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Published: March 15th 2008
Caution!
Heights! A rather unflattering picture for both of usFor the past week Cairns and the surrounding areas have been in the middle of a monsoon. Towns nearby (as in perhaps a 15-20 minute drive away) have had families trapped inside of their houses from the flooding. The river, I think it is the Barron River, rose 12 meters higher than normal in like 3 days or something. The father was impressed by my use of the metric system when I relayed this information, but I don't know the conversion so I'm forced to parrot the news station. No one wanted to drive with sheets of rain coming down, so work was very slow and filled with cleaning. The only excitement was the baby crocodile necropsy (a bunch from the same group of eggs died--they had irregular livers, so maybe genetic birth defects?) and a koala necropsy. I also drew up antibiotics and give them subcutaneously to a cat and a puppy, which made me feel very professional and cool. My bird boyfriend from the previous post was adopted and left me for a family life. I shall miss his enthusiastic baths in which he would repeat "Thank you!" over and over as he splashed in the water.
Thankfully
the sun finally began to emerge on Thursday, so we decided to venture outdoors. On a related side note; you would not believe the amount of movies and TV shows that we watch during the week. There are only 6 channels on basic television service, so our options are extremely limited. I have probably seen more of 'The Biggest Loser' and 'So You Think You Can Dance' (Australian versions of course!) in the past 5 weeks than the total amount of television I have watched in a year. This might seem hard to believe, but Biggest Loser is on 5 days a week, and the other one is on twice. I don't know if it is intentional or not, but The Biggest Loser comes on around dinnertime, as if to warn us off that second piece of whatever. Random episodes of Friends, House, cricket games (I immediately retire to my room during these..not the most exciting of games), and ripoffs of American reality shows can all be heard blasting throughout the apartment as the viewer tries to hear them over the sound of the rain outside. Yes, it's that loud when it comes charging down from the clouds. After the
monsoon, the weather was beautiful. The humidity had broken and it could almost be considered cool outside. I took advantage of the weather change and went running for the first time in a month. It wasn't pretty.
Annie, Paige, and I had planned to go up to Kuranda on Saturday, but decided to take advantage of the sun and went to Palm Cove instead. The stinger nets weren't put out because of the wind so swimming was out of the question. Thankfully the cool weather held and it was mostly cloudy so we didn't even get hot. I don't think I got much of a tan, despite not putting sunscreen on for 30 minutes. In sunny weather you can burn that quickly, trust me, I have learned this the hard way.
Kuranda is an aboriginal community that is north of Cairns. You can drive or take a bus, but we went for the touristy transportation. We meant to leave for Kuranda early on Sunday, but the plans went astray a bit and we missed the first bus to the skyrail station. My lame attempt to book a reservation an hour before we left worked to our advantage a
Barron Falls
with a rainbow bit since we were able to get ahead of a large tourist group. The skyrail was very scenic. I thought I would be more afraid with the heights issue, but I found the ride to be relaxing. We passed over a couple of mountains until we came to Barron Falls. This waterfall is huuuuuge! From our vantage-point we were able to see a rainbow in the mist formed from god knows how many gallons/tons of water crashing onto rocks. There were 2 scenic stops during the skyrail route. The first one wasn't worth getting out for since it was a rainforest walk and we have trekked through rainforests on our own. The second one was over Barron Falls, so it was worth it! Even as far away from it as we were, we still got wet from the constant mist surrounding the area. After taking some pictures we got back onto a skyrail coach and continued onward to Kuranda.
The main draw for Kuranda, to us at least, was the shopping opportunities. In Cairns the aboriginal art and boomerangs are way overpriced! Actually going up to the village proved not only cheaper, but we were able to purchase directly
Welcome to Kuranda pose
I was trying to look like I was riding the cassowary without much luck. from the artists behind the pieces. Everybody wins! Annie was convinced that she had to buy all of her souvenirs here, so we spent most of our time browsing the shops. I picked up a few pieces to bring home, but we might try to get up there again before we leave Cairns. One shop had children performing traditional dances so of course we had to stop and take pictures/videos. The large instrument is called a didgeridoo and, from what I've seen, is played by breathing out with your lips closed so that they vibrate and echo inside the instrument. That's a basic sound of playing it...I have no idea how they make other sounds/notes! I tried to use one that the English boy downstairs bought but was unable to make any kind of musical sound. Looks like there will be no didgeridoo playing in my future. Ah well.
After our funds were exhausted from shopping, we still had a little over an hour before the scenic train left. Annie wanted to browse the markets a little longer, I wanted to go to the open aviary, and Paige chose the butterfly sanctuary so we decided to split up.
Didgeridoo
Such a long instrument! I bought a bag of nuts and crackers to entice birds to come to me, and it worked rather well! Since I was alone I had to ask other people to take pictures of me, but thankfully I was with an older crowd who were happy to be of assistance. There were so many pretty birds! After working in the vet clinic here I have become more accustomed to dealing with birds, especially parrots and their large, nut(/bone!!)-cracking beaks so I wasn't freaked out until they started approaching my face. The birds were smart...they would wait to see who was feeding another bird before flocking to that person and getting some treats for themselves. As you can see in the picture, one unexpectedly landed on my head. I was concerned about getting pooped on, but my luck held strong and I emerged from Birdworld without any surprise souvenirs. One of my favorites was the Mandarin duck...they are so cute! A tiny little Honeyeater kept landing on my hand and licking the grape I was trying to tempt an Eclectus parrot with. They drink nectar so it wasn't able to actually eat it, but it sure liked the grape juice. There
Surprise guest
oh hello there is a young Honeyeater at work that we have to syringe feed and I almost brought it home for the weekend to take care of it before I remembered how noisy it can get here. After spending an hour in Birdworld, I met up with Annie and Paige to get to the train station.
The scenic railroad is one of those things that you apparently have to do, but I was not impressed by it. First of all, it was so crowded that you couldn't sit comfortably. If I am going to be on a train for 1.5 hours, I would like some personal space. Towards the end of the train ride I was in such a bad mood that I hated everyone around me. From the people talking loudly during the informational videos (they see this kind of stuff all the time apparently...ok SHUT UP) to the older woman who kept sticking her head out the window trying to get a picture of the train during turns and giving me mild panic attacks as I pictured a horror movie taking place in front of me as her head is knocked off by a branch. A teenager joined in
her death-defying pursuit for the perfect shot to the point where I couldn't even look that way anymore. We were 3 people away from the window so we couldn't even see the scenes the train was supposed to provide us with. The other passengers stoically ignored our attempts to take pictures out of the window from 3 feet away. We couldn't help but notice that the commercials for the railway had like 3 people in the seats instead of our 8. I call false advertising on that one. A big boooo to you Kuranda scenic railway.
By the time we got home, the rain had once again started up to continue for another week. Oh rainy season.
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Brother
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Your trip is the ying to the yang of my trip
If two people go on two vastly opposite trips and one of them screams in anguish, does he make a sound? My god, our trips could not possibly be more opposite if you vacationed on Mars or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench or some crazy place like that. Apparently, you are enjoying your trip and having fun. This is good. I have been battling the flu, various apocolyptic-strength colds, and near-constant diarrhea from this water I'm forced to drink. This is all very, very bad. If I weigh more than 140 pounds I'll be surprised. My classes are now upwards of ten, eleven hours long and the amount of information I'm stuffing in my head has started to produce stress fractures on my skull and I occasionally weep tears of blood and frustration. However, in exactly seven days, I'll have been home for four hours, as I estimate I'll be entering the front door at 2pm or so next Saturday. Waiting for me is a cat with a urinary problem and a cat with a flatulence problem. Yay.