This past week was spent in the beautiful sand island named Fraser Island. This island is considered to be the largest sand island in the world and is also a World Heritage site. I didn’t go here for just fun though. For my Biol2001 class, it was a 5 day research trip to study the sand dune transact, the Sclerophyll Forest and Rainforests that were located in the island. To be honest, I’m so happy I went. I learned so much information about trees, animals and the vegetation, that I can now easily tell what one tree or plant is from another. The only way to get around the island was in a 4x4. We took some comfy looking Land Rovers from UQ all the way to the island ( 4 ½ hours) and then for the next 4 days, our road was the beach. Each day consisted of rocky off-roading, waves hitting our rovers, and lots and lots of bugs! 
Each morning was filled with research. The first day I was up at 5:15am. This was an ungodly hour since I haven’t woken up this early since I’ve been in Australia…but it was for a good reason! I was required to go bird watching! It was awesome! We were able to spot about 18 different birds within an hour and I learned about how and why they go to certain trees, their calls, and about their colors. A few birds that I was able to see were Honeyeaters, Doves, Grey-Shrike Thrush, Varied Trillers and many more. Once that was over, our first day of research had begun by learning about the sand dune transects. We had a 100 meter area where we took down notes every 20m on what ground cover there was, the types of trees and different shrubs. The afternoon was spent at Eli Creek, a natural spring creek in the middle of the forest! It was only about half a meter deep but it was refreshing!The second day we headed to the Sclerophyll Forests to do research on ground cover, canopy cover and new plant growth. It was long and tedious but very interesting! I was able to what types of trees grow where and why, as well as the different plants. Once we did that, we moved to doing plants and had to classify what they were and their traits. Once the morning of research was done, we ate lunch and suffered ( and I mean suffered! Too hot! And giant spiders!) through a 7km hike through the forest, which on the other end, was a lake. It was so refreshing, but before that, we stopped at a 50m sand dune, which we had to climb, but we could jump off of it! I felt like I was in the desert, yet there was forest surrounding the area.
The third day, we journeyed about an hour out into the rainforest. This time we worked on the canopy cover, the size of the trees, and the leaf litter. This was a quick morning, because my group wanted to get out of the rainforest and all the bugs as fast as possible! I’ve never had a problem with bugs, but these bugs in the rainforest are REALLY big! For example, I almost ran into a Golden Orb Spider, check it out. Its terrifying when your inches from it. That afternoon, was absolutely amazing to make up for a scary morning. Our group headed to Lake Mackenzie, which is a white sand beach with clear blue water! It was so beautiful, and since its so natural, we couldn’t wear any sunscreen when we went in, just to preserve the lake! Luckily it was a slight overcast, so no burning occurred!
The final day was exciting. We were done with our research, my team stayed up all evening to finish imputing our data, that by the end we were all going insane. We went to Lake Wabby for a few hours in the morning after our breakfast, and this lake was bright green! Each lake that we went to was a different color from the vegetation, and the sand was also different colors because of the nutrients. This final day at Lake Wabby, I truly felt in the dessert. When we arrived, all you could see was sand, but when you looked to your left, there was a forest! In the next 100 years or so, the dunes will actually take over Lake Wabby, and as you can see in the pictures, the sand is slowly taking over the forest. Its so amazing how nature works.
I could go on for days about all of the extra stuff that we did, but overall these were the highlights of the trip. I hope you enjoy the photos and soon I will be putting together a video blog about my trip on Fraser. I would do it now, but I have to pack for my flight to Fiji in the morning :-)
Cheers!
