Happy Leap Year!

The day starts spectacularly beautiful with clear blue skies and bright sunshine. John decides to take the train north across the Harbour Bridge and walk back to the city to experience the bridge up close and personal. We are planning to do the Bridge Climb hopefully this week but more on that to come. I choose to have a quiet day today because we had such a busy Saturday night with our friends Brian, Lynne and Peter. Brian and Lynne were the Sydneysiders we met in Cairns when we were diving. The weather turns cool and overcast quite quickly in the late afternoon with a strong wind picking up.

John: Bridges fascinate me – and this bridge in particular. It is only the 3rd longest of its type, but it is probably the largest in terms of weight-bearing capacity. It carries two train tracks, 8 lanes of traffic and pedestrian walkways. The engineers who designed it didn’t go with a suspension bridge because they wanted the bridge to be able to carry more weight than possible with a suspension bridge.


From left: entering the bridge; looking east from the bridge; the Opera House and Circular Quay from the bridge

It was built by building the two sides of the arch separately. To keep them from collapsing before completion, they were each anchored by huge steel ropes. When the two halves were completed, the two sides were, by design, about 1 metre apart, and the huge steel ropes were slowly relaxed, over a period of 8 days, until they connected.


From left: the bridge from the top of the south-east pylon; bridge climbers

The entire weight of the bridge rests on 4 huge hinges – these allow the bridge to rock back and forward as it expands and contracts – it apparently can lengthen by over 100 millimetres on a hot day.

The Spirit of Tasmania passing under the bridge

Although the height of the bridge allowed all ships to pass under it for many years, today’s huge cruise ships cannot get through. They now berth at Circular Quay, so their arrivals and departures are tightly scheduled, as only one can be accommodated at a time.

Greg: We are eating Thai in Newtown this evening with Eric and Graham who have basically adopted us while we have been here. Eric has travelled extensively in Bali and we will be picking his brain for the next leg of our journey (which starts in just two weeks!) We cab it over to Graham’s renovation war zone apartment for a drink on his balcony. And what a balcony! He has the most spectacular, unobstructed view of the Anzac and Harbour bridges with the entire city laid out before him. We savour the view and then head into Newtown after a brief tour of some of the surrounding neighbourhoods (again many million dollar Victorian Terraces) and have a wonderful unhurried meal at Thai Riffic. People are all ready starting to talk about the end of summer. Boo Hoo!

A beautiful day for the beach – we head to Bondi. We assume that it will be packed – it is a gorgeous weekend day, and that will make it more of the true experience of Bondi. When we get there, we see that it is beautiful. And not so packed as we had feared, although there are lots of people there.

The water is much cooler here than it was up north. There are lots of surfers in the water – all directed by signs to the south end of the beach; the north end is for body surfing. The body surfing is fun – because it is again today a very big sea, the body surfing is far more intense than it was on the northern beaches, and you need to be very aware of where others are and what they are doing – there are so many people in the water. If the wave breaks far enough ahead that the people farther out are riding the wave, you need to dive down to avoid a collision with them – but the swells are of such a size that you really need to either ride them or duck under them – you don’t want to have them hit you full force.


From left: Bondi; riding big waves

We get quickly waterlogged by the intensity of the waves, and after drying off we walk up to the esplanade for a bit to eat. Like in any good beach town, the esplanade is full of tacky souvenir shops, greasy takeaways and stalls offering junk. After lunch and some light window shopping, we grab the bus back to Darlinghurst.

The countdown to Mardi Gras has begun:
When we arrive back downtown, we find that it is the annual “Shop Yourself Silly” day, a Mardi Gras event where most of the shops in this area donate a portion of their day’s takings to the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation, which raises funds for people living in poverty with HIV/AIDS. The streets in the late afternoon are full of shoppers, carrying their treasures and cheering on the drag queens who have been installed on the backs of trucks up and down the street, and who, amidst the monologues and the songs, exhort the crowds to “spend, spend, spend!”

Keep on shopping!

We check email, and our friend Jacqueline has sent an ode that is coincidentally, but completely, appropriate for the moment.

Armani who art in Holts.
Hallowed be thy shoes.
Thy Prada come.
Thy shopping done.
On Bloor St. as it is in Paris.
Give us this day, our Visa Gold.
And forgive us our balance.
As we forgive those who charge us interest.
Lead us not into Wal-Mart.
And deliver us from Sears.
For thine is the Chanel, the Gaultier, and the Versace.
For Dolce and Gabbana
Amex.

The weather has turned beautiful again, and it is time to start getting to know parts of Sydney that are outside, and that are outside the downtown core. Today we head to Watsons Bay, a 15 minute ferry ride on a fast catamaran ferry. It is on the south side of the harbour, and is the last ferry stop still inside the harbour.

We find a quaint town, where the waterfront homes command spectacular views back to Sydney, and no doubt command equally spectacular prices in this overheated real estate market where the average price for a house is just under A$500,000. If the rundown Victorian terrace homes in the Paddington are truly going for about a mill, these homes will be going for much, much more.


View of Sydney from Watsons Bay

From the bay, we walk around the shore, climbing from sea level as we go up to the South Head and Hornby Lighthouse. As we go, we pass the local nude beach, but it is high tide and there is no beach right now. We get to the top of the head, to an excellent view of North Head, the end of land on the north side of the harbour. The sea is rough today, (we feel sorry for the ferry passengers who aren’t on a catamaran – we barely felt the swell, but watch the Manly ferry pitch to and fro) and standing up here you can see and hear the power of the ocean as it crashes onto the rocks way down below. We were told that the swells were so high that surfers were able to surf inside the harbour, although we see none today.


North Head

The weather breaks, and we head out walking into a new part of town. We walk along Stanley Street, right behind our apartment building and reminiscent of Crescent Street in Montreal. We continue on along William Street to King’s Cross, the Soho (London Soho, not New York Soho) of Sydney, and up to Potts Point, a beautiful residential area on a peninsula. Then around the bend to Woolloomooloo Bay, where the Navy docks are located, walking beside ship after ship.


Fleet’s in!

In Woolloomooloo is an old wharf that was the centre of heated controversy as to its future, and that is now luxury condos and the W Hotel. We walk through the lobby, which serves both the hotel and the apartments, and runs the length of the wharf, and it is striking! The integration of the mechanical apparatus of the wharf into the décor is fascinating.

From there we walk around the other side of the bay, into the Domain and the Royal Botanical Gardens, vast green spaces in Sydney’s heart. We stop at the Boy Charlton Pool, a saltwater pool set beside Woolloomooloo Bay, and tell ourselves that if we could, we’d live there.


Boy Charlton Pool in Woolloomooloo Bay, with Wharf and Naval Ship in background on left

We go round Mrs. Macquaries Point to find spectacular views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House awaiting us and, further around the point, of the CBD.


From left: the Opera House and Harbour Bridge from Mrs. Macquaries Point; Greg in front of Farm Cove and the Central Business District

We walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens, which are not laid out, for the most part, in formal garden style but are more naturalistic, in the style of Capability Brown. We stop and admire various borders, and when we get to the refreshment stand we are surprised to realize we’ve been walking for almost 3 hours straight. We take a well-deserved break, and as we head out again, our ears are assaulted. We look up and see hundreds of fruit bats – flying foxes – sleeping in the trees, although sleeping is a misnomer, given the talking and the wing-stretching that was going on. I am surprised by the bright red-orange fur that we can see on them.


Fruit bats sleeping

Sitting in our apartment around dusk over the days, we have noted that the sky fills with bats – it looks a bit like the flying monkeys scene in the Wizard of Oz – and we now know where at least some of them sleep. A sign informs us that the bats are migratory, but also that the RBG has been granted permission to try to convince the bats (in a non-harmful way) to move on, as they are damaging the trees in which they roost, and they don’t seem to be in any hurry to migrate onwards.

The RBG connects back up to the Domain, and in turn the Domain connects to Hyde Park. We walk on through, ending up back at home, just in time to avoid being caught in a brief shower. We get upstairs, and over in the west is a beautiful double rainbow.

We continue to be amazed by the generosity of the people of Sydney and generally of Australia. People are sincerely friendly and open here.

Graham O’Keefe has organized dinner and a show for us and 7 other people. The fact that none of us knows each other makes no difference to Australians. This is all part of the fun.

Graham picks us up (another extremely generous gesture) and we head through rush hour traffic over the Anzac Bridge into trendy Balmain which melds the working class, bourgeois renovators and the very well-heeled. Balmain is about a 20 minute drive from the city center and is tucked into the inner west’s harbour, and the main street is Darling Street. Dinner and a show ends up to be a raucous evening of food, wine, broken glasses (not just our table) and a drag show hosted by Miss Pastie deKlyne at the very popular Café Tatu. An all-inclusive evening in one venue that is quite small for the amount of people they pack in. And Miss deKlyne seems to be quite popular – many guests appeared to know her routines.

Over dinner we discover that another two of our ten are Canadians but that neither has lived in Canada for over 35 years. We find out later that there are 3 more Canadians having dinner in the restaurant. We’re everywhere!

