arrival

The flight to Australia wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, although my shoulders and neck are hurting a bit today from sleeping on the plane. I flew into LA as the sun was setting, and by the time we landed it was dark. I was both appalled and amazed at how many lights were in the actual city. I kept thinking we were there, but more and more lights kept appearing! I just can’t believe how many people are crammed into a place with no water. The lights were both beautiful and disgusting.

I met the SIT group about halfway through my layover. We sat on the floor by our gate and played Australia-themed card games. I really like the group so far; everyone is very laid back and easy-going. There are two boys and 12 girls (including myself) in the program. I didn’t sit with anyone on the plane. I watched the movie Australia (ha) and then slept for most of the trip to Brisbane.

Once we landed in Brisbane, we had about an hour and a half layover. First, we had to go through Customs, where a small beagle got me in trouble because I had an orange in my bag. They confiscated that from me and gave the dog a treat! Then we had to pick up our baggage, check in and re-check our baggage, take a train to our terminal, go through security again, and make it to our gate! We JUST made it during the final boarding call. The flight to Cairns (pronounced CANS) wasn’t long. Flying into Cairns was absolutely beautiful. The “mountains” are less than 1,000 feet, but they appear much larger, and are covered with beautiful forest. I was the kid taking pictures out of the plane window as we landed.



We are staying in a hostel called the Northern Greenhouse. It’s nice; we’re 4 or 5 to a room. The common room is a covered porch with couches and two computers, and there is a kitchen where we can get breakfast in the morning or cook our own food. We had most of the day when we arrived to ourselves. I walked around with a few other kids; we went down to the water and had paninis for lunch at a café. I hate cities, but Cairns is the perfect size for me. It’s a somewhat touristy town, but has a really pretty town center where there is live music, and lots of pretty trees and flowers around all the sidewalks. Plus, you can see the mountains and ocean from many places in the city.

Later, the whole group went down to the “lagoon,” a huge public pool filled with filtered ocean water. The lagoon is structured so that when you look out toward the ocean, it appears as if you are actually in the ocean, with the mountains surrounding you. I was floating on my back in the water when these HUGE bats, like the size of red-tailed hawks, flew screaming over head. It was dusk, and there was a lone white egret flying calmly through their scattered crowd. It was sort of surreal. It was a great end to a tired, humid day. Tony, our director, then took us out for pizza. A large pizza was about the size of a personal pizza at home! We went to sleep soon after we returned to the hostel, and it really just took that one night of sleep to recover from any jet lag.

On Saturday, we got up early to grab breakfast (Vegemite was an option, but I haven’t tried it yet!) and then took taxis to the base of Mount Whitmore. It was pouring, but we hiked to the top (about 600 feet) despite the rain. Tony and Jack, another advisor, talked to us about many of the plants and other land features as we hiked, and we were given water-proof notebooks for the semester. It just took the one hike to accept that we are going to be damp and everything we own will probably be wet for most of the semester! The rainforest was also beautiful; it was just hard to look at everything because the rain was falling in your eyes every time you looked up! I would love to go back to that trail, as well as the Botanical Gardens next door, when it’s not raining, so that I can take pictures. We ended the hike with a walk along a boardwalk through a swamp, which had impressive vegetation, and had brunch under a pavilion. Apple-guava juice, dragon fruit, star fruit, mangos, watermelon, pineapple, kiwis, and scones with jelly and cream was absolutely delicious! We spent the rest of the day in meetings about the semester, and it never stopped raining!

Today we just had more meetings at Reef Teach, the classroom we’ll be using while we’re in Cairns and on our homestay. Tomorrow, we are driving North to Port Douglas and the Atherton Tablelands to continue orientation for the week. I’ll be out of internet until I get back in Cairns on Saturday!

Here is some more info from the rest of my readings, which you don’t have to read, although I think the last two parts are particularly interesting!

~Because the Australian government essentially had no ties to the land or history attached to the environment there, it was easy for them to promote economic growth, industrialization, population growth, increased and improved technology, and huge development projects that negatively affected the environment and nature of the continent.
~The use of the term “stakeholders” in Australia in the 1990s, especially popular with bureaucrats, businesspeople, and others negotiating development, reinforced economic imperatives and excluded nature.
~Rainforests, like those found in Australia, maybe defined as “A closed moisture-loving community of trees, usually containing one or more subordinate storeys of trees and shrubs; frequently mixed in composition; the species typically, but not invariably, broadleaved and evergreen; heavy vines (lianes); vascular and non vascular epiphytes, stranglers and buttressing often present and sometimes abundant; floristic affinities mainly with the Antarctic or Indo-Malaysian floras; eucalypts typically absent except as relics of an earlier community.” The diversity of life found in rainforest communities is a major factor in what distinguishes rainforests from other ecosystems and vegetation types. The height and depth of canopy closure, as well as the leaves, vines, and trunks of vegetation, and special life forms or growth forms, are used to classify different types of rainforests. Such rainforests may be classified as vine forests, fern forests, or mossy forests. Climate and weather are also used to classify rainforests in categories such as subtropical rainforests, dry rainforests, warm-temperate rainforests, and cool-temperate rainforests.
~Australia was once part of Gondwanaland, a giant land mass made up of the present day land masses of Africa, South America, Antarctica, India, Madagascar, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and part of New Guinea. This landmass began to break up about 120 million years ago. One of the last events of this break-up was Australia’s separation from Antarctica about 50 million years ago. Antarctica stayed in the same location, while Australia drifted northward. During a 35 million year period of isolation from other land masses, Australia was able to develop the great diversification of the unique flora and fauna on the continent.
~The community composition of a coral reef is largely determined by light availability, wave action, sediment load, salinity, and tidal range. Available food and inorganic nutrients, temperature, and the topography of the sea floor are also important factors. Hermatypic or reef-building corals refer to corals that contain zooxanthellae, or single-celled algae, that live symbiotically with the coral polyps. Corals that do not contain this algae are referred to as ahermatypic. Hermatypic corals require sunlight to grow, because the algae need photosynthesis. Ahermatypic corals do not need sunlight, and can grow at any ocean depth. In order to reproduce effectively in environments where water is constantly moving and parents may be separated, the corals of the Great Barrier Reef have synchronized their reproductive behavior to the time of year when water temperature is increasing most rapidly after winter, the phases of the moon (when the moon is full), and time of day (shortly after sunset)! “At least half of all the corals of the entire Great Barrier Reef release their gametes just after dark about five days after the full moon in late spring.” Many corals deposit layers of skeleton in seasonal cycles. These layers, like the growth rings of trees, can act as biological clocks.