The Queen doesn't live in Queensland.... but crocodiles do!
WARNING- SUPER LONG ENTRY, BUT PROBABLY ONE OF THE BEST I WILL WRITE WHILE IM HERE. IT'S WORTH THE ENTIRE 1/2 HOUR (OR LONGER) IT WILL TAKE YOU TO READ IT. PLEASE COMMENT!!
A little preface to the next section… I took a 5 day trip to tropical north Queensland in conjunction with my host university, Arcadia. I didn’t know anyone on the trip, minus the leaders whom I had for the orientation of week 1. However, I was excited nonetheless, because this is the first of 2 big trips that I will be on while in Australia. And for those ignorant readers that won’t look anything up on a map, Queensland is the state in the northeast part of the country, and it is beautiful, sunny, and warm pretty much all year round (think Florida, but with rainforests and mountains, and, well… Australian things).
My Aunt Diana really encouraged me to take this trip, and I am so glad that I listened to her because it was stunningly beautiful and worth every penny (quite an expensive trip, although not as expensive as the one I will take to the Gold Coast at the end of September). Anyway, enjoy this next section… the Queensland adventure… pictures to follow next so you can see what i'm talking about. I suggest reading and then looking at the pictures straightaway to get the idea of what I saw :)
August 10th- I woke up at 4am in order to walk halfway across the city to catch a bus to the airport. I could have taken a taxi, but it was only a half hour walk, and I refuse to pay ridiculous amounts of money when I could just walk. I caught the bus at 5am and arrived at the airport at 5:20, well ahead of time for my 7:10 departure. I quickly learned that Australian security is WAY lax compared to the US, especially when it comes to domestic flights. The entire process of checking in and going through “security” took about a total of 10 minutes. I only had to show ID once, I didn’t have to take my shoes off, anyone can go through the security and wait with their loved ones, etc etc. I was kind of angry that I got there so early when it wasn’t really necessary, but I think it is much better to be early than late in case something goes wrong (as we will see later in the saga…)
The flight was uneventful because Australia from the sky is pretty boring to look at, and I was so tired so I basically slept the entire 2.5 hours. The arrival was amusing for a few reasons, the first being the fact that the Cairns airport doesn’t actually LOOK like an airport. The pilot said we were landing, but as the plane got closer to the ground, it seriously looked like we were attempting to land in people’s backyards. Eventually we touched down on a very small runway and taxied up to a building that looked like a small hospital, at best. The second reason it was amusing was because of the weather. I walked outside and it was absolutely beautiful- 26 degrees (roughly 80 F) and sunny yet there were native Queenslanders dressed in jumpers (aussie for sweaters) and pants! It was so, so, so weird. For them, 26 degrees is considered cold and wintertime. Weird.
Anyway, like all airports in Australia, the city is 15-20 mins away from the airport, so I hopped on another bus that took me directly to the heart of Cairns- a place called The Esplanade. There were shops, restaurants, galleries, tourist things, and right by the beach there was a huge public pool/fountain called the Lagoon. I think at maximum capacity it can hold 1,000 swimmers, and there is a little beach that surrounds the whole thing, with boats and pier just off to the right, and the cairns “skyline” to your left. It was quite pretty, so I decided to hang out there and people watch because I didn’t have to meet the trip group until 4pm. I ended up sleeping and relaxing for a good 4 hours, which was nice, but I really wished that I had someone there to enjoy the view with
At 4 pm, I made my way to a hostel called the Bohemia Resort to meet up with the Arcadia staff and the other students. Like I said, I didn’t know any of them, and really didn’t get to know too many of them that well because they weren’t really my kind of people (many clique-ish American sorority girl types that cared more about how much of a tan they were going to get than what we were going to be doing for the next 5 days). We all hopped on a couple of rented van/bus things and headed for Mission Beach, which was 2 hours south of Cairns. Once we got there, we checked into the hostel and explored the town (all ¼ mile of it… it was quite small with just a few restaurants, places to stay, and a post office, but the atmosphere was cool nonetheless). It was the type of place that you could only find if you happened upon it, but once you did you realized you were in a really cool little place. I’m pretty sure that the town exists solely to cater to vacationers who are in the area to visit the Great Barrier Reef, or are en route to somewhere else.
