Whitsunday's Sailing Trip!

Over Easter Break we had good Friday and Easter Monday off and so our school travel agent organized a trip to the Whitsunday Islands for us to go sailing.

Friday morning we left JCU and arrived in Airlie Beach mid-arvo. After checking into our backpacker's accommodation we headed out to explore- we laid out by the lagoon and then headed to Whitsunday Opal's for a free digeridoo lesson. Playing the digeridoo is so hard!

Saturday six of us went to breakfast at Village Cafe and I had a delicious breakfast of pancakes with fresh blueberries and cream- amazing! Then we headed over to the Airlie Markets- first highlight of the day was passing a group of cockatoos and getting them to land on our arms! After browsing around the market for a while it was finally time to head to our sailboat! I was on Wings II with 6 others from JCU. It was a catamaran and definitely smaller than I had been envisioning but still perfect none the less. There were four crew members; a skipper, two divemasters, and our "mum" for the trip. That first afternoon we got straight in the water for a scuba dive at Heyman Island (maybe it's actually Hayman, idk) and then we did a night dive at the same spot. The dive site was at Blue Pearl Bay and the coral in that area was called "the maze" and we ended at the "dance floor." While diving we saw a huge humphead maori wrasse named Priscilla that swam right up to us! and I got to hold a starfish.

Sunday morning we woke up to a beautiful Easter morning sunrise at around 6:15am (who said you get to sleep in on holiday?) and we were straight in the water for two dives at Hook Island. We saw so many amazing fish- the fish you see at aquariums really are in the ocean! The highlights of the morning were feeling the underside of a sea anemone (it was soo soft and smooth!), seeing huge angelfish and a lionfish. Sunday afternoon we sailed through "the washing machine" to the largest island in the Whitsundays actually called Whitsunday Island home to Whitehaven Beach. For those of you who don't know, Whitehaven is consistently rated in the top 3 most beautiful beaches in the WORLD. The sand is made out of about 99% silica and it is the whitest, finest sand you will ever see- it was hard for me to imagine it before I got there but it is seriously like fine fine grains of sugar. 

Monday was another early morning- instead of scuba diving I decided to snorkel. It was a great spot to snorkel :) That afternoon all of the other JCU students left but I had decided to stay because my practicals for Tuesday had been canceled. Monday night our boat had an after party at one of the establishments in Airlie and so I went to that and had fun talking to one of the girls from Denmark and a couple from England that had been on my boat.

Tuesday morning I went sea kayaking with Salty Dog Kayaking. We kayaked through "the Gateway to the Whitsundays" out of Shute Harbor past some of the islands to this place called White Rock. Apparently when Captain James Cook was exploring the Whitsundays he charted it as a rock and it has never been reclassified as an island. They had delicious morning tea for us there and we were able to climb the rocks, maybe it was like bouldering?, to get a beautiful view of the Whitsundays. On the way back we took it slow and our guide told us all about the islands and the damage from the cyclone.

The Whitsunday Islands are a chain of 74 islands located off the Queensland Coast that are continental islands. This means they have been subsiding and became islands because of sea level rise (I believe but not 100% sure). As the islands have subsided fringing reefs developed surrounding the islands. These fringing reefs are now a part of the Great Barrier Reef.

Tuesday afternoon I ate lunch and wandered around Airlie with some Australians I met kayaking and then headed home on Wednesday morning.

Orpheus Island

Life is busy in Australia, but luckily not because of classes (I have just put all my school work off) but because of adventures :)

Orpheus Island- March 26-29th I had a field study class with my coral reef geomorphology class to our uni's research station off the coast of Queensland on an island that only has two things: 1. our research station and 2. the resort all the celebrities go to for like $2000 a night. It was amazing- I was full on expecting shacks in the bush but no- we had nice bunks, showers, a great porch to sit on while drinking our coffee in the morning :) While we were there we were working on doing reef flat surveys- comparing a low-energy leeward reef to a high-energy windward reef. In the afternoons after we got done with our work we were able to go snorkeling- my favorite site was the area with a clam bed with giant clams of the most brilliant iridescent blue you have every seen.

Great Weekend!

