Port Douglas Parade

---

Sorry this post came in a bit late, but I worked 8 days in a row and had several social activities in between, so here it goes:



Friday 1st of June was my third day off work and that day I was expecting to go to the "Port Douglas Parade", an event that's part of the "Port Douglas Carnivale". The best way to describe it, is copy-pasting the overview from the website:

PORT DOUGLAS CARNIVALE May 18 – 27 2012

Port Douglas Carnivale turns 18 this year. It’s a magical festival held during the last two weeks of May within the seaside resort village and its surrounds. There’s music, arts, sports, food, culture and all styles of entertainment – every reason to head to Port Douglas for a ‘taste of paradise’.

And the website: http://www.carnivale.com.au/

The parade was supposed to start at around 7 in the evening, so I had plenty of time to not do much and enjoy that day.

At around 4:30pm I went to take a bus to go to town because I needed to do a few things before the stores closed down. As soon as I got to the bus stop, I saw a bus from the company I work for, heading back to the marina, which is very close to were I needed to go. The bus driver was Alicia, an American girl from California with whom I get to work often in the boat. Luckily she saw me and I got a free ride into town. From the marina, it takes about 5 minutes to get to Macrossan St., which is were I needed to go.

I went to the company's office to hand in some paperwork and then I went to a few shops to see if I could get a used bike, but they didn't have anything for the moment. After that, I still had to wait a while for the parade to start, so in the meantime I went to take a few photos and walk around. It started raining really hard about 2 hours before the parade was supposed to start and I thought it was going to get cancelled (it had been cancelled the previous week for the same reason), but at 7pm the rain had stopped almost completely and everything went on as planned. I joined Anthony outside of an irish pub (Paddy's) to take photos of the parade. Anthony has a job on the side as a pro photographer, but this time he wasn't working, he was taking pictures of his wife, Melina, who was in one of the floats in the parade.

The parade mainly consists of different companies of Port Douglas putting up a float and parading down Macrossan St. There are also a few people in costumes, jugglers, etc. It's not the greatest parade in the world, but it's still fun. The parade lasted around 25 minutes and a pretty good crowd gathered in the streets. After that, most people headed down to the pubs and Anthony and I went to get a beer at a bar called "The Courthouse". There, I saw Tim, a Canadian who I had been diving with in Calypso and he and his friends joined us. Then, we were joined by a few girls that worked in the Courthouse who had the day off. It was a lot of fun and and I realized how much I was missing going out; I've been very relaxed in that sense the last months. I went home at around 11:30 because I was working the next day.



Saturday and Sunday were great days work-wise. I worked on another boat owned by the same company, called "Pure Dive", which ironically only takes snorkellers. That boat had been chartered for both days by a a group in charge of American college students doing a marine biology course in Port Douglas. We had a total of 25 passengers including the students, 2 professors and two girls in charge of the marine biology program. A few of the students were certified divers and a few also wanted to try diving. We were 2 instructors on the boat that day, Lance (from NZ) and I and also two girls; Lisa (Australian), the skipper of the boat and Alicia, who worked as hostess those days.

Both days were very chilled out and I got to do a few dives; the first day with certified divers and the other day I had to do the introductory dives. What made the days really good as well, besides not having a large amount of passengers, was the fact that we were only 4 in the crew. Those days I just went home after work and relaxed. Saturday night I stayed up playing cards with Melina, Lauren (friend of Melina) and Paul, our journalist neighbor.



On Monday, we had a group that chartered Calypso - It was a chemical company which rented the boat for people who worked in different groups within the company and who were from different places in Australia, so most of them didn't know each other. The boat usually leaves at 9:30am every day, but these people showed up very late after apparently a big night out, so the boat left the marina at 12:30pm and went to only dive 1 site. When we got to the site, most of the people got in the water to snorkel and others just chilled out in the boat, eating and drinking. It was a very relaxed day; I didn't go diving at all, so just an easy day.

That evening, we got out of work slightly later (at around 6pm) and when I was riding my bike back home, I saw a huge flock of what apparently seemed like birds, but when I took a closer look, they were bats, and they were huge; more like flying foxes than rats. It was an awesome sight. I was told that these bats go out in the evening looking for food (they only eat fruits) and aren't dangerous at all. On a day off, I'll go and take photos of them, it's really an incredible sight.



Tuesday was a very hectic day. We were supposed to have about 50 people on board, but because there was a problem with the other boat we have (Pure Dive), all the passengers that were originally going on Pure Dive were transfered to Calypso at the last minute, so we left with 92 passengers. Among them, there were quite a few divers, most of them doing introductory dives, but also a few certified divers, who I got to take out that day. Besides it being a very busy day, nothing else extraordinary happened; it was pretty much another day of work, which was still good.



