Australia Page 6
From crispyneurons
Sydney | Brisbane | Airlie, Whitsundays | Queensland Adventure | Townsville, Maggie | Cairns, Cape Trib | Return to Syndey
[edit] 9/25/99 12:10 PM, Cairns
I got into Cairns last night at 10:30. I wondered if the hostel shuttle I had arranged would still be there, seeing how the bus was half an hour late. But it was, along with half a dozen others I hadn't asked for. Seems they all stand around at the Cairns transit center and try to hawk their hostels to the backpackers. They seriously try to woo backpackers, just for a night or two at A$16. (Much harder than Mariott, for example, tries to get travelers in for US$200 a night.) The hostel turned out to be in the Sydney and Brisbane format: dorms in a large, labyrinthine building, rather than the small separated A frame cabins found in Airlie and Maggie. I suppose I prefer the cabin format but those seem to exist only in tiny towns, not "big cities" like Cairns.
Cairns is half tourist mecca and half border town. The architecture ranges from lush resort hotels to rickety two-story saloons right out of a John Wayne movie. It's hot and humid, and soggy from the on again, off again showers. The dominant colors are green and grey. It was muggy enough to keep me sleepless much of last night, unless that was the head cold I've begun to nurse. I crawled out of bed at 11 AM and ate what amounts to lunch. Cairns seems to be as lethargic as I feel. It's Saturday, yet the activity level is low right here on the esplanade. Today will be a good day to explore Cairns the city itself. But tomorrow I want to see the surroundings -- Cape Tribulation, Daintree River, or perhaps the Kuranda train/skylift. Maybe even the Undara lava tubes. Some combination of these trips will probably occupy me for the next week. Man I hope this cold goes away. Last thing I need.
[edit] 9/26/99 1:34 PM, Cape Tribulation
Late last night while I was at the hostel (Caravella's 149) I met a few girls and we all went to a bar/restaurant called the Underdog. This place gives free (or discounted) dinners to people from Caravella's. Over dinner I got to know one of the girls, Rikke (pronounced something like 'reeg-ay') from Denmark. Over drinks we made plans to go to up north to Cape Tribulation together. Back at the hostel we booked the trip: 3 days, 2 nights in the tropical north Queensland rainforest. She's low on cash so I'm paying her way. The bus was to leave at 7:40 the next morning so we tried to crash early, though not before 1 AM as it turned out. Our last minute preparations were hectic.
The bus showed up late the next morning -- it's happened to me before out here, and I'm told this is common in Australia, sort of an Aussie version of manana. The trip has been interesting. The bus took us first to the Daintree river. We boarded a boat to look for estuarine crocs and instead found a green snake, a python, and a tree with large green ant's nests.
Apparently the green ants make for a nutritious treat, packed with protein and Vitamin C-laden citric acids. We didn't find any ants so I couldn't try for myself. It rained pretty heavily while we were out on the river. We saw no crocs though, because the Daintree is tidal and the tide was too high. After we got off the boat we got a bite to eat. I ordered a croc dog, a sausage made of crocodile meat served in a bun like a hot dog. Rikke didn't like it but I thought it was fine. It didn't taste like chicken. But it probably tasted better than green ants do.
The tropical forests envelop everything out here. Many of the plant species here managed to survive the original Cretaceous cometary impact that killed the dinosaurs, and are in a sense living fossils. In fact a biologist who had been studying a plant long thought to be extinct (and available in fossil form only) discovered living examples of it in this rainforest. It was a scientific breakthrough. An Australian farmer had been killing them as weeds because they were poisoning his livestock.
[edit] 8:30 PM, Cape Trib
After a few hours we made it to PK's, the backpacker hostel of choice for Cape Trib. Rikke has become a cold fish on this trip; not sure if she's just tired or bored, but she's harder and harder to engage in conversation. Having brought her along is starting to look like a bad idea. After she went off for a swim I was just thinking, 'time for siesta?' when a girl named Meghan asks me if I'd like to talk to the beach with her and her friend Neil. They are American and 19 and 20 respectively. Again it's odd to be the old guy here, but I'm not finding it hard to relate at all. They are from New York, out here for college on an exchange program. So off I went to Cape Tribulation Beach with them.
