The other day, I found out something new to tease Aussies about. It all started when Laing commented on my handwriting. "Hey Kate, why do you have such funny handwriting? It's running writing, but with a few print letters in there."
"Sorry, Laing, what was that you called it again?" I asked, a bit confused
"Running writing. Plus a few print letters."
"You mean cursive?"
"...what's cursive?"
RUNNING WRITING! Jeez, Australia! Please feel free to tease any Aussies you know about that silliness.
Well, Darwin was good fun - humid as, but fun. We went to a few markets, including one that had these two funny fire twirlers. They had all this older jazzy music on and were a bit vaudevilleish. It reminded me a bit of Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor in Singin' in the Rain during that fiddle song, actually. Really quite splendid. We also toured the Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory where we saw Sweetheart, a stuffed 3.8 metre saltie that they caught off the Daly River after he got too aggressive with boat attacks. They meant to just capture him, but he got caught on a sunken log when they were towing him back and drowned. So they stuffed him and put him there. So big! They also had some interesting skeletons of a giant flightless goose (Imagine a 1 metre tall goose!) and a marsupial rhino. I'm starting to think there's a marsupial version of everything now! Rhinos, lions, tapirs, elephants, etc. I also bought my plane ticket home - I arrive on the 15th of December at 12:!5am. :)
We then headed to Litchfield National Park where we saw our first frill-necked lizard...and then proceeded to honk at and try to avoid running it over since it was in the middle of the road... There's some lovely swimming holes as well as magnetic termite mounds. The area floods so the termites can't burrow underground like most others do so they build up! Being ever so clever, they've discovered that if you build the mounds in a north to south orientation, the mound catches the best sun and keeps it warm - important since they are so temperature sensitive. Tons of these in a field. Pretty awesome how they developed their directional senses. As for rockpools, Wangi Falls is this pretty big lagoon with two waterfalls falling down a huge cliff. Mind you, freshwater crocs inhabit the area and sometimes salties get in....but everyone went in anyway and it was quite refreshing. We stopped by another one called Buley Rockpool - it's all these small but quite deep rockholes along a stream. Those were great too. We were sitting there, enjoying the water when up popped a yellow-spotted water monitor, just chilling next to us. We saw that one at the Gunlom rockpool in Kakadu as well, but we weren't sure what it was. It hung out for a few minutes, then made me nervous by slipping back under water and disappearing. Lovely.
We headed down the center...saw a lot of dead cows on the side of the road...still no big red kangaroos. We did stop off at the Devils Marbles - big rocks shaped like, well, marbles. We walked around there for a bit, taking fun pictures and being attacked by flies, giant grasshoppers and spinifex (this grass that grows all through the center and is SHARP!) Alice Springs came up next...it was okay. It was cold and rainy when we got there, all the people we met weren't very friendly at all, and one of those sensor doors decided to close on my foot and not get off until I forced it off even though I was walking through the door. We did stop in Bojangles Saloon for a beer since Dad went there and said it was like an old western saloon with the swingy doors and such. It was a pretty funny pub - they like to take the piss, I think! The bathroom doors had Pull handles on the left side of the door, but it was a Push door and on the right. The toilets were clear plastic with barbed wire inside so when you glance it looks like you might hurt yourself! The sinks were also quite funny - you turn one handle on, but a sink down the line somewhere else turns on so you have to walk down there to wash your hands and such. :) I was quite amused. We also popped into the Reptile Centre - we saw another frill-necked lizard, among lots of other cool things- and enjoyed a talk about reptiles...then were made to hold them. I first held a Bearded Dragon - if you've ever seen one, they look sharp and painful! But the points on their sides feel like rubber. Pretty awesome. Then I held a Blue-Tongued Skink, who kept trying to nestle under my jumper...and finally, I held a 7 kilo Olive Python named Honey...which wasn't as bad or terrifying as I expected. For a snake, Honey was quite...sweet. :) Crazy. She certainly loved Laing as well. She kept trying to nestle in his fluffy hair and taste his face. Afterwards, they said it's seeing if you're edible - I think Honey may have thought Laing was edible the way she kept tasting him...maybe he shouldn't be around snakes anymore.
As we've been driving down, Laing and I were both waiting for this deserty harshness that everyone knows the center for. I mean, this is the harsh, inhospitable center where you hear about people dying these horrid deaths! Here I am, pretty much picturing something like the Sahara Desert with a bit more shrubbery but no, all we see is green grass, tree and wildflowers. We finally asked a petrol attendant and apparently this year is a fluke. At that point, they'd gotten 30 inches of rain already, when they usually get 2 for the whole year! We were worrying about making it up north before the wet season so that we didn't get flooded in/out, but apparently we should've worried about the middle since the road was flooded one evening and we had to go back a bit. It'd gone down the next day so it was all kosher. At least all the rain cooled down the temperatures a bit.
