marinegirl

Other places on the same latitude as Townsville: Antananarivo (Madagascar), Beira (Mozambique), Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), Tsumeb (Namibia), Belo Horizonte (Brazil), Sucre (Bolivia), Iquique (Chile) and Tonga. These places all strike me as ‘have a great big siesta in the middle of the day and only work in the mornings and late afternoons’ kind of places, how life in the tropics should be. But in Townsville, we’re expected to work a 9 to 5 like the rest of the Western world (which somehow we are apart of, despite being about as far East as you can go)! I feel somewhat cheated out of lazy hammock siesta time.It’s begun to get oppressively hot now. The photos on my bedroom wall have all distorted in the heat, and the blu-tack frequently melts and I have to stick them back up again. It’s a good incentive to go into work, where the air conditioning is efficient, and more importantly, free; but you have find the motivation to get out of bed early - the sun is up at 6am, and by 9am it’s too hot to walk in without arriving in a pool of sweat.Everywhere around town is starting to look really dry and brown, although it’s the ‘wet season’ it hasn’t rained in Townsville in a month. Occasionally it’s cloudy, but it never comes to anything. It’s coming into bushfire season too… there’s been a few on the local news, and you can often smell smoke, although it’s hard to tell if it’s from a proper fire or the ‘controlled burns’ they do to reduce the fuel load.All the lawns are still lush and green though (much better than at home!) because of the magic sprinkler systems that pop up and water at night. When I first got here I couldn’t work out how the grass was always wet in the mornings - the sprinklers sink down into the grass during the day! It’s funny because at the same time all you here on the news is how Australia is suffering the worst drought in decades, and how we should be putting buckets in our showers… but heaven forbid the lawns should turn brown!Anyway, enough about the weather, I’m in danger of reinforcing the British stereotype! In other news, I’m starting to get busy at work, which is good. I’m collating data on biodiversity and marine reserves in the Philippines, and writing grant applications to get some money so I can go and do lots of fieldwork. My supervisor goes away for three weeks today though, so we’ll see how long the motivation lasts! I’ve booked an early Christmas present for myself – I’m going on a liveaboard to the outer reef with the dive club in early December, which I’m really looking forward to.Hope everyone’s well, it’s always nice to hear news from home, so get in touch!Becks xPS. Yes, I spent my weekend taking photos of plastic animals…