By Abby Webster

I’m Abby – a 3rd-year PhD student at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF). I traded gloomy Syracuse, NY for sunny Lismore, NSW, Australia and already know my 8 weeks will go by way too quickly. My exchange takes place at Southern Cross University’s Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry, where I’m doing a 15N-N2 tracer experiment to quantify benthic N2-fixation.

I had roughly 8 months from when I learned I’d be heading to Australia for research to the time that I actually got here. You would think that’d be plenty of time to prepare and to pack, but everyone procrastinates a little bit. Naturally, I was still packing my bags and checking their weight a few hours before my first flight left. I’d like to take a moment here to thank whoever invented packing cubes. They’re non-negotiable, and I don’t know why I haven’t used them before. Such a simple concept but so effective. My other very satisfying realization while packing – 15 mL vials fit inside 50 mL centrifuge tubes. Not sure why that felt like the biggest win when making things fit, but you can thank me later.

A few days, 4 airports, and 20+ hours of flight time later (across all three of my flights, don’t worry), I arrived on a Monday at 5:00am. My flight left LAX on Saturday night, so with the time change, I just skipped over the Sunday. First impressions – Aussie slang is fun, I’m keen on it. It’s normal to be barefoot outside or in the grocery store; my peers from ESF will appreciate that. And everyone is so nice here. Even the customs folks were careful not to totally rip apart a lavender sachet my grandmother sewed for me that I had to declare; Australia is (for good reason) very protective of what goods come into the country. I couldn’t help but think if it were the US, I probably wouldn’t have been walking away with the quilting still intact.