Wednesday, however, was a different day. I still went to work like every day and I also got to take certified divers that day, which is the best part of the job. Taking certified divers means that we only take people who know how to dive and give then a tour on the different dive sites. I only had 3 people with me; Dave, an Australian (his girlfriend Steph was doing an introductory dive), Bryony from New Zeland (former navy officer who's now working for an army general as a civilian) and Josh, an American from Hawaii, very chilled out and also a traveller who moved to Port Douglas recently. We had very good dives that day and by then I was getting more confident with the knowledge of the sites.

The third and final dive, I only had 2 divers, so the 3 of us got taken on the small boat we have and were dropped off in a part of the dive site so we could dive back to Calypso. It's very unusual to do that and in this case we could because we had the time and we were very few divers. I had only been in that site once and I got instructions on how to get back to the boat. Fortunately, the directions given to me were pretty accurate and I only had to surface a couple of times to make sure I was following the right direction back. It's been by far the best dive I've had here.

Bruce, another guy who works in Calypso, was working as a photographer that day and he was really happy about it, due to the fact that he loves photography. He asked me if I wanted to get a beer after work with him and his girlfriend Giselle (they live in the same street as I), so of course I said yes. I asked him if there was anyone else going and he hadn't invited anyone else, so I invited the people I had dived with that day. It's not very usual I guess, when people go on these kind of tours and after that get to hang out with the people that work there, so they all said yes as well.

After we got back to Port Douglas and finished cleaning up the boat, Bruce, Giselle and I went to a pub called "Lure", which is in the marina and has discounts for people that work on the boats. The other guys arrived after a few minutes and Josh brought along two more people that he worked with. We had a really good time; most of the people there had lived in other countries and all liked to travel. We stayed there at until 9, when they closed the bar. After that, we headed to the Courthouse Hotel to have a few more beers and also to get something to eat. The food there is very good and it's not an expensive place. I had a spectacular plate of pork ribs and chips; I think the best pork ribs I've ever had, that's how good they were. After the Courthouse, there only remained Bruce, Giselle, Bryony and another girl whose name I can't remember. We had one final jug of beer at the Iron Bar and then shared a taxi back home. It's been one of the best days in Port Douglas so far, mainly because of the people I met.



Thursday, it was back to work again and that day I had to go with the introductory divers. As usual, it all started with a class explaning the basics of scuba diving and then taking them in the different sites in groups of no more than 4 people. That day, of the seven people that wanted to try scuba diving, one of them backed out at the last minute and two girls panicked in the surface, right after they got in the water, so I was left with only four divers. All 4 did pretty well and I had no problems with them. All of them liked it that much, that they did 1 or 2 more dives that day. It's a really nice part of the job when you see people leaving the boat happy at the end of the day; means a job well done.

After work, I went with Bruce and Giselle to the supermarket and then went back home. I fell asleep at around 9pm that day.



Friday, I had another day working in Calypso, taking out certified divers and had some pretty good dives that day as well. There are two sites which I really like; one of them is called "The Split" which consists of two huge bommies (Australian slang for "lump of coral") and the other site is called "Two Tone", because in the middle of that part of the reef, there's a sand patch which gives away a turquoise color to the water that contrasts to the brown color of the coral patches. In that specific site, there's a lot of marine life and also a certain area where it's very likely to see sharks, which I now know where it is. The sharks that can be seen here are reef sharks, white tips, black tips and grey whalers; all of them harmless (they swim away when approached). That day I saw 4 sharks in a period of about 5 minutes; 3 of them swimming and another one laying in the bottom.

When we were going back to Port Douglas, I was talking with Lance, Bruce and Florence (a French dive instructor) and somehow we ended up talking about mossies (an informal way to name mosquitoes in Australia). There are some really tiny ones here that sting and then pee on the wound, so when someone scratches, it spreads and makes it worse. Right now, both of my legs are covered in scars (it's like a full-on attack by fleas). Anyway, Lance told me what to get for that, so after work I went straight to a pharmacy and bought the whole combo: pills, an antiseptic cream and mosquito repelent, all of which is helping now.

When I got back home, I ran into Bruce and Giselle and they invited me to take a walk to the beach (they were taking their 11 month old dog, Kosher, there). It was a good half an hour walk and then the 3 of us went to get dinner at a place called "The Tavern", about 5 minutes from where we live. We had a good conversation, a few glasses of wine and then we went back home because we had to work the next day.

---