Wilderness Karis, Activate!

So tonight I went to a Rugby League game. It was the Queensland Cowboys vs. the New Zealand Warriors. I was sad that it wasn't a Union game (I have no idea what the difference between the two types of rugby are) because the Union Kiwi team is the All Blacks and before each game they do a Haka, a traditional Maori war chant and dance. It is terrifying. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cle20lQg0Qs

Maybe I will get to go to a game against the All Blacks before my time here is over. But anyway, it was fun. It was "bucketing down" as they say here (pouring rain) and we were sitting in the grass. My host mom lent me a poncho, so it wasn't terrible, and it stopped raining before the end. Watching rugby in the rain is actually pretty epic because when they slam into each other you can see water splash off of them.

Australia has much better sports than us, between two types of rugby and Aussie Rules. American football is boring. They wear pads and actually stop play every time someone gets tackled! Not nearly as hardcore.

For the first half I sat with my friend Eliza and her host dad who was nice enough to explain the rules to us. New Zealand kicked Australia's ass, but it was fun anyway. It helped that the whole night only cost me AU$2.90. My host mom drove me in and my host brother gave me the tickets for free since he couldn't go, so all I had to pay for was the bus back! I have become such a cheapskate here, it's sad. But everything is so expensive!

Tonight is the last night of my homestay. You won't hear from me for at least a week! This is the part where we head out of civilization for a while. We're camping with two Aboriginal elders for the week. Proper camping: no electronics of any kind. We are not even allowed to bring watches. We're on "Murri Time". I can't really fathom not knowing what time it is for a week. I look at my watch constantly. No cameras either, which will be hard when everything is so awesome! Jack will be taking pictures that he'll give to us, though.

It might drive me crazy, but I think it'll be really awesome to just get in a different headspace for a while. I'm bringing my book on Aboriginal uses for rainforest plants and we are going to forage! Also, they're teaching us how to throw spears and boomerangs. And maybe play the didgeridoo. And we get to listen to Aboriginal stories around the campfire. And they'll give us Aboriginal names reflecting who we are (I am worried I will get something terrible). Did I mention the spears and boomerangs? I AM SO EXCITED!!! My life is awesome.

Anyway, I need to finish packing and go to sleep. We are only bringing one backpack's worth of stuff, but I still have to pack up the rest to put into storage. I love you all! Have a fantastic week, and I will tell you all about mine when I get back!

Research Woes

After days and days of random Google searching and amassing a staggering number of bookmarks, I finally began contacting people. So far today I have emailed seven different people/institutions about research opportunities for my Independent Study Project. I've contacted people from half the states/territories in the country about a ridiculous array of animals (penguins, koalas, seals, dolphins, flying foxes, kangaroos, bower birds, dugongs, birds in general). All I want is for one that is fun, something I can turn into a 50 page paper in a month, and is somewhere remotely near someone I know to say yes. Is this asking too much? At this point I am just hoping that they don't all reject me straight off. Wish me luck!

In the meantime I am going to enjoy one of the many perks of being in Australia: British TV! Words cannot express my love for Stephen Fry.

To Whom it May Concern

Dear The United States of America,

While in Australia these past (nearly) four weeks, it has come to my attention that you are severely lacking in some things, mostly food items. Before I return you must acquire all of the following:

1. Tim Tams (a "biscuit" - cookie - that is chocolate sandwiched between chocolate covered in chocolate)

2. What Australians refer to as "lemonade" but is actually fizzy lemon soda that is amazingly delicious (Lift, Solo, etc.)

3. Ice cream treats that are half ice cream sandwich, half ice cream bar

4. Mangosteens

5. Proper mangoes (I thought the ones there were acceptable until I tasted one here, you have no idea what you are missing)

I will inform you of any additions to this list as they occur.

Sincerely,

Karis

Which Team Should I Cheer for This Time?

