nice walk with my Ozzies after dark. Thursday I jinxed myself and got my first sunburn with Morgan and Scott at the beach, but it was soooooooooooo worth it! The water was wonderful and relaxing. Thursday night we took a trop to Stockland (the mall) to get some Tim-Tams (the best cookies EVER) and a new notebook so I can keep track of all the crazy adventures I still need to go on. We just missed the bus on the way back so we had to do a bit of people watching--for any of you that know Carousel mall or even Shoppingtown mall at night on the weekends....well here in Australia they have the same thing--crazy punk kids and super skanky girls, its a small world after all! Friday was a movie night day and my first Conserving Marine Wildlife practical--we got to practice being IUCN ecologists. For anyone who isn't familiar the IUCN make the red list--for endangered species. I have to say it was a pretty cool activity. It is really making me think about careers in conservation.

Now for what you've all been waiting for! Paluma!

It actually wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. It clearly can't compare to the ocean, but it was nice. We had to meet as a class at 8 AM on Saturday morning, and it took about an hour to get there. Once inside the Paluma park we had to drive up the mountain to 2925 feet and then hike our way up a bit more. As we drove up we could see an amazing view of the ocean, Townsville and the other mountain sides. We were all a bit scared because the driver was zooming around the curves---on one side we were inches away from hitting the side of the mountain and its jagged rocks and on the other inches away from falling off a cliff. Now mind you it was a single car roadway meant for both ways of traffic. SCARY. On our way up it sprinkled a bit, but it really never rained on us the whole time.

When we finally made it up we split into two groups. My group went on a rainforest walk with our actual professor. The whole time he stopped and named off Latin family names of trees and plants. It was really difficult to follow and almost unenjoyable. I tried my best to write down their characteristics and take pictures to remember the plants later, but I was behind the whole time. I finally gave up and just took pictures of sweet trees and epiphytes. There were a lot of huge buttresses at the base of trees and tons of epiphytes (those vine looking things that wrap around trees). We hiked into wetter regions and drier regions--some with some great overlooks. We didn't have to worry too much about the wildlife. The only things really were ticks, mites and leeches. Sadly I did have to fight off the leaches. --It was strange too because I had long pants on, but suddenly I felt something cold on my leg, like water. I lifted my pant leg up and what do you know there was a leech! I yanked it off and smushed it in disgust. Then about two minutes later I felt the same cold sensation on my neck! YUCKKKKKKKK, eww eww!! And about two minutes after that I was face to face with a palm size golden orb weaver (or something like that). I am so glad I wasn't face to face with it by surprise!

After this 2.5 hour walk we stopped and met up with the other group for lunch. This wasn't really enjoyable as the people I sat with were trying to knock out the wild turkeys hanging around us with their apple cores, stupid Americans (urgh). After lunch we switched teachers and went on a different path called the H loop or as the Ozzie's say..."hach" hehe. By this time a cloud had settled in on us, and I do mean on us. We were so high up we were in the cloud. It was really cool to walk through the rainforest like this, the video in this post is from that walk. This was a more enjoyable walk because the teacher really didn't know anything about families and genuses and stuff so we really just walked through and tried to enjoy it. One thing we did stop to talk about was this little plant with hairs on it. There is some plant in the rainforest that is suppose to sting you, "the stinging plant". But it turned out to just be a particularly hairy plant. Also on this walk we saw a coral fungi (see it on my snapfish pictures) which was a vibrant neon orange. Again, no real wildlife--and luckily no leeches!

Overall it was about 5 hours of hiking/walking around in the woods so when we were done I was pretty pooped. But it was pretty cool to be in the rainforest! I think everyone fell asleep in the car on the way back. Reminds me of the good old days of being a three year old hehe.

Cairns: Paradise Found

As you know, this weekend I traveled to Cairns. Friday I got a call from my friend Theresa telling me a cyclone was moving in and that the dive we were suppose to do was cancelled. With rain and disaster in the forecast I boarded the plan a little bummed. But little did I realize it was going to the best weekend yet!

I got to Cairns within an hour after boarding the plane. My wonderful friends waited for me at the airport-Noor, Rhona and Miranda as well as drove me there to begin with. The person I sat next to on the plane kept looking over at me, I could tell he really wanted to talk. When he finally did--he didn't shut up, which was fine, it was entertaining for sure. He was from Townsville, but had decided a few days before that he wanted to up and move to Cairns. But he was a real partier -or so he said-and that was really most of what he talked about. His uncle and he had gotten in a fight with some people and got kicked out of Uni Club (the club on campus) earlier in the week. (hysterical right?) So refreshments came around--on Qantas airlines you get free alcohol so obviously this kid took a beer. It was so funny because as soon as we got off the plane this kid was wabbling around, clearly unable to handle alcohol...and yet he had just went on and on about how much of a partier he was. I think this is what people call a light weight? Really funny!