We finally made it to Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park. We started at Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) where we did lots of walks and a Ranger talk - all very interesting about the rock itself as well as the 3 Aborginal tribes in the area who consider it one of their sacred sites. Interestingly enough, many people make the trip to Uluru mainly to climb it (I didn't even know you could climb it....but anyway), but you shouldn't as it's a sacred land. In the Cultural Centre, there's even this big bit asking you not to climb. The Aborigines and Rangers want to close it since many people have died but they can't because of tourism (they're afraid people won't come if they can't climb it, plus tourism companies use political pressure to keep it open as well as advertise it heaps anyway). Also, these tribes itry to avoid conflict whenever possible, plus they believe it's part of our culture to climb Uluru. So, although it's forbidden in their culture to climb it, they allow us to do so because they think it's part of our culture. I thought that was interesting. And thought it quite rude of all those people to just go ahead and climb it anyway when they seriously ask you not to. Anyway, Uluru is amazing! It may be just a giant sandstone, but it's so neat! Definitely worth the trip into the middle. We managed to get up at 5:15am (!!!) to make it to see the sunrise over Uluru - very pretty - and see a sunset on it as well. Great pictures of it to upload later. In the same park, there's also Kata Tjuta (aka The Olgas) which was so fantastic too! We did the Valley of the Winds walk, which takes you through them and it was lovely. Really gorgeous! Because of all this rain, there were streams and waterfalls as well as heaps of wildflowers and goodness. My favorite walk, for sure.
Next up was Kings Canyon, where we did a lovely 6 km hike along the rim of the canyon - it takes you up to the very top and you hike around it with a great view of the canyon itself, the land out below and the domes on top. The top's super interesting as it used to be the floor and sand dunes of the Inland Sea that used to be in Aus ages ago. Some of the stones have fossilized ripples on them as well as a few critters. Plus the domes have these crazy cross sections where wind blew sand from all different directions and it all hardened. There's a great little lush area in the middle of the canyon called the Garden of Eden as well. It was quite a nice hike!
Now time to end this super long post. We're currently in Port Augusta starting to look for a wee bit of work to get us through Adelaide, Melbourne and back to Sydney. Wish us luck!
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
I'm starting to think big kangaroos don't even exist.
There are two horrible things trying to attack me. Evil bloodsucking mozzies and the wretchedly persistent face-eating flies. Mozzies are bad enough, but the world has them, I suppose. And my horrible swelling allergic reaction is just my genes, I guess (Gee thanks, parents). But the flies....they just don't take no for an answer! They follow you EVERYWHERE and go for the eyes and ears and nose! WHY?! Why do the cavities in my ears appeal to them?! I don't understand. Anyway, I'll be happy to get waaaay down south and far away from these evil flies once we get down that way.
Well, we left Cairns about a week ago and headed west. We stopped by Normanton to see the statue of Krys the Savananah King - the largest crocodile ever recorded and verified. Krys was killed by a woman back in the day and was 8.63metres long - 28 feet and some odd inches. It was SO BIGGGGG. It's head was like the size of me! We continued on and made it into the Northern Territory. NT is an interesting place. It's very, very flat - much like North Dakota, and no one seems to care much about rules. The speed limit is 130kph - very exciting! We stayed at the caravan park in Daly Waters and had a pint at the pub - it's the oldest licensed pub in Australia. We swung through Katherine as well - we'll stop by the Nitmiluk National Park on the way back down and up to Kakadu National Park for a few days.
Our first day there, Laing and I climbed up the Gunlom escarpment and there were heaps of freshwater rock pools up there to swim in - don't have to worry about crocs since it was fresh and high up! (Can't really swim anywhere else up here...salties'll get ya!) So, everyone knew the pools were up there because they talked to the Ranger, but I didn't - Laing had talked to the Ranger since i was making afternoon tea and forgot that they were up there so I wasn't wearing a swimsuit! As it was hot as and the flies just wanting to eat your face...well the only logically thing to do was dive right on in fully clothed. Quite refreshing too - the wet clothes keep you cool on the way down the escarpment. Later on, we did a little hike to see some ancient Aboriginal rock art - that was pretty sweet and I'll post my photos soon. We also hiked around a billabong - gotta watch out for crocs there too. The water was pretty far away from the path since it's the dry season and it had strunk, but it was super cool to see all the birdlife! TONS of birds in the water! Egrets, magpie geese, pelicans (are huge!!!! SERIOUSLY! HUGE!), ducks, black cockatoos, etc. just all in the water chilling. Part of me was horribly wishing for a Discovery Channel moment of a croc leaping up and catching a bird, but that didn't happen. But camping here isn't so fun. There is no breeze. It's just stiflingly hot at night. I pretty much lay awake using a Paronella Park big pamphlet as my fan. Not fun at all!
