Things I've learned in Australia

I will soon be getting back into "real life", which will be a bit of an adjustment. I know many of you are probably wondering why I am coming home earlier than I had initially planned. Essentially, I feel that I have accomplished what I set out to do, and would prefer to save my dwindling funds for other endeavours, such as buying a house or even future travel. More importantly, I think I have finally learned that there is life outside of work, and that I am going back for the right reasons. That's not to say that I won't give 120% at my job (I am still a workaholic and probably always will be), but there are also other things that I would like to do in my life.

The past six months have been amazing: I have seen and done so much I can hardly believe it. In this final blog posting, I wanted to try and summarize my trip by recording all the things I have learned, as well as the favourite and/or most memorable aspects of my trip. I will start with the latter...

• Favourite part of Australia: Central Australia


• Three favourite birds (how could I just pick one?): rainbow bee-eater, rufous-crowned emu-wren, and Major Mitchell's (pink) cockatoo


• Favourite marsupial: Fat-tailed dunnart


• Most memorable hike: Kinglake NP (thanks Moss!)
• Most memorable day: Black Saturday (the day over 200 people lost their lives in the bushfires in Victoria)


• Favourite Australian beverage: Bundaberg ginger beer


• Favourite Australian food: apricot and coconut delight (a type of fruit bar, very yummy)

Things I've learned:

• Life is analagous to bushwalking, where the journey is more important than the destination. Don't be afraid to go places that you've never been before, just be prepared for anything. When you find a nice place, stay there a while and enjoy it. Take time to stop and watch the birds or smell the flowers. Sometimes it's nice to have company, and other times you just want to be alone.


• There is life outside of work!


• I'm capable of more than I think. For example, driving on the wrong side of the road, and spending six months meeting new people (always difficult for me).


• I have no desire to do a Ph.D., although I am determined to write up a couple of chapters of my thesis for submission to journals.


• I am a "twitcher" (birder). I want to become involved in birding at home now, learn to band birds and improve my knowledge of bird calls. For those interested, my final bird tally is 286 species.
• An older birdwatcher belonging to the Cairns wader group asked me, when I told him that I had seen a certain species of bird, "ah but, did you enjoy it?". That sort of stopped me in my tracks for a minute, but I quickly realized that he was bang on. It's easy to focus on "collecting" as many species as possible, and forget to just enjoy watching them. Another step in learning to slow down and enjoy things.


• To take my previous point further, I have learned that I need to enjoy what I have at the moment, without constantly wishing I was somewhere else doing something else. I'm pretty lucky in my life, as I have a good job, live in a nice town with easy access to National and Provincial parks, have some good friends and good health. I am still working on this particular lesson, but at least I now recognize that it's something I need to work on.

As I mentioned, this will be my final blog posting. I would like to thank all of you for following my adventures across Australia, and hope to see many of you soon. Australia is an incredible place, and I highly recommend that you all visit at some point in your lives. It's painful to get there, but once you're there (and recovered from jet lag), it's an amazing experience. I'll certainly be back very soon. G'day to you all, mates!