Magnetic Island Adventure

We had an awesome time on Maggie Island with Sameer, Dylan, and Hilary. We went to Horseshoe Bay first and relaxed. Morgan got to ride in the boat while Hilary, Sam, and Dylan went on the water tubes to take pictures of the times Hilary and Sam fell out. She also got to ride on the group before them to be their spotter and their photographer. We got some food at Noodies restaurant and put a pin on Syracuse/ Rochester on the world map that they had there. Then we had to wait an hour for the bus to Forts Walk, so

we walked to the sand bar. We saw some crazy sea gulls, two sand dollars, and a boy in a sombrero. We finally got the most crowded bus ever and went to Forts Walk where they have the highest density of Koalas. We saw three and one had a baby (Morgan found two, and a German family found the other one). We got to see Arthur Bay where we went snorkeling the first time we went to Maggie and had to walk through every single terrain Australia ("Stralya") has to offer... no joke. The walk was easy, we both did it in our flip flops.

Having our share of Koalas and bugs we headed back to the ferry but had to wait because we miss judged the time. We got to see the sun set and two guys trying to find sunnies (sunglasses) in the rocks by the water which was hysterical. There were also little rock wallabies (two had babies) and relaxed on the rocks ourselves because we were whipped.

We drove back and learned that the rural Australians say "Stralya" instead of Australia.

Sam told us that the two door cars that have a bed and are really popular here are called ute, like utility vehicles. He could not believe that we didn't know what a ute was.

p.s. (1)We only have three day's left in Townsville and it is going by too fast! (2)Morgan's hall mates are awesome because they gave her the funniest barometer from Townsville to have as a keeps sake. It was a lovely surprise.

(3) We are happy that you have been reading our blog and will soon be home to show you all the pictures and share the stories!

Almost done

Here we have a summary of the last few memories of Australia. We tried Vegemite on a grilled cheese sandwich. It was ok with the cheese, but Scott had to try it by itself... not good by itself.









We made cake for the last assessment we handed in!! We finished our Fauna Lab Report and made ourselves a nice marble cake.








We had a movie night with the crew from Uni hall and ordered pizzas. Our pizza was the favorite and we only got to eat a piece each, but it was still good times.










This was taken at the night markets at the strand. Sam said the cotton candy in France is called "bababababa" haha










And finally the girls had a smore night at Rotary! Elaine had never had one and we had real American marshmallows!! Jade missed the marshmallows and was glad to have one!

Orpheus Island Field Trip for Coral Reef Geomorphogy

Here is a summery of our field trip at Orpheus Island.
We left campus at 3:30 am and got to Tylers beach for the sunrise. Then we had to wait for the last boat to get to the island so we watched a movie on Scott's labtop.







Next we got settled into our rooms and had morning tea. We got into our groups for our project and relaxed the rest of the day and ending with some intense games of spoons.









Our Project consisted of us taking data on transects of 6 different sections of beach, 4 at Pioneer B ay and 2 at Iris Point. The main objective was to compare an contrast the high energy reef (Iris Point) and the low energy reef (Pioneer Bay). This brittle star is part of our habitat descriptions.






We got to snorkel every day at some point. This was at Iris Point. We had to be covered head to toe because of Jelly Fish. This made it impossible to dive down and see anything because we would always float back up. Morgan had the hardest time because she would go a foot down and float right back up and even break the surface! It was really agitating, but the reefs were pretty shallow so it wasn't that much of a problem.



The sunsets were beautiful! Every day was amazing pretty much. This was the last day we were on the island and we had just got back from Iris Point. We had to eat dinner and work on our lab report that was due. Every group was up till odd hours of the morning finishing it. The range of ours people got sleep was scary!! We heard from 3.5 hours to 1.5 hours and then most people stayed up all night finishing it. I suppose this was because we had to be up at 5am to get ready to leave before the tide dropped.
Overall it was an awesome time!!

our lives

We have been doing a lot of homework since Brisbane. We finished a coral reef paper, a project proposal on the anthropogenic acoustics involving humpback whales off the coast of Hawaii, and are now doing a history paper. Yes it has been fun... We have been enjoying the puppy that belongs the the head of house at Rotary, his name is Roty. As you can see he is adorable!!! We don't have very much left for the rest of the semester. One lab report, two presentations, and a field trip. We have two weeks of finals and a whole week off to study!! Then off to Hawaii :D