I don't think I can accurately describe how weird it is to watch the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in ninety degree heat. Especially when they are taking place so close to home (relatively speaking). It is really really weird. When I watch the Winter Olympics it is curled up under a blanket with hot tea or cocoa and a giant pile of snow outside, not sweating in shorts and a t-shirt with all the windows open and a ceiling fan on full (my host family has air conditioning, but they only really use it at night, and even then it is on a timer).

It actually made me pretty homesick. I missed the snow a little watching everyone marching around with big fluffy coats on. Mostly though, it's weird not watching the Olympics with my family. I don't think there's been a Games yet that we haven't watched at least some of together. Also, it made me want to go to Canada, which I guess is what the cultural presentations are supposed to do, so good job, Canada! I wish they hadn't used the Joni Mitchell song from Love Actually, though. I can never hear that song without seeing Emma Thompson crying. Very depressing.

Whether or not Australia has less annoying commentators than the U.S. still remains to be seen. I can't remember if it's the woman who talks during skating in the Winter Olympics or the woman who talks during gymnastics in the Summer Olympics that I hate. Maybe it's both. Hopefully Australian commentators will not make me want to punch them! The accent is a good start. :P Hope you all enjoy the Olympics!

Cultural Differences, or "Baz and Gaz were Listening to Acka Dacka on the way to Macker's"

G'day mates, how ya goin'? I quite like Australian vernacular, it makes me happy. Not a lot has been happening these days, I'm really enjoying my homestay family and have been going to classes in town, navigating bus systems, that sort of stuff. Much less adventurey (although public transport is still scary. Tomorrow night we are going out and will probably be out way past when the buses stop so we'll have to do cabs! I went in a cab by myself for the first time in Sydney, and it's weird! Wow I am a sheltered suburban girl, aren't I?) but nice. So because I don't have a lot of cute cuddly creatures to post pictures of or hair-raising stories about wild animal attacks and spicy stuff I thought I would talk about culture a bit.

I've been thinking about it more since I've been living with an Australian family (understandably) and especially because last night Hunter made me take some quizzes online to test my Aussie knowledge. I am True Blue Aussie (which is super high praise) and I only got three of the slang words wrong out of twenty (and he got one wrong, so that doesn't count).

I really haven't had any culture shock. Honestly, I expected it to be a lot more...different. It's really similar to home in most respects, and what isn't American is often British. That's not to say Australia isn't very much it's own country, though, it's just...familiar. There are some differences that you notice more the more you're here. For example:

1. Everyone is SO much nicer here! They're just...nice! People on the street will smile at you and ask how you are! They will just come up and start talking to you. They ask you how you are and seem to genuinely want an answer. It's so sweet! It's a little off-putting at first (paranoid American thinking "what do you want?!") but they are just nice! This was especially true of a group of Aborigines we met. We stopped at a park to fill up our water bottles and I think it was a big family hanging out in the shelter near the water tap, apparently being interviewed by someone. We said hi and they were pretty much the friendliest people I've ever met. They were all shaking our hands and asking us questions and just amazingly nice! They waved as we drove away and then again when we drove past because we had to turn around. Probably this is partially because, as our teacher told us when we got back on the bus, we did something that most white Australians wouldn't do, namely actually talking to a group of Aborigines. Nice as everyone is, there's a lot of really disgusting racism in this country, and not just towards Aborigines.

2. The slang. Aussies love their slang. I mean really, more than everyone else ever. They have different words for everything and basically everything is shortened. Besides the stuff that is British, here is the basic formula for an Australian slang word: 1) chop it in half, 2) Harden the last consonant 3) double the last consonant and add "ie" or just add an "o". This is how "mosquito" becomes "mozzie", "afternoon" becomes "arvo", etc. The title was a phrase my host brother taught me to make me sound like an Aussie. It means "Barry and Gary were listening to AC/DC on their way to MacDonald's". I like it a lot, even when it means I have no idea what people are saying.

