Far North Queensland

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It's been a strange few weeks here in far north Queensland at the Karnak theater in Mossman. We're pretty much as far north as you can go in Australia on paved roads and therefore very much in the tropics, and have to get used to the humidity, violent storms and warms nights that are associated with life here.
There are two main things to report i guess. Chris was able to spend 5 days away from the theater and preparations for the opera (more on that later) and learn to dive on the great barrier reef. It was as you can image a fantastic experience. It involved 2 days of theory in a classroom in Cairns and 2 days of practical experience on the reef. On the fifth day Alice and a friend of our's Ania, who has been wwoofing with us at Karnak, joined me on the reef and we had a great day snorkeling and diving; we were lucky enough to see humpback whales splashing about on the hour and a half journey to and from the reef and to swim with a turtle around one of the reefs.

I'd been told terrible things about Cairns, but i found it to be a pleasant-enough town, although very much centered on the tourist dollar, nicely set out with a swimming pool on the promenade (the sea there is often too full of salt water crocodiles and poisonous jellyfish to be swimable).

Other than the distraction of swimming the reef and the occasional trip to the Daintree national park, Mossman gorge (which have all been very beautiful) we've simply been preparing for the opera La Traviata which took place on Friday 5th. I wont bore you with all the details of the painting, strimming and weeding that needed to be done, let's just say there was a lot. The theater had been pretty much un-used since hurricane Yasmin blew through in January so there was a lot to do; and once all that had been done we were both roped into helping with the food.

The back-stage people from Oz-Opera arrived on the Thursday afternoon and I spent one of the hardest afternoon's of my life helping to unload the vehicle and set up the stage. I would love to be able to put up some photos of what it looked like when it was all finished but we were simply too busy towards the end to track down a camera and do it justice. However, there are some photos of Karnak on my Facebook and photobucket accounts.

The theater is in the rainforest and exposed on two sides to the elements and although we'd had a month of good weather on the run up to it the weather on the night was, of course appalling, and the opera had to be cut back by half an hour or so because the stage was too wet for some of the action to take place.
Plus there was the inevitable stress involved in simultaneously serving fresh food (samosas, pizza, roasted taro, smoked salmon rolls and much more) for over 300 people and the exhaustion of the previous few days, so it was perhaps not the ideal time for us to see our first opera. . Oh well, we had an interesting experience. I don't feel like i want to to use this to whinge and complain about the people we meet traveling, but our current host, Diane, has not been a positive influence shall we say. Without wanting to be too negative, she has taken a lot away from what could have been a brilliant experience.

From here we head south so tick off some of the tourist attractions the east coast is famous for and have another, hopefully less exciting wwooof booked for the end of the month.

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