Despite yesterdays awful weather, both of the year 13 Geography classes went on a fieldtrip down to the beach. The purpose of this trip was to see human interference on coastal processes. This is important because the information we will collect and the things we will see will help us with an internal assessment later on in the term.

So anyway, when I woke up that morning, I could hear the rain hitting the roof of the house. I was a little disappointed because I had hoped for better weather because I would rather stay warm and dry than cold and wet. I was sure they wouldn’t cancel the trip so I went up school prepared, with pens, paper, lunch and a camera. As I got to school, the rain had settled, although it looked like it could start again at anytime. Regardless, down at the beach was going to be wet and icky.

Everyone got on the bus, and we were off on the trip. Our first stop was down to the Dunedin City Council where we would meet with a lady that will talk about Coastal Dunedin. Oddly, she was Australian and had only been here doing the job for 5 weeks, although she did seem to have a fair bit of knowledge. She talked and there was a slideshow on the projector, but I couldn’t see that. I did have a look and touch of some plants that are down there.

After that, we started heading down to the beach area. But before we went there, we stopped outside McDonalds for people to get (and eat) lunch. It was only quarter to 11 so it was a very early lunch. Me and my mates decided to walk down the road a little bit and get Burger King instead. I got a BK Chicken Value Meal. It was really good, much much better than anything McDonalds could offer.

Then it was time to go down to the beach. We went down the St Clair beach and walked along it. We looked at the water and what the beach looked like. Everyone took heaps of pictures so we could look at them and refer to them later on. During this walk, the weather was starting to get worse. It didn’t pour down, but it was starting to drizzle. We then got back into the bus and drove further along the beach. At this point, it was raining. The teacher decided that we would stay in the bus and not go outside and do what was originally planned.

Driving around for 2 hours was interesting but started to get boring. Then we got back to school and I went home. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that the weather was bad, but at least we didn’t have to go out in the rain and get cold and wet. If it wasn’t raining, we would have been collecting data of the beach such as measurements, calculations, sketches and pictures of the beach, so I suppose we got of that work. The trip wasn’t that bad because it meant a day of school. I can’t wait for the next Geography fieldtrip later on in the year, we’re going to Queenstown!

Geography Beach Fieldtrip Photographs are at http://flickr.com/photos/yum9me/sets/72157605209611191/

At the end of January, my friend introduced me to this fun, outdoor treasure hunting game, called Geocaching. The main idea is that you are given a waypoint, and from that waypoint, you either find the geocache or find the GPS co-ordinates to the cache location. A cache generally is a container containing a logbook and items such as toys and nick nacks.

So far, I have found 16 of these geocaches. Each cache varying in size, from a film canister, to a lunchbox and bigger. The locations also vary. Some are just at the side of a road, some are in a park hidden in the bush, others are well into bushland and require you to go in the middle of no where to find a cache. The hiding spots also vary in difficulty, and generally all factors determinethat such as size, terrain and location. A GPS is extremely handy and necessary for most of the caches to help you get to the co-ordinates of the cache.

Yesterday, my friend plus a few other people went to find a cache called “Omega Nutcase,” which is a five star cache. Geocaching is much more fun when you are doing it with friends or other geocachers, also having more than one pair of eyes is always an advantage. My friends came over the night before and brought the other puzzle pieces from the other caches in the series so we could try and figure out the co-ordinates for this cache. We had a general idea where it was located but we jut needed to pinpoint exactly where it is or else we would never find it. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack, literally.

The puzzle was pretty abstract but after 30 or so minutes, he managed to figure out what we were supposed to do, (he had already started doing the puzzle but the solution so far didn’t make sense.) I pretty much did the typing and then we were all sorted. We knew where on the island the cache was located, now it was just a matter of getting there, at the right time. We had to plan when we were going so we could get across to the island and back before the tides came in.

Anyway, yesterday morning at 11am, we left to go out to Warrington Beach. By the time we got there, it was about 11:40am so we quickly made it across the water over to the island. (Google Maps) We had to cross 2 streams of water to get there. The first one was a bit over the knees and the second one was at the knees. There were heaps of snails, cockles (well the shells,) and crabs. Oh, lets not forget all the sandflies, but I was well covered and didn’t get any bites.

