Sydney whirlwind

sooooooo...got some more time to burn and thoguth i might as well throw up some pictures (ps i just posted another post before this...just tellin ya). these are my crazy short tiem in Sydney, it just so happened that two of hte wonderful girls i met on my ATA tour were also flying in to Sydney at the same time as i was so we got together at wake up! ...it was really great becasue Paula had spent muchos time in Sydney and knew exactally how to get to the Sydney harbour from our hostel. man without that help i would have never found it. (thanks again if your out there). I also found my Coober Pedy opal (crazy story, ask me sometime) while i was in sydney. Sooo...these are the pics of the walk.^See the Harbour bridge poking out?^
^I just had to take a picture of the daytripper^ Panoramic of the proximity of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House

^my interpretation of the bridge^
looking back towards the city^me being Nemo in front of the opera house

^ wooooooohoooooooooooooo Opera House!!!!!!!!!^

Rightyo......so thats my Sydney adventure. It could have been nice to spend a couple days there but the big cities are DEFINATELY not what i went to Oz for...I mean they're nice and all but give me a choice between shopping downtown or sweating it out with lizards in the center....well, there is no choice. right. i'm done.

Return from Downunder...

Well, here I am, currently sitting in the Irving Hall computerlab, writing this post. As you may have guessed, I have returned safely from my travels downunder (booooo). The trip back was good - it was REALLY nice to be going from LOOOONNNNNNGGG flight to increasingly shorter rather than the reverse. My flight from Sydney to San Francisco was actually fairly pleasent and seem alllllllllllllllllllooooooooottttttt shorter. I scored a window seat AND a mother/daughter duo which one of them was always out of their seat, so I had room. Plus we watched Blades of Glory...wodnerful. (ps: finaly got a pic of me in SFO with flowers in my hair)
My only set back was that I landed in Toronto around 11pm and didn't depart until 8am...sooooo this meant that they couldn't check my luggage through yet. This meant five plus hours of uncomfortable "sleeping" on top of all my luggage on a chair on the side of security without a plug so no laptop movies. Meh, it was worth it. BUT, when 5:30am came and the check-ins opened and I could finally make my way through security, I was verrrryyyyy thankfully...verrrryyy...met by TIMHORTONS!!!!!!!! I cannot express how elated I was to buy an everythign bagel WITH cream cheese AND a XL coffee for only $3.43!!!!!! The crappiest little "coffee" in Oz alone has been costing me at LEAST $3.50.
Anyhow, the otehr issue I must address is the eternal battle that any traveller will no doubt become well aquanted with: Luggage restrictions. Normally I pack light but I some how ended up with a copius ammont of heavy stuff I couldn't part with. I have no idea how it happened. To be fair, I also had a proper backpack that I hadn't had on the way there. Still...
Right, so I bought those vaccuum bags and somehow shoved it all in my two suitcases(including my backpack) but there was NO way they were under the restrictions for my international flights, let alone my cheap VirginBlue domestics...so i resigned myself to the fact that I would be paying out the butt all the way through.
So i went to checkin at Townsville VISA at the ready...now you must understand that I know people who have got stuck paying with virginblue who alows 20kg free..then like TEN$ per kg over...I had a 21kg and a 29kg bag...here's the miracle: he let me get away wiht only paying 30$!!!!!!! This travel fairy seemed to be with the rest of my trip and I got away with only paying that 35$ in Toronto...and got off for freein Sydney by buying the checkin girl a chocolate bar!!!! I haven't work out the hundreds it should have cost me but i think that was pretty good.

soooooo, the moral is: just look reallllllllly tried (like you just reeeaaalllly want to just get home) and smile lots....works like a charm!

