The Bulldogs are Cheating

AA: Back Sydneyside…

15 May 2011
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I spent my extra day in Cairns heading up to Kuranda on the cheapo bus, one of the few towns I’d missed on my Atherton Tablelands loop. I had a few specific reasons for wanting to head up there, but it turned out to be rather disappointing. Basically a small touristy town with nothing but giftshops and eateries. The vaunted “markets” turned out to be 60% generic flea market/crafting stuff that you can see anywhere in Canada too and 40% “Australian souvenirs” probably churned out by the same Indonesian sweatshops as the souvenirs seen in the asian-y markets in Cairns or Sydney or wherever. The aboriginal art in the gallery type places was definitely much better, though most was well beyond my price range. I bought myself a small painting as a souvenir of the trip though, so it wasn’t all wasted. One of the parts that did live up to the billing was a meat pie I had from Annabel’s as recommended by a guy at the hostel. Absolutely delicious Steak, Egg, Bacon and Cheese pie inside melt in your mouth pastry, talk about a fantastic lunch for $4.50. Overall though it didn’t really feel worth my time to head up there and I actually only stayed a few hours, not waiting for the later bus like I’d originally planned. I can’t help but feel that if I was a bit disappointed after paying $10 round trip for my bus ride, the people who’d spent the $65 or more on the scenic railway probably felt worse. The scenery from the bus had been pretty, but not as good as my tour with the rental car previously. Once back in Cairns I used the net for a bit while people in Canada were still awake, then walked down to the esplanade and had a swim in the lagoon as the sun set. I had actually planned to go to see a movie at the mall near the hostel on the way back, but I’d completely forgotten it was Friday night. The teenaged hordes had descended so I headed to coles instead, grabbed the fixings for some pasta and headed back to the hostel with a bottle of wine.

The next morning it was time to repack everything nice and tightly for my first plane journey in a while, I haven’t bought much but as with any trip things seem to slowly start to take up more and more space. I think the effect is worse when you’re backpacking. I had purposely left a bit of souvenir space in my original packing though so eventually I got everything bundled up and ready to go. My flight wasn’t until 6 though so I still had some time to kill. I was so incredibly tempted to do another day’s diving trip actually but I figured it would be tempting fate to assume I’d be back exactly on schedule on a dive tour, since it would only leave me about 1:10 to get to the airport. Instead I just did a long walk around town, had an ice cream and lunch down on the esplanade, then came back to the hostel and sat in a lounge chair by the pool reading a book until my airport shuttle came. I managed to just sneak under the lower bag weight limit for Virgin Australia and boarding my plane around 6. I found it very interesting that (for this route at least) VA boards its planes from the front and rear. For a 737-700 they boarded the first 10 rows from the front door via a jetway, everyone in the back rows had to cross the tarmac and go up the stairs. Adding to the weirdness was the fact that at no point in the check in or boarding process was I required to show ID, something that seems to happen back home endlessly even for domestic flights.

Sydney was actually chilly. Even to my Winnipeg blood it felt a little cold after being in the tropics for weeks. Of course the Sydneysiders have been gradually dropping in temp so they have no excuse, yet I saw tons of people who were obviously locals wearing wool hats and wintery looking coats despite it still being +10 and just a bit breezy. I laughed more than a few times as I hopped the train into the city. While out the day before I’d used my bond rebate from the rental car and pre-booked the YHA harbour in Sydney for 4 nights after hearing how great it was. As those that have travelled with me know I memorize the basic layout of a city pretty quickly and it takes a long time for me to forget so I got to the hostel via train without consulting a map at all. I was definitely a little weary after lugging my bag up the stairs in The Rocks though. The hostel itself was very bizarre. You walk into a small ground floor alcove surrounded by glass. Through the glass is old stone and what looks like foundations, I’d been forewarned so I knew it was actually an archaeological dig site that the hostel sits over. The rooms on the ground floor are actually accessed via the first floor for both security and to keep the dig site fully accessible. It does make the hostel a bit cold at times though as the two wings are built around courtyards that are open to the dig site at the bottom. Most of the dig site is only fenced so the wind rushes in and upward, something that I imagine is great in the summer but causes a few goosebumps for people headed to breakfast now. Only the central area with kitchen, reception and internet kiosks is actually a contained building.

Once in the lobby I checked in, only half paying attention to what the girl was saying as I realized the guy next to me was being checked in to the same dorm. Being the sneaky bastard that I am I rushed her through the rest of her spiel and managed to get away from the desk first and sure enough, there was only one person in the room so there was a bottom bunk still in play. I snagged it about a minute before the other guy arrived none the wiser. Since I’ll be here a few days I actually unpacked a bit then went upstairs for the real reason I wanted to try this place out. It was about to close for the night out of respect for the neighbours, but I headed out onto the rooftop terrace for a quick sec regardless. Laid out before me was the Opera House, softly lit in white with the Harbour Bridge sparkling on my left. Can’t really beat that view for $40 a night.

The next morning I figured I’d do a proper beach tour since even though it was a bit chilly it was much sunnier than my last visit out to the beaches. I hopped the bus over to North Bondi and walked all the way south on the coast to Coogee. Along the way I sat and watched the waves for a bit at a few spots and even spent some time playing around with the tiny crabs crawling on the rocks south of Bronte. As before I’m jealous of these gorgeous beaches so close to the city center. With a bus (or ferry) ride equivalent to taking a ride from downtown to the U of M you have gorgeous wide open beaches with nice sand and decent to great surfing. As a result they’re mega packed during the summer of course, but even today the water was decent (though I didn’t do more than paddle my feet as swimming flags weren’t up at most beaches.) 

It was Sunday afternoon here so there were still a fair number of people at the parks along the coast as well, including a number of kids sports leagues. I sat and watched a rugby game involving 12-ish year old players. That age makes for some interesting rugby as you see some kid break and absolutely acrobatic and amazing move to dodge three opposing players, get completely free to go for the try, then give in to pubescent awkwardness and trip over a blade of grass. Even at that age though it’s a rough game and I was surprised to see only 2 or 3 kids whose parents had made them wear the special school helmet things. I remain fairly mystified by Aussie Rules Football though as the one game I saw in progress ended 5 minutes after I got there. Once down in Coogee I treated myself to a nice Thai lunch then walked back along the same route, finally catching a bus back from Bondi and arriving back at Circular Quay as the sun was setting. After a quick shower and a not so quick nap, I didn’t feel like much for dinner and hadn’t been to the grocery store yet so I skipped on the quite pricey restaurants down in the rocks and just got a semi-healthy chicken wrap at Maccas. I’m told the pub next door to the hostel is nice though and has $10 steak Monday night so I might treat myself after my blue mountains tour tomorrow.

It’s obvious from my updates but the trip is definitely winding down. It’s been a fantastic trip that I’ll never forget and I’ll certainly be back to both Australia and New Zealand. Regardless I’m a little burnt out and looking forward to my own bed, seeing friends and giving my dogs a big hug as I recharge for the next trip. As I write this I’m sitting up on the rooftop terrace watching the ferries pull in and out next to the opera house. It’s still a bit on the cool side so I’m alone except for the occasional smoker. I think it’s time to head into the TV room or see if anyone’s playing a game of uno or something though as they’ll be locking the terrace soon and I don’t want them to not see me and leave me out here all night.

AA: Don’t go chasing waterfalls.

13 May 2011
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Coming down off Cape Tribulation I was finally set up with money again and was able to do the croc cruise on the Daintree river. I’d lingered a bit over my free breakfast in the bistro and that combined with a very slow cement mixer coming down the winding roads meant I wasn’t on the cable ferry across until 9:30 when the tour started. I decided I still wanted to do it as it had been recommended and was a good deal so I went to register for the 11:00 even though it would minimize the time I had to spend on the tablelands later in the day. Thankfully when I said it was just me she told me I could make it but I’d have to run then called the boat to get them to wait a couple minutes.

I’m glad I made the effort. The river itself was gorgeous, dark and mysterious looking even in bright sunlight. It a very African Queen vibe to it despite the sun and when we passed through a narrow passage between the riverbank and a large island it was easy to imagine spears suddenly flying from unfriendly natives in the jungle. The banks themselves were mostly mangroves of the saltwater variety since even that far up the river there was a 2 meter tide from the ocean. As a result the whole area is happy times for crocodiles.

Our first encounter was with a small (by the guide’s standards anyway) female that he estimated was about 30 years old. She’s apparently very reliably sunning herself in one of two nearby places so they always start the trip with her. She was quite clearly visible, laying there and slowly opening and closing her mouth to control temperature. Just as we were about to head out she flopped closer to the water in preparation to go for a swim and gave us a few nice photos. The guide himself was the owner of the business, a fantastically knowledgeable guy who’s been working the river for 30 something years. Every time we’d hear a birdcall or see a new type of bird or plant he’d give us the name and some pertinent details. He also had a fantastic eye for spotting the camouflaged napping crocs, usually having to point out repeatedly to the rest of us where they were in the distance. After the female we stumbled across a smaller juvenile just scampering out of the water after a swim. We got a chance to see how they moved as the croc went to hide at the high tide mark, still a bit small to survive a serious challenge from a real bull. Our next step down the croc size ladder was a true youngster. Slim and about 2 feet long, the roughly 16 month old specimen looked like something one might see in a tropical aquarium but was in fact a croc keeping a wary eye on us. They’re very vulnerable until they get bigger, often eaten by other young crocs, the big ones and the occasional bull shark that hunts in the river as well. The last and best sight for us was Nelson the one armed (of course) bull croc at about 4 meters in length. He was truly massive, laying across the bank and clearly watching every one of us as the boat edged in. I was already pretty convinced that meeting one of these while swimming or walking near water was a bad thing, seeing one from 10 meters away was just a little extra reinforcement of how primeval looking and scary they are. Fascinating, but scary.