The beach is dark and brooding. Behind you is the lush, wet tropical forest, the heart of darkness, Australian style. (Minus all that the profound Conradian metaphysical terror.) Large dead coral formations, coated in slimy mud, are embedded all along the beach in the smooth tan sand.
As you face the iron-grey ocean, you are flanked on your left by the rocky point which gives this area its name. Ominous clouds threatening heavy rain roil through the mountains behind you. And oddly enough, though it was cloudy and very windy, people sunbathed, including the staple topless women. Meghan found this shocking. I smiled on the inside, and told her of Balding Bay.
We walked to the north end of the beach to the cape. We climbed up the rocks but the buckle on one of Meg's sandals broke so the rest of her climb was barefoot. It was steep and basically a single piece of rock. Seemed easy to fall off. But we got to the top fine. The wind was really gusting and you could see for miles from up there. We looked around up there for a bit before heading back to the beach and to the hostel.
We hiked over to the general store to buy dinner and breakfast for tomorrow. The general store was just someone's house with a single room with shelves of food and a cash register. We bought all the food we needed for A$10. This was six meals. A single meal at the hostel restaurant was A$9. A$10 vs. A$54... well, it's not a tough call. We went back to the kitchen building and made dinner. While we ate, a high school friend of Neil's showed up, a girl from New Jersey he hadn't seen in years. The fact that they managed to meet in a rainforest on the other side of the planet...
After we ate dinner we went to get ice cream from a place across the road. We linked up with Rikke, who had taken a nap the whole time we had been gone. She had no dinner, so she got real food while we ate 'Vanilla Heaven.' We got back to the hostel reception desk just in time to book for a nightwalk through the rainforest tomorrow night. We're also thinking of renting some mountain bikes for the day tomorrow to do more extensive exploring of the area.
After it got dark Neil wanted to go swimming so we went to the pool. Meghan and I merely dangled our feet into the water from the edge. While we talked, a drunken Kiwi joined us and told us how he and his three mates rented a 4WD and drove north to Cooktown, crossing streams and plenty of mud. Meghan was cold and had something like three layers of clothes on (aside from her bare feet), but she suddenly stripped down to her bikini and jumped into the water. That lasted about 15 seconds before she climbed back out. I don't entirely get her.
The big question now is, how long can I stay awake? I'm incredibly exhausted but the gods revile backpackers who crash before 9:30. One last note: Two beautiful Australian place names: Botany Bay and Undara. Add these to the group that includes Shenandoah, Kilimanjaro, and Indus Valley.
[edit] 9/27/99 4:23 PM, Cape Trib
I slept soundly but with one or two interruptions last night. The cabin had three German girls; they came in pretty late last night. One brought home a guy to keep her bed warm. The other two woke up in the same bed for reasons I could only speculate. One of them brought food back to the cabin, which is a no-no out here, so I suggested she get rid of it. Meaghan and Neil and I had planned to wake up early this morning to see the sun rise over the beach. But Neil didn't wake me up, and he wouldn't say why. Meg suspected that he was afraid to. Oddness! Well, I have another theory.
Around mid-morning after breakfast we rented the mountain bikes. The bikes were in terrible condition. The front tire on mine was almost flat and the gears were all jammed. Out of the original 18, only three gears worked. The chain was rusted out and the brakes were a joke. But after some trial and error I managed to figure out how to get it working reasonably well. The three of us went out and rode down a rough gravel road for about an hour. It was very humid and the heat was stifling, and we didn't see much of interest down the road, so Meg suggested we turn back. Neil wanted to keep going, so we left him and went back to the hostel for a refreshing swim in the pool. After eating lunch we went back to the beach to lay out. It was about as sunny as this place gets, I suppose.
Of all the beaches in Australia I've been to, this one stands alone in one respect: because the sunlight is at best muted out here, the beach is never broiling with radiant heat like the ones to the south. It was warm and windy but also cloudy. Pleasant, actually. Meg tells me she seeks blue oceans; none around here. I advised her to head south to Airlie or Maggie. After a while Neil rejoined us. He told us about a few places he had discovered -- a swimming hole, a tidal pool with access to the far south end of the beach.
The weather began to go a little sour, so Meg and I decided to leave. Just then, we bumped into Brian, some guy she knows. The four of us went to find a few of the places Neil discovered. So the four of us took off.
