New South Wales

Well, I never finished my story.

When we left Brisbane, it was cloudy, and it got dark fast. Then it started to rain. Then it started to POUR. Tim called me and told me that there was severe flood warnings for the area, and the roads were pretty dangerous, so we only drive for about two hours before we pulled over in Southport and decided to stay at a hostel for the night instead of camping. The hostel we found was one of the dodgier hostels we’d stayed in, mainly because the sheets were a little gross and the room smelled quite badly of mildew and stinky feet. But we cooked some pasta and ate on the porch with the rain and wind outside, and got a good night of sleep.

In the morning, it was sunny, and Eva drove south through Surfer’s Paradise. The landscape had definitely changed from Queensland. The area was more developed and looked much more Westernized. We didn’t stop. We started driving West to go to Nimbin, a town famous for marijuana and other such substances. Anders had spent a few days there during ISP and was offered to buy drugs three times during his first hour in the town. (He didn’t, of course.) It was a long, windy drive to Nimbin, but it was absolutely beautiful. The landscape was much different from North Queensland, but in some places the vegetation almost reminded me of home. It was very hilly, and there was a lot of forest and many farms. Everything was the wet new green after a rainstorm. Parts of the road were a bit flooded (Nimbin had been evacuated a couple of days prior due to the flooding), and we literally had to ford some streams with the good old station wagon. It was pretty bizarre. When we finally made it to Nimbin, we parked the car and got out to walk around. The town was basically just one main street, lined with hippie shops: hippie clothing stores, spiritual bookstores, organic food and supplies stores, a bong shop, music stores, and arts and crafts galleries. Almost every shop had a colorful mural or painting above it. We all did a little bit of souvenir shopping, checked out the art galleries, and then had veggie sandwiches and pancakes at a little café. We also checked out the Nimbin Museum, as cluttered as it was colorful. The museum was about eight rooms, and everything inside was painted from the floor to the ceiling with murals and quotes. Newspaper clippings covered some walls, artifacts others, and just plain weird shit covered the majority of the museum. We were offered pot several times outside of the museum, as well as pot cookies outside of the public bathrooms, but we declined all offers and got back in the car.






I drove out of Nimbin. We found a much easier road to leave the town by, so we didn’t have to cross anymore streams, and those in the backseat weren’t getting carsick anymore. However, I drove in about one million directions because every road we took to try to get back onto the Pacific Highway was closed because of flooding. We wasted so much time trying to get on the closed road that we had to completely bypass the Gold Coast, Byron Bay, and all of the other beaches in that area. (Byron Bay is where the abroad program I originally applied for was held. It’s also the eastern most point on the continent.) I was getting fairly stressed of passing through the same roundabouts one million times to try to find a place to go, so Steve took over. We determined that we had to head West in order to head South to get to Sydney by 3PM the next day. We drove past nightfall and ended up camping in Uralla. It was our last night of camping, and it was COLD. It was late Autumn at this point, and we were heading closer and closer to the South Pole. We could see our breath in the starry night, and we put on as many layers as possible to cook our last campside meal before we headed into our tents. I pulled my sleeping bag completely over my head, but was still shivering all night. I was very happy to wake up in the morning to put away our tents (for the last time) and get in the warm car, with the sun rising over the New South Wales landscape.

Leaving Queensland: Tin Can Bay to Brisbane

We woke up in Tin Can Bay to an absolutely beautiful sunny morning. We had slept in til almost eight, and we took our time getting ready, hanging out damp clothes and towels on top of our tents and the car to dry in the sun. The people who worked at the caravan park told us about a dock where they feed dolphins every morning at about seven, (which we had clearly missed), but when we left, we drove by in case any dolphins were still there. There weren’t any, but the bay was really pretty in the morning.

From Tin Can Bay, I drove us south to Noosa Head. We were now on the Sunshine Coast. It was a very pretty drive. Noosa is a ritzy town that has more roundabouts than any other city in Queensland, and maybe the whole country, I forget. Maybe even in the world! I navigated us through so many roundabouts we were dizzy. Once we found a place to park at Noosa Head, we got out of the car. The town was really cute, but it looked a bit expensive. We walked down to the beach and walked along the sand to the other side of town. The waves were huge. People were surfing—it was the first surfing we had seen in Australia. (Further north, there aren’t big enough waves on the coast because the GBR blocks them.) Surfers wore wetsuits and carried their boards along a pretty, wooded path alongside the curvy road on their way to the beach. We were walking on the very top of the beach, near the rocks, when a huge wave came in. There was nowhere to escape. I was up to my waist in unexpected ocean water, and absolutely covered in sand. It was an uncomfortable walk back to the car, but we got into dry clothes, and Kelly drove us to another side of town, where we walked along Sunshine Beach, which was absolutely beautiful. We then went to a cute coffee shop where I ate some pretty fancy banana bread before getting back on the road.




The drive from Noosa down to Redcliffe was absolutely the most gorgeous drive. We passed the Glass House Mountains, where I wish we could have stopped. On our right, the sun was setting, and the sky was a brilliant yellow of golden light. It was raining a little bit, and on our left, up the lit-up, dew-dropped greenness of the cane fields, a rainbow shone out of grey clouds. As we drove, the rainbow grew taller and taller. It arched around and reached the ground on both sides. It was the largest rainbow I’ve ever seen. As we drove further, a second rainbow began to double over the first. I was glad Kelly was driving, because I could not stop looking at the scenery and wouldn’t have been paying any attention to the road. We got to Redcliffe past nightfall, where we just stopped for a short walk on the pier before continuing to Brisbane.

We got a little bit lost driving into Brisbane, but after a short detour which actually took us around the perimeter of the city, we made it to Kelly’s friend Dan’s apartment. We went inside, where we met Dan’s cousin Jackie, an immense Maori woman with a beautiful face and long black hair. Soon after, we drove to downtown Brisbane, which was really just like any other city, to have dinner at Bow Thai. Steve paid for my green curry, which he owed me after our sky-diving bet. After dinner, we headed back to the car and waited on the street to meet my friend Tim. Tim came to New Jersey during the summer of 2006 for about two months, and we had spent a fair amount of time together at Culver Lake. I hadn’t seen him since, but he and his friend Matt met me in Brisbane. I said goodbye to Kelly, Steve, and Eva for the night (they were staying at Dan’s), and Tim and Matt and I walked to Tim’s car.

Tim drove the three of us up to Mount Coolth (or something like that), where we could see a view of the city all lit up at night. It was sort of a hilarious drive to get there, because Matt was giving directions from the back seat, but wasn’t really paying attention, and it took much longer than it should have to get up the mountain. But we made it. We ordered coffee at a small café on top of the mountain, a skill I never mastered in Australia; what I wanted was a plain black coffee, and what I got was a luke-warm small puddle of espresso. Yuck. It was a bit chilly on top of the mountain, so we didn’t stay too long, but we did get a good view of Brisbane. When we left, Tim dropped Matt off at his house and we went to Tim’s dad’s house for the night. For the first time since homestay, I had my own room! I stayed in Tim’s brother’s room with a bed all to myself. Before bed, Tim and I talked for almost two hours, just catching up on the past three years of our lives since we had last seen each other. It was really nice.

I definitely slept in the next morning. It was wonderful. I was so warm and comfortable and relaxed. In the morning, Tim, the best host ever, made me a breakfast of orange juice, toast with butter and jam, and instant coffee (the only kind they drink, basically). We ate on the back deck. It was a pleasant, slow morning. Unfortunately, the koalas that Tim had nearly guaranteed would be outside our windows in the trees in the morning were completely absent. Because I had never seen a koala in the wild, Tim was determined to find me one. After showers and packing up, we headed out to Redlands IndigiScapes Centre, an area of restored forest and gardens where koalas could often be found. We walked through some of the walking trails, but all of the koalas must have been hiding from the rain, because we could not find any. When it started to pour, we ran back to the car. Luckily, Tim’s friend Taco, who knew we were on a koala hunt, gave us a call. He had found one in a park near his house. We drove over to Taco’s and walked to the end of his street where I saw my first koala, about one million feet up in the tallest eucalyptus tree in the world. It was nothing but a wet gray blob swaying among wet gray branches. But it was a koala, nonetheless.


Believe it or don't, but there is a koala in that tree.

After our semi-successful koala hunt, Tim and I headed off on an American food hunt, where we obtained bagels and Dr. Pepper. I have no idea why they don’t have bagels in Australia. They don’t have Dr. Pepper because there is a medicine that tastes very similar to it, and the soda went bankrupt there because people associated it with being sick. But Tim knew where to find it, and it was delicious. The bagels were stale, but I got them at a severe discount because I complained. They man at the bakery was like, “Bagels are supposed to be a little bit hard…” and in my head I was thinking, “These are the only five bagels in the entire country. Don’t tell ME what a bagel is supposed to be like.” But I didn’t say that.

