Three Week Run

Those of you who could be bothered to read my blog might have caught on that we're missing about three weeks, yes, three weeks of updates. Those diving entries were mainly to keep you occupied as I traveled and rarely used the 'net. Here I am though, alone in Cairns, and the shuttle to my hostel isn't until 9:30 p.m., so let's make the most of it, shall we?

Let's shall. Here are some photos beginning November 18. As you know, I flew to Brisbane from Darwin, and that's where Siall lives. She and I were housemates at New College. We've known each other for 14 years or something insane like that. Siall now is a student and teacher and her main pastime is poetry! Currently, one of her poems (or is it more than one?) is being set to dance by some local artists in an exhibition which matches writers and dancers.

First a shot of Byron Bay at sunset, which Siall and I visited just before I headed North:



Here is Siall and my friend Andre (you might remember him from the Alice Springs photos), who coincidentally happened to be in Brisbane when we were there. We had almost approximately exactly the best drinks of our lives at this pub. Siall was drinking something blue called Liquid Opium (I'm not making that up). They had the best bloody marys I've ever had in my life, which was my second drink after a drink called Apple Cobbler. Usually I like beer or straight shots, but these cocktails were impossible to resist, almost as good as the drinks in Eugene at El Vaquero -- or just.


Back in the West End of Brisbane, Siall and her roommate played with the remote controller for a tiny whirring electric helicopter.


On November 24th, which was a Saturday and also Election Day, I took the bus to Hervey Bay. Incidentally, I was glad that Kevin Rudd won the prime minister seat, but not so glad that the third-party representatives (the Greens and the Democrats) didn't get elected. Also incidentally, whenever I ask anyone what they think of the election, if they were happy about Rudd winning, they all say "It was time for a change" or "We were ready for a change."

The next day I took the boat to Fraser Island. Here is a shipwreck there.


Because it was cheap and because the pilot said I could ride in front, I took a short flying tour of the island. The dials and guages are fascinating, no?


M5 is the motorway on Fraser Island, and it's made of only sand. And it's supposedly the only highway in the world where you can play in traffic. Pedestrians have the right-of-way everywhere on this coastline. If anyone is hanging out on the beach, sunbathing and building sand castles, the cars, legally, have to drive around them. The bus on Fraser drove practically where the waves broke, even though it had to be on the left side of the road. We were driving anywhere from 80 to 100 kilometers an hour! Also, the vehicles must share the road with the planes. It's a motorway, an airstrip, and a recreational beach! The shoreline in the view from the plane's window is, indeed, the M5.


On Fraser Island I made two friends, Ben and Fouzia. Ben is from Nigeria, and Fouzia is from France. Although we are all cozy here on the boat back to Hervey Bay, we were all solo travelers who met only that day.


That night, Sunday, I took the bus to Bundaberg, and the following morning I met a fellow named Dave who was hitchhiking to Cairns. We walked together to buy fruit from the local market, the visitors' center wasn't open, and so I threw caution to the wind and hitchhiked with him to Agnes Water. Now in Cairns, today, I'm not going farther north and am taking a flight to Melbourne tomorrow, since I'd promised my Melburnian cousins I'd return. This means, no more hitchhiking, so feel free to issue me all the warnings you want, or quote to me that four-year-old incident where some hitchhikers were killed. (To sum, it was great to meet locals rather than more backpackers from Europe, who are also very nice, of course, but nothing beats learning about a place from a local. :)

As a side note, most of the people who picked up me and Dave were older men who would talk to us about fishing. Sharing the car with a fishing pole or an esky (that's the Aussie word for cooler) full of just-caught fish was nothing new to us. We were also picked up by a garbage truck-driver, two semis (they had 18 gears!), a poet, an emergency surgeon and his rural nurse wife, and the mother of four young daughters, among other kind and friendly drivers.

That Monday, the 26th, we stayed at the Southern Cross hostel in Agnes Water, and the following morning I began my dive course at 1770, the town near Agnes. For several days I trained in a swimming pool. On Wednesday and Thursday of that week, I trained in this estuary, which earned me my open water diving certificate. That means I can dive up to 18 meters, although I've never gone below 15.


I stayed at the Southern Cross from Monday to Saturday morning of that week. It wasn't an everyday hostel. It had beautiful landscaping, free toast and tea, cabin-like rooms with decking, and an open-air common area. This view is of the meditation area in the backyard of my room. Behind it are the water tanks.