The dinner was good, we ate cheap pizzas and drank expensive beers (go figure). I met some of the nicer kids from James Cook University, and I actually got along with a bunch of them. That night, as like every night we were there, many of the kids went out and spent lots of money on drinking, but I opted out and went back to the hostel to get sleep and prepare for the next day’s adventure.
August 11, 2007- Saturday was one of my favorite days of the trip because a majority of it was spent on the Great Barrier Reef. First, one of our leaders Stuart took us for a short walk along the beach to teach us about local flora and fauna of Mission Beach (he knows about basically everything in Australia…) This was when I realized that for some strange reason, my camera batteries had died, even though they were charging the entire previous night. I was really upset at first, but I soon realized that it was the perfect day to have that happen, because I wouldn’t have used it to take pictures under water anyway! After the walk, we got on a commercial dive boat that took us out to the Great Barrier Reef for an afternoon of snorkeling and scuba diving. It took about 1.5 hours to actually get to the reef because we picked up some honeymooners from Dunk Island (future vacation spot for me and Joe- it’s so beautiful!), and the reef is pretty far away from the coast. I spent the whole hour talking to one of the leaders named Mark, who pretty much became my best friend for the 5 days because we had a lot in common and just kept a conversation going every time we had the chance. Secretly, neither one of us wanted to hang out with the Americans, so we sort of us just hung back and did our own thing. He was cool, it was almost like having a big brother for 5 days :)
Anyway, we got to the reef and were prepped on how to use the snorkel and those who were going scuba diving headed off (I didn’t go, too expensive…). When I first got into the water, it was a bit nerve wracking because I had never used a snorkel before so I wasn’t taking deep enough breaths to cycle out my own carbon dioxide. Thus I got really nervous, put my head above the water, and tried to go back to the boat to relax and try again. However, because the tide was pretty low, I bumped my knee into the coral and got cut pretty bad. It didn’t hurt that much, but I still have tiny marks all over my knee, almost 2 weeks later… I went back to the boat to practice using the snorkel in a low stress situation, and after a few minutes I went back out with one of the leaders Maz. I followed her around and watched her point out some really pretty fish, which helped me to relax. Soon, I was zipping around the reef, hanging out with the fish, and staring at all of the pretty coral. It was SUCH an amazing view, I can’t even hope to describe it very well… the water was clear and vibrantly blue, there were many different types of fish of all shapes and sizes, and just the grandeur of the whole thing was amazing for me.
After a bit, Maz got cold (silly Australians, the water was almost 75 degrees!) so we went back to the boat for lunch and tea, which was delicious. I drank an Australian-made ginger ale, and fell in love. It is less spicy than our ginger ale, and a bit sweeter. It tastes like a combination of ginger ale and cream soda. Delicious!
Soon, I bugged her to go out for a second dive, and she agreed. We saw all of the same things, but I enjoyed it much more because I was finally getting comfortable. I got very excited when I saw a few clownfish hovering around some coral, and I immediately swam closer to play with “Nemo.” I waved my fingers in front of the coral, and they hurried behind it, and after a second they curiously came back. I did the same thing, and we played this fishy version of “peekaboo” for a few minutes. After that, a large purple fish with big eyes swam really close to me, about a foot away, and we just swam along together for a little bit, checking each other out and being (I think) mutually amazed. Then, I saw the biggest school of fish- there were at least 1000 maybe more… They all swam around me, and I felt like I was in a movie or something… it was just incredible!
