Awards

Awarded the Best Dancing Queen Prize based on her NYE performance
Anderson, Liz

Most likely to be caught smiling for no apparent reason Award
Carrels, JD

"Constantly" singing, Kareoke Queen award
Constant, Stephanie

Most likely to be off on her own having a good time award
Forry, Deanna

Award for most memorable line spoken to a visiting lecturer—"I,  like, can't believe, like, how laid back the cops are.  Like at Festival First, like, I was urinating behind like a tree, and like, 2 cops were just laughing at me.
Foulds, Luke

I can't believe I just failed this course for referring to Reynold as Shamu the whale award
Gardner, Evan

The Graduate Award!
Hammond, Jen

First time playing in an ocean award
Heupel, Kalli

Most unlikely to speak in parseltongue Award
Johnson, Jennifer

Most consistent runner and exerciser over and above the fat-camp aspects of this course created by Russ award
Kading, Kilee

Best and most consistent asker of questions to site report speakers Award
King, Carson

Mostly likely to organize the group and make others feel good about it award
Pletts, Gentry

Worst sunburn award, based on the lost of her entire face peeling off early in the course
Profilet, Katrin

Split personality award for being both Kevin Ricke and Kmart
Ricke, Kevin

Best overall student award
Roghair, Leah

Most likely to ask questions of our visiting lecturers award
Zimmerman, Nicole

Great Barrier Reef

Sunday we, yet again, woke up early to get on our bus to go to the harbor. We boarded the Reef Experience boat to go out to the Great Barrier Reef and scuba dive. The reef was about two hours from shore so the crew talked to us about what kinds of animals we would see at the Reef and different precautions to be aware of. I signed up with a small group of certified divers and went through some of the hand signals and what our game plan was going to be. Everyone else either could snorkel or have an introductory dive. My group suited up and started our decent into the ocean. The Reef was gorgeous; between the fish and the coral the colors were amazing. Within the first couple of minutes we saw a shark which was a cool start to the dive. I saw many large clams, fish, small jelly fish (it’s the time of year in Australia where all these jelly fish wash up by the beaches but the small ones aren’t too venomous and we wear a wet suit so it was fine), sea cucumbers, and much more. There was an adorable turtle above me going to the surface to get air. We stayed down for about 45 minutes but then one of the girls in the group was running low on air so we started back towards the boat. 

After a lunch and nap break the boat went to another area of the reef where we could go out again if we wanted too. I decided to go out again with one of the guys that were in my original group for the first dive because if you were a certified diver you could go out alone and do your own thing. We both didn’t want to go out alone so decided to stick with each other. We saw two sea turtles and ended up chasing after one of them because he had a camera and wanted to get a good shot of it. I went through my air much faster this time; I think it was because of the chase and me being nervous about being without a guide. The second dive was only 30 minutes and we went to a depth of 19.6 meters. I saw a lot and had a blast so overall it was a successful day. On the way back to the harbor one of the crew members (who happened to be from South Dakota) taught us some fun facts about sharks to make the time past faster. Some facts: Sharks loose 30,000 to 40,000 teeth in their life time, and that their skin is really a combination of teeth and skin which makes it feel like sandpaper and potentially cut someone’s hand. It was a fun but very tiring day so we all came back to Gilligan’s and napped before a fun night out.

Rafting

Saturday was another very early morning to get on a bus to get to the rafting place. We drove 2 hours to a town that battles with a surrounding town on who gets the most rain. It poured the whole way up the mountains but right when we got to our departure point in the river it cleared which was very nice. My team consisted of Nicole, Jen H., Liz, Katrin, Jen and our guide Rob. We got our equipment on and then headed to our raft to learn the moves and commands. The beginning of the river was to be the grade 4 rapids which were good to wake us up. All of the rapids had weird names like birds nest, the maze, zig zag, birth canal, alarm clock, and dog poo. We got to jump in and float down some portions and then learn how to get back into the raft as well as help others get in. I was pretty good at getting in so I had to help people by grabbing onto their life vests and pulling them up.  Nicole fell in twice, one of which was scary because she got stuck in this area for a while and got pulled underneath the raft where she scraped her stomach on a rock. Evan got hit by JD with a paddle and ended up having a concussion. Luckily I didn’t fall out at all besides jumping in or being push/pulled in by the guides and others in our group. At one point we flipped our boat and then Rob asked me and Jen to climb on top of the bottom of the boat with him. I had to hold onto a rope while laying down the center of the raft while Rob and Jen stood on the other side holding my feet. Then they pulled my feet and flipped the raft over so I got to hang off the side and flip in the air. It was really fun. We stopped along the river to get lunch and take a break after seeing some really amazing waterfalls.

Once we started down the river again we went through some more amazing rapids including one where we got stock sideways then finally fell through, which was really scary. When Nicole fell out she switched positions with me because she was in the front and had less to hold on to. There were a couple rapids that I thought for sure I was going to be thrown out of or hit by the other girls falling into me. It definitely made for an interesting finish to the trip. We finished our journey, carried the raft to the trailer and turned in our equipment. The guides were hilarious the entire time and definitely made the trip so much fun. When we got back to Gilligan’s we were all sore and tired so we hung out for a little and went to bed because we were going to have another fun filled day on the ocean tomorrow.

