Townsville-Fanning River-Clonkers
...sorry- there was a girl on the trip who resembled Michelle from American Pie.
Later in the day I made my way to the airport and up to the city of Townsville :snicker:, stopping in Brisbane and met up with the other overseas/northern hemisphere students. There were 6 of us from the states (including Colorado, Texas, Maryland and New York State) and one girl from France, so we delighted in explaining just how far our country had gone in renaming things like "Freedom Fries" and "Freedom Toast"... we weren't sure about "freedom kissing". For the first week they had us doing day trips in and around Townsville and staying at the previously mentioned caravan park.
We... "bonded" with the waitress at the restaurant, Anita's, they had us eating at every night that offered just a *slightly* limited selection. A few of us escaped Thursday to go check out the local nightlife and found ourselves meeting quite a few Americans... mostly military o.O The final night we all returned as Anita's offered a seafood buffet and live music which consisted of our dear Marge covering sappy love songs from movies and the like, backed up by her Karaoke machine.
Early the next morning, we met up with the JCU second years to head out to Fanning River where we spent a week or so learning about the rocks and how to map.
I had a lovely partner from Cairns who (after multiple people asked if I was ok with doing all the work) somehow managed to spend 14 hours (6pm to 8am) on 3 handwritten pages of rock descriptions, enabling me a whopping 2 hours of sleep while I did (or redid) the rest of the project. Fun stuff... In the process of tearing down camp, we ended up with a large quantity of melting ice and someone found a stick for something in between cricket and baseball. It wasn't the most successful game as most of the ice chunks would shatter when hit, but it was quite entertaining (and refreshing). Anyways, we came back Friday and went out and had fun. Our group barely made the last bus home on a whim and had some creepy people trying to talk to us ("Oh, Americans!"). We had a free day before our next trip, so I took the ferry out to Magnetic Island and watched the sunset.
Heading out even earlier than Fanning River, we were on the road to Cloncurry (a.k.a. "The Curry" or "Clonkers") at 7 and spent a good portion of the day driving. We stopped in a few very small towns and ended up eating more "Servo" (convenience store) food than we desired. The following day we began our 2 week mapping project of the Snake Creek Anticline which can be characterized by it's many forms of sparkly rocks. I had, until then, decided that I wasn't going to pick up a bunch of rocks just to drag them back across the Pacific in my suitcase (I already had enough sand to deal with for my mom) and would just find 1 or 2 really good ones, but this thinking soon went out the window. Mapping involved plotting rock types and minerals and such while measuring bedding, cleavage, folds, etc.
On the "day off" we visited the Ernest Henry Mine which is basically a huge pit in the ground (we even got to see an explosion), and I gained some understanding of just how big mining/economic geology is in Australia as that's what the majority of the students will go into. When we were loading into the trucks to take the tour, all of the overseas girls got into one before the driver got in and was surprised that he had ended up with "all sheilas". Of course because of this, when the girls started asking if we could go see one of the really big trucks, he caved and we got to do so while the other groups were wondering where we were.
After visiting a few outcrops on the way home, we all got ready for our night on the town in... Cloncurry, which has a few pubs with drinks, billiards and music, but NO dancing. This of course didn't stop us... and eventually led to a few people getting kicked out. A side note is that very few people actually remember being in any of the pictures from that evening despite their presence.
So with more mapping and more shenanigans (from giving people antennae to trundling to stealing the towels and clothing of people showering) we made it to the field test where we found a baby death adder (would've fit in the palm of my hand) on one of the rocks were we supposed to be measuring. The final project provided me with enough work to be busy the evening that everyone was celebrating a birthday. I finally decided it was time for sleep and stopped by the bathroom along the way, turning on the light to find a pile of clothing on the floor. I was hoping it was left from earlier, but could just feel that I was not alone. After deciding I would just use the bathroom and leave without saying anything, I asked the group running around with cameras (paparazzi style) who had been in the bathroom but this ended up being new information to them, and of course they busted in on the pair. A toilet stall- lovely...
After about 4.5 hours of sleep, I got up to work some more and ended up working straight through the night (though I wasn't the only one), stopped to watch the sunrise and kept working through the day, until a few hours past the deadline. Sometime during that I realized exactly how much of a disadvantage I had having not taken structure or a few other classes I'll do this coming year. The sculling (chugging) of the last of a box of port wine as well as some booger wars followed this, and with getting ready to leave and all that I finally got to bed around 1:30 only to wake up at 6 to drive back to Townsville. With a rather uncomfortable bus ride, I merely dozed, and got to that evening averaging 3 hours of sleep a night for the previous 3 days. Not wanting to miss my last chance to spend time with everyone, I went out for an entertaining evening.
We got back around 1 after attempting to walk home and realizing that it wasn't gonna happen which led to Cam calling a cab for us. At this point I was perfectly primed for sleeping straight through my alarm -_-
The extra day did allow me to relax a bit, and I got to say goodbye to Brendan and Cam among others who I had missed the night before. The other overseas students who were all staying longer reserved a hostel room that we all shared. The room was normally all women (called "the Sanctuary" and painted fuchsia), but since we were a group with only one guy they decided it would be ok. I finally got a good night's sleep and made the bus, and the plane, and the other planes (though they required running in both Sydney and LAX) and made it home in one piece.