The show rolls on in its typical saucy drag queen way with the usual innuendo and bad dirty jokes but it seems to fit the bill very well this evening. At one point, Pastie takes her show out the front door of the restaurant and into the street, literally stopping traffic on Darling Street. What would Mardi Gras be without at least one tragic drag queen?

Our web site has proven to be even more popular than we had imagined or anticipated. This became clear when we hadn’t posted for 7 days last week. The roar of the crowd was fearsome! “Where are you? We demand more postings! What’s going on?”

We would like to take this opportunity to thank those people who were responsible for helping us with the realization, concept and design of our web site and business cards, and of the trip itself, without which none of this would have happened.

First, Brian MacDonald in Toronto, for being our first go-to. He pointed us in the right direction for dealing with the initial information overload. Thanks Brian, for sorting us out.

Ryan Thompson, of Artifex Design in Vancouver, for his brilliant design of the website. We saw eye to eye very quickly with ideas for the design of the site and the day-to-day running has been a breeze. Thanks, Ryan.

And finally, Bill Baker in Vancouver (and environs, sorry Billy..I can never remember where you live. It is “Summer” something in BC somewhere) for the wonderful concept and design of our trip cards. They have been a hit everywhere we go. So much so that we are having t-shirts made up. Special web offer-- $49.99 US$ while supplies last! Plus S&H and all applicable taxes.

If anyone is looking for some top notch work to be done, contact us and we will send you all their coordinates.

While we’re at it, we’d also like to acknowledge the work done for us by Aaron Livie of Flight Centre on Bay Street in Toronto in figuring out what we wanted, when often we didn’t know, in finding the obscure hotels or attractions we’d heard about but couldn’t find ourselves, and for his patience; Aaron is heading off to on a wonderful trip of his own soon, to South Africa, and we wish him a fantastic time!

Keep those comments coming!

“What you are producing here on your web site is wonderful, magnificent, outstanding, lovely and much more.” La Contessa d’H.

“I hadn’t checked in for awhile and I was amazed at all you've done . . . . Your writing is so great it almost makes me feel as those I've seen and experienced all these things with you . . . which helps (almost) ease the pain of surfing your site while I'm at work .” B.H

“Its cold here!! It all sounds so beautiful. I love the pictures and the tales you both tell. Looking forward to more...” C.S.

“This sight is becoming a part of my routine at work...” C.W.

“Your public demands news. You've got a very popular website.” B.S.

“Shopping at the IGA? You could have done that in Picton!” D.&H.Z.

“Brian, Gary and I are all anxiously awaiting your next update. We have information needs you know. I hope this isn't some Hollywood-style PR strategy you're pulling to create a frenzy among your adoring fans. Did you really think this was YOUR trip and yours alone???? If there is no update by end of day, I'm buying a Hello! magazine to help with the DT's (Do Tells).” J.J.

"You are doing a wonderful job of conveying the wonder of your expedition." J.&J.M.

"[Y]ou've created a monster, but many of us don't care. There. I've said it, and I'm glad. More entries! Quick! If you don't post soon, I'm going to switch to porn. I mean it! Just try me!" G.G. (Not Greg George)

These are all true testimonials. Really. Honestly.

And as a final note: It started to rain yesterday here in Sydney. Everyone is breathing a sigh of relief because it has been so dry here. They are predicting rain until Saturday. Sigh!

The weather has turned – the sky is cloudy, there is a hint of rain, and the temperature has fallen to - 23°. Greg comments that it feels like fall, and I remind him that it feels more like summer in Toronto.

When we arrived in the apartment, we were both concerned that I would have trouble sleeping in all the brightness. In fact, I am sleeping well, and it is Greg who is not sleeping. He wakes this morning complaining of exhaustion.

We agree that given the weather, today is a perfect museum day, after we get through our chores – gym for me, internet café for Greg. When we meet back at the apartment just before noon, Greg is still not feeling great, and when I come out of the shower, he is sound asleep. I leave him to sleep, and head down to the Rocks, to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which has 2 special exhibits – Tracey Collins and Leigh Bowery, that look very interesting. Tracey Collins is an Australian photographer who we’ve not heard of, and Leigh Bowery was that larger-than-life 80’s club diva, anti-fashion fashionista and model for some of Lucian Freud’s best, or at least most provocative, paintings, who with his clothes challenged many of our most-accepted notions of what clothes are.

The Collins exhibit is challenging and hard: she uses her camera as a weapon, and there is such truth in what she has to say that I am completely overwhelmed – in particular by 2 series of photographs – scenes of childhood anguish caused by words said.

The Leigh Bowery exhibit, which is the one I really was more interested in, proves disappointing. The clothes are on mannequins, but they don’t hold the visual power they did when he wore them. The curator has sprinkled the exhibit with a few photos of Bowery in his clothes, which for me are the most compelling things in the exhibit. Far less successful are the many movies that are included to convey the world Bowery inhabited – most of which are self-indulgent. The impact of Bowery was the visual power of the person in the costume, or out of it in the case of the Freud portraits, and it is too bad that the curator has not focussed on these. Almost as an afterthought, there is 1 Freud portrait and a few Freud sketches of Bowery. I look forward to an exhibit of the photos and the paintings, and come away disappointed in the wrong choices of the curator

It is Fair Day today! Mardi Gras Fair Day to be more specific. The Mardi Gras parade doesn’t happen for another 2 weeks, but the street party is today. It takes places in Victoria Park, which is a good distance from Oxford St., but the transit people are running special buses that take you right there and right back.

We go over and it a lot like Church St. on Pride Day, except that they aren’t cramming all those people into one little street – there is a whole park. The Fair spreads over the entire park, and there are lots and lots of people.

We walk around for a few hours, talking to lots of people at the booths, getting lots of paper to dispose of when we get home, buying lots of raffle tickets to help support good causes. We find the divers group, have a good chat with them – find out that they have a group dive scheduled for next Sunday, which we are invited to join. We also discover something that will bring great relief to my mother – the sharks have all moved out of the Sydney waters at the moment – it is pupping season, and they are all far offshore at this time of year.

Then we sit on the grass and listen to the main concert for an hour, enjoying the day before returning home for naps.

Around 5:30, Grant and Bob arrive at the apartment to go out with us for the evening with Eric and his friends Graham and Larry. Eric is a Canadian (from Meaford) who moved here almost 30 years ago, and Bob and Bill have put us in touch with him. In chatting with me about things we’d been doing in Sydney, he had learned that Grant and Bob were also here from Canada, and invited them to come along tonight – the more the merrier! The plan is to go to Eric’s house for a drink, and then to head out for dinner. We drive in a convoy, too many people to fit in 1 car, to Eric’s home. From the outside it is typical Australian suburban house. Then you walk into a Balinese fantasy – that carries through the house and into the back garden. It is beautiful!

Drinks are served, and shortly after the doorbell rings – it is Julie and Christine – two friends from Victoria (the state, not the city) who are in Sydney at a huge gift show on at the Sydney Convention Centre, which is so large that it is also on at a 2nd site near the airport. Julie owns a candle manufacturer, which she proudly tells us is the largest employer in her small town, and Christine, who is Julie’s sister-in-law, has come to Sydney to help Julie sell. A wonderful cocktail party ensues.

Just as we are starting to think that it must be getting time to head out to dinner, out of nowhere a table and 9 chairs appear. We don’t know how, but Eric has whipped together a feast for 9. Beef and lamb done on the barby, with veg and salad, and wine from a friend of Graham’s vineyard. And this chocolate dessert that even the non-dessert eaters are having seconds of. And wonderful conversation the whole evening long.

No plans! Nothing we must do today! We luxuriate in the sense that there is nothing on our to-do list, and sleep late. It is surprising to me how seldom we’ve had this feeling of total freedom that we feel today. I thought that 1 ½ months into the trip, we’d have run out of things to do and would be looking for action. It is proving to be quite the opposite.

Greg wrote yesterday that the apartment is too stark for his tastes. I haven’t decided yet if I agree – it is certainly visually stunning. My concern is that it may not be very practical, although after 2 days it is proving to be more practical that I had originally expected. You walk in the door and the first thing that you see is the wall of glass – floor to ceiling, wall to wall – and the south-facing, 12th floor view over Darlinghurst and Surry Hills (unlike in the northern hemisphere, a south view here means that you don’t get direct sunlight, so the apartment stays relatively cool, a good thing given that it is not air-conditioned). The next thing you see is the whiteness – it is very white – the walls (no art), the ceiling, the dining room table, the chairs, the vases, the leather sofa and ottoman, the bed and the linens. The floor is neutral grey, and the only colour is the bright red carpet in the sitting area. Greg supplemented that yesterday with the flowers he gave me for my birthday – star lilies (and more white – tuberoses – the two scents together are beautiful). The bedroom is separated from the main part of the apartment by a frosted glass 3-panel door that pushes back into the wall to integrate the spaces if you wish. The bathroom is the only area that isn’t white – it is black tile, with white fixtures, and a sliding panel to separate it from the dressing room.


