For all those who are wondering what its like to catch the bus all the way to Darwin from cairns I urge you to keep wondering and never find out. Certain words come close to describing it: painful, torture, agony, hell, exhausting. Really all you need to know was it took a long time, 41 hours, and it’s a lot like an endurance test. I didn’t crack but boy did I want to, the only thing that stopped me leaping off the bus is not wanting to be left out in the middle of nowhere in one of the ‘towns’ we stopped at. So I endured and crazily was able to walk through the melting heat of Darwin’s afternoon to find my hostel. Now here’s the really insane part, after such a journey you expect to be exhausted right, well I was, however I didn’t sleep that night. Instead I met Kate who is a filmmaker and Reiki teacher and we took a walk and stayed up all night talking about films and Reiki and whatnot, amazing how awake a good conversation can make you. When the sun had risen we decided to head back to the hostel and finally I got a bit of rest, rising in the afternoon. So in total I was up around 70 hours before finally getting to bed, truly a long day.
The next day I met up with Marc who had flown over after I left on the bus, we went to the Crocodile Cove which I was unhappy to pay for but figured I may as well considering I was there and he wanted to see it. It was, after all my annoyance, pretty damn good, I got to hold a little Salty, saw some big Salties and I mean BIG, these fella’s weren’t pretty. But they were very cool, we also found about 100 babies in a big enclosure, which was also awesome, so now I have seen a ton of crocs, including all the various breeds around the world, stuffed mostly, and even old Charlie’s skull, complete with axe wounds. In the evening I visited the famous night market with Kate, which was very fun, a colourful array of stalls selling all kinds of things a lot of it very good quality, and we ate the food she had made earlier and talked some more.
One of the most hilarious things I have ever seen happened at her last hostel, we went over there to swim in the pool as they had shut ours and after we’d had our swim, were sitting, talking and chilling out, the lads arrived. In a big chain, quite akin to the way ants will run in a line, they streamed into the pool and began to run around the edge anti-clockwise, running faster and faster until they had created a whirlpool and eventually collapsed, the current they had created being so strong they could just lay back and get dragged around the pool. This was by far the most bizarre thing I have witnessed so far on my journey; just the suddenness and randomness of it totally surprised me, but what an idea! I had not my camera with me, otherwise pictures and film would now be online, so instead of filming I jumped in and joined them on their quest to make a raging current in the confines of a swimming pool.
For most of my time in the north I talked, with Kate, about all kinds of extra ordinary stuff as if it was totally ordinary. Again those of a sceptical view should look away at this time. We spoke about Past Lives, Angels and Reiki; she informed about most of the stuff I needed more information about, like how Reiki actually worked, where it came from and about Angels and their ways, and she also told me about Indigo and Crystal Children, which I still need more info on, there just wasn’t enough time to fit all the information in, even with staying up all night. Mainly our talking consisted of me asking questions and Kate filling me in on various subjects, her knowledge is a little more comprehensive than mine. We swapped Reiki treatments, and I found out my Reiki isn’t proper Reiki, great. We also talked about some slightly more normal stuff, including our trips round Oz, what she was doing in Darwin and the recent films we had made. Hers being a short film shot from the point of view of a crocodile called Sweetheart, and actual famous croc that lived near Darwin.
One thing I have to say about Darwin is the heat! My god the HEAT! It’s so hot you open the door and think you’ve just opened the oven door; just sitting down is a sweat-inducing task. The main reason Kate and I stayed up so late to talk is that during the day you simply cannot think, and only at about 2 in the morning does the heat drop to a still humid 30 centigrade which is just about bearable. Around perhaps 5 in the morning the heat tended to be around a pleasant 25 and this made it the best time to chat. However as soon as the sun rises the heat shoots straight back up so sunrise was bedtime, ahh air-con!
Uncles and Cousins
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.