Anyway enough about that. I had to wait about an hour and a half until the shuttle I had booked brought me to where my friend Theresa was staying. I did a good bit of people watching, I love that sport! When I finally got to Theresa's place she was walking down the street toward me. We shared a wonderful hug and brought my stuff to her room. Then we went to a party that she had previously been at and I met a bunch of her friends.

We slept in Saturday, and by sleeping in I mean 10AM. Since we couldn't dive we decided to go on this thing called the skyrail, which basically brings you over the rainforest. It was awesome-check out the pictures. It had two stops along the way to its final destination which was this little touristy town in the middle of the rainforest. The first stop we got off at was a walk through the rainforest. It was sprinkling a bit and they had umbrella's we could use. The second stop was at some waterfalls. They were quite powerful, I guess because it is the rainy season. The view from the skyrail was magnificent-you could see mountains behind mountains, you could see the ocean, you could see cockatoos (spelling?), you could see everything. Truly beautiful. It was in all about a 45 minute ride on the skyrail-not including the stops to the final spot. Kuranda, the little town in the rainforest, was surrounding by a murky pond, where we believe zillions and I mean zillions of freshies (freshwater crocs) were hiding out.

Kuranda was home to many little touristy shops and markets; it was nice and relaxing. We just walked around and window shopped for a while, bought a few things. Then we came across a Venomous (spelling?) Animal Zoo. It looked a little sketchy, but Theresa's male friend who was with us wanted to go pretty bad-so we did. And it was worth it. First we had to go down this creepy ramp into the bottom of the building where all these glass tanks held different poisonous snakes. (pictures and descriptions on snapfish) There was this really odd woman (who Theresa hated haha) giving a tour to some aboriginal children. She sounded like she had no idea what she was talking about. It made me really question the 15 dollars I had just spent to see these snakes. For all I knew they weren't venomous at all. But whatever, they were pretty cool. When we had enough at the bottom we went back to the top where some other tour guide was going to explain some other creatures to us. This was cool because we got to hold some of them--crazy right? Who wants to hold Australia's venomous creatures? I sure do! But the ones we held weren't actually venomous-they just had defenses that made them look threatening. The skink was my favorite, he had a blue tongue. We also got to hold a water snake that insisted on getting uncomfortably close to you, even for me. By the time we were done it was cycloning out and we had to run back to catch the last trip on the skyrail. It was quite relaxing to ride back and look at the rainforest in the protection of our little sky lift.

Saturday dinner we made a run for some thai/vegetarian/indian food (as the restaurant was called)-it was pretty good, better than cafeteria food at least. But that night we went out on the town. It was wicked fun. We (all Theresa's friends and I) got all dressed up--dresses and nice slacks and shirts --and went downtown. Cairns is one of the biggest backpacker places in the North, despite the smallness of everything else about Cairns, the city was booming with clubs and night life, more so than Townsville has ever looked. Theresa decided we had to go to one of their normal hangout places, Giligan's -a bar/club across the way from one of the biggest hostels in Cairns. It was SO cool. They had a bar with a pool right behind it and a few different rooms with different music themes. On the bottom floor they had a dance floor with these little table/cages you could dance in. Theresa and her friend kept trying to get me to go in, but I was too ashamed of my dancing to get up there. I think this was a good choice hehe. But the music was great, and the lighting was terrific. I loved it. The upper floor was okay, lots of funny people dancing, and the oddest part was that there was a queen size bed along side the wall. I don't want to know what that was for!

After hanging out there for quite a while, we met up with some more of her friends who had decided to have a quietter night out in a different pub. This was just like a regular bar, but they did have a dance floor. We then made our way as a huge group to this exclusive club at the casino in Cairns. There was a specific dress code too, how cool is that? I actually passed because I was wearing a dress and cute shoes, but one of the kids with us was in shorts--a big no no and couldn't get in. So this club was called the Velvet Underground and as you can tell it was underground. It had red rugs and was really classy. There were two floors--we went to the botom. But there was a special VIP level on this floor-basically it looked like what clubs look like in movies. SO Cool! Behind the DJ was this crazy mask, kind of India-ish/magician-ish looking and the music was ALL techno. My kind of heaven for sure. We danced around a lot and I drank lots of water haha. Then in the middle of the night they had a dance contest-with people who could actually dance. It was kind of like a private viewing of the show-so you think you can dance, with the exception of one girl who basically gave us a strip show (odd?). We had so much fun that we were out until 2:30AM --for me thats crazy.

