Surf & Turf

This is it! It may have taken me over five months, but I have officially travelled up the east coast of Australia, all the way from Melbourne to Cairns. And the Cairns area holds some of the most amazing things you can do around Australia. What first comes to mind is the Great Barrier Reef, of course, and we will get to that. First, I visited the Atherton Tablelands on one of the very few tours I actually booked on this trip. Captain Matty’s Barefoot Tours is surprisingly (in theory) rated as the #1 Thing to Do in the Cairns area on Tripadvisor, and it has nothing to do with the ocean. This full one-day trip (and I mean full day, it’s around a 12 hours from pickup to drop-off) takes you from Cairns off into the Tablelands for a day of exploring, swimming, and general merriment. It’s sort of just rocks and trees and waterfalls, but culminates into what feels like a lot more.

A couple of days of rest, miniature adventures with couchsurfing host, and wandering Cairns central was followed with the big guns: a two day diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef. I was heading out with Rum Runner, a relatively small sailboat that holds a maximum of sixteen guests (we had eleven) and four crew members. The small group size was a bonus, as was the excellent crew. The ride to the outer reef was rather choppy, and despite early assurances from everyone that they did not get seasick, seven people ended up feeding the fish (myself luckily not included). After a couple of hours of this, we finally made it to calmer waters above the reef, and moored for our first dive.

There were only six certified divers on the boat, myself included. The rest were snorkeling, doing their Open Water course, or doing introductory dives. I was a bit nervous, as I was by far the freshest diver of the group. When diving, you are always paired with a “buddy” for safety purposes, who you are meant to stick with for the duration of the dive. My buddy was a Brit who had her advanced diving course, and close to 70 dives. Hoping my ears would hold up and not hold the group up too much, we geared up, took the big step off of the boat, and slowly descended below the surface of the water.

There aren’t really words to describe what it feels like to dive on this reef. I did five dives in the two days, foregoing one to give my ears a bit of a break. At one point, while stopping to admire a beautiful section of coral and the furious activity of the fish who lived there, I realized that what was in front of me, that what I was seeing at that moment, was so much more than what it looked like. You can see this reef from space. The astronomical scale of this is impossible to grasp, especially when each square meter of reef is captivating enough to stare at for hours. The longer you look, the more you see, and I found I was just as fascinated with the coral and the plants as I was with the marine animals. One of my favourite spots that we visited was called The Pinnacles and, as its name implies, has towers of coral upwards of 25 meters high. As you swim slowly, nearly effortlessly, over, around, and through these formations of life, it definitely causes pause. This is such an incredible part of the world and to have been there in such a direct way was truly astounding. Once comfortable in the water, diving is truly one of the most calming things I have done. It reminds me of an amped up yoga practice, in a way. After returning to the surface, a bit of the adrenalin kicks in, and you get the thrill of what you have just done. A snack, a rest on the boat in the sun, repeat.

Open Water

That’s right. Day three saw some drastic improvements in my ears’ ability to equalize and in Nikkie’s ability to pop extra motion sickness pills. Dives #1 and #2 smashed. All of our pool work completed, half of our dives done, theory completed, and a cool 98% on my final exam (the inner nerd returns). With slight envy, I watched the other students receive their certification cards and mosey on their way. We still had two dives to complete the following day.

Onward to day four of our three day course. It turns out our original instructor did get the day off, and we were going to go out with the owner of the shop, Rob, and Divemaster in training, Mike. Rob began in the morning by stating he was sick of diving in Alma Bay. Alma was where we had gone for the previous two days, and the remainder of the class had completed all of their dives. The bay was pretty, but sights (coral and fish) were minimal, and the visbility had been very poor (one metre at worst, four at best). Instead of heading back to the bay, we were going to head out to Moltke, a shipwreck in Geoffrey Bay. After prepping our equipment, getting a short briefing on the dive, and getting the somewhat cryptic reassurance that the entry for this dive just required a bit of faith, we headed out to our launch point.

A bit of faith, true. Strapped into dive equipment essentially feels like being strapped into a large backpack, though more awkward with poorer weight distribution. To enter the water on this dive, Rob and Mike wanted us to stand on the edge of a slanting boat dock a few feet above the water, face the other direction, hold onto our regulator (the thing you breathe out of) and fall backwards into the water. Which looked a bit freaky, but was quite fun once accomplished. Then off we swam to our wreck.

