Australia, where everybody knows your name

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I landed in Australia just before midnight on Wednesday 20 September. Immigration took me aside for a little chat about my 'criminal record', so I explained it was all driving offences (as if this makes it all acceptable) and the very nice lady immigration officer told me it doesn't count as a criminal offence if you don't stand before a judge, so they let me in.

I went to the tourist information desk to ask about a nearby hotel - and as my flight to Cairns was at 7 a.m. the lady at the desk suggested the 4th floor departure lounge which has sofas. I went up to the 4th floor and Dave the cleaner set me up in my own little apartment - he arranged the chairs so you and your baggage are safe. There were 3 other ladies there so he made us all be near each other and within easy sight of the security cameras. Dave was the friendliest person I have ever met in my entire life - he introduced us all to each other and was just lovely. I slept really well - it got a bit chilly at about 1 a.m. so I got my sleeping bag out and was lovely and warm, I slept right through until 5, then I went off to get a shower - if you use the disabled shower you can take your luggage trolley in with you. You could live at Brisbane airport, in fact you should - it is free, they have TV, you would get to come home to cheerful Dave every night and the breakfast was fantastic. What more could a girl want? Also they have real trees inside the airport - actually inside the terminal, I wondered if they had real birds and real insects to go with them. I wondered if the trees minded being grown in captivity and if they missed the birds and the insects - sleeping at airports does strange things to your mind.

One of the first things I noticed about Australia is that whenever you hand over your passport or your visa card, everyone calls you by your first name - they are really chatty and friendly. Not like London where they just smack it right back at you and scowl on to the next person. I got a window seat on the flight to Cairns and had an amazing view of the Great Barrier Reef. I was just glued to the window the whole way. I hadn't expected it because I was sat on the left not the right but because of the flight path you got to see it all. Also everyone on the right side of the plane got covered in soy sauce - two Japanese tourists had it in their hand luggage in the overhead lockers and the bottle leaked. It was really funny - despite the smell, unless you were being dripped on I suppose. The hostesses tried mopping it up and plugging all the vents with j-cloths, but still it ran the full length of the plane and spattered everyone. When the plane tipped forward to descend it ran all the way back to the front of the aircraft spattering everyone all over again. Laugh - I nearly bought a round of sushi.

I had arranged to meet a friend in Cairns - who decided a few days before, when I was not able to read or reply to emails, that she might not be there, but said she would email or text me. When I arrived in Cairns there was no email and no text, so I went to the YHA she told me she would be at - and she wasn't there. I got a text 4 hours later, in which I found out she had actually left Cairns half an hour after I arrived. This was explained away as the 'nature of travel' and she urged me to rush up to Port Douglas and join her. I actually thought it was less the nature of travel and more the actions of someone so far up their own backside they can't consider anyone else for a second and having travelled for nearly 24 hours to a meeting place that had been arranged for months I wasn't rushing after her again. So Cairns it was. Apart from being a tad annoyed I then didn't really know what to do or where to go - so the YHA lady suggested I spend the next day and a half in Cairns to acclimatise and then go up to Cape Tribulation to the rainforest and reef. This seemed like a good plan.

Cairns has little to recommend it - more tourist tat than you could ever imagine, cheap koala bear toys, fake boomerangs, didgeridoos and all sorts of crap that nobody could ever want or need - but if you get enough sun and cheap beer I suppose you might be persuaded to buy it. It was also full of very young European backpackers 'experiencing' Australia. It was like the costa del sol on a very bad day - the British naturally divided their time between the bars and the brawls, the Germans took this opportunity to take over the town. In fact for some strange reason North Queensland in its entirety seems to currently have more Germans in it than any other nationality - including Australians. The 'esplanade' at Cairns is a path that runs alongside miles and miles of mudflats. The townplanners ripped up the mangroves to provide a beach. All it provided was miles of mud, deprived flora and fauna of their natural habitat and made it far easier for all our rubbish to swiftly be carried out to the reef. Fabulous decision, Tony Blair would have been proud of it.

Friday I repacked - my luggage was already 5kg heavier than when I left England - and I very much suspect I might be too, but we don't need to verify that one. Anyway I finally heeded my brother's advice and threw out everything I hadn't worn which made enough room for me to justify buying a snorkel and mask. Being a typical woman I went for colour rather than make - it is a very pretty pale blue and for those of you who know about these things a Tusa platina.

