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Published: February 7th 2007
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The roadoften travelled continued up the coast to my final destination of Cairns. Along the way I stopped at a place called Magnetic Island where I met up with 2 Canadians and 2 guys from Denmark that were my roomates back in the Whitsundays. We rented a 4X4 and drove around the island in a couple of hours...not that exciting really.
I then decided that since I'd been to Nz and Oz and hadnt done anything extremely riveting, I'd try my hand at White Water Rafting on the Tully River. It has always been something that I've wanted to try and the Tully River is known to be the best place to do it in Australasia with grade 4 rapids (rapids range on a scale from 1-5). I chose the basic option deal as it was a bit cheaper, but was bumped up to the X-treme team for free as they needed another person. I just assumed it was a case of them needing some more muscle (and with the size of my biceps being visible, I was the only true option), however, they said it was more a product of me having chest hair that grows in the shape
of an X......whoops.
It was a really fun day with perfect weather and met was quite intense a couple of times. Being the "muscle" in the raft, I was placed at the front of the raft and subsequently and unintentionally thrown out of the raft at some very inopportune times. They tell you that, once you fall it, its key to try and keep your feet up and your head back so that your legs dont get sucked under and wedged in between a couple of rocks where you can drown in a matter of seconds. This is easier said than done, when you're thrown over board and are heading straight for giant boulders at a very fast rate and simultaneously being sucked under by the current. This all the while people are trying to hand you their paddles to hold onto. There was one spot where, we I went over a little fall, and then got sucked into whats called the Lava pool, where you are sucked about 10 feet under water for 5-6 seconds. My guide (also named Jeremy) reassured me that I would return to the surface, but this was my first experience where I was
involuntarily being sucked under water and had no control as to when I was going to return to the surface. Those 5-6 seconds felt like an hour, but after returning to the surface and ensuring that the pressure in my ears had been equalized, I wanted to do it again. Its pretty much like doing Drop Zone. It looks scary, but when you're actually up there and can see to the other side of Lake Ontario, you question what made you want to do the ride. But then you do it, do a quick body check to ensure everything is still in working order, then line-up to do it again, only to have all the same feelings repeat them self.
The next day I went to Cape Tribulation which is a federally protected rainforest north of Cairns. While the rainforest originally covered 5% of Oz, it now covers only .5%. Inside of it, there are 75% of Australia's native butterflies and a bunch of other statistics about insects, reptiles and birds that are relevent, however, I cannot remember...my apologies.
Perhaps I don't remember, because I was shocked when I learned that Oz had 19 of the worlds 21 deadliest
snakes and 16 out of the worlds deadliest spiders...a bunch of which were located in where we currently were.....oh great.
I ended up seeing a bunch of pythons, which were cool and not scary at all. However, on one of my rainforest walks my friend Laura spotted this MASSIVE spider. Which we later learned was infact poisonous, however not deadly. See pic....the web was the size of a basketball hoop. It actually reminded me of that Gary Larson's Far Side comic, where 2 spiders are spinning this massive web at the bottom of a slide in a children's playground. Upon completion of the web, the one spider turns to the other and says "Big John, if we pull this one off, we'll be eating like kings for the next month"....I was a big baby and used the zoom feature of my camera as well as I could so that I didn't have to get too close to this freak of nature. I really don't know much about spiders and if they have the ability to jump out at you....(i'd have to assume not, but you never know with these freakish creatures here in Oz). I hope you like the pic
tho.
The next day I went scuba diving (for the first time) to the great barrier reef. This followed the day that I had read of some scuba diver being half swallowed by a great white shark on the east coast. It made international headlines, because he escaped the sharks vicious and usually deadly jaws by repeatedly poking it in the eye. Prior to this news story I was set on seeing a shark at the reef....when I actually got under water, I had mixed feelings. I'm not going to go into depth about my scuba diving, because I'm starting to think that I'll have no stories to tell when I get back home.....I did luck out when I was one of only 3 people out of 40 who were given under water cameras, so I have about 100 solid pics, which were added to a CD with 287 professional underwater pics.
From November to March its stinger season here in Oz, so you always have to wear a stinger suit out in the water to prevent from deadly stings. They say that only 7.8 people die here in Oz each year from deadly animals, fish, mammals, insects etc....and
that far more people die from being hit in the head with a coconut. There are a few deadly stingers in the ocean, one of which is called the Box Head Jelly Fish. It can kill a small child in 3 to 4 minutes. If an adult gets stung by one and is fortunate enough to live, the pain from the sting has been compared to putting an iron rod into a fire for a few hours, taking it out and putting it wherever you got stung, multiplied by 10. This pain continues on for 25 minutes before beginning to subside.
This concluded my time along the east coast and I write this entry, not from a crappy internet cafe, but rather from the luxury of my friend Deacon's place in Adelaide, South Australia.
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anonymous
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great pictures Jer!