Maggie Island!

Yesterday a bunch of us spent the day at Maggie Island.  Magnetic Island is a 15 minute ferry from Townsville and a very popular place for people from the city to go.  I can understand why because it is absolutely gorgeous there.  It is a very very quiet and relaxed place, and it has loads of awesome beaches, rainforest mountains, and coral reefs.  

It actually looks like a brochure you would look at for some tropical island paradise.  It reminds me a lot of Acadia National Park in Maine if you replace all of the pine trees with rainforest and palms, and the rocky coast of Maine with white sand beaches and crystal clear water with reefs.

They have a ton of hiking trails so we started off by getting on one of those to see where it took us.  You can actually walk from one end of the island to the other if you have enough time and are motivated enough.  We first stopped in a place called Geoffrey Bay because it looked like there was a reef a ways out and we wanted to check it out.  Three of us ended swimming out there with mask and snorkels and the coral was amazing.  In like 6 feet of water there was reef covering the entire bottom so it was right under us.  It was so incredible.  Unfortunately it was "choppy" (barely any waves so I can't even imagine how calm it is when there is no wind) so the visibility was not good at all and we didn't stay out too long.  We talked to

 a guy at a dive shop though and he said usually the vis is around 50 feet so we'll definitely be back to check it out again.  He also showed us all of the best bays for snorkeling on reefs that are on the island and pointed out some shipwreck locations you can get to from shore so I'm excited to explore some more.

After the reef we chilled at some other beaches in the different bays.  We then ended up doing a lot more hiking and took a trail called the forts which goes around to a bunch of old WW2 gun posts, observation towers, and things like that.  Really cool and the views were amazing.  Magnetic Island also has the largest population of koalas in the north and we ended up seeing one.  After the hiking and the scenic overlooks we ended up at Horseshoe Bay which is the best place to watch the sunset.  We hung out there all night and did some swimming and barbecuing on the beach.  I was glad to finally be able to see what all the hubub was about the island and I can't wait to get back out there again.  

View of Townsville from the ferry out to the island

Geoffrey Bay

We found echidnas!  They are really goofy, you can't see it in this picture but their feet are backwards.  They are the only monotreme (egg laying mammal) in the world besides the platypus.

Alma Bay

These birds are all over the place and are awesome looking.  They are ridiculously loud at night.  I still haven't figured out what kind they are.  

Found a bat in one of the forts

 It was about as big as my palm.  

Florence Bay I believe

I found a cuttlebone from a cuttlefish while we were snorkeling.  Pretty cool.  The dive shop said it was one of the bigger ones they have seen.

Sunset at Horseshoe Bay

Panoramic view from the forts overlook

Panoramic of Horseshoe Bay

Classes

We figured our classes out this week.  I had to do a lot of switching things around because there were so many conflicts between what I was signed up for.  Since the marine science classes I wanted were technically different levels or years, they don't really design them to be taken together since regular students would not be taking them at the same time.  I ended up with only 2 of the classes I though I would be in originally but its not a big deal because I like the ones I am in and my schedule is sweet.  

My classes are:

-Coral Reef Ecology: This has a field trip out to the Great Barrier Reef for 4 days where we get to dive and do labs and things so it is going to be pretty awesome.

-Marine Conservation Biology

-Design and Analysis for Ecological Studies: I'm really pumped about this one because I've never done anything like this before, it is using data to create computer models for different types of ecological situations.  This is the type of thing I'll be getting into if I end up doing anything with conservation for a career.

-Effective Photography:  Awesome.  I'm excited about this one as well, I've been wanting to take a photography class for a long time.

So with these for classes my school schedule is:

Monday 9-10 and 1-5

Tuesday 9-11 and 12-2

Wednesday 10-1

Thursday 10-12 and 2-5

Friday 3-4

Pretty sweet.  Only one class on Wednesday and Friday, which means there is a lot of possibilities for three day weekend trips.  I'm also free for dive club meetings which I'm excited about because they do a ton of trips.  Classes start tomorrow so we are gearing up for that, meanwhile there was just an announcement that the bus for the school sponsored sunday drinking event at the tavern leaves in 15 minutes.  I could get used to this place.                 

The strand, campus, etc

So in our free time this week we've been doing a lot of exploring around Townsville.  It is about a 20 minute bus ride to the city and the beach so its a pretty sweet deal.  The beach here is called "the strand"  and is probably about a mile long.  All of the Aussies say it is a crappy beach but none of us Americans can really figure out why because it is pretty nice.  

The other day one of the Australians took us around to a couple places to show us some cool spots.  Behind the strand and downtown is a small mountain called Castle Hill, there is a road and a hiking path that goes to the top.  It is an awesome view from the top-you can see the entire city, the beach, and the ocean.  Right behind our campus is a mountain called Mount Stuart.  We drove to the top of that as well and it is cool because you can see everything between campus and downtown, as well as way out into the ocean and the surrounding islands.  Mount Stuart is owned by the army here so apparently everything is fenced off and there are signs everywhere saying if you try to hike up you will get shot or blown up by a land mine.  Someone pointed a trail out to us that you can supposedly get up to the top from so we are going to give it a go soon.  