When we were on the island, it was now time to venture into the trees and bushes to get to the middle of the island to get to the cache. It took about 20 to 30 minutes to get around the the location of where the cache was. It was a bit hard to use the GPS because it was bouncing everywhere. There could be many reason to that such as the overcast weather, or all the trees in the area. After about an hour of looking and going around in circles (literally,) we thought we had the general area worked out, and it was within 10 to 20 metres from the area where we were.

After looking around the area and climbing a few trees for the next 30 to 40 minutes, we were getting a little tired. We couldn’t stay here for too much longer because the tide would be starting to come in. This was our only opportunity because we would most likely, never come back. We stepped over a fallen tree and my mate looked up a few small trees to find a green ammo tin that was well camouflaged in the tree. We climbed the tree, took a look inside and signed everyone’s names in the logbook. There were only 2 other peoples names in the logbook when we got there.

Now it was time to get out of there and on to the beach. We ran through all the bushes and tree branches onto the beach. Then we ran down the beach to get to the point where we started from, where we left a bag with our belonging in it. When we got there, we had a cup of coke and some jelly beans before making the journey back to where we began. We knew the streams would be higher because we could see the water coming in. The first stream was now half way between out waist and knees. The next one was deep. On me, it was just below my arms, but on the rest of the group, that are a little taller than me, it was a bit past their waists.

When we got back, we were soaking and tried to dry ourselves and our clothes the best we could before making our way back into the city. We were happy that we finally found the cache! We thought we done a good job. To be honest, the best part of the adventure was the nice warm shower at the end. Geocaching is a lot of fun. If you would like to start looking for some caches, you can go to the Geocaching website, and look for caches near you.

I spent an hour of the afternoon cleaning out the turtles tank. This is not an easy task and it time consuming. Lucky I only have to do it once a month. The tank requires to be clean for the health of the turtles, they can get sick if you leave them in dirty water, water full of their rotting food and their faeces. You wouldn’t like to be swimming around in that would you.

First you have to remove the turtles from the tank. I put them in a tub with a little of the water from the tank. I put them in the living room where it is warm so they don’t freeze and get sick. I then slowly remove the water from the tank and put it down the drain. This consists of me holding a tube for ten minutes that sucks out the water from the tank and transfers it to the sink.

After the water is removed, I wipe the tank down with a sponge. I make sure that the glass is nice and clean on the inside so there is no dirt to make the clean water dirty and also make sure the glass is clean on the outside so we can see the turtles swim and play in the water. I also have to clean the dirty from the heater and the filter that is in the turtle tank.

Cleaning the filter is the best part. I generally go outside with the hose and put it on high pressure and blast the filth out of the filter sponges and in the gaps on the filter case. The water sprays back everywhere, including my face and my clothes. I am usually soaked after hosing the filter. Also there is a small river in the backyard because I have used so much water and it can’t find a place to escape.

After the everything is cleaned, it is time to fill the tank with nice, clean warm water. The mixture is 8 parts cold, 2 parts hot. Waiting for the water to boil is the most time consuming part of cleaning the tank. The jug takes about 5 minutes to boil and I need to boil it about 6 times. I do that and fill the tank so far up. There we have it, a nice clean tank.

We generally wait about an hour or two before returning the turtles to their clean home. When that time comes, the tub of water where they are temporarily smells horrible. They have went toilet in there and the water is disgusting. I put the turtles back in the tank slowly so they don’t hurt themselves and then I watch them swim around happily in their nice clean home.

The silly thing is, that as soon as I put them in, thats when the nonsense starts. I think it is an animal law to dirty when you have just been cleaned. One of the first things the turtles do when they return to their tank is go soil it. The water is only clean for half an hour before they dirty it with their faeces. Also the two mischievous turtles like to swim around and move the filter. The filter ends up in the middle of the tank on an angle. We end up sticking our hands in to fix their home.

Well cleaning is one of the disadvantages of having pets. Its a small price to pay for the fun and happiness they give you, even if my ones stay in their tank most of the time. At least they are fun to take pictures of