I’d named my car Gertie because at first I was told it was a Hyundai Getz and for some reason Gertie the Getz popped into my head. Turns out it’s the new version called the i30, but Gertie stuck. She’s tiny, white and has about as much power as a modern lawn tractor but she’s given me a bit of independence in discovering some of the other neat things around Cairns. Next up was the Atherton Tablelands, a massive plateau just in from the coast. It’s basically a series of small towns, waterfalls and great views of a more rugged Australia in one direction and rolling hills out to the sea in the other. Gertie struggled to get up the winding switchback road, but once up there we cruised together and saw the sights. After a quick stop at a tourist office I set myself up with an itinerary of hikes and waterfalls and the like that would hopefully get me down off the mount shortly before dark and back in Cairns in time to get a bed and do some planning for the last few days of the trip.  My first stop was Mount Hypipamee National Park to see a large volcanic gas vent crater and Dinner Falls nearby. I had been told it was a nice hike, which it was but it was only about 15 minutes total to visit both sites. Likewise with the curtain fig, a giant strangler fig that has created a curtain after its host tree fell partially down before the process was complete. I also did a short road circuit called the waterfall trail that stopped at three different sets of falls. In the end I didn’t do any longer hikes, but the sheer volume of shorter ones had my legs (still stiff from using diving muscles) whining a bit.

The road down from the tableland was a lot more fun than the road up since Gertie could handle it a lot better. I really really wish I had my Mazda over here though, it would be a blast on that road. The route down had a much longer section of heavy winding so it was getting quite dark before I pulled back in at my old Cairns hostel. Thankfully they had room so I booked in, grabbed a quickie kebab for dinner then settled in to plan.

Sadly Uluru would likely cost me 1200AUD for a short three day trip. Much as I want to see it, I think that’s money that’s better spent in Europe this summer. Melbourne sadly suffered the same fate which is rather crushing to me, I’d really wanted to check it out as I’ve heard it’s a fantastic city. I think the problem is the current roller coaster in gas prices  ending the really good seat sales over here for a bit. I’ve instead decided that next time I visit Australia I will just start my journey in Melbourne and head west and up to Uluru first before spending any time on the east coast. It’s sad, but I don’t want to be sitting in Prague in August wishing I’d saved that money. Instead I’m going to head back to Sydney and do a couple of the day trips I missed last time.

AA: Great Barrier Reef and Cape Tribulation

12 May 2011
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Leaving Airlie Beach was another early morning. At the bus stop by 7:00AM, with my usual paranoia getting me there more like 6:25. Because I’m starting to run short on time I skipped Townsville and went straight to Cairns, the end of the backpacker highway as it’s often known.  It was a not so lovely 10.5 hour Greyhound ride but thankfully also probably my last coach ride of the trip. The scenery was definitely an improvement for this leg though, lots of gorgeous mountains, Kangaroos and (I think) a freshwater croc spotted from the bus. For an ultra-nerdy reference, I saw a green snake on a sugar cane plant at one of the meal stops. Upon arriving in Cairns I was picked up by a shuttle, checked in and ran over to a supermarket to get some lunch fixings for the next day (and a Kebab for supper.) I’d managed to get a cheap single for the first night then moved to a 3 bed dorm for the next 2. They were even cool with moving my bag over while I was gone the next day which was really appreciated, I heartily recommend the Traveller’s Oasis for anyone who wants to stay a little bit out of the CBD to be able to get a solid night’s sleep.

The next morning was the beginning of my dive course. After a minibus pickup to take me to a place that was only about a five minute walk away, we settled in to the classroom for the first part of the course. My class instructor was a guy named Jack, a Brit who keeps reminding me of John Oliver’s younger more attractive brother. Very similar mannerisms and voice, not helped by the fact that I rewatched a Prof. Duncan heavy episode of Community the night before. I was quite nervous as the day wore on. At first this was mostly because of the medical I’d have to pass. Once upon a time Doctors forbade anyone with Asthma from scuba diving but they’ve done more research in the past few years and as long as you aren’t having attacks or low lung volume you’re fine. Unfortunately I’d heard that Queensland is very strict about these things (and indeed safety for diving in general) so I figured there was a reasonable chance I’d get downchecked and would have wasted a day. Just as we did lunch the med team arrived, two of what I’m guessing were specialists or physicians assistants who took our BP, pulse and lung spirometry for the Doctor that followed. Happily enough I passed, though I’ve lost so much weight on this trip that my balance is terrible at the moment from the changed centre of gravity. It was a big relief, but my true nervousness was to start once we got in the pool.

The smaller half of our classroom group included me and an Italian, a Finn and three French folks so we were assigned to a French pool instructor named Pierre. This was definitely a good move because two of the French people were not the greatest with English so it greatly sped things up for him to be able to repeat once in French for the more complex stuff rather than 4x in English. The first step was just swimming a number of laps in fins, then treading water for ten minutes. Easy. Once we were fully geared up and kneeling underwater in the shallow end my problems began. I was constantly struggling to stay kneeling under the water to see what was going on, my regulator felt foreign in my mouth and rough on my lungs. Each exercise felt worse than the last and I was seriously considering dropping out of the course and taking them up on the end of day 1 refund option. Thankfully right at the end the instructor added a weight to my buoyancy vest’s pockets and I was staying put in the deep part of the pool. That gave me the confidence to stay in the course. By the time the day was over we’d been in the pool a few hours and were all absolutely wrecked. I don’t think I moved from my bed more than twice that night once I settled in, I just watched a movie and fell asleep pretty much right after.

Day two started with pool activities and instantly I felt more at home with the new weight belt. Unfortunately I had new problems with a less well fitting BCD vest, but it wasn’t as much of an issue. It was another strenuous morning though with many of the tasks being to learn emergency skills. Lunchtime was a delicious burger shop then a trip to the dive shop for those of us who wanted to buy masks and fins etc at a reasonable discount. Though obviously they want to make money off us, they also strongly pointed out that having your own gear encourages you continue doing the diving which makes sense. Classroom time followed and we ended the day with the final exam. Proud to say that I finished the exam super quickly and got the first 100% that instructor has seen in all his time teaching the course (a couple years I think,) oddly enough a Dutch girl named Inge got 100% a few minutes later as well. There was a small scale German language course going on simultaneously in the other classroom and I overheard their instructor say to ours that the 3 students had managed 25 mistakes between them. Given there were 50 questions and a 75% was a pass, at least one of them must have cut it very close. Unfortunately at this point we lost our Finnish girl, she never looked comfortable in the water and I think she went back to the doctor to get a second opinion. That night a few of us dragged ourselves over to a place called reef teach, essentially a two hour session with a marine biologist teaching us to properly identify fish and coral types. Very interesting and definitely helped in the water, but dear god I felt like a zombie walking back to the hostel.

The excellent part about this company (besides their tremendous reputation) is that the course includes a three day, two night liveaboard dive trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. Getting up for the boat at 5:30AM was another unpleasant start, but a few of us managed to get a brief nap on the way out to the reef when there wasn’t much to see. Gear setup was the other task, I had to prep my mask then discovered that they hadn’t brought a wetsuit in my size despite me mentioning it at least 4 times. Most of me could fit in the smaller suit, but my shoulders are too broad and keep the top of the chest piece so tight around my lungs that I can’t take a full breath (obviously bad.) Unfortunately this meant that my first dive was going to be in just a stinger protection suit while he tried to get another boat to bring one over, thankfully I found that I was fine in just the stinger suit. Maybe 27c water makes some of these people shiver after a while but when’s the last time Lake Winnipeg hit that temp before you went swimming? Still, I have to admit I was incredibly nervous as we lined up to drop into that green-blue water.

Turns out I had no reason to be, the ocean was 10x more natural feeling than the pool for me. I could move freely, my ears were equalizing properly and I could control my buoyancy much more accurately. We slowly moved down the mooring rope the crushed coral sea bed near a few reef outcroppings. Once on the bottom we ran through a few basic skills before Pierre proved to be an excellent instructor by leaving the other tests for after and taking us for a spin around some of the mounts to see the fish. We saw a number of different damselfish, some Anenomefish (Nemo!), big coral trout, parrot and surgeon fish along with a couple medium sized wrass. The coral itself was beautiful as well, Staghorn, Finger, Plates… all amazingly, though we’ve been told the colours get better as we move on to other dive sites. The absolute highlight of the dive was a stingray though. Just a tiny one, they’re absolutely harmless anyway unless you step on one, or you’re a Steve Irwin level moron and you wrestle them. Before I knew it 30 minutes had passed and we were moving up to the surface to run through some other skills. Pierre was awesome though, I found out later we’d spent 5 more minutes and gone 3-4 metres deeper than the other group. We all particularly enjoyed him picking up a sea cucumber and wearing it as a hat and pretending to play it like an accordion.

Unfortunately my buddy wasn’t feeling great after the dive so I was worried I might need to readjust for dive two, thankfully there was a decent gap before the next drop and he recovered sufficiently. In between dives we got a fantastic lunch (they’ve warned we’ll gain a kilo on this boat from the food) and a debrief on dive 1. Dive 2 was a little less fun since we needed to churn through a couple of the tougher skills including ascending on buddy air supply (simulating ours running out) then going back down and simulating the “oh shit i’m out of air and no one can help me get to the surface now” manoeuvre. We did another quick spin around the coral first, everything was very pretty but the fish situation was nothing new and not as good as the first dive. After we were back on board the boat moved a bit and then the certified divers also on the trip dropped in for another dive on a new reef. For those of us trying to be certified we were done diving for the day, but a few of us went out for a snorkel on this new reef and were blown away. I took along the video camera and  got what I hope are some great shots of coral and a vast array of fish. I was kind of wiped so I turned back, but the other people snorkelling got a brief glimpse of a reef shark. We finished the night off after dinner watching the certified folks do a night dive like the one we were looking forward to the next day. It’s very odd as they all carry flashlights and glowsticks tied to their regulator connection. As they drop into the water they glow a little, but soon they’re down amongst the coral and you can see eerie glows from above water or the occasional bright flash as someone points directly back at the boat. I can’t wait for our chance, especially since they say the second night dive spot is better and the sharks have been getting braver and coming to have a look. The rest of the night was pretty low key, even among those of us who only did two dives. Mostly chatting and sharing a few drinks. I spent quite a bit of time talking to a girl who was basically the more attractive Aussie clone of one of my ex-girlfriends (down to personality… haircut… wardrobe… everything) which was more than a little weird.

