One of the pretty girls working at Cairns Central YHA convinced me to do Uncle Brian’s tour. I never got to meet uncle Brian, he had an accident coming out of the shower to get the phone one day, slipped on the kitchen floor and his wife tried to stop his fall, he ended up impregnating her and so he now has a kid to look after and leaves the cousins to do the tours.
Cousin Rohan! He was our guide for the day, taught us some pretty weird stuff and told us stories like the one above all day, hilarious man and clearly loving his job. He greeted me at the hostel and I got on Gus the Wonderbus, then was treated to a recital of the names of everyone on the bus which Rohan did perfectly except for my name, which had been put on the list as Khan, my last name. Still, for every other person we picked up he recited the names again and got it right every time, apparently Brian had told him when he got the job, “The only thing that matters is that you remember their names, I don’t care if you drown a few as long as you shout out the right name when you try to save them.”
Our tour was to go to the Atherton Tablelands and have plenty of fun! And that we did, off we headed with Rohan telling us tales about Gus and his love triangle with Vulvina (his girlfriend) and Vanessa (an ambulance that took a fancy to him), and about his friend Bruce the highway, whenever Gus turned onto or off Bruce the Highway he would honk twice to say “Hi, Bruce” or “Bye, Bruce.” We started with a river that has a spooky story, one that claims the life of a male in their 20’s, always an outsider once a year, the story being about an aboriginal girl who fell in love with an outsider then drowned herself in the river when he was killed and when a man the same age swims in the river she pulls them down thinking it might be her lover. After that story we took some pictures of the place, which was very beautiful and enticing, turns out there are actually gaps in the riverbed which is rock, creating plug hole type scenarios that can pull down and drown anyone who swims over them. Still, beautiful place and we learned some interesting stuff about slow growing trees containing Cyanide.
So enough of the things that can kill you, onto the next stop, we went to a river and a natural rockslide, ran around like idiots, jumping down the rock slide and attempting to get up the rocks in the first place which turned out to be the funniest part, the only way up was a rock slope which naturally, was slippery when wet, and seeing as you had to reach it from the water, well everyone was having trouble so Rohan and I had to pull them up. The day was beautiful and so were a couple of the girls, and as we were swimming all day I had plenty of time to admire them in their bikini’s, especially one redhead from Holland called Marjanne, who’s a nurse so she’s smart as well as beautiful, always a bonus. So on we went, Cousin Rohan leaving us often confused but mostly just in hysterics and getting us to do ridiculous things such as playing where’s Wally, a game in which you must pass a hollow mint to one another on matchsticks held in mouths. It made for some great photos.
The next swim was at a waterfall with water that was “Extremely Refreshing,” according to Rohan who refuses to refer to the water as cold, the others attested to this by squealing a lot as the slowly waded in. I stood at the bank for a while hoping I would warm up a little before going in but as we were in shade this was only counter productive, eventually I grew some balls and went for it, splashing the rest of the group who were only up to their knees and being the first one to the waterfall, before realising how refreshed I felt. As soon as I stopped swimming with all my might to ignore the refreshment, I thought I might be dying or at least that my lungs had grown icicles, and in that state I sat and shivered whilst I waited for 3 others to get to the waterfall and sit by me and Rohan to notice, get out the camera and take shots of us freezing our asses off in the refreshing bath.
Our last swim was at a lovely lake which most people just looked at, I felt it couldn’t be wasted and so I had fun flipping into it from a little jetty and swimming around just long enough to notice I was bored without the rest of them. So instead I got out and ate muffins and drank hot chocolate, whilst being rude to the lovely Marjanne, at which point I would like to ask, why is it us boys never know how to be nice to a pretty girl and instead make fun of her and act like idiots? I found her very enticing so whenever I was in her company I insulted her and acted like a prat, pretty much the whole day. Granted I started off nice and I was actually interested when she told me about herself but I didn’t act like it. Really, when will we learn a better way of flirting? It’s embarrassing.
We all left the lake feeling pretty elated and then quickly stopped at a little river where we watched a platypus swim around, diving for food and resurfacing to eat. All of us were shocked at how small it was, with a duckbill and soft, sleek otter style fur and around a foot in length it was easily the cutest weird thing I have seen so far. Then we all hopped back in the bus for the long journey home in which we had a sing-along, which was hilarious and Elmo was passed around for us to hug and sing to. I really didn’t want to get out of the bus when we got back, dreading leaving my enlightened state and going back into the normal world, I hugged Rohan and said goodbye to the wonderful people that I will probably never see again.
Uncle Brian certainly knows how to run a tour.
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