Brisbane -> Surfing with Mojo

We had an awesome time touring around Brisbane on our first day. We saw a ton of historic landmarks and went up to the tower of the city hall. They were working on construction because they built it on a swamp and now it is sinking. We went on the wheel which was kind of like the eye in London. We spotted an awesome free pool that we checked out after. We went around 5 times when they only said 3! We had a sweet lunch in Anzac park on Anzac day! There was a huge memorial with guards and everything. We then met up with the Mojo bus and it took 5 ish hours to get to Spot X at Woolgoolga. We went surfing 3 times and each session was different. The fist day was sweet waves but the current was ridiculous. The second day there was no current, but the waves were small. We did pretty well. Scott got up pretty much every time. Morgan and Hilary got up most of the time but we had a blast anyway. We went to Byron Bay for 2 hours and looked around the shops and got amazing ice cream sundae's with our new friend from Holland. It was an awesome trip!

Undara Volcanic National Park - Fauna field trip

Skink












Northern Grey Bandicoot















Pretty Faced Wallaby




















Lewin's Honey Eater













Tree Frog
Our Undara Field trip was very interesting. Morgan's group (orange) had some epic fails. Their 5 hour bird watch ended up with no birds but there was one bat that was caught the night before. That same day we also got to go on the national park tour and saw wallaroos, pretty face wallaby, and eastern grey kangaroo. We also got to see a bat cave. After that we went frogging and didn't get back till very late so we were all starving. We had another bird watch on top of the crator and saw a beautiful sunset but no birds or eagles. The only thing we caught was an invasive cane toad and house mouse. We also found a few bandicoots and a chestnut mice. Scott's group (yellow) caught birds and a dragon aka success.






