ahhhh. 'stralia!

G’day from tropical Australia! I’m in Cairns which is known as the ‘Wet Tropics’ and is, of course, living up to its name. January is mid-summer here and it’s rained every day since I arrived Thursday night (Sunday night as I write this). It’s pouring right now.
Fortunately I avoided the worst of it, which happened about a week ago: Typhoon Charlotte dumped 9 inches of rain in 24 hours! That unfortunate event, coupled with a ‘king tide’ (highest tide in 14 years, I heard) flooded Cairns with water up to waist-deep. According to the locals, though, it all drained off by the next day and by the time I arrived, everything looked to be normal. It was raining quite heavily and they’d had the airport shut down due to lightning strikes, so my flight was a couple of hours late. By the time I’d mastered driving on the ‘wrong side’ and got lost trying to find my hotel, it was 12:30am before I checked in. Fortunately I didn’t hit anything or drive on the US side – I’d already had a bit of practice while conducting business in Sydney the previous 4 days as I was the ‘designated driver’ one evening.
Given the late hour, I decided to make Friday a get-my-feet-on-the-ground kind of day. I hadn’t really been able to take note of my surroundings as I was driving in, so I struck out on foot from my hotel, which is about 5 miles out of the city center. (One of the reasons I got lost – wasn’t expecting it to be so far out of town. But it was cheap!) Even at 8am it was about 80 degrees with 80% humidity. Or something like that. I soaked a shirt in no time but walked about 3 miles towards town before I turned around. Got a good view of the locality (mainly restaurants – I’m not exaggerating to say that there are 2 or 3 times as many McDonald’s in Australia as in the US - and the local grocery and mall) and picked up an awesome single-serving apricot pie at a local bakery. I’m definitely going back there for more!
After reviewing the maps I’d gotten with the rent-a-car, I drove into downtown around noon and started walking some more. The main thing I hoped to accomplish was getting some information on day trips out to the Great Barrier Reef and also hiking information about the many National Parks nearby. All of the locals are very friendly and I ended up purchasing a reef trip from the outfitter a friend had recommended (only $104) and also spent an hour at the parks office. She gave me a good list of hikes she’d recommend (and had done them all) and what was closed due to damage from the typhoon. I finished the day with a short hike (about 4 miles) at a hill just outside of town. With the heat and humidity (I came from winter!), the walking I’d already done, and the fact that I’m apparently not in as good a shape as I thought I was, it was a lot harder than I expected….it rained while I was hiking but I was already pretty wet so it actually felt good.
Saturday was the realization of a life-long dream – getting to see and snorkel the Great Barrier Reef which has intrigued me since I was young. The weather was perfect and at the end of the day they said the visibility was the best they’d had all summer. I’m not much of a pray-er but on the way out to the reef I had to take a moment to thank God for letting my life work out so wonderfully that I could have this opportunity. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to see some things I’d always dreamed of, like the Everglades and the Great Wall. Some day I’ll get to Madagascar, Iceland, New Zealand, and the Norwegian fjords. But hopefully there’s plenty of time and things continue to work in my favor.
The boat ride to the first snorkeling site took just over an hour. I’d decided to rent a full-body lycra ‘stinger suit’ for about $4, and I’m glad I did. Not only did it protect me from jellyfish, of which I saw literally thousands of small ones, but I didn’t have to worry about sunburn either. (I was already a bit of a crispy critter after that first day.) We were supposed to buddy-up so I found another solo guy and we hit the water pretty quickly. He’d rented an underwater camera (I gotta see those pictures) and it was a good thing because first thing we saw was a small white-tip shark. (All the sharks we’d encounter are harmless, they said.) The coral and fish and shells were spectacularly colored – didn’t touch anything but just looked. The depth ranged from 3-20 feet or so and we spent about an hour there. At the second site we again saw a shark – a different type – and one of the crew had said there were Giant Clams so my buddy and I set off in search of one. Took a while but when we found one, it was quite a sight. Looked to be about 4 or 5 feet across with it’s shell open and the valves going. There were supposedly turtles there but we didn’t see any, nor any rays. At the third and last site there were many Giant Clams – even a couple of babies about 2 feet across – and some ginormous fish. Although I wasn’t supposed to touch anything I couldn’t resist diving down and touching the clamshell – just to say I touched one. I definitely could have spent a lot more time snorkeling. I’ll just have to come back – maybe I’ll re-retire and man one of those boats.
