Mangroves at Strattie

Brown Lake champions

Brown Lake

The activities of Strattie continued. Day 3 was the morning of seagrass exploration and data collection at low tide. That afternoon, we had time off and most of us used it to process the data from the previous days as we were always busy each day. This was a good time to catch up. At night we had an interesting guest lecture about Manta rays, these big sea creatures that can grow up to 9m wide, gigantic animals! On day 4, we visited the National Park to look at Blue lake. It was a nice and quiet walk through the forests and the lake was peaceful and clear. Blue lake is a window lake that formed when the parent rock surface dipped below, and exposed the ground water. The water in the lake is actually the exposed water table. Afterwards we drove to Brown Lake, which is a perched lake. It got its color due to the presence of the eucalyptus trees around the lake, whose tannin stains the lake water brown. The source of water in the lake is rainwater and runoff. We had the chance to swim in Brown lake, unlike Blue lake, which is very sacred for Aboriginal people, and we could not swim in it.

Blue Lake - not really ( camera setting :-))

After the wonderful mornings in the water and forest, we visited the mangroves in the afternoon. We walked into the Rhozophora and Avicenna trees, knee deep in mud and collected data about tree types, height, girth and distance from shore. It was quite a long process but my group exercised efficiency that made the work so much less strenuous. we had some laughter and fun too along the way. After the mangroves we returned home for another warm, nice dinner and a guest lecture about Sea Turtles in trouble. I was usually ready for bed by 8pm due to the full days out in the field. On Day 5, we were all feeling the strain of hard work and getting tired. Fortunately, one lab was cancelled and the sharks were left with the Dune Succession lab, which took a while on our last lab days, but we were all happy to be done with labs.  That afternoon was spent processing lab data and trying to study for the final exam that was the next day.

Sunset watching with friends - Teresa and Graham

However, between all these field trips, each evening, I was happy to spend time watching sunsets with friends, and witnessing the creation of (new) friendships between people. The sunsets were always beautiful, different and spectacular each day. Graham and Teresa were my sunset buddies and they were always excited to watch the splendid sunsets, accompanied by fun photo sessions. Strattie was proving to be wonderful on each day. Where else could one finish a long day by watching the sunset by the beach while having dinner. It was wonderful! But, after all this, we were ready for the big city ---> Sydney!!!

Happy times watching sunsets

The beautiful sunset

The usual photo shoots :-) - with Graham