First stop was the swimming hole. It was in the middle of the jungle and only accesible via a narrow trail. A rainforest is a plant riot. When the jungle broke you saw an isolated creek leading to a natural pond. There was a weather-beaten rope swing. Small fish schooled through the placid water. It reminds me of a creek in Missouri that I used to go to when I was a kid. None of us wanted to go swimming in this stagnant little pond, but Neil & Brian discovered that if you dropped small pebbles into the water, the fish would go after them like food. It was thin entertainment, but kind of sadistic too. Meg stayed well away from the water; I begin to recognize in her certain prissy, neat-freakish qualities.
After that we picked up dinner/breakfast at the general store and headed to the tidal pool. This was actually scenic because it was framed by a rocky promontory in the distance. It also led back to the beach proper after an interval. We followed it through. Brian found a coconut lying in the sand that he wanted to crack open, to drink the milk. Seemed like a bad idea to eat sometime you found on the ground... He felt pressured to put it back, but later on I found someone else at the hostel trying to crack open the same coconut. Oh well. Probably won't cause an epidemic.
After we got back we took another swim at the hostel's pool, though this time Meg wouldn't get in until Neil and I did first. She was suddenly shy about peeling down to her bikini. She can be very proper and modest. There's a certain hesitant tension in her body language, and she's paranoid that someone will steal her stuff if she leaves it in the cabin, exactly like I was my first day out here. But she never got over it, and in my eyes it now seems ludicrous. Her modesty is especially quirky since she has an excellent body. But she's only 19, educated and bright, but not immersed in the grubby informality of backpacker culture. But I do think she's having fun in her tightly controlled way.
[edit] 9/28/99 8:07 PM, Cairns
So later last night, around 7:30, we departed for the rainforest nightwalk. About a dozen of us walked through the rainforest well after dark with a guide who led us all. We were each given flashlights, though the guide's was much nicer, bright as a headlight. We were told to wear closed shoes, but all I had was the sandals and there was no way that was going to stop me. Meaghan began to show here fear not long before we were to leave, but she did stick with it.
The nightwalk was fantastic! the rainforest jungle is entirely different at night. For one thing, most rainforest animals are nocturnal so the whole place comes to life only after dark. It's also much spookier and the noises and smells and tactile sensations become much more evocative. The air is hot and humid owing to a "greenouse effect" microclimate beneath the canopy, and it is also heavily oxygenated. We found many things: the strangler fig, a tree which envelopes and kills another tree, to steal its resources; the cane toad, introduced to Oz in the 30s and poisonous to native wildlife, their skin secretes a narcotic substance, and their Australian population is over 50 billion; two species of lizard in the 'dragon' family, one of which was a gravid female; a stinger plant, with heart shaped leaves and equipped with poison spikes evolved to target mammalian nervous systems, it is intensely painful and can cause tingling that lasts up to six months after initial contact; large fruit-eating bats the size of eagles; and the best of all, we saw the beady eyes of the estuarine crocodile, a man-eater, on the opposite shore of a creek. Just knowing it was there was electrifying. There were a few other special moments on the walk that come to mind as well. One was the sight from a beach of the nearly full moon bathing the ocean in a liquid stream of light. This was so beautiful I could hardly tear my eyes away from it. Another was when we assembled as a group and the guide had us put out all the lights. The insects were loud and the leaves rustled gently. The night sky was softly lit by moonlight and I could just make out the silhouettes of our little group and surrounding trees. It was utterly relaxing. Near the end of the trail we found evidence that a tree kangaroo had been around not long before. The guide helps to catch rats in the rainforest in support of a scientific study, so we checked the cages with him and found two white tailed rats, which the guide seemed to think quite unusual.
[edit] 10:52 PM, Cairns
As I wrote the previous entry an Irish girl named Lisa pulled me out of bed and wanted to have a few beers and few laughs. I can get used to this. She led me to an open area under a roof, with a TV blaring and a few people sprawled on chairs. Nothing but bad American shows on. But I had no endurance out there. Sadly, this cold is getting the better of me, my throat is sore and it hurts when I swallow, plus now I have a wonderful dry cough. I need to sleep cause I'm too drunk to write coherently. Lisa's from Dublin. Why do Irish girls alwasy want me drunk? Misspelling 'always' was kind of funny. Shit, it's time to sleep now.
