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.

Darwin = Turkeys+Explosions+Beautiful People - Crocodiles

Yep Darwin. Its a pretty cool place all in all. I do think i wouldn't mind living here if i lived in Australia. Although i don't know how many places i could find good art jobs. Nevertheless i have had a very relaxing week of opening bank accounts and walking around and mailing stuff across the planet and walking around and other normal things. Its like i'm a part of society again! And about the video yes meri keeps chickens in the backyard of his not so suburban house. Free range baby! Of course his roommates ravenous dog kept eating all of the english muffin i was trying to feed to the chickens.

OH AND THE BUSH TURKIES.

Behold. The face of my NEMISIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_vG7O3iHqg

This is the most annoying bird on the face of the planet. Known as the Orange Footed Scrub Fowl, or more commonly the bush turkey, i guarantee it is most foul indeed. Not only does it set up a GIANT pile of dirt in your back yard as its PERMANENT nest, but it is nocturnal. Imagine hearing that noise they make in the video twenty times louder and for half an hour intervals at 2AM. Not only that but if you listen they aren't just making that noise for their own amusement. Some other bush turkey far off in someone else's backyard calls back with the same noise. OVER AND OVER AND OVER. I have a small pile of rocks which i keep next to my tent so i can scare them away in the middle of the night. They always come back. Meri dug a big hole out of the side of their nest and used it as fertilizer for his garden so they spend all day scratching away trying to fill it back up. So if they spend all day scratching and all night squawking, when do they sleep?

Also in addition to bird calls all night long fireworks are very popular in Darwin. I mean really popular. People all over seem to set them off any time of day without occasion. I am not complaining i think that's totally awesome, but it can be a little unnerving to hear what sounds like gun shots all night long coming from not to far off in the neighborhood.

Other than the ongoing fight against the bush turkey scourge, life is pretty laid back in Darwin. We have gone to some barbecues and parties, gone fishing in a beach tributary and in the pool of an abandoned house (apparently there is a baby barramundi in there) and just generally hung out. Oh and i got to play banjo with a band in front of a whole party of people, that was cool. The banjo was missing a string but it was still awesome to get up there and do it.

Also all this craziness about crocodiles in Darwin is a bunch of crock. Much like the bats in Austin i think they are just a hoax put out there by the corporate tourism machine. . . . . maybe not, but I have been to the beach every day, gone swimming, and have seen no crocodiles. I don't think crocodiles even prefer to hunt on beaches. they are more of the wait-in-still-murky-swamps-or-rivers type. Ocean beaches are a bit too exposed for crocs i think. Apparently you can't swim here in the wet season because there are thousands of extremely deadly box jellyfish in the water but i am not too worried about being eaten by a 5 meter crocodile. maybe in kakadu or fishing in the mangroves but not at the beach like everyone keeps telling me.

OH and AMERICA, I have discovered my purpose in life. Like Marco Polo before me i am returning to my homeland to revolutionize the food world; throw your maple syrup away because in Australia they eat their pancakes with lime juice and brown sugar. i thought it sounded weird at first but i will never eat my pancakes with syrup again. apparently lemon is also acceptable. If all goes according to plan in three years time everyone in Europe will be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and i will be able to order my pancakes at ihop with lime juice and brown sugar. Muahhahahaha.

As nice as my stay in Darwin has been i am off tomorrow for Cairns. I will be leaving in a relocation van with a british musician from Liverpool ( . . . . Paul Mccartney?) an irish guy and a retired farmer from Tasmania. I haven't met the other two but the farmer is quite a nice guy and has some very interesting life tales to tell. Unfortunately i did not get to make it to Kakadu on this trip. I was trying to find a ride but i had too much business with the bank account to set up and other stuff so i ran out of time. i only have a few more weeks here in australia and i need to get over to the east coast ASAP. So i think i will be seeing the Daintree rainforest instead. The worlds oldest tropical rainforest bordered by a pristine white sand beach. yep it exists.

http://www.tropicwings.com.au/images/gallery/Cape%20Tribulation.jpg

So if all goes according to plan i should be spending my birthday with a stiff drink on the beach in Port Douglas or Cairns then head up and see cool trees and stuff in the rainforest. Preceded by four days of driving across thousands of kilometers of boring tablelands.

Ah but it's spaghetti time and i'm starving!

Johnny PBnJ Generalizes About the People of Katherine And Harbors French Fugitives.

And in the blink of an eye (two days) i am now in Darwin.

Darwin . . . . oops I mean Darwin is biggest city i have seen for a long time. There was actually a traffic jam on my way in! Wow what a rare treat, just like old times. So my plan was to leave Alice by Saturday . . . today . . . and be in Darwin by Monday. I went about it in the usual backpacker way; by leaving a post-it note with my name and room number on the board in the hostel. But i wasn't entirely convinced that that was going to work so i went back to my room to put an ad on Gumtree (like craigslist) for travel partners to Darwin. Not five minutes later there is a girl knocking on my door saying that they are leaving for Darwin in 15 minutes. It was because of the post-it note not gumtree but i will employ both tactics in my attempt to get to Cairns. anyway so we left Alice at about 4:30 PM, a bit strange i know but they wanted to stay at a campsite for free rather than pay a hostel. So we drove an hour up the Stuart Highway (The ONLY road going north or south through the NT) and camped our first night on the road to Darwin. Here is a timeline i drew of my first night out:

WOW HOLY $&@* PICTURES UPLOAD SO FAST IN THE REAL WORLD!

