From Beaches to Operas

Well, it's been a few days since my last update.  I'm coming on the end of my trip now.  Let's see, on Wednesday, I went on a beach tour from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach.  The walk itself took probably around three hours or so, and was right on the coastline, so we had great views of the water the entire time.  Once we got to Bondi, we had a late lunch at the Blue Burrito Company, which had some extremely decent burritos.

Thursday, I ventured to Darling Harbor, and went to the Sydney Aquarium.  The aquarium had a ton of sealife, a lot of which I had already seen, like the reef sharks, and many of the reef fish.  However, I got to see a dugong along with a leafy sea dragon.  Dugongs are in the manatee family, and are extremely rare, since they are an endangered species due to human impact.  There are only five dugongs currently in captivity, and the Sydney Aquarium has two.  After the aquarium, I got on a sightseeing tour bus, and saw most of Sydney during the afternoon.

Friday, I did a city walk through my hostel.  We walked around in a large circle, and saw Darling Harbor, Queen Victoria Building, Circular Quay (including the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House), the Royal Botanical Gardens (with their fruit bats), and the Sydney Hospital.  The tour took about five hours, and afterwards I definitely felt a lot more comfortable walking around on my own afterwards.  I met a ton of great people from my hostel, including a group of Americans!

Today, I toured the Opera House, which was absolutely amazing!  I got to see the Playhouse, the Studio, the Concert Hall, and the Utzon Room.  I got some pictures of the inside (none that we weren't allowed to take!), and learned a ton.  If I had time left, I would definitely go see a production there.  After the Opera House, I walked around the Rocks where a weekend market was set up.  It was definitely hard to keep my wallet safe in my purse!

Well, I'm off. Tomorrow will probably be Olympic Park.  I'll post pictures when I finally upload them from my camera.

G'day!

KK

Only one week left.  The last two days were a ton of fun.  Yesterday, I went on a wildlife tour of the Southern Highlands.  We saw lots of cool animals, including platypus, koalas, wombats, kangaroos, emus, wallabies, and we heard a ton of lyrebirds.  We also saw some bush-tailed possums after the sun had set.  We had dinner at the oldest continuously licensed pub in Australia, which was opened in 1836.

Today, it was more wildlife, but at the Taronga Zoo.  The zoo is on an island right outside of Circular Quay, so you need to get on a ferry to get there.  The zoo itself is probably about the same size as San Diego Zoo, and has a ton of animals that you don't see in American zoos.  There was a platypus, Tasmanian devils, snow leopards, leopard seals, a fishing cat (kind of like an ocelot), tons of Australian wildlife including the most poisonous snake in the world which looks a lot like a common garden snake from America, as well as usual zoo animals.  The zoo took about six or seven hours to see pretty much everything, and now I'm just lounging around for a little while.

Tomorrow I'm planning on going to Bondi Beach and get some sun if it's warm enough as well as hit the shops in the area.

KK

Platypus...kinda looks more like a log though.

Koala

Wombat

Leopard seal

Snow leopard

not very long, but if you listen closely, you can hear lyrebirds.

G'day from Sydney!

This was my first full day here in Sydney, and I started off my grand tour of the city with a day tour into the Blue Mountains.  This is actually a misnomer, because the Blue Mountains are not blue and they are not mountains either.  The blue hazy color comes from light hitting eucalyptus vapor, and reflecting only the blue wavelength.  And they are actually a sandstone plateau that has been eroded into mountain-like shapes by rivers.  All in all, it was absolutely fantastic!  The guide was extremely knowledgeable, and I met a ton of great people, including a family from Chicago.  The father looked and sounded a lot like my Uncle Dale, and now I'm wondering if he has any relatives from Chicago that would be travelling around Australia…

We also drove around Sydney Olympic Park, and saw many of the stadiums that were used for the 2000 Summer Olympics, including the Gymnastics Arena, the Tennis Center, the Aquatics Center, and the Baseball Stadium (which is now being used for agriculture showings).  Our guide didn't say anything about the Softball Stadium, however I am planning on finding out if it is in the park or if it is elsewhere, and see if I can find a way to go see it.

After the tour, we were put on a river cruise that would take us to Circular Quay, where the Sydney Bridge and Sydney Opera House are located.  This was around 6:30, so we saw these structures at night, which was absolutely breathtaking.  Once we got off, I ate dinner at a small Italian café that served an extremely decent gnocchi and panna cotta.  I then took the train back to my hostel, where I am preparing for tomorrow's trek into the highlands.

Cheers, mates!

KK

And here are those pictures I promised:

Wombat!

Feeding the kangaroos

Hanging around with the koalas

In the Blue Mountains

Three Sisters

And the Real Adventure Begins

Wow, the last few days have been extremely busy!  We finished up the last of our course on Wednesday with our group presentations, and began to pack up for the trip back to Perth.  Unfortunately, our travel karma hit again, and the bus that was coming to pick us up broke down an hour away from Coral Bay.  Because of that, we were stuck in Coral Bay for over eight hours longer than we were supposed to be while they sent another bus up from Perth to come get us.  So we didn't leave until somewhere around two in the morning.  Then, if that wasn't enough, the bus driver forgot to get gas at the road house we stopped at, and we ran out of gas an hour away from Murdoch!  Needless to say, upon arriving back at our dorms, none of us were inclined to go out for the rest of the night.