Greg in whiteness

After coffee, Greg goes off in search of a barber for a haircut while I go to the internet café (a different one than Thursday, right behind our apartment) and hope that whatever happened on Thursday proves to be a fluke. I am barely sitting down when our mobile rings and it is my mother, calling to wish me a happy birthday (it is still Friday back in Canada) and to find out if we’re alive – the silence on the web and email fronts has rattled her. It is wonderful to hear the sound of her voice, we chat and I learn that the bitter winter has turned to rain and that people think spring may be on the verge of arriving; and I marvel (yet again) at the technology that allows her to pick up the phone in Canada and reach me in an internet café on the other side of the world.

Everything goes swimmingly – I get into our site without any problem and post a week’s worth of updates successfully. The emails download properly – when I look, the outbox is empty and the sent file is full. Hurray! (Greg: Apologies to our adoring fans for the delay in the updating. Read on McDuff!)

We do a shop at the IGA that is across the street from the internet café, marvelling again at our luck in losing our first apartment and finding this one, far better located, at such short notice. Then it is back to the apartment for lunch and naps. At 4, I go to the apartment building’s gym – which turns out to be surprisingly well equipped – for a long-overdue workout, and to appease my guilt I do a triple workout – 2X my normal cardio of 40 minutes, and then my weights routine.

I come back to the apartment to find that a chicken is roasting in the oven. I make a salad, and we wash it down with a lovely white wine – a blend of semillon, sauvignon blanc and viognier.

We sit quietly after dinner – the dishwasher (the cutest – ½ size, perfect for 2 people, and absolutely silent) does its things while Greg reads and I write this.

Happy Birthday John!
And birthday wishes out to Catherine McIssac, too!

We settle into our apartment, home for the next month. We have lucked out with our location – we are (for those who know Sydney) on the south west corner of Hyde Park, literally across the street from the Anzac Memorial, and less than a 5 minute walk to the Museum rail stop, and the bottom end of the CBD, and 1 minute from the intersection of Liverpool and Oxford Streets. The apartment is ultra modern – stark for my personal tastes but it will certainly fit the bill while we are here. We are hoping that this part of the trip will give some normalcy back into our lives: develop a routine of, perhaps, grocery shopping, working out, and eating in. It’s amazing how much you miss those little things.

We meet up with some fellow Torontonians, Grant and Bob, and give them the quick tour of Sydney (we are such experts now). Sydney is gearing up for Mardi Gras and there is a real sense of anticipation in the air. Although our plan is to catch up when we lunch, it is clear that we are not following our plan – so we head to a café, and over coffees get all the latest from Canada – the Governor Generals problems, Paul Martin’s problems, Belinda Stronach’s leadership bid, heads rolling everywhere. After 30 minutes we decide that we were better off not knowing any of this, and head off for our tour. (We had expected to log on to the Globe and Mail and CBC websites fairly regularly, but the difficulty in finding web cafés has meant that we have not been doing that with any regularity, and when we do, we get frustrated because all the stories assume you read yesterday’s story. If you didn’t, you often don’t know what they’re talking about. So we’ve stopped reading them.)

Late in the afternoon of a lovely day (38° - but not humid and so not oppressive at all), Grant and Bob head back to the suburb (ferry to Manly Beach, then bus or taxi farther north) where they are visiting friends. We head to a bottle shop, pick up a bottle of champagne (oops! – sparking wine) from Domaine Chandon, which we toured in the Yarra Valley, and a spectacular South Australian shiraz/sangiovese blend, and then head to Yipiyiyo! to celebrate John’s birthday. This restaurant has been highly recommended by everyone we know who has been to Sydney recently, and the meal is magnificent – the food delicious, the service attentive and gentle (thanks, Tony!), and the conversation scintillating.

A frustrating day in all!

We rise early, pack up the campervan, and set off for the last final 35 kilometres of driving, copy of map highlighted showing exactly where we are to go to: 1) pick up keys to flat we've rented; 2) pick up bags we left at Sullivan's Hotel; 3) drop everything at flat; and 4) return campervan to Maui depot, near airport.

We negotiate our way to the M4 successfully, and the drive is easy. We sail past the Olympic Site, and, as the motorways tend to do here, the dual carriageway ends and we are driving on city streets, which are still marked as the M4. We hit congestion, the radio announces a bad accident about 5 kilometres further down the road, and it takes over 1 hour to get past it. We continue to follow the M4, as our maps tell us to do, and all of a sudden we are approaching the Anzac bridge, which we know enough to know means we are lost. We stop, check our maps, they all tell us to follow the M4, which the road signs tell us we're still on, but the maps show the M4 in a completely different part of town. We drive around in circles for an hour before we figure out how to get to where we need to be. We finally get within 1/2 kilometre of the rental agencies office when traffic again grinds to a halt. A crane ahead has dropped a load into the middle of the street, tying up traffic in all directions for another 30 minutes. When we finally get to the Fox Studios, where the rental agency is located, nobody can tell us where the building we're looking for is (contrary to the assurances we'd been given that "everyone will know the building once you're at the Fox Studios). This is where mobile phones come in handy, and we get the agency on the phone and they guide us as we drive to the building.

The rest of the day goes swimmingly - we get our bags, drop them off at our super deluxe apartment, head down to the airport to drop the campervan. We get back to the CBD by 1:45, grab a bite, and head to the internet cafe to update the web and check emails - we have not been able to do this since Coolum Beach, due to a lack of internet cafes on the road. We get all settled in and - something goes wrong. We cannot upload to the website, and we cannot pickup or send emails. We spend too long trying to figure it out, and, still frustrated, head home for a nap.

Today is our final big day of driving and I will admit publicly that I am ready to get out of this damn campervan.

We are up fairly early as is everyone around us. It is about 7:30 and John has been up puttering for about an hour. I pull open the shade and look down at Back Beach. There are a number of people, some with dogs, who are already making the trudge back from the point. They must have started out at about 6:00 am. God, such fortitude! John and I have come to realize that not only are we the only two men travelling alone that we have seen (in style, cocktails before dinner and wine with), but we are also the youngest people in the campervan parks. This suggests to us there may be an unrecognized target market of potential caravaners and campervanners waiting to be found.

We dump our grey water (we are experts at this now), fill up with fresh water, and head out on the road, saying goodbye to our 48 hour beach address. It is only about 400 km but the anticipation of this part of the trip finishing makes it feel a lot longer. Much of it proves to be dual carriageway, which makes the driving faster and smoother, but also increases the tension for John, especially as we get closer to Sydney and the drivers get that familiar big-city aggressiveness that we haven’t seen till now. (The joys of driving in a huge country/continent where there are only 20 million people, and about half of them live in 2 cities – Sydney and Melbourne. When you add Brisbane and Adelaide to the pot, with another 2 ½ million between them, you have an awful lot of space, as we’ve come to recognize over the last week, with very few people.)

We stop after about 45 minutes to visit the Billabong Nature Reserve because John just has to pat a Koala and they promise us, and a number of other tourists, a pat at 10:30. We stroll through the small park and see a number of Kangaroos (and a new baby albino wallaby) lounging in the shade and oblivious to us humans. That is unless you have purchased special kangaroo food – then they magically spring to life and love you. We, however, didn’t want to spend the exorbitant amount being asked on the tiny cup of ‘roo food; we are content to watch others delight in feeding baby kangaroos.


‘Roo with Cup

Our official petting starts and a nice young man entices Suzy down from her slumber, and the group of us are allowed to pat and say hello to her. Koala’s love to be held and hugged and Suzy is no exception. The handler explains that it is now illegal in NSW for anyone not employed at a zoo/reserve to hold koalas, so we can only pat her. As the 10 or so of us try not to crowd her, Suzy gets restless and clings to her handler. We are done in 15 minutes and head to the highway again.


John with one of his many friends

I keep counting down the mileage as we approach Sydney. Quite a familiar town appears on the map and has several exits and mileage signs indicating the fast approaching exit. It very obviously reminds us of home.


Ahhhhh…home!

Our plan is to stay just outside Sydney and then to drive into the city tomorrow morning to retrieve the keys to the flat we are renting, pick up our stored bags at Sullivan’s Hotel and drops the camper off near the airport. From the information we’ve found, there are only 3 campervan parks in the entire Sydney area, one conveniently north of the city. We are both ready to stop as we drive up to it – only to see a sign announcing that a new subdivision is being built on the site, and the park is being closed – in August 2003. We fight through Sydney traffic (the motorway mysteriously ends and scatters all those cars onto local streets for 8 kms before the next motorway starts again) to the 2nd best location, in the far western suburbs. After check-in, we hear some of the residents talking and come to understand that this caravan park is also about to be redeveloped – the neighbourhood has become a decidedly upscale suburb, and a developer is trying to buy the site. Indeed, our campervan backs onto the backyard of a nice, suburban home.

Today is the 13th anniversary of the day that we met. We were introduced by friends, Dan and Lisle, at a bar late on a Sunday afternoon. Who knew that 13 years later we’d still be talking to each other after 47 days on the road?

The view from the front door is spectacular and the sound of the waves braking on the shore is incredible. A lovely sea breeze blows through the campervan, saving us from turning the AC on. We are just on the periphery of one of the most interesting national parks we’ve come across—Hat Head National Park.