The best part was we had to wake up at 6AM the next morning to go SCUBA diving, which I really can't complain about. But basically you can tell I was running off adrenaline all weekend. Sadly in the middle of the short sleeping night that we had--one of Theresa's friends came barging in -drunk and wild and woke up up. Ei, yi yi!

Sunday morning we woke, far too early, and got ready for diving. We went through a group called Deep Down Diving or something like that. They had about 80 people on board that day, but only 5 of us were actually already certified divers, crazy!! Many people were just there to snorkel, but a lot of people were getting certified for diving. It is quite possible that other than the instructors and ship crew that I may have had the most dives of anyone present--a scary thought.

Because I have a wonderful body, I of course got sea-sick. Yuck, I tried to fight it off but unfortunately breakfast didn't want to stay down. After that though the sea-sickness was manageable and as soon as I got in the water it went away. Theresa was a great dive buddy. She helped me set up my gear and situate myself despite my seasickness. I was much appreciative of this, really really really.

I was so excited to get into the water and once I got it the experience totally surpassed my expectations. And the scary thing is, it was pretty murky I guess because of the cyclone. Don't worry it was a wonderful and beautiful sunny day--no cyclone present when I actually dove. The first dive we saw a lot of parrotfish (that eat coral) and coral of course. Vibrant and distinctive colors in everything. It was super relaxing to be there but thrilling at the same time.

For our second dive we went to another reef. Here the first thing that greeted us was a wrasse, a large large fish with ginormous lips! He was my favorite fish of all. He let us touch him and he was the softest smoothest thing I've ever touched. If I could marry a fish it would be him. He was that cool. By the way--his name is Willy and his face is on a postcard. Again we saw tons of beautiful coral and reef fish and this time I even saw a sting ray. Both dives lasted about an hour and we probably were at a depth of 35 feet or less the whole time. The water was probably above 90 and I was only wearing a stinger suit--basically an underarmour jumper. After the dives I wanted more, so I went out for a snorkel. You'll love this--I heard someone yelling and poked my head up to hear someone saying all snorkelers back to the boat!! I looked to my right and saw two huge fins poking out of the water!! OH MY GOODNESS-yes it was exactly what I thought-a shark!! You better bet my flippers I was back to the boat without another look. It was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO cooool! I have no idea what kind of shark it was but it wasn't an ordinary reef shark because they wouldn't have called us back. I was so scared, but really really excited too. After a few minutes they told us we could get back in the water, all of us were reluctant, but I got back in and was probably only one of three people that did. I had to though, I wasn't going to let a shark get in the way of my first day on the GBR! And honestly I kind of wanted to see this big guy under water! No sign of him the rest of the day though, I guess I could deal with that!

On the way back Theresa and I relaxed on the top of the ship soaking in sun. It was wonderful. Needless to say I was absolutely exhausted by the time we got back to her place.

I took a bus back to Townsville Sundaynight/Monday morning. 12:25 leave time and 5:35 AM arrival --I really didn't sleep on the bus--it was uncomfortable and freezing. Then I had to wait an hour and a half at the bus terminal in Townsville before the Monday busses even started around Townsville. I couldn't keep my eyes open though so I laid down on a bench and tried to sleep. Covered in flies (yes I'm not sure why flies) I waited, but let me tell you--fly covered and sleep deprived I had just had the best weekend in my life.

class week # 2

Goodness gracious, I am sorry its been a week since I wrote! I can't say I've been doing much. But I'll let you be the judge of that.

Lets go back in time for a few minutes........

Last Friday as I said we were going to have a movie night. We all had dinner together (me and my Aussies, and we had guests (Morgan and Scott-American friends haha)(And yes I do still know I am also American). We watched Yes, Man, which is way funny you should all see it if you haven't and PS I love you, which was pretty good, but definetly the opposite of funny.