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Day two on the boat dawned quite early as the Irish dive supervisor went around yelling out a reveille. I was actually already awake, but it was still an unpleasant wakeup. The plan for the day called for a pre-breakfast dive at 7:30, followed by our last certification dive at 11:00. Dive 3 was the last dive that was really heavy on skills since in addition to the regular stuff we finished off the optional. It was fantastic getting a look at the area I’d snorkelled the night before though from a max depth of 18m. Pierre is definitely a bit more active with his students as we consistently go a couple meters deeper and longer than the other crew of cert course people (though Jack has more of them to wrangle which makes a difference.) We had another great sighting on this dive as well despite being busy testing skills. This one was a lionfish, spines fully extended at the sight of us, absolutely beautiful backlit against the blue green depths. Visibility was in fact excellent everywhere, extending to 20m most of the time. Dive 4 didn’t have anything rare, but it was another deeper dive and our longest yet as we were under for 40 minutes. The added excitement of course is that with dive 4 successfully completed we’re all now PADI certified open water divers and can now dive without the instructor (as we’ll do for the first time roughly 2 hours from when I’m writing this.) Definitely a bit nervewracking, but I personally haven’t really had an “oh god where is the instructor” moment since early in the first dive, and that was only because I got turned around trying to avoid being kicked in the face. Definitely won’t be as deep of a dive either so an emergency ascent becomes much less of an issue. Later on when we go on the night dive we’ll be with an instructor again for the obvious reason, but most of the people in my class are most worried about that one.

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Finally the time arrived, our first dive as certified divers. Andrea and I suited up and spent a little extra time on our buddy checks of each other’s equipment. Soon enough though we were doing our entries off the back platform and slowly sinking down to the reef. There’s a nervousness at that first moment for most people. You sink slowly into the gloom, eyes adjusting to the water filtered sunlight and brain overcoming the hardwired impulses to kick up to the surface so you can breathe. After a few moments your body accepts that there IS air coming in through that regulator and yes let’s flip over and start kicking downwards. I have to admit, this time those feelings were far more intense as up until now we’d had Pierre to focus on, making sure we were all ok then leading us onward. Not only Pierre in fact, but 3 other students as well, this time it was just us buddies if something went wrong. For this dive we had a guide line down to the seabed but after the first few meters Andrea and I kicked off to avoid the congestion of the more timid types and started heading towards the reef.

Visibility on all our dives was pretty great so it didn’t take long for the eyes to get used to the colour and light and begin to pick out fish flitting about (other than the big bunch always up near the boat looking for handouts.) This site turned out to be gorgeous as well and large schools of damselfish and wrass scooted up close to us before veering away as they realized how big we were. This particular site was the edge of a bigger reef with a large number of boumis (free standing clumps of coral, often massive) just off the edge. Fantastically enough, as we swam between several of them I heard a crunching sound faintly and, looking down, spotted a sea turtle chomping away. He was a green turtle, roughly 1m across with his fins fully extended. After a minute I managed to get Andrea’s attention and show it to him, but it took me a few sign language sessions as it was reasonably well camoed against the bottom. It was my first really good close up encounter with one of my favourite animals and I was absolutely dying for a camera. He was completely unphased by our presence and I actually got to within about 6inches of his shell. I honestly could have spend the whole dive watching him ignore me and eat, but I figured Andrea would want to move on. We left it to its dinner and swam on into an area filled with softer corals. The damselfish were particularly great that dive as we saw, blue, lemon, chocolate dip, black and white and many others. Several bumphead parrotfish stalked us at one point before veering off when they saw something tasty to grab, we also saw several boxfish, a big barracuda and a triggerfish. Andrea kept trying to veer off into boumis out in the deep water though, and as a result the extra air we expended kept us from getting to get to some of the other neat sounding areas. We also felt a little lost on the way back to the boat, but had we kept going another minute or so we would have seen the mooring blocks. Not bad for our first dive certified though.

It might have been silly, but I was so hooked on diving already that I couldn’t resist. I signed up for the adventure diver add on course which slightly changed a few of my remaining dives. My night dive was now a certification dive as a night diver, which basically meant that I had to prove I could find a compass bearing underwater. Either way I was going with an instructor, this just meant I got to go with Pierre again and got a temporary new buddy named Jacqueline. Prep for the night dive was rather spirited… Jack sat us all down around the table and described what we would see. He also reiterated that night diving was the best chance to see sharks, but that sometimes they did get big ones. In that case he wanted us to do something called the ring of steel and all lock arms with our tanks facing outward. At that point if a shark fixated on someone like Astrid (one of the divers from his dive group) it would likely circle repeatedly and nudge her with every pass looking for a reaction. Now at some point Astrid might panic, so there was a simple procedure to follow. Jack has actually done shark research so we listened carefully: “The people on either side of Astrid need to look at each other, unhook from her… the one on the left can inflate her BCD to send her floating upwards then they link arms again after giving her a shove. Once she distracts it we can swim on.” It took a few of the group a few more seconds to catch on before Astrid gave him a big punch in the arm. That wasn’t Jack’s only bastard moment either. Night divers wear a glow stick identifying their group attached to their regulator first stage. Jack handed these out and told us they were special pressure resistant ones with a tempered glass insert so not to crack them. They were activated by heat and liquid so he had us quickly rub them between our hands then suck on them as he proceeded to demonstrate quickly bringing up a blue glow. He then sat and watched as all 12 of us tried to make this happen. Keep in mind we’d already done three dives that day, so forgive us for taking a few minutes to realize that he’d just cracked them with his teeth and they were standard glowsticks. Funny guy! :p

A few minutes later we went to suit up, well aware of just how black the sky was everywhere around us. The only lights visible were stars and the occasional large vessel kilometres distant. Putting on the wet stinger suit is never a pleasant proposition but with the night-time breezes it was downright horrifying. Still, it wasn’t long before we were in the water and shining our torches around the water. Red bass were swirling all around the lights looking for some extra light for hunting. The pros call them red bastards because they’ll charge and eat anything tiny you highlight in your flashlight. Thankfully apparently they’re so thick that if you move your light to a rock wall instead at the last minute they’ll veer into the coral and knock themselves senseless for a moment. Unfortunately as we descended my new buddy had a bit of a freakout, she wasn’t a fan of just sitting still in the water. Luckily Pierre was able to calm her down after we surfaced briefly and we continued on, quickly running our compass drills. Night diving was amazing for different fish though as well as weird worms and other invertebrates and bioluminescent things visible here and there. One of the highlights was a massive school of barracuda passing within range of our lights. All about five feet long, there must have been over 100 of them swimming in a massive line. Of course the absolute highlight was when green appeared in the gloom as we were returning to the boat. Pierre and I turned our torches in that direction and illuminated two black tip reef sharks circling the edge of the boat’s light pool, hoping to get some food attracted by the glow. Seeing them was amazing, your blood runs absolutely cold a moment as that streamlined predatory body is revealed. Your mind knows that they won’t attack in this level of visibility unless you make them defend themselves, but it takes a moment for that signal to get through to the rest of your body. We watched them circle for a few minutes until they spiralled back outwards. Most of the group exited the water at that point, I sat back near Pierre floating just under the water with my reg out and snorkel in, watching the fish circling. Just as I was about to swim to the boarding steps a quite large white tip reef shark swam directly into the boat lighting, not even needing my flashlight to see more than a silhouette. It didn’t stay long, but I it was an amazing sight as it cut powerfully through the green glow before diving back down into the blue.

It took us all a while to calm down after that, one of the ex-instructors back on board for a visit got us all playing group games in the ship’s saloon. One weird one where you had to perform a complicated series of manoeuvres without letting go of a broom, the other a team game where a person wearing a blackened dive mask with a snorkel between their legs had to be spun around then called across the room by their partner holding a roll of toilet paper between their legs. Very bizarre… Despite the early start that morning most of the boat stayed up reasonably late, it was actually only the looming dawn dive the next morning that sent most of us off to our berths. I couldn’t resist going up to the top deck to have another look at the stars and actually got my first view of the Big Dipper on this side of the world. Hovering just above the horizon (Dubhe actually disappeared behind a wave once in a while) it was completely upside down and wrong looking. I pointed it out to the other Canadians and we all had a “WEIRD” moment before heading to bed.

5:30 came all too soon, as did the realization that the ship was rocking fairly violently. We’d been told we’d be going to a rare dive site for the dawn dive since the seas were so glassy, but sure enough the wind had come up around 4am and scrubbed that idea. Still, part two of the adventure diver add-on was altering my morning dive anyway. Instead of a second independent dive, I’d be doing a deep dive with an instructor, learning about the environment and giving me the ability to go that deep in future. Because most wrecks are deeper than I’d been so far this was the big selling point of the course for me. At 30m things get very different. Nitrogen narcosis becomes a very real possibility (hence going with an instructor the first time), pressure increases dramatically and as a result air use goes through the roof. You’ve also got a lot less time down there before the nitrogen in your bloodstream and tissues reaches the point where you need to do serious decompression stops on the way up. Decomp diving is something you do NOT do as a recreational diver so at those depths it becomes really important to constantly check your air gauge and dive computer. Pierre took along a few toys to show us the pressure effects as well. First he pulled out a colour slate to show us how red essentially disappears at that depth, appearing as black since those wavelengths have been filtered out. Next he pulled out a coke can, also black looking and shook it vigorously. Of course due to the pressure, when he opened it nothing came out. Last was a standard soda bottle filled with air that had compressed almost flat since at 30 meters air takes up ¼ the space it does on the surface. Turning over we looked up and were blown away… our bubbles travelled up and up and up… the surface completely out of sight. It’s really a mindblowing thing that you don’t even think about before you go down, you’ve never really been out of site of sun or artificial lights twinkling through the surface of water. With show and tell over we headed off towards the boumis, slowly climbing up from 30 to 25ish meters and watching our no decompression time jump quickly upwards. It was pretty wild seeing the other folks from the boat swimming 30 feet above us and pointing downwards. We’d controlled our air use well enough that we actually got our regular dive too (though we came back a bit into our safety for the first time, though only just.) I’d thought my first turtle encounter was amazing… this dive I got three different turtles, two green turtles and one hawk’s bill turtle. Pierre even tried to feed one of them but the big guy was enjoying the coral he was already chowing down on. Lots of barracuda, a variety of surgeonfish (think Dori from finding nemo) along with some nemos and parrotfish. Just as we got back to the ship Justin the giant Humphead Maori Wrass came alongside. He’s probably the size of a dining room table and very curious and friendly, pics to follow.

