Midsemester Break= Remote Islands and Many Rainforests

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Just got back from midsemester break and it was the most amazing 2 weeks of my life! I spent the first 5 days at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. It was so gorgeous! Heron Island is a tiny island on the southern part of the reef, so small that there’s only room for the University of Queensland Research Station and a resort. We had to take an 8 hour bus ride overnight from Brisbane to Gladstone and then a 2 hour super bumpy ferry ride to get to the island so I was quite tired when we got there but we went straight into the water for a snorkel near the shore of the island. We spent so much time in the water, snorkelling around the island and took 2 boat rides to snorkel on the outer rim of the reef surrounding Heron Island and we also did a night snorkel! Because this trip was another one of the field trips for the Marine Biology class I’m taking, we had to do a research project while we were there, but it was pretty relaxed and the whole trip was more focused making sure everyone spent as much time in the water as possible and saw heaps of cool marine animals and fish. I saw sea turtles—I saved some baby sea turtles lives as they were hatching as trying to get to the ocean because the sea gulls were trying to eat them, did you know that something like only 1 in 900 baby sea turtles survive to live to adult hood because of all of the predators they have! I also saw a shark, some manta rays and lion fish and a whole bunch of other fish that I don’t know the names of anymore. The days were packed full of snorkelling and exploring the island so every night when I went to bed I passed out immediately and we had to wake up for breakfast at 7am everyday so needless to say I had no problem sleeping the entire way back too!

Once I got back to Brisbane, I had a night to sleep in my bed and then I was off to Cairns! I was travelling with my friends Ben, Lauren and Marcus but it was also great because a lot of people from Emmanuel (the college I live in) were also in Cairns because they live there or were visiting. We got there late the first night and went to our hostel, called Gilligan’s. Gilligan’s was such a cool hostel! There was a gigantic bar on the first floor—which we were lucky not to have a room on the side facing the bar because it would’ve been loud—and we got a room for 4 which had a bathroom and shower. For the first time since I got here (other than in Emmanuel) I didn’t have to sleep in a bulk bed! I was pretty excited about that! We walked around the first night for a little bit just to get a feel for the city, Cairns nightlife is quite impressive but we were way too tired on the first night and it was 2am so we went to bed.

The next day was Ben’s birthday! We had planned to go to an Aboriginal park called Tjabukai and our friend Steph who is from Cairns drove us there but it was closed for the day because an elder in their group had died so we couldn’t go. Instead, we went to this super touristy placed called Rainforestation with our friend Nathan who lives in Port Douglas which is an hour and a half north of Cairns. We took this awful tour on an army duck (the cars that can also go in water) through the rainforest, it was really bad because we didn’t really see much and our tour guide was SO boring. He didn’t understand the difference between interesting and not interesting and therefore spent half of the 45 minute tour talking about replacing pieces in an army duck. After that we had a nice birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant and then we went out to celebrate Ben’s birthday!

On our second full day we went back to Tjabukai and learned a bit more about Aboriginal culture. The area where the place is was given back to the Tjabukai group after colonization and they decided to create a place where people could come to learn about their beliefs and traditions. The coolest part of the day was when we got to throw boomerangs and spears! There was also a really cool performance with Aboriginal dancing and a man playing a didgeridoo. I am now the proud owner of an authentic Aboriginal boomerang! The next day our friend, Rhi, and her friend who she was visiting, Jacqui, drove me and Ben around while Marcus and Lauren went on a snorkel trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Ben and I went to Crystal Cascades which is a gorgeous waterfall and creek type place outside of the city where a lot of locals go to swim. Then we drove up to a city in the mountains near Cairns called Kuranda, where there’s another beautiful waterfall (notice the trend of waterfalls here) and a hippie-like town. On the way back to the city, we stopped at Trinity Beach. During the summer season, the jellyfish are really bad in the Cairns area so the beaches have stinger nets so people can swim without worries about getting stung by ultra-deadly jellies like the Irukandji which are the size of your thumb nail but is the most venomous creature in the world! It was heaps of fun to drive around with a couple of aussies and not be a complete tourist for a day.

Our second to last day was our best day of the trip, we went on Captain Matty’s Barefoot Tour of the Tablelands where we saw 5 or 6 different waterfalls, a crater and a lake. Everywhere we stopped it was so picturesque and even though it was a chilly day, we swam at most of our stops too. Our tour guide was a hippie sort of guy from New Zealand and it was such a nice a relaxed day, he said that we could spend as much time as we wanted at each stop and wasn’t concerned about getting the group back at any time. My favourite place we stopped was the last waterfall where there was a natural “slide” which basically just meant there was a big rock with running water going over it and it was a lot of fun to slide down. This amazing and relaxed tour day was unfortunately followed by a not-so-great tour on our last day to the Daintree rainforest, Cape Tribulation and Port Douglas. The day was the complete opposite of Captain Matty’s tour, we drove forever and got 20 minutes at each stop, which was hardly enough! We got to see all of the sights but we were rushed the whole time and spent most of the in the bus. It was an unfortunate last day of our trip but you live and you learn, right?

Well I’ve rambled on for quite some time now, I hope you enjoyed reading about my travels! As of a couple days ago I only have 2 more months in this beautiful country! Also I'm frustrated with this website because they updated everything and now it won't let me upload pictures, I'm sorry! But if you get a chance Google Image search "Heron Island" it's seriously amazing!

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