Hey friends!
We've finally made it to Brisbane, which to me is insane because I associated this with the second half of the semester, which it almost is... O.O wow.
Since my last post we traveled back from Tassie to mainland and spent 4 days at the Lamington Plateau doing field research and I was off the grid.
We started off by being welcomed with a HURRICANE and literally spent our first night holding down the kitchen tents while the sky was black, it was pouring rain, whipping wind and thundering and lightning like crazyyy! Let's just say it wasn't the welcome any of us really had wanted after waking up at 3am that morning to catch the flight out of Tassie.
Luckily the rest of the trip had a bit nicer weather (until the last night lol...)
We spent our first day doing a long hike looking for Nothofagus, an ancient Gondwanan plant we saw in Tas, but with the recent climate change is now dwindling and we probably saw the last of the Nothofagus plants the exist up north. We were hiking through warm tropical and temperate forests and this plant family really needs the cool temperate environment.
The next few days were dedicated to getting into the dirt and doing some research. We did more transects looking at a 20x20m plot and taking surveys of the land, like which plants were where what was the soil like, any evidence of fires and so on. Our main goal is to be able to look at an environment's plants or animals and ask "how and why is this here". So in the transects we were comparing the rain forest to a sclerophyll forest that had recent controlled burning.
That same morning myself, and half the group woke up at 5am to go on a bird walk. The plateau is full of animals! Just on the walk we saw a fair number of species, but also heard loads. To name a few, there were the wild turkeys, the Tassie crows, king parrots, crimson rosellas, yellow robins (my favorite! They get all ruffled and poofy and they're adorable), whip birds, bower birds, cat birds... the list goes on and on.
The next day we were out again and hiking again. That night we were focused on mammals and were out until pretty late again. We went spot lighting and mammal trapping. We saw about half a dozen ring tailed possums, two bush tail possums, and two bush rats in the traps. It was really cool to see the native species. For the mammal trapping we set out about 25 elliot traps, a few wire traps and a possum trap. We had two rats in the elliot traps; our expert field guide and tutor showed us the proper way to catch it, and then put it into a bag to use a dichotomous key to figure the species.
The last day was out in the field again this time with three different entomologist; one was a beetle expert, the other two were arachnid experts with different specialties: spiders and pseudoscorpions. We were able to spend about 45 minutes with each on a rotation to learn proper collection techniques and also to learn about each of their specialties. It was really cool for me to work with the pseudoscorpion expert mainly because that was my independent project sophomore year fall in Greta's invertebrate zoology course. (Greta is my professor who is also leading this Australia study abroad). Pseudoscorpions are these really really small inverts that mostly live in leaf little, or in our case under certain tree barks, they're adorable and looking like a really fat and flat scorpion missing it's tail.
*I'll try to post more photos later, these are both from google, I didn't take any photos during the time there and just completely unplugged*
Fast forward the last night we had another storm come through but this one was nicer. It was kind of hysterical, we were all standing under the kitchen holding the tents again, but this time were were passing around snacks and otter pops while being just bombarded with rain (luckily not too much wind that go around).
Needless to say by the next day we were all exhausted though, and slightly broken (only half kidding...) We had about 15 hour days while there and each day was packed with great opportunities, but lots of hiking and all outdoor work. It was such a nice blessing to get to Brisbane. We're in these incredible apartments, but more important, they all come with washers and hot showers.
While were were in the bush a lot of stuff happened. It was a really great experience, we had some of the best food on program despite not having a real kitchen, no electricity and having our kitchen almost be blown away twice lol. We were camping in really great safari tents with cots and it was a good time, but it was really really nice to come back to civilization. The 16th was Lunar New Year/ Chinese new year! I'm really sad I missed it, for some reason I had my dates mixed up and didn't realize it had passed while I was in Lamington. The good thing is celebration normally goes on for 2 weeks so hopefully I can explore Brisbane and find some good Chinese food and celebrations. We also heard of the Florida shooting and that was devastating to hear. I also got some terrible news and so it's been a bit head on coming back to the city as well. Lamington was a really great experience and we're all learning so much but I'm also learning that field research for plant biology or entomology is probably not in my career future - but don't get me wrong, it's wonderful to learn about and it's important to learn it all because all the sects are connected. If I go into wilderness medicine I'll need to know all about it.