Because we dove so deep we had to skip the second dive that morning for nitrogen build-up reasons. It doesn’t sound as if we missed much though as the current had picked up a bit and most people didn’t see a ton before air supplies ran low. We had the option to snorkel but the sea was so choppy due to the wind that no one felt like wasting the energy. Actually it was neat being on the boat because the dive supervisor/spotter saw a turtle passing by, mentioned it to the ex-instructor guy who realized it was sick. They took out the tender and brought it back to the ship in a dive bin. The poor guy was covered in algae growth which is a sign he’s been on the surface too much and likely unable to dive deep. Since that probably means he has breathing problems it’s likely he mistook a plastic bag for a jellyfish and has his lungs blocked partially. We helped carry him on deck, then up into the shade of the wheelhouse so Warren the skipper could keep an eye on him. Wazza radioed to shore and marine rescue would be sending a pickup to take him to a marine vet a.s.a.p. when we reached shore. Poor guy and yet another reminder to keep plastic out of the oceans.

My last dive was going to be a digital underwater photographer certification (basically proving I understand how light changes underwater) so I rented a properly set up underwater camera from the staff. Expensive, but the nice thing is that they give you the photos on the memory card so unlike the other options for underwater without buying a full rig it’s not a questionable brand film camera that you have to have developed later. I got what I consider to be some amazing shots, sadly no turtles that dive but some beautiful coral shots and Anemones with clown anenomefish including probably the best photo I’ve ever taken. It’s very difficult work though. The best shots come from being slightly under your target and from as close as possible so it requires balancing your breathing to float absolutely still (full lungs = float up) without using your fins so you don’t hit coral, long slow breaths so you’re as quiet as possible and really steady hands. It’s complex enough that your breathing pattern doesn’t stay really regular and we found ourselves returning to the boat a little faster than usual from the extra air use. Still absolutely amazing and a good sendoff for myself from the Great Barrier Reef. I may wait to post those photos until I get home so I can do some more accurate cropping etc with my big computer.

Back on the boat the crew was in full cleanup mode so after stripping and cleaning my gear I headed to pack up everything. The wind had only picked up since breakfast so we knew we’d be in for a terrible ride, I don’t think anyone knew quite how bad though. As previously discussed I love that sort of thing, but we got to the point where we were getting some serious weightless feeling periods as the ship rolled in swells that were awfully big for a bright sunny day. You know things are wild when crew members throw up. Once we were back alee of the point south of Cairns people perked up a bit and a bunch of us exchanged emails and photos. We were all meeting for dinner and drinks later but we didn’t want to leave that sort of thing until alcohol time.

TD has been royally ticking me off for a long time, but getting off the boat was the point where I will finally stop being lazy and get rid of them for good. I had some things to pay for after the trip, the extra course etc and my visa didn’t work. I’ve kept my TD visa as a backup since my aeroplan visa is so new the credit limit is very low (applying when you’re a student doesn’t set you up for a high starter.) I haven’t had a safe opportunity to make a payment on it in a bit, so I had tried to use the TD one before the boat left for something. I figured they’d been stupid and not made note of my call about going to Australia, but instead they told me I hadn’t made a payment in a while. I must have misread my statement as I thought it was at zero, but there was next to nothing on there anyway. I called them the night before the boat left (early Saturday morning in Canada) and he said he would fix it but it would be the next business day, since the boat didn’t return until early Tuesday morning Canada time I figured that would be fine. Judging by the experience at ProDive, they didn’t. Frustratingly the first ATM I tried would not dispense enough so I had to run another block to a bank. Coming back I noticed the first one was near some Pokies (VLTs) so that’s probably why. Eventually got everything worked out and went back to the hostel. The fun would continue later… Dinner and drinks were fun, but in the end I had to bow out around midnight when the first bar closed. I have no idea how people were still going, but between the early wakeups and the fact that my rental car pickup the next morning would require me to be up at 7 I said my goodnights and went back to my nice quiet hostel.

The next morning when I tried to pay for the rest of my rental car, figuring the thing would have gone through by now it didn’t work again. Seething, I called TD again. After quite the rigmarole I was told that the problem was the card was giving an expiry date from this fall, which is when it expires. I said yes… that’s the card I’m trying to use. He then tries to tell me that the TD/GM partnership has dissolved or some such BS and I should have a new card. I hadn’t received one before I left, and a check with home later on revealed no such card either. Forgive me for thinking my card that doesn’t expire for 6 months would still be good… I asked the Indian dude on the other end of the line what the hell I was supposed to do. I wanted to get the extra insurance paying with a credit card would give me, but no… there’s nothing they can do apparently. To push the frustration level to an absolute max, I needed to then leave a cash bond. But to do that I needed to pay extra since you needed to leave the insurance deductible as a deposit. It was either $20 extra a day to give it a $400 deductible, or $1600 deductible. When I went to take out cash, I swear to god the first ATM was broken. A bit of a hike later, I couldn’t actually take out enough to get the entire amount, apparently I was over my max withdrawals for the day since it was the same 24hr period in Canada. I just about screamed… eventually through trial and error I managed to find what I could take out and it was enough to leave me with $40 until the rollover… fun.

Finally… FINALLY… I got out on the road. It definitely wasn’t the ideal time to start driving on the other side of the road. Pissed and frustrated, tired and not having driven in a couple months. Add to that the fact that I was hungry and couldn’t really use my remaining cash for food. Still I made out ok and soon enough I was driving north along the coast heading north to Daintree and Cape Tribulation. I made a few stops along the way based on recommendations I’d gotten from people on the dive trip and at the hostel. It’s a beautiful rugged coastline and quickly my nerves calmed. I stopped in Port Douglas for a look around, definitely a pretty little town and probably where I’ll dive out of next time I come here. A little bit further north I got into Daintree National Park at Mossman Gorge where I did a nice little hike and went for a wade in the stream since most of the water I’ll come to later will be in croc danger land. I’d wanted to do a recommended river tour in Daintree village proper, but sadly that would have left me with $3 or so until I saw an ATM or my parents made my other payment for me. Instead I headed across the Daintree River on a cable ferry that took half of my cash and looked as if it should have been retired years previously. Everywhere you looked along the riverbank there were croc warning signs and crossing it I couldn’t help but think that it was a very stereotypically Aussie looking river, very much where you imagine crocodiles living.

The other side of the river marked Cape Tribulation, a remote rainforest preserve with a road that winds up and down the hills to the sea. It’s a gorgeous area full of noisy birds, cassowaries, crocs and other lizards, scary big spiders and snakes. I did a few long and short hikes. Having managed to catch my foot in a hatch on the dive ship I had a fresh wound that made walking not fun but the scenery was so beautiful that I couldn’t resist. On one of the botanical walks I actually saw a goanna, a long dragony looking lizard. He was keeping a wary eye on me as I wandered along the boardwalk but not running to hide. That walk definitely made me feel thankful for a boardwalk though as the entire place screamed crocs and snakes. Walking back I ran into a tour group coming the other way to hear their guide mentioning to keep an eye out for snakes that might be up sunning themselves. Just need to remember not to blindly step over any logs or rocks. After a few hikes I found a tiny gas store with an ATM and tried again since it was now midnight eastern back in Canada, sure enough I could take out a few hundred bucks. Eventually I reached the tip of the cape and my hostel for the night, the road does go further north to Cooktown and the big cape beyond, but the next 100km are all dirt and 4WD only. In fact the roads are frequently impassable as the bridges only clear the streams and rivers by about half a meter at times. I can’t actually remember but there may even be full stream crossings on that road if you head further north. This place is a gorgeous spot with a number of cabins/hostel dorms, a beachfront bistro and heavy rainforest canopy all around. It’s cheap and comes with a free hot breakfast so I happily settled in. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting much from the bistro, maybe a nice burger or sandwich and some chips. Instead I got a spicy pan-seared Spanish mackerel with herbed cous cous and a red pepper coulis. It was absolutely delicious, probably the best meal I’ve had in weeks and made up for a whole day surviving on 2 melting chocolate cookies. It wasn’t cheap (in fact not much less than my room for the night) but the alternative was a decent drive and not much cheaper so I just enjoyed it. Returning to my room after a quick trip to the beach (again needing to stay away from the water due to croc possibilities) meant a nice long shower and time to sit down and write all this stuff down. It’s been a few nights since I caught up on the blog. I won’t be posting it until at least tomorrow night however since there’s no internet here. It’s a great place to curl up on my porch and write as I listen to a vast array of birdcalls echoing through the rainforest.

AA: interlude

6 May 2011
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Categories: Meanwhile... at stately Wayne Manor., Travel

Hey folks, likely no posts from me until I finish off the dive course. Will be busy basically all day tomorrow (and in no mood to write after) then out on the boat for 3 days / 2 nights.

Back to regularly scheduled tales of me embarassing myself soon (which shouldn’t be hard to get from this course) for the last days of the trip.

Antipodean Adventure: Dugong Good Time!

4 May 2011
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Categories: Travel

The Whitsundays are a small group of islands just off the coast of Australia (within the Great Barrier Reef) in Queensland.
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After getting another great sleep in my spacious digs I packed up a small bag for two nights out on the ship. All food etc was provided, all they asked was no giant bags and bring your own booze in cans (or full sized wine and spirit bottles) since bottled beer takes up too much garbage space. A little before three I started walking over to the marina with my daypack and a selection of Australian cider and felt about 300% better than the previous morning. It’s amazing what a bit of sleep can do for you. The marina itself was one bay over from the beach area and to get there I had to walk along a really nicely laid out boardwalk around the lip of the bay and past one of the more fancy resorts in town. Once I got to the marina though, I was at a bit of a loss as to where to go. Annoyingly, the travel agent who’d printed my boarding pass for me (not the woman at the hotel) had given me one that said meeting point at BoatX’s meeting point… which isn’t marked anywhere. You think they could have written “Meeting Point North” since that was clearly indicated on the marina map and on the covered gangway where I eventually found out I was supposed to be.