Helloooooooooooooooooo...well, have just finished my wonnnnnderful trip up through central Australia, and man, oh man, was it friggin brilliant. Sadly, that means that my trip is almost over and I will be leaving Australia way too soon. I don't want to put up all my photos from my trip right now, as I will soon be there and be able to show and explain in person, then put them up properly when I have time.
Best 21st birthday anyone coudl have asked for: waking under the stars in a swag near uluru, sunrise base walks, kata tjuta, kings canyon, aboringial dances, chased by dingo, fallign alseep agian in a swag to emus in the sky.
But i was just looking through my posts and couldn't find Xavier RUdd pictures!!! anyways, I thought I'd put some of those up to bide the time until I put up the redcenter pics. right, here they are from my April concert:

Right so this will be quick. I made it to Brisbane and haev been hanging out at the wodnerful Moreton Bay Backpacker again. Its been a wonderful week of sailing and city and zoo (but Ill save that for later). I leave for Melbourne night then leave on my Tour early Saturday. I will hopefully be able to figure out the whole gettign pictures onto hostel computers soon and update as I go. Anyways, I must be off before I spend my lunch money on internet. peace

back to the outback

so exams are over, the marks are in and i am officially done my thrid year of my degree. for the past few weeks since semester finished i have been helping out on some wonderful projects here at JCU. I helped Jaime with her plankton sampling lots - trecking through the wetlands, muddly pools, the ross river and mangroves. we saw spoonbills, which was really exciting (i had a book when i was little called 'ducks don't get wet' and ive wanted to see on ever since. also, in one of the mangrove sites we were sampling and then all of a sudden she saw this thing in the water. just as we were about to run out with visions of crocs or sharks in our head, we realised it was an eagle ray!!! we saw it again the next day and i got some ok pics...well ok for someone with a non-water proof camera in a muddy mangrove.
anyhow, i just finished helping anpther friend, Jo, sorting thousands upon thousands of ants for her honors. she's awesome. so now i'm helping out on another project - radio tracking keelback snakes. its reallllllllllllllyyyyy exciting. alright, i guess not everyone would find it exciting but i suurrrreeee do. we go out twice a day - early morning and just before dusk. i love how you can be almost standing ontop of the snake and not be able to it for lovenormoney.

Here comes the sun...

So, I've just realized just how very long it has been since I've posted one here. So sorry. April was the month of feild trip and Xavier Rudd but May was the mad dash to get all the feidl reports handed in. I am currently just finishing up my last paper and have wrote three of my four exams. My last exam is Tuesday at 6:15pm (5:15am for you all) and after that I am offically done my semester at JCU. I still don't know what exactally I plan on doing after that until my return home at the end of August, but I'll be sure to let you all knwo when I do. I promise to update my pictures but I will leave you with some pictures we took of our coral, Acropora millepora, for the project I am writing up. Its pretty cool, we took branches ate away the skeleton with acid then had these slides made through the coral. Anyhow, enjoy and I will post more soon.

Moorynia

So I just spent the majority of my reading break on a field trip in Moorynia national park. I was some of the best days of my life. We surveyed most of the vertebrate fauna: we did pit fall / funnel traps and active seaches for reptiles, Eliot traps for small mammals, mist netting / visual surveys for birds as well as the less galmourous surveys like vegetation and counting kangaroo poo. we found sooooo many things that i don't have pictures of yet, though we should be getting a site to put them all on to share. but these what i have thus far: Oh and I posted my rainforest pics too so look down a post

Black headed python

My fav: Speckled brown snake - VERY venomous

Story, we were checking the funnels/pitfalls and i picked up the funnel and Brett (the reptile guy) pointed out what was either a leggless lizard or snake, and it turned out to be ~70cm brown snake, wooooooo!

this is the snake still in the funnnel

Another fav: another deadly elaipid - Curl snake in our pit fall

This is a Burton's leggesss lizard, looks like a snake eh?
Mist netting: double barred finch

juvenille yellow-plumed honey eater

holding up a Delicate mouse
really cool: short tailed mouse, not previously known to occur in this area

The rest are jsut pictures from around where we stayed

Hopefully we'll have some new pics, but for now ill just put up some google pics of some other stuff:

Planigale - very small marsupial

Lots of these guys - Morethia boulengeri

And two of these: Stimson's python:

And the last I'll put up for now: bearded dragon - sold as pets alot, but we caught in the wild:

So that's the end of my feidl trips for now. back to getting class work done. wednesday is ANZAC day and we are FINALLY going ot see Xavier Rudd, im soooooo excited!