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!

Great Ocean Road and Melbourne

Last Thursday, I rented a car with three friends and headed of on the Great Ocean Road from Adelaide to Melbourne. I read an article about this trip in the New York Times last spring and I've heard a lot about it since getting to Australia - and it was just as awesome as everyone says. I'll try to refrain from putting too many pictures up - if your interested ask me for a slide show when I get back to the US!

Twelve Apostles rock formation along the Great Ocean Road at sunset.

Basically the same view without my ugly head blocking the view.

Beach on the Great Ocean Road just after sunrise.

London Arch as the first sun of the day hits it.

Cove along the Great Ocean Road.

We stopped at a park and saw about two dozen koalas. Most were napping and some were munching away on leaves - that's the life.

Koalas - Totally cute.

The bad news: I still haven't seen a kangaroo. The good news: we didn't hit one with the car!

Just off the road are national parks with some sweet rainforest.

Bell's Beach, which is super famous for surfing.

I hung out in Melbourne for a day and left intensely grateful that I don't live there for the summer. Not because it sucks - but because it is so awesome. Melbourne is one of the best cities I've ever been to, jammed with cafes, restaurants, museums, parks, tiny bars, and totally hooked up with public transport. I'm pretty sure I would achieve no work, and blow through all my money in a month.

Mt. Lofty

Hi everyone!

The highlight of this week was an awesome dinner at the house of Heather and John (who works at the archaeology dept). We started with champagne and a tray of cheeses and olives. For dinner, we had delicious zucchini parsley soup with fresh bread, followed by grilled snap peas, asparagus and salmon. Dessert was incredible: chocolate cake with caramel and homemade honey ice cream. Wow. Everyone at the dinner was really nice, and it was certainly one of the yummiest and funnest meals I've had in a long long time.

Yesterday, I went on a hike with a few friends to Mt. Lofty, which, while probably not technically a mountain, was a really pretty walk up to a great view. Also, I brought croissants and dolmas, which made the whole endeavor 120% more rewarding.  

In other good news, I finally found a beer I really like, Vale Ale.

View of Adelaide from the top of Mt Lofty. Downtown is visible, and so is the ocean.

big sur pictures

here's a few snaps from our time in big sur:

summer in the sierras

Well, I guess I’ve been MIA on this blog since our trip, partly because I’ve been sucked in by my summer bird job, and also because my backpacking (mis)adventures don’t seem quite as thrilling and exotic as Emily’s globetrotting cavorts. Also, I really don’t know how many people actually read this blog, so if you do, you should tell us and we’ll be encouraged to keep writing in it, although Emily has been doing an awesome job, must be nice to have internet access every day.

So, anyway, I’ve been in the Sierras of central California since late April. Before my job started I helped out with another project that my non-profit (the Institute for Bird Populations) is conducting with the funding of the Forest Service that works with Black-Backed Woodpeckers. We were doing playback surveys and catching the birds with mist-nets, putting transmitters on them, and then tracking their movements with radio telemetry. After a week doing that in northern California, I started my real job in Yosemite. This year was my third summer doing the job (though in a different national park every summer), but my first as the crew leader. I was a little nervous for the extra responsibility, but glad to have been able to work up the job ladder a notch. The first three weeks were training for the newly hired interns. Every morning we’d go out at dawn to bird for most of the morning, and then for the rest of the day go over how to carry out the protocol for bird surveys. It was interesting to be on the other side of the student-teacher relationship.

The first week all four of us surveyed in Yosemite, then after that Zeka and I went down to Sequoia/Kings Canyon for the rest of the summer while Ryan and Sam stayed in Yosemite. Emily came down to visit for an all too brief weekend after the first week and the two of us went camping in the Big Sur area of the California coast. I’d first explored Big Sur on time off while I was doing spotted owl work back in 2006, and it was great to share some of my treasured places and memories with Emily.

