File Under: Things You Absolutely Must Do
I’ve spent the last week—and will spend the next one as well—on Lizard Island, volunteering at the Research Station, and despite the fact that there’s been more rain than usual I feel 100% confident in saying that this is something that everyone should try to take a few weeks of their life to do. If you look up “Paradise” in the dictionary, you ought to find a picture of this place: palm trees, brilliant white sand beaches, azure water, world-class reefs waiting to be snorkeled just off shore. On the other side of the island, a few short kilometers away, is a $1600/night luxury resort, but as a volunteer at the station I pay nothing but the cost of a plane ticket and the food I had delivered by barge before I arrived. So, for my volunteer efforts I’m essentially recieving a $25,000 vacation for free! Given that I’m not paying a cent, and that this is just a research station, not a resort, I expected fairly meager accomodations, outhouses, communal showers, threadbare sheets over practically nonexistent mattreses in dank bug-ridden old bunkhouses, you get the idea. Imagine my surprise when I found I had a bright, clean room all to myself (eventually with one roommate, a very cool dude named Tane), in a cozy little house with an awesome covered veranda, a well-appointed kitchen, and all kinds of amenities in the main building, like cheap Internet access, an air-conditioned library and free laundry. Don’t get me wrong, nothing here is the absolute pinnacle of luxury, but basically to stay at the resort for the same amount of time, I’d be paying $25,000 for someone to cook fore and an air-conditioned room. I’m perfectly happy to scramble my own eggs and sleep with a ceiling fan on for that kind of money; even now, at the tail end of summer, it’s never too hot to sleep as long as the fan is running. I do have to work a bit to earn my keep, but we’re talking about 4 hours per day of mostly either cleaning walls/windows or helping move stuff around the workshop. Sometimes I might have to work an full 8-hour day, but only because I’m taking the next day off to hik up to Cook’s Look (where the famous captain reputedly spotted a clear way out through the outter barrier reef) or taking a short boat ride to do some more snorkelling on yet another world class reef. The work always flys by and then it’s just another day in paradise. It also doesn’t hurt that the people here are great. Anne & Lyle, the station directors, are nice although they do mostly keep a bit ofmprofessional distance from the researchers and volunteers; Bob & Tania Lamb, the couple in charge of maintainence for 6 months of the year—and essentially my bosses—are just about the nicest, funnest people you could ever hope to play a marimba with (Bob built a huge marimba and brings it down to the beach for the weekly BBQ or invites people up to their house for Marimba parties, often getting 5 people playing at once), they’re the greatest bosses ever. Then there’s also the researchers, an ever-shifting diverse mix of people from acrossthe globe; researchers stay anywhere from a few weeks to a few months and from what I’ve heard, most come back several times; like nationality, ages vary, but most tend to be in their mid-20s to -30s and all are conducting research of e sort that pertains to the reef or life found in/on/around it. If I were single, I’d probably also comment on the extremely favorable ratio of women to men, as well as te fact that most of the women spend all day running around in little more than their swim attire, but as a devoted boyfriend with eyes for no one but Alissa, I’m sure I wouldn’t have anything to say about that. There’s a lot of work to be done here, particularly by the researchers, but that doesn’t prevent a generally festive atmosphere, and indeed, in the case of the weekly BYOE (bring your own everything but the grill) beach BBQ, B & T’s marimba sessions, and our frequent impromptu dinner parties, lots of festivities. The only real downside I can think of is the need to deal with the occasional over-sized Huntsman spider or other exotic insect, but nothing is really more harmful than your garden-variety centipede and the bedrooms tend to be well sealed from insects and impeccably maintained by Tania and volunteers like me, so everyone without an absolutely crippling case of arachnophobia should be fine. I’ll post some more specific stories and photos when I can, but for now the message I want to convey is this: get your butt over to the Lizard Island Research Station as fast as you can, you won’t regret it.