Anyway yeah, it was alright for the first few hours but i woke up in the middle of the night FREEZING no thanks to the summer weight backpacking tent that i brought. Of course i love my tent but i may only be camping in it while i am up north here. But yeah, it was cold that first night. Especially because i couldn't have a fire. Leaving in 15 minutes i didn't have time to buy matches and the campsite had been scavenged clean by grey nomads. AHHH yes the grey nomads they are a new player in this story. Grey Nomads are people who are retired, whose kids have all grown up and left and they have sold their house and bought a Caravan and just live on the road. They will take months between cities just going from campsite to campsite trading stories about gas milage and cheap tourist parks with other grey nomads. And there are A LOT of them. i would say that at least 60 to 70 percent of the people at all the campsites were grey nomads. It sounds like a fun thing to live and a great way to finally see all of your big open country. But say what you will about their touristy frumpines and bathrobes, they are by far the nicest people you will meet in Australia, and that is saying a lot because Australians are generally very nice people. The next morning seeing that my breakfast was locked in the car with the german girls i was riding up with one guy offered me a spanish omelet with chorizo and a cup of tea, then later that night at the next campsite i was making my instant noodles with sausage over the campfire and this scottish expat comes over and dumps the remainder of his homecooked curry sauce in my noodles and offers me a beer! The generosity of Bill the Scottish expat goes even further but we will get into that just after i describe how freaking big Australia is. It was like my plane flight over here except in a car. It was cool to watch the scenery subtly change from the desert scrub of Alice to more green with bright white gum trees everywhere that usually only grow in creeks in Alice. Then there were these big rock formations around the Devil's Marbles then yesterday it started to get more and more green and palm trees showed up and NATURAL STANDING WATER WOW. It instantly and probably instinctually caught my eye the first time i saw it, a creek that actually had water in it. It was just a little bit mind you but it wasn't just being sucked right back into the ground or evaporating. Then later there were mountains and an actual river. 

But we drove all of that first day from early morning to late and stopped at a campsite just north of Elliot. The campsite was bigger and more accommodating that the town itself. And Bill offered me his curry sauce and a beer and then i noticed this guy and girl asking around pretty desperately about going to Darwin. I wasn't sure if we had space but i offered them a ride anyway. It turns out that they had been traveling with 5 other people in a van when they stopped for petrol in Elliot and the gas station attendant called the police for them having too many people in one car. The police were less than helpful about giving them options for getting north and just dropped them at the campsite without a tent or a blanket or any idea of how to get anywhere. Which seems unfair given that later the rest of their group showed up and these two seemed like the nicest people out of the bunch. But we offered them a ride in our car and Bill in his infinite generosity let them sleep in his car for the night. 

Night number two was much nicer, being 782 kilometers further north. The night was a little chilly but completely bearable and i slept through most of the night which was good. Then more driving and driving and driving until we ended up in the town of Katherine for lunch and to stock up on supplies at the grocery store. Of course i had been sleeping in the car on the way there and when i got out in the parking lot i wasn't quite looking and hit the car next to us with the door as i was opening it. A gentle series of taps but it left a little mark. All of a sudden the lady who owned the car came over and started giving a loud and public commentary on the height of my intelligence. I said sorry and that it was an accident and she kept going on so i said "Woah, chill out lady it was an accident and i apologized." Of course this didn't help anything and she got her boyfriend involved. After all was said and done i gave the guy 20 bucks to leave me alone and go buff his precious car. Which i would have done anyway so they didn't have to get all persnickety about it and cause a big fuss. And they didn't leave a very good first impression of the people of Katherine on a traveling stranger. But no harm no foul, i went inside and got some bread and peanut butter and jam and continued my good work. My good work being spreading the gospel of PBnJ. It seems that although peanut butter is sold all across the world, no one buys or eats it except for in the united states. So all through this trip of mine i have been getting people from across europe and australia to try peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and so far they have all enjoyed them. So if peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches suddenly become popular in Denmark, France, Germany and England, I can safely say it was my doing. 

But here i sit in Darwin; I have my tent set up underneath the house of one of the aforementioned utopian permacultureists and am thoroughly enjoying some much needed time off. We had a barbeque last night and then this morning we all went to go see Batman. It's like i live in a city again doing all these city things! I took a walk to see the Darwin waterfront. . . . and i saw it. It was definitely a waterfront. I was there. But thats about it. I am more looking forward to Kakadu National Park that should be good fun. And city slicker stuff here in Darwin as well. 

