A Nostalgic Look Back at Cairns (part 2)

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, I don’t have a clue.

So I’ll fake it. What do I remember of our last full day in Cairns? I remember getting up early, getting picked up at the hotel by our tour guide, being joined by a worldly pack of fellow travelers, very few of whom I can still picture in my head. Let’s see…

There was the surfer guy, the short Russianish guy, the hot girl and her even hotter friend, the star-eyed newlyweds, there was probably an old Asian couple, and the hillbilly, the opera singer (I’m actually pretty sure I’m not making that one up), the jock, the dweeb. Plus the tour guide, who I think was a pretty cool guy, and his robot buddy G.Y.R.O., and that about covers it.

First stop was the Cathedral Fig Tree, so named because it’s big, old, and all archey, and because Jesus said so. It really is an impressive site, thick with winding branches, tall and dramatic. Our tour guide had so many facts about this tree which were so fascinating that I remember them even today. Facts like:

• It would take eleven Irishmen six weeks to climb to the peak.
• There’s enough space among all the growth that coats the tree to contain the entire marshmallow domestic product of Hungary — of a decade!
• At its core, there is a flaming pillar of a substance identified only as being not of this earth.
• The tree cannot be penetrated by heat, steel, laser beams, pressurized water, x-rays, or diamond. It can be damaged only by a common, dollar store emery board, which is why they are forbidden on the continent to all but professionals.
• It grants wishes, but only practical ones.

If you look closely, you can spot the rare Queenslandian Douchebag.

From there we went to yet another rain forest. (Seriously Australia, this is just excessive. You need to get rid of some of this crap, put in some more room for cattle to graze, or maybe a strip mall, or something.) It was nice, saw some trees, some dirt. Saw this wicked ant there:

Check out those pincers. Take the jock’s word for it — it stings when those things dig into the back of your neck. It stings and then it goes numb, and then you convulse, and then several hours later, once everyone believes you’re gonna be fine, your eyes turn green and you bite the nose off of the hot girl (but not the hotter girl, thank god).

Fighting off jungle Jaguars builds up a healthy appetite, so from there we went to a pleasant little lake for lunch. Sandwiches, in case you were wondering. It was a nice lake, no doubt about that, with some turtles, and some water. A few folks got in the water and looked like they were having a blast, though I wasn’t one of them. But don’t feel too sorry for Mr. Adam — while they were off swimming, the hotter girl talked to me for like 25 seconds. Score!

Then — and forgive me if I sound like I’m bragging — we all went to what is something of a celebrity spot in ol’ Australia. Take a look:

That’s right, it’s the waterfall used in some shampoo commercial eleven years ago. I’ll accept your envy in the form of cash or commemorative postage stamp. Our tour guide really made quite the deal out of this, going so far as to have people imitate the famed TV spot by getting in the water and flipping their wet hair back, and showing us photos of previous tour guests also doing so. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him I had no fucking clue what commercial he was talking about.

But that aside, it really was a very nice waterfall, apparently the most photographed waterfall in all of Australia, and good, cold fun to swim out to. Though it gets a bit panicky, because it’s very dark water, and there are all kinds of sticks and slimy rocks poking up at right about foot level, and also it’s surprisingly hard to breathe when you’re under a waterfall.

Next, our guide took us to a huge gas fissure. A big crack in the ground where, eons ago, gas built up and built up until the pressure was so great that it just couldn’t be held in any longer. There was a grand eruption, with deafening sound and poisonous smell, chunks of solid earth blasting out across the land, making what would have to have been a terrible mess. And leaving behind this wet, gaping hole into which only the most adventurous of fools would dare to climb (though it’s illegal to do so).

But sounds don’t just come out, they also go in, and then bounce around a bit. This water-filled pit makes a hell of a soundboard — shout as loud as you can down into there, or get a friend to sing some opera, because the echo is quite impressive. Hell, toss in a couple of big rocks, or a log of hard wood, or some beads, whatever you want, and wait for the spectacular, groaning splash, then watch as the hole you’ve created in the thick layer of goo down there quickly closes up. Fun for the whole family, even the pets.

We were so exhausted from checking out that glorious hole, we almost missed another beautiful sight on the way back to the van:

Isn’t it adorable? Apparently some kind of Australian rodent caught and skinned these little birds and left them here for a future meal. Awww…

Close-up of my sunburned arm taken in week 3 of the trip.

She Collects Sea Shells by the Sea Shore

Across all the beaches of Australia, my mother amassed quite a collection of seashells. She found several she wanted to snatch on the beaches of Fitzroy Island as well, but all the signs there forbade the removal of shells and coral, and Mum obeyed, obediant person that she is.

So here, Mum, is everything you had to leave behind that day. Print this out and stick it wherever you’ve got all those shells (ignore the skid mark — ooh, that downunder cuisine really works a number on the stomach):

Australia website? What the hell are you talking abou–Ohhh.

