How A Meat Pie and a few Fish Changed My Life.

I am now in beautiful Port Douglas! And i sort of wish that i came here directly and skipped right over Cairns. Not that Cairns isn't a cool town but Port Douglas is exactly my kind of town, and it's way more beautiful than Cairns. I think anyway. Plus i like the more quiet and laid back atmosphere of Port Douglas because i spent too much money at the pubs in Cairns...... hey it was my birthday......week. I didn't even go half as crazy as most of the backpackers do, i don't even know how they do it especially with how much booze costs and how little money most of them seem to have. But that's Cairns for you.

BUT YESTERDAY I WENT SNORKELING ON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. I never thought that i would see something that trumps the night sky at Delmore Downs but seeing the reef just smashed that with a cinderblock and then broke the cinderblock with its fist. Jumping off the boat  for the first time it takes you a second to get the idea of what is going on (keep in mind i'm a good swimmer but i've never snorkeled before). This concept of having your head under the water AND breathing normally just doesn't add up with your instincts. So there is a second of fumbling with the waves and sucking in water and then you get your head under. I didn't take many pictures because truth be told there really isn't a lot to see from above the water. The water is a nice color of blue and you can kind of see that there are rock like things coming up from below, but really it just looks like water with rocks under it. Then you put your head under and the lysergic kaleidoscope mind trip begins. Swimming over the reef really feels like some sort of dream because everything is so alien, crazy colors and huge fish abound in even bigger schools. Really the coral is pretty but the star of the show in my book is the fish. The parrotfish covered in stripes and dot patterns of crazy colors and fish with all sorts of weird protrusions on them are everywhere. My favorite part was this huge school of these little electric blue fish that all seemed somehow linked up. They would all be facing one direction and flowing like a slow cloud then all of a sudden they would all turn in the other direction in perfect synchronicity. I could have watched that for hours. That was definitely one of the most amazing things i have ever seen. No question.

Also i spent today searching for people to go see Mossman Gorge and the Daintree rainforest with me and i stopped into a pie shop for lunch. I may have mentioned pies before but Australia being of british origin features a wide variety of savory pies. But Mocka's Pies in Port Douglas have the best pies i have ever had. The kangaroo pie i ate nearly brought me to tears it was so good. It put me in such a good mood i couldn't stop laughing. To tell the truth i'm not really sure what they put in their pies to make me react this way . . . anyway they are delicious. And it had a little doughy cutout of a kangaroo shape baked right on top! I need to learn how to make them so that i can have meat pies when i go back to the states. Which isn't too long now.....GASP!!!

6 Day Roadventure to CAIRNS.

And so I met up with a 64 year old Tasmanian farmer who had had some financial trouble and decided to go traveling around instead of fretting about it and an English musician and an irish guy, and we four made way for Darwin. I had to skip over Kakadu as I mentioned due to time constraints but I will make my way to see the Daintree Rainforest to make up for it. As we passed by Kakadu and Litchfeild national parks it seemed that everything was blackened and on fire anyway due to it being the dry season.

We got off to a slow start inching our way from beautiful waterfall to hotsprings to the next beautiful waterfall down the stuart highway. It was nice to have the time to stop and take our time to see all the sights and have no pressure on when we got to Cairns.

The waterfalls are very beautiful in the Northern Territory and we stopped at one called Edith falls just in time for sunset. It was a bit cold for swimming but that was best saved for the hot springs. In my experience, when you come to a creek in the middle of the forest and you decide to get in, you had best prepare yourself to inch in and take your time acclimating to the freezing water. Not here. The water in some places was boiling out of the ground and steam was coming off of the water in big clouds. It felt like we were being turned into soup. The water is hot because there is a lava chamber deep under ground next to the water that heats it up and sends it to the surface to bubble up and burn unsuspecting bathers. But not all of the hot springs were boiling. The best one we went to was bitter springs near Mataranka the worlds most unassuming waterfall. They were deep enough to actually swim in and the water was kept just nice and warm like a bath. That was very refreshing after a few days of not having a shower or anything.

