I survived the field trip! Woohoo! Hehe.. Actually, it wasn't half as bad as I thought i would be.. Out of cold, tired, hungry and dirty, I was only pretty cold at some times of the night, and a little dirty from tramping through underbush. But tired, no.. Was a fluke that I chose the best bunk. :P Was right at the end, far away from the main shed, so wasn't disturbed by the noise, and my bunk mates were pretty much all the considerate sort. :) And hungry, definately no! A little sick of sandwiches now, but I certainly can't say I went hungry.. Here's a day by day run down on my trip!
Day 1Was late for the bus! My clock was slow or something, so I thought I'd left the house 10 minutes before 9am, which would give me plenty of time to stroll along. But halfway down the path, I looked at my watch and it was already 9:05! Yipes.. Luckily, the bus was still there, and I was the last one on before we left. The bus ride was a little more than 3 hours, with a stop for lunch.. I had a hot dog!
The field station was a couple of km down a horribly pitted dirt track, so we had to get off the bus to walk.. Thankfully there were 3 station wagons to load our bigger bags on. My bag was like the smallest of all! Compact packing for the win! :P Some people looked like they packed for 2 weeks!
We were divided into 5 smaller groups.. It was a rotation sort of thing, with each group doing a different practical at the same time and then switching around. The first day was freaking windy.. Luckily my group did the plant practical on the first day. I pity the people who had to go into the water for the fish pract! The wind was so chilly.. The plant pract was pretty easy, just collecting samples of all the different species within a 20m radius, measuring their height and leaf width etc, for two different forest types, dry sclerophyll and wet sclerophyll.
Dinner was yummy! David Briscoe, one of the volunteer staff, loves cooking, so he cooked dinner everyday! Two thumbs up! 'Twas amazing the stuff he came up with over a scrummy outdoor stove, for no less than 50 people, mind you! We had sausages, steak and salad on the first day. I went to bed pretty early, slept surprisingly well too.
Day 2Discovered that there was nice hot water! Had bacon and eggs for breakie, mmm! Did the invertebrates pract after breakfast. We had to shake bugs out of the vegetation, classify them and count them etc. The stuff you can actually find is really interesting. There were some that were really funky looking and colourful..
Sandwiches for lunch, then had the bird watching practical.. I couldn't see a thing! Whenever I saw something move, I'd bring up my binoculars and it would be gone already.. :P Other people were like rattling off bird species, I was just standing there looking around in bewilderment. Bird watching, fail. :(
Dave's Famous Chicken Curry was for dinner! Good stuff! Had two servings.. :D After that we had a trivia quiz, my group came in 2nd place! Had Milky Bars as our prize. We also won the best group name bonus. We called ourselves "John Howard's Illigitiment Children".. And yes it was spelt wrong.. Dave called us the "Illiterate Children" after that. :P Took the 2nd hot shower of the day and went to bed..
Day 3My group was so lucky.. We did the fish practical on the 3rd day when it was nice and sunny! The wind died down as well. The lake was beautiful.. It was such a calm day that there was barely a ripple on the surface and it was almost mirror like.. We had to use a net to catch the fishes to identify and count them.. Was pretty hard work! Had to keep the bottom lead line down to prevent the fishies from escaping under the net. It's back breaking to stick your butt in the air with your hands underwater, so I sort of half squatted in the water, which meant I got all wet and my legs didn't really like me much either. It was quite unbelievable the number and variety of fish we got though!
As usual, sandwiches for lunch, then we did the plankton pract. We came at a bad time, it was the time of the year that phytoplankton were reproducing at a crazy rate! So there were like a gazillion of dinoflagellates and not much of anything else. Boring. :P
Dave cooked spaghetti bolognaise for dinner.. Our group had to help chop up stuff! I did the onions and my hands smelt funny for quite a while after that. :P I showered three times on the third day! Loving the hot water! It rained at night though.
Day 4The fourth day we had to get into groups of our own chosing to do a project of our own design. I did mine with John, Tanya and Lachlan.. I initially only just wanted to do a project with Tanya 'coz she has a good idea of what she's doing and she's great with plants and she's really nice and understanding of my ignorance. :P But somehow John sort of pushed himself into our group and almost took over.. I don't like him much, he's really pushy and unpleasant to work with.. I don't mind Lachlan though, he's pretty nice and knows a fair bit about plants as well. I was more or less the weakest link.. > <;
Day 4's dinner was superb! There was beef stroganoff, with carrots, peas, potato with loads of sour cream, and caramelized onions! I'm getting hungry just thinking of it again.. And then there was delicious apple pie with ice cream for desset! Wowz..
Day 5
Finished up the last bit of our project in the morning.. John couldn't be bothered and went home early in his own car! So we're not sharing those results with him kekeke.. Again, sandwiches for breakfast and lunch.. See why I'm a 'lil sandwich-phobic now? Aussies are crazy, they just eat bread all the time..
Finally got on the bus home.. Yay! Home sweet home.. :)
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