Exciting personal accomplishments in the last few days include getting a hammock for my balcony and acquiring a bike.  Sweet, I'm all set for the semester.

A sweet tree down by the strand.  There are a lot of these all over, the roots like grow down from the branches then into the ground once they reach it.

View from our room balconies.  Mount Stuart is to the right of the ones in this picture.

I got a hammock!

The other day when we were walking I found a preying mantis.  I put it on my balcony and it stayed there for a couple days before it took off.  

We were at Maggie Island yesterday and it was incredible.  I am going to try to put up pictures from there soon because it was absolutely amazing.  

-Jeremy

Wake up at 10, go out to eat, then do it again

So in the past weeks we have spent our time meeting new people and checking out all the new places.  The week before classes is called "o week" and is meant to get you accustomed to everything, but pretty much all that there was to do in terms of academic orientation things was sign up for classes and get our student ids.  More than anything the first few weeks of school are all about social events to get to know everyone.  The list of school-sponsored social events coming up that is posted in my dorm and in the orientation handbook reads:

-7/26: Sunday sesh! Meet for free taxis to the tavern at 3:30 

-7/28: Toga party at Uni Club

-7/30: Club opening night at Uni Club

-7/31: Recession themed pub crawl.  Free shuttle around to all the pubs and discounts on drinks.

-8/1: Kegs on the lawn.  If you participate to represent your dorm in the cross country race that day you get a discount on your cup.

-8/7: Full moon party.  Party out on the beach on Maggie Island all night until the sun comes up.

It is so different here because all of the school events are for drinking while at Maine all of the school events are put together so people will do stuff besides drink.  Apparently the whole campus goes to these things here and it gets pretty crazy so it should be pretty fun.  

Swimming with crocs

The animals around here are something we were warned a ton about before we came.  Queensland is home to something like eight of the top ten world’s most venomous snakes, spiders, and whatever else, but so far we haven’t seen anything too crazy.  On the beaches here they have signs all over the place about marine stingers because box jellyfish can kill a person in seconds.  During the summer all of the jellyfish are in near the coast so you can’t go in the ocean unless you are in specific areas with stinger nets.  Fortunately we are here during the winter so we don’t really have to worry about it.  It is still funny walking the beach and seeing bottles of vinegar all over though. 

The other day a bunch of us were going down to a river near campus to meet up with a group of friends who were there swimming.  They have a rope swing and dock and stuff so it’s a nice spot.  On the way we got lost but we ended up at a scenic overlook spot and could see a crocodile basking on a rock in the water.  It was about 6 feet long, nothing too huge but still big enough that we figured we must be at the wrong river because it must not be safe to swim with crocs.  There was even an informational sign about freshwater crocodiles at the overlook, which leads to the assumption that they must be pretty common in this river.  Well turns out when we do find our friends they are only about a 5 minute walk away, swimming in the same river where we saw and read about the crocs.  Needless to say they were pretty surprised to hear about that.  We figured it must be alright if they have a rope swing and dock set up so we spent the next hour swimming and jumping out of the tree, just making sure we had our head on a swivel.  Apparently the freshwater crocs are harmless, it’s only the salties that you have to watch out for.  When we were at the Rainforestation during our orientation we saw a huge saltie called “Jack the Ripper” who was probably close to 20 feet long.  It was unreal.  Why was he called Jack the Ripper?  Well apparently he has killed all 17 females they have tried to get him to mate with. 

Last night when I was walking home I heard something banging around in the garbage near the bathroom.  When I went to see what it was I found an Aussie possum staring at me while chewing on a discarded orange.  It was funny because the day before somebody had come back to his room to find his food rummaged through and possum sized poops all over the place.  I guess we know the culprit now.  I am going to leave some apple cores on my balcony and see if

they come.  The other day I was out on the balcony and there was a kookaburra sitting on the balcony next door.  We hear them at night, their laughs are really loud.  He sat there for about 20 minutes before I decided to mess with him.  I looked up their call on my computer and played it to see what would happen.  As soon as it started playing his head swiveled around looking for where it was coming from, then he flew away.  I successfully defended my territory. 

Pictured: Inferior Kookaburra

-Jeremy

Australian squirrels

There are wallabies all over campus.  Kangaroos too, but not as many.  At night they scare the hell out of you because you'll be walking along and some huge thing will come crashing by you at 100 miles per hour.  Or 160 kilometers per hour.  A lot of them have little joeys in their pouches too, it's pretty cool.  

Getting Settled

Edit:  I put up a slideshow on the bottom of the page of some of the pictures I took diving on Tuesday.  I haven't figured out how to move it up on the page or make the pictures bigger but if you click on them it should take you to the bigger image I think.

