Australia Blog Tino

This weekend, my host parents took me to Magnetic Island, an island a few miles from the coast of Townsville. On the island there are about 2300 permanent residents, but over 290 000 yearly visitors. It is a beautiful island with lots of beaches.

 Today was another great day down here in Cairns, because I went diving at the Great Barrier Reef. At eight o'clock in the morning we started our tour to the Norman Reef. Since the stinger season here in Australia is over now, due to 'cold weather', the jellyfish aren't active anymore. Therefore we didn't have to wear stinger suits, but much more annoying and tight wet suits.  But except for this annoying feature, the diving itself was great, lots of stingrays, sharks and turtles. This time I tried to use as little oxygen from my tank as possible, in order to stay under water as long as possible, which worked out quite well. Everybody starts with 200 bars of tank pressure, and in the end one of my mates, I dived with had about 60 bars left while I had about 110 bars left. The only 'trick' for that is to actively breath slower and try to take long and deep breaths. In the beginning this is quite difficult, since you are excited and your heart rate is high. So

 This week I went on a trip to the Daintree rainforest. It was probably the best trip I had so far, because of the people that also went to the camp. I shared a room with five mates and we had the best time ever.  Our trip started on Tuesday at 6:30 in the morning, when we left from school to our first stop: Hartleys Crocodile Farm. I was there 13 years ago, and still recognized the crocodile that was in front of the entrance of the farm. During our stop there, we had a boat tour through there human made lagoon, filled with about 30 crocodiles. We also got to see a feeding of a five meter crocodile in an eight by four meter pond. It was terrifying to see a half a ton animal submerge ten centimeters below the surface and not seeing it anymore.    After this stop, we had a two hour drive to our campsite (Daintree Rainforest Observatory) near Cape Tribulation. Shortly after arriving there we received an introduction to the site. Until about eight o'clock in the evening we had free tim

Today my Marine Science class went on a Marine Science Reef Trip, to collect data for our assessment this term.  We met up at seven o'clock at the  Marina. After a wait of about one and a half hours we finally left for the Norman Reef, out first stop. We didn't collect any data from here since only the second reef was interesting for us. We just went for a quick tour around the reef. The next stop was Hastings Reef, where we collected our data. Collecting pictures there was a bit annoying, because the reef was on some spots very deep, and the next meter it was nearly too shallow for us to swim above, which is why you couldn't take regular pictures. You aren't really allowed to touch the reef, in case you destroy a coral. 

Today the school organized a mountainbiking trip to Smithfield. Smithfield is a massive mountainbiking trail, and one of the locations for the World Championship. Next week there will be a competition called "Crankworx". It is a tournament sponsored by Red Bull and streamed live on RedBull TV from 17-21st of May. Unfortunately I can't provide pictures right now. But in a few days I am going to have some footage of the ride.

I recently noticed that Queensland especially Far North Queensland has a huge problem with Youth Crimes. Children under the age of 14 years can't really be punished by the legal system of Queensland. Many Aboriginal children use this blind spot to do all sorts of crimes.  About a week ago three Aboriginal children nearly broke into our house, but luckily they took off after they saw the security camera. (Video 1)   Video 1  Since then I have joined a Facebook group called "CRIMES ALERT CAIRNS", where residents of Cairns post about everything they see, which might be a criminal activity. About 70% of the posts are about children breaking into houses or stealing cars.  But whenever they are caught, the victims have to write them a letter in which they tell them that they shouldn't do these crimes, but that's it. Nothing more happens.  My host mother told me about a friend of hers, who works at a petrol station, which also has problems with youth crimes. Everyday of