That website.

I present animals of Australia, in ultramodern flash video form. First, an octopus seen in its natural habitat, the Sydney Aquarium (turn off your speakers):

Now, some pelicans. Pelicans, by the way, are quite fond of fish.

Here’s a spiky thing we saw at … one of the places we went, I guess. Maybe it’s from the Seoul aquarium, I really can’t remember at this point. But if you think it’s cool here on this little video, just imagine if you were seeing it eight stories tall. It’s not eight stories tall, it’s actually pretty tiny, but what if it were? That would be awesome.

And this is a nice waterfall in Cairns. There’s a lizard scurrying somewhere in here, but I’m not sure if YouTube’s video-quality downgrade kept it intact. Just look real close.

A Nostalgic Look Back at Cairns (part 1)

A long time ago, in a land far, far away…

I’ve struggled up until this point trying to write these things in the present tense, to give’em that sense of off-the-cuff, as-it-happens, YOU’RE-part-of-the-action reportage. But it’s been so long since we left Australia, my mother and I, that at this point it’d just be a farce to write in any tense but that past. And farce has no place on my webspace. Which rhymes, by the way. Or try it like this: “And farce, it has no place on my webspace.” Iambic pentameter.

So past tense it will be. Also, it will be full of errors, again because it was quite a ways back that all this happened. I’ll do my best, but I give no promise of accuracy.

It says “Bat-tree.” Curse you, loss of sharpness due to transfer from bitmap to j-peg plus shrinking to fit into alotted blogspace!

One thing I know for certain is true: Cairns did not break tradition. Upon arrival at the train station, we had to walk to our hotel, carrying out heavy luggage, for a good seven hours (adjusted for inflation). Best part of the walk: bats. Did I mention the Brisbane bats? I think so, but let me go back now and check … Yeah. Yes, I did. Good, because Brisbane is downright bat-deficient compared to Cairns. Walk down Cairns’ charming city blocks and bats will swoop by a couple a minute. Where are they going? To the Tree. This big tree in a park had hundreds, maybe even twos of hundreds of bats swarming it, the sounds of their flapping and screeching filling my Q Tip-ravaged ears. It was very, very cool, and very, very too dark to photograph.

The hotel room was probably the nicest one yet. A cozy little affair with tiles and a back patio and … closets. And whatever else you need it to have to get what I mean by “cozy.” There was a pool too, in which I must admit I indulged on more than one occasion. But I mustn’t let this luxury get to my head.

In the morning we went for a long walk along the waterline, back to the city. I took my strides proudly, confidently, and sunblock-free on that hot, 16-degrees-from-the-equator summer’s day, secure in the knowledge that the steady beating the sun had already been giving me up to this point in my vacation had coated my skin in an impenetrably protective tan. Guess I don’t really understand how that all works.

But that pain won’t come until later; for now, we still had this little city to explore, and touristy junk to set up. After booking ourselves on a little trip for the next day, we hopped a bus to an entirely unspectacular beach. It was so unspectacular, I don’t even know why I mention it.

Oh yeah, because some fishermen there caught a shark. One of them bottom-trawling sharks. It was pretty big.

That night — Ohh the flesh, how it did burn. Oh my. The pool was nice, though. And laying back in an outdoor pool on a warm night, looking up as it rains and as bats flap by overhead, it’s an image worth remembering. I’ll share it with everyone once Hewlett-Packard figures out how to hook an InkJet up to my limbic system.

Our excursion the next day took us to Fitzroy Island, a jungleous resort rock an hour or so from shore, right on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. It was a very nice spot, with shiny coral beaches, and 50 year-old cement roads so steep and tiring you would’ve thought we’d had a hotel booked at the top. Slippery, these paths were, too, because it was raining. But it was a pleasant summer’s rain, cool and loud and horribly painful as each drop stabbed at my burning, red shoulders.

It was while walking along these paths that I developed a new theory. Now, it’s still a bit rough, I haven’t completed all my research yet, nor have I consulted my peers, but I feel fairly confident in its validity. Here it is: there are more lizards in Australia than there are molecules in the universe. It’s like you can’t see the forest for the skinks.

Folk say you gotta go diving along the Great Barrier Reef when you’re in Australia. I say you gotta go diving along the Great Barrier Reef early when you’re in Australia. In these last, burnt days of the trip, we just weren’t interested in learning to SCUBA, as nice as it would’ve been. So we settled for second best: glass-bottomed boat ride.

It was just a short little putter around Fitzroy Island, and I guess the weather wasn’t optimal, but we got to see some nice colours down below. No turtles though; the guy said they see a lot of turtles, but we didn’t see any. But that’s okay, because right now, where I’m sitting as I type this, all I gotta do is turn my head to see a turtle. Let’s take a look right now … Aww, he’s sleeping. Or she. You can’t tell until they’re like 10 years old.

