Emus, Cassowaries, and Roos, Oh My! (and 31)

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This entry was lost in the Aug 1st crash of the Travelblog site. I've done my best to restore it to its original form. I think it's basically the same with a few photos in different order. Many thanks to Cameron, Heather & Nick, and the Travelblog admin.
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I'd like to begin by letting you all know that this entry does not include any references to anything remotely related to seasickness...or anything else unpleasant.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's get to the details of the rest of my Aussie experience.

In the last entry I said that the dive trip was the anchor of my Australia plans. The rest of my plans were to head a bit south (near Brisbane) and spend a couple weeks sitting on the beach chilling and surfing and resting up so I was ready (mentally and physically) for Asia. Well, as seems to be the pattern, my actual experience ended up being nothing like my original plans. This is partially because I'm in Australia later than planned (due to my extra 3 weeks in NZ) and it's not quite as warm as I'd like down south. And it's also partially because it's really hard to pass on all the other opportunities available in Australia. So...

Once I regained stability on dry land I decided to head north from Cairns to the Daintree Rain Forest and a place called Cape Tribulation. The trip up there included a 45 minute boat/ferry ride on/across the Daintree River into croc territory to see what killer animals were out and about. As it turned out, we could see several different crocs hanging out in the muddy river banks soaking up the late morning sun. Throw in a python slithering along some tree branches and a couple of cool birds and I'd say the boat gig was a success.

Upon arriving to my "resort" (the Beach House) in Cape Tribulation, I walked into my room to discover that Emma, my dive buddy, had made the same plans and was in the same dorm. It's a small travel world. I originally had only booked one night and was planning to head south along the coast after that, but upon seeing how beautiful the rain forest and the beach were, I quickly booked up a couple more nights. If ever you're looking for a place to chill out, the Beach House in Cape Trib is a good option. Beaches, rain forest walks, refreshing (read "chilly") swimming holes, and some crazy wildlife just cruising around. The craziest wildlife that I saw was a Cassowary. This is more or less an over-sized chicken with a blue neck & head. One came out of the forest right onto the beach one afternoon and wandered around for an hour or so. We had been warned to not tick them off because they will charge and more or less slice a person open with their enormous claws. He tried to look intimidating a couple of times, but no charging or slicing. Good stuff.

After a couple more days of doing very little in Cairns, I finally headed further south to a town called Airlie Beach where I hopped on an 83ft sailboat (Boomerang) with 26 other funsters for a couple days of sailing around the Whitsunday Islands. I hadn't originally planned on doing this, but everyone I've talked to has raved about it so much that I figured I'd give it a go. Once again, my original plan was proven to be flawed and my journey benefited by exercising some travel flexibility. Yeah, I guess that my Aussie "plan" pretty much got scrapped after the dive trip.

The sailing was brilliant and I felt fine the whole time. Great success! I hopped on an overnight bus to Noosa for a (birth)day of my original Australia plan...the beach and some surfing. A couple of hours of having my butt thoroughly kicked by the waves, current, wind, etc further proved to me that I made the right decision to spend most of my time doing other non-surfing activities here in Aussie. I've only surfed a few times before and haven't exactly been good...but I've at least managed to not totally stink. This experience falls in the category of really, really sucking. Oh well...was time to head back to the hostel and figure out some impromptu birthday plans.

So there I am at 7pm on my birthday and not knowing anyone in town. So sad, right? Not so much. The backpacker life is one in which advance planning is not required in order to find a decent party. My hostel had a restaurant/bar attached to it so I swung by for the "Mexican Fiesta" night. While waiting for my semi-Mexican food (I think I can confidently say that I would have been more qualified to make Mexican food than the Canadian and German girls...but it ended up being ok), I ended up meeting two Italians (MJ and Ludo) and Casper the Friendly Dutchman. The party crew was assembled. After a while we migrated across the street to a pub that was having a karaoke competition. Unfortunately, we were too late to enter. After the eventual winner finished his impressive version of "TNT" by ACDC, the mic opened up for anyone to sing. For those of you who have been lucky enough to experience first hand how much I can love a microphone and the opportunity to amplify my voice...you might understand that I couldn't resist the stage. I was tempted to honor the national rock gods of ACDC by testing out my public "Thunderstruck" (also the White Sox intro song) abilities. But in the end I decided to get in touch with the Jake and Elwood inside of me with a rendition of "Sweet Home Chicago." Maybe not the best choice amongst a room full of non-Americans because no one actually knew what I was singing. Oh well...I had fun and the Italian girls were impressed. Not knowing how to properly top that experience and with my need to hear own amplified voice satisfied, we decided to call it a night and headed back to the hostel. My birthday started out waking up on a bus (with some sore 31-year old joints), took a detour to the beach (getting my 31-year old butt kicked by mother nature), and ended up on stage (with my mind ignoring -or just being numbed- the physical challenges of the day and pretending that I'm still 21). All in all, a pretty good day.