3. Being "green" seems to be a bigger deal here. Of course there are different levels, but this really was brought home to me when I was listening to the radio in Melbourne and there was a commercial saying "We all know we need to limit our showers to four minutes..." and I thought "Really?! Almost everyone I know takes showers at least five times longer than that!" Of course, Australia is running out of water faster than basically anywhere else, something to do with being the driest inhabited continent to begin with, so that is probably why. Still, it extends to other parts of life as well. You have to pay ten cents for a plastic bag at Target, for example.

4. Everyone goes to bed SO early here! Okay, this is probably a broad generalization, but other people have noticed it at their homestays, too. I live with a teenager and a preteen. Last night everyone was in bed by 9:30. Tonight Helen complained about being "out too late" when the movie we were watching didn't finish until 10:00. How is this possible?! When I was 16 there were nights I was up past 4:00 and I didn't go to school any later than they do! Someone else's host mom said she thought it was because of the heat, it just sort of saps your energy. I've been going to bed much much earlier ever since I've been here than I ever do at home, so maybe there's something to it. It's still weird.

5. The kids are so polite! They fight and sass and everything just like at home, but they also pour drinks for other people before themselves, ask if I or their mom would like anything anytime they get something for themselves, and say "beg your pardon?" It's really impressive.

6. They freaking love ABBA. At least, the older generation does. I think everyone in the program has mentioned how their host parents play ABBA at home over and over again and my host mom insisted there should be an ABBA Rockband.

7. The humor. I don't really know how to describe it. I think it's drier than American humor. They can certainly laugh at themselves, which is wonderful. Whatever it is, I love it.

8. "Nice" means "good". This doesn't seem like much of a difference, but I definitely noticed it. Someone would hand me a piece of fruit and say "Try this, it's nice." which to me sounds kind of like half-hearted praise, or even a way of saying it's not very good in a polite way. But what they mean is "This is good." They also describe food as "beautiful" to mean delicious.

9. They know things! Things about the world! Things about geography! If you asked anyone in the US what the names of the seven Australian states were, I bet over 90% of them would look at you blankly, maybe not even having considered Australia has states (incidentally, they are Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, Northern Territory, Tasmania, and then there's the Capital Territory which is like DC).

Anytime anyone asked me where I'm from I would say "The US" figuring that would be that. Invariably they ask "Which part?" and I say "Minnesota" expecting a blank look, but every time they know where I'm talking about. Usually I get "Oh, that's in the central west, isn't it?" or "It's quite cold there, isn't it?" Once a guy even said "Oh, is that where they grow those little red berries?" "Cranberries?" I asked. "Yes! Those are the ones." "Actually, that's Wisconsin, but it's right next to Minnesota, and that's where I go to school." I replied, thinking "How in the hell do you know which crops are grown where in the US?! How would you possibly ever know that? Do they even eat cranberries here? Do you take classes on this in school?!" Why don't we know things about other countries?

10. The biggest cultural difference I've noticed is their attitude towards censorship. This is the one thing so far that has literally made my jaw drop. I knew that they censored books and movies and especially video games here, that if it isn't rated you can't get it. But I watched a show the other night that was half sketch-comedy, half political commentary called Hungry Beast (which was really good, by the way) and they talked a lot about the government's plan to censor the internet.

They're trying to create a rating system (which would be performed by a nongovernmental rating board who would judge on the same criteria they already do for other things) which would blacklist certain websites and deny the entire country access. Mostly this means pedophilia sites and stuff like that, but there's definitely the possibility for mistakes to be made (on what some people claim was a test run but the government denies, a woman's website about her canteen got blacklisted because it had the word "teen" in it) and for the government to go overboard. Especially because they plan on not releasing the list of banned websites. This is ridiculous enough to me, but the show used a polling company to find out how the country felt about it and 80% supported the government having censorship power over the internet. That is where my jaw hit the floor. If that were proposed in America people would go insane. I cannot understand that at all. I mean, yeah it would be great if a lot of websites didn't exist, but...government censorship on an extreme scale? When did Australia become China?