Tim drove me back into the city to Dan’s apartment, where I met up with Kelly, Steve, and Eva again. We said our goodbyes to Dan and Tim and Steve drove us into the night, leaving Queensland, the state we had lived in for the past four months.

Fraser Island

We woke up very early in Hervey Bay and met with the rest of our safari group in the bar of Beaches, the hostel we stayed at. It felt like we were back under restricted supervision again, because we were guided in making tons of decisions, like who would drive and what groceries we would buy, and then we were packed into the 4WD Land Rovers to drive to the 4WD company where we were instructed in all sorts of safety procedures and what not to do on the island. It basically went like this: “If you don’t do exactly what we tell you, you WILL die.” We were taught how to pack the vehicles, given our camping gear, and we drove off to the ferry.

It was a misty morning, and the ferry ride was rather cold and miserable. By the time we got to Fraser Island, it was raining quite heavily, and as we drove through the rainforest on bumpy dirt roads, it began to pour. On our first drive, we were supposed to make several stops: Eli Creek, the shipwreck, and the Pinnacles, but high tide was early, and we had to have the car off the beach (the road) by 1 o’clock. And it was pouring. So we just drove to our campsite at Cathedral Beach. There were eleven people in our car (Group B), and another eleven people in Group A. In addition to me, Steve, Eva, and Kelly, we also had Dilan from Germany; Maggie and Anita from Ireland; Paddy, Tom, and Scott from England; and Rob from Sweden. When we got to our campsite, the rain was bucketing from the sky, and we only had a small pavilion of 4 picnic tables to keep us dry. Tom made a genius comment as we huddled under the pavilion. Something like, “Great. Our group is mostly girls, and it’s going to take forever to pitch a tent with them, and the tents are going to get soaking wet.” So, what happens? Kelly, Eva, and I (with the help of Steve) pitch two of the 6-person tents in HALF the time that Tom, Scott, and Rob pitch the third. I put Tom in his place after THAT incident.

Basically we were soaking wet all afternoon, and as there was nothing to do other than hang out under a pavilion, everyone began drinking by about 3 in the afternoon. I was a little bummed about the situation, but after dinner, we discovered that three of the guys who had stayed in our hostel at Cairns were in the other group of 22 people who had arrived the night before, so we got to spend some unexpected time with them. A couple of dingoes came right up to our campsite, too, so it was cool to see them. We’d only ever seen them on the roadside as we drove past before. We were all really tired from waking up so early and from driving for so long the day before, so we went to bed early in our wet tents.

We woke up early, too. Day Two on Fraser was a bit more exciting. The sun actually peeped through the clouds, and we filled our day with seeing everything we were supposed to see that day, and everything we had missed the day before. We began by walking up Indian Head, a cliff jutting out into the ocean. The view was beautiful both from the beach and from the top of the cliff, looking out to sea. The sun came out and was shining on the wet grass, and everything was so bright and sun-warmed. After Indian Head, we drove to the Rock Pools. Lumps of rock broke the incoming waves enough that they protected the beach, but water from huge waves slid over the rocks and formed cold pools in the sand. I didn’t go swimming, but others did. I just laid on the rocks and let the sun warm me up.






After the Rock Pools, we made up for what we missed the day before. We stopped at the shipwreck (a steamship from the 1930s that crashed onto the sand island) to take pictures; walked through the freezing cold water of Eli Creek, past walking palms with aerial roots; and walked through the sand in front of the red-rock Pinnacles. We had to get our car off the beach again for high tide, so we drove back to the campsite, but I went back down to the beach with some of our group. We tried playing Frisbee, but it was very windy, so Kelly, Steve, Eva, and I went for a walk on the beach. The waves were very strong, and the sky was a mix of cloudy darkness and sunny blue that so much depth to it beyond the waves. It was a gray beach day, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Our night at the campsite was similar to the one before…a group dinner with lots of alcohol before, during, and after. Our tent wasn’t as wet on our second night though, and we got a good night’s sleep.






Day Three on Fraser was mostly spent in the car. We had to drive back the way we came, through the forest to the ferry terminal, but we stopped at three lakes on our way. We only stopped briefly at the first two, to take pictures, but we stayed a while at Lake Mackenzie, the third stop. Lake Mackenzie was probably the most beautiful of the three, with a pure white sand beach and crystal clear water, but it was my least favorite stop because it was so crowded. I walked to the far end of the beach to get away from the noise of all the other people and the smell of cigarette smoke, and a little bit of a Zen moment by myself in the sand. The water was freezing cold, so I only went up to my ankles, but others swam there, because the sun was finally out for good. When we left the lake, we drove to the ferry, and had a much sunnier ferry-ride back to Hervey Bay.




Once we returned to the hostel, we unloaded everything we owned in the parking lot and repacked all our suitcases, cleaned out the car, and packed the car so well that we could actually see out the back window for the very first time. Steve started to drive south, and we ended up pulling into a caravan park at Tin Can Bay after buying groceries for the night. We set up our tents and cooked a Mexican feast in the picnic area, which was lighted AND had two burners. The bathrooms were amazing clean and spacious, and we were full and happy and decided to sleep in the next morning, happy to be in our own dry tents.

Townsville to Hervey Bay

Well, I wasn’t expecting to spend too much time in Townsville, but when we had stopped in Cardwell, I had tried to make lunch plans with Russ and Ian. Russell wasn’t free for lunch, so we had to do dinner instead, which meant that we spent the whole afternoon in Townsville. Steve drove down the mountain from Wallaman Falls, and then Eva drove into Townsville.

We hung out on the Strand for a little while, as we waited to try to get our car’s headlights fixed, but that was a failure. We looked at a few guidebooks to continue planning the next day or two. Andrew, Janni, and David, my friends from the Reef Lodge, came to hang out with us for a bit. At five, we headed to Flinders Street to listen to some live music at Monsoon’s, the bar that Sam, Geneveve, and I hung out at on our first night in Townsville. Sam’s music business, Humble Pine, was hosting the live music, so I got to see Sam and Ben, and I also got to see Sam perform for the first time. We just relaxed out on the deck, listening to music, watching the sky change colors over the harbor as the sun set.

At about six-thirty, Russ, Ian, and Graeme met us for dinner. It felt to us like our program hadn’t ended yet, but it was strange to be there all together without Tony and the rest of the group. Nevertheless, it was a great treat to spend some more time with Russ and Ian. They are the two people I will always miss the most about Australia and one of the main reasons I would like to return.

I was truly happy to be back in Townsville and to see everyone that I had already said goodbye to. Our whole road trip was like a short transition of saying goodbyes, because we did a few at a time. Saying goodbye to Russ and Ian again was easier this time than it had been the first time, because we weren’t saying goodbye in an emotional group of 14 Americans leaving a country they loved. It was just us, this time. Ian gave me the biggest hug ever; I don’t think I’ve ever had a bigger hug than that. Andrew, Janni, and David also came back to our car to say goodbye to me again. Ian led us out to the highway, with Kelly driving, and pulled over as we got on the highway and waved goodbye. I will always remember his face, waving out his car window, a smile on his face, looking regal in his cowboy hat and perfectly happy with his life.



Kelly and I tag-teamed that night to get us to MacKay, five hours south of Townsville. We got there at about two o’clock in the morning, when we pulled into a caravan park to camp for the night. Steve and Eva slept in the backseat so that we could get up early, at about 6:30 the next morning, to continue driving. We drove through the “horror strip” during the day, a strip of road that Russell had warned us not to traverse during the night. He even told us not to get out of our car while we were driving through this part, because people had left their cars to go pee in the bush before and never returned. We did stop at a bathroom on the way, but there were no casualties, other than the loss of Kelly’s favorite hat.

We drove all day; we were on a mission. We got to Hervey Bay in the evening, where we stayed at a hostel. The next morning, we were going on our 4WD camping safari on Fraser Island for three days.

Road Trip: Sky Diving and Wallaman Falls

So, Steve drove us to the airport in Tully, where we would be boarding a small plane, only to jump out of it once it reached 14,000 feet in the air. We were to sky dive on Mission Beach: we would jump out over the ocean, overlooking the reef, and land on the beach. When we left Eddy Bay, it was a little bit cloudy, and we were nervous about whether the weather would be nice enough to dive or not (after all, Tully is the other “wettest” city of Australia). As we drove, the sky cleared up, and it became a beautiful sunny day.

At the airport, as we signed our lives away, we met Lauren and Avery, as well as Avery’s sister, and another friend, Tom. The eight of us were going to jump out of the plane together. There was a bit of confusion, which involved Kelly, Steve, Eva, and I driving our station wagon about 20 minutes to the landing site at Mission Beach, then taking a bus back to Tully. We were supposed to hang out at the beach and have lunch there, because the rest of our group was taking a bus there to hang out, but we accidentally went right back to the airport and just had to sit around hungry for a few hours, and we didn’t have any food or anything because it was all in our car at Mission Beach.