On the second day, we were going to the Yellow River wetlands at 8am for a tour with a Ranger, however, we got there at 8am and no one was there! So off we went to tour ourselves. There were two lovely little billabongs full of interesting critters. On our way back, we passed the Ranger and tour group - so we figured our clocks must be wrong. And so they were, because the middle of Aus is 30 minutes ahead of the east coast....what the heck, Australia? Normal countries do hour differences....not 30 minutes. The West Coast goes back to normal and is an hour. When I questioned Laing on this, he just shrugged his shoulders and walked away like it wasn't odd. Further proof that Australia and it's inhabitants are more than just a little bit strange. We went on a few more hikes and went to an Aboriginal pandanus palm weaving class - basically we tried to learn how to strip the palms so you can use the soft bits to weave. Laing and I sort of got it by the end, but not really. :) After that, we went back to the van, but the battery was dead for no good reason. The Ranger that was helping with the class didn't have a radio or jumper cables and told us to walk 1km to the Border Shop. Fortunately, an older European woman was there and had some so she and her husband helped us out. Not 5 minutes later, as we're driving, we hear a loud, horrible tire-hitting-something-bad pop. There was a bit of metal in the road that you couldn't see and we hit it. Laing pulled over so I could hop out of the car to check the tires and sure enough, the back left tire was wheezing air and sinking fast. So we pop on the spare and continue on our way. On the way out of Kakadu, there's the Mamukula Wetlands and as Laing loves wetlands and swamps, he wanted to stop - the magpie geese migrate there to eat bulbs in the area so it's supposed to be pretty cool. We'd been driving for awhile so we hoped the battery was charged, but I was worried as it died...for no reason. But, we risk it, and go see the geese. It wasn't that exciting. Outside the viewing platform, there was a really cute wallaby eating something with a little wagtail perched on it's back. I thought that was far more interesting than the dadgum birds. Anyway, we get back to the van and it's deaaaaaad. So Laing decides to clean off the battery terminals and check the connection - mind you, we have no reception and if anyone comes that way, unless they have jumpers, all they can do is drive somewhere and call someone for us. It was all okay though, as it was just a loose connection - hopefully we just have to buy the 2 new tires and not a new battery!
So now we're in Darwin and will have to see what cities in the Northern Territory are like. :D And see what other weird roadkill we see...in NT, they don't have fences for their cattle in parts. Because the roads aren't that highly traveled, I think they figured to just leave it out. But that means you have to watch for the cows on the road. Most have enough sense to keep off, but we did see a few dead cows on the side of the road. Along with the usual wallabies and possums...but someone had been out killing boars and these were BIG boars. I hope they wanted to come back to find them and weren't just being horrible because one was draped across a Floodway sign and a few more were propped up against other signs...oh and we saw a dead CAMEL. I haven't even seen a live camel in Aus, but yes, I've seen a dead one so I guess they really do exist here. America is going to seem so normal once I get back. :)
Well, we left Cairns about a week ago and headed west. We stopped by Normanton to see the statue of Krys the Savananah King - the largest crocodile ever recorded and verified. Krys was killed by a woman back in the day and was 8.63metres long - 28 feet and some odd inches. It was SO BIGGGGG. It's head was like the size of me! We continued on and made it into the Northern Territory. NT is an interesting place. It's very, very flat - much like North Dakota, and no one seems to care much about rules. The speed limit is 130kph - very exciting! We stayed at the caravan park in Daly Waters and had a pint at the pub - it's the oldest licensed pub in Australia. We swung through Katherine as well - we'll stop by the Nitmiluk National Park on the way back down and up to Kakadu National Park for a few days.
Our first day there, Laing and I climbed up the Gunlom escarpment and there were heaps of freshwater rock pools up there to swim in - don't have to worry about crocs since it was fresh and high up! (Can't really swim anywhere else up here...salties'll get ya!) So, everyone knew the pools were up there because they talked to the Ranger, but I didn't - Laing had talked to the Ranger since i was making afternoon tea and forgot that they were up there so I wasn't wearing a swimsuit! As it was hot as and the flies just wanting to eat your face...well the only logically thing to do was dive right on in fully clothed. Quite refreshing too - the wet clothes keep you cool on the way down the escarpment. Later on, we did a little hike to see some ancient Aboriginal rock art - that was pretty sweet and I'll post my photos soon. We also hiked around a billabong - gotta watch out for crocs there too. The water was pretty far away from the path since it's the dry season and it had strunk, but it was super cool to see all the birdlife! TONS of birds in the water! Egrets, magpie geese, pelicans (are huge!!!! SERIOUSLY! HUGE!), ducks, black cockatoos, etc. just all in the water chilling. Part of me was horribly wishing for a Discovery Channel moment of a croc leaping up and catching a bird, but that didn't happen. But camping here isn't so fun. There is no breeze. It's just stiflingly hot at night. I pretty much lay awake using a Paronella Park big pamphlet as my fan. Not fun at all!
On the second day, we were going to the Yellow River wetlands at 8am for a tour with a Ranger, however, we got there at 8am and no one was there! So off we went to tour ourselves. There were two lovely little billabongs full of interesting critters. On our way back, we passed the Ranger and tour group - so we figured our clocks must be wrong. And so they were, because the middle of Aus is 30 minutes ahead of the east coast....what the heck, Australia? Normal countries do hour differences....not 30 minutes. The West Coast goes back to normal and is an hour. When I questioned Laing on this, he just shrugged his shoulders and walked away like it wasn't odd. Further proof that Australia and it's inhabitants are more than just a little bit strange. We went on a few more hikes and went to an Aboriginal pandanus palm weaving class - basically we tried to learn how to strip the palms so you can use the soft bits to weave. Laing and I sort of got it by the end, but not really. :) After that, we went back to the van, but the battery was dead for no good reason. The Ranger that was helping with the class didn't have a radio or jumper cables and told us to walk 1km to the Border Shop. Fortunately, an older European woman was there and had some so she and her husband helped us out. Not 5 minutes later, as we're driving, we hear a loud, horrible tire-hitting-something-bad pop. There was a bit of metal in the road that you couldn't see and we hit it. Laing pulled over so I could hop out of the car to check the tires and sure enough, the back left tire was wheezing air and sinking fast. So we pop on the spare and continue on our way. On the way out of Kakadu, there's the Mamukula Wetlands and as Laing loves wetlands and swamps, he wanted to stop - the magpie geese migrate there to eat bulbs in the area so it's supposed to be pretty cool. We'd been driving for awhile so we hoped the battery was charged, but I was worried as it died...for no reason. But, we risk it, and go see the geese. It wasn't that exciting. Outside the viewing platform, there was a really cute wallaby eating something with a little wagtail perched on it's back. I thought that was far more interesting than the dadgum birds. Anyway, we get back to the van and it's deaaaaaad. So Laing decides to clean off the battery terminals and check the connection - mind you, we have no reception and if anyone comes that way, unless they have jumpers, all they can do is drive somewhere and call someone for us. It was all okay though, as it was just a loose connection - hopefully we just have to buy the 2 new tires and not a new battery!
