G'day!
A few more cultural/slang notes:
Our trip into Sydney from the Hunter Valley was harrowing with lots of traffic on narrow laned busy streets. Quick thinking and driving on Tim's part helped us just miss the truck that decided to snake into our lane. Stressed out, we arrived in time to return the rental car, do a few duty-free errands, and hop on the overnight train to Brisbane. Due to school holidays (like our spring break), we couldn't get a sleeper car so we paid a little extra to get "first class seats". These are like coach seats (except, as the conductor said, "more leg room, more recline, and a higher class of passengers)...yeah, right. Our seats were spacious but I can't really sleep sitting up and we were next to the only public phone on the train. Also, the crying baby in the back was tolerable but the two women screaming at each other about the crying baby just completed the ambiance. Thank goodness for Brisbane.
Brisbane (pronounced Brisbun) in the state of Queensland (QLD) was a city of pleasant surprises and made for walkers. Several bridges connect the city over the Brisbane River and across the river from the Central Business District was South Bank.....a lovely collection of parks, shops, museums, theaters, and other river front features. While in South Bank we saw an IMAX film (6 story high screening of "Everest"), saw a public pool which had a sand beach on it, attended a night arts/crafts market, walked through a rainforest boardwalk, toured the state museum, and saw a transplanted handcarved temple from Nepal (left over from the Worlds Fair). At the botanical gardens we walked though a mangrove forest (is that a mangrove grove?) and watch tiny mud crabs and fiddler crabs poke out of their sandy holes as the tide went out (another roll of film used here). This well lit city made even our walk back to the hostel after the 10 p.m. movie feel safe and interesting.
After three days in Brisbane, we hopped aboard the Sunlander train (sleeper this time) north to Cairns (pronounced "cans"), gateway to the "Wet Tropics" World Heritage Area. I can't get used to going north for hotter climate. There are really only two seasons here: the Wet (December to March) and the Dry (April to November). Since we arrived in the rain and it rained on and off the entire three days we were here, this year the season is called the Long Wet (really). Usually, we were told, the skies are clear and weather is hot by now. So we got a compromise...hot and wet. This just reconfirms that I am not a tropical being. We both love seeing the flora, especially the tree-sized versions of our puny houseplants growing wild. But high humidity and large bugs on the sidewalks and constant mildew smell make us cranky. Cairns is predominantly a tourist town, kind of a tropical Bronson, Missouri with streets of souvenir shops, dive shops (home of the Great Barrier Reef), fast food places and hostels. It did, however, have a botanical garden that was all rainforest, ferns, and orchids...including the bloom of the rare black batflower (the naturalist had to point it out, it's not very colorful, but has a bat-like shape.)
Despite the rain we did probably the most exciting white water rafting ever. I guess when you're already wet the warm rain doesn't matter. Usually, the trip is over the upper Tully River, known for its rapids. However, with all the rain, the upper Tully was too fast and dangerous so they took us twice over the same stretch of the lower Tully. Boring the second time? Heavens, no! In fact, the water rose over half a meter in just the short time it took us to eat lunch and get back upstream. The adrenaline flowed when we went over a wave then saw a wall of water just ahead of us. Although everyone in the raft was a first time rafter except the guide and us, we only had one person fall out. The water was warm and it was a glorious time. Tully, not surprisingly, is the town in Australia that gets the most rain each year.
The next day we took a packaged tour on an old train along a steep track up to Kuranda, originally an aboriginal settlement. Now its a touristy town with a craft market, but our time there was short. We then boarded a Sky cable car that took us over the rainforest with two stops to see long waterfalls, ending at a wonderful aboriginal cultural center. We were treated to multimedia performances of the community's history, religious beliefs, dances, music, and lifestyle. There were also boomerang and spear-throwing demonstrations. Tim was one of the few non-natives to throw the spear (using a spear thrower) and hit the hay target....twice! Even the native instructor was impressed. He wasn't quite as good with the boomerang. But, if you have any pesky kangaroos in your yard, give Tim a call. I, on the other hand, still throw like a girl, so the wildlife in Muskegon is safe from me.
Next we hopped a plane to Darwin, at the top of Australia, in the state of the Northern Territories (NT). By the way, as we were stumbling through the Cairns airport at 6 a.m., waiting for our flight out, I noticed a woman vacuuming the floor with a large machine labeled "Clarke Equipment, Muskegon, Michigan"...wow, international exposure!
Darwin and surrounding area is called "Up Top, Down Under". We're really talking tropical here. Some of you may remember that Darwin was essentially leveled by cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve in 1974. We saw a museum exhibit on the storm and the rebuilding.....a tremendous amount of effort went into making the town what it is today. To see the area, we rented a caravan (that is a van with a pop top so Tim could stand up inside...contains a small gas stove, fridge, storage, and a couch/bed). We headed out to Kakadu National Park (in the rain) and stopped at a caravan park after dark. Here you rent a spot and plug your vehicle into power and water. It's dark, raining off and on, we can't figure out if the power is working or not, and the mosquitos are thick. With help from a neighboring camper, we plugged in and figured out how to pop the top, make the couch a bed, and open up the screens. Cozy is an overstatement...not much room to move, especially with Tim, me, our packs, and a lot of mosquitoes. But that's ok because it was hot and no air flow so easy to swat the little guys. Awakened early by tropical birds (where's that spear when you need it?). But after a buggy breakfast and greeting the little frogs in the communal shower, we toured the park.