On Friday I went diving off of Lady Musgrave Island. The first dive was along Napoleon's Wall and the second was in the Lady Musgrave lagoon. The view was spectacular, with a visibility of 30 meters or more. This was the first time I was completely comfortable diving. My mask didn't leak. My air flowed smoothly. My nose didn't explode. I was simply in awe of the coral varieties, the colorful fish, and the eels. I could even turn and twist in the water to keep track of my buddy and his air. At one point one of the people diving with us got in my way. I tried hard to keep just a little bit of space between me and the others, so as not to cause accidents, but one guy swam right into my path, flailed (in diving you're really not supposed to use your arms at all), and nearly knocked off my regulator and my mask. Thankfully, I'd learned how to replace my mask and regulator in my safety training courses, and everything went so smoothly. I was so proud of myself. We went down to 15 meters at one point, and my oxygen had one of the highest amounts at each of the two dives, which means I wasn't hyperventilating or over-exerting myself and was just generally being calm while breathing.

On Saturday, December 1, we left Agnes and hitchhiked to Rockhampton and Mackay. I have to say, traveling with a working-class fellow from Brisbane (whose ambition is to work in the mines) really caused me to shed my touristy behaviors, one of which was the constant picture-taking. I took almost no pictures in these two towns, save for this one of Dave in the cab of the semi. One nice thing that happened, though, was that I partipated in the couchsurfing project. We stayed with a couple and their parents in Rockhampton for a night. The following two nights we stayed with an older couple in Mackay. The Rocky hosts were also travellers, and they had even visited Eugene during their trip to the States! Nearly no one I've met knows where Oregon is -- much less Eugene. In Mackay we stayed with a woman who was a Justice of the Peace and a city councillor and her husband, who was mostly a kept man, but who seemed pretty handy around the house. We talked heatedly about politics over wine.


From Mackay we went to Airlie Beach. At Proserpine an older man picked us up and told us about the sailing races which happen every Wednesday. He called his son, who was on the crew of the Lady Hawk, and we were told to meet the crew on Wednesday the 5th (last week) at the sailing club. We really lucked out. Not only did we get to experience Airlie in a way that is rare for a tourist to experience (the tourists usually take chartered sailing tours), but we happened across a boat owned by a really skillful sailor, Johnny. We didn't win the sailing race, probably because we had so many people aboard the boat, but we had a great time. Johnny won Yachtsman of the Year at the recognition awards that Friday.

By the way, Dave didn't want to have his seat on the boat, and he headed up to Townsville where I met him a few days later. Meantime, we met up with Andre, and we ate dinner with him after our sailing race experiences. He made us yummy garlic butter spaghetti.

The boats in our wake:


We enjoyed ourselves so much that Johnny took Andre and me out on the boat on Saturday, the 8th. One of the crew of the Lady Hawk, Dan, also liked to dive, and so the plan was to rent equipment, sail out to Armit Island, and dive twice in the reef around the island. I think it's called a coral cay. The other cool thing about Johnny, who is about 70, is that he's died four times. He's had four heart surgeries and says he's living on borrowed time, so he just enjoys life. He also talks like a sailor.

Johnny is sitting at the wheel with his wife Linika. They had the engine on as we started out toward the island.


They had the cutest 6-month-old Staffie. I took about a thousand pictures of him. His name is Harley, after the bike. We got along so well that Harley often tried to nibble my earlobes.


Once we got to the island, we anchored and took the dinghy to the shore. The Lady Hawk is here offshore, the one in front.



Armit Island wasn't an armpit; it was paradise. This is the shoreline off which I dove. The current was strong and the visibility poor, but the coral as before was beautiful. I posted pictures at the last entry. The pictures didn't really do the view justice, primarily because you lose the ability to see colors the further down you go. In person I saw stronger colors than what's shown in the pictures. Even so, the first color lost is red, then orange, then yellow, and down the rainbow, hence why everything seems so blue-green with the piddly little flashbulb of the waterproof camera (on loan from Dan, my dive buddy). You'll have to wait for the pictures from the Lady Musgrave Island trip, since I did take a waterproof camera, but it wasn't digital.

On the beach of Armit was such a nice lagoon where nearly everyone sat or waded and drank beers. Harley was somewhat afraid of the water and wouldn't get in. Sara, one of the gals on the boat, watched on.


Function over beauty. Upon surfacing, the skilled (or newly and somewhat skilled) diver inflates the BC (Buoyancy Control).



After a half hour or more, we went down for a second dive. We only went to a depth of 6 meters the first time, and on this one we went down to 12 meters. This put me, ultimately, in group I in the Padi nitrogen charts! I trained with SSI, not Padi. Are the groupings the same? Anyway, here's a picture of my dive buddy Dan.