Maz and I were the last ones to get back in the boat this time because we stayed out until the dive company made us get back in to start heading back to shore. I dried off and sat on the edge of the boat to enjoy the view and reflect on what I had just experienced. When we returned to Dunk Island, they let us get off and explore the island for 30 minutes while they washed the boat. I walked around for a little bit and decided that I wanted to visit again in the future with Joe, and then I walked back to the dock only to see a different boat being towed out of the water by a tractor. Only, the tractor got stuck in the sand so they were calling in a bigger tractor to get them both stuck. It was an amusing sight to view, and Mark and I watched it for about 10 minutes, placing bets on when we thought the chain would snap. (Un)Luckily, it never did, and the tractors were successful. On the short trip from Dunk Island back to the shore, I sat on the edge of the boat again and sang songs at the top of my lungs (it was really windy- no one could hear me). I sang “I hope you dance” by Leann Womack because I was feeling happy and inspirational, and “hey there Delilah” by the Plain White Tees because I was also feeling sad and wish I had someone to share the day with.
That night, we went to a local bar/restaurant, which was expensive, but delicious. I, of course, had fish and chips and a few pints of the local beer, which made me happy, despite the price. There was a footie game on all of the TVs, and many of the locals were really getting into it. This place also had a separate room with a dance floor and pool tables, so we hung out there all night to dance and relax after the long day in the sun. It was quite a fun evening, and a great way to end the best day of the vacation.
August 12- Sunday, we made our way back to Cairns, but it was an all day affair because we stopped for many adventures along the way. The first stop was to the fan-palm rainforest in a town called Licuala. This was the first of 5 different rainforests we would seeing during the next 3 days. The Licuala rainforest is called a fan-palm rainforest because most of the trees are fan-palms (google them if you don’t know what they look like, but it’s pretty self explanatory). It didn’t have that much of a canopy (due to recent cyclones), so there was lots of sunlight that crept through. There’s not much I can say besides that, check out the pictures for more articulate (albeit non-descriptive) details.
The next place we visited was a town called Tulley, which is the wettest place in Australia. I don’t remember the exact number for yearly rainfall, but it was a lot. We went to the visitors center to learn about its history and importance to Australia-it is a farming town- tons and TONS of sugarcane. In fact, much of tropical north queensland is home to a vast amount of sugar cane farms. I learned a lot about the sugarcane process, but I won’t go into boring details here (you can ask me later if you want to know more- it’s really cool!). When we got back on the road, Mark pointed out a “cane train” to us, which is exactly what it sounds like. There are railroad tracks built along the side of the road and everything! It was pretty cool to observe, and also hilarious because later in the day we had to stop at an intersection to wait for the cane train to pass… amazing.
For lunch we stopped in a little town called Innisfails, and then headed off to a place called Josephine falls. Here, we walked through another rainforest (this one was more temperate, and had a higher and larger canopy, so it was darker and felt more like a proper rainforest (although I don’t really know what that even means hahah). At the end of our walk we came to the waterfall and all marveled at its beauty. There was also a natural waterslide, and I got a picture of two happy kids playing on it.
The next stop was to the Babinda falls, where we saw more waterfalls, but this one also had a giant waterhole where we went for a swim and relaxed. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I saw even MORE different vegetation than the last 2 rainforests. It’s amazing how you can travel 10 kilometers up the road and see such different sights!
