We Survived

Hi Everyone,
So I guess I should start helping out more with the blog. Scott has been doing too much of the work and really it isn’t fair so here we go. Well after an exciting season of volleyball The Flogging Mollies (that’s us!) ended up taking second place in the league! As a team that made it into the finals by default for another team that couldn’t make it (because we ended up finishing in 5th) we beat the 3rd and 2nd place teams! We ended up losing the championship to The Yellow Tails and posted is the glorious footage of that game. All and all not too bad of an ending to our season and we’ve already signed up for the next one.
After a grueling semester of being buried in our laptops and hitting the journal articles we have succeeded in completing our first semester! Damn it feels good! But my rejoicing could only be experienced for a minimal amount of time because I started an intensive 2 week course that very Saturday. It wasn’t too bad- they offer several breaks and an unlimited supply of cookies, tea, and coffee. There was also a field trip to Orpheus Island to brighten up the class.
Orpheus was as beautiful as I remembered it with bright warm sunshine, great food, and beautiful snorkeling. I hope you enjoy some of the underwater photos I took. During our time there we spent about 6 hours a day in the water, laying out transects, and counting the bream fish species that were spotted along our transect lines. It was exhausting work that I would take over being in an office any day. I have one more trip to Orpheus coming up here later on this week for a different class and Scott gets to come with me this time! We get to plan a project together so it should be good fun!
Scotts turn:
With my roommate Whitney and our friend Peter we set out to conquer northern queensland. We started by heading out to cairns (300km north) where we stopped to have lunch then continued north to the small town of Mossman. This little town is surrounded by the Daintree National Park and we decided to hike some of it at night when there would be less people. So at sunset we headed off to a world heritage site (Mossman gorge) with our headlamps and cameras. Its easy to see why that is a world heritage area, the rainforest changes in vegetation around every corner and streams cut the area up to make a really unique place. Not many animals were seen but the highlights were some frogs we found by a river. First one was spotted and we were very excited, then looking around it must have been a party that we interrupted because they were everywhere. The next day we headed to the coast and up to cape tribulation where the asphalt ends and the four wheeling begins. We stopped at a bat house to look around at rescued fruit bats and then went to the beach. The weird thing is that we found out why they call it a rain forest, it rains on and off all damn day and night. We camped that night and had a few beer since it was the last place that we would see a town and before I knew it I was in a hippy camp next door singing irish songs with some irish bloke that had a guitar. So in other words it was interesting. The next day we headed on to the offroad section of the trip. These roads are great! I wish I had my dirtbike. There were some insane up hills that were a little creepy going up and a little worse going down the other side. Every river crossing had its own way of being beautiful. One had a little waterfall that started on the side of the road, one was a giant wash with large gum trees scattered around and all had signs not to enter the water due to crocs. Actually every river or body of water we passed had signs not to enter because of large reptiles with teeth, we heeded these sign on most occasions. Throughout the road there were places to pull over and explore water holes or sections of beach and I must say im glad we did on most occasions because we found this secluded beach that stretched out with the receding tide and was littered with mangroves. It was a great area and I wish we stayed there that night. We even found an axe buried in the sand which we used to break open coconuts. One of the days we got to an area where there was an aboriginal community and there was a sign spray painted that read “Falls” with an arrow. We followed it and came to a dirt parking lot with no one in it and hiked to the water fall. It surprised us that this beautiful waterfall that you can walk right up to (and climb up the cliff next to it) had no one around. We made it to Cooktown that day and had some food and decided to continue. The nice thing about this trip was finding a camping spot, we would drive all day stopping and taking in the sites of Australia and when the sun starts to set we would find some river and camp near it. On one occasion we looked at the map and saw that there wasn’t much ahead of us that day so we took a road that looked like it led to the beach. We took that and ended up on a four wheel track on the beach with little areas that you could pull into to camp. The best part was there was no one there! The entire beach was empty!