Written by South Pacific Students, Grace and Caroline
What’s New in Our Journey?
After our long flights, we safely arrived in Cairns! Mary and Sushi bravely drove on the opposite side of the road for the first time and got us to our lovely hostel. For lunch, we ventured to our first Australian shopping mall and indulged in some food court delicacies. We spent a good first night at the hostel, enjoyed swimming in the pool, started orientation, and even made a few new friends.
The next day, we drove to SheOak Ridge (with a quick pit stop at the grocery store to pick up necessary snacks: TimTams, chips, coffee, granola bars, etc.) and made MANY wrong turns on the backroads of the Daintree. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we met up with Marcus and Claire, our partners for the week who run a nature reserve here in the Daintree rainforest, and they warmly greeted us at their property.
Once we settled in, we continued orientation throughout the week, learning about managing risk, writing community guidelines, playing A LOT of games, learning how to effectively work together, and much more. When we weren’t busy with orientation, we helped Claire and Marcus with their work around the property. We took down the barbed wire (and encountered a few wasp nests along the way—sorry, Sushi, Grace, and Julia!) and prepared pots because Marcus plans to plant 80,000 trees (out of 100,000)!
We also met Theo, the VERY cute and sadly imprinted wallaby at SheOak. We fed him plenty of sweet potatoes and gave him many chest scratches, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Claire also let us watch her nightly feeding of the wild wallabies, and we loved seeing all of them, especially the adorable joeys. There are so many details we might have missed, but overall, it’s been a wonderful week!
Top Three Highlights of the Week:
- Meeting and hanging out with Theo! He’s super friendly and loves to smile, especially when he’s drowning in sweet potatoes. He often comes up from Claire and Marcus’ house to hang out at our bunk, which we really appreciate. What a wonderful host!
- As a group, we’ve discovered a shared love for UNO and have been playing it every night after dinner (and sometimes during the day). Our games get quite intense, filled with lots of screaming and laughter. Don’t worry—we’re keeping a tally of wins and will update you on the scores. Clivia is currently the reigning champion with four wins.
- Our third highlight has to be removing all the barbed wire from Marcus and Claire’s property! They started the project a while ago, and we were able to help finish it. In our next post, we’ll update you on how many kilometers we removed. We became quite skilled at understanding the complexities of barbed wire, which truly seems to have a mind of its own. Many scratches later, we think we’ve mastered it—though there’s always room for improvement!
Challenges We’ve Faced (and Conquered!)
While we’ve loved our time at SheOak Ridge, we’ve found the compost toilets to be a bit of a challenge (to put it mildly). But we’re powering through, knowing that this experience will make us stronger! We’ve even picked up some Aussie slang and now call them “dunnies.”
Our second challenge has been the number of spiders and snakes. Claire and Marcus have reassured us they aren’t very dangerous, and we’ve learned a lot about them—but we’re still cautious and quickly dive into our tents, zipping them up as fast as possible!
Group Dynamics & Moments of Gratitude:
We are incredibly grateful that our group clicked immediately, and we all get along so well. With a small group, it’s easy to spend one-on-one time and really bond. Everyone is unique, but we’re all on the same page and love to laugh and sing together! We’ve been playing lots of games—both in orientation and during our downtime—and telling stories to get to know each other better.
We’ve found a great balance between being serious and getting our work done while still having fun and being a little silly. It’s been a joy to find this harmony in our group!
Bonus Fun: Language Lessons and Musical Vibes
Clivia has been teaching us German, and our current favorite word is “Schmetterling,” which means butterfly. We’ve also been enjoying lots of guitar playing and are so grateful for Gabe and JT’s (Julia T., who we call JT!) musical talents.
