George Hayward, 2012 North Queensland Sustainability student blogger, writes:
May 24
Today was entirely dedicated to travel. We left Magnetic Island early this morning with Port Douglas as our final destination. We did indeed arrive, but several hours later than expected. There was a bad accident on a road that we couldn’t detour from, and thus we spent two extra hours at a rest station waiting for it to clear up. It was hot, rainy, boring and expensive. As you can imagine, nobody was too thrilled to be there.
I think it’s important to note here that as travelers, we can sometimes get unnecessarily angered or bothered by delays and obstacles. I sympathize. But today, for example, we found out that the accident responsible for our lengthy delay resulted in at least one fatality. Somebody died on that road today, and regardless of the reason, I think an incident like that puts our two-hour delay into perspective. So what we had a delay? At least we were alive and safe.
I don’t know if other students thought about this, but I encourage all future travelers to just remember that there are bigger issues than arriving places on time, or having everything run smoothly. Sometimes problems arise, but remember that you might not be getting the worst of it. And life goes on. At least, it did for us today, and my heart goes out to the person for whom it did not.
Like I said, today was all travel. I did take about two hours on the bus to do my essay, but that sums up the whole day. Tomorrow we see koalas, so I’m excited!
May 25
Maureen, Sam and Aubrey having a blast
Well, we can cross “torrential downpour” off the list of things to see in Australia! We woke up this morning to sheets of rain clamoring the roof without restraint. One glimpse outside indicated that it hadn’t just started, either. Puddles existed everywhere and the street was in the infancy stages of becoming a river.
Unfortunately, this meant our Aboriginal Dreamtime afternoon walk was cancelled. On the bright side, we were heading to the wildlife habitat park in spite of the weather. It was probably my favorite experience so far. We saw cassowaries, koalas, native birds, kangaroos, crocodiles, an emu, snakes and too many more animals to recall. Most students got a picture with the koala as well. He was a cute little fellow-not the best smelling thing in the world though!
Feeding a kangaroo
The kangaroos would come right up to your hands if you had food and even pose for a picture or two. The birds were lots of fun as well. We couldn’t touch any of them but their diversity and prevalence was exciting enough to keep our cameras flashing and minds intrigued.
We then hit the supermarket for lunch supplies and got ready for our three-hour afternoon lectures. Upon arriving at the classroom, chocolate cake, pound cake, coffee, tea and other snacks were presented to us. I’d consider that a great start! In addition, the lectures were given by a PhD student named Jimmy, who was refreshingly funny and entertaining. He was also incredibly knowledgeable and easily understood. In fact, I’m pretty sure all twenty of us left with Jimmy’s most important message fresh in our minds: “Don’t touch anything in the reef…or you will die.” Of course, he was slightly exaggerating, but his redundancy and humor helped it stick in our heads. To finish up the evening, we then had pizza by the pool in our apartment complex.