This issue was brought up by my host brother, too. We were talking on the first night and he mentioned how he thinks America's free speech thing goes too far. He said "We don't have the KKK here." Which is true, but that doesn't stop a lot of Australians from being extremely racist. Not being able to march around screaming it in public doesn't make people stop thinking it. If it did, they wouldn't be having attacks on Indian students in Melbourne.

It's just weird to me. Australians are so nice, laid-back, funloving...how do they have such strict censorship laws? It doesn't make sense. If you are curious, here is the Hungry Beast site which has a lot about this debate (and about the attacks on the government websites by Anonymous, which is a whole different issue not really related to Australian culture, but still pretty interesting) http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/?WT.mc_id=ABCTV_HB_TVHPmod

Sorry this got a bit long and ranty. You should let me know what you think, because I think this stuff is fascinating but maybe that is just me.

In Which I Experience Small-Town Australia, The Great Barrier Reef, an Australian Home, and Spicy Food

We stayed in an adorable hostel in Yungaburra called On the Wallaby. It was cute and small and run by hippies and fantastic.

Yungaburra is a tiny adorable town in the middle of nowhere. We went swimming (a common theme when it is ridiculously hot!) and on the way back made friends with a random neighborhood dog that followed us home. He was super sweet. We named him Bartleby.

This hostel fed us and then took us on a midnight canoe trip in a local lake to see wildlife. We all piled into a giant bus (the twelve of us and two other guys) and drove to the lake. Everything was fine until the leader guy started driving on the wrong side of the road, going way too fast and swerving back and forth. Everyone else was screaming with joy and I had a full on panic attack and flashback to my car accident. No fun. He was very nice about it and gave me a hug when we stopped and drove back much more safely.

The canoeing was fun. They had the rule that “ladies go in front” which pissed me off and actually I had to switch with my partner at one point because I needed to be able to steer. I hadn’t canoed since the Boundary Waters last summer and it felt really good to practice steering strokes again. After we switched the night was fantastic.

We saw beautiful stars, the Milky Way was incredibly bright, and I learned a little bit about astronomy from Cameron, one of the guys in my group. We saw tiny wallabies and a water dragon and the guide found a potentially lethal snake on the shore and we each got pictures holding it (he held the head, we just held the tail) which will be on facebook whenever Erika updates it.

Yesterday we drove around the Atherton Tablelands. Not so tabley, actually

And we each got dropped off randomly in a small town with the assignment to find out what we could about the history and environmental concerns in the area. My town was an adorable little place called Malanda. It has the oldest continually operating movie theatre in Australia (which listed Zombieland as “coming soon”):

some fairly interesting shops:

the oldest wooden structure in Australia (or so I've heard)

and a historical Dairy Centre complete with museum (with creepy creepy mannequins and delicious milkshakes).

We had four hours and with two left and nothing better to do I headed off to the visitor’s center. The white Australians working there just sort of pointed me towards the exhibits and left me to it but the Aboriginal coordinator was really excited that I was there and told me anything and everything I wanted to know. As we were talking he mentioned that he happened to know where there were some tree kangaroos and did I want to see them? YES. So he took me out back to the little strip of rainforest behind the center and showed me the exact tree where there were two tree kangaroos (mother and oldish baby) hanging out. They are kind of hard to see, they were very high up and well hidden, but you can sort of see the black face and gingerish body in this picture:

He also took me to where there were green ring-tailed possums much closer to the ground and easier to see:

And we found a goanna (big native lizard) but it was too quick for me to get a picture. Amazing.

That night we relaxed a little. They served us dinner at the hostel, which was lovely spaghetti. With it the owner (Kate) had some chili that she proudly hyped as home grown and said we should try. In keeping with my “Trying New Things” philosophy, I decided I should attempt spicy. I took a tiny little bit on my fork and ate it with some spaghetti.