But finally, we were all harnessed up and sent to board our plane. There were no seats in the plane, so we had to sit in two rows, basically straddling each other. The diver that I was attached to was named Ben, and he was very friendly and laid back. I wasn’t very nervous at all to begin with, but I’m sure Ben’s personality helped with that. When the plane took off, the divers left the door to the plane open! It was a little bit disconcerting. The air coming in was cold. Ben had a watch on his wrist that showed the altitude, and it was crazy to watch how high into the air we climbed. 4,000 feet in the air seemed extremely high, but we went all the way to 14,000! When we finally reached 14,000 feet, the scariest part was watching the first couple of people jump out of the plane. Avery’s sister, Kelsey, was first, and I just remember seeing her face as the pair fell out upside down. I was also amazed at how quickly it all happened: each pair jumped right after the other! I was the fifth person to jump out. Ben and I tumbled out of the plane for a little bit before he pulled the tiny parachute that stabilizes you. I may have had my eyes closed for the first part, or maybe it was just too disconcerting to realize what I was seeing, but I’m sure we were upside down at one point. We then proceeded to fall for a full 60 seconds—from 14,000 to 4,000 feet—before Ben pulled the parachute. I was really calm for the whole fall. I had bet Steve that if I didn’t scream, he would have to buy me dinner. Well, he bought me dinner. I didn’t even have an adrenaline rush! It was just the sea air soaring into my lungs and the ocean coming close and close. I guess it took my breath away a little at first, but as soon as I got used to the falling feeling and began to settle into it, Ben pulled the parachute. He began to make turns with it, but I asked him to stop because I get motion sickness. A benefit of not turning was that we got to be up in the air much longer, just gliding down to earth. (Turning the chute makes you come down faster.) At one point, Kelly sailed by, right below me. It was so strange to be in the middle of the air and close enough to talk to somebody. I felt like I could put my feet down on top of her parachute.





I was glad that I got to stay up in the air longer. I was the last person to land. When we jumped, I had been told to look toward the horizon instead of straight down so I could see more, but I had completely forgotten to do that. This extra time allowed me to really soak in the view—mostly the ocean, but also the beach and rainforest. It looked like we were going to land in the ocean, but we swung down onto the beach where everyone was waiting. We all hung out on the beach in the sun for an hour or two before we said our goodbyes to Avery, Lauren, and the rest, and hopped back into our station wagon.

When we left Mission Beach, I drove for the first time. It was easier than I thought it would be. The main thing to be careful about is hugging the left side of the road, but we all put on our wipers instead of our signal a couple of times. I drove into Cardwell—the same place I had stopped at to and from Townsville on the Greyhound bus. The sun was setting behind the forest, and the sky was absolutely beautiful over the water and Hitchenbrook Island. I walked out onto the pier to take some photos, and called Russell and Ian to make plans for the next day in Townsville. We bought a few groceries for dinner, and then continued driving to Wallaman Falls.



The roads to Wallaman were long, empty, and dark. Twice while I was driving, the headlights on the car went out completely when I had the brights on. The first time, when I turned the brights off, the headlights went back on immediately, so I decided to just drive with my hand on the signal so I could turn them off immediately if it happened again. However, the second time it happened, the lights remained off for a good six seconds after I had turned the brights off! It was super dangerous, so we decided to just not use them. I had to drive up the windy mountain to the top of Wallaman Falls without them. At one point, Kelly shone her flashlight out of the window, and it shone further ahead than our headlights did!

We set up camp in the dark again. The sky was very starry and absolutely beautiful, but it was cold on top of the tablelands. We cooked pasta in the dark and went to bed. In the morning, there was dew everywhere. The sun began to warm things up when it rose over the trees, and we had breakfast and packed up the car. We did a short walking track through the rainforest to some granite rock pools, then drove to the lookout point for Wallaman Falls, the tallest waterfall in Australia at 268 meters. The gorge was immense. We felt like we were at the Grand Canyon, it was so big. We didn’t have time to walk to the bottom of the falls, which would have been nice, but the view was still amazing. It was nice to just relax and be in nature for a little while after being in Cairns and doing work for so long.







After enjoying the falls, we got back in the station wagon to continue our journey. Next stop: Townsville.

Road Trip: Babinda Boulders and Eddy Bay

I am posting this entry a little bit after-the-fact, but I decided it wasn’t fair to inform everyone of all my adventures with SIT and not write about my independent adventures.

After the program ended, Steve, Eva, Kelly, Lauren, and I planned to complete a road trip in a camper van from Cairns to Sydney. We planned to pick our Camperman camper up on the 14th (after saying good-bye to the five people who left on the group flight, and others who were leaving on their own travels), and head out that day. We went to pick it up at noon ($20 taxi ride) but it wasn’t yet ready. Kelly and Eva went back at 3:30 to pick it up, only to find that the van was a manual…which none of us knew how to drive. This was frustrating to us because the man who booked it for us, Andy, had promised us an automatic vehicle. It turns out they don’t even manufacture these campers as automatics. (That guy clearly knew what he was doing.) Kelly tried learning to drive it in the parking lot, but decided she was way too uncomfortable to be driving a huge van on the other side of the road in a foreign country in manual.

SO, Plan B. We booked another night at the Greenhouse in Cairns, (which was actually nice, because we got to spend a little bit more time with the people still there: Anders, Avery, Sam, and Geneveve). We booked a station wagon with camping gear to pick up the next day. Lauren decided to back out and get a bus ticket down the coast instead, because the station wagon would be extremely cramped and she has a bad back and didn’t want to camp the entire trip.

On the fifteenth, we went to pick up our vehicle. Now, Andy had told us that this car would NOT have a tape deck, only a CD player. So, we went to the trouble of buying a radio adaptor for our i-pods, even though we already had a tape-deck adaptor. Of course, we get the car and find out that it does indeed have a tape deck, and no CD player to be found. We also went through a lot of trouble filling out the paperwork to rent the car. They would ONLY accept a credit card for some insurance thing, and none of us had one. They wouldn’t take debit, cash, check, anything. So Kelly had to call her parents (even though it was after midnight at home), and they had to scan their passports, driver’s licenses, and credit card number, just so that we could get the car. Kelly was the first to drive on the left side of the road, and we drove our new pal, a red Ford Falcon, back to the hostel to pack it up. The station wagon was COMPLETELY packed. We couldn’t have fit anything else if we tried. At some points in the trip, when we packed it extremely well, we had about three inches to look out the back windshield. Eva went to return the i-pod radio adaptor, we did some food shopping, packed the car, said goodbyes, and left Cairns around 4:00 in the afternoon.

Kelly drove out of the city and we headed south on Route 1, the Bruce Highway. It was a beautiful day, and we drove past the rainforest-covered mountains of the area and the sun-lit sugar cane fields. Our first stop was at Babinda Boulders, a place Tony had recommended. (Babinda competes with Tully for the “wettest” place in Australia… the two cities have the highest rainfall each year.) We walked along a path through the rainforest at dusk. The path ran alongside a heavy-flowing creek, where huge granite boulders caused the water to churn and froth. The boulders formed really pretty rock pools in some places. We were going to camp at the boulders, because it was free, but all of the free campsites were taken and we didn’t want to risk getting caught, so we kept driving south to Eddy Bay.



It was a good thing, too! The caravan park we camped at was right on the beach. We could hear the waves from our tent. We set up camp in the dark, then went down to some picnic tables by the beach to cook our first dinner on our propane stove. It was late, so we didn’t want to get too extravagant; we just made cous-cous with some spices and things, then tea. We went to bed soon after. We woke up in the morning and began to pack away our campsite. It was about 8 o’clock, and we had about a two-hour drive to get to Tully, where we were going to go sky-diving. We had to be there by 11 o’clock. So we’re packing up our tents when out of the bushes pop…

TWO CASSOWARIES! Eva heard a rustling in the grasses, and we all looked up to see a large, brownish bird step out of the bushes. I wasn’t sure what it was at first—it resembled some combination of goose or stork—but then its father stepped out of the grasses behind it: a full grown male cassowary. They approached us slowly. “Keep something between you and the cassowary,” Steve calmly reminded us, and we got behind the car or inside of it to take photos. Now, for those of you who don’t know what a cassowary is, just keep in mind the fact that they have a huge talon that could gut a human being in one swipe. So we’re safe behind our car doors, taking photos. At one point, the father separated from his baby. Each was on the opposite side of our neighbor’s car. I thought the father was panicking because he couldn’t see his baby—he began to jump and attack the car, leaving a foot-long scratch on it—but he probably just saw his reflection in the tinted window.



