Australia.

A place where corn syrup is illegal...

Where hamburgers are served with beets unless you request otherwise...

Where two bottles of shampoo cost almost $13....

Where redheads are known as "rangahs", after orangutans!...
Where shrimp are called prawns...

Where people indeed do drive on the left side of the road, but no, toilets do not flush the other way...

Where the day I landed, January 26th, is Australia Day.

Coming into Sydney after a very long trip was indeed one of the most exciting moments of my life!  I left Boston to Los Angeles, and took the 11:45pm (delayed, yes) flight out of LA to Sydney, sitting on a plane with two levels, between two wonderfully informative Australians. 

One girl was from Adelaide, and the other, from Melbourne.  Both helped the long flight to pass quickly, and I practically tore off the airplane when I got to Sydney.  Although customs took away my beef jerky and apple chips, I got to hang onto my crackers.  Thanks.  And then, after they stole my sustenance and reprimanded me for trying to take pictures of my robbers, I had to follow endless signs around the entire muggy airport, signs that sat at every corner and pointed me onward to my connection to Cairns until I had almost gotten back to where I started.  Add to that the fact that I had no Australian cash with which to purchase something from "Hungry Jack's" (the Australian equivalent of Burger King).

From my window seat on the way to Cairns, I suddenly caught sight of the gorgeous Great Barrier Reef.  From the air, the view was dazzling.

When I landed at the airport at 3:30pm on Tuesday the 26th, after probably more than 24 hours of travel, it felt like a dream.  I had arrived on another side of the world, somewhere in transit I'd lost a day, I'd been to three airports, and on top of that, I was carted along the left side of the road in weather that was anything BUT wintry blizzard conditions. 

However, the Center for Rainforest Studies is not "down" in Cairns, in the lowlands, but up on the Tablelands, eliminating much of the mugginess and heat and rendering it rather like late spring, suprisingly.  I've even felt slightly chilly during the day!  After lunch in Cairns where the fruit bats hang out in the tall trees, Audrey, the Student Affairs Manager, drove Monika (another intern who'd been living in Brisbane), Cabot (our Wildnerness First Aid instructor), and myself up the long windy road to the center.

It's quite a ride in that bucking and pitching vehicle, after turning off the main road, to rumble over a gravel trail covered with wet leaves and surrounded on both sides by towering palm-like trees, huge ferns, and dense undergrowth.  We met "Piggy" along the way, the husband of Siggy, one of the female researchers here (animal ecology), who was clearing out the road after the holiday break.  And after passing several student cabins, we arrived at what would be our new home for the next half year.

The house is a long, one-story house, with a deck running its length overlooking the backyard.  And guess what's my backyard?  The rainforest.

While the days have been mostly taken up by Wilderness First Aid training, I have nevertheless had a thrilling introduction to life around here. Imagine your morning run around the tar track at the local highschool instead as a jog over shiny wet leaves, under hanging vines and broad drippy leaves, brush turkeys scurrying to get out of your way and pademelons scampering about in the underbrush lining the trail. Or your swim in the neighborhood lake instead as a dip in Lake Eacham, a clear crater lake with a misty sky overhead and the gloomy secrecy of the rainforest lining the rim. The strident cries and chirps of tropical birds echo hollowly out across the still lake.




My walk to the Center every morning is down the wet trail, fraught with cane toads and brush turkeys that bob and weave as they run straight away from me. As I turn onto the trail that leads to the Center I pass what I’ve been told may be an echidna trail. At night along this same trail are glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, and I’ve even been lucky enough to see the cassowary that lives around here!



During our first aid training on the Center porch, I often get distracted by the rainbow lorikeets and Ulysses butterflies- not to mention the prospect of ripe mangos and sour limes- right in the front yard! But in between first aid drills that test my acting skills and patience in the face of “kids” screaming at me that they are choking and “can’t breathe”, I’m able to walk around the grounds and check out the mini geckos that crawl around the walls and tables, hunt for the black snake that was observed by the frightened cook, and learn about the possibility of observing wallabies, pythons, and monitor lizards that have been seen hanging about the Center.

The rain is a funny thing here. It will come out of nowhere, last for a few minutes, then clear and the sky will be blue and white clouds. Or, it will pour down so torrentially that our instructor literally has to holler above the noise. And I was informed that the lightning storms here are so terrific that students sitting in the classroom can feel small currents of electricity through their seats. Then there are the beautiful dry, cool, clear, breezy days that are just like fall on the Tablelands.

However, we all received a healthy dose of terror in one afternoon session in which we discussed symptoms, carriers, and remedies for toxins. Ticks, jellyfish, spiders, snakes, and of course, the awful stinging tree literally had us leaping on our tiptoes, checking our arms and legs, and peering in all directions for venomous creatures that would undoubtedly leap at us on the trail. The stinging tree in particular is a terrifying variation of our stinging nettle, but worse. If you so much as brush against it with your clothes, the stinging hairs on it will stick into your skin and irritate it periodically for MONTHS. Suffice it to say that if I’m ever walking in the woods, EVERY tree is a STINGING TREE. However, falling asleep to the strident beeps, croaks, and roars of frogs and waking up to warbling birds only helps to drive home the fact that this isn’t a zoo- this is REAL!

Yet, the routine of this first week is somewhat of an anomaly. When the students arrive on February first, our slightly understaffed group of interns and researchers will scramble to hold everything together the first few weeks. No time for dreaming- it’s all hands on deck!