So now we're in Darwin and will have to see what cities in the Northern Territory are like. :D And see what other weird roadkill we see...in NT, they don't have fences for their cattle in parts. Because the roads aren't that highly traveled, I think they figured to just leave it out. But that means you have to watch for the cows on the road. Most have enough sense to keep off, but we did see a few dead cows on the side of the road. Along with the usual wallabies and possums...but someone had been out killing boars and these were BIG boars. I hope they wanted to come back to find them and weren't just being horrible because one was draped across a Floodway sign and a few more were propped up against other signs...oh and we saw a dead CAMEL. I haven't even seen a live camel in Aus, but yes, I've seen a dead one so I guess they really do exist here. America is going to seem so normal once I get back. :)
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Up north
It's still weird to me to think of things in a Southern Hemisphere kinda way. For example, birds / old people :) migrate south in the winter. Here, they migrate north. Weird. That sort of thing. It just sounds wrong. Anyway, we're up in the waaaaarm north areas.
Laing and I arrived in Cairns on the 20th, stumbled across some fun markets where I tried my first lychees (yum!) and starapple (super yum!). It also was apparently Peace Week and they had some bands playing as well as some cultural performances which were pretty interesting. We were planning on scuba diving, but alas, we got Paul, our van, in the shop for his yearly inspection and he'll cost about $500. Mind you, that's pretty good considering he's a 1998 and driven around soooo much. But it's all good, we've been entertaining ourselves with other natural wonders.
We drove up to Daintree National Park and Cape Tribulation. The Daintree is the oldest surviving rainforest on the planet! It has some trees (such as the 'idiot fruit tree', lol) that haven't changed in years - like they were the same when dinosaurs lived! We went to the Daintree Discovery Centre that takes you on an aerial walkway so you can view the rainforest from different levels, the floor, midway up the canopy and from the very top. It was pretty cool. Sadly, it had just finished raining so the mozzies were quite thick and attacked me. I was quite itchy after all 30 million of my bites. :(
The Daintree area is separated a bit by a river and all the flooding in the area during the wet season makes it a bit hard for electrical stuff, so many of the residents up there use other sources of power - solar, wind, etc. So they all turn into hippies a bit. :) They have heaps of things like this one ice creamery we stopped at - it was Biodynamic Organic Ice Cream (I don't even know what that means!). They had heaps of funky flavors as well - Laing tried Sweet Potato and Ginger, I tried Black Sapote and Chocolate Liqueur. They had other tempting ones like Goji Berry and Yoghurt, Macadamia with Lime, Dragon fruit, etc.
Oh! So scary story! One night, we were camping at this rest area. Mind you, no one else is around. Just Laing, me, woods. Usually at a rest area, there's one or two other campers at least. So, I get woken up at 1:24am by a really loud noise that I think is a gunshot. But I'm foggy from just waking up so I think maybe I'm dreaming. I wait a bit to see what it was, and BANG! Another gunshot! Now, it's fairly close and before I left Coolum, everyone was making fun of me for traveling and this Aussie horror film, Wolf Creek (an evil killer man preys on travelers and kills them....great way to send me off, guys!) so it's dark. We're alone in the woods. There's gunshots and I'm just like, "AH! WOLF CREEK!" I therefore hurry to wake up Laing and he's all, "Oh it's fine , it's fine" even though 2 more shots happen. Anyway, those were the last of it, hopefully it was just someone hunting (at 1:24am!?!?!) or something, but let's just say, I had a whole plan of action of how to jump into the van and drive away quickly if needed. :)
We next headed to Mareeba because they have a reallllly good coffee place - so good! As well as Kuranda for their Rainforest Markets. It's pretty cool to walk around all the funky market stalls in the rainforest. It was a fun town as well - they had a saltwater taffy shop where you could watch them make it which was pretty interesting.
Yesterday, we drove out to Atherton and Yungaburra to see the Curtain Fig as well as the Cathedral Fig. They are huge trees, about 700-1000 years old in a Mabi Rainforest - again one of the older rainforests in the world. I have some really cool photos of those. We also drove out to Lake Tinaroo for a wee picnic - we were going to swim, but it was cloudy and not warm enough. :(
Today, our plans are to drive to the Millaa Millaa Waterfall Circuit and Laing wants to visit a biodynamic dairy around the area as well...we get to sample cheese, lol!
Hope everyone's good!
