Queensland Adventures Part Un

The TV in the corner said that all three flights to Mt. Isa were scheduled to arrive on time. The adjacent screen said that all three flights scheduled to depart were on time. This seemed to be the entire load for the Mt. Isa airport that afternoon. Ellen and I had naturally gotten there early to take advantage of the free air conditioning and wifi. I looked up from the phone to see a Boeing-737 touchdown. It was at that moment that I started to feel like our vacation had begun.

We had been planning to go and see the East coast of Queensland for some time and it had just so happened that our friend and former roommate Dana had some free time to come visit. These things all happily coincided to make an awesome vacation opportunity.

The plan was to drive north to Normanton to see a scale model of the world's largest salt water crocodile. Then we would drive East to Cairns and the Atherton Table lands to see some tropical rainforest before headed South to check out the Bundaberg rum distillery and finally drop Dana off at the Brisbane Airport.

At the moment all this was in the future. Ellen's and my immediate priority was to get some lunch as it was 2:00 PM and we had been waiting for Dana to eat. Unfortunately they fed her on the plane and for some reason Domino's $5.00 pizza wasn't appealing after a 44 hour trip. I know that sounds completely strange but to each his own I suppose. After gorging ourselves on some questionable pizza product we hit the road for Hillside do get take a tour of the station with Pete and have dinner while briefing Dana on our plan.

I immediately jumped in the Landcruiser upon our arrival at Hillside and pulled it around while the girls unpacked Dana's stuff. They eventually came out and we grabbed Pete to head out to the Cameron Bore. I figured since she was on the station for a night it made sense that she should go on a bore run. It is, after all, probably the most quintessential job that we do around here. Aside from seeming zonked from the plane ride Dana seemed to be in good spirits and Pete shared some very pleasant insights about the station with us. One of the things he mentioned was that the original telegraph line from Brisbane to Darwin ran through Hillside. Now the original poles make very convenient fence posts. Dana also experienced a very exciting milestone. She saw her first wild kangaroo while we were driving out through the station to Cameron. There was a little family of roos and they did that picturesque thing they sometimes do by running along a little to the side and in front of the car. All in all I figured it was a very pleasant start for our grand adventure.

It was a good thing we didn't have far to go the next day because we didn't leave the house until noon. Once we got on the road Dana got to experience her first real Outback drive. The original explorers of Australia described the area we were in as a ghastly blank as I had learned from the Bill Bryson book as well. Looking out the window one could see how they came to the conclusion. There isn't much except some low trees and red dust once you get north of Burke and Wills roadhouse. As we drove North to Normanton I believe Dana began to realize what she had signed up for. One should never take a trip to Australia unless they can resign themselves to driving through large quantities of seemingly deserted land. There are no houses, no gas stations, no convenience stores, no mailboxes, and no people. These things are all there of course, but they are all very cleverly hidden in the bush in such a way that no one can see them. It gives a person the impression that they are entirely alone, except of course for the road trains. They are always just around the corner waiting to spring on innocent motorists through a unique attack in which they seem to be in their lane in the beginning but by the end they're weaving through both lanes and some of the shoulder.

By the time we got to our destination for the evening we were reassuring Dana that not all of the trip would be this appalling, just the beginning parts. We overnighted in Karumba on Allan's suggestion to have a beer and watch the sunset over the gulf of Carpentaria. All in all I'd say it was a pretty good way to begin our trip.

The next morning we got up and headed to Normanton to see the world's largest salt water mock up crocodile. As we were walking over to the thing I thought to myself, “there is no way this could be the size of a real crocodile.” Surprise! It was to scale. Allan had told us before we left that they had been up there for kids sports one time and they had fit 16 kids on the back of this beast and 5 kids in the mouth. I thought he had been joking but lets just say if this guy had an appetite for kids (which he probably did) he could have easily supped on a first grade field trip. Naturally, while Dana and I shuddered, Ellen thought it was really cool. She's a very odd girl sometimes.

I will go ahead and skip over our drive along the Savannah Way from Normanton to Atherton. Suffice it to say that we saw some dingos and a really big smoke stack from some bygone industrial site.

The Atherton Table Lands are just up the mountain from Cairns. The great dividing range comes very close to the ocean in tropical Queensland so there is very high rainfall up in the table lands that all flows back down the mountain to the ocean in a relatively short distance. Luckily for us the altitude is fairly great which made for some stunning waterfalls and cooler weather. We were a bit strung out from all our driving and Dana requested that we stop for some swimming at one such fall. It was there that we coined our first term for the trip. Lots of bus tours run from Cairns to the Atherton Table Lands which means that there is a reasonable chance that while you are swimming in your pristine waterfall, a bus full of “sex fiends” will show up. These are scantly clad 19 year-old European backpackers on small, old Toyota busses that stalk around the area taking pictures and generally flaunting their coolness and youth. They are, of course, annoying but generally fairly fun to have around especially when you are swimming at a freezing waterfall and their lack of body fat causes them to get very cold and start freaking out. Dana, Ellen, and I were extremely tolerant of the testosterone driven stupidity given that we were probably worse at 19.

