If you Cairns stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

A quick thought on Melbourne that hadn’t fully formed the last time I posted – one of the reasons it appealed to me so much is that it felt very close to its convict past. The bounty of dark alleyways – perfect for felons on the run –made me feel like a bit of a fugitive myself. Melbourne also boasts many more preserved buildings than Sydney which gives it more of a historical aura. My opinion also could have been skewed by the fact that Nina, Julia and I were almost arrested by a police officer who looked like a gentrified version of Magwitch. We had hubristically thought we could beat the system and decided not to buy return tickets for our tram ride back from Fitzroy. Our arrogance was not entirely unfounded since of all of the trams I had ridden up to that last one, no one had ever come on to check tickets. In any case, of course right before we were supposed to get off a troop of officers boarded the tram and started inspecting tickets. It looked like what I picture a train stickups in the Wild West would look, except that the “bad guys” were really the good guys and we were the bad guys, but at the time that’s not how it seemed. In any case, after we handed them our expired, concession tickets from our previous ride (by the way, in Melbourne you have to be under age 11 to qualify for Concession ticket. Woops.) Officer Magwitch threatened us with a hefty fine but after much groveling let us off with a warning and ordered us to buy full fare tickets which we obediently did.

Anyway, lets move from Melbourne’s convict past and the Dickensian nature of their police force and onto the present.

Tuesday through Wednesday of last week were pretty unremarkable. Went to class, worked on pieced, work-shopped pieces – not much time to explore since Thursday night we were back to the airport and off to Cairns. Thursday afternoon was more notable since we got to meet with Anthony Dennis, the editor of the Australian branch of Travel and Leisure. Before touring us around the Fairfax office (Fairfax being Australia’s 2^nd largest publishing house), he talked about the workings of Australian Travel and Leisure and what he looks for in travel pieces (apparently the format is super important…) It was definitely interesting to talk to Anthony and see the T+L office, but most of the travel writing that goes into their magazine doesn’t really speak to me. It is filled with mostly service pieces on pricey resorts and restaurants with a few longer features that are also usually based on glitzy destinations. While I love flipping through the magazine for its stunning photographs, if I ever get involved in travel journalism I want whatever I write to have more substance. Its slightly disheartening that I have stumbled on very few publications other than National Geographic and the New Yorker that publish the type of travel writing I’m interested in. I would also love to write a travel memoir, but all 3 of those options are ambitious to say the least.

Guess, I should start by practicing…

Might as well begin with the action which started early Friday morning unless you count listening to my compadre Brendan snore all night as action. We were picked up bright and early by the “Jungle Tour” van which conveyed us to s

everal scenic lookouts along the coast. Queensland’s terrain is markedly different from that of NSW and Victoria. Whereas the only Palm Trees that I’ve seen in NSW were obviously planted, Queensland boasts a ton of natural palms that dot the beaches and roadsides. It is also much lusher; even the mountains are carpeted in green.

Queensland Terrain

Next it was onto the Mossman Rainforest Center where I finally got to hold a Koala! The furry little fellahs were so cute I had to seriously restrain myself from stuffing it under my shirt and making a run for it. But then I thought of my run-in with the terrifying police officer in Melbourne and thought better of it. Instead, I held Bailey (that was his name, another sign that we were meant to be: Bailey + Haley = eternal happiness) for the stringently timed 10 seconds – just enough time to get a few photos snapped – before begrudgingly handing him over to the handler.

INSERT KOALA + ME PIC

A quick musing: While observing some Koalas up in their treehouses I came to the conclusion that in a past life my Dad was a Koala. The physical resemblance is uncanny (especially the fluffy hair, eyebrows and sizable nose...) and both of them are perpetually in alternate state of minds. Of course, Koala’s have an excuse –they’re constantly stoned on the toxins from the eucalyptus leaves they ingest. Hopefully my Dad has a different excuse.

Fazsha

Koala

But I digress, back on topic.

After meticulously purel-ing my hands and arms (Weird Fact: Koalas often carry Chlamydia. Strange right? I don’t know enough about the disease to know if you can catch it asexually, but I was also not keen to find out and accordingly drowned myself in gallons of purel) we moved on to a swampy, croc-infested river where we went swimming with pieces of bloody steak taped around our limbs and torsos. I jest, in actuality we jumped on a huge paddleboat and cruised up and down the river looking for crocs. I would have been perfectly happy seeing any old croc, so stumbling upon Fat Albert, a 300 Kilo monster of a crocodile was a special, if unnecessary, bonus like when a vending machine accidentally dispenses 2 bags of Lays instead of 1

AHH, FAT ALBERT!

