Koala Hugs

It's the Queens Birthday! Happy Birthday! OK... not really. Her birthday's in April. But each 'please-let-me-still-be-associated-with-Britain' country that celebrates this holiday just kind of picks it's own day to do it (usually in early Summer). Queensland, being the exceptional rebel state, decided just this year to skip the traditional May/June celebration date, ignore what the rest of Australia does, and just stick it on October 1st. QLD apparently moved Labor day from March to May this year too, just to confuse it's citizens. Meanwhile, half-way across the pacific, the new gov't, a.k.a. military regime, of Fiji has decided to get rid of Queen's B-day altogether. Good on you, Fiji. But poor poor queen. She doesn't get any attention anymore.

The holiday weather is unfortunately quite wet, but Saturday Gwen and I headed to a Koala Sanctuary (Lone Pine) in Brisbane this weekend for a little personal time with some Australian fauna. As you can see below, koalas and kangaroos are scary and vicious... trying bite and claw...

We also got the opportunity to walk around Oxley Creek commons with Hugh Possingham and his adorable mutt, Douglass. And took the train up to Boondall Wetlands to check out some slightly-less-invaded looking forests. I added 46 birds to my life list... the proportion of which may be skewed just slightly to the walk with Hugh, the professional birder. (OK. 40:6)

Australian vocab:

'Well done' & 'Good on you': a phrase of congratulations or approval. Similar to the western meanings, but can be applied to situations ranging from actual congratulatory situations, to double-fisting red and white wine, to correctly paying the entrance fee to a park.

WTF Australia?

So, walking around Australia is something like walking through a US pet store. There are parakeets, cockatoos, zebra finches, iguanas, sugar gliders.... it's kind of silly that half the things we buy as pets come from this one continent. 

All the same, the wildlife in Queensland is pretty cool, and I haven't even walked out of this one suburb! 

Yes, the one is dead, but it's the first marsupial I saw! I've started a short bird list and might start posting it here as I go along. I also saw my first fruit bat flying around last night! 

I'm pretty satisfied with all the new flora and fauna to be seen, but as the following story shows, there are down sides to being on the other side of the world!

My infatuation with all things new and different became tenuous when I realized I hadn't bought any tortilla chips at the grocery store during my first run for staple items. As many of you may know... tortilla chips are a staple for me. I never add them to a shopping list, because when I see them in a store, I automatically restock my cache. You can see how this may have worried me... tortilla chips must not have come into my line of vision while wandering the grocery store! I tried to calm my fear of the worst, but a nagging voice kept whispering... 'maybe there were no tortilla chips'. 

Next trip to the grocery store, I had my priorities set. I first come across the Mexican food section. Filed under 'Asian foods' this section was one shelf of taco kits, a single type of corn tortillas, and a small variety of 'taco sauces' and 'guacamole spices', all which look to have been marketed by Taco Bell. There are 2 pint sized (literally) bags of white corn Mission tortilla chips. A small sigh of relief. But I am confused by their very small size, and more confused that the red label Mission chips next to them are not just the familar triangle shape that the red label usually indicates, but an "extreme cheese" version. WTF?

I again try to convince myself that there must be a whole mass of normally sized and flavored tortilla chips in the regular chip aisle of the store. My shaky confidence quickly dissolved into terror, and shamefully enough almost tears when I found the "Corn chip section":

It is filled with DORITOS!!! Those are NOT tortilla chips. I am devastated. I ended up buying the 2 bags of Mission chips (I did the math, and they are 2/5 the size of a normal bag in the US), as well as 2 other equally tiny bags of a "Deli-style corn chip with sea salt" which have poppy seeds in them and do not taste like tortilla chips (seriously, WTF Australia). So in the end I have spent $8 AU ($8.50 US) on what amounts to be ~ 1.5 bags of sub-par tortilla chips.

It's going to be a long 3 months.

Helllllooooo Brisvegas...

(Brisvegas: actually a slang term for Brisbane, QLD; at least from people in Melbourne)

After two days of trying to not fall asleep in Melbourne, I flew up to Brisbane, where I will be spending the next five weeks at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia. I'll be trying to meet (and get feed back from) a variety of researchers up here. There are so many acronyms associated with this one academic department, I feel like I'm in the US gov't!

EDG - Environmental Decisions Group
CSIRO - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
NERP - National Environmental Research Program
ARC - Autralian Research Council
CEED - Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decision Making
GCI - Global Change Institute

... to name a few. And there's surely more I'm missing.

I've gotten a chance to meet with Hugh Possingham yesterday (For those of you not in my field reading this, he's kind of a big deal in conservation biology, particularly systematic conservation planning and decision science). I'm hoping to go out birding with him at some point in the coming weeks. He's does monthly surveys in some locations around here, and has already told me the best place to find a bowerbird within driving distance of Brisie (another slang name for Brisbane)! Heck yes!

I also gave a talk at the departmental morning tea today. There are lots of marine/reef people studying here, so hopefully a few of them know who I am now, and I'll be able to get some feed back on the MPA project I'm doing here.

On a side note, we should have tea and scones in TN once a week! I suppose our equivalent in 2 dollar tuesdays at Sunspot, but tea and scones is so much less committal and more inclusive.

Australian vocab:

"room to swing a cat": refers to amount of space in a particular location/venue. (ex: "Wow there's a lot of people in this pictionary game. There's not enough room to swing a cat in here"). Apparently has actually been tried by at least one native Victorian, resulting in devastating outcomes for the cat.

capsicum: pepper
muesli: granola, or pretty much
flat white: espresso with a ton of milk in it, but not a latte, cause that's also on the menu
brekkie/brekky: breakfast
paw paw: papaya...  that one confused me
mangosteen: mangosteen (yea, ok, it's the same, but it's still the first time I've eaten one!)

If you're reading this blog entry, then you probably already know a bit about where I am and what I'm doing here. However, a wise man once told me, you should start by stating your purpose. 

Well, I'm am starting on a 3 month visit to Australia (primarily University of Queensland, Brisbane, and University of Melbourne) funded by the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED). I'll be working with Michael Bode to look at how the size and spacing of marine protected areas on the Great Barrier Reef impact a model fish population. I hope to also spend my time developing other research interests and questions to start outlining a dissertation proposal. I plan to share my research progress and ideas here when applicable, as well as share the occasional random anecdote or lesson learned.

So, after crossing the international date line & the equator, eating 4 Korean airplane microwaved meals, watching 6 in-flight films and sleeping approximately 4 cumulative hours, I was welcomed to Australia this morning by this gorgeous sunrise over Melbourne city center.

Thus far, I've managed to find the University of Melbourne campus, drink about 4 cups of coffee and meet a handful of students, post-docs, and faculty - all whose names I'm promptly forgotten due to lack of sleep - at the ecology 'morning tea'. I hope to do better tomorrow.

New Australian vocabulary:

vego:  vegetarian ("Gwen is a vego, so we'll add chicken separately")

greenie/brownie: pro-environmental people, and pro-industrial or pro-agriculture people respectively (possibly of Tasmanian origin)