Laing and I arrived in Cairns on the 20th, stumbled across some fun markets where I tried my first lychees (yum!) and starapple (super yum!). It also was apparently Peace Week and they had some bands playing as well as some cultural performances which were pretty interesting. We were planning on scuba diving, but alas, we got Paul, our van, in the shop for his yearly inspection and he'll cost about $500. Mind you, that's pretty good considering he's a 1998 and driven around soooo much. But it's all good, we've been entertaining ourselves with other natural wonders.
We drove up to Daintree National Park and Cape Tribulation. The Daintree is the oldest surviving rainforest on the planet! It has some trees (such as the 'idiot fruit tree', lol) that haven't changed in years - like they were the same when dinosaurs lived! We went to the Daintree Discovery Centre that takes you on an aerial walkway so you can view the rainforest from different levels, the floor, midway up the canopy and from the very top. It was pretty cool. Sadly, it had just finished raining so the mozzies were quite thick and attacked me. I was quite itchy after all 30 million of my bites. :(
The Daintree area is separated a bit by a river and all the flooding in the area during the wet season makes it a bit hard for electrical stuff, so many of the residents up there use other sources of power - solar, wind, etc. So they all turn into hippies a bit. :) They have heaps of things like this one ice creamery we stopped at - it was Biodynamic Organic Ice Cream (I don't even know what that means!). They had heaps of funky flavors as well - Laing tried Sweet Potato and Ginger, I tried Black Sapote and Chocolate Liqueur. They had other tempting ones like Goji Berry and Yoghurt, Macadamia with Lime, Dragon fruit, etc.
Oh! So scary story! One night, we were camping at this rest area. Mind you, no one else is around. Just Laing, me, woods. Usually at a rest area, there's one or two other campers at least. So, I get woken up at 1:24am by a really loud noise that I think is a gunshot. But I'm foggy from just waking up so I think maybe I'm dreaming. I wait a bit to see what it was, and BANG! Another gunshot! Now, it's fairly close and before I left Coolum, everyone was making fun of me for traveling and this Aussie horror film, Wolf Creek (an evil killer man preys on travelers and kills them....great way to send me off, guys!) so it's dark. We're alone in the woods. There's gunshots and I'm just like, "AH! WOLF CREEK!" I therefore hurry to wake up Laing and he's all, "Oh it's fine , it's fine" even though 2 more shots happen. Anyway, those were the last of it, hopefully it was just someone hunting (at 1:24am!?!?!) or something, but let's just say, I had a whole plan of action of how to jump into the van and drive away quickly if needed. :)
We next headed to Mareeba because they have a reallllly good coffee place - so good! As well as Kuranda for their Rainforest Markets. It's pretty cool to walk around all the funky market stalls in the rainforest. It was a fun town as well - they had a saltwater taffy shop where you could watch them make it which was pretty interesting.
Yesterday, we drove out to Atherton and Yungaburra to see the Curtain Fig as well as the Cathedral Fig. They are huge trees, about 700-1000 years old in a Mabi Rainforest - again one of the older rainforests in the world. I have some really cool photos of those. We also drove out to Lake Tinaroo for a wee picnic - we were going to swim, but it was cloudy and not warm enough. :(
Today, our plans are to drive to the Millaa Millaa Waterfall Circuit and Laing wants to visit a biodynamic dairy around the area as well...we get to sample cheese, lol!
Hope everyone's good!
Friday, September 17, 2010
Snorkel snorkel snorkel.
I've been snorkeling over part of the Great Barrier Reef!!!!! But we'll get to that. First off, after leaving Proserpine we drove up the coast to Townsville (we passed Bowen "The Authentic Mural Town" which is...a great accomplishment...I guess). Townsville is hot, but quite a lovely little city. A couple of cute cafés and restaurants - plus apparently a pub with a round pool table, which, alas, we didn't see. We spent most of the day along The Strand and had a BBQ out there. They also have the Rockpool, which is a walled off area so the crocs and stinger jellyfish can't get in and people can swim safely in the ocean. It was quite nice! The place we camped that night was full of older travelers and we got to talking with a man named Gary - he's been traveling for most of his adult life apparently. He seriously just drives around, working when he needs to, etc. Anyway, he told us we had to go to Maggie - or Magnetic Island - just off the coast. Later, we were walking through town and met an Irish guy who'd just come from Maggie and said it was amazing and quite cheap at the moment and that we just haaaave to go. We've sort of just been taking people's advice on a whim so off we went to Maggie the next day.
To get to Maggie, you catch a 20 minute ferry over to Nelly Bay and then bus to wherever you need to go. It's such a pretty island! I could definitely work there for like...3 months and be happy. We arrived at around 1045am and caught the bus to our hostel where we dumped our stuff and grabbed some snorkel gear. Our hostel is in Arcadia which is right next to Alma and Geoffrey Bay. There's a lovely bit of the reef in Alma Bay so we started there first. Mind you, I've never been snorkeling. Never. Laing, being the Aussie that he is, slaps the mask on me and says, "Just don't breathe through your nose. You'll be fine!" and chucks me in the water. It was terrifying. I panicked just a little. Not breathing through your nose with a mask on is hard at first, plus it's so quiet and all you hear is pretty much your breathing and flippers. Plus, the ocean and I aren't BFF or anything... I overcame it all though as I was on a gorgeous island and snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef! After about 10 minutes, I was pretty okay at it and am currently a pro. ;) It was pretty excellent as well because it was super clear that morning - you could see for 7 metres After Alma, we tried Geoffrey, but it was quite murky and getting late so we headed back to the hostel for the evening.
