Northern Queensland

As promised, here is a longer version of what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks. In the beginning of July, I headed up to the West Coast of the Cape York Peninsula. I joined the professor I’m working with in Adelaide (Mick) and two other grad students (Amy and Claire) for some field work, primarily at a mission site that was inhabited from 1898-1932. We were working outside of the town of Weipa, which is mostly populated by people working at bauxite (aluminum) mines in the area. Lots of the area is basically being strip mined, which obviously has a huge impact on the ecosystem. The field work was really interesting, and I learned a lot. We were mostly focused on mapping the mission and an old cattle homestead, but I also spent some time surveying for and recording culturally modified trees around the sites. One highlight was working with traditional owners of the land the mission site is located on, who still manage the land with burning.  Another highlight was not being eaten by a croc. We did spot a TON of wallabies and kangaroos while working though! It was really fun to be out in the bush with Mick, Claire and Amy, who know all the secrets of camping in Australia, such as how to make damper (bread cooked over the campfire) and how to make a mean pot of tea. In turn, I managed to impress them with the amount of cheese I consume. 

Can you spot the kangaroo?

Looking at not so old stuff.

There were also tons of termite mounds!

Salt pan by the mission.

Measuring sugarbag scars!

The traditional owners often burn the under bush, which was common until the land was used for cattle grazing by Europeans. 

Spider - so cool!

The soil was beautiful - super red.

 After field work finished, we spent a couple days driving from Weipa across the Cape York tip to Cairns. This area is very lowly populated, with most of the land either held by Indigenous peoples or cattle ranchers. Just about the only thing for 1000 or so kilometers are a few small road houses (facilities that sell gas and snacks) and a couple tiny towns. Makes Wyoming seem like Manhattan. There is a lot of rock art found in this region, and we stopped at the only site open to the public, which was pretty amazing. It is around 14,000 years old, and there are many depictions of people, animals such as fish, and turtles, and stencils made with hands. Awesome!

Queensland is very flat by Weipa, but it got quite hilly in the eastern half of the peninsula.

In Cairns, I immediately booked it for the Great Barrier Reef. After one night as a paying guest on a boat that stays out on the reef, I ended up getting hooked up with a short work exchange job cleaning and helping out in the kitchen. I was able to spend four days and three nights in an incredibly amazing spot, eating great food, working really hard, and jumping into the water with my snorkel every chance I got.  I saw a couple reef sharks, some turtles, and lots of colorful fish, but the really incredible part was the coral. There are gazillions of species of hard and soft corals and anemones in bajillions of different shapes and colors. It was just as awesome as I hope for, they definitely had to pry me off the boat to get me back to Cairns! 

Yup. Didn't want to leave. Did I mention we saw dolphins?

You can pretty much see the coral from this one.

I’m now returned Adelaide, ready to get back to crunching the numbers for our scarred tree data!