Hannah and me, smiling rather manically.

Don't remember quite what this was about...

Finally, a group photo!

Tony, our Fearless Leader.

After a relatively painless flight to Sydney (and a very painful lunch of airline beans and rice), I took the train to my hostel, the Mcleay Lodge. When I booked the hostel in August, I unwittingly managed to land myself about two blocks up from Sydney's infamous Darlinghurst Rd, the red light district. Had I been in the market for heroin or hookers, I'd have been in business. That said, Pott's Point (where I was) is a bit quieter, and sort of how I'd imaging the Village in the early eighties. Lots of young, gay people and a few trendy shops and cafés beginning to pop up.

I didn't do much Friday evening, but I did go out to explore the "Markets by Moonlight" at the Rocks, Sydney's oldest neighborhood. There was live music there, although I wasn't crazy about it, but it was fun to walk around and look at Sydney Harbor, and eat some mysterious street vendor food.

Saturday I went on Alice's Whirlwind Walking Tour of Sydney. I started out walking to Paddington, which is the trendy fashion district. I looked in some of the cool shops on Oxford Street and then checked out the Paddington Market, which was fun. Lots of neat things by local artists and jewelers, and not really very touristy. Then I walked all the way up to College Street, which was an interesting walk, and stopped at the Australian Museum. The Australian Museum is pretty good, and is sort of a cross between culture and natural history (with an emphasis on all things Australian, of course). Spent a few good hours there, before walking up to the Royal Botanical Gardens. At this point, I realized that I was going to pass out on the pavement if I didn't eat something right away. So, I stopped at a little outdoor café right outside the garden gates and had a piece of quiche and a ginger beer. Australia markets several brands of ginger beer, Bundaberg being the most common. I will miss this.

Anyway, the Botanical Gardens were in their full, early-summer glory. The rose garden, which is extensive, was in full bloom with hundreds of different kinds of roses. And there were day-lilies and all manner of other plantings, both native and introduced. The trees were also interesting––bunya pines next to palm trees next to wattles… you get the idea. At this point, around six-thirty, I was so tired that I walked back to the hostel (at least another fifty minutes of walking), got some take-out Indian food, and fell asleep.

On Sunday, I decided to give my poor feet a bit of a break and take the train back to the Rocks. However, the travel gods were not on my side and King's Cross station wasn't running any trains that day. All of the train routes from that station were being covered by buses, though, so after a bit of figuring things out I managed to get to the Rocks. I walked around in the big Rocks Market in the morning, and then wandered around until I found the entrance onto the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I should note that you can see both the Bridge and the Sydney Opera House from the Rocks. I decided to start walking across the bridge to see the view, and ended up crossing the whole thing (which is quite a long way, actually, and there's no shade). Got a lovely view of the city and the Harbor, with all of the sailboats and cargo ships and cruise liners and jetboats. And on the other end of the bridge I found… another market! Apparently Sydney is big on markets. Who knew? So I walked around there for just a few minutes, and then got some falafel for lunch. Eventually I wandered back over the Bridge and to the Opera House.

As much as I have tried to leave her out of this narrative, it seems negligent of me not to mention that Oprah Winfrey was visiting Sydney at the same time I was. This is significant to me only because of the occasional hassles it caused and the constant embarrassment of middle-aged American housewives along for her tour, occasionally sporting white plastic top hats and bright yellow shirts. I was inclined to begin pretending to be Canadian, if only to stop people asking if I was here with bloody Oprah.

But I digress. The Opera House is really cool from the outside, but I wasn't that impressed with the inside (mostly beige composite blocks) until I got to the concert hall. However, I went there in the first place because I wanted to get a ticket to Handel's Messiah. I got the second-to-last one, actually, and the lovely people at the Opera House give nearly a fifty percent discount to students. The concert didn't start until five, though, so I went to the Rocks Museum, which is very small, and poked my rather large nose around there for about an hour. Then I went back to the Opera House, looking like most of a bum, and went to the concert hall. The concert hall is, architecturally, an acoustic masterpiece. I don't think I've ever been in a room with such well-thought-out acoustics. It's also much more attractive than the beige blocks, although someone got the bright idea to put bright pink upholstery on all of the seats. Also, to the architect's credit, all of the seats (even the crappy last-minute college student ones) have an excellent frontal view of the stage. The performance was incredible, and I was particularly impressed by the tenor and alto soloists. And the choir was huge; at least three hundred people. They were accompanied by the Sydney Philharmonic, which was also excellent. Unsurprisingly, I was sitting next to a German woman, and we got talking about music (she was a die-hard opera fan). And, rather more surprisingly, she invited me for a glass of chardonnay at intermission. So I had fun talking to her, and chatting to the woman from Sydney on my other side, whose elderly mother could recite almost every word of the Messiah, including the solos. It was a wonderful evening.

