Gateway to the GBR: Cairns

Cairns was the first stop on my 2 week Australia East Coast trip! I flew into Cairns late Thursday night and arrived at 1:30a on Friday. Just enough time to crash in a hostel before getting up at 6:15a to go diving! When we got off the plane I felt the way I had when I first landed in Sydney, then Brisbane, the humidity was stifling, and I felt like I had gone somewhere completely different. This was a immediate reminder that Carins is much further north of Brisbane, and in the tropics instead of the subtropics. The reason that we chose to start in Cairns is because it is the city that is closest to the Great Barrier Reef. It's about an hour by boat to get out the the reef, and a friend and I really wanted to go diving on the reef. I'll do a separate post about our diving experience, but we were also able to spend an evening in Cairns before heading on to our next stop.

Cairns is a small touristy city. It has so many people leaving from there to go the the reef or rainforest that it is a bit of a stop over. The streets are lined with dive shops, information booths, hostels, and bars. For all of that it's actually a really nice place. Tropical vegetation lines the wide boulevards (see above and belwo left), making the city feel like it is in the middle of the rainforest (below right). The CBD is vibrant. The colors from all of the shops and bars beacon the curious traveller. 

We walked to the esplanade, which is the main street of the CBD and leads from the harbor where the diving trips leave to a lively nightlife scene. We strolled along it until we came to a pub, and grabbed some ciders and pizzas for dinner. Afterwards we walked to the Lagoon (see below). This is the swimming area of Cairns. Similar to Streets Beach in Brisbane, the Lagoon is a pool and beach that borders an actual body of water. It is backed up to the ocean, but because of all the jellies (box jellies and Irikanji are deadly and live in the waters of the coast of Cairns) you cannot swim in the ocean without a stinger suit. So Cairns has an artificial beach set up for those who choose not to risk it. There are metal fish statues in the Lagoon and they are quite beautiful at night (below). 

After strolling along the beach, we headed to the Night Markets. These are goods and food markets that are open from 5p to 11p. They have tons of souvenirs and goods for sale, as well as some really great food. We walked around all of the twisting corridors between the stalls (below left). I bought some shorts with the Australian Flag on them, and my friends bought some cool bracelets. We also grabbed some dessert, I got a yummy green tea crape (read about it here: ) It was a wonderful way to spend the rest of the evening! We finished at the night markets and then spend our final few hours in Cairns playing cards at our hostel, before catching a night Greyhound Bus! We slept on the bus, and it took us to the next stop on our journey: The Whitesunday Islands.

Diving Cook Island

Second dive site of my time in Australia! We enjoyed out time at Julian Rocks so much that we signed up to dive with Unidive a second time. That dive was last weekend! We headed out to Cook Island which is a small island (like so small that it's too rocky for people to walk on it) that is just off the coast from Tweed River and Coolengatta. It has a bunch of reefs around the island and is actually a Marine Park, so it was a nice area. There were tons of fish and corals. Some of the highlights were tons of cleaning wrasses cleaning reef fish, heaps of puffers, and some huge groupers. In addition to the fish, we also saw some other amazing ocean inhabitants. The firstly we saw a couple of moray eels (below bottom). We saw a bunch of Wobegong sharks, but not as many as the Julian Rocks dive. We also saw a green sea turtle! I looked up and saw it chilling in front of us! We followed him for a bit, it was really cool to see him riding the waves (felt like something out of Finding Nemo). The highlight of the trip though, was the octopus (see above!!). He was hiding in a hole but we could see his eyes, and he changed color to fit in better with the rocks. It was really exciting because it was the first wild octopus that I've seen. After another great dive, I can't wait to go again. And I will be, this weekend at the Great Barrier Reef.

Fossil Hunting at Dinmore Quarry

In an attempt to get involved at uni, and do some really cool stuff, I joined a couple of the student groups here. One of them is the Environmental Science Society! It's a club for students and other UQ community members who are interested in Environmental Sciences. Two weekends ago they held their second event. It was a day trip to the Dinmore Quarry to go fossil hunting! I was so excited because I love anything having to do with earth's past environment (there's a reason that I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was little, and am planning on getting a PHD in paleoecology and paleoclimatology) and I've never gone fossil hunting before. We left around 10a and carpooled to the site, which was about 40 minutes outside of the city. A quarry of course is a mine for minerals, so this site was basically a huge hole in the ground (see below). This quarry has been in operation for a very long time, and the site has been studied for about 100 years!

We scrambled into the quarry and basically smashed rocks for the next 2 hours. I didn't have a rock hammer with me, I really need to get one, so I was a bit sad when a bunch of the other club members pulled out their hammers and started breaking apart the rocks. However, I needn't have worried. The rocks were layered shales, and were extremely easy to break apart (see below left). So I was able to break apart the rocks with my hands, since they were so nicely layered the cleavage was incredibly easy to break into stratified chunks (below right). 

These layers were formed in the Triassic and had a ton of Triassic flora trapped inside and preserved in the organics that made up the shale. As we broke the rocks apart we found grasses (see left below) and ferns (see right below) trapped in different layers of the rock. It was like peeling back layers of the past! Part of the reason that I want to study the past climate and ecosystems of the Earth is because if we understand the past we will be better able to understand the future and how we as humans may affect it. This is vital in an age that has been called the "anthropocene" because the current greatest driving force in earth's environment is a single species, humans. I want to help us better prepare for the future in a way that I find intriguing. 

This passion stemmed from the wonder that I felt as a little kid to be learning about the ages of dinosaurs and all of the amazing animals that no longer exist. To me it was more magical than a make-believe world because they actually happened! And scientists use what tools they have to flesh out what that place was like, and why it was that way. It's exciting and wondrous, and there is always more for us to discover, and I can't wait until I'm able to contribute to that pursuit.