The view from the front door

Having spent a week in a campervan has brought back lots of memories for me. When I was younger, my family travelled across Canada, from the Atlantic via Hudson Bay to the Pacific, over 4 summers. For a couple of those years we travelled in a trailer hitched to the family station wagon. As I look around the campervan, and see the modern technology (electric pump, hot water heater, microwave oven, separate grey and black water systems, toilet cassette that you easily carry to the toilets for the black water), I think back to the trailer, and wonder how my mom and dad did it with 5 kids and a dog – only a hand pump to get water, boiling water on the stove to make hot water, hooking up the sewage with hoses every day. We have not had any kind of meltdown driving down the coast, but I wonder whether the same could be said if we’d been doing the primitive camping of 35 years ago. My parents must have been saints! (Or crazy – and if not before, then surely after 4 weeks of driving 5 kids and a dog across the country.)

We wake late, and despite the forecasts, the weather is spectacularly gorgeous – yet another perfect day in paradise! We go for a long walk – probably about 6 or 7 kilometres in all. We walk across a bridge over the estuary, and pass a number of people fly fishing. This reminds me of being on Vancouver Island with my family, trailering, all those years ago, and my brother and sister trying their hand at fly fishing. My sister, on her first try, hooked my mother, and we had to rush her to the emergency ward to have the hook removed. After crossing the estuary, we get to Back Beach, the beautiful beach we look at from our front door. We walk the entire length, to the mouth of another river, and then back again. It takes us about 2 ½ hours, start to finish.


The bridge over the estuary; Back Beach, with South West Rocks and Trial Bay in the background

Driving 2400 kilometres so far (400 to go to get to Sydney tomorrow), we have listened to a great deal of Aussie radio – it is just like being at home. There are lots of FM radio stations playing North American music – lots of Evanescence, Kylie, No Doubt, Outkast, Dido, Shania, Celine, Beyoncé, Brittany, Christina, Enrique, etc. Although the radio stations all announce that they proudly play Australian music, the only obviously Australian music they do play is the ubiquitous Kylie, and it is only obviously Australian because we know where Kylie comes from. Kylie appears to be a national hero – 2nd only to any number of cricket players, but ahead of anyone else. The alternative, which we listen to when we are not driving (the silent passages can’t be heard over the wind whistling through the cracks around the windows) is ABC, which is not what you think – it is the Australian Broadcasting Commission. And they have a wonderful classical network that makes us feel like we are listening to CBC Radio 2. We have been pulling up to our sites, hooking up electrical and water and turning on the radio to settle in, listening to David Daniels (quite regularly – there seems to be a fixation on countertenors right now in Australia) or Madama Butterfly.

After a wonderful nap, we hit the beach, and spend a couple of hours body surfing. The water is noticeably cooler than it was up at Coolum Beach, but the day is hot enough that the coolness of the water is refreshing. And although the waves don’t compare to Coolum, they are better for body surfing – we get some spectacularly long rides before becoming waterlogged.

We shower and shave, then sit outside and watch the sunset over Back Beach and the mountains behind it. What a gorgeous way to spend a day.

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Today is an easy driving day – we do not have far to go to our next destination. We have chosen South West Rocks because it is reputed to have excellent diving – an underwater tunnel to an underwater cave, with hard corals and grey nurse sharks – we are planning to stop here for 2 days, in order to dive tomorrow.

Yesterday at the Clarence River Resort, Nicki, who checked us in (and checked us out –via our web site. By the time we got back from walking around to pick a campsite, she was talking about Utz and Sophia) was a goldmine of information about the area. She told us about all the local sites, and then gave us a booklet that she, or someone else at the campground, had put together with more detailed information: this area boasts, justifiably, of the cleanliness of its rivers and coasts.

Because we are only going a couple of hundred kilometres today, we spend some time this morning checking out a couple of the sights. In particular, we drive up to Angourie, which is famed for its surfing. Unfortunately for the crowd hanging in the water, today is not a good surfing day. However, as we wander around, we come face-to-face with a goanna, and have a good little stare-down.


Goanna

The driving is not as easy as predicted – we are no longer in a valley, but are in gently rolling countryside. There is a strong wind today, and we are driving a big box. It is a day to keep 2 hands on the steering wheel at all times.

We notice that the road signs have changed since leaving Queensland and entering New South Wales. Instead of promises of certain death, they demand that we stop every 2 hours to refresh ourselves and they smugly ask “How fast are you going now?”. Every time we pass one, Greg does his best whiney, indolent voice.

NSW has photo radar cameras everywhere. As far as we can tell, they give you lots of warning about where they are – at least 3 signs before the camera. But the signs tell us that the NSW government has instituted another kind of control – the cameras record big vehicles, and monitor how long it takes them to get from monitoring point to monitoring point. This is not for speeding – it is to make sure that the commercial drivers are actually stopping and taking their refreshment break every 2 hours. We don’t know if it is really enforced, but the signs promise sanctions such as loss of licence, a very real threat to someone who makes his or her livelihood by driving.

We get to South West Rocks and find a charming beach town. The woman at the campervan parks asks how we got here – it is not listed in the tourist guides, and all the tourists here are Aussies. Our camping space has a million dollar view (actually, these days, it is a $7.5 million view); yes, we have found another fantastic beach.

We drive to the dive centre to book our dive, to be told that the weather forecasts for tomorrow are so bad that they have decided not to dive tomorrow. Disappointed, we confer about what to do, and decide to stay here for our planned 2 nights. We feel sure that even if the weather is really rotten, there are few places we would enjoy as much. We will walk on the beach, whatever the weather.

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Ahhh, the campervan life…who knew about grey water, or sullage, as they call it here. Or as they may call it in Canada too…I don’t know. We really aren’t campervan people. And the overview and walk-through they give you before you hit the road is not very comprehensive. Hmmmmm…..

We clean up our breakfast dishes this morning and are packing up the van to ready it for our departure when we detect a distinct odour from the van…or more importantly, from the shower stall/toilet. I immediately say “John!!” It smells of rotten eggs and we quickly realize that the smell is coming, in fact, from the shower/toilet. I open the door and see this putrid ooze coming up the shower drain. The grey water is at its capacity and is backing up in the van. I then spend a half hour trying to drain the thing. It’s not something that you just open up the valve and let drain on the lawn. Although you could, you’d be dealing with steely looks from your neighbouring campervans or caravans, or the knowing, judgemental looks of conservationists. It really comes down to a choice. You could choose to pollute the local wild and bird life at the animal sanctuary (where you are camping) or wait until you get to a city or town, and unceremoniously open your waste water drain locally at lunch, dumping your left over pasta and toothpaste into the city sewer system. (This is what the management of our rental company suggested.) There is a clandestine feeling of right and wrong here. The moment and the weather affect all of this.

Campervan or caravan life is really a big thing here in Oz. There are many caravan clubs that people join. There is an unofficial “hand wave” hello to all Maui or Britz campervans that pass you on the highway, which in most parts is similar to our TransCanada Highway—small and slow. Unlike the TransCanada (at least in Ontario), this is the major north/south route – it is Highway 1. There are some days that you get a wave, “I’m a campervan person too”; but if they don’t respond, I wonder if they have been properly debriefed before setting off. So I wave, being a good Canadian, to all campervans and work-a-day vehicles that look like campers that drive by, mostly to my embarrassment.

We arrive at the Clarence River Resort after some rural driving, and find a pristine, organized camp ground that speaks to you about not feeding the birds or other wildlife and to not disturb the comings and goings of wildlife in your camping area. This is by far the most beautiful caravan park we’ve stopped at.

We do our usual…hook up our electrical, make sure we have water and get down our camping chairs, which is where we have our first cocktail of the evening. I immediately see a group of kangaroos and I call to John, still inside, to get the camera. We spray ourselves with bug repellent and make our way, ever so cautiously over to where the ‘roos are feeding. They are catching the end of day feeding of succulent grasses before the sun goes down. One has her joey in her, his or her feet spilling out of her pouch. There is also another adult there, and farther off, there are 3 others, feeding. We don’t know whether we should move forward or back, but of course, John wants to move forward, the camera fast-clicking as we go.


Kangaroos feeding; note feet dangling from pouch in centre photo and size of pouch in photo on right
We don’t go far enough to make them move – I make sure of that. They acknowledge our presence, and we are respectful (we hope) of theirs. (We see the same mother the next morning, this time her joey is still in her pouch, but is facing out , and they are both munching on the grasses, happy as cla…kangaroos.)

We go walking, and see another mother and her joey feeding down near the Clarence River. The joey is not in-pouch, it is old enough to be out. Another couple (we peg them as Germans) is just ahead of us, video camera blazing, and they have no compunction about approaching the ‘roos. Time after time, the Germans get just inside their comfort zone and the kangaroos retreat another 10 metres. We watch with fascination – and with our zoom lens, I catch their retreats.


Mom and joey; Retreat!

