Wednesday June 23, 2010

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I woke up 6 hours later in Rockhampton, a larger city south of Airlie beach. It reminded me so much of home, with a greyhound station, McDonalds, Subway, Pizza Hut, Dominos and other American stores and restraints. We waited in McDonalds, as Daniele was flying into Rockhampton at 7:30. Soon enough he arrived and we all piled into the car for the 45-minute ride to Yeppoon. The area is very arid with fields of yellow grass, broken up by steep mountains with lush green vegetation on the sides of the bright orange rock. In Yeppoon we went to the house and picked up some of the luggage Daniele had brought down for us. We headed into the heart of Yeppoon and Daniele told us he decided to rent a house for a few days. He hadn’t had enough time to purchase some furniture for the house before he flew out, so renting the house would give us time to do that. Yeppoon is a nice area, and reminds me of Nantasket beach actually, with a long flat beach and crashing waves. After settling the house we headed to the new place, unloaded all of our stuff, showered and rested for a bit. Daniele promised a friend, Ginny, (the woman we are renting the house from) he would go to a talk about the reef, and so we all piled in the car and headed back to Rockhampton. The talk was at the library and was very interesting. It was for important figures (the Mayor of Rockhampton, scientists and other political figures in the area) about the Chinese shipping vessel that ran aground on Douglas Shoal a few months back. I remember hearing about it, but didn’t hear anymore before I flew out. The talk told us all about what happened (the ship ran aground, then the tide knocked it around for a few days demolishing all life and coral on the top of the reef before it finally floated close enough to the edge to be removed by tugs), and what they have been doing. We saw some pretty devastating pictures before and after of football-sized areas that once had live corals and are now just scarred areas of scraped coral rock and piles of coral rubble. Also, they explained that the hull of the ship was painted in anti-fouling paint, a paint that exudes copper and zinc thus stopping/killing anything that would try to grow on the paint. This paint was scrapped off and now may or may not be floating around the rest of the shoal. Basically a lot of damage came from the ship, however it could easily have been worse as no oil or fuel leaked from the boat. After the talk we headed to local furniture stores in order to look for prices. The house we were moving in is part house part office, with the office part being for other people and the house part being ours. Thus we need to furnish the house with beds, a couch, tv, etc. We saw Ginny at the parking lot and she gave us a magazine similar to the Want-Ad, and we started going through it and circling some ads. We headed back to Yeppoon, went grocery shopping, then went home and the girls made a delicious Swedish dinner. Alpe macaroni = Macaroni of the farmer in the Alps. Desert and a few games of yahtzee later we all went to bed. Daniele is planning on heading to some red cross stores tomorrow in order to check out prices for furniture.

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