Aussie Aussie Aussie

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After a long, tiring day’s travel from New Zealand we arrived in Cairns, Northern Queensland. This was the first time either of us had been to Australia so we were keen to explore the country and its culture. The first difference that we noticed from NZ was that the temperature was considerably higher. In NZ it had fluctuated wildly from high 20s degrees C to hailstones and biting winds. In Cairns it was still, balmy and warm. Later, we quantified this as a high of 32C daily with biting cold nights of 24C! (Ha Ha, we hope you are all enjoying November in the UK!) We had booked a couple of nights in a Lonely Planet recommended hostel and were taken there by a <span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> skinny, unintelligible taxi driver with long, unfashionable, alcoholic-thin hair after a few missed turns. It turned out that the hostel was bit out of town but was friendly, welcoming and had a bed to rest our weary heads. Refreshed by a night’s sleep, we explored Cairns on foot and found it most agreeable. Karen was particularly taken by the arty, swish, large open-air swimming pool on the esplanade which substituted for a city centre beach. I was more interested in the traditional old Aussie pubs on backstreet corners which were densely populated by midmorning by rough guys like you see in road trip movies. I figured that if I had brought a wingman we could have interacted with these crazy dudes and got some fantastic stories. Karen found the prospect of this most unappealing as she grabbed her beach towel and headed for the trendy seafront. Cairns seems to be run almost exclusively on the backpacker-tourist’s dollar. We are informed that it now has a population of 150,000 and is the 2^ndfastest growing city in Australia (behind Darwin!!). Half of these people could be tourists! Backpacker hostels are found on every street and there must be five travel agents / events organisers for each one, desperate to flog the “must-do” activities of diving, bungee, sky diving and rainforest trips to ever-willing hedonistic youngsters. After a noisy second night at our hostel (histrionic drunkenness over trivial drinking injuries from our charming neighbours) we moved to a city centre establishment to be close to all the amenities. This was a mistake. It was like the worst student halls of residence possible. We lived in a windowless room with just a bed, had to give photo ID to get a plastic box of crockery/cutlery each, had to fight for space in hopelessly inadequate fridges and were woken up at all hours by drunken guests. Are we getting old???!! We managed to tolerate it but it did take a bit of a shine off our time in Cairns. One night in cairns’ city centre we watched a great punch up between a bunch of drunken Abos (or native Australians as apparently we are meant to say) and the local security forces. I think the natives took the victory on points and certainly had the more aggressive intent. Meanwhile, during the days we conformed to the wishes of the trip organisers. Karen was very brave. She did a 50m bungee jump (see piccies below). I took the vital role of cameraman from the safety of terra firma. She had a wee wobble at the top but went over the edge pretty well (the screaming and whooping was obligatory of course!), stating that she loved it and couldn’t wait to do it again. Another day, we went out onto the Great Barrier Reef on a large boat. Karen had registered to do a single dive but after the excitement of the first (and a wad of cash burning a hole in her pocket) she had a further two, managing to get up close and personal with a large Hawksbill turtle on the third (the photos of which I am sure will be accompanying this blog!). I was snorkelling similar areas. I had experienced ear problems when diving in the past so figured that the same may recur. I dived down to about 5 metres a few times and got the same pain so assumed that my ears are still incompatible with diving- although I did enjoy surprising a few divers as I whizzed past them in the depths with no scuba! I managed a couple of minutes swimming with a 4 or 5 foot long white tipped reef shark which thankfully didn’t seem hungry or annoyed by my presence. Almost every Australian we have met has taken great pleasure in welcoming us to “the world’s deadliest country”, claiming that almost everything that we will encounter is about to inject us with a fatal neurotoxin which will kill us in minutes or has more teeth and attitude than Esther Rantzen crossed with a pitbull! When diving we had to wear very fetching, all-in-one lycra suits to protect us from “stinger” jellyfish and have been warned about picking up cone-shaped shells for fear of being killed by something or another. Despite these warnings, we went on a crocodile safari today on a stretch of river where apparently 400 crocs of up to 6 metres live. You guessed it – not a sniff of a single one!! I was just about to peel my kit off and plunge into the murky water in my Speedos when the guide told us that his dog got eaten last week and one of his competitors’ children was taken last year. I remained in the boat after reflecting upon this new information. We spent the night in a remote cabin in the rainforest north of Cairns, in an area called Cape Tribulation. Apparently this area was given its name by Captain Cook who had spent 6 unhappy weeks anchored here whilst repairing a hole in his boat and lost numerous men to the hostile natives, disease and numerous dangerous creatures. Thankfully, we managed to survive thanks to finding a bottle of sauvignon blanc, a large pizza and an air conditioning unit. Beat that Ray Mears!