That was our last stop for the day, and we finished the day by driving 30 more kilometers to our destination at Cairns. We checked into the hostel around 5pm and were given the rest of the night to do whatever we wanted. Mark and I hunted around for an open grocery store because I didn’t want to pay for expensive restaurant food again, but we couldn’t find anything, so we went back to the hostel. When I walked in, I went to the bar/pool area and found out that they had a dinner special of nachos with chili and the works and a beer for 8 dollars. In Australia, that is CHEAP, so I decided to go for it. I ordered, took a quick shower, and then sat down at the bar with my nachos and beer, happy to finally have good food that was also cheap. Everyone else had gone out to clubs, restaurants and sushi bars, but I wasn’t up for spending upwards of $100 with people I barely knew, so I took up a conversation with the bartender, and a guy sitting next to me who was from Wales. I really enjoy talking to people that I don’t know, especially when they are from all over the world. I ended up talking to those two for 2 hours, until the guy from Wales had to leave. Lucky for me, Mark got back from his dinner with the other leaders at that time, so I talked with him for another hour. It was good fun. The drinks were cheap, I didn’t have to hang out with the Americans, and got to have 3 hours of fantastic conversation. It was a great night
August 13, 2007
On Monday, we woke fairly early for an hour ride north to Port Douglas in order to have “Breakfast with the Birds” at a wildlife sanctuary. This place had a huge tent set up with a delicious buffet breakfast (complete with mimosas and passionfruit!), but the sides of the tent were all open, so the native birds were able to fly around- hence “Breakfast with the birds.” It was a unique and humorous experience because many of the birds attempted to actually sit down and have breakfast with us, and some succeeded because we wanted to take pictures of them eating our people food. The whole time, I thought of my Grandmom and PopPop because this was exactly the type of thing they would enjoy (especially with Pop taking pictures of birds eating Grandmom’s food- haha I can just imagine it!).
The rest of the wildlife was pretty cool; we saw alligators, crocodiles, various birds and snakes, kangaroos, wallabies, cassowaries, turtles, and koalas. I had seen most of them during my Phillip Island trip, but they were exciting nonetheless. I also spotted my first echidna, which made me happy
We stopped in the town center of Port Douglas for lunch and a bit of shopping. It was a very tourist-y type of town, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere of it, and added it to my list of must-return places when I come back with Joe and whoever else… I managed to buy some souvenirs for my family and took in the sunshine and atmosphere while I had my lunch.
After lunch we continued on north to Daintree, where we took a boat cruise along the Daintree river for some old-fashioned Australian crocodile hunting. Now, I don’t really subscribe to stereotypes, and as an intellectual that currently lives in Melbourne, I realize that 95% of Australians do not talk, act, or look like Steve Irwin (God rest his soul), but our tour guide was straight out of the Australian textbook. He could have easily taken lessons from Steve at some point in his life. He had the outfit, the accent, and a love for crocodiles like no one I have ever met before. It was absolutely fantastic! I enjoyed every minute of the cruise, minus the fact that I am terrified of crocodiles. For some silly reason, I sat in the back of the boat in order to be able to hear the guide (and because it was as far away from the American girls that Mark and I could get), yet I forgot that the back was also the closest to the water. The entire ride, I kept expecting to turn around and see a crocodile snout following the boat, perhaps a ticking clock in its belly, chasing after me like I was Captain Hook. Luckily, they all stayed sunbaking (aussie for…well its obvious isn’t it?) on shore, and we managed to see about 6 different ones (including a tiny tiny baby!). I also learned heaps (aussie for lots) about the lifestyle of crocodiles, which is actually very interesting (you should look it up!).
After the cruise, we headed north through the rainforest to Cape Tribulation, where we played on the beach for a few hours. The water was extremely warm, and I walked along to take pictures of fishies and collect shells. Then Maz magically appeared with a Frisbee (!) so I tossed with one of the guys who had a pretty decent backhand. He was basically the only one who wanted to play with me because the other American girls spent the entire time laying on their towels getting tans. Lame. As the afternoon turned late, we started driving towards our hostel, which was IN the rainforest! Before we made it there, though, we took a short walk through a mangrove rainforest. Mangrove trees have unique roots because they grow under water. Look them up on wikipedia for more info, but we got to see the funny looking roots because there is a current drought and it was low tide. It was really cool, and I got some great pictures!
