Leeches, Bananas, and Brains: 2008 ASSAB Conference at Coffs Harbour

I spent this weekend at a conference in Coffs Harbour, which is an hour or two's drive south of the Queensland border. It was for the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour, and not only did I deliver my first conference paper (the required BoZo graduate student conference doesn’t count), but it was also my first trip, anywhere, by myself. I was the only person from the School of Botany and Zoology to go, so I booked everything myself and put myself up in a hostel ~2k from the resort where the conference was held. There were about 8 people from the Research School of Biological Science (RSBS, a part of the ANU), and I recognised a few of them, so I suppose I wasn’t totally by myself...

It was a bit awkward for me trying to mingle with other conference-goers (I really suck at trying to think up things to say to people, even if I find the person really interesting), but luckily it was really small—only about 90 people—so I was able to meet quite a few people and get to know several of them. Mingling is definitely the hardest part for me, but I suppose I need to get accustomed to this fine skill if I want to continue going to conferences and meeting like-minded peolpe.

I think I was the only person to stay at a hostel (some people stayed at a nearby campervan park, but most seemed to stay at the extremely posh resort where the conference was held—including the RSBS guys, who were set up real nice through their supervisor). The hostel was alright; the best thing being it was really slow so I had an entire 6 bed dorm to myself for both nights. But the worst thing was the walk to the resort, which was along the main highway, and half of it had no walking path so I had to go along the narrow shoulder. The one good thing about this, however, was that it passed the famous Big Banana. Not nearly as big as the Big Merino, but still pretty cool.

Views from the highway: Overlooking Coffs Harbour and the Big Banana

The first night I was there, Thursday, was the film night. They invited the Australian film director Jan Aldenhoven to talk about her work and contributions to many BBC and ABC series, including The Life of Birds, the Life of Mammals, the Private Life of Plants, etc. She began to show her film, Kangaroo; Faces in the Mob, but unfortunately the girl who offered me a ride back to the hostel had to leave early so I missed the second half. Seth and I don’t watch much TV or see many movies, but we love watching BBC documentaries, which made Jan’s talk one of the highlights of the trip.

The beach next to the resort

Friday morning was the ASSAB bird-watching tour which took us through some bushland near the neighbouring town of Sawtell. I didn’t bring my binoculars, which was really annoying, but we had two guides to point all the birds out to us. It felt strange being in a large group, about 15 people, but it was only just for fun--I wasn’t out to hunt for nests!

Birdwatching tour at Sawtell

We returned to the conference, I slept through a bunch of talks, and after lunch in the nearby shopping centre I managed to sneak away for a few hours to go for a walk to the beach. I had wanted to check out the city centre but it would have been too far. I hadn’t gotten much sleep and was going to head back to the hostel for a nap but decided an afternoon run would be a better use of time. At the start of the run I had to dodge lots of traffic and try to navigate poorly marked paths, but eventually found the Coffs Creek Walk, which was surprisingly marshy and wooded for being in the middle of town.

The beach near the hostel

Coffs Creek Walk

After dinner at the hostel I walked back to the resort, but this time I took the much longer, yet much prettier side roads through a residential neighbourhood.

The neighbourhood behind the resort

The evening ASSAB activity was a trip to Muttonbird Island, a small island (probably less than 1k long) right off the coast, accessible via a footpath from the jetty. The island is unique for being a breeding site for wedge-tailed shearwaters. The adults fly out to sea during the day to feed and when they return an hour or two after sunset they find their burrows. The adults and chicks make a ‘haunting’ call back and forth to each other, and when all the birds come in at night the island is full of these strange and spooky sounds. For some reason, it did not happen that night. It was a dud. We only heard one set of birds making this sound, but at least we got an idea of what it was supposed to be like.

Saturday morning I checked out of the hostel and Sam (from RSBS) picked me up so we could go to the nearby Bruxner Park (next to Ulidara National Park) for a run. I first met Sam at the ASSAB conference last year (which was held at the ANU) after recognising him as a Division 1 runner for B&G's IB team. Since then, I bumped into him on numerous occasions around campus.

We drove up a big hill and passed some very cool banana and avocado plantations, parked the car, and ran to a lookout then tried to follow a path through rainforest. It somehow ended so we eventually found ourselves running along the main road back to the car. It was a crappy run, but it went through some pretty cool areas.

From the lookout at Bruxner Park: banana plantations!

Sam trying to find the trail

Vincent tree

We stopped for a stretch and after a minute I heard Sam say ‘hey, I have a leech on my shoe’. I could feel my heart skip a beat, and I quickly looked at my own shoes—sure enough, they were covered in leeches! I could see them sliding through the ventilation in the sides, so I pulled the shoes off, then noticed there were a few on my socks, so I ripped those off, too. How gross! Sam later found one had attached to his ankle, but being a smoker he had a lighter on hand to rid himself of it :P The only thing that made me feel better was stopping on the way back down the hill to pick up a bag of bananas and a bag of avocados, which the farmers sell from the side of the road.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at the conference, trying to set aside my nervousness to listen to talks. One of my favourite presentations was given by the conference organiser, Gisela Kaplan, about her tedious 10 year study on communication in the very shy tawny frogmouth. She is certainly a great example of devotion to research!

My talk was in the afternoon, and went about as well as can be expected—no major mistakes or fumbles, but probably also not extremely elegant. I did, however, answer my questions at the end fairly well, I think.

I only had 20 minutes after my presentation to talk with people before I had to leave for the airport, which was a bit of a shame. I think I was one of the last people to arrive at the conference and one of the first to leave—I missed the big dinner on the jetty and also the Sunday morning talks. I would have liked to stay longer, but the flight scheduling worked best this way.

I got a ride to the airport with some people from RSBS, hopped on the plane to Sydney (the only time they checked my identification was when I got my ticket—talk about security!), took the midnight bus to Canberra, and finally hitched a ride back to my house with a crazy Asian Christian businessman dude from Qeanbeyan that was really nice but totally freaked me out. I am glad to be back.