Completion

I am now completely and totally and officially done with my semester abroad. I took my last final this morning, I'll get all of my results in December. I even finished packing today, which is good because I get on a plane at 5:45 tomorrow morning. I'm flying to Auckland, New Zealand on the way home so I'll probably post one last time to tell you all about that, but other than that I'm done.

My last day at the beach. The white rectangle in the ocean is the net.

There have been a lot of lasts going on. On Saturday we had our last barbie. I had my last day on the Australian beach. I swam in the ocean in Australia for the last time, which was also the first time I swam in the netted area (they just put out nets because it's jellyfish season and the box jellyfish comes into shore areas to breed and kill people). Today I ate my last package of Woolworths instant noodles. I will finish my jar of peanut butter today as well. I ate my last fresh mango yesterday, it was truly delicious. On Sunday I went to the Night Market for the last time. I also had my last scoop of mango gelato. I even took pictures of my last trip to the Smithfield Shopping Centre to buy my last bag of wholegrain penne. It took me a long time to fall asleep last night because I kept on remembering that it would be my last night sleeping here. That's right folks, I'm staying up all night tonight. In any case, I've had a pretty good time here, and while I'm super excited to go home, I'm also sad to leave tropical North Queensland. I love the plants here, especially the ones that make me think of dinosaurs because they were around when they were. I'm going to miss seeing bright blue Ulysses butterflies. I'm also going to miss finding wallabies when I go for walks and skinks darting into the undergrowth whenever I walk by. I'll miss scanning the path for venomous snakes while I run and checking for paralysis ticks afterwards. I'll even miss avoiding the edges of murky bodies of water to avoid saltwater crocodiles.

My beautiful bus ticket art

As I was packing, I was reminded that I have saved pretty much every bus ticket I bought the whole time I was here. Someone suggested that I scrapbook them, but I didn't want to take them home so I lay them out on the floor in chronological order and made them into "art." I think it says something about my experience here.

Anyways, I just keeping on moving along, and before I know it I'll be back in Oregon and not long after that I'll be back at PLU. So I'll see you around!

Camping Trip

I have officially finished classes and just have three finals before I end this semester entirely. The end of classes was good, especially the part where my Biodiversity of Tropical Australia went on a "field trip" to go eat native Australian foods. Nom Nom Nom! Anyways, Australian Unis have a "study break" the week before finals start. I get the impression that I was actually supposed to study during this time, but instead some friends and I went camping. We left last Saturday and got back on Wednesday. Since we didn't have a tent or sleeping bags it seemed logical to rent a campervan and try that out.

A waterfall with a rainbow that we saw along the way

Us at the top of the ridge at Undara

On the first day we drove to Lake Barrine, Lake Eacham, and Malanda. While we at Lake Barrine I walked all the way around the lake and saw a Boyd's forest dragon and what may have been a musky rat kangaroo. Very cool. Also, I head something that I highly suspect was a bunch wampoo pigeons. They are named for their characteristic sound, it really does sound like "wam-poo." We spent the night in a campground in Malanda where we made pasta (a major staple in our diet for the week) using the campstove that came with the campervan. 

The next day we drove to Undara, which you may remember is one of the places I went on my fieldtrip for Biodiversity of Tropical Australia earlier in the semester. On the way we stopped at the Curtain Fig Tree and while we were leaving it a tree kangaroo crossed the road in front of us, very cool! Unfortunately I did not have my camera out and ready for it so I didn't get a picture. This time it was much warmer at Undara so I decided to go swim with one of my friends. We actually met some interesting people at the pool, a geology class from JCU Townsville (the other campus in North Queensland) was there for a field trip so we talked to them and also to some people who were here on vacation. Then we went for a walk. The last time I was at Undara we found a pond with some birds. Since one of my friends is into birdwatching we decided to head down there at around dusk to check out the birds. After that we walked up to the ridge (which has a spectacular view by the way) where we convinced someone to take a picture of us.

The day after that we saw a ton of waterfalls. We stopped at three on our way to the Henrietta Creek Campground where we intended to spend the night. Henrietta Creek was beautiful and we decided to do some hiking. After masterfully evading the stinging trees which were growing across the path we came to a tall and spectacular waterfall with a large pool at the bottom. Naturally we spend the rest of the afternoon swimming around in this pool. It was quite nice. When we were getting close to where we had left the campervan the Cicadas started singing. They were ridiculously loud. After the fact I realized while studying that they were probably Northern Greengrocer cicadas, which only sing for about 15 minutes at dusk. We didn't know that at the time and since we were fairly certain we were suffering hearing damage (it was loud enough to be physically painful) we decided to drive back to Malanda to where we had camped before. When we got there we were starving and made dinosaur pasta. I found this very exciting because I have long harbored an undying love of dinosaurs.

A rock wallaby with its joey

The final full day we drove to Granite Gorge. We stopped on the way to see the Cathedral Fig, it was very large and looked super fun to climb on. Granite Gorge is beautiful and is clearly named after the large granite boulders that make up most of the park. We spent the afternoon clambering around on the boulders and generally being silly. Among the cooler boulders was one that looked like a whale and another that looked like a dinosaur. Granite Gorge is also known for the huge amount of rock wallabies that live there. A few of the ones we saw had little joeys peeking out of their pouches.

The camping trip was a lot of fun and we had great timing. It started raining while we were driving back on the last day. Now I am studying for my finals and preparing to come back to the states. I leave Australia in two weeks!