We returned to Cairns briefly and spent a day relaxing as we waited for our overnight Greyhound bus down the coast. After our experiences of night buses in Southeast Asia we had some reservations about using this mode of transport. We considered hiring a car but after 4500km in NZ the thought of driving long distance was less appealing. We bought a ticket from Cairns to Brisbane. Now check a map. This doesn’t look far but it really is! We completed about the first third of the trip in 12 hours, finding ourselves at Airlie Beach. This is a great little tourist town on the coast, all geared up for sailing trips around the magnificent Whitsunday Islands. These islands really are “must-do” if you are in Queensland and were the focal point for us meeting up with Steve and Caroline, good friends of mine from university who married in September and, since they are locum GPs, disappeared off for a few months and were travelling north up the same coast. For those who don’t know ‘Stevoline’, they are quite prone to partake in a few liquid refreshments and we were only too happy to join them in the few days that we had to wait to join a boat. Karen took the opportunity to hurl herself out of an aeroplane from 10,000 feet but fortunately had the foresight to strap a bloke to her back who seemed to know what he was doing. He managed to guide her safely to earth as well as recording the whole event on video camera for insurance purposes. We have struggled to wipe the smile off Karen’s ever since, with the only problem now being that she is struggling to find where she is going to get her next adrenaline kick from. For a couple of days, Stevo and myself went fishing on the barrier reef with the hilarious Captain Scotty who couldn’t have been more Aussie if he had XXXX tattooed on his forehead! We managed to land several interesting, bright coloured fish but nothing huge such as a tuna or marlin. Stevo caught a large coral trout which we took home and cooked on the municipal Barbie by the beach and amply fed the four of us. The following day we managed to catch a reasonably sized turtle!! It just wouldn’t leave our bait alone and finally it got hooked on the edge of his beak. We carefully lifted him aboard, pinned him down and removed the hook before sending him on his way. Not really what we were looking to catch but he was unharmed and it makes for an interesting story!

The following day we ventured out onto a sailing boat for 2 days and nights. Airlie Beach must be the home of 50 chartered sailing boats, the vast majority of whom were fully booked on the dates we were there. It should be made clear that cruising in the Whitsundays is not a cheap pastime. Short trips seemed to range from around £200 to £600 per person for a couple of nights, with the number of people on the boat and levels of luxury varying accordingly. We ended up on a budget boat, largely due to limited availability, but that meant that we could spend the extra cash on the events prior to setting sail. What it did mean was that we spent 2 nights at sea on a glorified Club 18-30 booze cruise. We actually ended up doing pretty well out of it as we were given private cabins with beds large enough for us both to fit in. Some of the poor backpackers were given bunks which resembled little more than a shelf on the wall of the corridor with no doors or curtains for privacy. Luxuries included flush toilets but no showering or wash facilities. Fortunately we were snorkelling frequently enough that body odour didn’t seem to be an issue. A communal BYO beer store proved the main focus of our angst as a group of four Austrian guys were drinking the same brand of lager as we were. Suspicious that they were going to consume our supplies and leave us dry on the second night, there was a strict beer counting policy in place. In the end, we only lost 3 or 4 from our stash of 30 which we put down to natural wastage. I hasten to add that, against racial stereotyping, it wasn’t the Scottish fellas but the English/Irish girls who were most intent on the beer monitoring. It may have been a different story

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