Kangaroo tails are amazing things – they look (from as close as we get) to be as thick as a human leg, and they use them to support themselves when sitting. We learn from one of our neighbours that the males also use them as support when they fight each other – they stand on their tails, and kick at each other with their back feet. You wouldn’t want to get in the way of a kangaroo’s back feet – they have long, sharp nails and strong leg muscles. She said that when she lived in the outback she raised a number of orphan joeys from infancy, and that forever after they would come back to her house and announce their presence just before dawn by jumping up and down on her veranda.

Our evening closes with chicken brochette and coleslaw and another Wolf Blass Chardonnay (sorry Flick and Ruth—have asked for the silver label but to no avail!). We look at the Milky Way and the Southern Cross, and as the mosquitoes attack, we head for bed and a good night’s sleep.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I wake early, Greg does not. I head to the beach at about 6:30, and there are more people on it than there were yesterday afternoon – which means there are no more than 30. They are walking, running, fishing.


Early morning on the beach

At this point, we have finally passed the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. The reef starts north of the tip of Cape York, the northernmost point in Australia, and ends about 150 kilometres south of Rockhampton. There are two immediately obvious consequences from being south: there are surf beaches, and the water is cooler, so there are no stingers to paralyze you.

We have promised ourselves a beach day, and that is what we have. We spend the day gloriously, alternating between lying on the beach and body surfing. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that is, in my view, as relaxing as lying on a beach on a hot, hot day, listening to the crashing waves. This could be a place to come back to again and again.


Body surfing the day away!

Greg is snoozing on the beach, and I go for a long walk, walking in the surf. All of a sudden I realize that I am surrounded by life. Crabs are scurrying sideways, and there are hundreds of clams rolling in the surf. I have never seen this before, and watch with amazement as the clams open their shells by just a fraction, stick out their foot, pull themselves upright and burrow into the sand. And after a few seconds, they start spitting, shooting little streams out of the sand. And then it happens again: a big wave exposes them, and the whole process is repeated, probably happening every 5 minutes or so. I ran back to Greg, and made him come and watch too. It only seems to work if the clams are uncovered by the wave – we used our feet to expose a few, and they just sat there on the beach, doing nothing. We then moved them down so they would be in the next wave that rolled up, and sure enough, out came the little foot, upright they went, and then they were gone.

We celebrate Valentine’s Day with another wonderful home cooked dinner and bottle of merlot. We are very much appreciating cooking for ourselves after almost a month of restaurant food. Then we go back to the beach and walk. Again there is no moon, but tonight the sky is partly cloudy; although some stars are visible through the clouds, it is not a night for stargazing. Being Valentine’s Day Night, the beach is full of couples strolling. This does not diminish our joy in walking in the surf, hand in hand.

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I think you can tell a lot about a country by driving its roads. Based on the 1600 kilometres we’ve covered from Cairns to Coolum, I would say that Australians are polite, courteous and law-abiding – that last adjective is based on the fact that the fastest we’ve seen anybody go is 120 in a 110 kph zone. This may, or may not, be due to the fact that we’ve seen more speed traps in 3 days than I think I’ve seen in 31 years of driving in Ontario.

I would also say that there is a deep paternalistic streak to the Australian culture – even deeper than in Canada, at least as regards driving. In addition to the speed traps, every few kilometres there is a sign threatening us with death: “Stop! Revive! Survive!”; “Tired Drivers Die!”; “Every K[ilometre] Over Is A Killer!”; and Greg’s favourite: “Rest or R.I.P.!” And whether intended or not, the message is reinforced, at least in Northern Queensland, by part of the landscape: every 40 or 50 kilometres, we pass a wrecked automobile that has been allowed to stay where it landed to rust out. Some of these accidents were obviously quite gruesome.

The drive today is easier than the prior 2 were: despite heavy clouds, we do not hit a single rain storm. The road is very flat – there are 2 sets of mountains that run parallel to the road – 1 east, 1 west (we suspect that on the west is the Great Dividing Range, which forms the boundary between the Wet Tropics and the Outback, but our maps do not confirm this) – but on the road, we have few ups and few downs. We decide to go to a campground that is right on the beach, in the town of Coolum Beach, on the Sunshine Coast (north of Brisbane, in contrast to the Gold Coast, which is south of Brisbane), and, if it is OK, to stay there for 2 nights.

When we stop for lunch at a nice picnic spot on a brook, we are surprised when we open the doors by the intensity of the heat. But this is what we’re craving after 9 days of monsoon, and so our decision to keep driving until we escape the rain has been confirmed.

As we drive into town, we pass an IGA, pick up some groceries and beer, and then head to the Maroochybeach Caravan Park, which is run by the local shire. As promised, it is on the seaward side of the coast road, but looking pretty barren otherwise – the grass is burnt, and there are few trees for shade.


Greg at home

Despite this, we park, then immediately walk over the dune on the boardwalk, and think we’ve died and gone to heaven! A wide, white soft sand beach (Flick: You were absolutely right about the noise the sand makes as you walk on it!) that goes on forever AND HAS ALMOST NO PEOPLE ON IT! We are hooked. We walk on the shore, and promise ourselves a moonlit walk later in the evening.



Looking north, and south, along Coolum Beach

Bird life in Australia is quite amazing, and it is different in Coolum Beach only because the birds appear to have no fear of humans. There are about 7 different kinds that will come right up to us if they think we have something they want – including (we think) crows, who talk (caw! caw!) continuously, and magpies.


Some of the birds who’ve visited us – let us know if you can identify any of them
After supper (another classic summer special: steak and salad, with a full-bodied, fruity merlot), we fulfill our promise, except the moon has not risen. The stars are beautiful, and we put the lessons Ruth and Flick gave us to work, identifying the Southern Cross and the False Southern Cross. We are standing on the shore, our feet in the surf, and there is nobody about. We rip off our clothes and run joyously into the water. It is one of those perfect nights that we will remember forever!

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We awake this morning after our first full night in our tidy but, sleeping-wise, cramped campervan to, wait…RAIN. I know it’s hard to believe. Our camper van island had been completely surrounded by water through the night and the drain unit that connects to our water and electricity hook up is completely covered with debris from the flood, trying to find somewhere to drain to.
We unhook and stow everything for the trip south. Despite a few rattles and rolls, things fit quite well in the space we are given and the trip is relatively hassle free.

However, the rain is not. It continues to pour. We have patches where we drive through perfectly dry but threatening skies, then all of a sudden, a wall of water. You can literally see it coming.


What it looks like from the passenger seat!

Today, we decide to do another big day of driving, by-passing famous Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands. It is so miserable we wouldn’t want to be there anyway. The road is somewhat boring with only the occasional vista to catch our eye. Banana and suger cane plantations continue to fill the wet view. We see lots of flooding and pass over many gushing, over-laden rivers and creeks.

Soon the landscape starts to change and we are in low valleys, away from the sea, with bogs and marshes. While it is still tropical, it is less lush. John comments on how much it looks like Florida. Wildlife is scarce but we do, however, see lots of big, exotic birds posing in the bogs. At one point, a wallaby bounds across the road in front of us. John wants to pull over and adopt him/her but we are in the middle of nowhere and I suggest we keep going. We don’t have any room in the camper van for it anyway. The lack of decent radio in AU is somewhat frustrating as my finger continues to push the “seek” button, looking for the right song or beat to keep us going. More importantly, we are listening for every weather report we can hear.

I have picked a few Caravan sites for us and we decide on “The Rambler Caravan Park” in North Rockhampton (or Rocky as the locals call it.) Rockhampton is known as the Beef Capital of Australia. (How’s that for a beef fact, Scooter? It ain’t Alberta.) We pull in and set up for the evening. The park backs onto the highway and we are right across from a big mall so we head over to Woolworths and pick up some supplies for supper. I stroll back to the camper to start dinner and John heads over to the internet store to confirm our flat rental for Sydney in 6 days.
The evening is warm and the sun is setting making the sky a brilliant orange and red. “Red sun at night…” John is almost praying. We hope this bodes well for tomorrow.

We have a typical Canadian summer meal…vodka tonics to start in our camp chairs outside the van, corn on the cob, new potatoes, and grilled chicken breasts. For an Aussie touch, fresh avocado. We finish with some fresh strawberries over vanilla ice cream and wash it all down with a lovely Wolf Blass Chardonnay.

We have logged over 640 km today and driven a total of 1100 km in the last two days…all of which was to out-run the rain. Successfully, we hope.

John and Greg’s Excellent Campervan Adventure

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The news this morning tells us that a cyclone has blown in from the Pacific, over the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea, and has landed a couple of hundred kilometres up the coast from Cairns – so heavy rains are expected in our vicinity.

We are leaving Cairns today in our campervan, beginning our drive to Sydney, 2600 kilometres to the south. We have allowed ourselves 8 days to do the drive, but given the weather forecast, we decide to get out of Cairns as quickly as possible, and just drive till we can’t drive any further. Although there are sights to see on the way down the coast, the rain will be with us until we leave the “wet tropics” – and we have voted to keep on going until we get out of the rain – you can’t see much through the blowing monsoon. About the only thing we can see as we drive is that this is sugar cane and banana country – in fact, the only crops we see today are sugar cane and banana. We have been hearing about the sugar cane farmers’ anger at the Australia-U.S. free trade agreement reached last weekend, which excludes sugar, and we get a strong sense, as we drive by all these hundreds of kilometres of sugar cane plantations, of how important this crop is to Queensland.

