Brief update

This past weekend I took a PADI Rescue Diver certification course on Magnetic Island. Trip plans have been changing but a lot of exciting things are coming up:

-Next week I am going on 4 day field trip to the orpheus island research station for Coral Reef Ecology, where we will be snorkeling/SCUBA diving to collect data on the coral reefs around the island
-Immediately after the field trip I am going on 4/5 day trip to Cape Tribulation with two buddies to camp on the beach, snorkel, and hike in the rainforest
-Two weeks from now is my weekend dive/camp safari to the palm islands with 6 other friends
-Three weeks from now is the 4 day backpacking and camping trip on the Thorsborne trail of Hinchinbrook Island

After that, Papa and dad come to visit and we will be doing plenty more awesome things while they are here.


I'll add some more details about the rescue course and upcoming trips soon (SO MANY RESEARCH PAPERS TO WRITE)



Catch yas

Whitsundays Pictures

So I figured out how to put a slideshow in to one of these posts.  I feel so much smarter now.  Now I won't have to put a bunch of pictures on the actual blog.  Whatever.  Anyway I will start adding these in from now on, for good measure here are the slideshows for the pictures I have so far.  


EDIT: Wow this actually looks way awesomer than I thought it would, wish I had figured this out earlier.

Whitsundays

Rainforest/Wallaman Falls

Yongala

Wheeler Reef 1

Wheeler Reef 2

Notes and Trips

The rest of the pictures from the Wallaman Falls and Whitsunday trips are uploaded on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/ozziejeremy) and facebook, so check em out.

So far I have crossed out three major trips on the list of what I wanted to see and do while I was here:

-Dive the Yongala

-Hike Wallaman Falls

-Sail the Whitsundays

Additionally as of right now I have booked two additional trips so will be doing those soon:

-Hike the Thorsborne trail.  I have a permit for October 15-19

-RAD Orpheus/Pelorus Island Dive Camp Safari.  I arranged a group trip with a bunch of friends and we will be going October 10-11

Right now I am working on my plans for spring break coming up in about a month.  I have a field trip the first four days for my Coral Reef Ecology class, however after that I am thinking about:

-Diving with Grey Nurse Sharks at Southwest Rocks

-Learning to Surf on the Gold Coast

I'm hoping I can fit both of these in the second half of break, so I am working on scheduling that right now.  Additionally, I am looking at doing a Rescue Diver SCUBA course on September 19-20, I am just waiting on Emergency First Responder certificates so hopefully it will happen.  It's gonna be a good month coming up with lots more exciting trips.

Cheers.  

Sailing the Whitsundays

Our boat, the "Habibi"

This past weekend I went on another trip I was looking forward to-sailing the Whitsunday Islands.  The Whitsundays are known for some of the best sailing in the world, so I headed down with a group of 7 other people for a three day weekend.  We were aboard the "Habibi", one of the cheaper boats in the region but it was perfect for us.  On Friday afternoon we took off and spent the afternoon sailing out to our first location.  We spent the afternoon and night on the boat, then woke up to spend the morning at Whitehaven Beach.  Whitehaven is known as one of the top 3 beaches in the world because it has the highest silica percentage (98%) of any beach in the world.  It is basically a perfect white beach.  The sand is so pure that they used it to make the lenses for the Hubble Telescope. 

Whitehaven Beach, the purest sand in the world

It feels like you are walking on powdered sugar it is so soft

Wobbegong shark!

After hanging out on the beach and snorkeling a bit (I found a Wobbegong shark!), we sailed some more until we got to a bay with a reef for snorkeling.  The snorkeling was really good, they only drawback was having to wear stinger suits because there is a big jellyfish problem in the area.  It is beginning to be the start of the box jelly season, and there are also the irukandji which are in the area year round.  Luckily we had no problems because either species has the capability to kill you.  I really enjoyed the snorkeling and saw some cool stuff, the highlight being a turtle which I followed around for about ten minutes.  

Giant Clam

After snorkeling we sailed some more for more snorkeling at "Manta Ray Bay".  I was hoping the name meant we would see a Manta Ray, but no luck.  The snorkeling was still awesome though, as soon as we got off the boat a huge Maori Wrasse bigger than me was all over us.  Most of the boats feed them (not to keen on that) so they are really friendly towards people in the water and come right up to you.  Also saw a whitetip reef shark while snorkeling.  Did some more sailing to our mooring for the night, then woke up in the morning for our last bit of snorkeling.  Saw a ray, some nudibranchs, trumpetfish, and a tiny boxfish among other things this time.  

This guy was bigger than me and was just as curious about me as I was of him

Nudibranch!

Giant Trevally scoping us out

After Sunday morning snorkeling we took off at about 9 am Sunday to head home, but we were intercepted by an energetic humpback whale.  We spent about 30 minutes just watching him next to the boat.  He did 3 full breaches (never thought I would get to see that in my life) and spent about 20 minutes laying on his side on the surface and whacking his fin on the water.  It was amazing to watch and a great way to end the weekend.  The trip was definitely what I was hoping it would be like, and made me wish I had my own boat and knew how to sail.  It was also great to meet and hang out with some new people, and I had a real good time. 

  It slapped its fin and completely breached for a good half an hour

Awesome trip

Rainforest/Wallaman Falls

View of the falls from the top

View of the falls from the bottom

So two weeks ago I was able to do one of my goal trips, which was to hike around Wallaman Falls.  Wallaman Falls is the tallest waterfall in Australia (over 1000 feet including about a 900 foot free fall) so I was pretty excited to do this.  I signed up for a weekend trip in a group of 8 people and we headed out Saturday morning.

During the day Saturday we spent most of our time exploring the rainforest and learning about the area.  The Wet Tropics of Queensland are a world heritage area because they are the oldest rainforest on earth and a critical ecosystem for this area of the world.  Queensland is the only place in the world with two World Heritage Areas (Wet Tropics and Great Barrier Reef).  Our guide Ross was really knowledgeable about the rainforest so it was cool how much he taught us about it.  We did a couple of different hikes through the rainforest, and also got to stop at some waterfalls to swim.  Cool stuff.  The highlight of the day was in the evening when we went down to a river to look for platypus.  Platypus are extremely rare and only like 15% of Australian's or something like that have ever seen one.  We were in one of the few areas of the country where you can see them on a regular basis.  We ended up spending about an hour watching them and got to see a bunch.  I was really surprised at how small they are-only about a foot long.  For some reason I had an image of them being like 3 feet long and the size of a beaver or something.  Still, it was really cool.  Later that night we also did a night hike and saw bats, gliders, possums, and a ton of what they call "kangaroo rats"  which are basically tiny wallabies.  It was pretty neat.

Platypus!  This was the best picture I could get, but we did see them consistently for about an hour

Diving through a waterfall

Sunday was the big day we got to go to Wallaman Falls, which was the highlight of the trip for me.  There was viewing observations across the gorge of the falls which provided great pictures, and then we did a 2 km hike down to the base of the falls.  It was really amazing as I've never seen anything near that big.  We were there during the dry season, so I can't even imagine how powerful the falls must be during the rainy season.  Crazy stuff.  It was an awesome trip and great weekend, not only did we see some cool stuff but we also learned a lot about the area as well.

We went to a spot to look for Saltwater Crocodiles, but no luck.  

Rainforest Panoramic

Panoramic of the falls