Cairns

      Friday the group woke up really early to get our stuff together and leave the Tiffany. We go to the group check-in at the airport and then waited to get on our plane to Cairns. After a three hour flight we landed in beautiful area with a tiny airport. Reynold got us a coach bus which was an upgrade from our usual travel bus, and we were off to Gilligan’s. The town of Cairns is surrounded by gorgeous mountains (where it rains very often) and beautiful beaches. The town is not very big but has all of the amenities expected at a tourist town. Upon arrival to Gilligan’s we were all very excited because attached to our hostel was Gilligan’s club. We all went on a tour of the town and found out different restaurants that were recommended and where the beach was. Right when we got back to Gilligan’s we all grabbed our suits and headed to the pool. We played a fun game of pool volley ball which was a blast until the clouds thickened and it looked like it was going to rain. Liz & I went up to our room to take a nap before dinner. For dinner we went to the Greek restaurant down the street and got lamb gyros which were AMAZING, followed by some cookie dough gelato. We all decided that we would go to the club later on and check out the scene but not stay out too late because we had to be up early for rafting the next day. Gilligan’s has this huge outdoor bar area which the other night had a live band playing. They also have a huge inside area with a bar, stage, and places to sit if need be. There were tons of people everywhere and the group had a great time with the 2-4-1 drink special that they had, until we all headed to bed.

Last days in Sydney

Yesterday we had a group meeting which was terrible because we had to work on our group projects. Later in the day when we all needed a break and wanted to get dinner we went to famous Harry's Pies near the wharf. Then we all craved chocolate so we walked all the way to Wynard to go to a chocolate bar. It was incredibly worth the long walk! I got chocolate covered strawberries. Once finished we took the train home and worked on our presentations some more.

Today we had our final presentation today FINALLY! Tourism group rocked :) After all the groups presented we all headed out for lunch down the street from our apartments. Jen & I went shopping at the mall for a while but then we got tired and went back to take naps. Tonight we had the dinner cruise for the ending of our J-term class ( which we all passed yay!). The ship was gorgeous, we had our own private room and deck. Dinner was salmon which was delicious & Jen, Katryn and I split a bottle of wine :). The harbor is just as beautiful at night as during the day, and the sights were amazing. We all had a blast talking about our trip so far and how much fun we are going to have in Cairns. Nesiba and Shelly made up awards for all of us, I won constantly singing or something like that. It was a great end to a wonderful couple of weeks in Sydney.

Macquarie's Chair Handout

This is my site report on Macquarie's Chair.

Blog #11: Australia in the World Economy, University of Sydney

Today, we took the train to the other side of the University of Sydney and walked into campus on that side. We met Professor Geoff Dow who talked to us about the limits and the possibilities of politics in the contemporary world. He showed us many different graphs of variables that compare Australia to the world. One of the graphs that I thought was extremely interesting was The Wealth of Nations. Wealth is something that is accumulated over time, not income which is wages, rent, and interest.  The top three countries are Norway, Luxembourg, and the USA. Australia ranks 7^th on the list. This is interesting because Professor Dow then goes on to compare that to GDP per capita in 2010 and the Human development index 2010 ( a United Nations program that includes longevity, infant mortality, education and GDP per capita). GDP per capita shows Norway, Singapore, USA, Netherlands, Canada and Australia as the top 6 countries. But when compared to the HDI Norway, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Netherlands, and Canada are the top 7. This shows that even though a country, like Singapore for example, has high GDP it is lacking in other areas like education, longevity, etc. as shown in the HDI where it ranks last. It is important to look at these graphs to see all of the different areas a country can be ranked and what is included in each.

Professor Dow also talked a lot about unemployment as a major variable to compare Australia to the world. He shows multiple graphs that show its unemployment against the rest of the world before the financial crisis and during. One of his graphs show unemployment from 1974 to 2004 and has Australia at 6.6% the OECD at 6.4 (which is Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development which is somewhat of an average) and the United States at 6.2%. Then another graph shows unemployment in 2009. The USA is at 9.3% the OECD is 8.3%, and Australia is at 5.6%. Dow presents this information and says that the reason for this is because of the mining boom hitting Australia when it did. Unemployment is interesting to look at because recent events in the Global Financial Crisis have impacted so many countries and these numbers show how Australia has been hit less than others. Unemployment is important to look at because it shows people without jobs that have been looking for a considerable amount of time which is a sign of economic stability.

 

Another variable that Dow talked about that I thought was interesting was the average annual hours worked per person in 2009. Korea was at the top of the list with 2256, Greece is second with 2119 and then USA is 8^th with 1802 hours. Australia is 1690 which is about 100 less hours than the United States. This is interesting because Norway, which was at the top of the Human Development Index talked about earlier, is near the bottom of the list with 1407 average hours worked per person. This is important to look at especially when comparing it to the GDP graphs mentioned above. Norway shows us how even though they don’t work as much as some other countries they still have high HDI and GDP.

We also heard the enthusiastic Frank Stilwell speak about Australia as the "Lucky Country". He talked about why Australia has been lucky in economic times including the Australia is close to Asia which is experiencing major growth especially in China who is buying Australia's natural resources, efficient government policies to get consumer spending up, and continuing population growth. He talked about some problems with this like the imbalance of economic, social, and ecological sectors. 

Something that was talked about earlier in the course when Jones spoke (Blog #6) was performance of Australia since WWII.   Jones also did a great job providing an overview of Australia’s macroeconomic performance since WWII. In the 1950’s Australia boomed with agriculture expansion and manufacturing development such as autos and petrochemicals. The 1960’s began a massive resource boom exported to mostly Japan. This boom was followed by a general economic crisis in the mid 1970’s.  In the 1990’s there is another resource boom mostly to China.  These events changed Australia’s GDP, unemployment, inflation and external balance greatly. Currently, Australia’s GDP and inflation has rose 3% in the past year. The external balance on current accounts in Australia has been negative which means that the imports have been greater than the exports. Today Australia’s primary trade and finance partners include China, Japan, Korea, India, and the United States.