We finally got to the hostel (Crocodylus Village) around 6pm, with a yummy dinner served to us at 7pm. There wasn’t really anywhere to go out because we were in the middle of the rainforest, so everyone stayed around and played pool, darts, board games, etc. Yet again I ended up talking to Mark for most of the night, and this time we were joined by a few kids who were also feeling excluded from the American Barbie dolls. We had a great conversation, including the ever-present cultural study of Australia vs America vs everywhere. Eventually, we all got tired and headed to bed. It was kind of like camping, with all of the animal sounds and the dampness, but I was still in a bed. It was weird…
August 14, 2007
Tuesday was the last day of the Queensland trip, which started off with another beach visit- this one was called Cowbay beach. I walked around and collected shells, tossed around the Frisbee, and took pictures of a random boat against the skyline. It was quite relaxing and a nice way to start the day. The next stop on the way back to Cairns was the Mossman Gorge, which is a pretty popular place for tourists to go. Up until this point, all of the beaches and waterfalls had been relatively deserted because they weren’t as well known. I realized when we arrived at the Gorge how much I had taken that for granted- there were people everywhere! Somehow the rainforest and gorge didn’t feel as authentic that way… I don’t know it was really weird. However, I did get to cross one of those wooden swing bridges that you only see in the movies, and let me tell you- it was terrifying! The sign leading up to it said “No more than 10 people on the bridge at any time” and no one was paying attention to it, so I was even more scared, because I like to follow the rules when my life may be in danger! Though it was scary, it was also really fun, so I guess it was worth it. The gorge itself was very pretty as well, so it was a nice spot for our picnic lunch even though it was so crowded.
Just down the road from the gorge was an aboriginal culture tour, also on our agenda for the day. It was my first encounter with aboriginal people, which was pretty cool, but I’m not sure how I felt about the entire experience. Our guide through the forest was a woman, and she also happened to be the only woman tour guide. She also happened to be one of the most sexist, hardcore feminists I have ever met, which I think had to do with the fact that she’s the only woman who works at that company. Everything she showed us in the forest in terms of Aboriginal life and culture was fascinating, but her tour was FULL of sexist comments. Granted we only had 3 guys in our group, but I’m sure they were made to feel very uncomfortable; I was extremely upset at the whole situation because I do not consider myself to be an extreme feminist and I think “reverse sexism” (which is actually just sexism in my mind) is terrible and it really embarrasses me. Anyway, the actual things she showed us were pretty cool, including survival and daily living in the forest, info on the flora and fauna (including a HUGE strangler fig tree, the biggest tree I have ever seen!), cave art, rituals and celebrations, and other aspects of Aboriginal life. She got really into it, talking about “my ancestors” as if she knew them all. They are a very spiritual culture, very in tune with nature, but this woman lives in an Aussie house with modern conveniences so I had a hard time believing that she was as in tune with the nature as “authentic” aborigines would have been. Oh well, I guess one encounter with them is not enough to judge or make assumptions. I hope that isn’t my last encounter with the Aborigines.
After the tour, we headed back to Cairns in order to make flights. Here’s where the interesting epic story comes in where I almost didn’t make it back to Melbourne:
Earlier that morning, I realized that somewhere along the trip I lost my flight itinerary and airport shuttle ticket and I didn’t remember what time my flight left Cairns. I had thought it was around 9pm, but I wasn’t sure. We got to the airport around 3pm, and Mark suggested that I go back to Cairns city and hang out rather than sitting at the airport for hours. I didn’t really want to because I didn’t want to pay for a shuttle back to the airport, but Mark enticed me with a free dinner on the Arcadia credit card, so when I went into the airport and asked the Jetstar people what time my flight left, the guy said “10 pm mate,” I decided that 6 hours in the airport was NOT what I wanted to do, and free food usually always wins
So Mark and I headed back to the city and had a really yummy dinner and chatted for a long time. We walked around the lagoon, and out onto the pier to check out all of the boats. They were expensive and HUGE. Some were so huge, that they had a smaller boat stored on the deck of the bigger boat- they all obviously belonged to millionaires that summered in Cairns. We even saw one that was a pirate ship- so cool!!! It was a really fun time, because I finally had someone to talk to about all of my study abroad problems/insecurities because it’s his job to listen to that stuff and help out, which is exactly what he did. As I said before, it was like I had a big brother for 5 days, and it was awesome. I have yet to meet another person in Australia that I can talk to like we did, so it was a good time.