Friday, however, brought a whole new experience.  We headed over to Caversham Wildlife Park to see Australia's iconic animals up close.  We got to pet and feed close to a hundred kangaroos, pet a wombat, see dingos and emus, and pet koalas!  We saw this adorable koala joey that popped out of its mother's pouch while we were in the nursery.  By far the cutest thing I've ever seen!  After the wildlife park, we headed into the Freemantle Markets to do some last minute souvenir shopping before heading into Perth to do the same along with grabbing dinner at our favorite oriental restaurant.  From there, it was back to the dorms to do laundry, shower, and pack everything up for our early morning flight.

Our flight left at 5:45 am, so we had to reserve taxis for 2:45 am, which meant that none of us got any sleep.  It took about twenty minutes to get to the airport, and thankfully our flight took off on time.  Six hours later or so, I am in Sydney at my hostel, looking out at the city.  I think the plan for today is going to be getting changed into something that doesn't resemble pajamas, and heading out to get my bearings, and hopefully find food.  The camera is dead at the moment, so I'll have to post pictures on my next update.

Until next time!

KK

One fish, two fish

Well, it's been awhile since I posted last.

The last few days have been full of data collection.  My second project was fish identification.  We ran five transects at each site, and had to identify and tally every fish we saw.  Thankfully, one of my group members is an expert at identifying fish, so we had no trouble there.  Honestly, the worst part of the data collection was at Five Fingers Reef, where the current was extremely strong.  The transects were run with the current, so we would drift along, counting fish, but then we had to swim back up against the current to get to our next transect.  Needless to say, that was probably the greatest workout I've gotten since I got to Australia.

Today, we are finishing our reports, and taking our exam, which is a one hour essay.  We've been told that it will be about global climate change, so it shouldn't be too hard.  After that, all we have left is to give our presentations tomorrow, and then we head back to civilization.  It's been great camping out every night, but I'm going to be happy to have access to fresh water.

Cheers!

KK

A Whale of a Tale

G'day mates!

It's been awhile since I've updated, but we've been swamped with working on our plankton and manta project.  We have finished collecting the data, including looking at the plankton through a microscope and identifying them up to their order.  If asked, I can now identify copepods, decapod larvae, amphipods, and mysids.  Now all that's left is writing up the report and giving the presentation, which is also pretty much done.  Of course, our project did not come without some complications.  Ironically, all this happened at the site where we saw the manta rays the other day.  It was day two of our project, and we went out to take quadrat pictures for our habitat types, and we threw the one quadrat down and dove to take a picture, but when we went to grab the quadrat, it disappeared under the sand!  The swell was so bad, that the waves completely covered the quadrat with sand, and we couldn't find it, because it was so murky.  From then, we tied a rope with a buoy onto the new quadrat so we wouldn't lose that one, only to have water leak into the waterproof case and damage the camera!  Obviously, Bateman's Bay did not want us to do any habitat analysis, so we gave up and headed to one of our other sites.

However, because we've done all of this work for the last couple of days, we got to go on a wildlife cruise!  We got on the cruise at around 8:30 in the morning, and spent all day out on the boat, looking for Ningaloo Reef's iconic wildlife.  We saw black-tipped reef sharks, sea turtles, dolphins, manta rays, tiger sharks, and HUMPBACK WHALES!!  The dolphins were riding the wake of our boat, so we got a ton of really close pictures of them.  The manta rays were barrel rolling to feed, which was great to see again.  We saw four humpbacks total:  two were juveniles that were just beyond the reef, and the other two were a mother and calf that was less than a week old resting in the bay.  Today was, by far, the highlight of the trip.

Well, that's all for now.  We have another free day tomorrow before starting our second project.  Here are some pictures from our cruise along with one of our manta pictures for our project.

 Here's the dolphin that was riding our wake.

 Humpback tail! One of the two juveniles we saw outside the reef.

 Tiger shark!!!

Here is the manta ray from our project.

KK

Mantas and Plagues

Day one of our projects have finished!  I am working on plankton populations in different habitats in the reef lagoons.  We were on the boat from ten in the morning til four thirty in the afternoon, and we were sampling plankton by dragging nets behind the boat for ten minutes.  There were manta rays barrel rolling at one of our sites, which is how mantas gather plankton together in order to eat them.  So after our last run, we grabbed our fins and snorkel, and jumped into the water to swim with them!  The water was more turbid than some of the other sites, but we found the manta ray barrel rolling three feet from us!  It was by far the highlight of this trip thus far.

We also witnessed from the boat a large plague of locusts coming down from the point towards our camp.  There were so many locusts that they covered the whole point and made the white sand dunes brown!  They have been a bit annoying though, especially when you're trying to shower while keeping track of the seven locusts that are hanging out in the bathroom stall, but they don't bite, so there are no worries there.  Hopefully, they'll keep moving at the same speed they were earlier, and pass through Coral Bay quickly.

Tomorrow, we'll be finishing our last transect as well as collecting data on the habitats we are sampling in, and then afterwards start counting the different species of plankton and abundance at each site.  I don't have any pictures up from underwater, but here's a video of manta rays barrel rolling, so you have some idea of what we saw today.

KK