More Cairns to come, within the next six months guaranteed.

Further Nerding

In case you were wondering how I’d just happened to stumble upon all them Matrix locations in Sydney (for the Nerd Quiz), don’t be an idiot: I sought their addresses out beforehand on the Internet. I’d do the same for Ghostbusters locations if I ever found myself in New York.

Those spots were all from the first movie, and I didn’t visit any from the second or third Matrixes because those films were shot mostly in studios, with only the odd, passing location moment. Or so I thought.

In one of our first days in Sydney, after taking in the Opera House we went a-wanderin’ and found ourselves in the Botanical Gardens (recall the shots of trees from way back when). And right at the end of the gardens there’s a pleasant little park that seemed familiar to me somehow.

I wasn’t positive at the time, but I was pretty sure this park was the location of the very last scene of the series. Not sure enough to include it in the quiz, but sure enough to go to each bench and check the little dedication plaque — the bench featured in the movie was dedicated to a Mr. Thomas Anderson. I couldn’t find the plaque, but the movie came out in 2003, so it’s not like the bench had to still be there.

And why did it take until now to put this up? Because I forgot to check the DVD when I got back home. But I just watched it, and yes, I can indeed confirm, it’s the same park. As for the specific bench, I think it may actually have been there, it may have been that one bench I didn’t check. I suspect as much because the bench I didn’t check, the one with that never-moving couple on it, was positioned by the same tree as the bench from the film (though a bit closer), and, even more damning, none of the benches from my photos match the Matrix bench in design — except for the one I didn’t look at (I think; it’s not a great photo).

Exhibit A: The common bench

Exhibit B: The unknowable bench

So there you have it, a fortuitous happenstance, and one that I and only I care about to even the slightest degree. And yet I choose to share.

We conclude with a comparison:

From the movie:

From my top-quality Dixcom camera:

And combined, thanks to the voodoo magic of Microsoft Paint:

Be cast off, ye doubters.

The Flood Continues!

Did I fail to mention the cliffside path in back in Forster? Seems I did. Well, it was very nice. First vid’s set at the very start of the path, the next is about halfway through:

A pleasant little waterfall hidden in the forests of the Blue Mountains:

A glimpse inside one of the Jenolan Caves, featuring narration by our intrepid guide. Note that wacky accent!

A pack of bloodthirsty beasts circles its prey:

Queensland is Goin’ to Hell

I don’t have much of an excuse. I certainly could’ve finished this off by now, I just haven’t. Coulda put up all the pics as well. Didn’t. And that’s all I’ve got to say on that.

On to this: The Bible’s a pretty big book, bigger still when you consider how flimsy they always make those pages. Seriously, publishers really think this book doesn’t deserve the paper quality of even John Grisham’s latest? John Grisham’s latest in paperback? I’m certain that’s a smiteable offence.

But my point is, I’ve been under no illusion that I’d get it finished over the course of one busy month in Australia. After about our fourth stop, I knew more than ever I wouldn’t get very deep into it at all, unless I could read it while on the train, and that would require buying one, and well, that just ain’t gonna happen. So I settled with the humble goal of getting through Genesis.

Problem: once we left New South Wales, the hotel Bible well dried up. I don’t know if it’s because Queensland is a largely illiterate state, or because Gideons can’t survive in hot, equatorial climates, or what. But I do know that when the rapture finally does happen, the citizens of Austraila’s vast northeast are gettin’ Left Behind. Nary a good book to be found anywhere we stayed.

Thank God (I assume) that we were heading back down to good, pious Sydney for our last couple of nights. Our final hotel housed for me just what the (Christian Scientist) doctor ordered, right there in my nightstand drawer.

My final thoughts on the origins of the universe and all of humanity? Pretty anticlimactic, though I will say I liked the usage of “spake” as the past tense for “speak.” I’m gonna start using that one myself. Otherwise, what you get from the last handful of Genesis is soap opera stories of long-thought-dead-sons-now-kings reuniting with their 110 year-old fathers, all very Sally Jessy Raphael. But that’s an off-season episode of Sally; let us not forget the tale of Lot and his daughters, way back in the sweeps of Chapter 19 (31-36):

And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:

Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.

Ugh. And that’s all I’ve got to say on that.

Avoid Mackay

Things get off to a bad start: our train dumps us in Mackay at about 2:30 am, and we have to wait a good 45 minutes for our taxi. It’s not too long a ride to the hotel I’ve booked — the Whitsunday International Hotel, or “The Whit” as contraction-happy locals call it — and right away we learn that the Lonely Planet’s descriptions can occasionally be generous. It’s something of a dump.