The next morning, we'd rented a convertible for the day - they're called Tropical Topless and seriously, we were in a Barbie car. You'll have to see the photos of that one. It was quite hilarious. We drove up to The Forts walk which takes you along the camp areas, ammunitions stations, gun stations, etc. of the base that was set up on Magnetic Island during WWII. It takes you all the way to the top of a little hill bit and you can overlook a few bays on that side of the island and the ocean. Quite pretty! It's also the area of the largest koala colony in Aus! We saw the cutest momma and baby koala along the way (I took an unnecessary amount of pictures) and heaps of butterflies too! It was quite hot after the hike so we drove up to Horseshoe Bay to have iced coffee and recuperate, then drove back to the hiking spot for Arthur and Florence Bay. You can't take cars down that way so you have to hike about 4-6 kms to get to the bays, but it's definitely worth it. So we hiked there and snorkelled away the afternoon. We saw heaps of fish, a couple stingrays and 3 REEF SHARKS during our snorkel adventures. It's really quite a sight. Laing also saw something like a sea snake or eel, but didn't mention this to me until I was out of the water and wouldn't get all nervous because it was going to try to kill me.
Later on when we were out on the deck, the receptionist gave us a bag of bits of veggies and told us to walk down the road and feed the rock wallabies. I seriously almost kidnapped one and made it my pet. The cutest dadgum wallabies ever! They're quite tame as well so lots will come up to your hand and eat right out of it. The hostel also does weekly Toad Races on Wednesday nights and we just happened to be there on a Wednesday night so we watched. People bet heaps on a dadgum toad!!!! The highest was $85 and it's just hoping that their one of seven toads hops out of the circle fastest. Crazy! Maggie is also home to weird birds. There's these creepy storky-like birds, but they move a bit like the raptors you see in Jurassic Park...they kinda make dinosaur noises too. I need to find out what they are.
We were leaving the next morning, but there's a Green Zone (you can't fish there) over by where we fed the rock wallabies and is great for snorkeling since all the fish hang out because people go there to feed them. Since we have a set of snorkel gear (But it's big so it only fits Laing) and didn't want to hire another, only Laing snorkeled there but he said there were heaps of really cool fish - including a few parrot fish and a groper. Mind you, gropers can bite off human limbs if they're big enough and agitated. This one was big enough to nip off a few digits. Ah! I managed to step on a bit of crab shell or coral the day before and had a nice pocket of grossness and pus on the bottom of my foot as well (No worries, mom, Laing's got a pretty awesome First Aid kit with which we cleaned out the cut really well, put on some Wound Gel and bandaged the sucker up so it's not infected or anything)
We then headed back to the mainland, visited Castle Rock (views of Townsville) and the Aboriginal Culture Center (some really amazing aboriginal art) and continued on our merry way. We popped into Tully to get a photo with the Great Golden Gumboot (why is everything either Big or Great and Golden?) - Tully's "A Pretty Wet Place" as they say. It's one of the highest places of rainfall in Aus. The gumboot is 7m tall or something like that and that's how much rainfall they had one year and onwards to Mena Creek.
Mena Creek is the site of Paronella Park. Back in 1913 a Spanish guy named José Paronella came to Australia to make his fortune as he had trained to be a baker/pastry chef and found the money wasn't to his liking. After laboring on sugar cane farms and then buying and selling some, he'd made a tidy sum, brought his woman over and started building a Spanish castle on a bit of land he bought out here. Alone. By hand. Seriously. He mixed cement in a wheelbarrow and built 2 castles. There's a lovely bit of waterfall and a lagoon so he built a giant staircase and carried all the sand and such he'd need up the steps and build his upper castle, complete with foyer, lovely little wishing fountain (which kids used to steal money out of until he put some freshwater eels in it to solve that problem) and movie theatre/dance hall. He then also built a picnic area by the lagoon with diving platforms, boats and everything, and a lower castle with a café and dining hall. Plus a few tennis courts he rolled from termite mounds with a giant wheel of rock, just for funsies. It was opened to the public in 1935 and quite a big deal for awhile there. Mind you, when he'd flatten the cement, he wasn't wearing gloves and this would wear off the skin raw and he'd have to wait 2 months for it to grow back and do it all over again. Talk about obsession. It's pretty amazing! Mind you, he trained as a baker and built all this as well as thoughtfully did it too! He made sure the angle of the lower castle was just right so you can see the waterfalls from the tennis courts through the open doors of the café. Also, he planted these giant Kauri trees in an avenue so they ended just where you could see the waterfalls again and so on. Amazing for someone who was supposed to just make bread. They also have some cool microbats, bentwing bats, which are the smallest bats in Aus and eat mozzies. Meaning there are hardly any here! And HUGE freshwater eels. IT WAS SO GROSS! Overall, definitely worth a visit! I think that's about it for now! I'll upload some more photos soon!
