Life's been a bit hectic lately... we just had lecture recess, which is a week break from school (apparently meant for catching up on school work, not holiday.... ) and just before then I had a bunch of assignments due. The break was at the perfect time to unwind and relax.... if i didn't have 2 fieldtrips! Luckily, they were actually a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about Australia and my classes.
For the first trip, I went to Wambiana, which is a cattle farm about two and a half hours west of Townsville. They call it "the bush" around here. It was pretty interesting to go there, it was a family's house and they had 23,000 hectares of land (57,000 acres). They lease out a good portion of the land to government agencies who use them to research sustainable management in terms of beef production, as well as land production. Our job on the farm was to compile a data list of all species found on the property in order to help the government in regards to biodiversity. We did this by setting up different types of traps in different paddocks, as well as spotting and catching animals.
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| Headed out to set the traps! |
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| Digging the traps... lots of laboour |
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| The lagoon! The water was freeeezing! |
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| perfectly shed snake skin.. pretty cool! |
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| And this would be some of the cattle |
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| Me and 'Snowy' |
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| Snowy and Connor (who lives on the farm) |
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| The house... beautiful house! |
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| ...And our accommodations (not as beautiful, but it was still fun) |
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| Black Headed Python |
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| Venomous snake we caught during spotlighting one night |
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| Green Tree Frog! |
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| Gecko eggs |
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| Wallarus! |
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| One of the way Michael herds the cattle... |
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| Connor, teaching us how to lasso! |
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| Welcome to the farm (: |
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| Camels! |
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| Two of the young'ns on the farm |
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| The whole family, plus Julian (middle back) who was doing the WWOOF program with the family |