Saturday I was up at 5, so at about 5.30 I thought I would take a walk along the Esplanade and photo the sunrise. The esplanade was packed. There were a few tourists like me and the rest were locals out for their morning exercise - the Australians are obsessed, it might as well be LA. I got the tour bus at 7.30 with two young girls from Leeds who, despite the early hour, had perfect hair, perfect make up and their clothes coordinated perfectly with their gleaming trainers. Even though I had been up 2 hours I looked an unironed wreck - might as well have been going to work really. The bus journey took us right along the coast which was a stunningly beautiful drive. Our driver, who was from Bolton, did his best to detract from the beauty of the scenery by telling us every horror story recorded over the past 20 years in North Queensland - crocs, snakes, spiders, trees, sting rays, jelly fish, you name it, its lethal. He wasn't alone in this, all the locals do it along with everybody else who has lived here more than a year - N Queensland might as well make its motto "visit Queensland before you die - right before you die!".

Then we went on a Crocodile Cruise and a boardwalk through the Daintree rainforest. The crocodile cruise driver was a painfully skinny version of Paul Hogan in the character of Crocodile Dundee. He also had that thinning hair which many men seem to think is easily disguised by the stringy half attempt at a ponytail dangling from the back of their head - in England they gravitate towards IT, in Australia they gravitate towards the tourist industry.
We eventually saw a croc - it looked lethargic and senile, but Crocodile Ponytail man had impressed on us if any of us were foolish enough to leave our seats the boat would overturn and we would see the croc move like lightning so we all sat very still. However we had already been advised that crocodiles are notoriously lazy and will always go for the smallest person first for an easy kill - so had we gone in all those young skinny backpackers would suddenly wished they were me and my newly acquired excess baggage. Hah!

Another bus joined with our crowd - and there was my long-lost friend. We chatted, she apologised profusely - and has continued to do so every time our paths cross, I couldn't be bothered to be mad although I was quite tempted to see how the crocodile would react to an incredibly tall woman being shoved in its path. But we agreed that we are both on different schedules - Colette is in a hurry to be done having travelled for months, for me everything is new and I want to dillydally, so when the bus dropped me at Crocodyllus YHA she went back to Cairns. No doubt we will meet up somewhere else along the way.

I checked in to my cabin - it was a 6 bed dorm in a wooden A frame like tent on stilts. I hoped it kept out the spiders - it wasn't doing much of a job keeping out the mosquitoes. I was in there with two american girls who had also been on my bus. Two of us stood out on the verandah marvelling at the rainforest when a cassowary walked past. Cassowaries are very elusive emu birds which can be up to two metres high - and this one was far taller than me. I was speechless. I pointed but the words wouldn't come out, I ran back into the dorm for my camera and the other American. We came out and the cassowary stood there just long enough for us both to get out our cameras, then disappeared as quickly as he had arrived before either of us could get a photo. The first American girl was still looking at us strangely, completely oblivious to what had just stood behind her. Then we all went on a walk through the forest - it is a numbered ropewalk and there are 37 viewpoints - trees, plants and stuff. Even the trees here are lethal - strangling figs, stinging trees. The trees were obviously having a merciful day as they left us alone - but the mosquitoes and horseflies were nowhere near so generous. About halfway round I gave up reading the guide and just got out of there whilst I still had some blood left in my veins. I sat down in the bar area to have a cup of tea - and the cassowary wandered past again, with my camera back in the dorm. It almost taunts you, it seems to know when nobody has a camera.

The next day I went on a trip to the reef with Rum Runner cruise boat. The crew were really friendly and funny and I got chatting to another guest from Crocodyllus. He looked a little bit like Trey from 'Sex and the City' - and he said 'alrighty', - but he was chatty enough. He seemed very eager to chat, but I didn't take it personally because he was equally eager to chat to every other single woman on the cruise. Trey told me he was an accountant - which explained the fastidiousness I suppose. By the end of the day none of his targetted females had returned his interest so he returned to chatting to me. I will quite happily chat to anyone so I wasn't bothered - and also I had assumed he was batting for the other side - he was a bit too fastidious about keeping his clothes dry and everything just so, so didn't think he had any romantic intentions.

I went diving when everyone went snorkelling- only two of us chose to dive which was good for me because I still need a lot of hand holding. In fact on the first dive I had my very first panic attack, it happened really suddenly. I filled my mask with water to defog it and must have inadvertently breathed in through my nose. I then started panicking and hyperventilating - and breathed in again through my nose, was convinced I was choking and drowning and started screaming. At 18 metres nobody can hear you scream. Kane, the divemaster, just held on to my arm and kept on signalling me that I was to clear my mask. Eventually the little corner of sanity that lurks inside my brain figured that as I kept screaming I could actually breathe and I calmed down - but it was very scary, and I felt a complete prat afterwards.