Monday, my last day in Sydney, I decided to take the train up into the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains get their name from the blue mist that hangs over them, which is caused by light reflecting off of tiny droplets of eucalyptus oil that hang around the trees. It's about a two hour train ride from Sydney, but the second half of the ride has beautiful scenery. I got to Katoomba, the end of the country line, and got on a red double-decker bus from London, circa 1970s, I would guess. Anyway, the deal with this bus was that you could get on and off whenever you wanted for the day. So I hopped off at Katoomba Falls, not really having any idea what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised, however, and found a beautiful hiking spot and amazing views of the highest waterfall I've ever seen. The whole area has sandstone (I think) and clay cliffs. The clay erodes easily, so huge chunks of rock break off and slide hundreds of metres down into the valley, creating very sheer drops. It's quite breathtaking, really. I took some photos, but you can't really capture the panorama very well. It ended up being rather a long hike down a few thousand very precipitous stone stairs, which would have scared my mother senseless.

At the bottom I saw a sign for a "scenic railway," that took you back to the top of the cliffs. I needed to get back up to get the bus, and I didn't fancy walking the whole hike again uphill. So, I hopped on. Whoops. This was, allegedly, the world's steepest rain line. The train was an open car with a cage over the top, but there wasn't really anything keeping you in the seats (like, say, seatbelts). Basically I was facing backwards and literally standing up as the train went up vertically. Slightly terrifying. Actually, it was rather enjoyable after the first minute or two (only about a ten-minute ride). But certainly not what I was expecting. Caught the bus to a town called Leura, where I spent just about half an hour before catching the train back to Sydney. I didn't really feel like going back to the hostel, though, so I checked out Darling Harbor, the rich and fancy bit of Sydney where there are nice parks and fancy restaurants. I walked around for awhile (there are amazing water features in the parks, by the way) and ended up eating at a pretty good restaurant called Blue Fish (not to be confused with bluefish, which I don’t believe live in the Pacific). I had Tasmanian salmon. Then I impulsively got a hazelnut ice cream cone and walked around to the train station, which was running again.

And that was it. Tuesday morning (weird to think that it is still Tuesday here in the States) I got up, got a pain au chocolat for the plane, and caught my shuttle to the airport. Nineteen or so hours later, I'm about half an hour from landing in NYC, and it is still Tuesday afternoon. This has been, quite literally, the longest day of my life.

Tomorrow I leave for Sydney at noon. I have no idea what I'm going to do there, but it should be fun.

Beetles and a tiny house gecko at the Treehouse.

Some views of Peterson Creek.

A cool Australian native plant. I forget what it is. But it was growing by the Allumbah Pocket entrance to Peterson Creek.

Jed, the resident canine at On the Wallaby, and master of the sad puppy dog eyes.

It's been awhile since I've written anything. I wrapped up my platypus research, and headed back to Cairns on the 29^th. Spent rather a hectic week writing up the paper ("The effects of creek vegetation and invertebrate composition on the foraging behavior of the platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, in Lower Peterson Creek, Yungaburra QLD"), but finished it by Saturday morning. We spent all day Sunday and Monday morning listening to each others' presentations, which was neat. It was interesting to hear what everyone had been doing for a month. Maria gave an excellent presentation on bee sperm and apiculture, Karen studied wallaby scats, Tim chased after sharks, Hannah looked at collective behavior in fish, Alyse improved cane toad traps… the list goes on and on. There were eighteen of us altogether.

Monday afternoon we headed off to somewhere (we didn't know where), which turned out to be Mission Beach. Stopped at a beautiful little swimming hole on the way, with a pebbly creek bottom and very clear water. And also at a fruit stand, where we bought tons of lychees. We ate them on the bus. In Mission Beach, we stayed at the Treehouse again, the hostel with the nice kitty cat. Monday night we went for a walk in the little town of Mission Beach, and had a barbeque on the deck. We ran into Tasha, Tony's other half, and his daughters Em and Elli at the fish and chips shop. There were heaps of interesting beetles at the hostel, including enormous rhinoceros beetles. Maria and I had fun looking at them. We tried going for a walk that night to look for more, but we didn't have much luck.

We spent Tuesday at the beach, swimming in the stinger nets (full-on stinger season now). The nets keep out box jellyfish, although the tiny irukandji jellyfish can still get though, as they're only about the size of your fingernail. But they monitor the amount of jellyfish in the stinger nets, so it's generally all right to swim. The water was beautiful and warm, and we had sun until the afternoon. Tony's family was there, as were Russ, Ian, and Giovanne. I was in the water most of the time, and Tony's kids were chasing Maria around because I told them that she was actually a crocodile. Then we had our last ever Merrell lunch, which was a bit sad. Back at the hostel almost all of us showered and promptly fell asleep, and then got dressed for our dinner.