The boat returned about 4pm so I called my wife and talked to her for a good long time, and then wandered around down by the marina and downtown area for several hours. My snorkeling partner, Adrian Hamilton, is also on vacation and said he’d like to drive out to the outback with me, so we made arrangements to do that later this week. He has an interesting story – born in South Africa, living in London, but immigrating to eastern British Columbia to work in construction/remodeling.
Today I went hiking in Barron Gorge National Park, just 12 miles out of town. It’s got rainforest as well as some dry oak habitat at the higher elevations. The parks gal had recommended a loop hike that was about 8 miles so I thought no problem, I should be able to do that in about 3 hours. But I gotta say – this hike would make it into my top 5 all-time least-fun hikes. Not only was it exhausting but there were several moments of near-panic. First of all I got lost even trying to find the trailhead. It wasn’t well-marked so I went a mile up another trail which dead-ended. After consulting the map I figured out where I was on a different trail so I headed back and started up the real loop trail. The first thing I saw was a stupendous example of what I took to calling Arachnida dinnerus platus, which likes to spin its web right across the trail. The parks lady told me they were harmless and was quite excited that I might see one – but when I did I was excited in a different way. I think they call it ‘arachnilepsy’ – the funny dance you do when you walk through a web. He may have been harmless but had he landed on me, he’d have definitely been harmed. I love nature and all, but I prefer to admire spiders from a distance – especially ones the size of dinner plates.
Anyway, I struggled up the hill in the heat and humidity. It’s off-season (winter is their tourist season because it’s warm) and the trail was poorly-marked and poorly-maintained. (They could have used a few cairns!) I finally met another hiker near the top; she was coming from the other direction and told me to be careful of the ‘whitey wall’ plants which were growing over the path. (I looked it up, it’s actually known as “wait-a-while”.) The thorns have hooks in them and they rip your flesh, clothing, whatever they touch. When you get hooked you’re supposed to back out of it but I don’t think thast worked too well for me. There are also ‘vicious hairy mary’ vines (more thorns) and signs promoting the stinger trees which have tiny hairs and inject a neurotoxin which is quite painful and can take months to go away. I was doing OK with the wait-a-whiles until I met up with another couple coming in the opposite direction. They told me there were two tree-falls just ahead that had these things all over them, and they had the blood to show for it. Well, I struggled getting past these barriers (had to lie flat and crawl under the second obstacle) and didn’t get too ripped up – but I kept encountering these things and by the end of the hike I had wounds everywhere, head to toe, and a pair of shorts that will go in the trash. And I had to cross two streams that were running pretty fast and no marking on the other side as to where the trail picked up again. All I knew was, I wasn’t heading back through those tree-falls again! So I had to keep forging ahead. For one of the few times in my hiking career I was happy to see civilization….took me almost 5 hours to do 8 miles.
So I dropped all of my stuff at the car and headed back up this little short trail I’d been on at the beginning, which ran along one of the fast-running streams. I took my shoes off, jumped in and sat there in the running water for a good 30 minutes. The water was warm so it was quite pleasant. I decided the rest of the week I’m going to hit some of the trails that are more heavily traveled in case I need to partake of the local knowledge. I’m so tired from hiking today I think I’m going to go for a drive south the Mission Beach where I hear there are some Cassowaries – a flightless bird that’s on the endangered species list. There’s a little island called Dunk Island just offshore that you can reach by water taxi fairly cheaply, so I may go over there.
I got some information about where I might see a platypus too, so I hope I get that lucky. Mostly what I’ve seen so far are the geckos around my hotel room as well as some other types of lizards. And the spiders of course. There seem to be a million different bird calls (and they’re really noisy!) but I’m not too much of a birder.
Hopefully I’ll have time to post another blog before I get back home. We’ll see. I have quite a bit of work to do while I’m on vacation so I gotta take care of the job too.
Thanks for reading – hope you found it interesting!