Saturday I was WICKED bored, no big plans for the weekend. So I decided to go on a nice hike up the mountain type structure behind my townhouse. It was AWESOME. I should have brought my camera and I promise I will next time, but it was soo cool. I think I may have described an earlier walk up this mountain, but this time I went a lot farther and even made it up a second mountain peak. (I could be wrong in classifying these as mountains.) It wasn't too hot out, though it was sticky, dont get me wrong. But I had my headphones in with newly stolen music from my friend Rhona, so it was goooooooood. There are so many little pathways up there--I could probably take a different one every day and be busy the whole semester. I decided to take one called Hammerhead (because I had spotted it my last hike up there but was too nervous to try it.) This time I marched onward! When I got to the top I could see alllllll of Townsville it was so pretty and the wind felt so good. I neglected to mention that as I was close to the top the path ended so I kind of paved my own way for a few meters (yes meters, thats what they use here). To make sure I knew where I was going on my way back I made a little arrow sign out of rocks, though I honestly think I could have found it if I hadn't made this. At the top here you could go two different ways-down another path or up to another peak. If you were reading carefully you already know which I took. So yes, I went up up up! The earth here is so red and its got little ant cities every few feet. It started to get pretty steep, and the music was getting really intense, so I stopped and stared out at my surroundings, wow! It was like a movie and I was in the middle of it. I actually got teary -eyed (spelling), though that may have been for other reasons than the scenery. But it really felt good to be up there just climbing, freely on my own, with no one holding me back except myself. And to be away from people--it just felt good. This was such a steep peak, but I had to keep going because I knew there was something great waiting for me. when I finally planted my foot onto an unslanted surface I was pumped. There was like this little area that looked like it could be a camp site--there was even remnants of a campfire (along with someones shoes?) If you know me at all, you can only imagine what I did next. Danced, danced danced! Haha, it was quite a lot of fun. I could sing as loud as I wanted and dance as strangely as I wanted. (Of course I looked over my shoulder every 5 seconds to make sure no one else was there) The wind was amazing and the view even better. I am so ashamed I don't have a picture for you to see. I'll end this story there at the peak--but I did eventually have to climb back down.

That night I rounded up the troups to go down to the strand!! It was Rhona, Noor, Dylan and I. (Phillipino, Sydney-ian, Melbourne-ian and American) It was great-we took a bus down there and were on the bus for a good hour and still couldnt see the beach, we were wondering if we took the wrong bus, but it turned out it was good enough-but we basically had to jump off because the driver was a luny -bin. When we got there the first thing we all wanted was icecream! So we hunted down some place called Juliett's, which was actually a gelato shop. It basically was icecream, maybe you can explain the difference to me. One scoop was 3.90 but OMG -it was MEGA. I couldn't stop licking it for the first 5 minutes of having it because it was so huge and melting all over. DELICIOUS. We sat on the beach underneath the stars, listening to the waves crash (while keeping our eyes on a wild cat(so Noor said) that was stalking us for our gelato). I really wanted to go swimming though so I forced them to go with me (actually only convincing Rhona) and we walked down to the Rock pool because we were too scared to go in the actual ocean. The Rock Pool as I may have described in an earlier post is a pool built basically next to the ocean that connects to the ocean and has salt water filtering into it. Its free of marine stingers and crocs so its not so scary to be in at night.

Sunday was a lazy day, I don't think I did much other than talk to my family on skype and attempt to go swimming in the pool (closed due to low chlorine-whatever : ( ) I may have watched a movie that night--yeah right, I did--The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Another good one-quite long though.

Monday I spent the day looking up flights and such, trying to plan my life. I have come to the sad reality that I probably won't make it to Ayers Rock this trip. It is about 500 dollars one way and you can only leave there on the weekends which makes it really hard to plan for. But I have decided that I will just have to come back! : ) Maybe move here, just kidding Mom! (Or am I kidding?) I had one class Monday-it was my first with my Reef Fishes teacher-he's pretty wild looking and interesting to listen to. I think I will enjoy that class.

Random thought--I was walking down the beach the other day thinking I dont think I would want to move here if it is this warm all the time. Maybe a little farther South, but I think I actually miss the cold weather a bit. I was reminiscing (spelling? sorry!) about my wonderful bed at home with heaps of pillows and blankets that I can hide in and what a wonderful feeling that is. Here I have a sheet and sometimes I can't even stand to be touching that I'm so hot. Its nice to have the changing seasons-it keeps you on your feet. But then again, Syracuse winter lasts far too long. There has to be something inbetween-perhaps Spain? haha.

Tuesday-I had one lecture in the morning-conserving marine wildlife and that was it for the day. I had a different lecturer today than the first week of classes, he use to work for the IUCN-the people who make the lists of endangered species. Pretty cool. After lecture I hopped on a bus and went down to Flinder's St.-the hub of the town. I had no idea where to get off so I just sprang up at one stop and got off. I walked down Flinders Mall which is in the middle of flinder's street-but no cars are allowed on it-its full of cute shops, coffee spots and other fun summery things. I didn't stop in any shops but I will go back there another day. Iwas headed for the Museum of Tropical Queensland, which was just next to the Reef HQ that I went to during O Week. When I finally made it there the guy at the entrance chatted me up a bit finally coming to the conclusion that I could be classified as a local, haha, imagine that! (Due to my student ID from JCU) So I got in for free! It was such an awesome museum. Please check out my pictures on snapfish. I got there at 11 and didnt leave until 230, thats pretty long for a solitary person in a museum.