[edit] 9/29/99 11:00 AM, Cairns
William Cohen (the US Secretary of Defense) is in Cairns today. One assumes it relates to East Timor; theoretically there is to be no official American military involvement, but... Well, to continue the original story... after the night walk we piled back into the guide's land cruiser to head back to PK's, and we found a python laying on the pavement. It was fine, not run over; they are known to lay on the warm pavement after dark to keep warm. The guide picked it up and showed it to us; it was coiled around his wrist, clenching strongly, "like a tight bracelet" he said. He let it go up a tree, to see vehicular death another day.
The next day we prepared to leave PK's, back to civilization. It was unexciting, mostly packing stuff up and tring to catch the right bus, which was pretty entertaining and challenging. More than a few bus riders failed. The bus took off at 1PM or so, departing for a four hour ride back from Cape Trib to Cairns. The driver turned out to be this huge old Scottish guy. Looks like a slovenly Santa Claus. But his rolling Scottish burr aside, he was an Aussie in his heart; he hummed, then sang, "Waltzing Mathilda" for a good bit of the trip. Quite a character. I saw lots of banana and coconut plantations in this part of rural Queensland. We stopped at a fruit stand that makes a kind of 'ice cream' from purely fruit products, no milk or sugar, and it was actually good.
The next stop was the entrance to a chunk of land run by the Aborigines. It turns out there are a few still left, more here than farther south. The ones who live here are not smeared in charcoal and hunting with boomerangs, nor are they homeless and drunk as the ones I found in Brisbane. These people, the Kuku-Yalanji, have a different way. In order to generate money for their community, a few of them work as guides on the old Aboriginal dream trails in the Daintree rainforest, in Mossman Gorge. They say the jungle is like a person to the Aborigines. Our guide was a mostly Aboriginal (75%) man named T.J. His perfect Australian accent was surprising to me. But he is certainly no stranger to the European sourced Australian culture.
T.J. is 43 years old and was born in the jungle. He told us of his struggle to find identity while being torn between two cultures. He spoke of the old rituals and performed an initiation ceremony for one of the girls in the tour. (More on this later.) He said he had been sick from his internal conflict and was thus killed and resurrected by a witch doctor. A life-changing experience for him occurred when he was just a child. His grandfather channeled a spirit who foretold that he would become a messenger, a kind of messiah to share Aboriginal culture and spirituality with the materialist white man. He believes that Christianity is about fear and he wants to liberate people from their destructive greed. The material existence seems hollow to him. He might express these ideas differently than I am. I found his message to be similar to Taoism. But I think he's worried about white people and that makes him want to transmit Aboriginal culture. He really seems to see it as his duty.
He took us to a small pool in the woods. Here he performed the rite of initiation for the girl he had picked earlier. He chanted in his native tongue and rubbed clay dots on her forehead, cheeks, and chin. The point of the initiation is to make the person feel special, he told us; nothing more. He said it's best if an old man performs it because with experience one can really best characterize the qualities of the girl being initiated.
Afterwards we went on and saw a few more things, like a 500 yr. old tree that was of special significance to the guide's people. He mentioned that he planned to do a documentary. If he makes it, I hope to get a copy somehow. I also hope to keep in touch with him via email, after I return home. His natural interest in spiritual Aboriginal symbols parallels my own interest in semiotics. Oddly, he disappeared at the end of the trail; I never saw him come back out to the clearing with the rest of the group.
Then we piled back onto the bus to continue our journey. When we got to Port Douglas I said goodbye to Neil and Meaghan -- this was their stop. Perhaps we'll keep in touch.
Down the road, just outside of Cairns, a mango tree decided what we needed to do was stop under it, so it arranged for our bus to get a flat tire. Its mangos were ripe so some of us gathered a few to take with us for food. This ensures good dispersal for its seeds and contributes to the success of its species. Pretty clever for a mango tree. And the fruit was delicious.