So we got in to Townsville yesterday and I am finally started to get settled.  Backtracking to last Saturday I had a 12 hour layover in LAX before the flight to Australia.  It was nice to be on a group flight though because everyone else there to meet and wait with.  The flight to Sydney was 15 hours but it was not at all as bad as I expected it would be.  Since we were flying overnight they had all of the lights off so it was really easy to sleep.  It was a huge plane -- 12 seats across or something ridiculous like that.  Each seat had its own TV with tons of movies and tv shows to choose from, and we got a couple of meals as well including free drinks.  Once we landed in Sydney we had to transfer to Cairns, but since we were delayed leaving LAX we had to hurry through customs and only made it to the gate in time as they had already started boarding.  

In Cairns we had a 4 day orientation with AustraLearn and stayed in a backpackers hostel.  The orientation was a combination of doing cool stuff and sitting through boring information sessions.  On Tuesday we went out to the Great Barrier Reef with Passions of Paradise to Paradise Reef and Michaelmas Cay.  It was a 2.5 hour boat ride out to the reef but it was so nice to sit in the sun and the scenery was beautiful.  On the way out we ran into a humpback whale and its calf so the captain cut the engine and they ended up coming to within 15 feet of the boat, it was awesome.  I got to do one dive on each site.  Some of the highlights include a moray eel, rays, a green turtle, HUGE mauri wrasse, giant clams, lionfish, baitballs, and countless other beautiful fish.  By far the most impressive thing was the coral though.  It is like something straight out of Planet Earth.  I wish my pictures could do it justice.  It was a great day and my new dive computer and sea sickness patches worked perfectly.

On Wednesday we went into the rainforest to a place called Rainforestation.  It was pretty sweet, we started off with an introduction to aboriginal culture by learning how to throw a boomerang and play dijiridoo, then went on a military duck tour through the rainforest.  They also had a mini wildlife park with Australian animals in it so we got to feed and pet kangaroos and hold a python and stuff like that.  They also took our picture holding a koala so I'll have to try to figure out how to get that up.  Wednesday night there was a pub crawl in Cairns so a bunch of us went on that, it took us to 7 different bars and there were deals and free drinks at each one.  They had some fun games and event things that went along with it so it ended up being a good night.  Thursday morning we took a four hour bus ride to Townsville to move into school.

We got here yesterday afternoon and checked into our halls (they call residence halls colleges).  The campus is much different than I expected but I like it here.  There are kangaroos all over campus.  The university is a lot more isolated from the city than I thought it would be.   I have a single room with a balcony, which is really nice.  I am going to get a hammock for it as soon as I can.  Since we got there in the afternoon we didn't do too much, just familiarized ourselves with the campus and the bus system going into town.  This morning (Friday) we had a brief international student orientation basically telling us how to set up our online student accounts and register for classes and all that jazz.  Next week is a week of orientation type activities called "o week" so there will be a lot of stuff going on then.  I went into the city with some people and we checked out the boardwalk type park they have along the beach called the strand.  It is about a 15-20 minute bus ride from campus but I think once I get a bike I can get there in even less than that.  Might be headed back out there tonight but we'll see.  Next up on the agenda for the next couple days is trying to fix all the schedule conflicts in my classes and getting a bike.  I'll try to take some pictures of campus/the city in the next few days, we are probably heading out to Magnetic Island this weekend as well.  

-Jeremy    

Here

Got to school yesterday. It's awesome. So much to get set up and registered. Hopefully I'll get internet up soon so I can update and put pictures.

Leave in 1 Day, Arrive in 3

Finally finished packing and am ready to head out.  I fly out of MSP tomorrow morning and get to LAX around 11 am.  The flight to Sydney doesn't leave till 11 pm, but there should be plenty of other people to meet that will be on the Australia flight so that will help pass the time.  Everybody on the flight is involved in the AustraLearn program like me and will be going to JCU as well, which is going to make it a lot easier to get through all of the travel.  During the 15 hour flight to Sydney we also lose 17 hours of time.  Once we get to Sydney we have a short layover and then a flight to Cairns where we finally arrive at around 1 pm on Monday.  50 or so hours after I left home.

Once in Cairns we have a 4 day AustraLearn orientation program to help introduce us to the country.  They haven't given us all the details yet but we will get to SCUBA dive on the Great Barrier Reef, go on a rainforest tour, and visit a wildlife sanctuary among other things.  Quite the way to start off the semester.  And I'll actually have something exciting to put on here then.  Afterwards we will bus to JCU about 4 hours away and go through a week of orientation activities at the university before classes finally start on the 27th.  It is going to be nice to have free time before the semester begins to get acquainted with the new setting.  

-Jeremy     

My Blog for Scuba Radio

In addition to maintaining this blog I will also be corresponding for Scuba Radio, a national radio program devoted to SCUBA diving.  I was recently featured on the show talking about getting ready to go and introducing myself and what I will be doing throughout the semester.  You can view the blog I have set up through Scuba Radio here, and I will also keep a link to it at the top of this page.  

-Jeremy

Hello

My soon-to-be home for the next 6 months

I will be using this blog as a way of keeping in contact with friends and family while I am away for semester in Australia.  I will be studying at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia from July to December.  I do not plan on writing frequent or lengthy posts but will probably use this as a way of sharing photos and brief updates of what I am up to.  Townsville's current weather: 80 degrees and sunny.  Four days left until I leave.  

-Jeremy