Winding down in Straddie

After leaving Heron Islands, I wasn't really sure what to expect after having the best two weeks ever. But in all honesty, a winddown was just what I needed, and a winddown was what we got. A lot of us, including me, had become sick over the past few weeks, so when we arrived in Stradbroke Island, an island made entirely of sand that's an hour ferry ride off the Brisbane coast, I was ready for a rest.

Over the 10 or so days we had in Straddie, we learned about Coastal Resource Management, which was honestly pretty boring. Our class was basically about a hypothetical situation where a tourist facility would be built on the island - since the island is pretty undeveloped and has a large aboriginal population as well as people of low socioeconomic status, a new tourist resort would have a huge impact on it. So for the next few days, we had some field trips to where the hypothetical tourist facility would be made, and had a group project about how we would go about assessing if the tourist facility would be put in place. It was interesting, but mostly pretty boring stuff. My professor was really cool though - he does a lot of resource management in Vietnam so we tried to have a conversation in Vietnamese, and he also told this insane story about a street brawl he got into in Sweden where he took on two large Nazis and got arrested for it, even though he had been attacked first.

On our last three days on Straddie, we had free days where those who needed to do their research projects could do research or write their papers. Since I am already done with my research project, I had completely free days. I caught up on TV, since Straddie had really good internet, spent two days at the beach, and went sandboarding. The beaches at Straddie are amazingly nice - the sand is so clean and fine that it squeaks when you walk on it and the water is clear, clean, and not too hot or cold. The current was really strong, which made for good body surfing. The only thing was that there were a lot of jellyfish and blue bottles (a scarier, blue form of jellyfish whose bites hurt like crazy) around. I ended up getting stung by a jellyfish on my arm, but it didn't hurt that much at all.

One afternoon, about half of the group (24 of us) went sandboarding, which is like snowboarding except on sand dunes. This was SO MUCH FUN! I have only gone snowboarding once in my life and I'm not good on my feet at all, but the great thing about sandboarding is that it doesn't hurt when you fall. The sand is really fine that even if it gets all over you, it's not uncomfortable - more like a fine layer of clean dust. We all looked like sugar-coated donuts afterwards, but it was really worth it. You could go down the mountains sitting on the board, standing like you're snowboarding, or sitting on the board with a friend, which was the preferred way. The hardest part was climbing back up the giant hills of sand after making it to the bottom, but other than that, the two hours of sandboarding went by way too quickly.

I'm currently in Sydney, so pictures of Straddie will have to wait until I get back to Brisbane in about two weeks.