The cruise took up the entire day and, apart from the panic attack, was a really fun day. The crew were very committed to preserving the reef and very knowledgeable on the subject. The passengers were a nice mix of people. I was chatting to one lady from Perth who said I should email her when I am in Perth and she has friends who dive regularly who would take me. I said I would be in Perth in January, she said she would be on holiday or she would have invited me to stay. Me jokingly "Don't worry, just leave me your house and your car keys", Lady from Perth "what a fantastic idea, let's do that - email me" then she said "by the way what's your name?" and she was serious!! Australians are amazing. I will email her as I would love to go diving, but would feel awkward staying in someone else's house - but if she has friends who will hold my hand whilst I scream 18 metres down that would be helpful.

In the evening Trey and I taught some of our fellow guests how to play hearts. I am crap at cards and lost dismally - which amused all of us, but Trey kept on about it for 2 days. This is when I first started to suspect he was somewhat odd - it was just a game of cards.

Monday I wanted to go kayaking, but the trip was postponed until Tuesday, so odd little Trey suggested we hire bicycles and see some of the area so we did. He goes running (an obvious sign of weirdness) and was clearly fitter than me, so I said could we go at my pace. He completely ignored me, so it nearly killed me but was beautiful countryside. Trey was way ahead of me and everytime he saw something he would scream out 'wallaby', 'snake', and strangely enough whatever creature it might have been would head for the rainforest by the time I cycled up. At one point I swear I heard the wallaby scream out 'tosser' when it spotted Trey but maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part.
We went to the animal sanctuary and all they had was three kangaroos. I would rather see them in their natural habitat but Trey asked me to take various pictures of him and the kangas - and was very insistent that I had to get the angle and the lighting right. I hadn't realised we were doing a covershoot for vogue but he got quite huffy about it.

In the afternoon I couldn't really bring myself to get back in the saddle so I sat and planned my next week's travelling. Trey went inside and got his holiday snaps from last year, which he just happened to have handy, and his cross-stitch of the barrier reef. Quite a few locals used the bar at our resort, and sitting with a grown man sewing a cross-stitch picture amongst a group of very macho Australians made me a bit nervous - but I suppose it shows a certain strength of character for a 37 year old man to even admit to having cross-stitch as a hobby, let alone bring it out in a bar. The photos actually made me feel a bit sorry for him - a few snaps from the previous holiday - which was exactly the same location as this year, snaps of his mother's cats, snaps of his cats. There was more than a touch of Norman Bates about the poor man.

Tuesday 7 of us went kayaking. There were three double kayaks so Trey and I were thrown together in the same kayak. The lucky bloke who got to row on his own was the first one to arrive. Trey and I did quite well - despite Trey completely refusing to do what I told him. Eventually I asked him why he wouldn't row at the same pace as me and he said if you both rowed the same side it might unbalance the kayak - a few sharp words later I had convinced him just to follow my lead and we got there. The Dutch couple had also exchanged a few sharp words, and the British couple not only weren't talking by the time we got to the first beach stop, the girl was actually in tears, mind you they had set off with the kayak the wrong way round. Don't ever go kayaking with someone you are attracted to - it will never get off the ground. Despite my sharp words on the kayak, Trey said he had an apartment booked in Port Douglas and would I like to spend a few days there with him. After the cross-stitch incident this confirmed, to me, that Trey was definitely not interested in women. This is an outrageous assumption I know - no self-respecting gay man would do cross-stitch, but what else was I to think? Anyway I said OK, but still wanted to know a few more details - such as how many bedrooms and was there a lock on the shower, I really didn't want to play the Janet Leigh role.

We had breakfast on the first beach too - this is when I began to suspect Trey may actually have romantic designs on me - he was glued to my side, breathing down my neck - literally. It is a cliche I have heard and used many times, but it was actually happening, and it was making my skin crawl. He was also inviting me to his home town, suggesting we meet up in NZ at Christmas and just getting totally carried away with 'us'. One of us was possibly a certifiable psychopath so I wasn't to comfortable with this us. After breakfast I went for a walk along the beach and Trey joined me. He pointed out how romantic it was - I said I didn't have time for romance, it would detract from my journey and I was too focussed on my trip to bother with men. This is of course complete rubbish and the first decent man I meet I will have plenty of time for romance - but Trey Norman Bates just didn't fit the bill. Then some of us went snorkelling. As we were leaving the water I spotted another load of fish, so pottered for a while near the shore. Ed, our guide, had told us all to stick together, but I was so near the shore I was OK. When I got out I counted to make sure the other two were back. When I had dried off I realised I had miscounted because I had forgotten Ed - which meant Trey was not actually on the beach. I couldn't see him in the water. I waited for a while thinking he had gone off to the loo. I then dithered over whether I should say anything - he was getting a bit scary. However eventually I did, poor Ed nearly had a heart attack. We all started looking for Trey. Ed went off in the boat and eventually found him. Trey had decided to go snorkelling way out. We were all a bit miffed with him, particularly me - there is never a great white shark around when you most need one.