She did not warn us that it was one of the hottest chilies on the planet. It burned my tongue and when I tried to swallow it it burned my throat and I started choking a little bit and barely swallowed it. I had to run to the fridge and gulp down the rest of the milk and two rice cakes. My eyes were streaming and my face and mouth were burning and if I were a cartoon character there would have been steam coming out of my ears. In short, I almost died. My nose and throat didn’t stop burning for at least a couple of hours and my nose didn't stop running all night. But! I survived! I survived one of the hottest chilies on earth, and that is a pretty huge accomplishment for my poor poor Minnesotan taste buds. Maybe I killed enough of them to be able to handle some more mild spices.

The last day we did some more bird watching, swam in a huge crater lake formed by a volcano, and headed back to Cairns. Then we went to a presentation on the Great Barrier Reef which was really well done.

Saturday we woke up ridiculously early and got on a boat (I never thought I'd be on a boat! Haha sorry that was stuck in my head the entire time. I may or may not have had my arms spread wide on the starboard bow at one point or another. Also they play that song at clubs here! It makes me happy every time) to head out to the Great Barrier Reef! It was the most exciting thing ever. We played Hearts on the boat (I kicked ass!) and every few minutes one of us would start grinning and jumping up and down. We finally got there and went through all the safety talks and got all our gear (let me tell you, snorkel equipment is both comfortable and fashionable) and jumped off the back of the boat. I was treading water for a minute, just excited to be in the ocean and my teacher turned to me and said "Look down!"

I put my face in the water and oh my god it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen! I've taken Marine Bio and TAed for it and watched the Shallow Seas episode of Planet Earth like seventy times but I was absolutely unprepared for how beautiful and other worldly the reef is! My mask kept leaking a little because I couldn't stop smiling and smile lines make a hole between your skin and the plastic.

We snorkeled at three separate reefs and it did not get old. I saw corals in every shape, and color, parrot fish (who are beautifully colored and will let you get right up to them! You can also hear them in the water because they chew up the coral and the crunching carries. Did you know that 40% of beach sand is parrot fish poo?), sea urchins, half-hidden stingrays in the sand, giant clams (one about half as big as I am!), sea anemones with nemo fish in them, a jellyfish (good thing I was wearing my stinger suit!), what may or may not have been a stonefish, butterfly fish, and a maori wrasse! I could go on and on. It was phenomenal! I really honestly can't describe it.

I bought an old school waterproof camera (it actually has film! How crazy is that? But it was cheap and is reusable, so that's good) but without the little screen and the ability to see the pictures right after I've taken them (how far we've come) I have no idea if any of the pictures will turn out until I get them developed. I cannot wait until I get to spend 10 days snorkeling basically all day on Lizard Island. Ah-may-zing!

Yesterday I was brought to my homestay family. They're really nice and I like them a lot. There's just three: Helen, the mum, Hunter, the 16 year old, and MacLean (as in Die Hard!) the 12 year old. I was terrified to hang out with teenage/preteen boys for two weeks but so far they have been lovely and also extremely entertaining. It's fun to watch sibling fights when you are not involved in them, and they are fairly nerdy which is good. We swam in their pool and I made a complete fool of myself playing Halo and all four of us played Guitar Hero together. They've said they'll teach me Cricket which I am excited for, but say they hate Australian Rules Football (they called it "GayFL", charming) so I will have to learn that from someone else.

Hunter is funny. We had a somewhat philosophical conversation tonight which is interesting with a 16 year old. He says "win" or "fail" a lot, which makes me happy and I showed him the Cracked articles that people have been sending me about how much I'm going to die in Australia. He got a huge kick out of them, but sadly he says he has never seen a giant blue earthworm and has no idea where they would be. I'll try to ask Jack tomorrow. Hunter is reading the Hitchhiker's Guide series and MacLean is reading The Hobbit. I feel I have been put in the correct home.

Favorite Host Family Quote So Far:

Helen: Do you want to shut the curtains so the whole world can't see you?

Hunter: I don't mind, I'm awesome.

