Our First Week

We have finally made it to Australia!  The weather over here has been wonderful and the people have been even better.  On Wednesday our team got the opportunity to tour CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Reseach Organization) located in Brisbane.  CSIRO is Australia's national science agency and is a multidisciplinary scientific research organization for Australia.  They have just moved into a brand new state of the art complex equipped with the latest technology for field and laboratory applications.  CSIRO even employs an onsite fabricator and facility that can build or modify anything needed for field work as well as repair all equipment.  After our tour, the team had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Rodrigo Bustamante of CSIRO and talk about Australia's fisheries management.  We then drove to Melany and stopped along the way to view the Glass House mountains which were absolutely beautiful.  Our next stop was Maleny Farmhouse Macadamia, the oldest and largest macadamia plantation in Australia with over 20,000 macadamia trees.  We finished our day with the Melany Rotary Club at Tranquill Park overlooking the Glass House mountains - couldn't ask for a better start to our trip.