Despite several more sharp words on our kayak journey home Trey still suffered romantic illusions and I declined the invitation to Port Douglas. He became very wintery and blanked me for the rest of the day. After they had all departed for Port Douglas I went cycling again at my own pace and then walked the 3km to the beach for a swim - action woman or what! As I had blown my chance to be Mrs Cross Stitch, I was devastated and drowned my sorrow in Australian beer. OK, I was thrilled, but I still drank the beer.

Wednesday I had a lazy day, just walked to the beach and back for a swim and chatted to Howard and Wendy from Wellington. They were very entertaining. I had been walking past the jigsaw puzzle which we all took it in turns to try and complete and failed. Howard came and showed me the 'correct' way to do jigsaws, and then got completely obsessed with it - reliving his childhood so Wendy and I chatted. They were really nice too and have also invited me to drop by if I am in the area, if I visit everyone who invites me I will never get home!! Sounds good to me.

Thursday one of the local guys said he had two kayaks down at the beach and asked me if I wanted to go kayaking again. I have had plenty of worse offers, particularly in the previous few days, so we arranged to meet at the beach at 8 a.m. Don offered me a lift on his motorbike, but they scare me, so I walked. The kayaks were chained up by a little clearing amongst the trees right at the end of the beach, there was a stone fireplace there which Don drily referred to as Cow Bay Yacht Club. He made us both a cup of billy tea and we went kayaking. The sea was a lot rougher than the previous day and Don warned me that once I got going I had to pedal like hell to get past the wake. I got in, I pedalled like hell. I lost my hat. I went back for my hat, I fell in. I got back in the kayak, I pedalled like hell, I lost my hat, I went back for it, managed not to fall in and this time sat on my hat - less protection from the sun, but more chance of getting past the wake. Don was way ahead of me taking it easy. My fat little arms were killing me just to keep going but I pushed on. Water was smacking me in the face and streaming into my eyes, if I stopped for a second I got pushed right back to the shore, so I just kept on and on. I wondered when it was going to start being fun.

We got to the first beach and I just lay back in my kayak and let the waves take me in. Don said he would show me how to surf in. I sat on the shore and rinsed the sea water out of my eyes whilst he played in the surf. After a while I decided to join him. The sea was a bit calmer and I only fell in once when I tried to join Don. He showed me how to wait for a wave and then get on the edge of it with the kayak and surf in. These flat kayaks are really heavy so it was quite a job getting them into position and you had to go hell for leather to catch the top of the wave. I managed it once and got so excited I forgot all the other instructions. The kayak and I somersaulted, the kayak surfaced before me and smashed me on the back of the head. For the next hour I played in the surf with various degrees of success. Don howled with laughter everytime I came a cropper, I just howled, but it was amazing fun. I am definitely going to learn to boogie board.

Despite my cowardice I was very glad of a lift home on the bike, my legs were like jelly. We had to carry the oars, the backpacks and the chairs - so we looked like a pair of gypsies, but who was to see us. I told Don he should teach kayak surfing to all the tourists and make a bundle. He said if it was a job it would stop being fun, and I suppose he is right, but I had a brilliant morning - far more entertaining than swearing my head off at Norman Bates!

On Friday I left Cow Bay and headed back to Cairns via Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge. The bus which took me back gave us exactly 35 minutes at Mossman - which was a shame as it was beautiful, and a whole 24 minutes at Port Douglas which actually appeared to be sufficient. It had posh shops, bars, restaurants, overpriced hotels and backpack hostels. Apart from a nice beach there was little else to recommend it, I had missed nothing by staying away from weird little Trey.

A week's absence had not improved Cairns, so I bought a bus pass which will take me down to Sydney via everywhere I care to get off and booked the first bus out of Cairns in the morning.

My first week in Australia is over - and so far it has been fantastic. I can't wait to see what the next few months bring.

Viv x

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Photos

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The barrier reef

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My kind of drive in

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Sunrise in Cairns

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Cairns businessman on the commute home

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Blurry crocodile

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Daintree river

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Daintree rainforest

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Fanpalms

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I'm going in, don't try and stop me

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The Barrier Reef

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Mattie the boatdriver

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Bandicoot

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Palm tree

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Cow Bay Beach

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The elusive cassowary

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Cow Bay Yacht Club Lounge Bar

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Trying to kayak and surf

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The carriage awaits