We were back on the boat in time for lunch. We were famished. I don't remember eating so fast in my life. I half-ate-half-swallowed an avocado-veggie sandwich and a small container of tabouli. I forgot to mention that--and this was the case after all my dives, now numbering 8--food tastes better after diving. After my fourth dive, I had a fresh squeezed apple-pineapple-ginger juice and a falafel, and it was one of the best lunches I've ever had! That's a lot of hyphens!

On the way back, for nearly the entire journey back to the Airlie Beach shore, Johnny let me drive the boat. We didn't use the engine, just the main sail and the jib.


Then I turned the boat over to Andre. While he sailed us nearly home, I sat on the deck and watched the sun set.


This brings us to the night of the 8th, which means I'm only five days behind on updates and not 21.

Underwater

Weird Diving Mishap

It wasn't so much a mishap as a weird experience for the people around me.

When we surfaced, I took off my mask and my face was covered in blood.

Nosebleeds are very common while diving apparently.

So today, to recap a bit, was the third day of my lesson, and so far I've dived four times and am now certified.

10 minutes before reaching the shoreline, I saw some brownish-red spots on my mask. I did the obvious thing of wiping the outer surface with my hand. Then I did a bit of a "mask clear." Still, reddish spots. My first thought: what a strange plant, and how did those leaf-pieces get inside my mask?! :)

Darwin, Northern Territory

Today I said goodbye to Siall and took the bus to Hervey Bay. Tomorrow I will take a tour of Fraser Island. Currently, it feels a bit like being in the middle of nowhere, but that's because I've been so spoiled by visitors' centers, which are usually everywhere and not here. As a result, I'm tempted to book everything under the sun. Sunday night I will take a bus to Bundaberg and then make the slow climb north, up the coast.

Also, I caved in and got a cheap mobile phone, mainly as a precaution. Unfortunately, it means checking the phone every few minutes to see who or what has called me back, and it means calling random toll-free numbers on advertisements in brochures so as to look for budget travel options, of which there are few, because--let's face it--the U.S. dollar is weak. If only I had euros to spend! Young tourists have so much disposable income these days. When I was young and taking a break from uni, I was poor. Ah, "those were the days, my friend."

So, here are some more backlogged photos. These are the last of my Darwin photos. After the Kakadu fiasco, I went to Litchfield, also a waterfall and plunge pool haven. But first, here are some more photos of jumping crocodiles (and of me holding an olive python). FYI: this riverboat is the same one as was used in the upcoming and recently filmed thriller "Rogue," which is the Aussie version of "Jaws." It's about tourists getting eaten by crocodiles and stuff. On that note...





One would think that after thinking that one member of the cohort was bitten by a snake (we didn't find out until later that it was just dehydration and shock) that I wouldn't hold a snake, but ball pythons, I assure you, are not aggressive to humans. They're almost friendly, in that make-a-friend-with-a-scaly-untalkative-serpentine-thing way. Oh, and the picture above the snake one is of a kite. The whistling kites and the fork-clawed (or was it fork-fingered?) kites swooped over the riverboat, also eager to fly home with meat in their talons.

I became friends with two travelers from England, Jayna and Nicola, aka Nic. Here they are in front of a large termite mound.


At the Booley plunge pools that were beneath Florence Falls, we made paint from ochre (red, yellow, and white). Then we painted Nic's face in an Aboriginal style. She wore the look well.



The next day I visited the Darwin market, somewhat like Eugene's Saturday Market, since it includes merchants and food kiosks, but this market had lots of pan-asian food and papaya, more fish balls than tofu, more papaya than basil, and just as many chair masseuses. Then I burned my skin to a crisp while walking to the museum, washed off the memory with hard cider, and saw a gorgeous sunset.


My new friend Zephyr, a photographer who lives in a warehouse, made me a delicious fish dinner, which included freshly cut spices and kaffir lime, as well as risotto. I stayed with Zephyr and his roommate for two nights in the warehouse before flying to Brisbane on Sunday, the 18th.


Here is a view of part of the warehouse, taken from a high ledge.


Here is a view of the delicious fish and risotto.

Kakadu

Before returning to Alice Springs on November 11, we stopped to collect fossils. In a short time I was bitten by many mosquitos and later resumed a course of antihistamines, which I continue to take now -- 11 days later. The mosquitos don't end, and repellant has helped, though I left my aerogard on the bus in Darwin.

I was lucky to find this fossil. The glarey bits in the center are two seashells, stuck in a rock in the middle of Australia. The backdrop here is a hostel bunkbed, because I spare no expense for this kind of high class photography.