After that Zeka and I got started in Seqoia/Kings Canyon, or SEKI, for short. It’s been really cool to survey in groves of sequoias, the largest trees (by volume) in the world. This year is a really heavy snow pack year, and it’s had a huge affect on the field season. We gradually survey sites higher in elevation throughout the summer, and usually place at least partially melt out by the times we need to hike there. Not this year. It’d be manageable to this point because we’d been in lower sites, but now every site left required beefy trips into the backcountry, most of which involve crossing high mountain passes. The weather has been relatively hot and dry recently, and the snow is melting, so hopefully we’ll be able to get to places eventually. While everything is melting all the streams have surged with all the meltwater, making crossings a little dicey. We’re trying to get where we can while being safe at the same time.

After this job ends in July I’m planning to hike the John Muir Trail, which spans over 200 miles between Yosemite and Mt. Whitney, which is just outside Sequoia NP. I’ve been wanting to do a long hike like this for a long time and am getting really excited for it! I’ll be joined by a few friends for at least a good part of the hike, and it’ll be great to share such an incredible experience with them.

Hope everyone reading this is doing well. Write me and tell me what’s going on with you. Take care.

Adelaide fun

Hi everyone! I've been up to some fun stuff in Adelaide since returning from Canberra. My hostel is really close to the Adelaide Central Market which is, as would be predicted from the name, a large market. There is tons of cheap veggies and fruits there, as well as cheese, olives, bakery goods, wine and coffee. I've been by a few times to pick up some odds and ends, but on Saturday morning I went for a cup of coffee to soak up the scene. I had a nice night Friday, I went to a pub with some friends, there was a great band playing. The one majorly disturbing thing about Australia so far (especially for someone used to Portland) is the outrageously expensive ($7 for 14 oz), crappy beer. Luckily, wine is dirt cheap and de-licious!
Today I went with some friends to Port Adelaide to go on a boat ride. The big attraction was dolphins - and we saw about a dozen! As you probably all know, I tend to freak out when watching dolphins, and I think it was only the freezing water that kept me from 'accidentally' falling in.
Also, I wrote a blog post about my research for the Finders Uni Archaeology blog. If you're interested, here's the link: flindersarchaeology.com

Mini donuts and espresso - The breakfast of champions.

We were served lunch on the boat ride. I even ate a few bites of my fish!

My friend Greg took this picture with his fancy camera.

The river banks were pretty industrial, but still interesting to see.

Port Adelaide lighthouse.

Canberra

I just got back from a trip to Canberra, Australia's capital city. I was there for the official orientation to EAPSI - the program that got me to Australia and is supporting my research. We were wined and dined by the Australian Academy of Science - I had some seriously fabulous food and (more than) my fair share of beer and wine. We visited the National Gallery, which has a great collection of Indigenous art. We also got to tour the Parliament House, and were able to sit in on 'question time', where politicians are able to query other representatives. This was awesome for two reasons:
1. The Dalai Lama was also sitting in on questions time. I have NEVER been so excited to be in the same room as someone in my life - including the time we saw Torii Hunter at McDonalds.
2. Most of the time was spent by politicians avoiding questions in hilarious ways, and being heckled by their colleagues. To imagine the scene, just think of a guy in a suit saying "Jobs blah blah blah they want to take away you pension blah blah we will create jobs blah blah blah..." while 100 other people are pointing and muttering and laughing rudely and standing up and sitting down, and one dude in the middle is yelling "order ORDER" in an Australian accent. Awesome.
The only sad part about the trip is that it was a lot of fun to hang out with the 20 other students, and now we're all split up into our host cities.

Canberra is a totally planned city, built from scratch. It is laid out symmetrically, all the streets are very wide, its super clean, and bars close at 10:30. Reminds me of my summer in Utah.

This picture is actually taken from the top of the capital building, which is covered in sod. The buildings in the large park area are the old parliament building and the war memorial. 

Top of the capital building.