Jul 15, 2018 - Wet tropics and surrounds

Townsville is the second largest city in Queensland with a population of 180,000 and surprisingly quite compact. We had great views of the city and surrounding area including out to Magnetic Island from the pink granite monolith that is Castle Hill. While we drove up, lots of other fit people walked, jogged and cycled up. The Ross River flows through town, isn't there a mosquito-borne virus named after it? Aerogard anyone? Driving through Ingham I was very disappointed that despite its strong Italian heritage there was not one Italian cake...

Nov 25, 2017 - Townsville - day visit

Heading towards Cairns we stopped off at Townsville to visit Reef HQ, an aquarium containing the world's largest collection of coral. Not a bad place and it was good to watch feeding time for the predator fish. Decided not to stay the night but continue heading ever northwards.

Oct 16, 2017 - Billabong Sanctuary in Townsville

October 16, 2017- Today we drove to the Billabong Sanctuary, a nature preserve in Townsville with rescued and example animals from the area. After our strikeout on koala spotting yesterday we scored big time at this place today. We started by being berated by an old cockatoo that has been there for many years. They don’t know how old the cockatoo is because they don’t have an easy way of guessing age, but the cockatoo has been there an owful long time, so it is definitely old for a bird. We had a chance to get close to a several koalas and...

Aug 26, 2017 - Townsville - Gilmer's Property Stay

Friday - Heading south once again, Bob has found a free camp for us near the beach @ Toomulla just north of Townsville, all set-up and time for a relaxing afternoon, Trevor and Andrew have gone off for a walk around the creek and beach. Time for Dannie and I to go walking through the parklands and onto the beach. Unfortunately we could not make it to the surf as the creek was too high to cross. Relaxing night around camp but early night for all. Saturday - Onto Townsville today, heading to the Deb and Ken Gilmore's property @ Kelso. After a...

Jun 25, 2017 - Townsville, Magnetic island and nature

We arrived in Townsville courtesy of our recently purchased Queensland rail coastal pass which allows us unlimited travel between Cairns and Brisbane within a month. The train was 6 hours which would pretty much get you anywhere in England, however it barely looks like you have moved in Australia! Townsville is a coastal town and our main reason for passing through was to visit Magnetic Island. It was named as such as Captain Cook's magnetic devices stopped working when he reached these islands. However, before going to Magnetic Island we...

Oct 26, 2016 - Trip to the Daintree

Hey y'all, I kept a detailed journal of the trip that I took over lecture recess and I would love to share it with you all! It's in pdf format and thus, it would be much easier for me to send it to you via email. Please message me (on facebook, email: chase.schober@my.jcu.edu.au, or on mytripjournal) so that I can send it to you. Cheers mates! -Chase

Sep 12, 2016 - Breakdown of my last month

Oh mah goodness it has been a while since I last journaled... I'm not proud of it but at the same time, I've been doing so much and I'm happy that I haven't missed out on any experiences because I'm busy journaling about other stuff I've done. There is so much to talk about I'm just going to jump in and go paragraph by paragraph. Netball: This sport is straight bonkers. It was kinda frustrating for me since I've grown up playing basketball and developing my dribbling and shooting specifically for a 10' hoop with a 29.5" circumference...

Aug 14, 2016 - Three Weeks In

Whoops, It's been far too long since I last journaled about what I've been up to, sorry to keep y'all in the dark. I've definitely been settling into a routine here which is strangely comfortable. The classes have been certainly keeping me busy, I have my first round of assignments due this week for most of my courses. One of these is a "pet element" project in my Environmental Geochemistry class in which we drew a random element (I got Molybdenum) and we will present a short summary of the element to the class. It's a pretty cool concept...

Jul 31, 2016 - First Week of Classes

Good afternoon fellow Seahawk fans, So today is Sunday July 31st and I'm finally getting around to catching everyone up on my first week of classes. I'm enrolled in 4 classes and I'm really excited about all of them, here are some highlights from each: Biodiversity of Tropical Australia- this is kinda my guilty pleasure class. It's learning about all of the wildlife in Northern Queensland and has 2 incredible field trips that are going to take us to the rainforest and to the coast. As some of you may have noticed, I'm really into taking...

Jul 22, 2016 - End of Orientation

Goodday Mates, Incidentally my favorite new expression to pick up from the Australians. I’ve been searching for a new greeting since “What’s up?” and “How’re you?” Are pointless since nobody ever really answers that question. I’ve been keeping super busy and have been having a great time settling in here. The weather is starting to heat up which I have mixed feelings about and I’m a weekend away from starting up school. Some cool things that I’ve done in the past couple of days: Pub crawl- for $10 I was able to go on a tour of 6 local bars...

Jul 18, 2016 - Start of Orientation

Quick update for y'all, Today we had our start of orientation week which was a lot of fun. I ate breakfast and walked to the auditorium with the international folks I met last night at dinner plus one other guy from Germany. We got checked in then sat down facing the speakers. There were a lot of exchange students, a large chunk of them were from Denmark, Norway, Germany, and America. Before it started we had a couple of competitions for prizes and one of them was to assemble a team of 4 people who had 4 different traits. As it happened, we...

Jul 17, 2016 - Exploring Townsville

Yo yo, Today I had a chance to explore Townsville and it was really incredible. We had a brief orientation after breakfast talking about the rules of the halls and some upcoming things that we should expect then we got on the bus from campus heading downtown. We being the group of Tulanians, a girl from Norway, and one other fellow from DC. The bus fare was pretty cheap, we got a day pass for $8 which gives us unlimited rides around the city. Our goal was to get some room supplies because as I mentioned, I lacked some necessities such as: a...