This is getting long again, sorry, there's just so much that always happens and I want to write about it all. If anyone has questions about my study abroad I'll be in Brisbane for the next few weeks, minus a few weekend excursions. But I'll have pretty consistent wifi and service to answer any questions.
新年快乐！
Cheers,
Kate
We've finally made it to Brisbane, which to me is insane because I associated this with the second half of the semester, which it almost is... O.O wow.
Since my last post we traveled back from Tassie to mainland and spent 4 days at the Lamington Plateau doing field research and I was off the grid.
We started off by being welcomed with a HURRICANE and literally spent our first night holding down the kitchen tents while the sky was black, it was pouring rain, whipping wind and thundering and lightning like crazyyy! Let's just say it wasn't the welcome any of us really had wanted after waking up at 3am that morning to catch the flight out of Tassie.
Luckily the rest of the trip had a bit nicer weather (until the last night lol...)
We spent our first day doing a long hike looking for Nothofagus, an ancient Gondwanan plant we saw in Tas, but with the recent climate change is now dwindling and we probably saw the last of the Nothofagus plants the exist up north. We were hiking through warm tropical and temperate forests and this plant family really needs the cool temperate environment.
 |
| Yellow Robbin |
That same morning myself, and half the group woke up at 5am to go on a bird walk. The plateau is full of animals! Just on the walk we saw a fair number of species, but also heard loads. To name a few, there were the wild turkeys, the Tassie crows, king parrots, crimson rosellas, yellow robins (my favorite! They get all ruffled and poofy and they're adorable), whip birds, bower birds, cat birds... the list goes on and on.
The next day we were out again and hiking again. That night we were focused on mammals and were out until pretty late again. We went spot lighting and mammal trapping. We saw about half a dozen ring tailed possums, two bush tail possums, and two bush rats in the traps. It was really cool to see the native species. For the mammal trapping we set out about 25 elliot traps, a few wire traps and a possum trap. We had two rats in the elliot traps; our expert field guide and tutor showed us the proper way to catch it, and then put it into a bag to use a dichotomous key to figure the species.
| Australian Pseudoscorpion |
*I'll try to post more photos later, these are both from google, I didn't take any photos during the time there and just completely unplugged*
Fast forward the last night we had another storm come through but this one was nicer. It was kind of hysterical, we were all standing under the kitchen holding the tents again, but this time were were passing around snacks and otter pops while being just bombarded with rain (luckily not too much wind that go around).
Needless to say by the next day we were all exhausted though, and slightly broken (only half kidding...) We had about 15 hour days while there and each day was packed with great opportunities, but lots of hiking and all outdoor work. It was such a nice blessing to get to Brisbane. We're in these incredible apartments, but more important, they all come with washers and hot showers.
While were were in the bush a lot of stuff happened. It was a really great experience, we had some of the best food on program despite not having a real kitchen, no electricity and having our kitchen almost be blown away twice lol. We were camping in really great safari tents with cots and it was a good time, but it was really really nice to come back to civilization. The 16th was Lunar New Year/ Chinese new year! I'm really sad I missed it, for some reason I had my dates mixed up and didn't realize it had passed while I was in Lamington. The good thing is celebration normally goes on for 2 weeks so hopefully I can explore Brisbane and find some good Chinese food and celebrations. We also heard of the Florida shooting and that was devastating to hear. I also got some terrible news and so it's been a bit head on coming back to the city as well. Lamington was a really great experience and we're all learning so much but I'm also learning that field research for plant biology or entomology is probably not in my career future - but don't get me wrong, it's wonderful to learn about and it's important to learn it all because all the sects are connected. If I go into wilderness medicine I'll need to know all about it.
This is getting long again, sorry, there's just so much that always happens and I want to write about it all. If anyone has questions about my study abroad I'll be in Brisbane for the next few weeks, minus a few weekend excursions. But I'll have pretty consistent wifi and service to answer any questions.
新年快乐！
Cheers,
Kate