Well, actually...

Not quite.

I was up at Heron Island the past week, for a field course. The island is in the Capricorn-Bunker group at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, off the town of Gladstone [interesting fact: every stirring stick used in cafes in Australia and many other places was and is made in Gladstone, which also happens to be Australia's busiest port. Okay, that's two semi-interesting facts.]

The reason we were up there was because UQ has/had a research station on the island. I say had because a large swathe of it burned down last year in an accidental fire. Though no one was physically hurt the less said about that tragic incident the better. I don't have any photos of the research station, mostly because there was nothing to see, just a stack of improvised buildings and cabins. As you can see from the pictures the island was more interesting, though for the first three days the weather played havoc on us, with a 30-knot gale blowing through and weather greyer and wetter than knickers in a toilet bowl. Collecting fish for dissection in that weather was not a pleasant experience; hauling them back in a large bin full of water for a kilometre even less enjoyable. I duly caught a chill which degraded into a sneezing cold and dry cough, needless to say the knowledge that it could only have gone uphill from that point was highly motivating.

As you can see from the pics, the weather did eventually clear and the sun came out, which meant deviating from the labwork which until then I had been so passionately immersed in became highly tempting, and eventually, inevitable. But then who goes to the Great Barrier Reef and doesn't have a swim? Granted I wasn't like one of those mad dogs or Englishmen who pretty much swam regardless of weather conditions, but once the weather broke I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity, and I wasn't disappointed. The loggerhead turtle with carapace alone as long as I was tall was a well-deserved panacea for ten years of expectation, the eagle rays fairly swarmed, there were blacktip and whitetip reef sharks, stingrays the size of an American economic crisis and a giant grouper named Gus who apparently eats eagle rays whole, this wasn't so much kid in a candy store as a sugar-deprived sweet addict being dumped in a marshmallow making machine and left to die. If someone had offered me a magic potion which would have given me fins and the ability to live on that reef as some fish/human mutant forever I would have taken it with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila; as it is I'll settle for a post-doc research grant.

Given the paradisical feel about the place it was understandably hard for some people to associate the trip with any sort of actual work, and indeed this showed on some of the group. It does sometimes cheese me off that some people who evidently have little more than a passing interest in the course material bother to subject themselves to the torture of actually having to take it. 'Cheap trip to Heron' was probably the major factor here, but then these people evidently didn't reckon with the real reason why they were brought to the island in the first place. I won't single out anyone on this particular occasion, but it was definitely apparent some people were more dedicated to their work than others. I personally know I dutifully enjoyed the work component of this trip as much as the fun, and I'm grateful to the two coordinators, Tom Cribb and Rob Adlard, not to mention the tutors and station staff available, whose advice and supervision were indispensable throughout.

All in all it was a great and most importantly, productive, trip, one that I would undoubtably remember till my dying day.

I am now back in Brisbane and have started semester. Updates will definitely be fewer and further between than they have been in the last couple of months, what with work, research projects and perhaps even a casual job to juggle, but I have some to-do's on this site, most importantly the testimonial for Chian Shen which I have been working on, but not very whole-heartedly, I have to admit. Sorry Shen if you're reading this and wondering where that's gone.