Chance of Showers

Inspired by yesterday's visit to the park, I ventured down  to the botanical gardens. Apparently people in Brisbane are really into fitness as there were hoards of people lunging their way across the pristine lawns. Bet the grounds management loved that. Other than the people blending (or not) into the gorgeous landscape, it was a beautiful sight!

Going as far back in the sketchy trails as I could, I reached the mangroves. They were pretty in their own sort of muddy way and a labyrinth of boardwalks weaved throughout them. It took running to a whole new level: pay attention (rare for me) or get a surprise whack over the head when running into the trees. Right at the time of sunrise the lighting was stunning... and became intensified as I experienced one of Brisbane's surprise showers!

Mangrove maze

A misty morning

It was the annoying/perfect kind of rain (depends on the circumstances) where it felt like you were running through the outskirts of sprinkler that you just barely didn't evade. The rain paid off though because on my way back from the park (all uphill...) there was a spectacular rainbow!

Double rainbow!

 In the morning, Bob and I led our group of 33 to Roma park, another stunning man-made creation, to view the ducks. Along the way he pointed out a few spectacles. One of the more memorable and terrifying were the “social spiders”. Those are definitely two words that I would never fathom to associate with one another. One spider is bad enough.

Spider party

Bob talking to the students

 Unfortunately the ducks were hard to come by so we used the unsuspecting ibises instead for our animal behavior observation. I suppose you could say we created a spectacle of ourselves: 33 young students gawking at common birds while they walked, pecked, and flew about. After the lesson, Bob and I meandered back through the elaborate gardens to the hotel for a quick lunch before lectures.

Copying this in my future yard

Definitely copying this too

 We had some great speakers today! One was about bio-geography of Australia which can be summarized by one word: extreme. Another was about Australia’s history (convicts, murder, lies, oh my!) and the last one presented by UGA’s own Jayna about amphibians. Hooray for Bufo marinus and chytrid studies! I actually understood some of the scientific names she threw out. I feel nerdy.