We visited the aboriginal cultural center, then did two bushwalks. Both had tremendous examples of aboriginal rock art. Some was 2,000 years old, some showed the European ships coming in the 1800s, and some were fairly new. The styles (which we had seen on bark and canvas in museums and galleries) resembled x-rays of local wildlife with skeletons and organs drawn. There were also human and spirit figures. Lots of film used here...I hope some of these came out. The colors are white, brown, black, and ochre (yellow) ...all from local rock or charcoal. Standing by these drawings, with no other people around, was magical to me....as if I was there when the drawings were done. We have been investigating the native culture where ever we go and are always struck by the closeness the people have with the land and how they coped with some extreme living conditions. Some may consider their art primitive, but it was a way to communicate religious stories and great events among people with no written language. Their life was hard, they have every reason to be very proud of their cultural heritage.
We're in crocodile country, here. In fact, the lodge in Kakadu is shaped like a crock. Up here there are two kinds: saltwater (called salties, very aggressive and man eaters) and freshwater (called freshies, not aggressive unless provoked). We went on a 1.5 hour cruise of the Yellow Waters.....and saw two salties...these guys are scary looking...I keep thinking of Captain Hook from Peter Pan. One stared at us for a while as we took photos then raced across the water (found out later that another croc was in its territory)...we all jumped. No wonder there's limited swimming in the local rivers. Also saw sea eagles and lots of water lilies.
Headed south to Katherine Gorge National Park next. The caravan park was a class joint this time with real power, no mozzies, and serving one of the best meals we've had on the whole trip. This site was en suite (which is a small duplex shower/toilet/sink building) complete with small frogs in the shower. By now I figure these amphibians are just a standard tropical caravan park feature. Besides, they are harmless and kind of cute as long as they don't jump around while I'm in there! The one that decided to camp out in the toilet bowl did not last long, sad to say.
Oh yes, the park...got distracted by the local wildlife. Katherine is a series of gorges, not all of which are accessible by boat. But we did see two on a short cruise up the gorge and a different view as we did an escarpment top walk. This walk started with a steep climb to a lookout over the gorge. Then we took a long trail, some of which was over tricky loose rock. Our goal was a waterfall with a swimming hole. It was very hot and it seemed like the trail was longer than it was marked. Finally we saw a flash of red cloth (someone's clothes) and followed it to a great rockhole, filled with cool clear water, fed by a waterfall. We quickly changed and jumped in.....ahhhhh! Worth every sweaty minute of the walk. It isn't often we can actually swim under some falls. Too soon we got back into our sweaty clothes and took the long walk back.
The final park we visited was Litchfield N.P. outside of Batchelor, N.T. (Supposedly, Batchelor has the highest number of PhDs per capita in Australia but we think it's because the only thing in Batchelor is three colleges and a small population.) Litchfield is just a two hour drive from Darwin and a popular spot for a day trip. No wonder, we saw three different waterfalls, swam in a pool fed by a fall, swam in a series of pools with water cascading from one to the other (Di almost slid downstream here and Tim did a precarious jump off a ledge into a deep pool). The largest of the falls had a pool that was supposedly good for snorkeling. Unfortunately, the recent rain resulted in closing the pool to swimming due to dangerous conditions but caused a tremendous surge of water over the falls. We heard later that the pool was really closed because a 4-meter saltie was found in it so I'm not unhappy we didn't swim there.
Back to Darwin for the day with a visit to another great rainforest botanical gardens, the harbor, and a museum with one of the largest collections of aboriginal art, then a very early flight the next day back to Cairns. Later that day we took a boat ride to the Great Barrier Reef and did some snorkeling on the coral. Lots of fish, lovely colored coral, huge giant clams, and no sharks or stinging jellyfish. We enjoyed the snorkeling so much that we took a half-day trip to Green Island (an island National Park), did some more snorkeling and walked around the very small island. The tide was out so we saw lots more fish, clams, starfish, and great coral. Originally we were going to scuba dive out of Cairns, but with all this marine life so shallow, we'll save that for later.
On our last day in Cairns we went on a "4 wheel drive adventure". Our guide picked us and 4 other guys up in his 4WD Toyota Land Rover, complete with snorkel for going through deep water. We went up to the top of one of the mountains in the rainforest (ele. 4100 feet). This was fine (although short-lived) 4-wheeling on roads through the World Heritage Area where only our guide has a permit to travel. The hole, rocks, and gullies he went over made us pretty nervous.....it would have made a great tv ad for Toyota. We stopped in the middle of nowhere and walked to a swimming hole fed by a waterfall....cold clear water. Then on to the Atherton Tablelands, a huge plateau about 2500 feet above sea level. Here they raise fruits like oranges, papayas, lychees, and avocados; also coffee, tobacco, sugar cane, cattle...the diversity of crops was unbelievable. Then back to the city. We were a little disappointed with the quantity of adventure, but not the quality.
We leave tomorrow for the last leg of our Australian journey. This is the east coast from Cairns south to Sydney. We've got about two weeks to check out the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, rest of the Barrier Reef, and (Di's idea) Bundenberg where they use the local ginger for ginger beer and sugar cane for rum. Talk to you from Sydney, if not sooner. Keep in touch.
-- Di and Tim
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