Win. The only bad things about homestay so far: 1) it is ridiculously awkward to be in someone else's home when they're not there, no matter how nice they are. I will probably get used to this eventually, but it's weird. 2) I must have spilled something sweet on my backpack at some point, because I came upstairs to my new room after a few hours and found my bed crawling with tiny ants, all swarming through the air conditioner onto my backpack. Helen sprayed the room and we emptied out the backpack and sprayed it and left it outside. They disappeared from the room very quickly, but earlier today were still on the backpack outside so I washed it in hot soapy water and hopefully by tomorrow it will be dry and ant-free so I can take it to lecture. Gross. 3) I brought generic Minnesota gifts for my family, but I have nothing appropriate for teenage boys! I have two weeks to get them something, I figure I'll just give them the gifts as a going away/thank you present at the end. Please help: What do boys like?!?!

Sorry this was ridiculously long. I miss you all but I kind of love it here which is really really good. I cannot believe how many amazing things I have seen just in the past two and a half weeks. I’m feeling a lot better about the next three and a half months now, but I’m sure the terror and homesickness will be back at some point. Also I have been 21 for over a month now, in Australia for nearly 3. Crazy. Anyway, I hope you are all having a lovely February so far. I miss you! Now I am going to sleep in my very own room alone for the second time in 3 weeks. Goodnight!

In Which I See Many Amazing Things and Am Attacked by Australian Wildlife for the First Time

Oh my goodness. I just got back from our orientation week. It was pretty ridiculous. The days feel really long here. Partially because they are literally longer than at home (SO much more daylight! :D), partially because I had gotten nice and used to not doing anything all day over break and now we get up at 7:30 and are moving basically all day, and maybe a little because I am far away. So this might take a while.

The good thing is that over orientation my homesickness got a lot better. This was partly due to hearing from some of you, partly because we were so busy all the time I didn’t have time to think about it, and because good things kept happening that made me happy to be here. I also got closer to a lot of the people here. It seems really crazy that I’ve only known them for a week. Oh, and the other really helpful thing: it was sunny all week *knocks on wood*.

The first day we all loaded up in the enormous bus and headed out. We took a nature walk (this will be a common theme) and saw a kookaburra!

The sun came out before lunchtime (a celebrated event) and we went to a beautiful rainforest park with a stream in it where we were allowed to swim. I don’t actually have the pictures from this place, because other people here have water proof cameras and I am overprotective of mine (because it is fantastic) but they will be on facebook whenever people want to post them. I really don’t think I can explain or show with pictures how absolutely gorgeous this scene was, though. Or how amazing it is to swim in a river in the rainforest. It’s just so peaceful and beautiful and awesome!

Next we went to the beach to talk about another ecosystem. You can’t really swim in the ocean in Northern Queensland from November to May because of the ridiculous numbers of incredibly poisonous jellyfish called “marine stingers”. Mostly if they touch you you will just die. Terrifying as that is, that doesn’t stop Australia from making hilarious caution signs. I have taken pictures of a lot of caution signs I thought were funny in this country, but this is my favorite:

That night we stayed in Port Douglas. We did go to the beach, where they have little areas that are completely surrounded by what they call “stinger nets” which are supposed to keep out the jellyfish. I don’t really trust this system, and it was low tide so the tiny area we were allowed to go in got down to maybe 2 feet deep, so we didn’t stay very long.

Day 2 might have been my favorite day so far of this program. We went to an Aboriginal heritage centre and were shown around by this tiny Aboriginal woman named Rosie. She was probably one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. She was just so…happy and wise. I don’t really know how to explain it, but we all felt exactly the same way. I love her and kind of want to be her when I grow up. She showed us around the rainforest from her perspective, showing us what the different plants were used for. She even took the girls aside and showed us the sacred Women’s Pool, which was really amazing. I actually did get a deep spiritual kind of feeling from it.

She also showed us a cave where they had done stick paintings:

And gave us a lot of wisdom along the way. My favorite thing she kept saying was also what her Aboriginal name means: “Life’s a challenge, live each day at a time, and tomorrow’s another day.”