The next stop was the Mt. Hyplpamee Crater. We had a nice look around the place stopping to read the signage that explained to us that this hole had been formed by gasses blowing out granite that had fractured. Interestingly it had been explored by cave divers from around the Atherton area. I mention all this because in the parking lot on the way out Ellen used her magical endangered creature summoning powers on a young cassowary. It was about a meter tall and walked across the parking lot like it was running around in a fashion common to all young animals when their mothers kick them out of the nest. I was impressed and Ellen had that little impish grin she always gets when she sees a new animal.

Having swum in the extremely cold waterfall and camped out for the night we were headed for the real meat and potatoes of our trip Cairns. I could hardly wait.

It should be noted that the Western approaches to Cairns are all absurdly steep. For the few of you who have ventured to Monteray, Virginia for the maple syrup festival, it's kind of like that but with more tropical plants and less pork rinds. One thing that we learned while making this descent into Cairns was that Australians aren't as used to this kind of driving as we are at home. I, for my part, dropped it into third and let her glide down the hill at 4000 rpm. All my careful trouble to take it easy on my equipment and passengers earned me a string of angry drivers behind me. These people seemed to not have been told that brakes were a finite resource and that if you over-heat them you could end up like the myriad of little crosses nailed to trees in the hair pin turns.

I pulled over so we could all catch our breath and so the hot heads could continue their boulder like descents down the mountain. I made sure to do this at a nasty little chicane so I could study the movements of the traffic in more detail. Upon stopping we noticed a memorial to the driver of an armored car that apparently went off the bank right where we were standing. As the girls walked around I sat and watched 50% of the cars squeal tires, and about three near head on collisions. I decided that it was just all pure madness and that I would have to just cope with it the best I knew how.

We made it down the mountain with only one near miss involving a person on a provisional license in a ute that he was treating more like a Porsche. Happy to be off the road we pulled into Cairns and checked into the hostel. Upon check in we were handed some free meal vouchers to an Irish bar downtown where we ran into some more of our sex fiend friends. The atmosphere was fairly typical for a backpacker bar; very loud music and many people of many cultures hopelessly trying to communicate their intentions towards one another over the din and alcoholic haze. They seemed to be getting on fairly well and we had a good time sitting in the corner and observing the goings on. Then it was back to the hostel for an early night.

The bus showed up at 6:00 AM to carry us to Daintree National Park. I had booked this as part of a three day tour package in which we would also be going to the barrier reef and riding a train to the little hippy town of Kuranda. While I was excited about the Daintree, I had been thinking about as sort of a warm up adventure. How wrong I was.

The bus driver seemed to be in his mid to late thirties and was very snarky. He sort of reminded me of an Antipodean Eric Stanley if Eric had decided that his life calling was driving a tour bus through a world heritage site. As I got on the bus I noticed it was of the type that the afore mentioned sex fiends usually rode. My heart sank a little at this prospect but we were riding now and there wasn't much I could do about it so I decided to have a positive outlook. As it turned out, all of the people that rode our bus were lovely.

Our first stop was a small rainforest board walk. The Aussies are quite good at doing these elevated walks in such a way that you feel like you're on some futuristic journey through a tropical rainforest. Of course we were merely on a boarded walkway but the whole thing was very well done. It was during this time that we found out that our tour guide was quite knowledgeable about all the wild stuff around us. He explained that contrary to popular belief, cassowaries are not really that dangerous. Apparently they have the capability to kill a human but their first instinct is to run away and won't attack a person unless they are extremely provoked. This was a fresh new outlook on these beautiful and endangered birds. It seems that everywhere you go in Australia people generally have the idea that cassowaries are extremely dangerous. While they may be heavily armed with a dagger on their foot, I find the whole notion a bit outrageous considering that only one person has ever been killed by a cassowary back in 1926. Also, he was a boyscout so you can be assured that he was taunting it incessantly. I submit that Australians could make the same argument about dingos on the same grounds but of course everyone would just laugh.

Our guide also showed us a little plant called wait-a-while that uses it's barbed tendrils to grab onto other plants to pull it's self up to the canopy. Unfortunately it also can use these tendrils to grab onto unwitting mountain bikers. According to our guide these encounters often end in stitches for the mountain biker and a story for the plant.

