Brisbane

It’s odd to be back in a city again. I’m not really a city person, and I miss how easy it used to be to slip away into the outdoors, but I enjoyed the three days we spent here. I bought a bus pass and downloaded the public transit app, which makes me feel very accomplished. I can get around the city like a real adult. Well, almost. They usually use cars. But close enough. It’s also been an interesting experience learning about how to explore a city. I’m used to visiting a place with a plan and a list of attractions to focus on. I’ve been learning from my friends about wandering around and seeing what you discover. My favorite part of that has been deciding where to eat. Brisbane is full of cool little restaurants, so we decide where to eat by walking down the street and deciding what looks good. Lebanese, Eritrean, Vietnamese, Greek, Japanese, all day breakfast, vegan…

It’s odd to be back on a university campus, and to be acting like a real student again. We were photographed for ID cards for library access, which felt very official. I checked out some books for my research project about the transportation of convicts to Australia 1788 – 1850. The UQ campus is beautiful. Near the bus terminal, there are several ponds surrounded by beautiful purple-blooming jacaranda trees and bunya pines. Very exciting, because we have one or two specimens of these on campus at home, too! Bunya bunya are native to Queensland, and seeing them where they belong was one of the things I was most hoping to see in Australia. (Yes, probably higher than kangaroos. Yes, I know, I’m weird.) The main quad is a lovely green space surrounded by sandstone-looking buildings with arcade walkways that also feel familiar. Lovely as campus is, I’ve spent a good deal of my time here in the library, getting work done. It’s amazing how much more productive I feel just sitting at a desk in a library as opposed to doing work in a tent or on the beach.

The Results of Two Weeks on Heron Island

I’m used to being sandy all the time. Wearing shoes is no longer a thing. I put on makeup for the first time last night, and my face is too tan for the color of my coverup. Sunglasses are a life essential. I’ve almost emptied a bottle of sunscreen. I’m surprised when my hair is its normal texture rather than a mass of salt-water-shaped curls. Looking presentable feels like a treat; wearing bathing suits and bro tanks is acceptable in every situation. Meals consist of protecting my plate from seagulls.

I learned how to dive down and stay down when snorkeling. I saw turtles, sharks, stingrays, moray eels, and a dolphin in the wild. I can identify fish. (…well, more than I used to be able to identify.) I’ve swum with enormous schools of fish. I’m in absolute awe of the Great Barrier Reef.

Beach volleyball matters. I’m part of a team that internally has two rules. 1) Wear black. 2) Have fun. Despite that, everyone else calls us team “No Fun Want Win.” That’s what happens when you’re intense while having fun, wear black, and enter the semifinals undefeated. But hey, we’ll take the intimidation factor. 🙂

I regularly forget that it’s October. Days are hot, blue skied, and sunny. The sea over the reef flat is the most amazing teal color, and the water beyond the drop-off is deep, beautiful blue. Days end in incredible sunsets over the sea with the silhouette of the shipwreck in the foreground. The night sky is so full of stars…until dawn, when the sun rises out of the sea again.

And I’m not ready to leave. ❤

The School Part (2)

Since this portion of the trip is located on the Great Barrier Reef, our coursework has naturally focused on coral reef ecology. Our lectures began with very basic oceanography and went on to the lifecycles of reef animals and ecological challenges facing the reefs.

The other part of our coursework on this island was a series of five labs. The first one my group did was on coral physiology. We were indoors in the lab for this one. We removed the tissue from a coral using an air pick, leaving only the skeleton. We then used a centrifuge to separate the coral’s tissue from the zooxanthellae that live within it. Coral has a symbiotic relationship with these microalgae; the coral benefits from the zooxanthellae’s photosynthetic power, and the zooxanthellae receive nutrients from the coral. We then re-suspended the zooxanthellae in acetone and counted zooxanthellae under a microscope. We weighed the coral skeletons, dipped them in wax, and weighed them again. This allowed us to calculate the surface area of the coral. From that, we were able to estimate the number of zooxanthellae that had been on our coral samples. My ~2.5cm piece of coral had about 1.7 million zooxanthellae on it.