Adios Hermanos.

Yesterday i almost blew up a generator, a ute, my boss, all my friends, at least 100 cattle, brand new yards and almost started a bush fire across an entire property in one foul swoop. . . . . and it was my last day at delmore to boot. I finally secured a ride to Alice with my bosses son who had to catch a flight today (tuesday). So yesterday i was needed to help with drafting the 800 + cattle that had been mustered into the shiny new Dnieper yards, with their shiny new pneumatic crush and drafting system. basically a crush with air driven doors that open with the flick of a switch, yeah really handy. We spent the morning going really well and sorting about half the cattle before taking a brake and then we came back and started sorting again. At this point we needed to turn the air compressor back on which had run out of petrol. That was my job alone, of course what everyone forgot is that pumping fuel is a two person job here. One person to get up on the back of the ute and pump the fuel out of the drum and one person to hold the hose into the fuel tank and to check how full it is getting. I didn't know how to start the motor without a pull chain and Don came over and showed me much to his verbal dismay. Unfortunately i ALONE had been tasked with filling up the generator. And this is my part of the mistake; instead of asking for help before going ahead, i performed a complicated maneuver involving me holding the hose in the tank with my foot and reaching behind and above me to turn the pump in the back of the ute. It got the fuel out of the tank well enough, but i couldn't see how much was coming out of the hose. Too much. The fuel tank overflowed spilling petrol all over the radiator that was still hot from running all day before. 

WHOOSH.

Instantly half the generator and the fuel pump hose was on fire and i turned and ran. The only thing that was going through my mind was "get away the ute is going to explode." and then i realized "oh yeah, the ute is going to explode and kill everyone" so i turned around and got into the ute and drove it to the road 20 meters away fuel pump still on fire. By this point the tall grass that surrounded the compressor was all aflame and spreading slowly (thankfully) in the lack of wind. We got the 20 litre tanks of water off the utes and poured them over the flames (burning off my arm hairs and some eyelashes in the process) but the petrol was still spilling out of the fuel line and it just spread the flames even more. Then all the pressure blew out of the compressor and everyone ran as fast as they could. We are really lucky that no one was hurt or anything destroyed except for the generator. Luckily even the air compressor was fine, but that was still the dumbest mistake i have ever made. 

A lot can be said about Don's . . . attitude towards his staff but one of his finer aspects is that he is very quick to forgive for even huge mistakes. I'm sure that it's a product of having grown up in an environment where everything that can possibly go wrong eventually does. Part of why i think i was so promptly forgiven was that while Don drove off to find another generator for the compressor, the rest of us continued drafting the old fashioned and more "hands-on" way WITHOUT the pneumatic race. AND we finished it all, who needs all that modern technology anyway? But we eventually got the thing up and running again and had a much less eventful day tagging and branding calves. Although i spent the rest of the day pretty shaken up. 

After an early night i got up and said my goodbyes and drove to town with Baden. And here i am feeling very out of place suddenly surrounded by "tons" of people and buildings. . . .  but more on that later. It's time for dome dinner....FROM THE GROCERY STORE!!!!!

Last Day No. 8

So here I am. STILL at Delmore. If it had a voice it would be saying "You thought you'd be rid of me so easily did you" I have been trying to leave Delmore ever since i missed the ride to Darwin with Meri and Tom but due to there being no available utes or enough people to spare to go to town here i sit. tomorrow will be day number 128 in the outback. That is a lot of days.
The past week has been fairly relaxed when compared with the rest of the time i have spent here; the last month or two specifically. There are several new people here whom i have spent time training to take over the art and where all the bores are and other loose end kind of stuff. But not a lot of action. To tell the truth the break has been much needed. I love working in the yards and living the cowboy life but you DO need at least one day off once in a while, so the break feels good. Being in limbo however is starting to get a little frustrating but i am sure that i will be moving on with my adventures shortly.

I may have mentioned this in my last post but i have decided that the rest of my trip will be dedicated to getting back into the art swing of things. i came to delmore to get my creative pilot light going again and i feel like i have accomplished that. Now that i will have the time and tools, i want to kick in the afterburners. There are a lot of unknowing people in coffee shops in australia just waiting for me to draw them. Muhuhahaha.

I am definitely ready to get back to civilization though. If not just for the ability to have control over what i have to eat. Flavoring for food is what brought our species out of the trees i think. Some chimp was sitting in a tree eating a tasteless mass of fruit mush when they spied a shining red strawberry glinting on a bush just down below. They jumped down and stood on two legs and roared out in triumph over the other species for having left sauceless noodles and over cooked meat up in the trees. Also i need some new pants. The knee section of my diesel soaked jeans have finally given out. i tried an emergency sewing procedure but it was to no avail. They just ripped even worse right along the other edge that i sewed them on. And the entire butt-section of my other pants completely blew out from sitting on the rails of the yards and jumping up and down for too long. So i will definitely be in the market for some new pants when i get back to the real world . . . . whenever that is.