I was standing behind the car and looking out over the top when I noticed a second father cassowary with a baby further down near the beach! I was super surprised to see a second pair (though we were surprised to see the first! These birds are rare!) because the birds are so territorial. I was right: as the second father approached our part of the campsite, the two began to get very angry with each other. We crouched in our car to watch them fight. Once, one of the babies attacked one of the fathers. He basically ran and jumped on him, and the father ran off. Other times, the baby nearest us would just plop down on the ground to wait. “Come on, Dad, I’m bored. Let’s move on. Get this fight over with already.”



One pair of cassowaries climbed up onto a small ridge while the other pair stayed below. Each patrolled back and forth, neither willing to go up or down, but neither willing to sacrifice their territory. After crouching in the car for so long without the cassowaries leaving, we decided we had to get our tents packed away so we could get on the road. It was an interesting few minutes as we began to take the tent down, then ran back to the car as the cassowaries came nearer, then back to the tent, back to the car… Eva and Kelly were in the middle of the lawn, when they had just finished putting away Eva and Steve’s tent, when one pair of cassowaries charged! I was safe in the car, but shouted “Guys! Look out!” in a most frightened voice. I’ve never seen any two people look more terrified in my life. Luckily, the cassowaries just charged past them, chasing a car up the drive.

Eventually, we made our way out of Eddy Bay and headed toward Tully for our sky-diving adventure. Steve drove this time. Our road trip was off to an excellent start – seeing those cassowaries so closely was probably the coolest wildlife experience we’d had. Their black feathers, fluffed up when they were angry; the large scales on their thick legs; their bright wattles; their prehistoric helmets and large beaks… We were truly lucky to experience those moments. Before, we had only seen a fleeting glimpse of a cassowary, about 100 yards away, on our rainforest trip. This was so much more amazing.

Story Eight: A Night of Tagging

Helping with Chelonia’s rescue was the first experience Delaney had with a sea turtle. She had taken a year off from her university studies in upstate New York and flown to Queensland to help with Craig’s research and volunteer at the Coral Ocean Aquarium and North Queensland Turtle Hospital. Watching Craig, Emily, and Dr. Bryson work on Chelonia, treating her injuries, giving her medicine, and feeding her, was inspiring. It saddened Delaney that the turtle had been left for dead after the boat ran over her, and that if Chelonia was breeding this year, she wouldn’t be able to lay the rest of her eggs. But Delaney was proud of the volunteer work that she would be doing in the coming months, and she was excited to participate in sea turtle research and conservation.

The evening after the rescue, Delaney met Craig at the aquarium. “Emily’s on her way,” Craig told her. “I got a call this morning from an Aboriginal man. He said he wants to come out tagging with us tonight.”

“Sounds good,” Delaney said. “What got him interested?”

“He just said he wanted to help conserve the species. It’s not uncommon for Indigenous people to want to get involved. They’re in the perfect position to be stewards for the species, and it’s important for them that a stable population of turtles is maintained so they can continue hunting them as they have always done,” Craig explained.

Emily rushed through the aquarium’s automatic doors. “Sorry I’m a bit late,” she said. “My parents kept me at dinner.”

“That’s okay. We’re on Murri time tonight,” Craig smiled. “A bloke who calls himself Blue Eyes is meeting us at the beach. You girls ready?”

The trio got into Craig’s pick-up and headed out to the same beach where Chelonia had been found. The sun had set before they arrived, and a deep violet dusk covered the empty beach. Craig handed each of them a small torch, covered with red cellophane to limit the brightness and glare. He brought his clip-board and data sheet down to the beach, and Delaney and Emily followed.

Blue Eyes was sitting at the top of the beach. He stood when he heard the others approaching.

“How ya goin’?” Craig asked, holding out his hand.

Blue Eyes shook his hand. “Good, thanks.”

“This is Emily and Delaney,” Craig introduced the girls. “Emily is working on her Ph.D. on sea turtles, and Delaney is here volunteering.”

“Nice to meet you,” Blue Eyes said.

“Nice to meet you, too,” the girls both answered.

The group all sat down at the top of the beach to wait. For the most part, Blue Eyes was silent. Craig and Emily chatted a bit, but Delaney was too excited to listen. She sat, hugging her knees to her chest, her eyes focused on the waterline. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness as dusk turned into night. Her eyes never left the breaking waves.

“There’s one!” Delaney squeaked in as much of a whisper as her excitement would allow.

The group quietly stood, but they didn’t move closer to the great turtle lumbering up the beach. Delaney watched, silent and awe-struck, as the turtle chose a spot in the sand and began to dig her nest. She felt that she was the luckiest person in the world to be able to view this process of nature, and she was amazed at the pureness of instinct that led this turtle to the beach to lay her eggs.

The turtle filled her egg chamber with sand and started to conceal the nest. The sand flew all around the turtle; her face and eyes were powdered with it. When the turtle began to make her way back to the sea and had left some distance between herself and her nest, Craig motioned the group toward the turtle.

Craig and Emily showed Delaney and Blue Eyes how to tag the turtle. They measured her while Delaney recorded the numbers on Craig’s data sheet. The process was quick and silent, with minimal disturbance, and they soon let the turtle return her journey to the ocean.

Seventeen turtles came up to the beach that night to lay their eggs. The group silently patrolled the dark beach, and when the turtles finished laying their eggs, quickly collected their data and tagged the reptiles. Two of the turtles had already been tagged, and Delaney recorded their numbers so that Craig could later add their information to his data.

After midnight, Emily and Delaney headed to Craig’s pick-up. Craig lagged behind to talk with Blue Eyes.

“You’re welcome to help out anytime,” he told him.

“Thanks. I’d like to get more involved,” Blue Eyes said. “The turtle numbers are decreasing. I want my children to be able to keep tradition and culture alive, and sea turtles are a part of that. If there are no more sea turtles, a part of our culture is lost.” It was the most Blue Eyes had spoken that night.

“It’s one of many issues facing the species today,” Craig said. “The turtles don’t know how much they contribute socially, economically, culturally… People don’t know it either. If everyone could come out on a night like this and see the turtles for themselves, maybe there wouldn’t be so much plastic in the ocean or ghost nets floating around because of irresponsible people. But these problems do exist, so it’s up to people like us to limit them. When you take your own knowledge back to your community, other people learn. Education and awareness about the species is what will save them.”

Blue Eyes silently agreed. He knew that it wasn’t only the turtles that needed management and monitoring; it was also the people. He planned to do his part: both for the turtles and for his people. The two shook hands and parted, and Craig climbed into his truck.

“Is Blue Eyes going to come out with us again?” Emily asked.

“I think he will,” Craig said.

The ride back to town was silent. As they drove, the sky began to lighten into early dawn. Delaney gazed out her window at the colors passing by, sleepy but exhilarated. She wished she could share how she felt with Emily and Craig, but she knew that they had already had these initial feelings of excitement long ago. She hoped that the way she felt at this moment would last each time she saw a sea turtle. She hoped that she would have many more opportunities to see them. “If we’re careful,” she thought, “they’ll survive the challenges we’ve given them.” She smiled to herself. With conservation and education, the ancient animals would outlive everyone.

Story Seven: The Turtle Hospital

Craig called Emily from the North Queensland Turtle Hospital. It was getting on late in the evening by the time they got the turtle into the shallow tank used for surgeries. The vet was already on her way.

“Hey Emily, how ya goin’?” Craig asked when Emily answered her mobile.

“Not too bad. I’ve just finished entering my data,” Emily responded.

“Good, good. Listen, we’ve just got an injured turtle here at the hospital. Some blokes were snorkeling over at ¬Thunaroo Bay and found her. She must be a nesting female; she’s lucky the boat motor only hit her shell instead of her head.”

“Oh, geez. Is the vet on her way? I’ll come right over.”

“Yeah, Dr. Bryson is on her way. We need a few stitches on the front right flipper. See you soon,” Craig said, hanging up his mobile and returning to the turtle’s tank. Delaney was standing over the turtle, watching her sulk in the shallow water. “She’ll be okay,” Craig told her. “She must have just been hit today, so there hasn’t been much chance for infection yet.”

“Do you think she laid any of her eggs yet?” Delaney asked.

“I don’t know,” Craig said. “She may have laid a clutch or two. She won’t be able to lay them while she’s here, but she’s got a few breeding seasons left in her.”

“They don’t breed every year?” Delaney asked.

“Greens sometimes take up to eight years between breeding seasons, sometimes less. She’s probably still young. She’ll lay eggs again.”

Emily and Dr. Bryson arrived at the same time. “Let’s see her,” Dr. Bryson said, walking over to the tank. “Doesn’t look too bad. We’ll stitch up her flipper, cover up the shell, and give her a few antibiotics.”

Delaney watched as Dr. Bryson sutured the cut on the turtle’s flipper and Emily and Craig prepared fiberglass to cover the cuts on the turtle’s shell that were made by the spinning propeller. The fiber glass would protect the turtle’s organs while the carapace repaired itself.