Our second lab was the fish lab. We learned how to identify the common species of fish found on the reef using clues from their body shape, behavior, and key features. We then all got into our wetsuits and went out on the reef with underwater cameras. We snorkeled around for an hour taking pictures of fish. Working in pairs, our goal was to get good pictures of 10 different species. Given that we were all very amateur fish photographers, this seemed a bit daunting until we got out on the reef. There were so many varieties of fish, that we were able to get 10 identifiable photographs without any problem. The most exciting find: a porcupine fish – not commonly seen – that was hiding under some coral. After lunch, we went through our photographs and identified the fish down to the species level.

The next day we had the plankton lab. We went out on the research boat and dragged a trawl net in four places to gather plankton from the seawater. Important note: plankton are not defined by size or species. Anything in the ocean that is a passive drifter and cannot significantly fight the current is part of the plankton. After we took our samples, we went back to the lab and looked at them under the microscope. It was amazing. We saw crab larvae and tiny snails, one-eyed copepods and radiolarians, which were festive enough to be Christmas ornaments. They looked like a spiky ball with a bright red center.

The fourth was the invertebrate lab. We started by looking at the animals in the touch tank – sea stars, sea cucumbers, citons, and nudibranches. We reviewed what we’d learned about their phylogeny, lifecycles, and morphology. Then, we went into the lab and looked at recruitment tiles under the microscope. These were terracotta tiles, about four centimeters square, which had been left out on the reef for a long time. To the naked eye, they appeared to be covered only with a fine layer of algae, but under the microscope they proved to have been colonized by an incredible array of tiny creature. After we looked at and identified animals on the tiles for a while, we moved on to more macroscopic animals. Our instructor had gathered several large chunks of reef rubble (primarily dead coral covered in algae) the night before. We broke these into small pieces, revealing more crabs, shrimp, and worms than I ever would have suspected were living in that apparently lifeless chuck.

Our final lab involved doing a transect of the reef. Our goal was to describe the benthic composition of the reef (what the bottom looks like) and to see if there was any difference between the composition of the inner reef flat and the mid reef flat. After we discussed the various methods and designs for transects, we went out on the reef flat. My group did a gradient transect, starting near the island and working out into the reef along a line perpendicular to the shore. This design is useful for pinpointing where there may be a transition between two zones. We did a quadrat style transect; we had a PBC frame one meter square, and we estimated the percent benthic cover within that frame. 5% Acropora, 10% other branching coral, 7% microalgae, 78% sand. Then we flipped the frame to the right and studied the next 1×1 meter square. We recorded 10 quadrats (one transect), then skipped 5 to 10 meters and started again, taking six transects total. It got rather exciting, because there was a strong wind blowing as we were working on our transects, and our clipboards and measuring tapes often got caught in the wind. In the end, our data was mostly sand, which seemed to be the primary composition of the reef flat. Our data, however, didn’t tell us much about the zonation of the reef.

Yesterday we had our lab exam, and today we had our theory exam on the lecture content. This afternoon we’re going to have a celebratory boat snorkel and then a party. After that, we will have project work time and free time for those whose projects are not based here. I’m super excited. 🙂 I’m getting used to going barefoot all the time and watching the waves roll into the beach.

Island Life

Rhythms.

Time passes

– or not.

High tide, low tide,

whisper to the the shore.

Sunrise, sunset.

The stars arc across the sky,

wishes aboard as they

fall into the sea.

High tide, low tide,

crashing on the shore.

Sunrise, wetsuit on.

Snorkeling is

fishfishfishstingrayfishfishturtleshark!fish

Wetsuit off, go to class:

Tutor says wetsuits on.

High tide, low tide,

footprints on the shore.

Sunrise,

snorkel, lecture, volleyball,

laughter, lab, sunwarm shoulders,

snorkel again, sunset, stars.

Sleep.

High tide, low tide,

timeless as the shore.

High tide, low tide.

High tide, low tide.

