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So I knew about this even before I wrote the previous post but I am too excited about it so I kept it separate. Last week I signed up for the dive club here at school and booked a trip out to the Yongala and Wheeler Reef. WOOOOOOO! But seriously I’m so pumped about it. The trip is August 21-23, we leave Friday night so that we wake up Saturday morning at Wheeler Reef and do 3 dives that day, then boat to the Yongala overnight and do two dives at the Yongala on Sunday. Since it is with the dive club through school the price was really good and I have like 6 or 7 friends going with me so it’s going to be a great time. I honestly can’t wait to get out there and dive. Wheeler Reef is supposed to be amazing and obviously the Yongala is phenomenal. Can’t wait to take pictures of everything. Like I said before it is whale season so we might even end up diving with whales at some of the sites. I am guessing I am going to love it so much that I will probably do a few more Yongala trips before the semester is over. There is a grouper at the wreck called VW because it is bigger than a car that I will try to get a picture with. Can’t wait.
As I was writing this I remembered a conversation my friend and I had with a guy from the dive shop on Magnetic Island. We were asking him about the Yongala wreck and how we read that everybody on board died. We asked him if you could still see the bones and stuff. He got really weird about it and said that you are not allowed to look for the bodies. A couple years ago authorities went down and stuffed all the remains inside of the ship where you can’t get to. Apparently there is a huge fine and you get arrested if you try to get in there. He told us National Geographic went down a couple years ago and that they dove deep to get to all of the bodies and film everything. When they came up they were arrested and had all of their film confiscated. Don't know how much I believe it but I thought it was a pretty cool story anyway. No matter what, it's going to be awesome.
So when I am bored or have free time during the day, instead of writing on here like I should I spend my time researching places I want to see or things I want to do while I am here. Obviously it is unrealistic for me to do everything on this list because I won’t have enough time or money, but I think I’ll get to do the majority of stuff. Here is what I have right now.
Skydive or bungee jump in the rainforest: I think I will do this when I head up to Cairns for my SCUBA trip after the semester. They have skydives from 12,000 feet where you free fall for 60 seconds and land on the beach. I have always wanted to try skydiving so this I am leaning towards that over bungee jumping, although I think bungee jumping would be way scarier so might be more fun.
Sea Kayak Magnetic Island: They do sea kayak tours every morning and its supposed to be awesome. They last like 4 hours and tour the whole island so I think it would be a great way to get my bearings of where the reefs and things are. There is an entire half of the island that is uninhabited and you can’t even get to unless you have a boat so it will be cool to go back there. One of my friends and I also have a goal of getting to that backside by bushwacking or rock climbing above the coast. The highest mountain on the island has no trails going to it so we are going to find a way to get up there somehow. This time of year Humpback whales are migrating through and you can see them out in the bays every day, so I want to get out there and kayak soon.
Hinchinbrook Island: This is a national park about an hour north of our school. It has one of the best backpacking trails in the country (Thorsborne Trail) that takes 4 days to do and you have to register way in advance. Right now I am thinking about doing it during my mid-semester break.
SCUBA dive the Yongala Wreck: The Yongala wreck is one of the top 5 dives in the world. Seriously, look it up. I am usually more interested in marine life than wreck dives but the cool thing about this dive is that it is special because of the marine life. The wreck is like an oasis in the dessert so everything there is abundant and freaking massive. Whales, turtles, manta rays, bull sharks, sea snakes, etc. I can’t wait. I will probably do this a couple times while I am here because the dive charters leave from Townsville.
SCUBA dive with Grey Nurse Sharks at Southwest Rocks: In Australia they call Sandtiger Sharks Grey Nurse Sharks. I worked with these at the zoo and they would be awesome to dive with. The diving at Southwest Rocks is really cool because it is a cave that you swim through and usually there are about 30-40 Grey Nurse Sharks (they are endangered here) at the site. They are a really slow-moving shark so they literally float within inches of you while you dive. Check it out: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afeTqlRtzWE)
Learn to surf: There is a cool program called mojo surf that does surfing/camping trips where they teach you how down on the Gold Coast of Australia that is world famous for surfing. I definitely can’t leave here without learning.