To illustrate: I’m the first one into the bathroom when we enter our room, and it’s a good thing too, because I find the biggest damn cockroach I’ve ever seen, and that includes in the creepy-stuff sections of zoos, just hanging out in the bathtub, on its back, basking, surrounded by little brown things that are either its poops or its babies. I’m without a weapon in here, and can’t slam a shoe onto the porcelain tub without drawing attention, so I try to grab it with toilet paper to flush it away. But it’s slippery, and escapes into a crack above the door. The nuggets I just wash down the drain. I decide not to tell my mother about the encounter, and she still doesn’t know. This will be a good way to find out if she actually reads this weblog thing.

When we wake up we’re still undecided how long we’ll be staying in Mackay — the room’s only booked for one day, so it’s up in the air. We explore the little riverside town, not especially picturesque, though maybe we’ve been desensitized to picturesque by all the abundantly picturesque places we’ve already been. We eventually get ourselves to the tourist information centre, grab a few pamphlets, see what there is in this town with an economy based, I would wager, almost entirely on gambling. I would wager. (Bonus vocab lesson: “Pokies” are what contraction-happy Australians call poker machines. Which makes it an oft-seen word in Mackay.)

We get to the tourist centre in time to sign up for a tour, and an hour or so later we’re the only ones in the van with Kenneth, or Jeff, or whatever his name is, watching a fairly detailed history of the area on a monitor. He drives us out to Cape Hillsborough National Park, and takes us first to a beach (just covered in sand bubbler crabs), then along a nearby path up a steep hill through the rainforest. Let me tell you, this guy Kenneth-or-Jeff is a knowledgeable son of a bitch — he can not be stumped; knows all the trees, all the bugs, all the history. Man runs a good, educational tour, albeit a short one. We’re both sort of expecting a second location, but we just head right back to dreary Mackay.

There’s nothing to do in this town, which shuts down completely at 5 o’clock, save for the numerous Pokie houses (the gambling kind of Pokie, not the other, better kind), and the movie theatre, which isn’t showing anything worth seeing. But there is another theatre north of the town which has Apocalypto, so, as much as my mother probably isn’t interested in seeing voluminous on-screen carnage from the form’s current king, that’s where we’re going.

The cab drops us off at the theatre, one of those large ones out in the wasteland, far from anything but tract housing. And around midnight, when the movie ends (and it was a good one — Holocaust or no, Mel Gibson can make an exciting romp), I just can’t get the damn special payphone in the theatre lobby to work. I try to put in my money, but it won’t let me. So I just dial the number posted on a big sheet of paper right above the phone, and it connects, but then cuts me off after five seconds. I say screw it, and decide to find a real payphone outside.

Big mistake, because there’re no pay phones in the suburbs. But after a quick explore, when we give up and come back to ask the popcorn counter guy to show us simple-headed foreigners how a phone works, they’ve shut the theatre down. It takes us well over an hour to wander the neighbourhood (followed most of the way by a l’il scrapper of a dog named Elmo, who runs off right before I can call the number on his collar) before we find a 24-hour Pokie establishment, who are kind enough to call a cab for us, when I can’t get their payphone to work, either.

You may be wondering why we would see so late a movie, thus dooming ourselves to stay another night in Mackay. We would’ve been quite ready to leave that day, but recall when I said there weren’t all that many trains running in Australia? Well, when I said that I was talking about the south-eastern state New South Wales. Once we got to Brisbane we’d passed into Queensland, and compared to Queensland, NSW is abundant in trains. There was no train anytime after our tour with Kenneth-or-Jeff ended, and there are no trains today, so we have to stay another two nights (though our final will be cut short, as that train leaves at about 5 am).

And the really appealing tour we wanted to do on day three isn’t happening, because there aren’t enough people signing up (you need at least 3, they had 2). So I guess today will just be spent hanging out in Mackay, then returning to The Whit (not having told my mother about the giganto-roach, she decides we may as well just stay there). We do make a nice little trip in the evening to a beach north of the city, but overall, not much is done with this vacation day.

Mackay’s big attraction is supposed to be the Whitsunday Islands, and we saw a bit of them on our tour with K-or-J, and would’ve seen even more of them had our second tour happened. But I have to say, unless you love gambling, head a bit further north to Arlie Beach if you want to see the islands. Avoid Mackay.

The Weather’s Great…

…Wish you were here.

(This is so much cheaper than buying and sending out postcards.)

Moving Picture Shows

By God, using YouTube is almost too easy…

Spelunking our way through George’s Gold Mine:

Relaxed wombat at the Lone Pine Mall Koala Sanctuary:

Jellyfish at the Sydney Aquarium (tilt head 90 degrees for proper viewing — and turn off the volume):

Boy, you folks are just gonna be flooded with videos. Just flooded.