As for sleeping we just drove until about 6:30 and then wherever we were we just pulled off at the side of the road and camped right there. The first night we camped in a swamp under a bridge and then in the desert for a few days and then suddenly we were in the rainforest. Even though we were driving just about all day everyday, it still took us five days to get from Darwin to Cairns. After we drove back down the stuart highway and saw all the sights, after we turned east at Tennant Creek it quickly became apparent just how big and empty Austraila really is. Not that there aren’t cool things to see here but we drove for two days across the Table lands east of Tennant creek and saw nothing but flat land and brown grass dotted with the occasional cow. We decided that if we were going to drive all this way we would at least have to make the most of our location and we turned north. Rather than keep going east along the barkley highway and then north along the coast to Cairns we decided to go north from Mt. Isa in the middle and head up to the Gulf of Carpentaria. This is a very remote area and although it makes up a large part of the northern coastline there is only one beach accessible by a sealed road. So we drove up to a small town called Karumba and had fresh caught fish and chips. (they just swim around pre-fried) and watched the sunset over a beach that seemed to be made of concrete. (I still though it was pretty. Also apparently Karumba is where the biggest crocodile ever shot was found. There is a statue of the 5 meter giant in the nearby town of Normanton. We camped on the beach and despite the dangers I still have not seen a crocodile in all my time in Australia. I keep hearing about them but I’m beginning to wonder if they really exist at all.

From here we drove east again across more empty but increasingly interesting land until we got to the Atherton Tablelands. Suddenly I blinked and I was back in Virginia. I swear the little towns with farmland on the green rolling hills back dropped by mountains could have been Luray or Roanoke or any other town in western Virginia and I never would have known the difference if it were not for the ever present weird bird calls and driving on the left side of the road. Of course the farmer said it looked just like Tasmania, the English guy said it looked just like the English country side and the irish guy said the same of Ireland. But still it was nice to see some familiar territory. (and beautiful at that)

Then as we passed over the foothills I suddenly noticed a line of thick massive clouds gathering in a line at the tops of the mountains. And here we entered the rainforest. The trees were giant, everything was dripping and green and the weird bird noises were as loud and weird as ever. But the views out of the window as we drove on the mountain roads were spectacular. On our last day of driving we stopped at several places to see the Curtain Fig Rainforest reserve, (only 2% of which is left due to deforestation) where you can see a giant fig tree that for all you Virginia people looks just like a tree version of the Marine Corps Museum in Occoquan. Here I also saw several bush turkeys in the forest which I promptly shook my fist at.

   
this was my attempt to get all of this massive tree in one picture. it took 6.

After a long and harrowing drive down the very windy other side of the mountain range we arrived on the beautiful eastern coast and into Cairns. Our group said our goodbyes after nearly a week of hiding from the police (did I mention that we had more people in the van than we were supposed to?) and campfire songs and then drunken campfire songs and just generally living on the road. Actually speaking of the police we managed to get the whole way from Darwin to Cairns and avoid being caught with more people in the van than were supposed to be and as soon as we get within 2 kilometers of Cairns we get pulled over because I have my arm out the window. Also because our driver was driving in two lanes at once but I was surprised when the officer came over to my side and told me that I could get a big fine just for having my arm propped on the open window. But luck was on our side, the cops neither gave us a ticket for anything NOR checked in the back of the car to find two guys riding around without seatbelts on. PHEW. Don’t try this at home kids. . . .  anyway I am now safely in Cairns enjoying the vibrant nightlife here (especially on my birthday hahaha) and spending the day at the waterfront drawing people and just generally hanging out.

However the internet is REALLY expensive here, 1 dollar for fifteen minutes! And all I really want to do most times is just check my email. At least I am used to going without now and can just deal with it until I go north to Port Douglas in the next few days.  Thank you to everybody that wished me a happy birthday! For reasons mentioned above I have been very brief and sparse in my use of the computer but I did get your messages and thank you!

Dear Screaming Masses of Adoring Fans:

Just letting you know that i am now in Cairns and i have many tales to tell of my adventures on the way here. BUT. Using the internet is 1 dollar for every 15 minutes and i can't use my own computer so it makes more sense if i just wait until i get to port douglas in a few days. But i had an excellent birthday last night. . . . from which i am still recovering . . . . . Australians are VERY generous with their Tequila . . . . but i should have even more to tell in a few days after snorkelling on the great barrier reef and hiking through the beautiful Daintree rainforest.