Soon enough we got back to town, and I checked in again at Caravella's 149. No sooner had a settled in than Lisa convinced me to drink with her and some friends. But I've already told that story. I was drunk, not to mention sick, so I slept like a log. But this morning I woke up feeling better than I had in days! Strange. It's very rainy in Cairns today. I bought a Quantas ticket back to Sydney for 10/1. Thank God I don't have to take the bus back. Due to the rain, there isn't much to do today. We were going to a nearby beach but those plans are shot. Tomorrow Lisa and I will go skydiving over Dunk Island. Man, did I just say that?
[edit] 2:30 PM, Cairns
Since I appear to have plenty of spare time today, I want to add a few other remarks:
Here in Cairns they have a vehicle one can hire which has two wheels on front and one in back. The driver sits in an egg-shaped compartment in the middle, slightly like a motorcycle. I like the design and I may rent one just for the novelty. They're called scooter-cars. Do they exist in America?
Many of the places around here have dismal names: Cape Tribulation, Mt. Sorrow, etc. This is attributed to the state of mind of Captain Cook when he explored and named everything around here. But I think he could have been more daring. What about Cape Whack? The Daintree river could easily have been the River Styx. Doesn't Mt. Total Fucking Nightmare have a night ring to it?
The Aboriginal guide, T.J., said that people can join the Aborigines for a time if they like, that they welcome outsiders into their family and don't care about the color of your skin. I got the impression it would be for a month or so. I'm tempted by the offer. It's very generous and extremely xenophilic. Unless it's just tourist pap. I'll assume the former.
[edit] 9/30/99 11:45 AM, Mission Beach
So we got back to Caravellas in good order. I developed some film, and then I hooked up with a few people last night: Lisa, and a few friends of hers, a couple - Stuart and Sally, all from Birmingham, UK. The four of us went to the Underdog for the free dinner and for a few drinks. Which later became more than a few. Which led to Sally and I taking part in a bar game, one a dance stage in front of the Underdog 'audience.' The game is called Knights & Cavaliers. There is a leader and all participants are broken into guy/girl pairs. The idea is that when the leader shouts "knights," the guys kneel on one knee and the girls sit on the other. If he calls "mount," the guy goes on all fours and the girl sits on his back. If he calls "cavalier," the guy picks up the girl in his arms. The pair who reacts the fastest wins. I wondered if I could really pick up Sally so rapidly if "cavalier" was called; she's in good shape but she's tall, maybe 5'8". So like a moron I told her "I hope I don't have to pick you up too much. I'm not a weightlifter you know" or something like that. Which was just brilliant. She was shocked for a split second, then said "Why you crass bastard!" It was hilarious. Actually I had no trouble picking her up and holding her for as long as I pleased; she was light as a feather. She must have recognized that herself, because afterwards she was looking at me in an entirely new way. Too bad her boyfriend was right there. (All kidding aside, he's a pretty cool guy.)
It was pouring non-stop that night. We ran in the rain to an Irish pub, PJ's. Had a few "pints" served in glasses the size of tumblers. Around one or so we headed back to the hostel, very sloshed. And in a few hours I realized my mistake.
The bus leaving for the skydiving over Dunk Island was departing at 8 AM the following morning (today). I had, and still have, a wicked hangover. I've been drinking water all day long and I'm still thirsty. When I opened my day backpack (which I took with me all last night, through the rain), I discovered my travel journal had water damage and the Lonely Planet guide was totally soaked; it looked like it had been dropped in a swimming pool. "Thus Spake Zarathustra" also was damaged, but not catastrophically. Anyway, getting up at 7 AM was total agony - I spent half an hour in the shower. I managed to eat something not long before the bus arrived. I slept through most of the two-hour trip from Cairns south to Mission Beach. I thought I'd be nervous this whole time, anticipating the skydive, but it hasn't been like that. We arrived early and I'm waiting for my chance to skydive.
[edit] 10:30 PM, Cairns
The skydive was incredible. It's very hard to describe but I'll try anyway. The weather ruled out skydiving over Dunk Island, so we landed on nearby Mission Beach proper. Since I'm not certified I had to go tandem, meaning physically attached to the professional skydiver. I put on a jumpsuit and a harness while I was instructed. It's really simple, the skydiver does all the work. I got into the small plane along with the two other tandem teams and a single diver who videotapes those who paid for it. The tiny plane has no seats, so we all sat crammed together on the floor. The 'door' on the plane is really just a door-shaped hole. As the plane slowly spiraled higher and higher, the tandem skydivers hooked together. Through the door I could see the ground get farther and farther below. Oddly, I felt completely calm the entire time but also filled with anticipation. Eventually the plane reached 10,000 feet, the altitude I had selected. The instructor slid us to the door, and my feet dangled out over two miles of air. Wind whipped my hair.