Eastern Grey Kangaroo















Rock Rat















Horseshoe Bat

Easter in Sydney - finally the tale

Day 1
Left Townsville early in the morning and got to Sydney in the aternoon. It was a nice flight and once we got to the airport we decided to stay in the City Resort Hostel for $37 AUD for 2 nights. We got a van driven by a crazy Russian who was not the best driver. We had interesting companions in the bus with us. The first was an older lady who had a hard acent that no one could understand, the next was the bright blondes who got in the front seat and we all were making fun of them. The best story was when they were asking where the city center was and we had been driving around the center since we left the airport! They lived up to the term "Dumb Blondes". As soon as we got to our hostel we locked everything up and went off to see the Opera House and climb the Sydney Bridge. There were so many bus tours by the Opera House it was crazy to walk through. Morgan was almost taken out by a few Asians taking pictures. We took pictures with a few statues on our walk. A boar fountain gave you good luck if your rubbed its nose, and Scott took pictures with Matthew Flinders too. We walked to the rocks to climb the bridge. We had to wear awesome suits to climb the bridge with a head lamp, ear phone, beanie, and fleece. We took pictures of some sweet celebrities that have climbed the bridge, such as Steve Irwin, Will Smith, and Bruce Springsteen. Our tour guide told us strories of some bridge facts. The first one was when an Irish work man fell off the bridge at 40 meters and survived but was bruised up and was back to work in 5 days! He wrote up a story about it and said that he was upset about ruining his shoes because on the fall he split his boots. Also in WW2 3 Japanese submarines made it into Sydney harbor by following the lights of the Ferries. They were aiming for a US navey ship in the Harbor at the time but missed and hit an AU boat. The Americans freaked out and started shooting at what they thought was the subs, but really it was Fort Dennison, the small island in the middle of the harbor. It was the only time the island has been fired upon. John also told us that when they were building it there were no hand rales and they had to climb using just rivets in the metal, and there were about 6 million in the bridge which keeps it together. They had crazy methods of getting the rivets into the bridge. There were only 2 men that actually died falling off the bridge, and 16 all together in the building of the tunnels and the city in 1930's. It was opened in 132 and a little boy rode around 3,000 km to get to the openeing (and back). He was a celebrity. We enjoyed climbing it with 8 other people, it was a full moon and not a cloud in the sky. We got to see the southern cross and all the different parts of the city at night. It was an amazing 3 hour walk. We were so hungry we had to find something. We saw one cute little restaurant in and when we checked it out the plates were $130 each!! So we went to City Extra and had a very nice dinner even though our wiater was an EPIC FAIL. We had for an hour for our check after we were done eating. We tried different things to get him to give it to us but non of them worked. We tried pouting at him, glaring at him, stacking the cups (which he took immediately but no check), sleeping, laughing obnoxiously, and his response was to pack up his things and leave because his shift was done! We were so mad and the next guy came over eventually to give us our check. We walked back to the Hostel through Hyde park and saw the cool fountain and the sweet water pool.
Day 2
We got up at 6:50 am and decided that it is the best time of the day to be in the cityl. There was only runners and bikers and the opera house was so beautiful without all of the tours. We had breakfast at the City Extra and we had amazing pancakes and ice cream. This time we got our check quickly. We took the Ferry to Taronga zoo and for 4 hours we walked around and saw all of the animals. They had a baby sea lion with a lady taking notes on him, we called him Peter. We also saw Tasmanian Devils and a little girl said "it's not a monster it's just a devil". There was also Francine the moneky! The Pygmy hippo was adorable. Both of the platypus exhibits were lacking a platypus! We were so sad. there were zebras and giraffes over looking the city. The leopard seal was huge!! We had lunch back at the Circular Quay at McDonalds, which was an epic fail. Scott got hit in the head by a sea gull that was going after his food! We then took the ferry to Darling Harbor to see the aquarium. We saw the dugong feedings, the shark and rays exhibit, the Nemo exhibit, no platypus the first time we saw it but then we walked all the way back to go see it again and it was out and playing. There wer actually 2!! It made our day. We had dinner at AmoRoma which was excellent but we were still hungry after we left because it didn't even fill our bowls. Hilary and Morgan had neon green pesto and Scott gnocchi. So we had to have waffle ice cream sundaes after. We listend to some guy singing in a suit and then walked back to the hostel through Hyde park again.
Day 3
We started off the day with breakfast at the Arch Cafe...it was pretty good we had an egg and bacon sandwich. We then caught the bus to go to Bondi Beach but we took the long bus with a scenic tour. We saw awesome houses that bordered the Ocean and we decided after school Marie, Hilary and us need to move there because it has a breathtaking view. A lady on the bus helped us out on where to go because we had to catch a different bus, she said she would house us for the night if she had room for three which would been totally cool for Easter but we proceeded to the beach and found hostel. The hostel was called Surfside and it had free body boards and rollerblades and breakfast included plus we got coupons for free drinks. We then went to the beach after we rented body boards even though it was cloudy out. The water was very cold but we got used to it and got a few good waves in. After surfing we walked the Bondi Beach stretch for little shopping and we had a late lunch, early dinner at the Bondi Bistro. Hilary got a really good pizza, Morgan got a chicken burger and chips (fries), and Scott got a beef burger...they were extremely good. When it got dark, we went back to the beach and played in the sand. We buried Hilary and made her into a castle and a stingray. After we built a nest and took pictures pretending to be Easter eggs in it, then we turned it into a bunny. On our way back to the hostel we got a Hungry Jacks (Burger King) chocolate dipped ice cream cone for a dollar.
Day 4- EASTER SUNDAY!!!
We started off the day waking up at 6:15am and walked to Coogee Beach. It was a great walk and the view was off the hook. Bronte McKeay, a cemetary, and kids easter egg hunting in their front yard and cool swimming pools were some of the fun things we saw. We walked by three pools with lots of old men in togs (speedos) and one was even doing yoga! After we came back to the hostel and checked out then we went to breakfast at the best restaurant ever The Gelato Bar Restaurant. Morgan and Hilary split a tomato and cheese omelet and strawberry french toast. Scott had chocolate banana crepes served with ice cream aka the best country ever!!! Ice cream served with breakfast :) Then for dessert we ordered rum cake and an eclair to split and they were heavenly. We then caught the bus back to the city and we had a hotel crisis because all the hostels were booked. So we found a cheap hotel in a room with three beds and a tv and the best part was we got the whole room to ourselves! We then preceded to take a nap because we were exhausted. Next we went to the Anzac Memorial and walked throught the botanical gardens. We follewed the botanical garden to the Opera House where we finally walked up to it and touched it. Then it was time to use our coupons and get a free drink which was a glass of house wine. Next we headed over to Cockle Bay to enjoy the night life so we got dinner for under ten dollars and got awesome milkshakes at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe. They were the best things ever and we sat by the harbor and enjoyed them! We took George Street back to the hotel and walked through the Queen Victoria building. At the hotel we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith and took showers to relax which was great then we went to bed at around 11pm because we had to get up at 4:40am to catch the taxi to the airport.
Day 5
Left Sydney at 7:10am and got doughnuts and bagels from Krispy Kreme for breakfast. Noor ( our Australian friend) picked us up from the airport in Townsville.