Mandurah excursion

I absolutely love my Geology field trips! I suppose being foreign here adds a little extra excitement to it. Next year, I would have a week long excursion down to Albany, another to Kalgoorlie, plus a few other day trip ones along the way. I can only imagine the alcohol and craze that would involve!

Last Sunday, I had an excursion down to Mandurah for my Environmental Geochemistry unit. Attendance is a requisite to pass this unit so like it or not, everyone had to rock up for it. I reckon it was good fun save I came home with a sunburnt back.

The purpose of this trip was to study nutrient pollution and acid sulphate soils around the vicinity of Mandurah which lies on the Swan Coastal Plain. Apparently Mandurah has the highest developmental growth rate in Australia so we were also there to see how the canal home development, channel dredging and the construction of the Dawesville Cut are affecting the environment's geochemistry. Most of this had to do with the changes in the water salinity and ecosystem of the Peel Inlet and Harvey Estuary.

At about 2pm, we stopped at the Mandurah waterfront for about 40 minutes for lunch break after visiting our first four locations - Halls Head Beach, Avalon Beach, Dawesville Cut and the western shore of the Harvey Estuary.




Our trip took a twist right after our break when the bus broke down LOL The engine started smoking up and made a couple of ciggy smokers at the Irish bar across the road choke hahaha! The bus managed to move for another 4-5 kilometers before completely breaking down (right in front of a church LOL). According to one of my lecturers, the upper compartment of that very bus somehow caught fire a year or two ago LOL. Very dodgy indeed.

Those who went there with their own cars went on with the excursion whilst the rest of us were stranded in the middle of no where. All of us decided to make our own way to the train station so we could head back to Curtin despite not having a clue how.

We eventually did get to the bus station by hopping into a Transperth bus. The driver was like, wtf when she saw the bunch of us and she gave us all a free of charge ride because she couldnt be arsed collecting 60 cent from 20 kids to the train station. So yeh, we managed to catch the train and woot, it was home sweet home from there. No need for a field report submission too :D

Musings of Geology

Whenever I tell people I study Geology, it's almost expected that they'd flash me that particular Wtf look or joke about how amazingly 'interesting' Geology is. You know, rocks.. meh, how interesting can that get? I'd usually just smirk and pretend that I really am doing the most boring course in the universe (oh noes! what am I thinking!) when deep inside me, it's actually all fired up with full-on love and enthusiasm. I'm such a closet nerd :D. On the rarer occasion, someone would say, "Wow, in for the money huh mate? Smart. My (_insert family member or friend here_) who works as a geologist earns an insane amount of money!"

I must say, switching to Geology has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. It has taught me so many things I'd never know unless I devote my life to reading encyclopaedias and watching National Geographic. I swear some of the things I learn are so mind-blowing that I spend nights pondering about them. Gotta love the field trips (and boozing) too!

(The fat pay check is just a bonus really)

I must however, honestly admit that it was rather overwhelming initially. During my practicals, everyone would be given a batch of rock samples and be told to differentiate them from one another. In other words, to classify them. The minute I saw them, I was like, gees, these are just.. rocks.. and they all look the same.. Two weeks through my semester, I starting questioning myself if I did make the right choice in switching and would I have been better off remaining in Civil Engineering.

Nonetheless, given a little more time, I've picked up all the little ways to identify and differentiate rock types. It's not the easiest thing to do but it is getting easier and more interesting with time. I personally find it rather intriguing to know like how certain rocks can host certain types of minerals. For example, arsenopyrite is usually associated with the presence of gold deposits. On the other hand, some rocks have undergone visible stresses and deformations, and even in small scales, would give a picture of the type of changes that bit of earth has undergone in a large scale (such as faults and that could possibly help indicate where fossil fuels could be found).

Right now, one of my units is on Paleaeontology. Not the most interesting subject but it is still interesting enough to make my brain go nuts with thoughts.

Life on this planet dates back to 3.5 billion years and has evolved tremendously since. Relative to geological time, a hundred years is like a millisecond. It makes me realise just now insignificant us humans are on this planet. Despite how we constantly change the face of it, our planet is still a dynamic system and it would still keep going on for the millions of years to come. One day, us humans may become extinct, but another form of life would simply take over and it would just be another part of evolution.

That brings me to wonder what our human life is really about. Some would take the easier path by believing in god to address to that question on our existence (despite the fact that the human interpretation of god only came about in rather recent time). Some would choose to not care and mindlessly go on with life as our life as humans is already burdened with far too many problems. Sometimes, I reckon that is perhaps the problem. We care about more than what we should.

But whatever it is, our human life is truly short - make the best of it. For me, Step 1 would be to get permanent residency in Australia. The grass is so much greener on this side of the planet (although not so much literally) LOL And Step 2: Not wear my brain out from thinking too much especially right before bedtime.. like, right now.