(a few days before we stopped in Port Douglas and the beach there was packed) And let me just say it was an awesome beach. So that night we spent around a camp fire with fruit bats eating above our heads. Our destination for this trip was to get to cape Melville which is in the cape York peninsula and then make a round about way back home. The entire time getting there the environment would change drastically. One minute we were in a rainforest then a savannah opens up and then mangroves take over. Just a few feet in elevation up or down or a mountain comes up and the entire habitat changes. One we arrived in the Lakefield national park the scenery was mostly a tropical savanna with waterholes that provided more dense vegetation. This was our final leg to reach the cape and the most remote. We got to a large river crossing where most people camp and fish then go home. We crossed it and continued on. The savanna was littered with giant termite mounds which provided cheap entertainment of looking at all the designs and styles that these little insects can produce. Around lunch I offered our driver a switch (this was his first offroading experience) so he could relax and enjoy the scenery, to our undoing he continued to drive. The road we were on had large sections of deep talcum powder where there was only one line to go through and steep sides on the side of the track from other trucks. We were going through them at a good pace so we wouldn’t get stuck. On one particular long stretch of track the truck was bouncing off of the walls and once the track ended to flat road the truck started to fishtail, our driver decided that to end the fishtailing he would counter steer by pulling the wheel in the opposite direction as hard as he could. The result ended with the truck hitting the water ditch which is on side of the road, with our left side and sending the truck over onto its topside. Luckily no one was injured and it gave me an experience of undoing my seat belt upside down and crashing into the roof (which was I have to say fun). We had to wait on the side of the road for someone to pass which surprisingly didn’t take to long, then flip the car back over. The truck wouldn’t start so we had to get towed about 40km back to the river where people were camping. This is when our driver decided it was my turn to drive the truck. No windshield, a buckled in roof which gave me a smaller area to see out of and getting towed behind a truck through talcum powder for 40 km ended with me covered in head to toe in about an inch of dirt, I was crying dirt tears. Most of the time I couldn’t even see the truck in front of us. Not mention that I had no power steering or brakes. Once back at the river our friend headed out to find a ranger so Whitney and I decided to take a bath in the river. I must have weighed an extra five pounds with that dirt because just dunking my head in turned the downstream clear water into a muddy mess. After this was accomplished a ranger walked by and proceeded to inform us that large salt water crocs were spotted here the last several days and we must be stupid for bathing in it. During the afternoon of not really knowing what to do some duel sports rolled into camp for the night and one was an ex Toyota mechanic. So he told me that there must be oil on top of the pistons so I should pull the glow plugs and shoot the oil out, then it should start. 30 minutes later covered in oil and blood the truck ran! The next day dawned and it was going to be the longest part of our trip… the drive home. We were over 850 km north of Townsville and away from most civilization. So babying the truck we set out for the nearest town (not sure if I would call it that), Laura. Driving without a windshield is great for taking crystal clear pictures of wildlife but it hinders you by having the wind constantly in your face and dust from passing cars in your lungs. We made it to laura and bought some plastic to cover the left side of the truck (the windows wouldn’t roll up). This was a vast improvement, now the truck would in a way pressurize and we could travel slightly faster. Riding home I would forget about the windshield and yelp in pain as insects, rocks, leaves and other road material would fly in and whap me in the face. It wasn’t extremely bad until we passed police cars and would try to act like nothing was wrong. In reality we passed three police cars and none even glanced at us, that’s something you wont find in California. After ten hours of driving the sun started to set and a cold front moved in (we learned later). This is the second time that our driver decided it was my turn to drive. Now it was dark so no sunglasses for me to block debris and wind hitting me in the eyes and the temperature dropped much to low for all of us. It took a total of about 12 hours to reach home and by that time I couldnt move my fingers. Whitney was in the back inside her sleeping bag and all I had was a couple of t-shirts and a windbreaker. All in all we completed about half of our original trip and it was great. Austalia 1, Scott 0.
Now its time for school again, hope everyone is doing well.

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