“That should be good,” Dr. Bryson said as she finished up. She handed Craig some antibiotics. “I’ve already given her some for today, but make sure you finish the treatment. She won’t be able to get any infections with this. I think she’ll heal fast.”

“Thanks. We’ll be able to release her as soon as the carapace heals. It shouldn’t be more than a few months before she’s healthy again, but she’ll wear the scars from the boat strike forever,” Craig said.

Dr. Bryson left the turtle hospital when her work was finished. “Did you get her blood sample?” Emily asked Craig.

“Na, we’ll wait until she’s looking a bit better. We’ll be sure to tag her and take a sample before we release her. How’s the research coming?”

“Oh, it’s going well. I want to head up to Torres Strait next month to teach this one community about tagging and monitoring the nesting turtles. I’m just collecting and analyzing data until then,” Emily said.

“What kind of research are you doing?” Delaney asked.

“I’m looking at the affects of climate change on turtle nesting,” Emily explained. “The sex of turtles is largely determined by the temperature of the sand that incubates them. Warmer sand produces more females, so as the beaches become warmer, they produce more females than males, throwing off the sex ratio. Many nesting beaches are also being washed away because of more extreme storms and rising water levels. It’s going to be a long project; I only started it about a year ago.”

“That sounds really cool. And you also do tagging and monitoring at Torres Strait?”

“Yeah, I just do that when I have time to take a break from my project. It’s really interesting to talk to the Indigenous people there. They have this amazing cultural knowledge of the environment. There’s always a great exchange of scientific information for cultural information. They love helping out with the tagging.”

“That’s really great,” Delaney said.

“Delaney is helping us tag some turtles this week,” Craig interjected.

“Oh, really? How did you come by the turtle hospital?” Emily asked.

“I just wanted to do some volunteer work with turtles,” Delaney answered. “Just want to learn about them. I found out about Craig’s work online and contacted him.”

“Great,” Emily said. “You should give the turtle a name,” she told Delaney as Craig threw some lettuce in the tank for the turtle to eat.

“Yeah, don’t let Emily name her. She calls every turtle ‘Wayamba,’” Craig laughed.

“Oh, be quiet,” Emily smirked. “Wayamba was the first turtle I saw, and he made me interested in studying turtles.” She laughed.

“Let’s call her Chelonia, after her scientific name,” Delaney suggested.

“Chelonia it is,” Craig said, smiling.

Story Six: Rescue

In November, when the waters were a bit warmer than they had been, Carl decided to go snorkeling. He would often scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, and he never tired of the diversity of life he saw there. His favorite dive was a night dive beneath a full moon. The night was so bright that Carl could see almost everything with only a small torch in the dark water. There were white-tip reef sharks everywhere. A hawksbill sea turtle swam up to Carl and his mates. The turtle swam in circles around the group and stayed with them for nearly twenty minutes. The hawksbill was just as curious about Carl and his friends as they were about him.

Instead of diving, today Carl chose to snorkel in the shallower waters near the shore. It was sea turtle nesting season, and he hoped to see a few during the day before they made their journey up the beach at night. If he was lucky, he would see very large female green turtles.

Carl and his best mate James put on their stinger suits after lunch and walked down the beach to the edge of the water, looking for turtle tracks as they went. They put on their fins, masks, and snorkels at the edge of the water, and entered the ocean backwards so they would not trip.

The water still had some bite to it, but the pair snorkeled in the early afternoon despite the chill. They saw several sharks, plenty of fish, and many bottom-dwelling sea cucumbers and sea stars. They didn’t see many sea turtles until they began to swim closer to shore as the sun began to sink in the western sky. There were several large green sea turtles, swimming leisurely through the water, calmly coming to the top of the water to take a breath of air.

Carl and James watched the turtles they found until they swam away. They did not wish to disturb them, so they did not follow them. Carl was very adamant about not disturbing the sea life. He never touched anything he encountered. He would simply watch it, take a picture, and be on his way. When James was with him, he made sure that James did the same.

The pair took several pictures of the turtles they found with the underwater camera that Carl invested in shortly after he got his SCUBA diving license. They stayed with the turtles for so long that there was no longer enough light to take good photos under the water. When the sun had only an hour left in the sky, Carl called to James and the two began to swim toward shore.

Near the beach, Carl snorkeled past a turtle at the surface of the water. The turtle wasn’t swimming, just floating still. Looking closer, Carl saw that the turtle’s front right fin was cut open, and her shell had clearly been damaged. “Oy!” Carl called to James, after raising his head above the water and taking his snorkel out of his mouth. “There’s an injured turtle over here!”

James swam over to have a look. “Is it still alive?” James asked.

“I think she is,” Carl said. “She just must be very tired.”

“What should we do?”

“Go up to the beach and find my mobile phone,” Carl said. “There’s a number for the North Queensland Turtle Hospital there. Call them and tell them where we are. I’ll stay with the turtle.” Carl put his snorkel back on and put his face back in the water while James swam to shore.

The North Queensland Turtle Hospital was attached to the Coral Ocean Aquarium. Carl had their number because of the many dive trips he had been on. He had never rescued a turtle before, but he knew the problems that faced the species. Most of the problems were caused by humans.

From the water, Carl watched James reach the shore, take off his fins, and run up the beach. The turtle didn’t try to move away from him. James ran back into the water, doing dolphin dives and then swimming Tarzan-style until he reached Carl.

“Craig’s on his way,” James said.

“Good,” Carl said.

The two watched the turtle floating, occasionally swimming slowly across the surface, her wounded flipper limp at her side. They continued to watch her in the fading afternoon light. For the most part, she was motionless. “It’s like she has her own personality,” James said, in awe of the calm bravery of the wounded turtle.

Soon, Craig arrived. Craig was the director of the sea turtle hospital. He brought a volunteer, Delaney, with him. “Oy! We’ve got her over here!” Carl shouted, waving his arm at the top of the beach where the two stood.

Together, the group carried the sea turtle out of the water and onto a rescue stretcher specifically designed for carrying turtles. They carefully and laboriously carried the stretcher to Craig’s pick-up truck and put the great green turtle in the padded tray in the back.

“Thanks for the call, mate,” Craig said, shaking James’ hand and then Carl’s. “We’ll fix this girl up and she’ll be right soon enough.”

Craig and Delaney got back into the pick-up and headed toward the aquarium and turtle hospital. Carl and James peeled off their wet and salty stinger suits, gathered their snorkeling gear, and began to walk home, saddened by the injured turtle but happy that they had done something to help.

Story Five: Blue Eyes and the Small Green Turtle

On one of the few sunny days in early summer, before the storms of the Wet began, Blue Eyes took his boat out onto the water. His daughter was getting married, and Blue Eyes was hoping to get a sea turtle for the occasion. It was at his grandmother’s funeral, many years ago, that he learned that sea turtle meat was only eaten at very special occasions and ceremonies. Blue Eyes wasn’t sure how easily he would find one. There were many more jellyfish in the water in recent years, so he knew there were less turtles than there used to be.

There were two other people in the boat. Blue Eyes had invited his son and his nephew along to help him hunt the dhalwatpu, or green sea turtle. The green turtles were always hunted for their meat: because they are herbivores, their meat tasted much better than garun, the loggerhead, or guwarrtji, the hawksbill. Even though the miyapuna were endangered, Blue Eyes still felt it was okay to hunt them, because he respected the marine turtles. It was his right to supply his family with turtle meat on special occasions, just as his ancestors had done. Whenever Blue Eyes hunted, he used every part of the animal he killed. Nothing went to waste. Today, he would catch only a small green sea turtle. He would leave the larger ones be so that they could breed and lay eggs. The small dhalwatpu would feed all of the guests at the wedding. One turtle was all that was needed.

Blue Eyes drove his boat slowly around the bay. It was turtle nesting season, so he knew to be careful and not to disturb any egg-laying female turtles. The tide was low, and the water was clear. The three men looked across the water, watching for turtles surfacing to breathe the air.

“There’s a small one,” Blue Eyes’ son said, pointing. Blue Eyes steered the boat in the direction of his son’s outstretched arm. Keeping his eye on the small turtle, Blue Eyes reached for his wap, or harpoon. The wap was made of thick, heavy wood, but it was still light enough to float in the water. The tip of the wap was made from the gidu tree. String from the bark of the fig tree was hooked onto two barbs carved into the harpoon.

Blue Eyes’ son took over steering the boat as the group got closer to the turtle they had chosen. The turtle swam gracefully away from the boat, but she was diligently and patiently followed. When the moment was right, Blue Eyes threw the wap with speed and accuracy. The tip landed in the shell of the turtle, exactly where Blue Eyes had aimed. Never taking his eyes off the turtle, he tied the string from the fig tree bark to the side of the boat and watched as the turtle continued swimming, more and more slowly as the weight of the boat tired her.