In Cairns
A few things happened here.
met Jochen here again, this was the final part of his journey before heading back to Sydney and then home again, so we figured we would take a walk and see what we could see, a Dutch friend of his accompanied us. We walked the esplanade observed the view of mud and then Jochen found a volleyball game to join in, we left him there, much as I love volleyball (sarcasm, although the last time I played I somehow won the game, resulting in hilarious icy forfeits for the opposers) I didn’t feel up to a game this night, so the Dutchie and I walked back and I bought an onyx bracelet from a little shop on the way. We said goodbye to Jochen in the morning and off he went, back to the real home of the Germans.
The filmmaker I was going to meet in Mission Beach has a house in Cairns, and his office is also there, he wasn’t sure he would be back whilst I was still there but in the end he was, so something went right. I had been involved in a production in England earlier in the year and they had just requested some extra footage of thoughts and feelings (interview style) about the event, and Richard who had worked on the event just happened to live in Cairns so he suggested we meet up and do the shoot there. We went for lunch at a great pizza place and I had a tandoori chicken pizza, bizarre but tasty whilst his camera charged, and we talked for hours about various things including my thoughts on the event and what I felt about the guy who the event was about and his message. When it came to shooting Richard asked me to shorten, but repeat everything I had told him earlier.
Also whilst here I met Marc, a witty Irish chap that I got on great with and we went out and sang karaoke (‘I’m too Sexy’ for me, ‘Hey Jude’ and something by Elvis for Marc), took turns dancing with a crazy Spanish (I think) girl and went to an open mic night at 12 Bar Blue a great little bar where even the owners jumped on stage for an impressive song or 2, naturally Marc sang again however I without having the words to read in front of me would have got about 2 lines into any song the band knew and then had to sing “La lala la, laaa la laa, la.” And that would have been slightly embarrassing.
On our last day before Darwin, (he took the plane I took the bus) we went for a walk through the botanical gardens and took an English girl called Hannah with us, she was sweet bless her, but my god was she a Kamuckla! That by the way is a word from my dad’s language, which describes someone who is argumentative, difficult and stubborn. We discovered she liked to argue about things earlier on but didn’t think that much of it, however whilst on this walk she would challenge every thing Marc or I said to the point that we were afraid of calling the sky blue with white fluffy bits, we might be penalized. I think Marc found this harder to deal with than I did and try as I might to placate her and find a subject we could discuss without fighting it was to no avail. When I tried films and said I liked Tarantino she told me that he was a terrible director and extremely arrogant, I asked why and the reasons she gave were irrelevant to my question so another argument spawned. I asked about her in general figuring that if she was telling me about herself we couldn’t argue on it, yet we did and she got extremely angry with me. Eventually I figured that if I didn’t ask questions and simply agreed with her on every subject, she would stop attacking every word I said, but even this didn’t work and eventually when Marc gave her a little scrap of paper he found, with one of those life is fun, be happy sayings on it in an attempt to break the tension and cheer her up she started crying.
All in all it wasn’t quite the walk I had expected, it turned out she got upset with me asking questions because of something I had said earlier about someone else that made her think I would be extremely judgemental and uncaring. I guess it was just the tip of the iceberg and who knows, enough stuff was stored in there that it could have come out at anytime even without provocation. Unfortunately I can be quite provocative.
Perhaps the most exciting thing that happened was the discovery that the local supermarket sold SPAM, yes that’s right, SPAM! And the purchasing of a beautiful new blue knife, which allowed me to actually cut vegetables rather than simply pummel them into pieces with the hostel knives which are consistently blunt in every single hostel in the galaxy.
Onwards and upwards, and downwards.
Sadly I have to keep moving; again I cursed my luck at winning a competition that gave me a ton of free stuff at the cost of having to leave a pretty girl behind, she went south and I had to continue my free holiday to the north.
