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Published: February 3rd 2008
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I took a nightbus to Rockhampton after camping. The Britt girls and I shared a cab and made it to the bus station with three minutes to spare! I managed to have a decent 4 hour slee[p on the bus and got cleaned up at the station in Rockhampton which has showers. Showering in a bus station is beyond classy. At 10 I met my guide for the day. His name's Dave and he doesn't believe in shoes. The inside of Daves van has no seatbelts and is covered in messages that other travellers have left using a rainbow of markers. I thought that I was going to an alligator farm, but Dave said that he hasn't done that trip for over 5 years. A lot of the quotes talked about spiders crawling on peoples heads so I wasn't sure what to expect. We picked up two other girls and headed off into the bush.
On our first stop - the middle of nowhere - we played an Aborigonee childrens game (I think of it more like a dare). Dave stomped on a huge ant pile full of "meat ants" and the object of the game is to see who can
stand on the pile the longest while the ants try to eat you. You're supposed to get a healthy pair of "bush socks" where your feet become black with ants and it looks like a pair of socks. The other girls did the classic "not it" as soon as he asked who would go first so I was thrown into the ring. The ants felt like tiny electric shocks all over my legs and I found out that my anklkes are really sensitive. I was able to stay on the pile for 50 seconds before I gave up and danced around getting the ants off of me. My feet were bleeding a little, but in the end I was the winner of the game. My feet were fine for the rest of the day but two days later I noticed they were covered with tiny bumps, hopefully that'll go away soon.
We spent the rest of the morning flipping over rocks and dead logs looking for cool stuff. I ended up being an expert at spotting things that can kill me, like red back spider. We also found a gecko, which was one of the coolest little animals ever, I'm
going to have to figure out how to get one home without anyone noticing. On the way otu of the bush I thought that Dave was going to drive full speed right into a fence but he stopped and hopped out at the last second and ran away. It turned out that he was hunting a dragon lizard, which later sat on my head. They're really neat and bristly all over with a little beard just like a tiny dragon.
We toured around a farm and hung out with a bull before going for a steak lunch. The cows here are a cross between European and Indian breeds because it's too hot for the Euros and too cold for the Indian ones. They tast delicious whatever they are.
In the afternoon we went to the 'ol swimming hole. The water was too dark to see beyond the first five inches and I was told there were beramundi in the deep areas (that's a huge fish). The bottom of the swimming hole was covered with tea tree mud though so it was kind of worth it, we had a Berverly Hillbillies-style spa. Once we'd dried off we went searching for big
tree frog
you can't touch tree frogs on the back or they'll die spiders. Turns out Australia's full of big hairy ugly things in almost every tree. Dave convinced me to hold some of the spiders and I learned that spider crawl up when they're scared, so if you have a spider crawling on you don't shake your arm towards teh floor because it'll just crawl onto your face. Once I got more comfortable Dave let the spider crawl on my cheek and we took pictures. We had to do it over and over again because the spider really liked hiding in my hair. I guess I'm not really afraid of spiders anymore...
As if spiders weren't enough Dave decided that we should go snake hunting. While me and the other girls were looking for mangoes Dave was flipping over rocks and eventually we found a red belly, the 16th most deadly snake in the world. We stared at it a while and Dave said that the s-shaped coiling pattern meant that it was getting ready to strike, so make sure not to use flash if you're taking pictures. Eventually the snake slitheres away down the path that we came up so we had to wait in the bush a while before we
could go back to the van.
The van got stuck in the mud for 2 hours and we three tiny girls pushed it out after making a track of brocken tree branches. It took forever and we were all covered up to our waists in mud.
Once we got the van unstuck we went chasing kangaroos. Roos get together in the evening to eat (safety in numbers) and we managed to find a pack of about 30 of them, it looked like the whole field was hopping).
Soon enough it was 7pm and time to go back home to the bus station where I slept on the bench outside waiting for my midnight bus to arrive. One random guy stopped and asked if I wanted to sleep on his couch, but I trust benches in the middle of nowhere to couches in strangers houses so I turned him down. Soon enough I was woken up by the bus driver and I was on my way to sail the Whitsundays...
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