Marina's Magellan Projects

The unpredictability of wifi during this trip made it very hard for me to post every day, in order for the dates on my posts to actually be correct. I am very sorry about that, I hope they still make sense and appear in some kind of order!

Today has absolutely nothing to do with my Magellan, and I am fine with that because I leave Australia tomorrow! I went scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns and it was incredibly exciting. I honestly don't even have words for how special the experience was, everything looks so different 20 feet underwater, it is so much more colorful!

Today, I had the chance to meet with two aboriginal/indigenous Australians who work on the Aboriginal Health Council. Whereas the national smoking rate for all Australians is around 12%, that rate is very different for smaller groups, including the aboriginal Australians. Their rate is 35% , and 49% for pregnant aboriginal women. That means half of pregnant aboriginal women smoke. What I learned in this interview is that the main reason for the high rates is mostly due to the culture of indigenous peoples. Tobacco was used as a form of payment in the 1900's, so that has resonated with the elders, and they don't see their lives without it. They also have their own forms of tobacco, which are purely herbal, meaning there are no added chemicals that we see in mass-produced cigarette brands. These herbal tobacco cigarettes were used to heal the body, so they believe that this outweighs any long term detrimental affects. As for the rate for pregnant women; they smoke because it le...

On Friday night/Saturday I basically had a day of travel once again. My flight out of Perth was delayed 2 hours, so at 2am I flew from Perth back to Sydney, and then had a 7 hour layover before my flight to Cairns. So it was a long day to say the least. But, when I made it to my hostel Saturday night, the room I was given made all the travel worth it. This hostel was a great way to end the trip, as my room was gigantic, clean, and was the only room that had French doors which opened onto a porch. I spent Sunday doing very touristy things like cuddling with a Koala, because it is only legal in the state of Queensland, which is where Cairns is located. I walked along the coast line, and saw the Cairns Lagoon. You would think because this is the city where the boat trips to the Great Barrier Reef depart from that it would be a beautiful resort town with white sandy beaches and beautiful scenery. It is the opposite, actually. There is not one real beach in Cairns City, because that is wher...

Today is my last day in Perth! This week at the Heart Foundation flew by. It was so packed with meetings and information, it almost felt like I had a job here! Today, Noni, the woman who I met with on Monday, is taking me to Curtin University, which is one of the biggest Universities in Western Australia and is completely smoke-free. This campus turned out to be W&J's polar opposite. Obviously it is about 10x the size, so that was very different to experience, and most students don't even live on campus. This is actually what most Australian Universities look like, actually, most students commute from an apartment or home, and most campuses are smoke free. I had the chance to speak with a faculty member who told me that the campus went completely smoke-free around 5 years ago, and it wasn't a huge chance for them. It was pretty much unacceptable to be non-smoke-free, so when they officially made the change, it was just accepted across the student population as common pr...

Wednesday was spent mostly reading through all of the packets of resources that they have given me here, nothing too newsworthy to write an entire post about. It has been really nice having a desk and large computer to work with to spread out all of the papers in front of me as well as having word documents open in front of me for my notes and ideas. As for today, Thursday, I had two really great meetings. The first was with a woman named Fiona Phillips from Cancer Council of Western Australia's " Make Smoking History " campaign. They are a non-governmental organization (NGO) who employ a range of strategies to combat tobacco use. They focus on four main areas; mass media advertisements (3-4 per year to target adults 18+), policy advocating, education & research, and community service programs (cessation support). The original campaign was called "Quit WA" and was run by the Western Australian Government until 2000, when it was handed over to the Cancer Cou...