The dhalwatpu swam less than one hundred meters before she was completely tired. Blue Eyes’ son jumped into the water and flipped the turtle onto its back, then brought it close to the side of the boat. Blue Eyes and his nephew pulled it up onto the boat by its rear legs. The turtle was small; Blue Eyes was positive that it was not yet nesting. The turtle would provide a great meal for the wedding, and Blue Eyes was satisfied with the hunt.

As his son climbed back aboard the boat, Blue Eyes heard the loud sound of a boat propeller hitting something. He looked up to see a trawler speeding across the bay. “Shit!” Blue Eyes heard someone yell. “It was a turtle. Should we go back and see if it’s okay?”

But Blue Eyes watched as the boat simply increased its speed across the water. Looking closely, he saw the name painted across the site of the boat in thick black letters: Humble Pine. Whoever was driving the trawler had no concern for the beautiful, endangered animals that had provided for Blue Eyes’ ancestors for generations.

Blue Eyes looked down at the small green turtle he had just caught and then looked out across the water where a turtle had just been hit by the boat motor. Blue Eyes remembered the story his grandfather had told him about the Rainbow Serpent, so many years ago. He wondered where the Rainbow Serpent was now, when a man had just killed a turtle for no reason. The turtle would go to waste; it would not provide for anybody. Blue Eyes had made sure that he chose a small turtle to hunt: one that would feed all his relatives and not go to waste.

But now Blue Eyes understood why the animals were so threatened, not only by Indigenous hunting, but by other human threats. He knew that global climate change was threatening the sea turtles as beaches were being washed away by more extreme tides and storms. But he had never seen the direct impact of a human killing a turtle with no concern for the animal’s numbers in the oceans.

At that moment, Blue Eyes understood that the sea country was not limitless. He had worried before about young Indigenous hunters taking more than they needed or not using traditional methods to hunt the dhalwatpu. But Blue Eyes was disgusted with the fishermen of the Humble Pine, who passed over the turtle as if it were as abundant as cane toads.

As Blue Eyes drove his boat home over the water in the late afternoon sunlight, he thought about ways that he could protect the endangered miyapuna. He wanted his grandchildren to have the same opportunities as he did to hunt the sea turtles for important occasions and celebrations, and he knew that he must play a role in sustainable community management of the species in order to conserve them for the future of his people.

a huge problem

People in Australia don't know who the Grateful Dead are.

Story Four: Crash

Sam was in a hurry. He had recently begun to realize that more than half of his life was over, and lately, he was always in a rush to get things done. He was frustrated with himself because he had overslept again this morning. Day after day, it was becoming harder for him to get out of bed. His joints always ached and he never felt as if he had slept enough. The salty smell of the ocean air was all it took to wake him up and get him moving, but it was difficult to make it down to the docks before sunrise as he used to.

It was late in November, and Sam had spent the day out on the water, trawling for prawns. By the time his crew had pulled in the third net of the day, the sun was already beginning to sink in the sky. Sam was watching the sun’s reflection on the water. His hair was mostly gray, but strands of copper still shone in the afternoon sunlight. His face was weathered, almost permanently red from being out in the sun and wind continually. These days, his face was usually contorted into a scowl or frown, adding to the wrinkles that had formed over the years. With his hands on his hips, his feet steady on the rocking Humble Pine, he gazed out over the water.

“Captain?” Al asked. “Are we going to set out the last net?” Al was the newest member of the trawling crew, and he was always hoping to catch as many prawns as possible in a day. He was ambitious and a good worker, but often found it difficult to work with Sam. He had been waiting at the dock for an hour this morning before Sam ambled down.

Sam broke out of his daze. “Yeah. Let’s get over to another bay.” Sam started the motor on the small trawler and began to increase speed as the boat bumped over the waves. It was the end of the tiger prawn trawling season, just as it was the end of the day, and Sam, like Al, wanted the largest catch possible.

The tide had gone out while Sam was slowly moving about his day, and the Humble Pine was now closer to the shore than he had realized. He increased the speed of the boat once more. He had no idea that he was taking his boat across the waters off the shore of a green sea turtle nesting site. He didn’t notice their heads poking out of the water as they took their breath and looked towards the beach; he was focused only on the setting sun on the horizon.

The boat jumped and the motor sputtered as the propeller smacked into something.
“Shit,” Al said, looking over the back of the boat. The water was churning in the wake of the boat, but Al could see a large green sea turtle gasp for air and go under, her shell broken by the collision. “It was a turtle. Should we go back and see if it’s okay?”

Sam wasn’t concerned. He stared straight ahead and never looked behind him or slowed the boat down. He didn’t answer Al.

“You know those blokes are endangered, right?” Al asked, hoping Sam would turn around.

“No way they’re endangered,” Sam said. “There are hundreds of them out here every day.” Sam had caught hundreds of turtles in his trawling nets over the years, mostly flatbacks and olive ridleys, but often loggerheads or green turtles. Some survived, others drowned. He let them go when he could. He wasn’t hurt when he couldn’t. What was one dead turtle when there were so many more in the ocean? The ocean was limitless. Sam suspected that the turtle populations were limitless as well.

Al shrugged. The turtle was completely out of sight by now, and the Humble Pine was fast on its way to the next trawling ground. Sam stared straight ahead. The day was almost over, and he had more fishing to do before the sun went down.

Story Three: The Aquarium

For her fifth birthday, Emily’s parents took her to the Coral Ocean Aquarium. The outside of the building was bright blue, like the ocean, and murals of corals, reef fish, sting rays, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, and octopi were painted on each wall. Emily’s favorite painting was of the butterflyfish. She loved the way its yellow scales stood out so brightly against the blue water.

Inside the aquarium, Emily’s mother paid their admission while the receptionist put a stamp on Emily’s hand. The stamp was of a sea turtle, and Emily pretended that the turtle was swimming up her arm.

The first tank that the family went to held several leopard sharks. Emily wasn’t scared of the sharks; they were young, so they were small. Her pet cat at home was more frightening than these animals. But Emily wondered where all of the reef fish were. She hoped the sharks hadn’t eaten them. At the bottom of the tank, a large red starfish clung to the sandy bottom. The sharks swam over it without noticing it. Emily wondered why they weren’t as excited to see the starfish as she was. She tugged on her father’s hand, pointing her tiny finger against the glass of the tank: “Look!” she told him. Her father didn’t know what she was pointing at, so he just smiled, took Emily’s hand, and walked to the next tank.

This tank held the corals and fishes that Emily had been looking for. She stood, wide-eyed, hands and face pressed against the tank. Her mouth was slightly open, and the wonder in her expression was reflected in the glass. She watched the anemone fish swim in and out of their anemone homes, trying to hide, but she thought their orange bodies were much too bright to ever be completely hidden. The butterflyfish swam regally past all the other fish. Emily thought they were the most beautiful of all, and she wondered if the other fish were jealous.

Emily and her family stopped to look at many tanks. They saw many more reef fishes, freshwater turtles, frogs, sea cucumbers, catfish, sea snakes, an octopus, sting rays, and much larger sharks.

The tank with the large sharks held adult leopard sharks, shovel-nosed rays, freshwater sawfish, and a tawny nurse shark. Emily still wasn’t scared of these sharks, though they were much larger, but she was happy that they were on one side of the glass and she was on the other. She and her parents watched the sharks being fed. The tawny nurse shark, who was sleeping on the sand when they arrived, was suddenly awake and active, finding food to eat. Emily heard the aquarium guide talking about the predators and their behavior, but she wasn’t listening, because she had noticed something much more exciting.

There, at the surface of the water, was a green sea turtle. The turtle must have been very hungry, because he was eating everything he saw. He even grabbed a squid right out from under a shark’s nose! Emily watched his feeding frenzy. The turtle could swim very quickly with is strong, fin-shaped flippers, and he probably ate more than his fair share of the food being thrown into the tank. This turtle was much larger than the freshwater turtles Emily had seen in a smaller tank earlier, and he was a much better swimmer. His shell was a beautiful mottled-brown and gold. Emily compared the stamp on her hand to the turtle swimming above, and she was happy that she had a chance to watch the sea turtle.

The aquarium guide pointed at the sea turtle and began to speak about it. Emily listened to the guide, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the turtle.

“This green sea turtle is four years old. He’s much larger than many turtles his age, because he is fed so well here,” the guide said. “He was found at Palm Island and brought to us just about a year ago. Right now, he will eat almost anything—he’ll even try to eat the hair of the scuba divers when they go in the tank!—but as he gets older, he’ll become a vegetarian and start to eat what’s good for him: mainly sea grasses and algae.”

Emily continued to watch the turtle swimming at the surface, eating whatever he could find. Many damselfish crowded around him to eat the debris that was shed from the food as he bit into it.