The campervan we get is an “upgrade”, slightly bigger than the one we had rented. We silently say “thank you” to our lucky stars – we can stow the suitcases in the additional berth, which is over the front seats, and won’t have to keep moving them around every time we want to go anywhere inside the campervan.

By the time we return the rental car, deal with the paperwork of the rental, and hit Woolworth’s to pick up some groceries, it is 1:30. It takes us till 7:00 to drive the 450 kilometres to Ayr, going mainly through heavy downpours. We decide to stop for the night, and get organized before it is completely dark. We get to the campground, and lucky for us, the rain is very light while we get set up. We are just nicely inside the campervan, pouring ourselves a much deserved v&t, when the heavens open wide.

Australia does not have compulsory auto insurance, and we are told that if anything happens, whether we are at fault or not, the rental agency will ding us for $10,000 and we will only get it back when and if they recover from the at-fault driver. We opt to purchase the best insurance coverage, at $35/day, which covers not only accidents, but also tires (or tyres, as they say here) and windshields, and at about 4 pm we are quite happy we did, as a passing truck shoots a rock onto the windshield and sure enough, a lovely long crack is the result.

We arrive in Ayr to a selection of campgrounds, and decide on an in-town site called the Burdekin Cascades Caravan Park. The rain continues and soon we have rivers gushing and surrounding our little campervan island. Greg has made pasta and salad for supper, as I run back and forth to the onsite laundry and move all the clothes that have been damp for 10 days from washer to dryer. We have a nice bottle of Wolf Blass merlot and all seems well with the world.

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain! And just when we thought the day might turn nice, yet more rain! Torrential, teaming, downpours of rain. This is not a complaint, simply an observation. It is warm, it is t-shirt and shorts weather. But it is wet. Very, very wet. We are 1/3 of the way through February, and Cairns is already over its normal February precipitation levels, well on the way to an all-time record.

We sleep late, work on the website, drive down the hill to town. After lunch and an hour at the internet café, we drive back up the hill for a lovely nap. After an hour, we drive back down the hill (the apartment we’ve rented in Sydney is, 1 week before arrival, no longer available and so we’re scrambling). The drive is relatively dry; then John shouts “Look!” and a literal wall of water appears and we drive into it. We push through torrential, cyclone like weather for the next 20 minutes. We have “white out” conditions with the rain.

We check the most recent email from the rental agency, pick a 1st and 2nd choice and email them back. We get a text message from Lynne and Brian – everyone texts here, rather than actually calling on their mobiles – and grab a quick bite of supper with them. Then it is back up the hill, our last trip up before we head down the coast towards Sydney tomorrow, and the damage from the downpour is everywhere in evidence, as John has to zig and zag around the downed branches and new rockslides. Over the last 10 days, as we’ve been driving this mountain, the road has been different every time – wet, dry, washouts, fog, rockslides, branches, frogs. The frogs freeze in the car’s headlights, and look right at you as you try to avoid running over them.

From left: Looking back at Cairns; Cairns airport control tower in front of the mountain we drive up and down regularly

Although it rains heavily again last night, the sun wakes us early – a good thing as we have booked dives for today, and we need to be on the pier by 8:00. We are diving from a different boat today than our other dives: while we appreciated everything that CDC and the Sunkist did for us, we want to expand our knowledge of the Reef and the company we are going with today with go to the northern outer reef. The sky stays clear for the 2 hour ride out; most of the people on the boat today are Japanese, and half the crew is also Japanese. We chat with a few people, and discover that we get along famously with two, Lynne and Brian, two friends from Sydney who have both bought condos in Cairns that they rent out, and who are up to inspect their properties. Lynne is diving, and will go out with Greg and me, while Brian will snorkel with some of the others.


Getting read to go!
Our first dive goes swimmingly, and we are both relieved that we don’t have to demonstrate our skills to anyone this time, and can focus on the dive itself. We see beautiful sights, the reef and the fish are so interesting and colourful – back up top, both Lynne and I comment on the same piece of coral – intense baby blue! We spend a few minutes as a group visiting with a big turtle, everyone just watching the turtle, and the turtle watching us, until he or she loses interest and swims away. Neither Greg nor I have yet mastered the art of not swimming, and we both run low on air about 30 minutes into our dive, surface and go back to the boat.


From left: everything OK; turtle; fish
Up top, one of Greg’s ears won’t equalize. In discussion with the crew, he decides not to do the afternoon dive, which will take place in a different part of Norman Reef. He and Brian go snorkelling, and Lynne and I and a German guy who lives in Nanjing, China, are buddies for the 2nd dive. We see some pink clownfish – Nemo’s cousins (Nemo is a false clownfish), and although I wish Greg were diving with me, I have a wonderful dive. Greg: The snorkel was just as wonderful, full of life and a warm, relaxing float for 40 minutes over the reef.


From left: Afternoon dive site; John with pink clownfish and anemones
Lynne, Brian, Greg and I drive to the CBD (downtown, except to Aussies) and find a touristy (is there anything else in Cairns?) restaurant on the Esplanade. We laugh through dinner, and agree that when we’re all back in Sydney we shall have to hang out together. Lynne talks about taking us diving with her gang near Sydney, and tells us that Sydney has the best shark diving in the world, and that we should really do it. Despite my fear, I am intrigued, and later that night dream of swimming with sharks, and realize in the morning that it was not a nightmare.

We wake to the surprising sound of absence of rain-if there is such a sound- for the first time in many days. Although still cloudy, the sun does make frequent appearances through the day, interspersed with a couple of intense, but brief, downpours. We drive down to Cairns – the radio is full of talk that a tropical depression is forming off the coast, which could bring on a cyclone mid-week – to meet Guy Hays for coffee. Guy is a native of Cairns – he must be one of very few who can claim this honour. Guy is a friend of my sister Ruth’s friend Veda, and Ruth and Guy have consequently become friends.

After a couple of hours of chat, learning about Cairns over the years and about what is going on at Liberty, our hotel (Guy worked there for a bit), we drive north to Port Douglas, a town about 45 kilometres north of Cairns, and generally reckoned as about as far as one can drive up the coast without a 4 wheel drive vehicle. All the way up, driving on the inside of the road, we pass beautiful beach after beautiful beach, and I am filled with longing to be in the water. When we get to Port Douglas, we find a town that is in the midst of a real estate boom – vacation villas and golf courses being built everywhere, taking with them much of the charm that would have made this area attractive.


Port Douglas Beach
After a stroll around the town and a drive up to the Lookout, we head down to the beach. It is hot, and I am looking forward to jumping in. But when we get there, we find the beach closed: in addition to the normal box jellyfish, which nets keep out, the waters are full of a 2nd type, much smaller, with long long tentacles that can come right through the nets, and which, if stung, can render you with permanent neurological damage, if not dead. The nets have even been pulled from the water, but the lifeguard is still there – we guess to enforce the no-swimming rule.

So we walk the beach and discover beach life: everywhere we see these interesting patterns made of little balls of sand. As we watch we realize that when we aren’t looking directly at them, they are full of life. We stand quietly, and these tiny little heads pop out of little holes in the sand. If you move, they go back down; if you don’t they will cautiously emerge and scurry around, disappearing again the minute you move. We can’t get close enough to know what they are, but they look a bit like miniature crabs.


From left: beach net lines; patterns in the sand
Driving back, we pass again the beautiful beaches, realizing now why they are so unpopulated, and wondering about the masochism of the few people who are actually sitting on the beach, knowing they can’t go near the water, not even to stick their toes in.

Looking south along the Queensland coast

We meet up with Guy again, and have Sunday night B-B-Q around the pool at one of the hotels in Cairns, gossiping and feeling as comfortable as old friends.

The morning starts with rain – it has been raining since we went to bed last night. The monsoon here comes normally during the nights. This year Queensland is getting more rain than normal, after 5 years of significantly lower rain than normal. Everything back at our room is damp - clothes don’t fully dry after getting them wet either from swimming or from the rain, and the covers of our books are all curling from the dampness they’ve absorbed. We have been wearing t-shirts and shorts almost exclusively: Cairns is not a fancy dress destination. We seem to fit right in with the budget travellers and backpackers and the locals with our thongs and surfer shorts.

There has been so much rain over the last few days that we go back to Barron Gorge to see what it looks like with water pouring over it. It is impressive, and the Aboriginal name, DinDin, is completely appropriate in English, even without translating its meaning. The area we are in is a UNESCO world heritage site – The Kuranda Range-the Wet Tropics, and much of the land we drive through going to and from Cairns is either national park or state forest.


Barron Gorge with water – compare to picture on Feb. 2

While we are up at Barron Gorge, the rain stops, and the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, as it will do all day. The temperature immediately jumps from 20° to 35° as we go down to Cairns to do some email and web updating. We stop at the Maui shop where we will be renting our campervan and check out the merchandise. Compact and efficient, it will suit our needs fine for our 8 day road trip to Sydney.