After our rainforest walk it was on to Cape Tribulation. The bright and cheery name was given to this beautiful area by Captain Cook upon his arrival in 1770. To be fair he was having a rough go of it. His boat had just gotten a hole in it after smacking into the Great Barrier Reef and he had to pull up in this remote rainforest to fix it. While it was beautiful for us I imagine that if we had been hacking through the jungle looking for supplies to fix our broken ship we would be less inclined to hold it in such high regard. As it was we all had a nice walk on the beach and a little lunch.

Our next outing for the day was on the Daintree River it's self. I had overlooked this part on the description but we were signed up for a crocodile cruise. The boat was a large stable flat bottomed skiff. The guy driving the boat had a sort of Mic Dundee feel about him. I got the distinct impression that he could go between shooting crocodiles and showing them to tourists depending on the social acceptability and marketing trends of the day. There were heaps of crocs on the river bank sunning themselves. We even saw a baby crocodile fishing in the low mangrove roots. The captain of the boat reckoned he was cute and I guess I can see where he was coming from, it would be the same cuteness I would attribute to a baby Great White or Grizzly. It was a lovely little jaunt about the river looking at natures most effective killing machine. Ellen was, of course, enthralled.

On our way home we stopped at a place called Mossman Gorge. This was a beautiful little site with an amazing swimming hole. Dana and I were splashing around happily while Ellen was trying very hard to overcome her fear of cold things and get in the water. All of a sudden we heard screaming. A little girl had strayed too close to the rocks and was being pulled down river. My lifeguard senses immediately kicked in and I started swimming for her. As I came around the rock I noticed that a girl from our tour had grabbed the panicking kid and was pulling her to safety all ready. I gave the girl mad props for getting the save and we all had a good laugh. In the end the water wasn't in any way dangerous but when you're a little kid and you are getting pulled away from your mother by a crazy current you might be a bit apt to scream.

Me Ellen and Dana on an overlook during the Cape Tribulation Tour

After this we made our way home. That night we got indian food and discussed how the days events had more than lived up to our expectations. I hoped that the next day would as well as my expectations were pretty high. The next day we would be visiting the Great Barrier Reef.

In the morning we got up at the crack of dawn to walk across the CBD of Cairns to our boat. When I booked the tour the lady had talked me into upgrading to a better boat which happened to be running a sale. Upon arrival we found that our trip was run by the local dive shop. I was comforted by this. PADI may be a racket to get people to pay them to dive but when you're out in the open ocean with people who have never snorkeled before it feels very nice to have a bunch of dive masters around.

Our course had us jogging South for a bit to drop some people at Fitzroy Island. We were actually a bit stunned from just looking at the hotel on Fitzroy. It was like one of those places that you see on a screen saver except we were seeing it out the front window of the boat. Unfortunately we didn't really have the gumption to marvel properly since we were all feeling a bit queezy. Luckily we found out that there was an upper observation deck on the boat which had fresh air or we might have all barfed.

We did our first snorkel at the Cairns Diving Center live-aboard boat which was moored about 30 km off the coast. It was spectacular. The reef was crystal clear and in pristine condition. Even without my glasses on I could easily see a giant clam about 20 ft down. This was a very good time to have the goPro camera. Since I couldn't see in full definition I could just snap a bunch of pictures. Then when we got home it was like looking at the reef for the first time again!

Reef Pic

We snorkeled about for a little while looking at all the beautiful fish and the deep blue water off the side of the reef. After we had our fill on the first reef we boarded the boat and got lunch. The lunch spread made us almost excited as the reef. Clearly it was a good idea to spring for the better boat.

After we got done eating we motored over to another reef a few km away from our first sight. It was a slightly unnerving experience on this reef. Before arrival the guides had told us that we could swim through big cracks in the reef. This would give us the unique vantage point of being surrounded by reef on three sides. At first everything was cool with this activity but then we all noticed that there was a noticeable lack of water in the cracks. No one had thought about it before hand but there was a super low tide on for right when we were scheduled to be there. The low tide that day was amazing. Upon boarding the boat we realized that we could see all the reefs for miles around. It was really cool to be able to see the geographic layout of the reefs from the top deck of the boat. We took some pictures there as well and then it was time to return to Cairns.

Great Barrier Reef Selfie!!!

As a bonus feature we heard on the boat that there was a big street festival that evening. We were very excited about this little morsel of entertainment so we headed for the waterfront at about 7:00 PM. Upon our arrival we stumbled across a parade that seemed to have just started. There was a friendly local man standing next to us with his kids. We all had fun critiquing the floats as they passed by. To my astonishment there was a marching band. Australian parades are often a bit odd to behold. As an American I am used to seeing a marching band at the front of my parades. This is not necessarily so in Australia. You cannot quite comprehend how much you appreciate a good marching band until you see a parade without one. It sort of feels like the parade sneaks up on you which is a rather disconcerting notion. The local high school was representing in this case so all was well.

