Thursday, January 15, 2009

The Ville

I've had to kill a bit of time in Townsville waiting for the weather to die down. A summary:

 - Visited the Aquarium. Quite nice! Some very interesting creatures, like the stonefish, olive seasnake and the nautilus, and really pretty reef displays. Would have been great to see more freshwater stuff.


Scorpionfish


 - Ran up Castle Hill. This is a big granite outcrop in the centre of town. It was pouring down and incredibly windy up on the top. Standing on the lookouts, grasping the steel barriers was such an invigorating, exhilirating experience, with the wind racing up the cliffs and whipping the rain onto my skin and into my eyes. I tilted my head back and let out a roar into the chaos. It was fantastic.

Most importantly, I've organised a bit of volunteer work with some of the good people of JCU. So, next week I'll be heading up Mt Bellinden-Kerr for a night or two to help with some invertebrate and leaf-litter samples (whilst searching for endemic microhylids...). Then I'll be doing similar things going up to Atherton - Kingfisher - Windsor - Mt Lewis - Mossman. After that I'm heading out to Undarra Volcanic National Park to do a bit of vertebrate trapping and surveying. Should be great fun!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds rad

letting out the roar sounds like that garden state infinite abyss moment!

Anonymous said...

Gimme a call, I can get you into the behind-the-scenes areas of the aquarium. ;)