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!

Paluma rainforest ecosystems trip 2

these are some pictures from the weekend at Paluma we spent a few weeks back. ill let hte pictures speak. it was a great weekend, soo much fun, so much food!

Strangling fig

accomodations

Butresses

Rifel bird - the only Oz bird of paradise (may the bird of paradise fly up your nose?)

Bird's nest ferns



So I''m finally going to put up the pictures from my Rainforest trip to Paluma. I was soooo much fun!!! Met alot of great people and learned lots. I'll mostly let the pictures talk for themselves.