We had dinner at a restaurant/resort called the Elandra, which was really very nice. They put Christmas crackers on all of the place settings, so we had a fun time with those (especially Tony's kids). I had six magnificent oysters to start (they call appetizers entrées here, for some unknown reason), and a delightful piece of salmon with a small salad and roasted potatoes. Lychee and green tea crème brûlée for dessert. And Tony ordered us some pretty nice wine to boot. It was quite a feast, and we all had a wonderful time (although Maria didn't really enjoy my oysters, poor thing). We got a bit silly on the way back to the hostel. Tony handed Em the bus's built-in microphone, and she started singing Australian Christmas songs, which are hilarious on so many levels. And the combination of extreme tiredness and a few glasses of wine got us all singing.

Wednesday morning we got up, threw our things in our bags, and headed off in the bus. We stopped at a beautiful stream in the rainforest on the way home, had a swim, and said goodbye to Ian, Russ, and Giovanne. Then we stopped at another fruit stand and bought about seven kilos of mangoes, and several more of lychees. I can't get over my excitement at being able to buy tropical fruits by the side of the road. We spent Wednesday afternoon clearing up odds and ends around Cairns. Most people were packing up, buying last minute gifts, closing bank accounts, etc. Then we met Tony in the evening. He handed back our field notebooks and a few other things, and read a little excerpt from everyone's notebook. Half the group, including Tony, was tearing up a bit by the end.

We decided that it would be nice to go out for Indian food, so we walked to the infamous Spicy Bite, down near the Esplanade. Unfortunately for the poor waitresses, we hadn't called ahead of time (there were nineteen of us), but they obligingly served us just the same. Maria and I split an order of samosas, and also shared palak paneer and dahl mahkni. Another nice meal. And Tony, the stinker, grabbed the bill before we knew what was happening, which was totally uncalled for (but very much appreciated). We went to walk around the Night Markets, and then came back to the hostel.

Everyone in our room except for Sydney and me was frantically packing, and I tried to make a start of it, too. People kept coming by asking if anyone needed this or that, or had extra space, or was on their flight. Tony came by and gave me an adorable little glass echidna, which was very, very sweet of him. And we all ended up in Karl's bar one more time, for our last evening. Carolyn was bawling her eyes out, along with several other people, but we had a good time in spite of it. I didn't end up going to bed until around midnight, and then I woke up at four in the morning because Hannah and Shannon had to catch their flights. By that point, poor Carolyn was positively wailing. But we got them to their cab all right, and saw them off.

This morning, Thursday, I got up around seven-thirty. I went out to have my tea, and found several people having breakfast with Tony, who had showed up to say goodbye. I cut up a bunch of mangoes, so we had mangoes and tea and wonderful Aussie yogurt. Around ten, Maria and I got our togs on and headed off to the Lagoon, the outdoor pool/artificial beach on the Esplanade. Remember that the city is built on a mud flat, and there are crocs on the muddy beach. But the Lagoon is filtered seawater, and faces the real ocean, and has fountains and beautiful lights at night, so it's a nice place to have a swim (it's also enormous, and approximately the shape of Queensland). Anyone can go there and have a swim.

We had to say goodbye to a few more people first, though. It's very strange to say goodbye to people who you may not see again. I'll certainly try to keep in touch with this wonderful group, but a few people are bound to slip through the cracks. It's sort of weird and sad. And we said goodbye to Tony, the Koala––our Fearless Leader. He has made so much of this trip possible, and he's a sweet and amazing man. I hope I get to see him again some day.

Despite this rather depressing start to things, we had a really nice swim. And then we came back, and said goodbye to a few more people. Maria was leaving around eleven-thirty, so I hung out with her until then. I was so sorry to see her go. She's off to New Zealand for a couple of weeks (flying home on Christmas Eve!). I'll miss having her around, though. She's a sweetie. People trickled out until about two-thirty, and now it's just Lauren, Sydney and me left. Sydney and I are going to Sydney (hee hee) on the same flight tomorrow at noon, although she'll be traveling on to New Zealand and Tahiti from there.

I spent a rather depressing afternoon packing things up and writing a few last postcards, and now we're about to go get dinner, although I don't yet know where.

And now, I'm back in Cairns. I got here on Monday, and I've pretty much been working on my paper since then. I get up around seven, and start writing at nine, when our classroom opens. And then I sit there and write until five, when we get kicked out. I'm only about halfway through, though. Still doing data analysis. But I'll try to have it done tonight, so that Nungi can edit it. It's a bit stressful, really, but it could be worse. I also have to give a presentation on Sunday, so I'll have to make a Powerpoint for that.

Last night we took a walk through the night markets, mostly for a break, although we also needed to get some small, assorted gifts. It's sort of a covered, non-food-related market with lots of stalls, and everything from touristy crap and kangaroo jerky to some food things and fun hats and jewelry and things.