Ok so after leaving Magnetic Island and Annette, my to do list had skydiving at the top, time to jump mission beach. The Treehouse YHA is a lovely little place, run by a sweet old couple that looked after me and were generally very friendly and helpful, it’s an all wooden building complete with an old dog and gigantic cat at mission beach, which is essentially another excuse to live by the beach and is just a few houses in between the jungle and a beach. Naturally 99.98% of Aussies live by the coast where it is considerably easier to breath and perform such actions as standing without instantly being inside a cocoon of your own sweat. I met a generous guy here who passed on a bit of food, showed me his photography projects and explained how he was biking down the east coast, a feat I thought slightly insane considering the heat and distance involved.
I woke up and got myself prepared, a friendly skydiver picked me up and off we trundled through the rain, which had picked this day to show up, just this day. He said it should clear up but if the conditions got any worse we would have to postpone until midday or maybe tomorrow, so naturally whilst I was talking to ‘The Boss’ about whether or not a free film would be a good idea for them to do, (naturally I didn’t want to pay for it) the rain grew, and grew into such epic proportions that soon it could be heard far away in space, naturally I only speculate as I was of course trapped under the deluge, but there was so much water I began to question whether in fact the sea had recently migrated just to pay us a visit. Even the mist from such a downpour could have put out most bush fires. The jump was cancelled.
I was also planning on meeting a filmmaker, who was staying in Mission Beach during the filming for Sea Patrol, but he had no car and I didn’t fancy ridiculous taxi fairs so we failed at that too.
So I left Mission Beach having achieved nothing but meeting a ridiculously oversized cat, and a Swiss man with a moustache! In Cairns I had more luck but I still didn’t get the free video, they agreed to it, but only after I had jumped, I think they got a little caught up in the debating of who was the one responsible for that type of decision so they never got round to realising they only had a short time before I had already fallen from the plane and that the video would be slightly useless without anyone in it.
So sorry people, the video and pictures of the jump would have cost me an extra $150 and that seemed a little steep! Plus mad seeing as my bank was surprisingly empty at this point.
Magnetic Island
I met an Isreali named Dor in airlie beach who left the day before me headed to Magnetic Island, both of us were staying at bungalow bay YHA so we met up there, drove around on the scooter he had rented and thought very hard about what to cook, he also pointed me in the direction of a Dutch girl he said was interested in getting a scooter and exploring, suggesting we go together. Introducing Annette, red hair, Dutch and a writer as well, we couldn’t get a scooter so I waited until she finished her little tour (I neglected to do the tour on grounds of being unable to wait for food) and we headed off on a walk which took slightly longer than we expected.
Our plan was to head to the Fort, the most common walk to do and the closest to the YHA, eventually we found the start of the route and headed up, all the while talking about sex, relationships and how most men think, eventually moving on to the subject of books, she now knows most of the one I’m writing but still has not divulged anything other than the gender of her main character and the book genre, oh and someone dies.
She was attractive but older than me so I assumed she wouldn’t be interested and I was totally honest about pretty much everything (sorry guys) whereas normally with a pretty girl I would be more reserved. The fort has a nice view and I discovered how afraid of heights she was, this girl scares easily, its comical, but we were really hot at this point so we wanted to find a beach and swim, unfortunately the nearest beach was ages away. We had to walk all the way back to the start of the fort trail before heading down a different road which pointed in the direction of beaches. We searched several possible’s only to be disappointed and thought we would never find one when we met a cheerful man who said ‘yeah, just round the corner.’ sure enough Florence bay was there and worth the walk, secluded and beautiful, surrounded by cliffs and the sun was getting low, my first thought was wow, romantic spot.
Annette commented on possible dangerous animals such as jellyfish or crocs so I responded by getting in the water and announcing that I had not died, therefore it was probably fine. We swam about for a while, still talking about relationships and men’s behaviour, she has a thing for Israeli men I found but didn’t like the way they weren’t actually interested in anything lasting longer than one night. I explained to her that this was in fact all men, not just Israelis who had one-track minds, but then pointed out there were the odd exceptions such as myself, who put food in first place. Eventually we noticed it was getting a little cold and the sun was disappearing behind the trees, so we washed off our feet and headed off, continuing down the same road as I had spied a shortcut on the map, adventure time.
