Needless to say my final weeks in
Australia were a hectic few, scrambling to finish up the mollusk collecting and
dissecting and wrap up all other remaining projects at work as well as trying
to squeeze in one last adventure to explore the Great Ocean Road and
Melbourne. There were quite a few late
nights in the lab but we successfully obtained tissue samples from a wide range
of mollusk families at a variety of eastern locations. The samples are all packed in their
microplates and ready to be shipped off to Canada to have their barcodes
read! The main challenge we encountered
was trying to preserve the shell for taxonomic records of each tissue sample we
collected, in many cases we simply had to smash the shell to obtain the
tissue. As the first primary marine
mollusk collection for the Barcode of Life we anticipated encountering some
challenges to work through and hoped to use our experiences to create a
standard protocol for future collections so I consider it a success and am
thrilled to have gotten to the initiative going, as it will continue on at the
Marine Center until no mollusk is left behind!
Beyond
the late nights in the lab I was also able to squeeze in my trip to
Victoria. We flew into Melbourne, at
which point we rented a Wicked Van (fully equipped with road trip camping
essentials and raunchy slogans and paintings all over it) and set out on the
Great Ocean Road. The drive was amazing
as we headed west along the Victorian coast line and stopped at the iconic
spots such as Bells Beach and the 12 Apostles and some quiet spots for some
great hiking and more koalas than I ever would have imagined seeing in the
wild. On the return drive we took a bit
of a detour to Lake Elizabeth which is known for its platypus sightings, but
after many hours of traipsing through the rain in search of platypus I finally
had to accept that I wasn’t going to get to cross “seeing a platypus” off my
bucket list just yet (which gives me more of an excuse to head back to
Australia sooner than later I suppose).
I was however fortunate enough to get to see a colony of fairy penguins
as we made our way back to Melbourne; and still had time to visit the aquarium,
casino and museum before I returned to Coffs to pack up and say my final
goodbyes. All in all, it was a great
little adventure to wrap up the enormous adventure that my time in Australia
has been!
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