The first exhibit I went in was about Pandora-a ship that sunk just north of Townsville in the 1800s. There was rumored to be a mutiny of some sort. The Pandora was set off to find the mutiners (is that a word?) and collect them and bring them back. A relatively small box was made on top the ships deck to hold the prisoners, Pandora's Box! I think 14 men were put inside, legs and arms bound. The Pandora then set sail for home, but it had to cross part of the reef on its way. Someone was sent out to find a way through it without crashing the ship, but before they knew it, the Pandora had drifted into the corals because of a strong storm coming on. As the tides moved out and the currents pulled, the Pandora moved farther out to sea where it sank to its demise. It was only at the last minute that the captain let the prisoners out of Pandora's Box.

The next exhibit was on Rugby Union, lots and lots of trophies. Despite my one semester playing rugby "I couldn't be bothered" (an Aussie phrase) to look at it long. On the upper level of the museum was an exhibit on Deep Sea Creatures, Coral and the Rainforest. This was pretty cool--they had basically every coral species you could, would, should ever want to see. There were also bizarre deep sea creatures ranging from that abyssal fish you see in finding nemo to this spider/crab creature. Again check out my pictures on snapfish for some crazy things.

After the museum I decided I HAD to go to the Strand, I was just too close to miss going into the ocean! After a 30 minute walk down a beautiful beautiful beach in which I could see Magnetic Island in the distance and jetskiiers and boaters abound on the water, I found a bathroom to change in. I forgot to mention that on that walk I passed some workers cutting down coconuts. I got a real kick out of this because they had a sign that said something like Beware Falling Coconuts...hahahahaha...I took a picture. When I finally made it to the beach I was greatly disappointed yet wildly excited. A sign (which I stupidly didn't get a picture of) of a crocodile was posted- the beach was closed due to a "confirmed crocodile siting". WOWWWW sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

cool! I couldn't believe it so I HAD to ask the lifeguards all about it. Well I didn't want to give up, I was already in my swimmers (aussie slang for swimsuit) so I quickly walked down to the Rock Pool and had a wonderfully relaxing dip there, with all the other bummed Aussies who couldnt go in the real ocean.

After a 30 minute swim and a 40 minute walk to the bus station I was on my way back to campus after a wonderful and fullfilling day with myself.

As if my day wasn't tiring enough, a friend passed by in the hallway and told me about how there was going to be Australia's Best Butt Competition at the Uni club that night. Now who would pass this up--I expected it to be ridiculously funny. It was actually a real dissappointment. The boy who won--you couldn't even tell if he had a butt, his pants were so baggy and the girl who won, well her butt wasn't that special. But it did give me and some friends a bit of entertainment so that was good.

On Wednesday I nearly felt like I was back at Cornell again. Not really, but I actually had several classes to go to, and finally a practical (lab)! The practical was pretty cool. We got to use stereoscopes (I think thats what it was called) to look at aerial maps of some reefs. It made everything look 3-D. Then we learned how to calculate reef accretion (I hope thats the right word)rates. Anyway I may not have known what I was doing, but it was way cool. After class I went and checked out some sweet books to read from the library. One on the S.S. Yongala-the most famous shipwreck in Townsville-that I will be diving in May and one on ghost towns around Australia. Wednesday night I took my first trip in an Aussie car! It was so weird-I went to get into the passengers side-except it was the drivers side. Whoops. One of the guys on my floor, a med. student, needed a coffee before a long night of paper writing so I joined him. We went to McCafe, SO WEIRD-the Australians actually have something before the Americans!! I guess its pretty fancy stuff here, but to me it will always be McDonald's.

Today is Thursday but for you all in America-still Wednesday. I haven't done much today, it was laundry day--I've got all my shirts, undies and socks hanging around my room like ornaments on a christmas tree -very bizarre to see and probably too much information (sorry). I have a class in the afternoon and tonight Rhona, Noor and I are taking a trip to Stockland (the shopping center) to get a few things. It is the ONLY night they are open past 5PM, weird I tell ya. Tomorrow I have quite a few classes and then at night I take a flight to Cairns!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOO!!! I'm off to JCU -Cairns to visit my friend Theresa (American from the University of New England where I first went to school). Saturday I make my first dive in the Great Barrier Reef! I can't wait. Look again on Monday for posts of pictures and hopefully some exciting dive stories. That is...if I don't get eaten by a croc!! G'nite my American friends : )