When we’d gotten our fill of pointing and laughing at blubbery Albert, we jumped back on the van and drove to Cape Tribulation, a beautiful preserved rainforest where we wandered around aimlessly for about 20 minutes before our guide informed us we had to get a move on back to Cairns.

Cape Tribulation

While the landscape was stunning and I might’ve committed suicide if I went back to the states without having held a Koala first, Friday’s “jungle adventure” was a bit meandering and unadventurous for my taste. I thought we were going to get to do some heavy trekking in the rainforest which definitely didn’t happen. In fact we didn’t really do anything.

After our long day of lazing around on the van we were surprisingly tuckered out and didn’t get up to much besides strolling around the Cairns Night Market. It was much like the Queen Victoria Market – hawking mostly australiana and uggs – but I also stumbled upon some odder selections such as Emu and Crocodile Jerkeys, Facial Cream labeled “Placenta Silk” whose main ingredient was, you guessed it, placenta (someone should let Michael McCoughnagghey know, im sure he’d be interested) and lastly Salmon Flavored, Koala shaped pasta.

Methinks it tries to do too much.

7/11 – SCUBA

Thankfully, yesterday’s inaction was countered by today’s excitement. The sun was hardly up when we woke up and rushed to Cairns Marina where we boarded the “Passions of Paradise” Catamaran – our transport to the Great Barrier Reef.

It took about 2 and a half hours to slog out to Michelman’s Cay, supposedly one of the most pristine and colorful diving spots on the reef and the whole time I was like a little kid on a road trip:

Me: Are we there yet?

Crew Member: No.

Me 2 minutes later: Are we there yet?

Crew Member: No.

Me 2 minutes after that: Are we there yet?

Crew Member: BUGGER OFF.

Right before we finally were there, the instructors gave a briefing on how to Scuba Dive which definitely lived up to its name. Having taken a Scuba Diving Class in February I was shocked at how little they explained to us. Since I still haven’t done my open water certification I was on an introductory dive meant for people with no diving background and I guess their reasoning was the less they taught us the less there was to screw up. As opposed to the dive class where we learned all about our computers, how to calculate an appropriate ascent rate, and mastered inflating and deflating our BCs, the “Passions” lecture could be boiled down into two simple rules: 1) Keep Breathing. 2) Don’t touch anything.

After I was all geared-up I asked one of the instructors to confirm that the computer calculates your ideal ascent rate and he said: “Don’t be silly, it measures smiles and I can see that you have been very smiley today.” While my inner voice was screaming: “No it doesn’t! It tells me how slow to ascend so I don’t implode you liar!”, I smiled and looked down at my computer and said : “Oh yep, now I’m at 8 billion and 1 for the day.”

This Disney does Grimm Brothers take on Scuba Diving heightened my nervousness since I did know how much could potentially go wrong while diving. But any anxiousness I felt was trumped by excitement. Diving in the pool was one of the coolest sensations I had ever felt so the thought of adding marine life (and the Great Barrier Reef!) to the equation made me want to explode.

Instead of exploding, I opted to jump into the water directly into a school of batfish keen on the food the Passions crew feeds them. After quickly running through how to clear our respirators and masks, we started our descent to the ocean floor.

First stop on our sub-aqueous adventure was a giant clam that I ever-so-cleverly named Happy. Our instructor Rob demonstrated how if you pressed on the clam’s flesh, its mammoth shell would snap closed. This might sound like a recipe for disaster but the clam’s tissue walls are so soft and thick that the shell can’t close completely and instead of excruciating pain, the sensation is almost like getting a hand massage from a very clammy pair of hands. (har har)

After we got our fill of the clam, we swam on and settled in front of a patch of anemone. At first I thought Rob had led us there only to see the see grass sway with the currents – a beautiful sight for sure – but then I saw a flash of orange and realized WE’D FOUND NEMO!

Nemoooo

I watched enthralled as he tentatively flitted in and out of the oscillating field of dreadlocks he calls home (or maybe not, I’m not sure how “home” translates to fish-ish).