High tide…

Transition: Cattle Station to Tropical Island

It was the most blessed sort of transition: from a place we were sorry to leave to a place we couldn’t wait to get to, with lots of fun activities along the way.

First came the goodbye part of the transition. The last few days at Wetherby were project work days for people whose research projects were based at Wetherby, and free days (celebration) for everyone else. We did a hike to a place called Turtle Rock, and ended that trip with a dip in a swimming hole just above a waterfall. On the way back, we stopped and visited a mango winery. That night we had a talent show around the bonfire, complete with improv theater games, songs, jokes, and didgeridoo performances. The next day Farmer John told us about his herds. He explained a little bit of what he looks for when purchasing a bull, how he does the artificial insemination and embryo transfer, and where the genetic strains were developed.

On Friday, I went on the Magical Mystery Tour. Farmer John took a group out on the bus without telling us where we were going. First, we stopped by his neighbor’s fish farm, which raises barramundi, and learned about that operation. Then we went to an in
credible botanical garden maintained by a small barefooted man in a loose-fitting white button up shirt, who is still waiting for the Agricultural Revolution, when people will reject capitalism and consumerism and return to the land. We got to taste an incredible variety of tropical fruits grown on his property: purple star fruit, green star fruit, jackfruit, papaya (or pawpaw) with passion fruit on top, and more. The flowers were also incredible – ginger flowers look like they’re made of plastic, they’re so perfect; bromeliad blossoms are colorful beyond description; and we tasted a few flowerets that had the flavor of cucumber with salad dressing. We saw tea trees and coffee trees and the tree with the largest leaf in the world. Then we went down to Port Douglas and played in the waves on Four Mile Beach, a long arch of sand that, on the far side, is backed by the mountains of the Great Escarpment.

Then came the goodbyes, which were hard because our tutors at Wetherby are great. Good on ya, Sean, Billy, Marcus, and Claire. You did a great job; thank you so much. And then came the 18-hour bus ride, which was hard because…well, that one is self-explanatory. We pulled in around midnight to Rockhampton, and stayed in a hotel motel with lots of character and a fun live band down in the bar. The next morning was a relatively short ride to the harbor, a three hour boat ride, and the hello part of the transition – becoming accustomed to our new “campus.”

As the boat pulled into the island, I think we all were thinking the same thing. Oh my goodness… This is wonderful! I cannot believe this counts as school. Our research station is on a very small, low, green island ringed by natural white sand beaches on which turtles nest. It’s located on the tip of a large coral reef lagoon, under blue blue sky and surrounded by blue blue water. The lagoon is 11 km in length. The stars are beautiful at night, and apparently sunrise and sunset are incredible. (I missed last night’s sunset because I was getting my snorkel gear.)

This morning we woke up early to do our first snorkel in the harbor. We saw schools of fish and a turtle and a school of eagle rays. My mask kept fogging, and my feet hurt because my fins didn’t fit right, but I didn’t mind that much. Gear can be switched out and upgraded, but more importantly, I’m in the first flush of appreciating being here. My school assignments now include early morning snorkeling and walking on the reef flat identifying Burnt Sausage Sea Cucumbers (they look exactly like their name, and are perhaps the funniest creature with which I am acquainted), and I think the transition might be complete. Not that my bags are unpacked or I know my way around, but my excitement has transferred from Wetherby to here, and I think that means my soul has transitioned. I’m ready for two weeks of sandy feet, togs (swimsuits) and wetsuits every day, and curly hair from being in salt water and sea breezes. 🙂

The School Part of the Trip

Our classes on this trip are organized on a block system. We take one class for two weeks, have an exam, and are done with that class. Since many of our classes are tied to the location we’re in, we do a lot of our learning in the field, doing fieldwork that complements what we’ve learned in lecture. We just took the second and final exam for the “Coastal Forest Ecosystems – Terrestrial” part of this trip, so I thought I’d give you some highlights of what I’ve learned.