To get to Maggie, you catch a 20 minute ferry over to Nelly Bay and then bus to wherever you need to go. It's such a pretty island! I could definitely work there for like...3 months and be happy. We arrived at around 1045am and caught the bus to our hostel where we dumped our stuff and grabbed some snorkel gear. Our hostel is in Arcadia which is right next to Alma and Geoffrey Bay. There's a lovely bit of the reef in Alma Bay so we started there first. Mind you, I've never been snorkeling. Never. Laing, being the Aussie that he is, slaps the mask on me and says, "Just don't breathe through your nose. You'll be fine!" and chucks me in the water. It was terrifying. I panicked just a little. Not breathing through your nose with a mask on is hard at first, plus it's so quiet and all you hear is pretty much your breathing and flippers. Plus, the ocean and I aren't BFF or anything... I overcame it all though as I was on a gorgeous island and snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef! After about 10 minutes, I was pretty okay at it and am currently a pro. ;) It was pretty excellent as well because it was super clear that morning - you could see for 7 metres After Alma, we tried Geoffrey, but it was quite murky and getting late so we headed back to the hostel for the evening.
The next morning, we'd rented a convertible for the day - they're called Tropical Topless and seriously, we were in a Barbie car. You'll have to see the photos of that one. It was quite hilarious. We drove up to The Forts walk which takes you along the camp areas, ammunitions stations, gun stations, etc. of the base that was set up on Magnetic Island during WWII. It takes you all the way to the top of a little hill bit and you can overlook a few bays on that side of the island and the ocean. Quite pretty! It's also the area of the largest koala colony in Aus! We saw the cutest momma and baby koala along the way (I took an unnecessary amount of pictures) and heaps of butterflies too! It was quite hot after the hike so we drove up to Horseshoe Bay to have iced coffee and recuperate, then drove back to the hiking spot for Arthur and Florence Bay. You can't take cars down that way so you have to hike about 4-6 kms to get to the bays, but it's definitely worth it. So we hiked there and snorkelled away the afternoon. We saw heaps of fish, a couple stingrays and 3 REEF SHARKS during our snorkel adventures. It's really quite a sight. Laing also saw something like a sea snake or eel, but didn't mention this to me until I was out of the water and wouldn't get all nervous because it was going to try to kill me.
Later on when we were out on the deck, the receptionist gave us a bag of bits of veggies and told us to walk down the road and feed the rock wallabies. I seriously almost kidnapped one and made it my pet. The cutest dadgum wallabies ever! They're quite tame as well so lots will come up to your hand and eat right out of it. The hostel also does weekly Toad Races on Wednesday nights and we just happened to be there on a Wednesday night so we watched. People bet heaps on a dadgum toad!!!! The highest was $85 and it's just hoping that their one of seven toads hops out of the circle fastest. Crazy! Maggie is also home to weird birds. There's these creepy storky-like birds, but they move a bit like the raptors you see in Jurassic Park...they kinda make dinosaur noises too. I need to find out what they are.
We were leaving the next morning, but there's a Green Zone (you can't fish there) over by where we fed the rock wallabies and is great for snorkeling since all the fish hang out because people go there to feed them. Since we have a set of snorkel gear (But it's big so it only fits Laing) and didn't want to hire another, only Laing snorkeled there but he said there were heaps of really cool fish - including a few parrot fish and a groper. Mind you, gropers can bite off human limbs if they're big enough and agitated. This one was big enough to nip off a few digits. Ah! I managed to step on a bit of crab shell or coral the day before and had a nice pocket of grossness and pus on the bottom of my foot as well (No worries, mom, Laing's got a pretty awesome First Aid kit with which we cleaned out the cut really well, put on some Wound Gel and bandaged the sucker up so it's not infected or anything)
We then headed back to the mainland, visited Castle Rock (views of Townsville) and the Aboriginal Culture Center (some really amazing aboriginal art) and continued on our merry way. We popped into Tully to get a photo with the Great Golden Gumboot (why is everything either Big or Great and Golden?) - Tully's "A Pretty Wet Place" as they say. It's one of the highest places of rainfall in Aus. The gumboot is 7m tall or something like that and that's how much rainfall they had one year and onwards to Mena Creek.
Mena Creek is the site of Paronella Park. Back in 1913 a Spanish guy named José Paronella came to Australia to make his fortune as he had trained to be a baker/pastry chef and found the money wasn't to his liking. After laboring on sugar cane farms and then buying and selling some, he'd made a tidy sum, brought his woman over and started building a Spanish castle on a bit of land he bought out here. Alone. By hand. Seriously. He mixed cement in a wheelbarrow and built 2 castles. There's a lovely bit of waterfall and a lagoon so he built a giant staircase and carried all the sand and such he'd need up the steps and build his upper castle, complete with foyer, lovely little wishing fountain (which kids used to steal money out of until he put some freshwater eels in it to solve that problem) and movie theatre/dance hall. He then also built a picnic area by the lagoon with diving platforms, boats and everything, and a lower castle with a café and dining hall. Plus a few tennis courts he rolled from termite mounds with a giant wheel of rock, just for funsies. It was opened to the public in 1935 and quite a big deal for awhile there. Mind you, when he'd flatten the cement, he wasn't wearing gloves and this would wear off the skin raw and he'd have to wait 2 months for it to grow back and do it all over again. Talk about obsession. It's pretty amazing! Mind you, he trained as a baker and built all this as well as thoughtfully did it too! He made sure the angle of the lower castle was just right so you can see the waterfalls from the tennis courts through the open doors of the café. Also, he planted these giant Kauri trees in an avenue so they ended just where you could see the waterfalls again and so on. Amazing for someone who was supposed to just make bread. They also have some cool microbats, bentwing bats, which are the smallest bats in Aus and eat mozzies. Meaning there are hardly any here! And HUGE freshwater eels. IT WAS SO GROSS! Overall, definitely worth a visit! I think that's about it for now! I'll upload some more photos soon!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
How funny.