We walked for a while, then carried on, then reached a little path through the woods and took it, eventually deciding it didn’t seem right and heading back, then carried on down the road which abruptly ended, with a beach. We found a couple on the beach and asked them how to get back to the hostel and they directed us all the way back to the main road, at least an hours walk and I was sure there was a shortcut so we took my route.
Going back down the little forest path we went over boulders and through rougher and wilder scenery before reaching, a signpost, saying the name of a beach we weren’t after, we pressed on. And kept walking, noting that the light wasn’t anywhere near as strong, and kept walking, finally we reached a beach and I saw it was the one signposted, and next to that, was a sign directing us to horseshoe bay, our beach, salvation! Well, over the next hill anyway. So we climbed, and kept climbing, but the light kept failing and we watched the sunset whilst we climbed over rocks and boulders and prayed it wouldn’t get too dark before we reached the bay.
It got dark, and we kept going and I kept yawning, distressing Annette even more as we descended the other side of the hill in darkness. She was scared and I did my best to stay positive, knowing full well I had no clue where we were or where we were going. But I pretended and on we went, visibility went altogether and we sort of guessed at where we were not really being able to see anything, then suddenly we were on sand! ‘Yes sand, we have reached the bay, at last, all we have to do is walk in this direction and oh, the ground is wet, the beach is over there. Where are we then, why is there all that water in the way? What do we do? Bugger.’ We decided to walk through a little path in front of these random houses that just happened to be there and realised that it wasn’t a path when it disappeared into the bushes and they disappeared into the water, all of this we could just about see from the light of the houses. Our fear rising we decided to ask a local, however nutty they may be it was our best chance of getting out of this scary place and onto that beach on the other side without getting eaten by crocs or anything else. The guy in the house said we were pretty silly to have been out after dark. Helpful. And also that we had to go back, or just wade through the creek as there was no way around, he said if we tried to go around we would just ending up with broken bones. Thanks for the morale boost! He repeatedly told us very helpfully that we should have come back earlier and that we weren’t very clever and eventually said ‘yeah just wade across as it’s the only way to get over the other side now that the tides in.’
Annette mentioned crocs again, that made me feel better about wading through a saltwater creek in the dark having no idea what was in there, as I knew full well that saltwater crocs have been known to show up at beaches in the north, and lie silently in wait for their prey. So we stood by it and made up our minds that if a grumpy old man, who thought we were stupid had told us to wade through a creek it must be safe, at least we tried to convince ourselves this as we prepared to cross by removing our bags and shoes. Ignoring the splashing sounds coming from the water in front of us.
Holding all our stuff above our heads we began to cross, the water getting deeper with every step reaching waist height about a third of the way across. Terrified that the ground under me that I had no way of predicting might have the odd hole in I slowly stumbled on, water rising up my spine, creeping closer to my bag, which I lifted higher, which made me feel more exposed and kept walking. Annette was ahead of me which probably had nothing to do with the ladies first rule and I was very relieved when I saw her stop sinking and start to rise out of the water. Reaching salvation at the other side we hugged and wept for our safety! Ok maybe we just hugged and said wearily ‘lets get home.’ Which we promptly did and watched into the wild to celebrate our victory! I felt tired but very awake after it so decided to go for a walk down to the beach and she accompanied me, the sprinklers had got everything so finding a sitting spot was difficult. Finding a kissing spot was even more difficult, but somehow we managed to find several.
We stayed in our separate rooms that night. The next day was different, no details coming up for obvious reasons, we had a lazy day and stayed indoors a lot, satisfied with our one adventure. Oh and we got a bigger bed, figured it might be useful.