There are two main ecosystems around Wetherby, so most of our studies revolved around that. The first one is an open sclerophyllous woodland. “Sclerophyllous” means that the trees in that ecosystem are adapted for low nutrient soils. Australian soil is very nutrient poor; often it has no O horizon at all. The O horizon is the dark, organic topsoil that things grow in. Australian trees such as eucalypts adapt for these conditions by having tougher, almost woody leaves that require less energy to make.

Sclerophyllous environments see frequent fire, so these trees have incredible fire adaptations. Eucalypts protect themselves with thick, insulating bark and/or fire retardant sap. They protect their seeds from fire in hard, woody (serotinous) pods. The pods open after fires, allowing eucalypts to reseed in ground that has been cleared of plants that might compete with it. Since they’re so well protected themselves, eucalypts actually encourage fire, as it clears out their competition. Their leaves are highly flammable and full of volatile oils. Fire fighters have reported that in particularly intense blazes, eucalypts literally explode. Additionally, their open canopies allow the hot Australian sun to dry out their leaf litter, basically creating a huge mat of tinder on the woodland floor.

The other ecosystem is rainforest. The rainforest is basically the opposite of the sclerophyllous woodland. Rainforest trees cannot survive fire, so they do everything they can to keep it out. Their thick vegetation and closed canopy creates a moist, still climate under its leaves. The moisture and lack of air movement means that fires that do start usually smother out.

The rainforest far outstrips the sclerophyllous woodland in both animal and plant diversity. We took a night walk through the rainforest, and the soundscape was incredible. Bats beat their wings against the leaves, bandicoots rustled through the bushes, and we heard the oddly disjointed crunching of a pademelon bouncing through the underbrush. During the day, the branches are full of the cheerful noises of cockatoos and lorikeets.

Two of our instructors live in part of the rainforest, so we took trips to their house after class. Claire does wallaby rehabilitation, so every afternoon she feeds the wallabies, and we get to come along and watch. As the wallabies transition back into the wild, they stay farther and farther from the house and learn to avoid humans, but a few recent releases and perennial returners came right up to us as we sat on the edge of the porch. They sniffed our faces, asked to be petted, and ate sweet potatoes out of our hands. Talk about dying from cuteness. Every time you turned around there was something incredibly adorable to take a picture of. A wallaby in someone’s lap. A wallaby kissing someone. A joey peeking out of his mother’s pocket. So. Cute.

I also took a tour of the gardens, which are Marcus’s terrain. It was really cool to see what a different variety of plants one grows in the tropics. His fruit tree collection contained mangos, several types of citrus, and mulberry. The garden plants were mostly Asian vegetables, whose names I’ve now entirely forgotten because I had never heard of most of them before. These are the plants that thrive in the tropics. He had very long speckled pole beans, several leaf vegetables, cherry tomatoes (I knew what those were), a few stem vegetables, and chili peppers for making chili sauce. He also had a cycad grove, a pitcher plant garden, a strangler fig collection, and a bunch of orchids (not currently in bloom). It was really cool. 🙂

It was neat how even these fun trips reinforced and built upon what we’d been learning in class. We learned about the geology, flora, and fauna of these ecosystems, as well as their relationship with fire, so our field work and fun trips allowed us to explore the ecosystems and see the way the things we’d learned worked together in real life. I very much enjoy the ecological approach to learning about a place. It gives me a broader understanding than focused, specialized studies, and beginning to understand a place makes it feel familiar and friendly.

The Outback

On Thursday we had our first exam (see, we really are doing school), and that afternoon half of the group – including me – went out to Chillagoe, a tiny little town in the outback, for a day and a half. We drove down miles of two-lane through mango orchards which gave way to miles of dirt road with free range cattle watching us placidly from the roadside. I had shotgun, and the windows were down, and there was music on the speakers. I really enjoyed that ride. The clouds were beautiful, haloed so brightly that they looked surreal.

The place we stayed was once an old mining camp. The open land, with savannah-like trees and red dirt, stretches west to the limestone outcrops which made this place a mining boomtown. There was gold in Chillagoe back in the heyday, and later copper and aluminum. (Or “aluminium” as the Australians say.) At one point there was an open surface mine a kilometer wide and a kilometer deep; it was the largest of its kind in the world, and dug before earthmoving machinery. These days Chillagoe is a very, very small town, but it still relies on the limestone outcrops, as they contain caves which help support one of the main industries of today: tourism.