And so we leaned forward and jumped. I remember feeling absolutely no fear or worry, which struck me (and still strikes me) as peculiar. I saw the plane spin away as we tumbled in 120mph free fall. Then a shocking jerk as the skydiver deployed the parachute. We bobbled briefly and then we hung in the air like puppets on strings. Soon we stabilized and I took my goggles off, and saw the world beneath me. The view was unbelievably awesome. The 30 seconds of free fall had been an instant of screaming wind and jangled shaking, but this part was serene. I saw the gigantic turquoise Pacific Ocean beneath me, the dense tropical jungle to my right, and a tiny spaghetti string of Mission Beach between (how on earth could we land on that?). I spread my arms and drifted in awed silence. It was subtly grand, and wonderful like a dream. I began to laugh with amazement. I couldn't find any words, no scream seemed loud enough. I floated above a toy world, as intricate and fragile as a Faberge egg. Glorious. Below my feet was nothing at all, not for a mile. It felt like I was breaking laws of physics: floating in midair? You just don't feel the sensation of falling. The instructor executed a few swoops and spins and gave me the chute controls. As we descended the beach became a destination rather than a string. An actual place to land. We plunged through opaque clouds and saw the dazzling tropical sun. Eventually we neared the beach to land. Amanda, an American girl who was skydiving later, had agreed to take pictures of my approach in exchange for my reciprocation. I saw her pointing my camera at me. Soon enough we gently landed in the sand.
The whole thing lasted less than five minutes, but I felt a profound change, I felt altered at some basic level. People asked me what it was like and all I could say was "I can't describe it." It took me a bit to recover my speech, about half an hour. It was an incredibly powerful experience.
Afterwards I had a late lunch and got to talking with a shy Japanese girl who nevertheless demonstrated the courage to go skydiving in our group. We returned to the beach so I could take the photos of Amanda skydiving with her camera. Amanda is much like my old friend Marta: brainy, beautiful, and neurotic. We watched some of the videos people had taken of their jumps, which was fun. One of the videos had me in a cameo appearance, right when I sat on the ledge of the doorway, ready to leap out of the plane. I was struck by how unruffled I appeared in the video, calmly nodding as the guide issued instructions to me. All this time I'd though skydiving would be frightening, only to discover it's more like a massage or hot bath! I was totally relaxed after it was over and almost took a nap. What a strange experience. The others generally didn't react this way, they were manically screaming and laughing. Except for Amanda, who reacted the way I had. But I told her my experience before she jumped so it may have colored her perception.
In the evening we departed Mission Beach and went back north to Cairns. I wanted to rest, and the girls wanted us to meet up at the Underdog later on (surprise). While I was resting, Michael from Perth found me! I had been trying to reach him for days, but he found me instead. I told him about the skydive and invited him to join us at the Underdog. So we took the bus over there and had drinks and/or dinner. Michael had a B-52 shooter but I was studiously avoiding alcohol all evening. (I can still feel the hangover now. Which begs the question: did being hungover affect my skydiving experience?) I met two girls from Perth, the one who talked was tall and named Beth, the other was beautiful and named Mazza. After a while they all wanted to go to PJ's (surprise) so we took off. Trouble was, no one (including yours truly) knew how to get there! After we walked a few blocks they claimed they had been following me. Too bad they never mentioned this to me. (They said I was a 'natural leader'. Uh huh.) So what the hell, I took the initiative.I asked for directions and eventually got us there.
But it was a bust. PJ's is too loud to talk and too sedate to dance, so we just stood around like idiots. Beth became rude because I stuck with ice water. The pressure to drink in this crowd is considerable, but I know my limits, and I wasn't having any, not that night. Since Beth was irritating and Mazza continued to be silent, Michael and I left. As this is probably the last time I'll see him I said goodbye, and went back to Caravella's, my little home away from home. It may have ended in a fizzle, but all told the day was as complex and beautiful as I could ask for.
Next page: Return to Sydney...
