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Location: Kuranda
Today was our first day of community service out of the two days that we would be having on this GoBeyond Australia trip. We started the day by waking up pretty early, leaving the cabins at 8:45 am. The ride to the site was roughly 10 minutes, but once we got there, we had an orientation on our service project and got right to work. Our task was to plant trees to re-vegetate an area around the Barron River. We hope that this will positively impact the river water, the local bird life, and the critically endangered Myola Tree Frog. Everyone was eager to plant as many trees as they could and, luckily, the weather was pretty good today. We all worked together as a team, and I think that the music that was playing in the background was a good choice to motivate people to keep on working.
The best part of the day was when the people that were driving by would roll down their windows and tell us that we were doing a good job and complimenting all of us. That had a positive impact on all of us as we were working throughout the entire day. With just 14 people, we planted 180 trees, which is pretty amazing. However, after a long day of service, we came back exhausted and decided to relax a bit before we went out for some nighttime frog monitoring. We heard a lot of frogs and other animals in the night, but we were only able to see a few of them. Tomorrow is going to be another service day, and the group is working well with each other so far. The trip is soon ending too, but I’m sure pretty almost all of us would wish this could last a little longer.