Carnarvon Gorge

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Carnarvon Gorge, a National Park on the outskirts of the Outback, was the fourth and final field trip of the semester (10/22/12-10/26/12). It was for our Terrestrial Ecology course and was pretty similar to Lamington.

We were on a bus for almost 12 hours before we reached Carnarvon, but it felt like 12 days. Towards the end it was cool to look out the window because we really were in the middle of nowhere. There were wild cows, horses, pigs, cats and of course kangaroos.

We got lucky that there was such great weather this week because we only had tents to sleep in. They were cute two-person tents but so small that we could barely fit everything inside. That didn’t matter too much, as just about all of us brought our cots outside to sleep under the stars. I’d never slept outside before this trip and it was so cool to roll over in the middle of the night and see the stars and moon light up the sky.

We went on a few hikes during this trip but it wasn’t nearly as intense as Lamington. There was, however, one hike that was brutal. It was only about 15 minutes long but was practically vertical. Almost half of the hike was up endless sets of ladders! I felt so accomplished to get to the top and there was a really great view as a reward.

Some of our hikes took us through a few really cool places in the park. We went swimming in a huge natural waterhole that had awesome scenery surrounding it. There was a canyon called the amphitheatre that was so loud it made a cough sound like thunder! Instead of listening about its formation and vegetative nature I daydreamed about how awesome it would be to go to a concert in there. There was also a protected area for Aboriginal rock art that has been around for hundreds of years. My favorite activity was the kangaroo/wallaby behavior observation. The park is so isolated that we don’t bother them, so they carry on with their business as if we aren’t there. The study wasn’t too interesting, though. Lots of scratching, eating, and hopping.

Food here didn’t even come close to what we had at Lamington. Since we were in the middle of nowhere we didn’t exactly have the best selection. The kookaburras were so crazy! They were not afraid of us at all and would literally fly at our table and take food from someone’s plate if it was unattended. There were also flies EVERYWHERE near the food and on the hikes. There aren’t mosquitoes in Australia and flies aren’t usually a problem but at Carnarvon we couldn’t get away from them at all. Gross.

Overall, Carnarvon was fun but my least favorite of the field trips. I had enough hiking after Lamington and it didn’t come close to how fun the GBR was. I think it was also hard to enjoy myself because I was dying to get back to Brissie. There was less than a week left by the end of Carnarvon and I need to squeeze in everything that I haven’t done yet! Finals are this week (10/29/12-10/31/12) and then it’s our 10-day break and the NZ portion of the trip!!!

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Photos

"Housing"
Setting up our tents when we got there

Vertical Hike
You can see the first of a billion ladders that we climbed to get to the top! The warning right in front wasn't too comforting either...

Ampitheatre
This canyon was huge and LOUD! (look at a few people from my group in the bottom left)

Roo Observing
My friends from Union, Leah and Bird, are studying kangaroo behavior

Wallaby and Joey!
Too cute :)