Before going to Kakadu forest, the bus driver stopped at Batchelor for the jumping crocodile cruise. These crocodiles can fling three meters of themselves into the air so as to chomp on a piece of meat. Supposedly, all crocodiles can jump, but we see them jump so rarely because the meat isn't flying through the air at them and bobbing along the water, like the raw meat which the feeders feed them does.


Kakadu boasts a series of plunge pools and waterfalls. Although by November the forest is officially into the "wet" season (the Top End has two seasons, wet and dry), many of the waterfalls were dry or barely trickling. The water, though, is quite refreshing, especially when the weather gets as hot as 35 degrees celsius. The pools are easy to swim in. It's easy to forget that you're a boiling potato, your skin getting brown and crispy. Before the first plunge pool, I met three guys sitting beside their 4WD and who had found four abandoned baby feral pigs. I didn't want to think that their rescue might have been motivated by hunger. Always keen on meeting the wildlife, I visited with this baby pig, who followed my every step. I'd walk a step, and it'd gruntily hobble forward. I'd walk another step, and it'd walk forward, its snout at my heel. We walked to the stream together, and I braved stepping on a crocodile to refresh myself with water; the pig drank. And it wouldn't leave my foot.


At this point there's a kind of gap in my picture-taking. I visited two plunge pools (Maguk and Jim Jim) and swam with our budget-style tour group. On the tour, the drivers take us on walks and pools and waterfalls and drive us to our campsites. When we returned to our campsite after visiting Jim Jim Falls, an Irish guy from our group couldn't leave the bus. His hands had started to go numb, and his legs started to cramp. Two big blokes carried him off of the bus, and we set up a place for him to lie down and put his feet up. He experienced a type of paralysis in his hands. I put a tablet into a water bottle, which had electrolytes and which would replace his sugars, and he wouldn't drink it. I gave it to his girlfriend to give him to drink, and he still wouldn't. He was in shock and very dehydrated. Because he was screaming out with pain, the guide radioed for help. He asked the injured fellow a number of questions, and Carl said that he might've been bitten. Worried he might have a snakebite, the two guides drove him to another vehicle where he was then taken to a helicopter and flown back to Darwin City.

Abandoned by our guides, our group sat around the campsite and had lunch. An hour passed and we found ourselves in the heat of the afternoon, a thick oppressive heat even in the shade. Several women from Barcelona went to the toilet facility to wash the dishes, and they never returned. A few of us later found them in the toilet area; they were sitting on benches, and we noticed it was indeed cooler there than at camp. We brought our camping mattresses into the toilet and sat around the ladies side of the facility, even the men, playing a card game called Asshole with the gals from Barcelona. When we passed our turns, we said "paso," and when someone at the end of the round was the asshole, we called him the "culo." Asshole in Barcelona consists of an entire hierarchy of castes, including assholes, sub-assholes, the middle citizenry, queens, and sub-queens. We passed the time this way and occasionally skipped a round to shower off the heat in the stalls with the running water, cane toads, and giant crickets.

Here is what our campsite at Muirella Park looked like.


That night we camped near Gunlom Falls and walked out there for star-gazing. It's easy to see shooting stars, and I can find some of the Northern Hemisphere constellations, though they're backwards and upside-down, but I have trouble pointing out other constellations. Usually I first spot Orion, then Taurus, then the Pleiades. Also, the moon waxes and wanes untraditionally. I'm used to the cheshire cat moon (the smile) being a waning moon. Here it's a waxing moon. One of my professors told me many years ago at university that "Cum crescet decrescet, et cum decrescet crescet." With a crescent or a "C" moon, the moon decrescendos (wanes). And with a decrescent or a "D" moon, the moon crescendos (waxes). It's one of those cool Latin ironies. Here the crescents wax; it's odd.

Anyway, our tour guides were emotionally exhausted from Carl's possible snakebite emergency. (There were no puncture wounds, and it turned out to be dehydration, not helped by the night before's heavy drinking, poor bloke.) So, they left us to our devices, and we donned our bathers and climbed up the cliffs. Well, two of us did, I and my new friend Judith from Barcelona. The guides lay prone in the grass and didn't bother to tell the rest of the group. We had to wave at them from the top of the falls.



It was beautiful up there, a series of cascading pools.






I ended up climbing up even further and swam down a ravine to another waterfall (the third waterfall of Gunlom, if you're counting). Several Irish blokes from the group did the same. Later they sat atop the second waterfall and jokingly blocked the falls by sitting in a small enclosure and stopping the water.

Roos and Rocks

It's been ages since I've uploaded pictures. Fortunately, I'm at my friend Siall's house, and she has a PC, and she's at her office today, granting me precious access to her desktop and all the wonders it has inside. Siall was one of my housemates my last year of university, and she is also the woman who midwifed my cat Wishbone, who is now 13-years-old (the cat).