After about 5 hours of eating, walking around, and talking, it was finally time for me to catch my shuttle to the airport. I got the 7:45 shuttle, which got me to the airport at 8pm, 2 hours ahead for my supposed 10pm flight. Mark had suggested I get a later shuttle because he said it wasn’t going to take that long to get through the check-in and security, but I am one of those paranoid people that needs to be way ahead of time in case something goes wrong. I am so glad that I listened to my paranoia, because when I went to check in, the guys at the jetstar counter looked at me in utter disbelief and said “why are you arriving at 8pm for a flight that leaves at 8:05?” I immediately went into a muscle gripping panic and told the guys that I had been told 10pm. It’s important to note that because it was such a small airport, there was only one flight to Melbourne out of Jetstar that night, so it’s not like the man could have been mistaken for another flight. Basically, the guy I talked to in the afternoon was completely wrong. The guys at the counter didn’t seem to believe my story (arrogant and wouldn’t admit that one of their people made a mistake) but at least they calmed my terror a bit by letting me know that the flight had been delayed due to a security breech in Melbourne earlier in the day, so all flights were behind. He printed out my ticket, told me to go to 18, and said that I better hurry because even though it was delayed, it was scheduled to leave in 10 minutes…
I ran so fast to the security, which was completely empty (I should mention here that this was the last flight of the night, so if I missed it, I had to find my way back to Cairns city, find a place to sleep, and then pay for another flight the next day because Jetstar doesn’t do refunds even though it technically would have been their fault) and quickly went through. This was about the time that I was thanking God that this was a small airport with very lax security. One minute later, I had arrived at gate 18, saw the tunnel door locked, looked at the computer screen which said “Final call- boarding.” In other words, I had missed it… or so I thought. In my panic, I ran back to the security and asked them what to do because my bags had already gone through but I wasn’t able to board. The nice security man looked at my boarding pass and gently told me that I was looking at the wrong gate- the man at the Jetstar counter had sent me to a different gate and I needed to be at gate 21. Furious at their second mistake of the night, but grateful for the help from the security, I sprinted yet again to the right gate, which was almost finished boarding. I quickly got to the end of the line and almost collapsed from a mixture of exhaustion, relief, stress, fury, and remnants of terror. The best part was that the guy who told me the wrong gate was also the guy who took my ticket. I was so emotional that I said “Gate 18 sounds nothing like 21 mate…” and walked onto the plane without even looking back to see his answer or reaction.
I found my seat and took a few deep breaths in attempt to calm down, and heard the two women sitting next to me talking about their frustrations at the delay. I turned to them and told them that I was so relieved for the delay and immediately relayed my story. They were in shock and immediately tried to help calm me down (I love most Aussies- they are so nice and friendly!) We ended up talking for a good 2 hours, and I found out that they were a mother and daughter (elder and middle aged) who lived together and were on holiday in Cairns. When they heard that I had lost my airport shuttle ticket, they asked me where I lived and they told me that they lived 10 minutes from my house and insisted that they drive me home once we landed. Now, I know I’m supposed to be wary of American strangers, but Aussies are different, especially an old lady and her daughter. I accepted because it would save me 1.5 hours of stress, and lots of money. So once we landed, they took me back to my house and insisted that I come over for dinner one night. I said yes, and left them $5 in the backseat, even though they said they didn’t want money. I stumbled inside, exhausted and immediately fell asleep. What a way to end my adventure…
So that’s it for Queensland. I’m still 15 days behind, but I’m getting there!!! You’ll get it soon! Please keep the comments up, and Congrats if you made it through that post. I would LOVE to hear from you, in a comment response or email (simplypie22@yahoo.com)
Love Lyndsey