Confusion aside, a little before four a very tanned younger guy came up and asked if I was Tristan, he then rounded up two young Danish girls as well before introducing himself as Jesse. He said he was skipper of the catamaran On Ice and gave us the amazing news that due to a booking snafu, we were the only 3 on what is normally a 10 passenger cruise. Suddenly that discount became the deal of a lifetime. We headed down into the packed Marina and met the deckhand/cook Craig who took our shoes (apparently the “shackles of civilization.”) The girls got an ensuite cabin (which I suspect they didn’t pay for as they’re travelling much like me) while I got my own cabin with a big queen bed and a mini bunk above with what was basically my own head right next door. The crew took the starboard cabins (often they just sleep on deck or on one of the mini bunks) so they were enjoying the sparseness of pax just as much as us. After a quick safety briefing we were underway.

The catamaran was gorgeous, gleaming white and functional yet with an air of unmistakable class. I wasn’t surprised to find out it had started life as a charter boat out of the millionaire’s resort on one of the islands. Apparently it’s had a few celebrity visitors in its time. All I really cared about was our steady progress out into the emerald green waters of the bay. For a while we put up the sails and went along on wind power, but the wind was so intermittent and erratic that eventually the skipper gave up. The engines weren’t loud though so it was still very peaceful. Even sailing out around Airlie Beach the water was very clear and you could often see a fish swimming up into the shallows. As with everywhere on the east coast now that it’s wintertime here the sun set quickly (but beautifully) and we were soon motoring out into the dark. We eventually moored near the lights of several other boats including the sister vessel of “on ice” the rather shockingly named Iceberg (i suppose that less of a bad luck thing in the southern hemisphere?.)

It turns out that Craig had trained as a chef once upon a time so dinner was tons better than I expected. BBQ grilled chicken with Tzaziki, a fresh salad and pesto noodles were the first night’s meal, absolutely delicious and massive portions. Not surprising I suppose as he’s used to cooking for 10+2 crew, but he said they always served a ton of food. The Danes (Signe and Stine) called it a night not long after dinner, knowing it would be a big day tomorrow, but I headed up to the front decking instead and had a gorgeous view of the stars, miles from the nearest streetlight. Beautiful view of the southern cross and many other constellations that are pretty unfamiliar. I’d just gone back to crack open another Cider and talk with the boys when we saw a zodiac tender coming over and Iceberg’s crew hopped on board for a drink (probably figuring by the lack of people on deck that the whole boat was asleep.) Turns out the guy skipping the Iceberg was named Tristram, one of the two brothers that own the company. Everyone was good fun and we all had a long chat before I finally gave in to the rocking of the boat and headed to bed.

I woke up a little after six with the crew, hoping to make the most of the daylight and the current tide conditions. Snagged a glass of orange juice as we waited rather impatiently for the girls. Given that they’d gone to bed at 9 at the latest they took their time getting up. Jesse had actually given up and was bringing the tender in to take me over to the hike start beach when they finally showed up on deck. All of them missed one of the most amazing sights of the entire trip though as looking over Jesse’s shoulder I saw a Dugong (the aussie sea cow I saw in the Sydney Aquarium) surface briefly, then throw his flippers up and dive when he saw all the boats around. Amazing, and a seriously rare treat according to Craig, even for those who frequently sail here. I don’t mean to sound like I’m annoyed with them, they were very nice and hey I like sleep too, I just didn’t go on the boat to sleep. I had a massive smile on my face as we hopped into the launch and headed to shore, passing a small sea turtle poking his head above water. By the time we got to the beach though the girls had delayed us enough that we were climbing the path to the lookout behind the entire party crew of a 32-person tall mast ship which was rather unfortunate, especially as they seemed to the world’s slowest walkers. We put on our shackles of civilization and headed uphill.

When we reached the Hill Inlet lookout it was worth it though. You get a gorgeous view down into a shallow inlet that just swirls with sand. It wasn’t the ideal combo of tide and sun to get the greatest of the patterns (do a quick GIS for Whitsunday Island  and you’ll see what I mean) but it was still gorgeous. Adding to the  wonder were the large number of clearly visible stingrays gliding around in the water hunting for the ghost of Steve Irwin. We were up reasonably high and we could clearly see their stings whipping around in the water… definitely don’t want to be on the business end of one. Stupidly enough we managed to time our exit from the lookout to end up right behind the slowpokes again, though this time in between two groups of them. I got to listen to the thrillingly inane conversation stylings of two Brit girls with that really annoying British valley girl thing going on. Instead of ending every sentence as a question (though they do that a lot too) they sort of sort of a singsong-dipthong thing with the middle of the last word of sentence while at the same time extending the middle syllable or vowel sound of the word to four or five times its appropriate length. As in: “Oh, I love that sh-ohhhhhOWWWWWW. So incredibly grating when she did it every sentence and didn’t stop chattering once for 15 minutes. After heading down to boat we cruised around the point and into the beach visible in the distance from the lookout where we tried out stand up paddle boarding (basically a big surfboard with a long canoelike paddle) which I was ok at, and Windsurfing which I continue to be absolute rubbish at.

After an excellent lunch we continued to cruise north up to the other big island in the chain known as Hook Island. Finally it was time for some snorkelling and we came around the corner into a nice sheltered cove called Manta Ray Bay. We all threw on our (soggy from earlier) wetsuits, it’s unfortunately still the tail end of stinger season and the last thing they want is for one of us to be hurt or killed by the nasty poisonous jellyfish. They’re also protection from some of the sharp bits of coral , though hopefully no one touched any. We were in the water almost immediately and surrounded by parrotfish from the instant we dropped below the dark green surface. Visibility was decent though apparently not as good it can be as they’ve had tons of rain lately. I’m not sure how long we swam around that bay, at least 90 minutes I’m guessing. Tons of parrot fish, angelfish, sandfish and many others I can’t remember of smaller varieties… we also saw several quite large grouper type fish, a small sea turtle and just before getting out a massive tuna. The girls went back to the boat before me, but eventually I hopped back on board and we went two bays down to Maureen’s Cove for another round. Both spots had the same types of fish in different concentrations all swimming over a gloriously colourful landscape of coral reef, sponges, clams and sea cucumbers. I’ll be posting some of the video taken with the underwater camera once I’m home and have some editing tools. After a while we were tired and I think Jesse guessed because he came back over on the inflatable raft, pulling himself along using an underwater scooter. We hopped on top and hung over the sides with our masks on. Laziest snorkelling ever, it was especially nice because we were able to get up speed and glide which let us sneak up on a few of the shyer fish.

Once we were back on the boat again we were all exhausted… paddle boarding, windsurfing two long snorkels and a lot of sun meant we were ready for a rest and some food. Unfortunately dinner wasn’t until we reached our mooring for the night which was still quite a ways away so all three of us curled up on the netting and relaxed in the sun with the sea streaming underneath us. I was unfortunately hobbling everywhere. I must have smacked the boarding ladder jumping off the boat because I felt some pain, but was too excited to really notice. It wasn’t until I got back on the boat the first time and it warmed up a bit that I realized I was in a fair amount of pain. My ankle was pretty quickly swollen with a tennis ball sized lump forming above it. I wasn’t going to let it keep me out of the water though so after some ice and elevation I was back in the water. Things weren’t helped by the fact that I sunburned the top of my feet from having them just above the water surface as I held them clear of the coral. Thankfully things were feeling much better by bed and by morning though it’s stiff I was able to walk semi normally, I won’t be hiking for a few days though. The guys were fairly concerned but I’m sure it’s ok, I do think I likely would have broken something had I not had the wetsuit on though.

That Night we moored at a snorkelling spot on the edge of Hayman Island, once a mega resort in the top 10 in the world. It’s still up there but not quite that high, but actually closed for the moment due to cyclone damage. It was getting close to sunset by the time we dropped anchor surround by a few private yachts and a bunch of other charter boats, these ones of the 28-35 person variety I had no interest in taking. They were every bit as loud and wild sounding as I expected. Our closest neighbour actually ended up being what looked like a pair of older couples blasting some Elvis as the sun set to the west. We ate a few nibblies with another gorgeous sunset as a backdrop. It wasn’t until it was dark that we heard some splashing between us and the elvis boat. Eventually we caught the occasional flick of a dorsal fin across the shimmer of their deck lights in the water. Craig figured the dolphin(s) were coming up to see the light. He went and grabbed a powerful torch and we began to shine it into the water. It took a while but eventually a small bottlenose dolphin that looked like a juvenile began to come almost but not quite into the beam then surface. He was a little nervous of the side of our hull, but got his nerve up eventually and came close enough for us to get a fantastic look at him both above and below the water. Eventually he got confident enough that he’d briefly surface in the light and look at us before flipping over and circling again. A magical way to end what was already one of the top five days of my life.

The next morning I was the first one up and I climbed up on deck to just enjoy the silence. No one else was stirring on any boat close to us and all I could hear was the slap of waves and the occasional creak of a bit of rigging in the wind. Eventually Jesse showed up and told me if I got into my wetsuit he’d give me the scooter and I could head over to the reef before any of the bigger boats got there. Sadly the damn thing’s battery must not have charged because it quit halfway in. He had to take me in on the launch instead, he knew I didn’t want to wait for the girls that morning. In the end I spent about 45 minutes on the reef before a group of girls came over from one of the biggies, all with floaties and half of them screaming when fish got close to them. Thankfully before they showed up and scared everything bigger off I saw a parrotfish that probably weighed as much as I do as well as 3 different Moray Eels looking absolutely evil but fascinating. I caught a short glimpse of a really big turtle in the distance but couldn’t catch up to him. Later, our second stop meant one last snorkel over a more open water reef.  The girls didn’t want to go back in the water so they took the transparent lexan kayak out instead, but I wasn’t passing up the chance. Lots of colourful fish, tidal conditions weren’t as good though. I did get my other really rare spot though, a very furtive looking octopus (thankfully not the mega venomous blue ring one) briefly disturbed by a reef trout brushing by it scooted across and other a different rock. Sadly hopping back on the boat meant it was time to head back, but I must say it was nice to get out of the wetsuit for a while. I’ll be back in one for pool training starting Friday.

I can’t recommend the guys at Real Sail enough. Even had On Ice been full it would have been spacious and luxurious, we just got the bonus. All of the staff I dealt with were courteous and loads of fun, yet they all have a lot of respect for the island conservation area and everything that lives in it. I heartily recommend you head out with them if you’re in this neck of the woods, either on my two night trip or the one nighter on Iceberg if you have less time.

