Rainforest and Reef

---

The two R's are the reason for coming to Cairns. I was slightly concerned regarding the weather - theoretically the rainy season could set in in a massive way any second, but luckily so far we have only been treated to fairly frequent, but not too crazy, showers.

I have been on a couple of trips here, firstly to the Atherton Tablelands, an inland area of rainforest up in the hills, where it was a little cooler and less humid than Cairns. Day one of the trip we went wildlife spotting, seeing, among other things, the Muskyrat Kangaroo, the forest dragon and the freakish-but-cute platypus. We also went for several swims; one river, one lake (volcanic, 85 metres deep at certain points), and two waterfalls.

One day two both myself and the girl i was travelling with at the time decided to make our own digeridoos. It took the best part of the day, including a few brief lessons - whilst my companion picked up the basics almost immediately, i spent a good hour blowing raspberries down the damn thing, before i could produce anything close to an authentic sound. After picking our logs, hollowing them out a bit (finishing the job of the termites), stripping the outside and sealing the inside, the majority of the rest was left to the professionals, who shaped the outside using machine tools. My didge is pretty sweet, and it pained me to send it home almost immediately.

On the last day on the tablelands, we got a little more active, going for a bike ride in the morning, and then for a canoe trip in the afternoon. At the end of the canoe trip, we found some ochre stones (as used for facepaints and rock paintings by the aborigonal people) and spend an hour painting our arms, legs and faces.

After one day in Cairns, during which i went to Reef Teach, an informative introduction to life on the reef, i set sail with ProDive on a three day liveaboard trip to check out the reef. It was a pretty intense three days, either in the water or recovering from being in the water, with a total of 11 dives, including 2 night dives. I discovered that underwater navigation is not my strong point, as only two of the dives were guided, and for the rest it was just me and my buddy, who was about as good as i was finding his way around.

However, it was pretty cool anyway, and i saw quite a bit of cool stuff. In all honesty, i think i prefered the reefs in Bali, but the animal life was superior here on the Great Barrier Reef. I saw several sharks, including one on a night dive who drifted eerily past us. Numerous turtles made friends with us, along with giant clams, crayfish, and numerous other fish (including one nesting triggerfish, who tried to take me on - i was too fast for it, and managed to escape).

---

Comments

[Chally]

Didge
Hey! Didge-making! Awesome! You simply must talk to Ian, and compare logs. ...as it were. Cx

[Curious]

Hey i'm curious, while you were in Cairns, making all those digeridoos and stuff...did you hear anything about getting work, painting aborginal art for quick money? So sellers could produce cheap art to sell of expensively?

[Jammy_Monkey]

Reply to above
Ah, not entirely sure what you are on about. Are you asking if you can do painting in some get rich quick type situation? If so, i doubt you will have much luck. I saw quite a few Aboriginals working on paintings and the process looked involved and painstaking. It did sell at quite a high price, but was usually authentic stuff - you could either find out about or meet the artist and get an explanation of what the painting actually represented, ie. which dreamtime story/songline. Hope that helps.