Guest Post: Avery Harriman

My name is Avery Harriman, I’m a soon-to-be senior from Carrboro, NC and am currently in the Australian Wildlife Conservation From Land to Sea study abroad program. Having completed our first week, I can say the program is full of new and exciting things and is just an overall great experience. Not only are we learning a lot about conservation but we also get free time to be on our own and get to know one another. Everyone seems to be having a great time and love what’s to come.

On one of our days we took a bus tour around different sites of Sydney. We stopped at a number of waterways to talk about how they play into the city's pollution of the ocean before meeting our tour guide of the day, Marc, at one of the beaches.

He introduced us to various flora and fauna along the coast we were walking. Many of the plants were reintroduced as the beaches had been cleared by settlers without being aware of the consequences like faster erosion, more noise pollution from the ocean or how it would affect local animals.

We stopped at some rock shallows while the tide was low and it was amazing. All sorts of marine life could be seen with striped snails and hermit crabs hiding in the remaining pools, there was moss in some places, sea anemones had tucked themselves in all over the rocks and I even saw a large sea slug hanging out in a stream.

To end our day we hiked up to a lighthouse that, although had a steep climb, had an amazing view. Climbing back down and walking across the beach back to our bus, me and a friend grabbed ice cream cones. It still wasn’t very late so me and a large group of friends all went to a local ramen shop we all adore for dinner. Back at our shared housing, us and several housemates got to watching movies and working on a puzzle before everyone went to bed.