Hike to Wallaman Falls: Wallaman Falls is the biggest waterfall in Australia and about an hour north of our school. Its over 1000 feet high. I may be heading out there in two weeks but am not certain yet.
Sail the Whitsunday Islands: Best place in the world to sail. There are 70 or so islands and you can have a crew take you to all the different islands for snorkelling, camping, etc. A huge group of us are going to do this one weekend.
Dive/Camp Safari to Orpheus and Pelorus Island: There is a place called Remote Area Dive in Townsville that does a 3 day dive trip out to these two islands for diving on the Great Barrier Reef. You also get to camp on the islands at night. Orpheus Island is also the place where I will be going for my 4-day field trip for Coral Reef Ecology
Cape Tribulation: This is a world-heritage wet tropics area North of Cairns. Where the real rainforest is. Its supposed to be beautiful and I want to hike it.
SCUBA dive Byron Bay: Byron Bay is supposed to have some of the best diving in Australia because it is a marine preserve in between the tropical ocean/Great Barrier Reef and the deep Southern Ocean so the species diversity is awesome.
7 Day Liveaboard on the Great Barrier Reef and the Reefs of the Coral Sea: This is supposed to be the premier diving in the entire country. I already have my trip booked and paid for after the semester is over, now it is just a matter of waiting for it to come.
I have a reservation to go here.
The nice thing about most of these trips is that I can do them in a weekend. Since I have no class on Fridays I can take off for three days weekend trips whenever I want, so most of these are definitely do-able. I don’t really care about going to Sydney or any of the big cities, and I don’t have plans to go to the outback because it is too expensive and takes too long. Hopefully I’ll start getting to do these soon!
This past weekend we went out to the island because every month when there is a full moon they have a full moon party out on the beach on Magnetic Island that goes from 5 pm to 5 am. Most people were excited because it was a party, I was excited because it was Magnetic Island. A few of us didn’t have class on Friday so we went out to the island for the day before the party. The mission was simple: find a sweet reef to snorkel at off of the beach. We headed out hoping that visibility would be better like everyone had promised, and luckily it was this time. It helped that we came at low tide so that the reef was in even shallower water than normal. The snorkelling was really good, the coral is awesome and we saw lots of fish. I also saw the biggest lobster I have ever seen, it was freaking huge. Tons of stingrays too, I swear we saw about 50 of them throughout the afternoon. A lot of times we didn’t even see them until we had kicked them up and they were swimming away. At one point I was snorkelling in about two feet of water admiring an especially sharp 5-foot stick in the sand before I realized it was attached to a huge ray right underneath me. Bit of a shock. We also made it out to the wreck this time, which was really cool because it was not too deep to snorkel around. It was covered with coral and a pretty sweet spot. I didn’t take the camera out because the water still wasn’t clear enough for good pictures, but soon enough I’ll be able to hopefully. I’m still waiting on seeing some of the sharks that I hear hang around these reefs. The full moon party was a good time as well later that night.
Saturday was the real highlight of the weekend as I went camping with a big group about an hour north of school. There were about 15 of us, including two girls from the group I came with and a bunch of Aussies we’ve met here. Our camping spot was right on the beach, and it was an awesome place. We were out there from Saturday morning until Sunday morning hanging around the fire and screwing around in the beach. At home people mess around with their 4WD trucks in the snow and mud, here they do it on the beach. They also had a dirt bike that we got to ride around-first time I have ever done that. Learned a little bit of rugby and cricket, and got laughed at for my homerun style cricket swing. My favorite part was skim boarding. We attached a rope to one of the trucks and got towed on a skip board on top of the water, just like you would with a boat except that we were only riding on about half a foot of water. Which made it hurt if you ate it and were going pretty fast. I had a blast doing that, I was able to get up for a while a couple times but spent most of the time getting a face full of sand. At night we chilled around the fire and got to see the moon rise, something that I didn’t even know happened. We even got a little excitement when a ton of paramedics and cops went flying past us on the beach. Apparently some guys camping a little ways down were messing around in their 4WD truck and one guy fell off the back and got run over. Luckily he survived but it was a pretty bad situation. We didn’t even need a tent for sleeping, just a blanket or sleeping bag in the sand. It was great. We even caught some crabs for breakfast in the morning. I can’t think of a much better way to spend a weekend in Australia.
