It had been pouring torrentially the day before, and the night had been wet too.  February 27th was my day to drive six of the students to Land Care, just down the road in Yungaburra, where we'd assist a group of volunteers in their efforts to restore the forested area around Peterson Creek.  Land Care is my favorite because it invariably involves the elderly gentlemen taking us on a nice walk around the place hunting for tree kangaroos.  Oh, and planting trees or shoveling gravel too.  Maybe...after we find a tree kangaroo.

So we all hopped in the car and followed Monika's car out onto the highway, since Monika was taking six of the students to help out with TREAT.  As we rounded a corner Monika honked; I wondered; then the students started clamoring, "Jen! Jen! A snake! You passed a dead snake, Monika honked at it for you!"

"WHAT?!"
I had my priorities, so I yelled at them that I was turning around, and while they kept an eye out for it I looked for a good place to pull off to the side.  Luckily I was driving "GUY" (christened according to the license plate "GYU"), which had a garbage bag in it from the last time Tim and I went out to pick up a dead redbelly.  After I'd pulled over, several students dashed with me to the scene of the crime.  Lying off to the side of the road was a perfect specimen of an amethystine python.

Everything.  Intact, except for a bit of intestine hanging out.

I wondered if this was legitimate roadkill, since there weren't any signs of impact with a vehicle.  But I was more than delighted to pick it up, put it in the bag, and carry my trophy back to the car with several enthusiastic young scientists in awe at science in action.  The others in the car were quite tolerant of the capture in the trash bag, and we continued on.  Lo and behold, as we crested another hill, there was another mess right in the middle of the road!  I couldn't tell what kind of snake it was, but the students squalled for me to pull over and get that one too.  I hollered back that I had a duty to get them to Land Care on time, and I'd feel terrible if we were late.  If it was still there on the way back, I'd pick it up.  Although we didn't see it on the way back from Land Care, our python was more than enough excitement to tide us over.  Back at the Centre, I eagerly let the students know that I'd be dissecting it after lunch, if anyone wanted to watch or help out.  The roughly 1.5kg female snake was about 2 meters long, and absolutely gorgeous.  As a handful of willing students photographed and assisted in the data collection, I got a fecal sample and cut the ventral side up the middle, exposing the snake's anatomy for my first-time reptile dissection!  Needless to say, it was more than thrilling for me and the students to peek inside the snake and identify its organs, including the heart, liver, and empty stomach.  Doubtless she'd been out looking for a meal after the heavy rains.

  

 

Just a friendly warning....

 Near Double Island, in Palm Cove near Cairns

  

  Prior to this first highlight of my adventures, I had the opportunity to participate in our first field trip.  It was a welcome break from reading papers, fighting with the computer and its slow internet, and the disasters of  playing ping pong with Monika when our vans pulled out of the carpark for a 3-day field trip in Chillagoe.  Roughly a three hour drive from the Gillies Highway, Chillagoe is considerably drier and could be considered the edge of the outback.  It used to be an old mining town in the early 1900s, and is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, with not much going on, and not too many people (I've heard the population is 250 and declining...)

That being said, we were quite excited as we passed through Mareeba (stopping for some "nibblies"=snacks) and continued on our way towards Chillagoe, stopping in Dimbulah to hear some local people discuss their efforts to preserve the Walsh River from development.  I had volunteered to drive the first part of the way so I could sit in the back and photograph some of the exciting landscape as we drew closer to Chillagoe.  But as we drew closer, the swathes of open, savanna-like eucalypt forest only became more prevalent, until the entire landscape was a monoculture of eucalypts.  Red dusty roads... tan and red chalky dirt, covered by an army of eucalypts stretching as far as the eye could see, over rolling hills and flat stretches of savannah.  Even mountains were crawling with the white trunks of the trees and sparse grasses no higher than your knee.

Needless to say the novelty eventually wore off and I settled back in my seat, covered in the gritty dust and dirt that smoked in through the open windows (for lack of AC).  But we all woke up when someone shouted out that there were kangaroos by the side of the road!  Although not the large red kangaroo, poster-child of the Australian Outback, these smaller kangaroos were still your typical bouncy marsupial.  When we arrived at our destination we set up camp at the Chillagoe Eco-Lodge early in the afternoon, a pleasant place with plenty of open space and open sky beneath which to pitch our tents.

It probably would have been even more pleasant if our tent had worked.

Prior to leaving, Monika and I had smugly snatched one of the (what we thought were) better tents and simply assumed that since the parts were all there, it must work.  (You can't blame us, after supervising 24 students and driving them all over the place, we were hardly in any state of mind to exert ourselves assessing our tent's condition.)  But as we proceeded to pitch the tent, one of the poles snapped, we realized that the poles were the wrong size anyway, and one of them was taped in a very rigid position.  We fiddled with it until we had a tent that stood up, then called it a day and went with the group for the field lectures around the area.

The next few days were a mixture of surface caves, eucalypt stands, swimming in the Walsh River, and enjoying the balmy nights under the fantastically starry sky.    We didn't even need our "torches" (flashlights) most of the time.  Alarm clock? A rooster that was in danger of being murdered every second of its wretched existence, but particularly at 4:30am.  There was certainly not much happening in Chillagoe, with one general store, two pubs, and a smattering of houses.    

The drive to Metal Hill was worth the dust and grit that covered us and got in every pore and on every fibre of hair no matter how many car windows were closed.  The rocks are hollow, so you can put on quite a concert simply by banging rocks together.  This joy carried over to our visit of the abandoned smeltery, where Audrey, Monika, and I found true joy in chucking rocks over the edge of the hill onto a pile of trashed copper slabs, reveling in the satisfaction of such destructive noise.  I wonder what else Chillagoe visitors would do for fun?  

 I believe it's a Bynoe's Gecko, if I identified it correctly.