AA: Stranded in Rockhampton and Aftermath

1 May 2011
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Categories: Space, Travel

Ugh…

Big planning mistake yesterday has left me in a bit of a mess here in Rockhampton. Upon returning from Fraser Island last night the Friendly Hostel guy had asked me to let him know what time my bus out was the next day, since the office closed in 30 odd minutes I had to rush it a bit as I hadn’t booked it yet. I made the mistake of accepting my guidebook’s assertion that there were 6-7 Greyhounds leaving Rockhampton daily northbound without double checking and booked my way here expecting to stay one night then move on to Airlie Beach instead of doing a 12-15 hour bus ride. Unfortunately, that info wasn’t correct and there are only three per day… the one I came in on that arrives at 8pm and hit Airlie at 2am, and two others that leave in the middle of the night (12:30ish and 2ish I believe) that arrive in Airlie early in the morning. Combined with the fact that something must be happening in Rocky tonight since finding a hostel took me many attempts (and this place is a hole) meant that I barely made my deadline as is. Arriving in Rockhampton I had the delightful task of hoofing it to the hostel as well, I’ve been spoiled with the shuttles lately, I don’t think I’ve had to walk from the Bus Station since Newcastle. Having already booked into tonight’s hostel I was more or less stuck here, but I should really have stayed on tonight’s bus and then stayed up til morning I suppose. If I hadn’t been told how really wonderful sailing the Whitsundays is by at least 5 people I would honestly just skip it and go on to Townsville.

As I write this it’s about 10 on Friday night, lots of yobbos are revving their engines and yelling on the street outside. I had to laugh actually as not long ago when I was using the internet kiosk in the tiny tv lounge (no wi-fi) there were about 8 early to mid twenties guys watching the Royal Wedding with rapt attention. Not really the type I would expect to be doing so, but I guess they’re all/mostly Brits. As for me I’m now ensconced in my dingy room, still debating what to do come morning. I’m thinking I may bite the bullet and head over to Europcar or another rental place and see what a one way rental to Mackay or Airlie would cost me. Otherwise I’ll have wasted a full day, possibly even two as I won’t be able to check what’s available for sailing trips until the next day. Not to mention if I want to get in somewhere after 2:25AM to sleep I’ll be paying a premium for only a few short hours in the room. My only concern is of course that I haven’t driven in Australia yet, but between bus rides, walking and riding around with David for a week I think I’m about as prepped as I’ll get.

I won’t be posting this tonight since of course there’s no wifi, but I’m hoping tomorrow turns out to be a better day as my spirits are a bit low at the moment.

 

Yeah… that didn’t turn out so well… After a $15 cab ride to the airport I discovered that the rental car’s company had been lying and they had nothing left that wasn’t reserved (they could get it for me in 6 hours, by which time I might as well wait for the bus.) Deciding to suck it up, I sat at the airport and sponged off Qantas’ free lounge internet and did some searching. I eventually decided to try to sleep a bit on the bus and not waste an Airlie sized hostel fee on what remained of the night since I’d be arriving around 3 and by the time I dealt with the extra hassle of a late check-in I’d likely not be sleeping until 4. This meant that 3-7AM or so found me sitting on a park bench in Airlie’s downtown talking randomly to extremely drunk passersby, including some old dude that asked me five different times if I had any alcohol for him, and each time I said no telling me: “Good.. Iz a gateway drug.” Hilarious the first time, somewhat grating after the 3rd… After an hour or two I began to see a bunch of girls (and a few guys) doing somewhat perfect examples of the old “walk of shame” as they made their way home furtively in cocktail dresses and ridiculous heels. Airlie Beach is another one of the party towns on the backpacker circuit here, though the culture does seem a little more varied than Byron. It turns out my chosen bench was actually not far from the Taxi pick up point and I was a little amazed to see a constant cab presence and a security guard there to direct people into cabs until about 5am.

I ended up reading an entire book under the street light as the night slowly passed, but at about 6am I headed across the street to McDonalds for some breakfast. Ended up skipping the OJ and having a coke to keep me awake for another couple hours as I waited for the hostel reception areas to open. Unfortunately for me, upon checking using Maccas free wifi I found that the hostel I’d planned to get a beachfront single at (so I could sleep during the day without interruption) it had filled up since last time I’d checked. After checking around I found what looked like a good option without going to the $200 a night places but unfortunately it had no reception hours. Breakfast finished, I walked down and waited outside for another hour or so before the woman showed up just before eight.

She was a lifesaver, no other word for it. Upon hearing my story she set me up with a room ready to check in and told me to go get some sleep. While I was there I noticed a set of brochures for the various sailing trips that head out into the Whitsundays from Airlie. I’d actually done a fair bit of boat research sitting in the Rockhampton airport the previous day and based upon that and some recommendations from friends I’d decided to do a catamaran trip amongst the islands. They give a smaller crowd and some more personal attention. Part of me wanted to go on one of the gorgeous old rigged ships, but many of them run with packed digs and because they’re slower you get less time on the islands themselves. I’d narrowed it down to a few boats, but had decided to wait and try to get a last minute deal since I’d timed my arrival in Airlie to sail Monday or Tuesday. Sitting there as she worked on my registration I noticed that one of the ones I’d scouted did in fact have a last minute deal on the sailing tomorrow, roughly $125 off. When I asked her about it she confirmed that they were a really good outfit to sail with so I asked her to book it. Amazingly enough she told me to go sleep and she’d look after it. When I checked back with her after my sleep she’d not only arranged it, she’d walked down to the office in person to make sure everything was confirmed for my place.

Upon heading into my room I found out that I’d actually gotten a self contained apartment with 2 queens and 1 single bed as well as a mini-kitchenette. A quick shower and a check of my email on the (free!!!) Wi-fi and I was out like a light at roughly 8AM. It was 1:30 before I woke… still tired but feeling a little more sane. After a quick trip to check if my trip was booked (she was on lunch break) I went and got some supplies for dinner and went to have a swim in the lagoon. Now that I’m in the tropics I actually have to worry about some of the other things in water (namely jellyfish here, though thankfully mostly out of season) so they have a massive beachfront swimming lagoon with some sand beaches. Once I was worn out I curled up in bed, caught up with a few of you back home and booked my other things through til Sunday so I won’t be having any more strandings for the next while.

I’m really looking forward to the sailing trip, the islands look absolutely gorgeous and it should be relaxing after the past few days. Assuming I go ahead with my plans for the dive course I want to do, I’ll spend over a week sailing around the coast between the two trips. I’ve always been a big age of sail buff and Captain Cook in particular has been an interest of mine forever. Sailing around some of the areas where he sailed in HM Bark Endeavour almost 250 years ago will be a dream come true. Oddly enough it comes just as Endeavour’s namesake and another fascination of mine, the Orbiter (Space Shuttle) Endeavour is about to leave on its last flight (though I noticed it was delayed.) Endeavour has always been my favourite of the space shuttles because of the Cook connection, but also because it replaced Challenger and as such meant the re-emergence of the space program.

In any case I’m going to throw the rest of my remaining photos up onto Facebook tonight since I’m sure I’ll have a massive chunk to upload once back from the boat. Thanks for all the comments on the blog updates, as much fun as I’ve been having I’m looking forward to seeing everyone soon and having a break for a few weeks once I’m home.

AA: Dingoes, Sharks and Spiders oh my!

28 April 2011
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I awoke Wednesday morning to the endless screeching of lorikeets directly outside my bedroom window. It was 5:00AM. I eventually managed to drift off for another little bit when they quieted down, but that was likely only because the rain was starting… rain that would hit us on and off for the entire day.

The pickup for the transfer over to the barge dock was at the lovely time of 7:20 so I was up at 6 something for the third consecutive day. Grey skies drizzled casually at random intervals as we circled the town picking up an assortment of day trippers and overnighters before finally opening up and pouring just as we were to board the ferry barge. Needless to say everyone crammed into the tiny indoor lounge rather than sitting on deck and the only one impressed was the ship’s cat as she had plenty of people to inspect. Once we got over to the far side we were steered to our respective giant four wheel drive coaches.

Fraser Island is an island almost entirely made of sand (the largest such place in the world) and has near zilch in the way of paved roads, usually the best you can hope for are some traction blocks on the nastier hills. A 4WD is essential on the island. Many people either join a group that packs into smaller suv style ones and do the camping thing, or do a larger bus style guided tour that does a day trip or has an overnight stay at one of the two bigger resorts remaining on the island. Since my friends Chris and Jodi had a good experience with the Fraser Explorer guided tours I decided to give them a shot, especially as the weather was already looking questionable when I booked.

The tour actually started with a speed run across the island to the resort to pick up the rest of our crew arriving from the other boat over from Rainbow Beach. Friends who have been here before commented on how they got stuck on some of those roads due to soft sand. We had the opposite problem, wet packed sand from weeks of rain with massive ruts that set the cabin swaying dramatically and had the guide warning us to not hit our heads and break “his windows.” Most of us took advantage of this to grab some water and a bathroom break and put on our swimsuits. While we were there our guide Graham checked the weather and saw that the southern half of the island didn’t look like it would be seeing sun any time soon so he suggested the first of what would eventually be 20 odd itinerary changes for us. Instead of a 5+km walk in a monsoon-like downpour we instead started the day 2 itinerary on the beach.