Before dinner the first night we went down to a local swimming hole. After exploring the amazingly sculpted limestone rocks above the pool, a couple of us left the group and made our way downstream. Our exploration first yielded shallow mucky streambed that was difficult to navigate. Suddenly, the water grew deep and peaceful. The stream – though still narrow – was deep enough to swim in, and wound an aquatic avenue through beautiful, draping Broadleaf Paperbarks. It was the most magical place I’ve been on this trip so far. “Oh Shenandoah” reflected beautifully off the still water.

The food at Chillagoe was delicious; it has been everywhere on the trip, but Chillagoe was especially good. The evening was spent playing cards (Euchre or 500 or whichever of the many names you call it) with two of our tutors and a bunch of other Stanford students.

The next morning we got up early for birding. The morning was absolutely beautiful, and we saw lots of birds: everything from wild cockatoos to apostle birds, where a group of adults – the group we saw had 11 birds – work together to raise a single chick.

The rest of the morning was spent exploring the limestone outcrops that surround Chillagoe. We saw Aboriginal art, climbed around on nearby outcrops, and explored several caves. Climbing around on the outcrops resulted in a few cut fingers. The limestone, which is basic, erodes away under the influence of groundwater and rain, which are slightly acidic. This is how the caves were formed. The rain also wore little cupped hollows in the top of the rock with sharp ridges between them, so you had to be careful with your hand placement when climbing.

The caves were very cool (temperature and awesomeness); a few of them had great cathedral-like chambers with wonderful acoustics. The places where stalactites and stalagmites were still growing sparkled with calcite crystals. And even three meters underground, tree roots penetrated the caves. Trees are so cool.

We went back to the swimming hole after lunch; it was scorchingly hot, so fieldwork was pushed back until after the heat of the day. Several of us adventured even farther down the stream. Eventually, we came to a dam, below which was another swimming hole. This one was currently occupied by two friendly, enthusiastic Australian kids. They were on their September holiday from school, so their dad had brought them out here to play and swim around. They eagerly showed us how and where to jump off the dam into the pool below, assuring us of its depth. “Even when my dad did a pencil dive, he didn’t touch the bottom,” the girl announced impressively. “Probably the tallest man in the world wouldn’t touch the bottom.” They also showed us the rope swing, doing flips and tricks, clearly showing off for the big kids. The rope swing and the dam pool were a lot of fun, perhaps the best swimming hole we’ve been to in Far North Queensland, and the kids’ friendliness made the discovery even better.

The afternoon was fieldwork and more caving, and I finished the day with two of my favorite things: a sunset and stargazing. Words fall short. We watched the sunset from balancing rock as it sank behind limestone formations of the horizon. Then the night grew dark and so incredibly full of stars. The Milky Way was a ribbon across the sky, wrapping around below the horizon and connecting me with those at home. Beyond the presence of the Milky Way, everything was new. I asked one of the tutors later to point out the Southern Cross, but he couldn’t find it because he was overwhelmed by the sheer number of stars that were visible in the outback.

That evening the whole group went down to the town’s nicer pub. (There were two.) This pub was in a building which was also the post office, and also seemed to serve as a social hall and children’s playground. There were about six people in it…including the two ladies behind the bar. This was before our group of twenty stormed in; we kind of took the place over. The international reputation Australians have for being easy going and friendly seems to be largely warranted. The two older ladies behind the bar were very sweet and willing to chat, just as the kids at the swimming hole had been. (And an extra shoutout for friendliness and hospitality to our hosts and tutors at Wetherby, Chillagoe, and from UQ.) Chillagoe was very small town since the mining collapse; the current population is 300.

I’m glad I got this chance to see a glimpse of the other Australia. Much of our time will be spent along the eastern seaboard, a narrow sliver of Australia with most of the people and most of the rain. The vast interior is another world, and in Chillagoe we got a glimpse of that. It was a beautiful place.