When the aquarium guide was finished speaking, Emily dragged her parents to her by the hands.

“What is the turtle’s name?” she asked, quietly but determinedly, pointing to the sea turtle and looking expectantly at the guide.

The aquarium guide smiled down at Emily. “His name is Wayamba,” she told her. “It’s an Aboriginal word for ‘turtle.’”

“Wayamba,” Emily repeated, satisfied.

When Emily and her parents left the aquarium, Emily waved goodbye to Wayamba. She thought she saw him wave his flipper back at her, and she hoped to see him again.

Emily’s parents bought her an ice cream on the way to the car. She ate it greedily, almost as quickly as the sea turtle gobbled up the food thrown to him. “What was your favorite animal to see?” her mother asked, wiping the chocolate from Emily’s face with a napkin.

“Wayamba, the sea turtle,” Emily said decisively, looking down at the stamp on her hand and smiling.

Story Two: Long Ago, in the Dreamtime

Tears slid down the dark skin of Charlie’s face. The day of the funeral had come, and family and friends had gathered to commemorate the life of Charlie’s late wife, whose name they would not speak. She had lived her life well, passing on her culture to her children and grandchildren and keeping close to the land where her ancestors had lived for generations. Her people had seen the sea levels rise and fall along the coast of Australia, but despite the changes in environment, they had always maintained a respect and understanding of the land they inhabited.

Charlie had learned from her. He himself had lost some of his culture when his father was sent to the reserve on Palm Island. He regained cultural knowledge through his wife, and he did his best to raise his children so that they would be proud of their heritage and continue to pass it on.

His wife had died, but Charlie still had other family members to love. He sat, thinking about the years that had passed, though he had never been concerned with the time that flew by him. He watched two of his grandsons running around, laughing and shouting, unaware of the sadness in his heart.

People were milling about, talking in low voices, and filling their plates with the food that was spread across the table. Charlie’s nephews had gone hunting the day before and captured a dugong and two green sea turtles for the occasion. The feast was their gift to Charlie, and he appreciated their efforts. The turtles had been baked over hot coals in the ground, and they were served with fried pumpkin and bean sprouts.

As Charlie watched his two young grandsons heaping food on their plates, he thought about the Dreamtime story his wife had shared with him about the sea turtle, Charlie’s own totem.

In the Dreamtime, Budgial, the sea turtle, represented wisdom and love. He loved Gugu, the fish, and he spent his time with her. He brought her food to eat and watched the sun go down with her, sharing pleasant conversation, and holding her when the night arrived and she became cold.

One day, many of the other animals were making fun of Gugu because she lived in the water and could not come onto the land. She asked Budgial to defend her, but when Budgial went to do so, he became friends with the others, and Gugu was upset. She cried and cried in the water that night, and Gunual, the goanna, asked her what was wrong. She explained to Gunual why she was upset with Budgial, so Gunual went to the others and beat them for making fun of Gugu.

Gunual represented strength, power, and greed. He told Gugu about his strength and power, and he explained what he had done to the others. She was glad that Gunual had defended her, so Gugu spent the night with him. Gunual brought her more food than she needed to show her what a wonderful hunter he was, but he would not love her the way Budgial had.

Gugu began to miss Budgial, and Gunual knew. As Gunual began to prepare a spear, Gugu swam away to find Budgial. She told him that Gunual was going to come kill him, but Budgial was brave. He held Gugu and told her everything would be alright.

When Gunual arrived at the scene and saw Budgial holding Gugu, he became furious. He was prepared to kill Budgial for taking Gugu away from him, but Budgial held up two shields, one against his front and one against his back, and jumped into the water. The shields protected Budgial, no matter how many spears Gunual threw at him.

Gunual couldn’t believe that he didn’t have the power to kill Budgial. He ran away from the water to live in the desert, where he remains. Gugu and Budgial maintained their love for each other, and they still live in the water together.
At a young age, Charlie was given the totem of Budgial, the sea turtle, because he had so much common sense and love for his friends and family. He would not eat the sea turtle at the funeral today, because no person can kill or eat his or her totem animal.

Charlie’s two grandsons were sitting on the floor at his feet, eating their meal of sea turtle meat and vegetables. His grandsons were half-caste; their mother, Charlie’s daughter, was Aboriginal, but their father was white. The two boys had light brown skin and soft, curly hair, and their eyes were wide as they looked down at the food on their plates. Their bellies were full, and they didn’t know how they would finish all of the food they had taken.

Charlie watched them contemplating their food, their hands on their bellies. “Did I ever tell you two the story of the Rainbow Serpent?” Charlie asked.

The two boys looked up and shook their heads. Charlie smiled, knowing that sharing a piece of his culture with his grandsons would make him feel better on this sad day. It is what his wife would have done.

“Long ago, in the Dreamtime, there were two young men who were heading down to the river to go fishing for that evening’s meal,” Charlie began. The two boys put their forks down and pushed their plates forward, looking up at their grandfather in interest.

“On their way to the river, the young men stopped to speak to an old man who was sitting beneath a tree. They noticed that the old man looked very weak. ‘We are going fishing,’ one of the young men said. ‘Would you like any fish for your dinner?’

“‘Yes, please,’ the old man said. ‘If you catch five fish for me, I can feed my whole family.’ The two young men agreed to help the old man and his family, and they continued on their walk to the river.

“When they got to the water, the men threw the bark of the Milky Pine into the river. This bark takes all of the oxygen out of the water, and eventually the fish will come to the surface of the water, searching for more oxygen to breathe. The barramundi, the black fin, and all of the other fish were soon floating at the top of the water.

“The two young men were very excited at the number of fish floating in the river, and they began to collect them in their dilly bags. But the Rainbow Serpent, who guarded the water hole, saw this happening and became very angry. The Rainbow Serpent protects the food chain and certifies that it is balanced. He makes sure that nobody takes more than they need and that nobody goes hungry. When he saw the two young men taking many more fish than they needed to feed themselves, he swam through tunnels beneath the ground and waited below the water.

“As the two young men continued to fill their dilly bags with the dead fish, the Rainbow Serpent sprang up from beneath the water and swallowed them whole. With his protruding belly, the Rainbow Serpent swam back down to the underground tunnels.

“The old man, still sitting beneath the tree, heard a large splash, and ran down to the river. He saw all the dead fish lying about and the dilly bags of the young men lying on the shore. The two young men were nowhere to be seen. The old man knew what had happened. He began to dance and shout, stomping holes in the ground. Eventually, the old man fell into the underground tunnel, where he found the Rainbow Serpent. He stabbed the large serpent in the tail, and the Rainbow Serpent screamed and spat the two young men out.

“The old man cleaned off the two young men and brought them back to the river banks. The young men were embarrassed for taking so much and for needing the old man to come and save them. They learned their lesson, to never take more than they needed.”

Charlie finished the Dreamtime story and watched his grandsons. They looked guiltily at the full plates that they could not finish.

“Sea turtle is a very special food,” Charlie explained. “We only eat it at special occasions. It is not to be wasted.”

The two grandsons nodded. They understood. Charlie looked into their blue eyes and was happy that he had the opportunity to share his knowledge of his culture with them. He hoped that the two boys would retain their culture in their changing world.

Story One: Chelonia mydas

It is late November, and the rising full moon can be seen in the day-lit sky. A newly matured green sea turtle is swimming through the shallow ocean waters off the coast of the beach where she was born. She has not returned to this site since she and her siblings dug their way up through the warm sand of the nest their mother dug for them. The last time she touched land, the hatchling and her siblings had scurried upwards out of the nest, towards the surface, breathing between the sand grains. They reached the surface of the nest with a burst of energy, as a coordinated group, but they dispersed as they clambered toward the surf. It was the last time she saw many of her siblings, as stragglers were taken by beach-dwelling crabs, popping up from their holes to capture the struggling hatchlings by the moonlight. Others were captured by shore-birds, night herons hiding still in the night, long legs poised to run toward their prey at the opportune moment.

Most of the hatchlings made it into the ocean. As soon as they reached the salty water, they swam, frenzied, past the breakers. They put every ounce of their energy into swimming that first night. Fish, small sharks, and cuttlefish took some of the hatchlings for their own meals, but the rest kept swimming. Separated, they swam for days. The residual yolk in their bodies supplied enough energy for them to continue swimming without feeding for several days, and they used this energy until they reached the currents that carried them to the deep, open ocean.