Much like Daytona and some other places in the states, cars are allowed on the beach there. Unlike those places, it’s used as the main highway for the island with a speed limit of 80km/h in most places (lowered from 100 after a wave flipped a car and killed some tourists according to Wikipedia.) Adding to the fun is the fact that it’s also used as the landing strip for rangers and scenic flights so all vehicles have to yield to planes as well. Our beast of a bus tore up the sand and through various creeks in no time, only slowing when the rain hit an absolute blinding level in patches as it mixed with sea spray. We kept heading north, following the tempting glimpses of blue sky in the distance. Eventually we arrived at the Champagne Pools, small rock enclosed lagoons constantly being refilled with champagne bubbles of wave action. These are apparently the only safe places to swim in the ocean on the island. The super fun reason? Active fish breeding grounds and a quick, steep drop off mean the coast of the island is shark central. Combined with heavy riptides, going out past knee depth is asking to die. Apparently Tiger and Mako are often seen there, but Hammerheads, Bull and Black Tips as well… with Great White sightings during whale calving season. Fun stuff! At least the pools were nice… (Video later of them)

From the pools we headed south to one of the few rock outcroppings on the island, Indian Head. Named by Cook for the natives he saw on it while passing, the mount has great views. The wind was howling up to 75kph while we were up there, so unfortunately the sea was too rough to see any sharks or rays, but we still got a great view of the island interior. The wind was so strong that it was difficult to stand straight, but of course some morons felt the need to climb out past the collapsing cliff warning and hang above a 90m drop. Further south we had a photo stop at the Pinnacle Coloured Sands which are sand cliff formations of many different colours. Sadly the lack of sun kept the camera from really capturing them, but they were quite pretty. By then it was 1:30 and we were all clamouring for a lunch stop so we headed back to the resort.

After lunch the weather had (sort of) improved on the south end of the island so we decided to do the long walk with a swim in the middle. This one was to Waddy Lake, a barrage lake created by a sand blow cutting off a stream and forming it into a lake. It was a roughly 2.5km hike each way, with a lovely swim in the middle. Coming in via the sand blow is quite wild as you starting walk through what seems like a patch of desert in the middle of the rainforest. You wouldn’t even know the lake was there if you weren’t told where to look, but sure enough, nestled next to the forest is a dark green lake full of catfish and turtles (and though none of us saw any… apparently some freshwater eels.) It was a lovely refreshing swim after the walk, but of course the rain came back and forced us to run scurrying to protect our gear. It was almost 5 by the time everyone was back at the bus, and darkness falls swiftly, especially hugging the east coast of the island, so we headed back to the resort. Still, we’d gotten to see far more of the island than I’d feared first thing that morning.

Upon reaching the resort we were assigned rooms. I’d signed up for a quad, but I guess I was the 5th guy to sign up for a quad because I ended up in a room by myself. Not your typical hostel room either, but what had clearly once been one of the nicer resort rooms, large with a kitchenette and ensuite. Instead of the two queen size it once likely had there were four singles. I actually sat there a while assuming someone else would come in, but when no one did I just had a laugh and hopped in the shower, finally feeling fully warm again for the first time since bed that morning. Dinner was an Aussie buffet and I swapped travel stories with an older British couple and two Norwegian girls who spoke shockingly good English. Malcolm even gave me a glass and a half of wine, which combined with all the swimming and the early mornings meant I was ready to go to bed and mellow out when they closed the main hall.

The next morning I actually had good intentions to get up and see the sunrise over the pacific, but upon waking up saw heavy cloud and a persistent drizzle so I went back to bed until 6:30. The one person who decided to try reported having no luck seeing the sun. After my first hot breakfast in quite a while, we set out to do the things we’d missed the day before. First up was a swim/wade in Eli Creek which runs down from a sand spring to the open ocean and is the biggest water outlet on the ocean side of the island. This was followed by a trip to the 1930s shipwreck Maheno not far away. Both places made for some fun camera and video shots though again some more sun would have been nice. We also saw a few of the local dingoes, reported to be one of the purest strains of them since dogs are not allowed on the island. Unfortunately we were never in a place where we could stop and take photos from a distance, but it was still very neat to see them.

After an early early lunch, we went for a walk in the rainforest along a beautifully clear stream. Endemic trees not too different from redwoods tower all along the path and the canopy is quite dense making it spooky in spots. The driver quite carefully saved his spider and snake lecture until after the walk, during which he revealed that we’d passed funnel web spiders as often as every 1.5m along the path. We also learned the rather unwelcome fact that the island actually does have Death Adders and Tai-pans… fun stuff again! Our last stop before heading back to the barge was Lake McKenzie a beautiful big perched lake up in the hills. Almost everyone had a swim here, but the wind was so cold that it eventually drove everyone back to the bus a bit early, not to the surprise of Graham. The last treat of the trip ended up being the sunset as we got close to mooring back in Hervey Bay.

So tonight I’m back at the Friendly Hostel, far too wiped to cook so I grabbed a pizza from the cheap locally recommended pizzeria and I’m going to settle down and probably fall asleep watching a movie once I post this entry. Thus far I’m alone in the three person room tonight as well, though it sounds like tomorrow night it will be packed as it took checking 5 hostels before I found a room for tomorrow night’s stop. Thankfully it’s just a short layover before I keep heading to the Whitsunday Islands.

AA:On the way to Hervey Bay

26 April 2011
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Quickie post while I have internet since I’ll be out on Fraser Island the next couple days.

The rest of my time hanging out with David was fun and pretty relaxed. Mostly amounted to a bit of shopping and a few more dips in the ocean wave before we headed to Brisbane yesterday to see the city and take in the ANZAC parade.

ANZAC day marks the anniversary of the beginning of the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey during World War I. Much like Canada, Australia (and to a lesser extent New Zealand) are thought to have come of age during WWI with Gallipoli being their first major contribution. Apparently ANZAC day is a much larger day of remembrance than November 11th in Australia and New Zealand. We ended up taking the train into town (full of veterans) and set ourselves up to watch the parade through downtown. We watched a number of the veterans groups march by as well as some re-enactors before the modern troops walked by. We also saw a few of the Yellow Cab company cabs from yesteryear, which I suppose proves that the orange “yellow” cabs have always been a thing.

Today was a crash reintroduction to the terrible world of Greyhound. We started out with a packed bus out of Surfers Paradise that took forever to load and left 15 minutes late. We made another stop only 10 minutes outside of Surfers, not even farther out than David’s place. I think I ended up as the only person who didn’t have someone sitting next to them, so either I smelled or I looked so peeved that no one wanted it. In the end when I checked my watch 75mins or so after departure we were still someplace that I knew was within a 15 minute drive of where I’d been staying the past week.

When booking this section of the trip on the greyhound website I’d chosen to take a trip that took slightly longer but was one service rather than transferring in Brisbane. It turns out that was a wasted effort since this service transferred to another (shittier) bus in Brisbane anyway so I might as well have stopped in Brisbane for the layover and spent less time cramped up on the smaller bus. Apparently the A/C in this bus was also stuck on high and most of us spent the rest of the trip shivering away. I also wasn’t lucky enough to get a row to myself this time. Worse, I got a loudmouthed American who had very little concept of the space one seat provides and proceeded to shove various body parts in my direction for the next few hours.

As part of that shuttle I passed through a number of smaller towns that are apparently quite nice. All of them are of the little beach town variety however, something I’ve done a lot of already, so I don’t feel too regretful about passing them by. About an hour and a half from Hervey Bay I traded away my incredibly pushy seat mate as half the bus got off, but in return got someone in the seat in front who smelled as if he hadn’t showered in 3 days. I ended up pulling my backpack onto my lap and opening up the chip bag inside so that the chilli fumes wafted up into my face and overpowered his BO a little. By the time we arrived in Hervey Bay I was practically turning blue.

Thankfully the hostel here in Hervey is everything that was promised. It’s called the Friendly Hostel and it certainly is. They have 4 apartment unit style setups. Mine has one 3 bed dorm (just singles, no bunks), one straight double bed room, and one twin single room. Between these 7 people (only 5 in ours atm) there is a shared kitchen of decent size, a shower/toilet and a small tv/common room. Also lovely is the fact that each bed comes with a locking cupboard (full length), bedside table, lamp, FOUR SLOT POWER BAR!!! and a comfy pillow.

I’m really looking forward to Fraser Island for some sand and dingoes tomorrow, everyone I’ve met who has headed out there has loved it. A little scary to think that tomorrow marks the 3 weeks left mark though.

AA: Gold Coast Round 2

22 April 2011
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Still here on the Gold Coast with David though I expect I’ll be leaving soon. Because of the fact that Easter is so late this year it coincides with ANZAC day in Australia (their remembrance day for the Australia New Zealand Army Corps) and gives them a 5 day long weekend this week. Combined with both Queensland and New South Wales schools being on holiday this week it has made for busy times and I expect difficulties in booking my next step if I leave before Sunday. Thankfully David is being a fantastic host and hasn’t kicked my butt out yet.

In fact, he’s been showing me an excellent time. Thursday seemed like a good beach day as the sun seemed to be out and strong to start the day and the vast hordes were still working until the next day. David took me down the coast from main beach along the various sections of beaches and neighbourhoods we’d seen the previous day from the top of Q1. Every view was gorgeous, green blue seas rolling onto wide sandy beaches. The wave action wasn’t the best I’d seen down here, yet every beach had at least a few surfers challenging the curls. We stopped at a Surf Life Saving Club at Elephant Rock to check out the view and have a drink and some wedges (of course with sour cream and thai sweet chilli.) What a fantastic view… we sat and watched a few surfers catching the waves off the rocks and enjoyed the sun.

Further south we reached the border between QLD and NSW again, this time at Captain Cook’s Point Danger. Despite it only being Thursday several of the beaches were very busy, at least by David’s standards. Of course, unlike grand beach here you need to swim between the patrol flags (or at least somewhere reasonably close to them) on most of the beaches lest you encounter rips and other unpleasant things. We ended up finding a comfy spot on Greenmount beach where we could look back across the long bay and see the high rises of Surfers Paradise rising in the distance. By this point the temps had gotten pretty high and we were both dying for a swim so it didn’t take us long to plant our towels and hop into the waves. They weren’t great body surfing waves sadly but it was still a magnificent place to swim on a beautiful day. When we went back to the apartment to have a shower afterwards we were absolutely wrecked from playing in the waves for almost two hours. David ended up having a nap and I laid semi conscious in bed watching a show for a bit.