After the parade there were fireworks on the strand. Now Australians may not do parades like we do in the states but what they lack in the parade field they certainly make up for in fireworks. This was without a doubt the best fireworks display I have ever seen. There is something really tasteful in the way they were done. It seemed like someone had really put in the time to say, “you know I think we should have three of the ones that make a big bang here followed promptly by two starbursts in a tasteful formation not unlike a palm tree.” The Aussies just go over the top with their fireworks which is of course what you are supposed to do.

After the fireworks there was a bit of a latin dance band while eating terrible Chinese food, something I had been craving for months. We were thinking about going crazy and went to a bar but after a couple of beers we realized that we had been out in the sun all day so we retired to the hostel for a good nights sleep. We were very excited that our final excursion was a scenic train ride and therefore wasn't scheduled to start until 8:15 AM.

Again, we were picked up by bus to be transferred to the train station. Our day was reputed to be incredibly relaxing which was just what we wanted. Upon our arrival at the train station We noticed that there were a bunch of families with little kids and grey nomads walking around. The presence of these demographics illustrated the fact that we had made the correct choice. No one in that group was going to be moving overly quickly which was exactly what we wanted.

We made our way out to the platform as the train pulled up. The engine was a diesel electric which was a bit surprising given that this was a scenic train journey. I've always been used to the Cass Railway which is, of course, pulled by a steam locomotive. As we boarded the train and took off I realized why this was so. The beginning of the trek ran through upper middle-class neighborhoods in the suburbs of Cairns. It occurred to us that the people living here wouldn't be very happy about a big smoke belching monster complete with annoying whistle chugging through their back yards every day.

Since we were four and the seating arrangement called for eight, we were placed with some other passengers for ascent to Kuranda. One of these was a Swiss backpacker of about our own age. She had a large camera and was very quiet but pleasant once engaged. The other two were grey nomads from New South Wales. They were very pleasant and chatty which made the ride much more enjoyable. As we began to climb the views became stunning. Dana, apparently feeling bad that she had a window seat without having a camera to match offered her seat to the Swiss girl. This move started a game of round robin that was to last all the way to the top with everyone getting a chance to take pictures out the window.

The views on the way up to Kuranda were absurd. As the train wove in and out of little gullies we would get alternating views of jungle and ocean. The whole thing was quite surreal. As we made our way over waterfalls and through tunnels we all took turns at the window and generally had a good ol' time. Near the top we stopped at Barron Falls where we disembarked from the train for a little while. These extraordinarily picturesque waterfalls are where the Barron River goes from the Atherton Tablelands into the Barron Gorge and finally to Cairns. The flow rate isn't what it has been in the past because some ingenious person decided to harness some of the water from the Barron River to an underground hydro electric power station. As a result the falls are somewhat diminished but are not all together gone which I think was a nice touch for the tourist industry.

Almost immediately after we left Barron Falls we were in Kuranda. This once 60s counter culture hideaway has reinvented it's self to be a cruise ship shopping boutique. Normally it is the kind of place you would see me avoiding like the black death but this particular excursion had an attraction specifically designed for Ellen. Tucked away in the corner of town there are a small wildlife sanctuary, a bird park and a butterfly zoo. We elected to see the birds and the mammals. The feature attraction of the wildlife sanctuary was for an extra $20 you could cuddle a koala. For anyone who knows my wife you will undoubtedly know that one of her defining features is that she keeps her purse strings tied in a knot that could rival the gordian. She looked at me in that questioning half panicked way she does when she is expected to outlay an extra cent she hasn't budgeted for and said, “can we afford it?” I gave the only reply a loving husband can well do in such a situation and said, “dear god woman it's $20! Take two if you want.” Wil Orndorff will sympathize with me on this subject I'm sure having worked with her for a year and a half.

Ellen Cuddling a Koala

Having done all that it was time to head back down to Cairns. The journey down was on the skyrail. This is a gondola they have rigged between Kuranda and Cairns which passes over some gorgeous rainforest and gives stunning views of the Pacific Ocean. As we were standing in line for this I noticed our Swiss friend waiting right next to a family of five. Seeing that they were packing them full I quickly snagged her and pulled her in with us. It was a good arrangement with so many seemingly feral children wandering about. It was nice to have a quiet ride down the mountain. Tomorrow we were taking off bound for Brisbane but it was nice to have this one relaxing day before our massive drive South.

And that's all I had time to write this week. We're back at Hillside now for a couple weeks. We're re-stocking the coffers before our next big adventure which should be in no less than five weeks. Who knows where we'll go, Western Australia? Victoria? New South Wales? All I can say is KEEP ON TRUCKIN! And stay tuned for another blog post next week finishing up the current adventure.