There was an art gallery with beautiful Aboriginal art. I bought a couple of small things (everything was so expensive!) that will be souvenirs for someone and a book about the rainforest plants and their uses. I’m excited about it, it looks really really interesting.

In the afternoon we went to Mossman Gorge, another river in the rainforest for us to swim in. If possible, this one was even more beautiful and amazing than the first one. It also had current, which was fun. I’d never really swam against current before. It was fun. This one I do have a picture of, but other people took more.

We ate lunch there and I was sitting at the table all alone and minding my own business when I got attacked by Australian wildlife for the first time. So, everyone who told me I would not be safe here was right. People who kept sending me articles about the terrifying things here that were going to poison me and how I was going to die. I hadn’t even been in this country two weeks when I got bitten! What did I get bitten by, you ask? What heinous creature of this terrifying and venomous country? Well I will tell you. It was a turkey. This turkey, in fact:

He wandered up under the table and bit me right on the toe. I am awaiting the next full moon, but I fully anticipate turning into a Wereturkey. I will let you know.

Later that day we went on a guided tour down the Daintree River. We did not see any crocodiles, sadly (I really want to see one from a safe distance), but we did see a lot of birds and adorable frogs:

And even fish that can spit! Seriously, they spit a stream of water a couple feet in the air and knock prey off of branches above them into the water where they catch them. We watched them do it. It was amazing!

Day 3:

Rainforest Habitat Area! This is an indoor-outdoor park/zoo thing where they keep all kinds of native Australian animals, a lot of which are endangered. We went there because it is much much harder to see most of these in the wild. A lot of them were birds like this Cassowary:

Who is basically a dinosaur, and will slice you open like a ton-ton with those claws if you anger it in the wild. They are very endangered and I want to see them in the wild so bad!

Also here were Tawny Frogmouths which are basically the best thing ever. They look like muppets. Adorable muppets that I want to snuggle.

We watched them being fed and I got to pet one! Super soft.

The next section was all outdoors and filled with wallabies, kangaroos, and a bunch of big water birds. In general I am not sure how I feel about allowing people to get so close to wild animals, even if they were raised in captivity, but we were restricted to the paths and the animals came and went as they pleased. It made me feel a little bit iffy, but they gave us “Roo Food” and OH MY GOD I FED WALLABIES AND KANGAROOS!!!

It is hard to feel morally uneasy when adorable things are literally eating out of the palm of your hand. Their lips were soft and tickley and the littlest one actually grabbed my hand with its tiny claws to bring it closer so it could eat. Adorable.

I did object to the koala cuddling/picture taking. They kept arranging it so it looked just right for the camera and the whole thing just seemed too stressful for the animal and training it to do something that wild animals shouldn’t do, etc. So I didn’t do that. I saw many koalas already on this trip though, and honestly seeing them in their natural habitat makes me happier than holding one in an artificial environment would.

Also, you might have noticed my sweet Bush Adventure Hat. Hats are necessary here because it’s hot and the sun will basically fry you alive. It is pretty ridiculous and pretty fantastic. I bought it very rushed at a chemist (which is a pharmacy, if you don’t know) but I think I kind of love it for how ridiculous and Australian it is.

Then we drove up to the Atherton Tablelands, where we encountered this freaking sweet gigantic moth!

It is called a Ulysses Moth and is really beautiful. This one is dead, by the way. One of the girls has a phobia of moths and we actually got her to hold it! She was freaking out but there is photographic proof and it is definitely progress.

Then we went to a place called the Curtain Fig Tree.

It was really magical and amazing and made me feel like I was in Avatar. This is a Strangler Fig that has taken over three different trees. They start high up on the trees and their roots grow down while their canopy grows up. It is breath-taking.

Anyway, this is only half of the INSANELY long blog post I wrote but it is quite late and I have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow to head out to the reef (exciting) and I am almost out of internet, so the rest will have to wait. Love you all! You are wonderful! I hope you have a fabulous day!