Morning: During the volunteer portion, our days usually began around 7 AM. Throughout the whole 2 weeks, we rotated duties like cooking and cleaning for different meals, so two people would make breakfast. It was normally somewhat cold outside. We would eat together, and depending on how long we would be out/what are our activities were for the day, we would pack some sandwiches and fruit for lunch. Then we would pile out in the troopie (our vehicle), and head out! Oh, and I can't forget to mention walking outside and seeing kangaroos hopping freely about in the mornings!
We'd usually end up working for a few hours before we took a break for "tea time", usually just a light snack. Work consisted of planting, pulling weeds, taking down or building fences, monitoring species, etc. Every task no matter how dull sounding was so much fun with all of us together. Often times we would play music while we worked, or had one of our volunteers narrating with a video camera.
Afternoon: After tea time, we would keep working, sometimes switching up tasks or breaking up into different groups so we all had a chance to work with each other. We would continue working again until about 4 or 5 PM when the sun typically starts to set in Australia.
During the peak of the afternoon, it would get quite hot despite the cold morning temperature. It was quite funny to see us all bundled up in the morning; then shedding our layers as we worked, and gradually putting them back on again before we left! We would usually eat lunch at our work site, as we had it packed from earlier. Shortly after we would finish up our work for the day and head back home. Whoever's turn it was to cook dinner would start and the rest of us would usually make a fire in the firepit, play any games that we had brought, or write in our journals.
Evening: After dinner and cleaning, we would have our fun! Evenings were ours to basically do whatever we wanted. We watched movies, and even made our own spoof of a horror movie with our video camera one night. On our two free nights we usually went out somewhere close by.
Since we were in the outback there weren't many places around us, most nights we would drive out and go spotlighting, where we would try to find kangaroos in the night. Other times, we'd find a cool spot to watch the sunset, do some rock climbing, or we'd drive out to the nearest town (about 60 miles out) and go to a local pub. By the time we were done, we were usually exhausted and ready to sleep!
Highlights: I don't know if I can pick just one moment that I loved the most from my volunteer experience. The highlight of this portion of the trip was definitely the friendships I made. Being with the same 8 people for 2 weeks, we bonded a lot. We all gave each other nicknames, made so many homemade movies, inside jokes, and made all of our volunteer tasks seem like fun vs. work. It was really hard to say goodbye to our project leader as well as Ryan, a local who worked on the land and spent almost all of his time those two weeks with us. The night before we left we had a goodbye party, complete with a Tim-Tam cake. (Tim-tams are the best Australian chocolate wafers ever!)
The highlight of my adventure tour experience had to be some of the activities we did and cultures we experienced. I will never forget bungee jumping in Cairns, scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, white water rafting down the Tully River, or surfing in Byron Bay!!