It's been an interesting week. Laing and I have been trying to find work on the fruit farms, but they're pretty much owned by the hostels so it's been hard. We started ringing the MacKay farmers directly and one woman said she'd try to ask around town and ring her back later. We did and she said try the Retreat Hotel (we later found out she was the ex-wife of the manager). So we ring the hotel and the manager, Mikey, says he'll ask his business partner and to call back later. So again, we do, and turns out they're having a party over the weekend and could use some extra hands. So we rock up the night before we're supposed to work just to have a chat with Mikey and what do we walk into? A completely redneck pub with topless bartenders because it's Topless Thursday. Mikey wasn't around so we came in the next morning and turns out they're having this big rock music festival that they'll pay us to help out with and get to watch for free. It was pretty awesome! Some really great bands playing classic tunes from AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, etc. It was pretty hilarious watching the drunk rednecks and cowboys all night as well. Plus, I met the guitarist of one of the bands - this old guy with a blue mohawk and one arm. Yes, a one-armed guitarist. Apparently, you can play a guitar that way by tapping the strings. It was pretty amazing and he was a super lovely gentleman. We helped break down for a few days then helped out with the housekeeping on our last day - I made 45 beds and Laing cleaned 45 toilets. Uuuugh. So we headed north to Proserpine and Airlie Beach. To celebrate the fact that we have a little money, we decided to go to Proserpine's local Irish pub to have a Kilkenny and a Guiness. We're chatting to the owner who asks if either of us is a cook. Turns out his head chef has to go to a wedding for 3 days and the guy that was supposed to help can't anymore and they can't get ahold of anyone else. We don't need the money yet, but hey, if these opportunities just keep landing in our laps, who are we to say no? Plus, they're having this great band, The Rumjacks, playing on Friday and Saturday so we get to go for free! It's pretty cool how it's all working out. So we'll hang around here - maybe go scuba diving on Sunday in the Great Barrier Reef!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Roadtrippin'
Alrighty folks, an update from down under! Laing and I bought a van in Sydney - a Mitsubishi Starwagon that I named Paul (for Paul Hogan, of course - he played Crocodile Dundee in case you didn't know). We started off from Sydney by heading northwest and stopping in a town called Katoomba. Echo Point is in Katoomba and a great viewpoint to see the Three Sisters - 3 large rock formations that's part of the original 7 Sisters, but the other 4 eroded away. I read in my guide book that one of the stories is that the sisters asked a sorcerer to turn them to stone to evade their admirers, but before he could turn them back to humans, the sorcerer died. Anyway, there's a hike you can do where you climb down these reaaaally steep steps called the Great Stairs that winds around the side of the sisters. Lovely views off it of the rest of the Jamieson Valley. Then there's a wee hike through some lovely rainforesty bits and back up more stairs and such. Quite nice!
We then headed just outside Wellington at a state park called Lake Burrendong where we had a nice campfire and enjoyed being out of a city. We roasted a pear in the fire as an experiment and it's tasty! Next time maybe adding a few spices before we chuck it in. :)
The next down we hit was Tamworth, the Country Music Capitol of Australia. Laing and I hoped that everyone would be a cowboy it and would be ridiculous, but alas, they were normal. Though there was a statue call the Great Golden Guitar which was....a great golden guitar...it was pretty big.
We stopped by Dangar Falls just outside of Dorrigo which were lovely, then went to Dorrigo National Park where we saw some really cool forest with heaps of GIANT vines and goodness. Definitely a cool sight.
Afterwards, we headed to Laing's parents house to do a bit of work on the van since the previous owners didn't use the space very well - added shelves, that sort of thing. Apparently, there’s a carpet snake living in the ceiling at the moment….his parents weren’t sure if they should tell me or not just in case I freaked out. Being the tough cookie that I am, I was fine with it….More or less. :) I did get bitten by a tick though! Normally, that’s gross but not a huge problem, but noooo. Aussie ticks release POISON into the bite if you mess with them. So I have a little spot on my arm that’s all irritated and sore to touch because Australians just can’t have non-venomous or poisonous things in their country, they have to be ridiculous and have evil critters.
Now we're in Brisbane visiting Damon before continuing north. The current plan is to hit the Great Barrier Reef, then head north to Cairns, then over to Darwin and Kakadu National Park before heading down the middle to see Ayers Rock (Uluru) and Alice Springs, then swing over to Adelaide and Melbourne, and maybe back to Sydney to sell the van. We'll probably then fly over to Perth on the West Coast...it all works a bit better for time since I have to be back in the States in December! Well, that's pretty much it for now. Lots of lovely pictures I need to upload so I'll do that...eventually...Hope everyone's good!
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