I had such an amazing weekend this weekend on Magnetic Island with the Red Frogs and Calvary Church. Okay so don't think typical church retreat in cabins with frozen food- I'm talking 5-star resort on a tropical island! Our speaker for the weekend was Matt Fielder from Planetshakers church in Melbourne- he was seriously the funniest pastor I have ever heard, he just said it like it was. Then on Friday afternoon my friends Jessica, Lindsay and I got to hang out with some of the guys we had met at church and hired (notice they don't say rent) a 4wd and toured around the island. Was the cyclone a problem? NO we swam in it! haha so there was a cyclone that hit Queensland between Saturday and Sunday but that didn't stop us from swimming in Alma Bay, a place they actually don't have stinger nets. Then we took this bush track out to West Point, a bay at the far tip in the middle of a nature preserve. At West Point there was all this conglomerate beach rock in the sand and Jess and I got all nerdy excited because we had just learned about it in our geomorphology class. On the way back to the resort we stopped at Cockle Bay (the best part was for sure the name). We had another great evening session then we had a cyclone dance party. All in all the cyclone definitely ended up being anti-climatic because when we woke up there wasn't even a ripple in the sea. 

Favorite Song of the weekend:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnLhCPgPy5Y&feature=related

Church website:

http://queenslandchurches.com/calvary/

p.s. I don't know how to rotate pics or add captions

Updates :)

Hey! so since I wrote that first post school has really gotten started and so have all the normal activities. I signed up for social soccer, which is basically intramural, but here you can sign up as an individual and then they create the teams for you- perfect to meet new people. So I'm on team TNT and last week we dominated, the other team only got it past half field like twice. I'm also doing ultimate frisbee which is every wednesday for about two hours. The first two weeks was just learning how to throw and catch and scrimmaging and then this past week we got split up into teams that we will be on the rest of the semester and each week we will play another team. My captain's team has one the championship every semester for the past four semesters, but no pressure! Also, right now I'm playing Fisher Shield basketball. Fisher Shield is a competition every year between all of the colleges. Last year GR won so we actually have the Fisher Shield this year, but we have to defend the title! The games are next week so we are practicing hard to get ready. Luckily my body seams to be getting used to the hear or there is no way I would be able to handle all these sports!

Last weekend I started my scuba dive certification at Magnetic Island with Reef Safari. We just did theory (yep we have a textbook) and pool skills and so hopefully this upcoming week I will be able to go back and finish the course. I just have to do four ocean dives and I will be certified to dive anywhere in the world to 18m. Our class was very multi-cultural- the two instructors were from Austria and Scotland and there were 3 Norwegian girls, a guy from Denmark, and a guy and a girl from England in addition to the three of us from the US. I was supposed to finish my certification this weekend but I'm not going to be able to because we have a cyclone heading towards us (think Florida during hurricane season) and it's just not a good time to be scuba diving.

So instead I'm about to run to a retreat with the Red Frogs, also on Magnetic Island we are just doing different activities. Red Frogs are like a christian group here in australia that go to all the UniClub parties and college parties and just hang-out and bring water and donuts and red candy frogs (hence the name). SO this weekend they are having a young adults retreat through the church that they are associated with and so I figured I would check it out!

First Month! (transfered from previous blog)

Whoa! Australia is amazing- I love it here! 

1st week, 10 feb-14 feb: arrived in Sydney on Wednesday morning for Study Australia orientation and it was hot! We took a bus to our hotel, the Meriton World Towever, and got settled in our room on the 73rd floor (we had a view of half the city, including Sydney Harbour). Our room was a actually an apartment complete with a kitchen, dining room table and living room area with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. In our apartment it was the four of us girls that are at James Cook (Alysia, Karlie, Jessica and myself) and two girls going to University of Sydney. That first night we went to dinner in Darling Harbour and I tried kangaroo. Apparently, kangaroo is the most sustainable meat to eat in Australia because of how plentiful kangaroos are, they are native to the land, it’s obviously local, and they have very humane killing practices. In fact some of the vegetarians in Australia have taken on “kangatarianism.” It was actually really good tasting, but because it has only 2% body fat they cook it rare. The next day we went on a walking tour through Sydney to see Hyde Park, the central business district, the shopping district and best of all the Botanic Gardens and Sydney Harbour. In the afternoon we went to a wildlife park where we got to pet koalas, kangaroos and wallabies. Then Friday, we woke up early and headed out to the Blue Mountains for a day of absailing- nothing like stepping over the edge of a cliff to find that you are mildly afraid of heights! But really it was an amazing way to explore the mountains. Then at the end of the day our guides had a nice cold beer waiting for us- the Australians are so chill! That night Jessica, Karlie and I decided to explore and so we basically ended up walking the whole city again before deciding to eat in Chinatown. We tried jellyfish. My advice is never try jellyfish. It was awful! so salt and slimy. We topped off the night by seeing Avatar-3D at the largest IMAX in the world (16 stories!). Saturday we were planning on doing the Bondi to Coogee beach walk but it poured all day! So instead we went to the Sydney Aquarium and Paddy’s Market (a huge indoor flee market). For our last night in Sydney, Study Australia had arranged a private Harbour cruise for our whole orientation. It was the perfect last night in Sydney, complete with fireworks (conveniently the Chinese New Years celebration was going on) over Sydney Harbour as we pulled back in.