Rob had to drag me involuntarily from my perch in front of Nemo but I’m glad that he did because immediately upon turning around we were faced with the most dramatic turtle I’ve ever seen. When I say the turtle was dramatic I don’t mean to imply he got down on one knee with a skull in his left hand and delivered a soliloquy from Hamlet, though that would have been awesome. What I mean is that all of his features were exaggerated. Not only was he as bigger than a tire on a monster truck but the colors and textures of his skin and shell were more vivid and defined than any picture could ever do justice. He seemed to know he was striking and be keen to show it off because he was anything but shy. Several times he swam straight at my camera, posing as deftly as Tyra’s chicks on America’s Next Top Model. He was even content to eat sea grass straight from my hand.

Mugging for the Camera

Blue Steel

Before I knew it, our time down under was up and it was time to relinquish our artificial gills and start breathing real O2 again. Thankfully I wasn’t forced to stay above water for long. After slamming down a delicious lunch it was back in my wetsuit for round 2.

Quick Gross Sidenote: I don’t recommend “slamming” down 3 servings of lunch right before diving which is exactly what I did. Apparently vomiting into your respirator is totally fine, and luckily I never had to find out whether the rumor was truthful but I definitely thought it was a possibility right before I jumped back in for my second dive.

The second dive, which we took off of the Outer Reef, was markedly different from the first. The water was considerably deeper and the reef was even more diverse. My favorite varities of coral were the type that looks like a witches spindly, misshapen fingers and the kind that looks like a miniature maze carved into a smooth rock face. The marine life was also unlike what we saw in the 1^st dive. In addition to a few new species of fish, I got to hold a feather star (a creature that looks like a cross between an octopus and starfish, covered in grass), poke at Christmas tree worms (little spikey creatures who live in holes in rocks which they vanish into as soon as you touch them) (see video) and soak up the homeliness that is a Groper fish.

Feather Star

Yes, groper fish. At first I thought I had misunderstood Rob’s heavy Australian accent, but as soon as he did the underwater sign for Groper sighting (Directions: Reach arms forward, pretend to cop a feel) it became very clear that I had not. Thankfully, I did not fall prey to PerveMcPerveFish’s ribald antics and made it safely back to the Catamaran, where I collapsed into a bench, glowing like a lantern fish (which unfortunately I didn’t get to see) for the entire ride back to Cairns.

Spindly Reef

Maze Like Reef

In closing, it is safe to say I am absolutely hooked (sorry…) on scuba diving and want to continue to dive as much as I possibly can. It is totally surreal – to the point that I sometimes felt as though I was swimming in an IMAX movie instead of reality. I’m a little worried that no dives will ever match up (such is the curse of having my first dive at the Great Barrier Reef) but somehow I think I will always find it just exhilarating.

7/12/09 –

“If the Rocks don’t get you, the crocs certainly will,” our river guide Tim so comfortingly informed us as we floated closer and closer to our first level 4 rapid. “Just don’t fall out, then we have no problems, ya?”

Today Johana, Brendan, Julia and I white water rafted down a 14km (croc-infested) stretch of the Tully river. One of the guides spotted a croc along our stretch of river this morning, and the rocks jutted out of the swift river like gravestones but somehow rafting down the Tully felt very safe. That’s not to say we didn’t get jostled around, thrown from the boat, and soaked to the bone but somehow I (probably stupidly) trusted that nature was not against me today.

Perhaps my comfort was also due to the fact that we were in control of very little. As we were about to enter a rapid, and even on the calm flat bits of the river, we were constantly following Tim’s instructions like little monkey slaves. “Down!” Tim would shout and we would jump obediently into a low crouch in the middle of the boat. “Left!” he yelled and we jumped to the left. “Overboard!’ and we mindlessly jumped overboard to swim with Lyle and co.

In addition to acting as drill sargent, Tim also enlightened us about the river and surrounding rainforest. One especially notable tidbit is that he rainforest contains a species of plant that can cure any disease known to man including the “hangover.” Hmmm…

In addition to nifty “facts” Tim also taught us the names of all the rapids which I’ve attached below:

Alarm clock

2-15: can take two or 15 minutes to get down

double waterfall

staircase

castle rock

foreplay

wet and moisty

lunch spot

doors of deception

corkscrew

midnight rock

pipeline

lava flows

rock garden

disappearing falls

heli pad

double “d” cup

divine rapid

jabba the hut

flip Wilson

sharks tooth

zig zag

mine field

take out

little rapid

big rapid

look out rapid

junction road

sweeper rapid

In this case, I feel as though the pictures and videos describe the day better than I can in words so here is a photo/video montage.

X-treme

Halfway down I decided to become one with the boat

Yipe!

If you turn your computer to the left this video makes much more sense.