That evening we decide to drive the other direction for dinner, and after going down the mountain we turn left away from Cairns, and head to one of the many beach towns that line the coast, Trinity Beach. On the way, we stop and take a picture of our favourite road sign.


One of John’s favourite road signs

We have read in a couple of our guides about a trattoria, L’Unico, that is right on the beach, and this is our intended destination. We find it after a couple of wrong turns, walk in to discover that it is a very popular restaurant, and we are the newest people in a long line waiting for tables. But we are lucky: there are only two of us, everyone else is waiting for a bigger table, and a deuce comes up quickly. We have a wonderful meal, the best we’ve had in Queensland by a long shot, and probably the best we’ve had in Australia. We have wonderful service, which we have been in Australia long enough to appreciate is the exception and not the rule.

For his main, Greg has a risotto with scallops, with the pink meat still attached to the white. He pronounces it delicious. I try something new to us: Moreton Bay Bugs, a shellfish that looks like a prawn with a lobster tail. They have been steamed in white wine and garlic, and prove well worth the gamble. In the busy atmosphere of the evening, one of the owners, Aldo, finds a couple of minutes to sit and chat with us and offers us a drink on the house, a personal touch strikingly reminiscent of the attention we’ve had in restaurants in Italy.

After dinner, making wonderful noises of contentment, we drive back to our hotel. I decide on a late night swim, and walking back to the room I hear laughter coming from the tree behind me. I swear I thought it was my mother’s wonderful infectious laugh. I wheel around, realizing as I do that I must have just heard a kookaburra. Of course I can’t see it, in the dark, but the next morning we see a kookaburra in a tree near our room.

Just as we are getting ready for bed, the rain starts again, and the frogs begin their nocturnes, lulling us gently to sleep.

Happy Birthday to Foster Wattles on February 9!


Success! We are certified divers.

Well, that treading water for 10 minutes and swimming 200 metres on Tuesday, February 3rd was only the beginning of one of the most exciting and eventful parts of our journey so far. As of Friday, February 6th, 2004, John and I are PADI Certified Open Water Divers, but more of that later.

Some Filler detail: John booked with The Cairns Dive Center or CDC as they are known locally. They offered us a four day “budget” dive course on the Reef which involved two days of theory and pool work, followed by two days diving on the Reef, after which you are certified (if you pass the written tests and the open water skills tests.) as an Open Water Diver. This is a limited certification and does not allow you to dive on wrecks, in certain areas, or below 18 metres. Further certification is available, the more diving you do.
These tests are both physically and mentally challenging and I wasn’t so sure that I was up for the task. The class that started right after ours had a student drop out after one lap of the 200 metre pool swim! We find out later that most students do the 5 day course where, after 2 days of classroom and pool work, you go to the mother ship, which is stationed on the Reef for 1 month at a time, and you get two night’s accommodation and three days of diving. Anyone who did the 5 day course got 4 extra dives including a night dive. (Barbara Colley, you know how exciting that is!) We had already paid for our hotel, which wouldn’t refund us, so after the 2 days on land and pool, we were separated from our group and we did two day trips to the Great Barrier Reef for our open water skills tests.

You tend to bond with the other people in your class and your instructor, so it was difficult to say good-bye to the other six: Birgit and Pedro (Belgian), Johannes (German), J.J. (Danish), Craig (British), and Madoka (Japanese). (The United Nations should consider moving to Cairns – every nationality seems to be represented here, and unlike the other U.N., everyone seems to get along great here.)

Our instructor was a seasoned veteran with years of diving experience all around the world. She was professional, fun, serious about diving, and most importantly, had a wicked, wonderful sense of humour. She also seemed to love teaching new divers and took great pride in passing on her considerable expertise. She knew everyone’s names and idiosyncrasies immediately, and made a extremely strenuous process fun. THANKS, LEANNE! for giving us what we needed to get certified. We had a wonderful time. We are so sorry we couldn’t do the mother ship and especially the night dive with you. Thanks for finding us on the day boat and encouraging us and congratulating us after our last certification dive. We will always remember these four days. How did J.J. do???

John:
Our time in the pool was fairly easy. I was very worried about my ears popping because I have always had problems with my ears when diving into pools. But the way we were taught, this wasn’t a problem for me. After over 6 hours in the pool (which had a depth of 4 metres) over the 2 days, we were pretty confident about our open water testing. But the first day of open water skills testing dawned with no dawn – the monsoon was going full force when we woke up. We had to be at school by 7:15 (school, by the way, was a 40 minute drive down the mountain through the monsoon, on winding, 180° hairpin turn, narrow-wrong-side-roads) to do our written exam (we both passed with flying colours).

By the time we got to the dock, the rain had stopped but our view back over Cairns was of romantic rainforest clouds hovering over the tops of the Kuranda Range Mountains. The 90 minute boat ride out to the Outer Reef was turbulent, with swells of between 7 and 10 metres, and a couple of people got seasick. We both seemed immune to that particular malady.

We enter the water: OHMIGOD! (to quote Donna LaPointe). It is not like a pool. Greg tells me he panicked, because his snorkel kept filling with water. They tell you to breathe through your snorkel when you are on the surface, to conserve your air for the dive. They forgot to add that when the swells are big (not as big as on the ride out, because the effect of being on the reef is that the water is calmer, but still big), you should breathe through your regulator even on the surface because your snorkel will not work if you get swamped. As well, Greg was freaked out because with the buddy system that divers use, we were supposed to stay together at all times – but with 20 other people fighting their way into the water, he couldn’t see me – I was already 1 metre under the water, forced down the anchor line we were to hold by the crowds. Unlike Greg, I was ready for the crowd – what freaked me out were the noises – who knew that air bubbles from 20 people could be so loud? Water conducts sound much more efficiently than air – so sounds are intensified.

We separate from the crowd with our instructor for the day, J.P, and go through our first set of open water skills, which we’ve already done in the pool, and learn that when your instructor shakes your hand underwater, that means you’ve passed that particular skill. Then we get a swim through the reef – magnificent, six stories high and so alive that you don’t know where to look, although the brightness of everything is muted because there is still no sun today. Despite which, the neon-coloured reef fish darting here and there, are exquisite. This first dive went to a depth of 10 metres, and lasted for 23 minutes.

After lunch on the boat, we begin our second dive. We know what to expect, and it goes very smoothly. We go to about the same depth, but have a dive of 35 minutes this time. Again, it is beautiful down there, and this time we swim through an arch complex in the reef, called the Labyrinth, and see this time a Maori wrasse (a very big fish!), who takes no notice of us. We hold a sea cucumber, stick small star fish to our masks and are generally in awe of the spectacle of the Reef. The ride back to shore is one of exhilaration – we have completed half our underwater skills testing. We chat with one of the crew, Michael, who has moved from Ireland to Australia with his girlfriend, to get his advanced diving certifications. Although he studied law, his passion is cinematography, and he is hoping that he will be able to do underwater cinematography. He knows Canada well, having attended Lester Pearson College on Vancouver Island. We are back on land by about 4:30, quickly check emails and update the web, grab a quick dinner, then drive up the mountain and fall exhausted to sleep.

Friday starts again with the monsoon going full force. We get to sleep a little later this morning – we don’t have to be on the boat until 8:30. The drive down the mountain is worse today – it is far windier than yesterday, and it has been raining heavily since 10:30 the night before – there are lots of rockslides that we have to negotiate around. We are the first guests to the boat at 8:20, and the crew tell us that it will be an ugly trip out to the reef – the wind is blowing a steady 25 knots, much harder than yesterday, and we will be sailing into the rising tide. Sure enough, visibility is almost nil for the entire ride to the reef, and 7 or 8 people (but again not us) are seasick on the way. We chuckle to ourselves, having seen this same thing the day before. We are seasoned sailors! When we moor on the reef, it is far rougher than yesterday and even 45 kilometres offshore the rain is driving, but in we plunge with Chris, who is administering our final open water skill tests.

We immediately go down to the bottom – at 14 meters, 3 metres deeper than we got yesterday. Our first test today is to fill our masks half-way with water, then to expel the water – something you need to be able to do to unfog your mask if necessary. This is something we have practiced and practiced, both in the pool and yesterday in the open water. I go first, and don’t realize that when I put my mask back onto my face, the skirt on one side has folded under the lens. When I open my eyes (I do these things with my eyes closed because of my contact lens) my mask is full of water. I lift it away from my face again and blow, and again when I open my eyes my mask is full of water. This time, so is my nose, and I am swallowing salt water that has come through my nose. I try one more time, it doesn’t work again, and I can feel panic setting in. By this time, Chris has grabbed my BCD vest, and is holding the regulator in place in my mouth, and the only thing that keeps me from doing an emergency ascent is the fact that Chris is holding tight, and I trust that if this were a real emergency, we’d be on our way up already. He puts a finger on my mask, and I finally realize that the skirt is not sitting properly. So I adjust it, still on the verge of panic, and just sit calmly, catching my breath, letting the panic ebb away, all with my eyes still closed. Finally, I lift the bottom of the mask, blow for all it is worth, and my mask clears. Thank god! We sit quietly, Chris keeps asking (via hand gesture) if I’m OK, I keep saying I’m OK, although I’m not really feeling very OK. When I can convincingly gesture that I am really OK, he gets Greg to do this routine, and Greg of course does it flawlessly, first time. We do our other skills tests, and get through them with no problem, and then do our swim. I am still not totally happy to be underwater, and am glad when we finally surface after 30 minutes.