2nd week, 15 feb-20 feb: O-week at JCU! Toga party, swimming in the river, sponsors night, UniClub, OP shop (wear the worst thing you can find at the thrift shop), the fun never ended I live in George Roberts one of the colleges (that’s what they call dorms) on campus. I’m in D-block with 3 other suite mates. At GR we have our own dining hall which is amazing, a sand volleyball court which is mostly always flooded, a basketball hoop and we are right across from the pool. That’s right my uni (that’s what they call universities) has an outdoor pool right across from my college- love it. My favorite roomie is Ellen, she is from Mackay which is 4ish hours south of Townsville. Don’t be jealous but I had the opportunity to be a freshman again; whenever it’s your first semester here, whether it’s your only one or not, you are called a “fresher.” If you stay, then your second year you get upgraded to “fossil.” SO all the first week all of us freshers had to wear gold headbands with our names written on them and if a fossil from GR caught us without it they could write our name in permanent marker on our foreheads.

Saturday we left Uni life for a little while and went with the Coastal Dry Tropics Landcare, Inc. to plant trees and help revegetate and island in the Ross River, I believe the location was called Mundingburra. Anyways I was so excited to be able to use a shovel and mattock again just like my SCA days :) The woman who was in charge, Lila, was awesome. She picked us up and gave us a ride and taught us as much as she could about the area- I hope to be like her when I am an adult. 

3rd week- 21 feb-27 feb: started off the week right by spending my Sunday at Magnetic Island right off the coast of Townsville. It was so nice to spend the day before classes started sleeping on the beach. Classes started Monday, but it was a pretty easy week with only lectures and no tutorials or practicals. I ended up being in Coral Reef Geomorphology, Foundations of Natural Resource Management, Geographic Information Systems and Biochemistry, which is a good combo because it lets me get to know a lot about Australia, meet a lot of Australians and graduate on time. Saturday was a swimming carnival between all of the colleges and so I spent the afternoon cheering on GR. My favorite events were the race to get as many people across the pool in 1 min as possible with 3 people from your college swimming in each lane at a time, the clothes relay where you had to pass a pair of shorts, tshirt and hat to the next person before they could dive in and take the stuff to the next and finally the belly flop competition. The scary event of the week was when I almost passed out at the UniClub on Thursday night- luckily my friend Jessica was there to catch me! She then force fed me water to rehydrate me- lesson of the week: always go out with a good friend.

4th week- 28 feb- 6 mar: Sunday afternoon we had a D & E block party for George Roberts; we went swimming in Ross River with the freshies (freshwater crocs) and a barbeque (the Aussies do love to bbq, however the phrase “throw some shrimp on the barbi” is inaccurate because they call them prawns). Then onto the second week of classes and practicals started. 

On Saturday, I went with Sharkies (our student travel agency) to Billabong Sanctuary- a place where they have all the native animals and let you pet them and teach you about them. So I got to pet a baby koala, then even hold another koala, wombat and croc! I could have held this huge snake but it kept winding it's head around peoples' shoulders and I knew that I couldn't handle that. Anyways, wombats are crazy animals, they are burrowing marsupials and they have this bone in their butt that they can kill things with by smacking it up against the top of their burrow. Tonka the baby wombat was so funny he kept running around and chewing people's shoelaces and shorts and everything. Apparently the wombats have more personality then the koalas.

Then that night we had fresher keg for GR. It was really fun, we took buses out to this field in the middle of nowhere where they just had a huge tent for us to sit under and a shed with a mechanical bull. I did not fall off the bull thank you very much (but I'm pretty sure he was going really easy on me). 

Sunday was a nice lazy day- Townsville has a market every Sunday called Cotter's Market so I just went with my friend Jessica and checked that out. There were all kinds of local vendors with art, jewelry, food, wine, woodworks, kangaroo paw back-scratchers... then we had Greek for lunch and spent the afternoon relaxing on 'the Strand.' We went to Calvary church that night with the Red Frogs group and that was super fun too!