My final act of tourism before leaving the big red island was to hop on yet another bus and make my way to the Australia Zoo. This is the Steve Irwin Zoo and has loads of cool animals in a well laid-out outdoor setting. There are open areas to roam around with and feed dozens of kangaroos...a snake house...a variety of fresh & salt water crocs...tigers...elephants...koalas...otters...emus...the list goes on. Thankfully the camera batteries were fully charged up because I was in animal-photography heaven.

I'm pretty certain that I didn't have a full understanding of how important Steve Irwin was to Australia nor did I understand how sad his passing was for Aussies and many others around the world. There was a memorial at the zoo which was surprisingly moving and I was quite inspired by his passion and what he accomplished in his life. All in all, it was a really cool zoo.

A few final Aussie thoughts...

Australia's really, really big - which makes it quite expensive and time consuming to get around. I think that was part of the beauty of New Zealand - the ease of travel and the proximity to the next gig. In order to do it properly here, I'd need to be willing to spend a lot more $$$...which I'm not. So bring on the low cost experience of South East Asia!

To some extent, I felt like my AUS experience was like an amped up version of Florida. This is probably because I didn't take the time or $$ to explore the outback and some other very "Australia" things. But that being said, an amped up version of Florida isn't exactly a bad thing, eh?

They like to abbreviate everything here. Such as...
Breaky - Breakfast
Aussie - Australia
Footy - Football
Wetty - Wet suit
Rashy - Rash Guard
Agro - Aggressive
So in keeping with that trend, my time in Australia wasn't long compared to NZ and potential other stops along the way, but it was certainly another enjoyable set of adventures.

Well, I had originally intended to be well rested for my arrival in Thailand...instead I'm completely wiped out & sleep deprived...not too unlike when I originally got here. Oh well...I'll catch up on sleep after my travels, right?

Bye bye to the "West" and it's off to Thailand and lots and lots of really good food!

Cheers,
Marc

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Photos

Cape Tribulation Beach
This ranks up near the top of the list of my favorite shots of the whole trip so far. Low tide on the beach exposed some cool rocks & pools. Add a few reflections ofthe clouds...and it shapes up to be a cool photo.

Scarface
Though this certainly isn't his face...

Roo Time!
One of the trickier self-photos I've taken.

Emu Head Shot
This is one of my favs from the day at the zoo. Sometimes it pays off to follow the same Emu for ages and taking countless photos until the right moment...

Schildpad = Turtle
This is the Dutch word I learned from the Dutch guys on the boat. I keep trying to impress other Dutch travelers with this knowledge.

Boomerang Sunset
Putting the sun to bed.

Otters
Not all the animals at the zoo were native to Australia...but these guys were cool anyway.

Komodo Dragon
The shadow isn't perfect, but the tongue out is.

Comments

[Cameron]

Thanks for the photos!
Thanks again for sharing your adventures with the rest of us who'll probably never get to Aussie Land. The pics are stunning - I'm sure it was hard to choose which ones to include. Would have loved to hear your rendition of "Sweet Home Chicago"!

[Nick Tsihlis]

lucky you
We have printed out all the blogs for Grandpa and Ki. Want me to scan them in and send them to you? Hope you're having fun in Thailand. Thanks for keeping us posted on what's going on.

[Going Global]

Already scanned
Thanks Heather, but Cam already hooked me up.