At any rate, we're going back to November 6th here. On my last day in Melbourne, I walked around the city's botanical gardens with my cousin Ruthie and her husband Gary. There we coincidentally ran into my cousin Steve and his wife Lisa and also Casey, the girlfriend of my cousin Jeremy, and their dogs. When we ate breakfast at the Canteen, we ran into them again, including Jeremy, no small feat in a city of over 3 million people. When Ruth and Gary dropped me off, I wandered around Federation Square during the Melbourne Cup. The Melbourne Cup is a huge event in Oz. Even the Prime Minister John Howard and his competitor Kevin Rudd (Australia will elect one of them on November 24) bet on the horses. Beyond the obvious fanfare of attending a gambling event, the women dress up in fancy prom-like outfits and don gigantic hats. It's a big deal. At Federation Square the races were projected onto a wall and here again on a big screen TV in the courtyard. Everyone and their mother bet on a horse. The horse who won was named Efficient, and he wasn't a favorite to win. I didn't bet on a horse, although Efficient is the type of name I might've bet on. While the racing horses are treated incredibly well and eat better than we do, there are many horses which are bred for racing and which don't become racing horses and which are treated horribly.


At the Federation Square I went inside the ACMI, which is something like the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and watched a few documentaries and animated shorts. One documentary was of Melburnian Yiddish women over 60 who do yoga; it's entitled Stand on Your Head. Also good for a laugh was Babs and Bob's Trip to New Zealand, a 6-minute documentary. Babs brought her video camera with her to New Zealand, and when she saw the red light was on, she thought the camera was off and vice versa. She gave the tapes to her Melburnian daughter to edit, and, appalled, she found the entirety of the footage was video of the ground. When Babs thought her camera was off, she carried it lens-down -- hours of footage of stones, gravel, shoes, toilets.

Following that and an art exhibition of indigenous painters, I walked along South Bank and up to the tallest building in Melbourne, 3800 meters high. Up there it's easy to familiarize oneself with the layout of the town.


Fast-forwarding ahead, I then left for Alice Springs, the town nearest to Uluru, the large sandstone rock in almost the dead center of Australia and considered to be the cultural heart of the country. Before leaving for Uluru and other geological formations, I spent the day in Alice. My favorite place was the baby kangaroo rescue facility, where we were taught to save baby kangaroos, called "joeys," from their mothers' pouches were we to find them killed in the road. They also let us hold the joeys. Here is my German friend Andre with a joey. And, here I am too with a joey named Amy. Amy licked my hand and tried to kiss me.


In the evening I walked up to Anzac Hill and watched the sun set over Alice.

The next morning I rose early and went to Kata Tjuta, arguably more sacred than Uluru. The Aborigines keep many of the mythical stories related to Kata Tjuta secret because of this sacredness. Uluru, in contrast, is more accessible.

The campsite was rather kingly. Each tent contained a bed, mattress, and sleeping bag, a stark contrast to my Colorado camping trip, in which Kimberly and I bore our camping gear on our backs and slept in a megamid during an electrical storm.


While Uluru is one solid monolith, Kata Tjuta has five or six humps. Here is one of them.


The next morning I circumambulated Uluru, just beyond sunrise. Uluru is a peaceful rock. I didn't climb it, out of respect for the Aborigines and their requests.


Here is a waterhole on the side of Uluru.


Along certain faces of the rock are cave paintings. These paintings are important to the Aborigines, in that they represent sacred stories and are ways of teaching their descendants how to survive. Not only might the Aborigines, here called the Anangu, pass on creation stories, but they also might draw maps of how to survive in the vicinity. Included on the map are plants and animals. In this drawing, the concentric circles represent waterholes or towns. The U or C shape represents a person. The line next to the C represents a digging stick.


That evening I went on my first camel ride. The camels are adorable and friendly. They'd bow their heads low so that I might pet their noses. They also enjoyed being scritched behind the ears. As I rode on one camel, I'd pet the ears of a caravaning, neighboring camel.



The following morning I hiked through Kings Canyon and walked past several features called "The Lost City" and "The Garden of Eden."


The base of this canyon is entitled the Garden of Eden, because it resembles a tropical jungle. Gigantic cycads, ferns, and eucalypts thrive in the water at the bottom.


The sandstone, mudstone, and silica formed these stratified layers.


Before leaving the center of the country, I said goodbye to my new friends and walking companions. Here are Julia and Philip from Stuttgart, Germany, and Hitesh "H" from Birmingham, England.