After lunch, we go down again. Our skill tests after lunch are full mask removal and hovering, and I am anxious to get them over – still concerned about this morning’s experience. Down we go, to 15 metres, and Chris makes me go first – he has no heart! But I do it, and do it perfectly the first time. The relief that floods over me is intense. Greg does his, getting it perfect, and then we hover. It is a bit like sitting on a flying carpet. At this point, Chris indicates we have passed all our skills, and are certified divers. We go for a swim, and it is the most wonderful swim I’ve ever taken. Pure relaxation and enjoyment and happiness that Greg and I have done this thing together.

When we get back to the boat, the monsoon has finally stopped, and although the sun is not out, the water is calm. JP announces to the crew and other divers that we are certified, and there are cheers and clapping. Michael from Ireland takes the picture of the two of us. We are so happy!

Greg and John are doing their scuba diving certification right now, on the Great Barrier Reef. No kidding, we're fishin' (or fish watching, anyway). Back Sunday, with stories.

Hi Joanne Weaver: Happy Birthday (February 4) from the Rain Forest – you would absolutely love it here!

I awake from a somewhat sleepless night of unfamiliar rainforest bird calls and various forms of cicada boisterously screeching in a constant crescendo and decrescendo, each species trying to outdo each other in noisy leg rubbing. I do need some reminding that we are living on top of a mountain in a rainforest. We have seen big white cockatoos, geckos, and tree frogs, and have heard many other unknown animals. The cockatoos will steal your food if you aren’t careful.

John has been up since seven and I keep the pillow pulled over my head until at least 9 o’clock. The tumultuous thunder and lightning storm from the night before has completely faded and the morning has broken with brilliant sunshine and a gentle breeze.

I pull on a pair of cotton shorts and a t-shirt and head up to the main building for breakfast. John has already had his cereal, juice and coffee and has sourced out a 4 day diving certification course run from Cairns. Two days of theory, then two days of diving on the “Reef”. We had talked about being certified (diving, that is) when we had begun laying plans for our trip and what better place to do it than the Great Barrier Reef. John makes the call and Trevor is helpful with details and expectations and we book the time. We both have to be able to swim 200 meters and tread water for 10 minutes. I plan to spend some time in the pool today seeing if I can actually do this.

Our day today is completely unplanned. The only thing we have to do is spend time by the pool. Which we do, at least until it is time for lunch. We head to Kuranda to post a letter, grab lunch, and do our usual scouting of an internet café that will let us use our laptop. This has been an unexpected hurdle so far, so when we find one, we try to strike up a relationship with the owner. In the car, we immediately break sweat and, the wusses that we are, crank the AC – although not as hot as yesterday (it is only 31°), the humidity makes the heat intense.

We spend a bit of time walking around Kuranda, sweating up a storm. After a couple of tries, we find an internet place that is willing to let us bring in our laptop.

After lunch, we walk around the shops – Kuranda is noted for its market – and note with interest the large number of Korean tourists whose dress (long sleeves and pants) strikes us as cute, given the intensity of the heat. Then up to Barron Gorge, where the Barron River used to tumble out and has created a wonderful cataract. We had hoped that, after yesterday evening’s rains, the waterfall would be interesting, but alas, the gorge is barren – with only a bridal veil of water. The river’s water is diverted above the gorge, and used to produce electricity. The locals tell us that the only time the gorge is alive is when the power authorities open the dam. We meet two charming Aboriginal women, Mavis and Glady, who are viewing the gorge (and spreading the Lord’s word). We offer to take their picture together in front of the gorge, and they offer us everlasting salvation.


Barron Gorge

There is a walk through the rain forest to the Barron Gorge train station (there are a train and a gondola (7.5 kilometres!) that go up the mountain and through the rain forest from Cairns to Kuranda) that is mainly on bridges, to avoid damaging the forest floor as much as possible. We enjoy exploring the rain forest – so different from a North American forest. One of the things we find fascinating are all the air roots that the trees have.


From left: John on bridge in rain forest, air roots

We get back to the resort and are ever so glad to jump into the pool. We spend the afternoon either in the pool or napping under the umbrellas, and on returning to our hut are surprised to see how pink we both are, despite having stayed covered except when in the pool.

Heavy thunderclouds started to gather in the sky just as we finished lunch, and just as we finish pouring ourselves a late afternoon vodka tonic, the heavens open, the lightning flashes and thunder roars – for about 20 minutes, bringing wonderful coolness when they are done.

At dinner (wonderful again) we discover that there are so few people here because it is monsoon season. They tell us that in another month the place will be hopping. Walking back, the tree frogs are singing up a storm – and apparently the fact that they are singing means there will be another rainstorm this evening. We see fruit bats hanging from the palms. They are quite amazing to watch – the most sensual consumption of food since Albert Finney played Tom Jones. And when they fly overhead, there is a gentle flapping noise and you can feel the movement of the air.

S16°
E145°

We blow out of Melbourne relatively easily today with many wonderful memories. We are completely impressed and enchanted with it, and leave wishing we could stay. Everywhere you look there are magnificent parks and sculptures and monuments. Even the freeways have interesting sculpture to look at as you drive along.

We make all our connections to the airport ahead of time, so have time to kill when we get there. We call John’s mom and have a nice chat with her. Virgin Blue didn’t hit us up for our overweight baggage on the flight from Adelaide to Melbourne, and they don’t again today. I guess they are having too much fun at their jobs. We have two flights today to reach Cairns - Melbourne to Brisbane (2 hours) and Brisbane to Cairns (2 ½ hours), all of which are easy and carefree. We buy two wraps, two Diet Cokes and a small can of Pringles on the plane for lunch - $19.50 Aus. We were starving and couldn’t grab food quickly enough between connections. Such is the future of air travel!

We deplane through the back of the plane, and are immediately hit with 38° humidity. We have left coolish and overcast 22° in Melbourne. It is a big change. We both immediately break sweat and are drenched. We are far north, much closer to the equator: we hadn’t really understood how far north we would be. Here are some locator comparisons: food for thought:

Cairns (pronounced either Kens or Cannes – you choose) is about the same latitude as Fiji.

In North America, Laguna Niguel, California is as far north of the equator as Sydney is south: both at 33°.

In Central America, Guatemala is as far north of the equator as Cairns is south of the equator.

In Africa, Senegal and Mali are as far north of the equator as Cairns is south of the equator.

(And for those of you who didn’t recognize these tidbits of information, they are John Mountain Facts ©).

We are staying at Liberty, a resort that is situated in the Kuranda rain forest reserve. Although only 7 kilometres as the crow flies, we drive out of Cairns for about 25 kilometres, up and further up over windy mountainous roads until we reach the resort.


Overlooking Cairns and the Coral Sea

John is driving – again it is on the wrong side. “Keep Left!” the dashboard in the rental car reminds us. It is Sunday at about 4 p.m. The resort encompasses about 1 square kilometre of land that is all rainforest. And there is nobody here!!! There are 50 (or that was the last number we could see) self-contained huts based on a Balinese A frame dwelling. Ours has two sleeping areas and the room we choose has an a/c unit – very nice indeed. There are also about 15 very nice “barracks” rooms with full porches closer to the main building. We check in, do the quick tour with Duran, unpack and head up to the pool which is situated just behind our “hut”. The pool is set in the most glamorous setting of natural rock and native palm and fern with two water falls - it is like swimming in your own lagoon. There seem to be only us and 4 women here, but while we are unpacking another couple checks in. Duran tells us that there are only 4 huts in use tonight.


From left: 2 views of the pool, the dining room

We don’t quite understand why there are so few people here – the huts are wonderful! We have two bedrooms, wonderful furniture, and our own Bang & Olufsen sound system.


Home Sweet Home, for 10 days anyway

We head up to a wonderful dinner at about 7:15, sitting poolside and outdoors but covered. We both have barramundi, grilled and caught within seeing distance, and salad, and watch an incredible thunderstorm start to develop over the Coral Sea, with glimpses of lightning through the palm trees heralding the thunderous booming of the rest of the storm. The rain starts gently, ever so, and then moves on to a warm, dancing torrent on the tin roof. North Queensland is tropical, and while it gets quite a lot of rain annually, most of it falls in the summer – and from the rain tonight, it would appear that “monsoon” is an appropriate description.

Sitting at the table, we listen as the afternoon cicadas sign off and the evening cicadas take over. When the rain starts the frogs join in, as Duran had earlier told us they would if it rained. John and I finish our dinner to this exquisite symphony, and head back to our hut so that we can watch the lightning and listen to the thunder rumble and the rain tumble on the roof at home. Before we leave, Duran asks if we want an umbrella. This rain is warm and gentle and inviting. It asks that you to come outside and play with it. Getting wet is the most important part – no umbrella necessary!

It is the rainforest, after all.

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