The green turtle hatchling drifted with the ocean currents, eating plankton near the surface of the water, and slowly growing. Her carapace grew from five centimeters to forty centimeters during her life in the open ocean, and when she was large enough to return to shallower waters without risking predation, she swam toward the sea-grass pastures. Here, she continued feeding for many years. As a youth, she was not selective in her diet, feeding on sponges, jellyfish, macroalgae, and even cigarette butts washed out to sea, floating on the surface of the water. But as she grew and matured, she recognized the strength and energy that feeding on the sea-grass beds provided her. With her serrated beak, she could easily seize and break off pieces of sea-grass. She thrived in large sea-grass meadows, where green sea-grass, brown at the tips, covered the shallow banks and sand-bottom channels of the coastal waters. She continued to supplement her diet with small amounts of macroalgae, and her herbivorous meals created the green body fat she is named for.

Now, she is nearly forty years old. After feeding and growing for so many years, she is ready to breed. She migrated hundreds of kilometers from her feeding grounds to the area of the nesting beach where she was born. There, she mated with several male turtles who had also migrated to the breeding grounds. The males, with claws at the tips of their flippers, held on to the female’s carapace as they mated.

Though it is several weeks after her first mating, she still carries the claw marks of the males on her shell. She made her first journey to the beach nearly two weeks ago. After dark, she swam to shore and lumbered up the gradient of the beach. She used her front flippers to drag her body over the sand. With her fore and rear flippers, she excavated her first nest area, and with her rear flippers, she dug her first egg chamber, alternately scooping the sand. When it was deep enough, she laid over one hundred small, round eggs, leathery and white against the tawny sand. She used her rear flippers again to fill and cover the egg chamber. As she laid her eggs, glands near her eyes formed tears, excreting the excess salt from the seawater she drank. Though these tears are constantly sliding down her face, they are most noticeable now that she has left the ocean for the land. She blinked, letting the tears go, turned, and followed the moonlight back to the dark sea.

If the turtle has concealed her nest sufficiently, it will protect the eggs from feral pigs and dogs that come to the beach for a late night snack. After eight weeks, the turtles inside the eggs will begin to pip, breaking their eggshells by rubbing an egg tooth on the tip of their noses against the shells. Each hatchling will pip within a few hours of each another, and they will stay within their broken eggshells for several days as their soft bodies uncurl. Once they have straightened, they will emerge from their nest, the same way their mother did so many years ago. They will race to the ocean, the darkness of their shells protecting their bodies in the dangerous night. Once in the water, their white undersides will protect them from predators below, looking toward the sky for the silhouettes of prey.

Now, the green sea turtle swims through the sea water, parallel to her nesting beach. After the sun goes down, when the moon is bright in the dark sky, she will make her way to the silent beach. She will trudge to the perfect nesting spot and dig an egg chamber, and she will quietly lay her second clutch of eggs. She will have nothing to do with her eggs once they have been laid; she will never see her offspring emerge from the nest or make their way to the ocean. Not all of them will survive. Most will make it safely to the sea, and some of the lucky ones will survive attacks by sharks and other marine predators. The ones that survive and make it to the open ocean will carefully grow over many years, feeding on algae and sea grasses like their mother did. Some will make it to breeding age, joining in the ancient cycle of reproduction, populating the oceans with these prehistoric reptiles that have survived for over one hundred million years.

The turtle glides through the water. Her rear flippers are broad rudders; her toe bones are long, and flexible enough to steer her through the ocean. With her front flippers, she paddles swiftly, moving them upward and backward, then forward and downward, flying through the ocean like a bird on wings. She makes her way to the surface every few minutes, exhaling her breath in a noisy rush above the water and breathing in the salty air, absorbing enough oxygen for her next dive below the water.

With her domed, light shell, stream-lined to maximize buoyancy and agility in the water, she is made for the sea. Her shell is olive green and brown, with darkly mottled splotches, and her eyes are wide, pensive and still. She dives deep in the water, feeding along the bottom, and slowly slopes to the surface. Her ascent is passive and graceful. She is completely unaware of the low-frequency sound of a boat motor approaching.

Her head breaks the surface as the water around her churns and the whirring smack of the propeller slices through her front flipper and crashes into her shell. She gasps the air for broken breath, but is too shocked by impact to see the foreign object speeding away in the sunny afternoon. The stillness of the water has disappeared, and in its place, the sea turtle bobs along the surface of the water. She floats, her flipper hanging limply at her side, not completely separated, but useless. The shock and pain of the accident has blinded the turtle of her earlier purpose, and she can do nothing but move slowly through the water, using the strength of only one flipper to paddle to a comfortable place.

Townsville

Townsville is a small town. We’ve only been here for about two weeks and we probably know everybody. Examples: On our way to Townsville, we met Sam on the bus. We ran into him several times without planning to meet up. Once, Sam and I were walking to the beach. On the way, he introduced me to his friend Jake, and we kept walking. On our way back, we found Jake and Geneveve hanging out together. Another time I met a man named Will, who dives regularly. I wanted to interview him for my sea turtle project, so we exchanged numbers. The next day, Geneveve saw him, and he said he was looking forward to the interview. His phone was off for the next three days, so I couldn’t get in touch with him. But then, Geneveve and I were having dinner with Russell (from our camping trip), and Will walks by with his family. Will and I started talking to each other, but Will’s parents started chatting with Russ, because Will’s father gulfs with Russ. Last story: Geneveve and I went to the aquarium. We were talking to the director, Fred, but he had to go because he had to meet with another man. I met this same man, Anthony, at a bar about a week later. But it wasn’t until our third meeting, when we randomly crossed paths on the street, that we realized we had seen each other before, at the aquarium. It’s a small town.

Geneveve and I left Cairns for Townsville on April 5th, the first day of ISP. We took a Greyhound bus. It was a six hour bus ride, but we were entertained with books to read and a movie to watch – “Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging.” (Who remembers that book!? (The book actually refers to “Full-frontal” snogging.)) We met Sam on the bus, and he helped Geneveve and I carry our obscene amount of luggage, get a taxi, and find our hostel. After settling into the Globetrotters Hostel (where we stayed for two nights before moving to the Reef Lodge), we met up with Sam for a drink. We soon found out that the main part of Townsville is just one street. Flinders Street has several bars, the “mall” (which includes free wi-fi at McDonald’s), and, well, that’s about it. Parallel to Flinders Street is the Strand. There’s a great view of the ocean, looking out toward Magnetic Island, and there is a beach with two stinger nets to swim in. There’s also an Olympic-size pool for me to swim in; a pier, with a kiosk that has great “chips” (French fries); another pool, sort of like the lagoon at Cairns; a walking track; and some nice shady, grassy spots to sit down and read a book.

I came to Townsville to work on my Independent Study Project. I am doing a research project on green sea turtles. My project involves academic research of the species and interviews with people who have had interactions with turtles: researchers, students, divers, snorkelers, indigenous hunters, tourists, volunteers, aquarium staff, and fishermen. As I collect data from these interviews, I am composing several short stories (which I will probably post in my blog). The stories are going to examine the factors affecting sea turtle endangerment, human interactions and perceptions of sea turtles, and conservation goals. In addition to my short stories, I need to also write a short paper that is more science based. This paper will explore how stories can be used as an educational tool for the non-scientific community; it will also go through my methods of interviewing people, my results, and what it all means. I’m enjoying working on the project. It got off to a slow start, but now that there are only two weeks left in ISP, it is picking up!

When I am not working on my turtle research, I spend a lot of time at the Strand or swimming. It is nice to finally have time to exercise again. I even bought a pair of sneakers to run, which may have been a terrible idea. (I went for my first run last night, and I am definitely feeling it today.)

Geneveve and I have done some more exploring in Townsville when were not doing our research. We’ve hiked up Castle Hill, a great hike up a red-rock mountain right in the center of town. We also went to Magnetic Island for a weekend. We didn’t see any koalas on the island, as we had hoped (there are about 200 living there,) but we did have a great time going to the beach, hiking, and snorkeling. We stayed at a campground with a free tent I obtained in Cairns. We were a three minute walk to the beach at Horseshoe Bay, and we also hiked about an hour to Florence Bay, where we snorkeled. The snorkeling was a little bit disappointing and heart-breaking after snorkeling at Lizard Island. The corals there are almost completely bleached and covered in algae. It was really sad to see, but also eye-opening. If I could, I would show every person in the world the Great Barrier Reef. It makes the threats of climate change SO much more apparent. I wish there were a way to make everybody understand, even though not everyone will be as lucky as I am and have the chance to see this place. Despite the bleaching on this reef, we did see several reef fish, and an eel. We spent two nights on “Maggie” and headed back early Monday morning on the ferry to get back to our research.

The next two weeks should be pretty quiet as I finish up my project. I should head back to Cairns around May 3rd to finish writing my paper. Our papers and presentations are due May 9th, and our program ends May 14th. At that point, I will be traveling down the coast with Eva, Steve, Kelly, and Lauren. Then, I’ll be home! I started to get a little bit homesick the past few days, but I know the rest of my time here will speed by, so I will have to be sure to enjoy every second, despite all the paper-writing that needs to be done.

Stay tuned for turtle tales!