The food here is definitely way different than what I am used to. For meals there is usually one entrée option. If you don’t like it-too bad you’re eating cereal tonight. Half of the time they run out of food halfway through a meal so that if you come late you’re screwed. Of course the other half of the time they have way too much food so you can guess what we are going to have for lunch the next day. It definitely gets really repetitive when lunch is last night’s leftovers, but usually the food at least tastes good. At the moment they are out of the doghouse a bit because it was tacos for lunch yesterday and they were awesome. Usually though, most people end up having cereal and peanut butter sandwiches as part of their dinner because there is just not enough other stuff to eat. I feel like an animal that stuffs itself to the brim when I eat because I don’t know when my next good meal will come. By the way Vegemite tastes like crap, I have no idea why anyone would want to eat that.
The last week or two has been mostly getting in a routine with classes and doing some more exploring during my free time. I really like my classes although it has been very difficult to get into school mode. I don’t know if my sense of time is still weird or I am just not prepared to have school at this time of year, but it seemed like I was falling in asleep in almost every class that first week. I have resorted to sitting in the very front row of class to keep myself awake, and I don’t mind it as long as the class is interesting I guess.
My favorite class so far (sidenote: the word favorite just came up as misspelled on my computer because I have everything set to Australian spelling) is Coral Reef Ecology. It looks like it is going to be pretty challenging and in-depth and the subject is obviously really interesting to me. For this class we also get to go on a four-day trip during one of our semester breaks out to a lab on the Great Barrier Reef. We’ll be doing a bunch of field studies on the reef out there and I’ll even be doing some scientific diving so I’m really pumped about that. Photography has also been pretty good so far, although we have to rent out the equipment way in advance so I’m kinda bummed about that because I would rather just take pictures of any cool stuff that I come across throughout the week instead of plan ahead what I want to photograph. Oh well, I’m still really pumped about what I’m learning.
Besides classes, I’ve also gone out to Magnetic Island a couple more times with friends. The first time was on a Wednesday when I didn’t have class and we wanted to check out some different bays to look for reefs off of the beach. We found an awesome one but the visibility was crap again. Everybody keeps insisting it is a freak thing for it to be so windy so I’m waiting it out for the snorkelling to get better. We did find a beach that was over run by sand bubbler crabs, which was so cool. I’m stealing from Kevin and saying check out this video (http://videos.howstuffworks.com/animal-planet/29027-fooled-by-nature-sand-bubbler-crabs-video.htm) if you don’t know what they are. Basically in a matter of a few hours when the tide is going out thousands of these crabs and sift through all the sand to get food then pack the sand in to tiny little balls. The balls literally cover the entire beach, and the crabs are everywhere. Pretty sweet. A bunch of us also did some more hiking around and snorkelling on the island on one of the weekends. At one point we decided to try to find a shipwreck that we had heard about that was off one of the beaches. We swam out to a post we thought was marking it but couldn’t find it. When we came back in we learned from the dive shop we were about 15 feet away and just missed it. Ah well, next time.
Besides the island, we also go to the rope swing pretty often. Yeah, the one right by where I bike past a 6 foot croc everyday. It’s fun and we’ve even gone in the middle of the night. My goal is to get a backflip down off of the swing. I also did some mountain biking with my friend Matt up in to the mountains behind school. There are some awesome trails that go up there, and it is a challenge because the brakes on my bike are pretty dodgy. They do a lot of controlled burns up in the hills because it is so dry during the winter that the entire forest could be wiped out if there was a natural fire. It is really cool to watch the mountains in flames at night, and going up there during the day to see everything burned is really cool. I’m going to have to start writing things on here more regularly because I know I am forgetting a ton of stuff, but I will add things as I remember them.
Post fire up in the mountains
I may submit this one for my photography class
