Went for volunteering at Iramoo grassland yesterday. The grassland is right next to Victoria University but I don't know what's that area called. A lecturer from that university, is carrying out a research project on striped legless lizards.

It's just the beginning of the project. So we only did tiles laying. The purpose is to attract the lizards to the tiles when the weather starts to warm up. For your information, lizards are ectotherms. They rely on external heat source to warm their body. Tiles get hot easily, so the lizards will settle under the tiles to stay warm.

The tiles were so heavy!! I can carry only 3 tiles at a time. I've tried carrying 4, but thought that better stick to 3. @@" Plus, we had to walk quite a distance to lay out the tiles. The next half of the day, I reduced to 2 tiles at a time. My arms were already half dead. x.x

I didn't want to wear the beanie at first, but it was a super windy day and my hair kept flying everywhere. Grr... The wind was so strong. I so heavy also had to step backwards when blew by the wind. Xi Inn and Shean, you all sure can fly off already lah. Haha.

Besides laying tiles, there's another job which was to paint numbers on the tiles. We took turns to paint the tiles. Sounded not hard, but it can be physically tiring when I was doing it. The routine went like this: squat down, paint, stand up, walk 5 meters, squat down, paint, stand up, walk 5 meters, squat down, paint and so on. I've painted 100 tiles which means 100 times of that routine. Pengsan... However, I still rather painting than carrying tiles.
Caroline, Ada, Shannon, Dr Meghan and me. I looked extra fat in the picture. That's why I hate wearing 3 layers. >=( Dr Meghan can carry 5 tiles at a time! I so memalukan... >.<"
There would have been more people if they didn't confuse us by changing the dates. Anyway, 5 of us managed to lay 250 tiles. Thought of coming again today for more tiles laying, but my arms didn't allow me to. Didn't even have the strength to open the peanut butter lid after I came back. @@
This is the first part of this project, there are more coming up. I have a training day next month. Dr Meghan will show us how to do the lizard survey and monitoring and also how to differentiate between striped legless lizards and brown snakes. The lizards are still under the ground at the moment, but will come out when spring approaches. Yay!! Can see the lizards!! =D