Stradbroke Island

After we finished celebrating our Australian-style Halloween, we began our Coastal Resource Management (CRM) course on Stradbroke.  For this course, we learned a lot about “adaptive management” through a case study.  Basically, we were all assigned to groups and had to prepare a 30 minute presentation regarding a hypothetic proposed resort at a site on Stradbroke.  In addition to a lecture series, our class also consisted of traveling around the island, exploring the different parts to Straddie that would be effected by the building of the “Super Snappy Marina and Resort.”

Here’s the site, Amity, of the proposed development:

Our activities included...


...a tour the CRL mining site:

Since Straddie is a huge sand island, CRL mines the land for rutile and other elements, then revegetates the land after.  The tour was actually really neat and we got to wear these awesome vests!

...a bush walk with Matt, a native aboriginal of Stradbroke.  He took us around the island, explaining a lot of the Bush Tucker, or natural foods and remedies the aboriginal people discovered.  A couple people in my class did research on Bush Tucker for our projects, and there actually a lot of chemicals found in popular Bush Tucker that is currently being researched with promising pharmaceutical potential, even for diesease such as cancer and AIDS.

Matt also showed up some traditional weapons and instruments,

along with how to make aboriginal body paint from rocks on the beach.

and start a fire!

and of course taught us how to throw a returning boomerang...lets just say not all us actually got our boomerang to come back to us.

...a beach tour.  Yes, of course we had to check out the local beaches as part of our class.  We weren’t allowed to swim here because of dangerous currents, but the deserted beach was gorgeous!

...a look at an already industrialized (and GORGEOUS) tourist area, Point Lookout.

We walked along this gorge, with an amazing view!!

The water was so clear! We saw tons of turtles and dolphins in the water!

KL and I climbed down and sat on the rocks to get a better view, pretty far back from the water, and got SOAKED by one huge wave!

While waiting for the bus, we had to take a picture in this perfect climbing tree :)

...a “mock town hall meeting” where each group was assigned a different role in the Stradebroke community, and had to dress up and role play about potential reactions to the resort

some of the costumes were AWESOME!

...a close up view of the local water system.  This is Brown Lake - the water is actually brown!! It looks like tea, but its a completely healthy lake!

During our free days on Stradbroke, we spent one beach day at Point Lookout and another day we went scuba diving and sandboarding.  Both of these experiences were incredible.

Our scuba boat launched from the beach, and since there was a decent amount of wind, the waves were HUGE.  Our little boat sped off straight into the waves, and the ride out was an experience in itself - the staff told us to hold on tight and stand on the boat kinda like we were surfing and thats what we had to do to not fall overboard!  It was soo much fun! After about a 30 minute ride out, we arrived at our first site where 4 of our group of 8 were sea sick!  (a least I wasn’t one of them)

We saw some cool finish and coral on our first dive, but the highlight of the day was the shark we saw at our second site!  We were able to get really close and pet it!  only in australia....

overall, great dive, since we pretty much got an adventure speed boat trip free along with our 2 dives!

In the afternoon, we meet up with about 20 others and went sandboarding.  This was so much fun!!

Between every dive we waxed our boards,

then slid down the (pretty big) hill.

We could go down sitting sled-style,

laying down,

and of course standing up!

Ready,

,

 Set,

GOO!!

Yay I made it!

 not all of our trips ended this successfully tho :(

After sandboarding we all had sand EVERYWHERE!!! and so much sand in my mouth!!! there gotta be some nutritional value right?

Group dogpile!

After a great time scuba diving and sandboarding, the day wasn’t over...it was my friend Coop’s birthday, so we headed out to celebrate.  The Straddie Sports Bar was nice enough to stay open late for us - they stayed open til....(drum roll please) 10 PM!!!

We left Stradbroke, off to board our fight to Sydney! :)