Sunday, January 20, 2013

heading north...again



I've been back in the office only three days and I'm once again heading off...this time to Townsville. I'll be going up with a couple of my grad students for fieldwork. I haven't been up there since my own PhD days and I must say I'm kinda looking forward to it – even though Townsville isn't quite as lush or glamorous as Cairns. I'll still have to keep a look out for crocodiles though...but fortunately the areas where we will be going are only meant to be inhabited by freshwater crocs which, unlike the salties, are not known to consume humans. I am more worried about bumping into red necks (in the course of my research, I've been subject to more xenophobic comments in North Queensland than anywhere else in the world). On the plus side, I'm looking forward to spending some free time gorging on ice cream at Frosty Mango.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just to warm you up, so where to you really come from? It is not only xenophobia in FNQ. Townsville had a very bad reputation for homophobia and in Cairns I saw the house where staff from the gay resort Turtle Cove lived, pockmarked with holes where rocks and stones had been thrown at it.