Due to the fact that it was school holidays we’d reluctantly concluded that the theme parks would be too nuts to really have much fun at, but David made the suggestion that we check out the Australian Outback Spectacular. This was a wild west type dinner show presenting the outback cattle station lifestyle both in the past and now. It was a blast. I’d read a fair bit about the production in advance but I was still blown away by how many animals they use. Tons of different horses, cattle, sheep and their herding dogs and even a demonstration of a helicopter mustering all in an indoor arena surrounded by dinner theatre seating. Included in the show (and very timely given ANZAC day on Monday) was a tribute to the Australian Light Horse regiments of the first World War, troops that were mostly outback volunteers. All the audience is divided into two teams and given appropriately coloured straw cowboy hats, of course they were out of anything larger than a medium hat so both David and I looked ridiculous trying to wear ours, but me more so. You actually get to keep the hats as well and they aren’t terrible so it’s a shame they were out of large or x-large. The show itself was incredibly well done, all the riders and animals were fantastic performers. The whole thing is a well oiled machine with the food brought to you piping hot during short intervals in the show (usually a song.) Several hundred people end up served within about 3 minutes while the drink staff bring around wine, beer or lemonade refills. The food itself was good as well, a salad with mango dressing wrapped in a tortilla, a quite tasty steak and trimmings and finally a proper Aussie pavlova for dessert with berries. The show ends with some audience participation moments but thankfully neither of us was chosen (David had done it in the past and faceplanted in the sand so he said no) and these determined which station was the winner. We lost thanks to some blatant cheating. All in all a great experience, still a little mystified as to why they sell light up lightsabers for kids though… surely a glowing cowboy hat or something would be better?

After the show we were about to pull back into the garage when David had another idea and took us back down the waterfront to the jetty we’d walked to my first day here. Here they’d implemented a very neat idea so that when we got to the end of the jetty in the dark we saw a ghostly looking scuba diver surfacing in the gloom. As he dove again we next saw a prehistoric looking creature swimming up out of the depths near the diver. Positioned above the pier are a number of powerful data projectors on swivel mounts that create a number of these images in the water. We saw the swimming dino looking things, the diver, eels and a turtle. Very neat idea. Not far from the pier there was a public installation along a path of what David called boopy things. Poles mounted with coloured LED bars that interact with passersby in sound and light. Fun to play with, but I couldn’t help but wonder how long they’d last in a park back home.

For Good Friday we decided to stay away from the beaches and go for another hike up in the hills. Judging by the traffic this was a good idea because even trying to get out of here we ended up doing about a 1 hour loop getting on the motorway then back off basically back where we started. We ended up going back through town and out another exit and back up into the hills the same way as before. Because most of these parks are built around outflow valleys from an ancient volcano they’re at the end of long roads that don’t connect to anything else because the ridges themselves are usually too rugged to build roads over. From looking at a map you can see that parts of where we went today are actually only a few kilometres from where we were in Springbrook but we’d have to do an hour’s drive down windy roads to go out and back in. This time we were hitting the Binna Burra section of Lamington National Park. The road wound up into the hills and then on to a wide ridge plateau with epic views of volcanic valleys on either side and the gold coast in the distance.

When we arrived at the info center David had a quick chat with the ranger and we decided to do the caves walk, a reasonably quick 5k with a lot of up and down. He warned us that the last 2km up the hill before the road was quite muddy and sure enough, soon after we got on the trail a family doing the walk in reverse came by with the kids quite covered in mud. Why you’d do the trail in reverse I don’t know as it leaves you with a long walk uphill on the road to finish instead of down it. It didn’t take long on the walk to get to the titular caves which were volcanic remnants thought in some cases to be Aboriginal weather shelters. It wasn’t until a bit after these caves and rock formations that the trail got quite muddy and we seemed to cross the same stream several times as we began winding our way back up the mountain. My most exciting moment came when I noticed something on the path and stopped dead as David nearly collided with me. As I pointed it out to David, the snake I noticed reared up and began making some disturbingly cobra-like poses with the front of its body while we meekly backed up a bit. Neither of us knew what type of snake it was so we politely waited for it to finish crossing the path. Thinking it had curled up under a rock we gave it some space only to discover that it was just beside the rock and kept having issues climbing the slippery muddy hill and reared back again as I passed. I like snakes and I’m certainly not terrified of them, but I knew there were potentially deadly ones in Queensland and both of us were very much more on the lookout as we clambered through the mud for the rest of the trail. Once we got up to the ranger hut again we showed David’s blurry photo (he camouflaged well) of Mr. Snake and were eventually hesitantly told what it was. It turned out the ranger was wrong as I later found the right species in a guide book at the lodge, venomous but rarely bites humans.

Not long after we encountered Jake the snake on the trail we began to see the true muddy bit of the trail. By picking our way carefully we managed to avoid the six inch deep portions, but it was still very slip and slide and you’d often plant your foot into something that felt like glue. We ran into several other groups coming the other way including a group of about 5 wearing the least appropriate footwear you can imagine. One guy wearing flipflops another wearing sports sandals (slightly better) and a woman wearing white slip-on shoes more appropriate to a lawn party I didn’t see what the other two were wearing but likely equally inappropriate. We warned them that the mud went on quite a while but they kept going. We heard the women yelping and could easily imagine the mud sucking their shoes off and leaving them barefoot to their ankles. We managed to avoid any leeches but saw a few people in the parking lot with blood streaming, I imagine that group discovered a few.

Annoyingly enough Australia seems to enjoy a tradition of restaurants (and perhaps other businesses?) imposing surcharges on public holidays. I’ve seen this number be up to 30%. We went up to the lodge at the end of the track but not only did they have a surcharge, they weren’t even serving food at 3pm. The only other eatery at the top was closed for the holiday, so we went back to the car, ate a few of our snacks and headed back to town stopping on the way for a slurpee (more yankee style than Winnipeg, but still refreshing.)  Lunch/Dinner ended up being a lazy visit to Dominos and a pretty laid back night occasionally watching the giant bats fluttering outside.

Saturday will be time to do a bit of shopping and plan my next stop before David gets sick of me, I’m hoping to head up to Fraser Island and do some sand riding and dingo visiting.

AA: Intro to the Gold Coast

21 April 2011
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Sadly the weather turned for the worse the next day with grey skies blowing in from the sea and keeping things cool during the day.  I still took the chance to go out boogie boarding, but it was a much shorter trip given the temps. When I eventually got back around 2:30 the Germans were only just stirring. I ended up spending most of the rest of the day browsing the town then reading a book by the pool before heading down to the beach again for a beer or two later on with Sabina.

My wonderful german roommates got back very late that night, not sure when but I’m fairly sure it was post 3AM.They continued their lovely trend of flicking on the light and talking loudly for 15 minutes so I didn’t feel too bad about making noise when I got up at 7:30ish to get ready for my bus. As usual I ended up at the bus stop far too early, but it’s always nice to feel safe about it. It was just a short trip up to Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast which is just southish of Brisbane.

Surfer’s is an odd place, a very Niagara Falls feel about some of it, fancy pants shops in place mingling with Ripley’s Believe it or Not types things and a casino. A sudden cluster of high rise apartment and hotel blocks sit on a variety of islands and it all faces onto a long strip of beaches along the gold coast. Absolutely gorgeous sand and waves and the strip seems to go on forever.

My hostel was actually a bit north of the main part of town next to a couple of quite swanky resorts and a mall for them which doesn’t exactly lead to a lot of cheap food choices (or a proper supermarket.) I did once again find a fisherman’s coop and got some delicious prawn skewers (Lemongrass and Thai Chili.) The hostel itself was much nicer than the Cape Byron one, probably the same amount of space for 4-bed rooms that there was in 10-bed at Cape Byron. No sign of my roomies when I arrived, but a solid locking cupboard always helps. This hostel also provided free boogie boards so I went out and tried the waves but they were quite confused with some rips pulling you down the beach so I didn’t stay in long. Just as well too as it started pouring off and on the rest of the day.

The worst was to come the next day though as the rain was intense. A few of us braved the weather and hopped on the shuttle bus to head downtown. Even with my raincoat on I was drenched to the bone within minutes of getting out of the van. It turned out to be mostly a wasted trip though as there wasn’t much to do in that kind of rain other than shop and I’m hardly in a place financially or storage wise to do much of those.  The one positive was finding a remaindered book sale and picking up 3 books at $5 a pop, $5 is insanely cheap by Aussie standards so I was pretty happy to restock some reading material.

Eventually I gave up on the excursion and headed back to the hostel to wait for my friend David from the Adventure Tours NZ group. He’s currently living in the Gold Coast area in between various side trips over here. Unfortunately that made for a very cold wait in the common room as it was open on the marina and front ends so it created a very cold wind tunnel through the whole room. Poor David was just returning from Sydney through and got what sounds like a wild ride through the storms, he described it as potholes in the sky the whole way back. Once he was safely home he came to get me at the hostel, thankfully not a long trip. We pretty quickly called it a night.

It’s been really nice having the chance to cruise around with David and get off the old Greyhound track a bit. Being locked into the tourist track makes it a little hard to check out some of the more remote places. Sadly the weather hadn’t improved much beyond the rain going from solid and driving to intermittent. We took a walk along the inner broadwater area the next morning but eventually dove into a mall and hit the movie theatres to take a break from it. Overall it was a lovely relaxing day and the chance to curl up and watch a bit of tv and catch up with a friend was fantastic after a few weeks of quick departures.

Today we headed up to Springbrook National Park and did a few great walks. After a quick lunch we headed down to Natural Arch. Gorgeous little walk out to a waterfall that has carved a hollow out into an archway. You can actually walk right down into a cave where we saw a ton of bats flying around feeding. Next up was “Best of all Lookout” an overlook at the Queensland/NSW border where we could  look down into New South Wales from the rim of the old volcano that makes up the area. It was a gorgeous view, but the clouds were quickly rolling back in. Our last walk of the day was to Purling Brook falls, a bit of a longer walk with a lot more up and down but with a gorgeous waterfall that you actually get to walk behind. I also got to check a Wallaby off my aussie wildlife list as a little reddish grey buddy was sitting on the edge of the road as we drove back.

Oops, actually… before heading out to the parks we went up Q1 which is the tallest (or one of the tallest if it’s been passed by Dubai) residential only buildings in the world. Fantastic views up and down the beaches and off towards the hills we’d soon be visiting in the parklands.

We also took a spin around some of the swankier islands with giant homes. We particularly liked this one that was for sale, comes with a nice sheltered mooring for your multi-million dollar yacht:

I made us some Spring Rolls and Peanut Thai Chicken Noodles for dinner and now we’re both trying to write but neither of us are feeling creative so full of food after a good walk.  Well that and the excitement of some laundry tonight… woohoo!

Apologies for any site wonkyness, had to rebuild it right before leaving.

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