The dives in the course are not only practice dives, but involve you practicing specific skills you need to be able to do in order to become certified. These involve “losing” your regulator and recovering it, taking off your mask underwater and clearing it of water, and using an alternate air source – your buddy’s tank. We completed the final few skills we needed to on our wreck dive, which I knew meant that we would be passing the course. I couldn’t even really think about the practical reasons of why I was doing what I was doing, because at this point, finally, we were really diving. Alma Bay was cool, you still get the experience of breathing underwater, but this was something else. Swimming over and around this wreck, which was now covered in and teeming with life, was extraordinary. It is truly another world, as clichéd as that sounds. We are so accustomed to what we see on land, every day. Grass, trees, creatures with legs. So much of what we saw on this dive I had never seen before, in real life, with my own eyes. And it was incredible. Diving somehow manages to be a thrilling adrenalin rush and a calming, almost meditative experience, all at the same time. Because it was only the two of us diving with two experienced divers, we essentially got VIP treatment. We stopped at leisure, watching the fish go about their business. In nooks and crannies of the wreck, they would often not be doing anything at all, just hovering in place, slowly getting rocked from side to side with the movement of the ocean, as were we. Rob held my hand out to touch a reddish plant (animal?) growing (living?) on the wreck, and as I gently brushed my finger along it, it turned from red to bright white. Schools of fish flew past overhead. I began the process of grasping the subtleties of controlling your buoyancy with your breath – controlling your up and down movements by breathing in and out.

I still had a bit of trouble with my ears, and had to descend slowly – and return to shallower depths several times – for them to equalize. I’m hoping this improves as I become more experienced and it doesn’t cause me any issues in Cairns.

After receiving our official (temporary) certification cards, Nikkie and I headed back to Townsville. We had booked one night at Civic Guest House, a hostel in town. This is, without question, the best hostel I have stayed at in Australia. Townsville, who would have thought, boasts the best hostel and the best coffee shop I’ve seen in Australia. So far, hostels in this country have been less than amazing, being a disappointing combination of expensive and unremarkable. At between 20 and 35 AUD a night, depending what city you are in, a night’s rest is certainly not cheap. And nothing is ever free, from Wi-Fi to laundry to linen at times. Cash deposits for keys and cutlery are commonplace. And then you get a rather bland dorm room, disinterested staff, and lackluster common spaces, all in a slightly grimy state.

Civic Guest House restored my faith that hostels can be done well in this country, for a reasonable price. Booking last minute, we got the cheapest room available at 24 AUD / person for a four-share dorm. Reasonable. And then we got inside. The place was spotless, with a sprawling, half-outdoors layout that included randomly placed bathrooms and showers, a lounge room with no TV, a giant chess set, an adorable and orderly kitchen, and small sets of wrought iron chairs and tiled tables in the courtyard. Adorable, charming, and run by an equally charming German couple. Free Wi-Fi, bonus. The fact that the hostel was not licensed to sell alcohol, as so many are in this country, meant that you could actually drink on the premises without fear of being thrown out. In short, this hostel could have been lifted directly out of some coastal Mediterranean town, fixed up slightly, and plunked down in central Townsville. Brilliant.

Atmospheres

I set up my laptop to write on the balcony of our unit at Foresthaven, then reevaluated and shimmied my chair half a metre closer to the small table on the balcony. Closer to my source of wine. I poured a glass, popped in my headphones, and pushed play on my collection of Gaslight Anthem tunes. It was a tough day. iTunes says 1.4 hours. Go.

I was what should have been two-thirds, but was really one-half, of the way through my PADI Open Water course and had had a rather frustrating day. Everything up to this point had gone swimmingly (ha!), but with the first of my four open water dives, I ran into some issues. Well, really just one: my left ear.

When you are standing on the beach, you have what they call one “atmosphere” of pressure exerted on your body – the pressure of the air from the top of the atmosphere to where you stand. When you are 10 meters below the surface of the ocean, you have the equivalent of two atmospheres of pressure. This is not insignificant. Underwater, a lot of weird and freaky things happen to our bodies, as truthfully we really should just not be down there at all. One of these things involve the changing volume of air, and to glaze over most of the technicalities of it all, you need to “equalize” your air spaces as you descend into the depths. Think popping your ears. This is supposed to be done frequently and gently in order to accommodate all of this crazy changing air. And my right ear went right along with the plan, but the left one simply wouldn’t cooperate. After discomfort turned into pain, I was told to discontinue diving for the day. This was, to put it mildly, extremely frustrating. To pass your Open Water, you need to complete four open water dives (in addition to “confined water” dives, which we had done in the dive centre pool. There are meant to be two dives on each of the second and third days of the course. Luckily, I was diving with a sweet operation, Pleasure Divers in Magnetic Island, who accommodated me by offering to bring the dive instructor in on his day off (for the nonexistent fourth day of the course) so I could complete all of my dives. Actually, so we could complete all of our dives. My old co-worker, Nikkie, had decided to join me for the course and was also having problems. On the first day, she initially became so freaked out that she had to get out of the pool. Once she got into the swing of things on the second day, she was doing well. Until the ocean, where she got a bit nauseous and ended up feeding the fish and having to get out of the water. Think seasickness without the boat.

This turn of events really frustrated me. I felt like I had done well to get to the point where I was now comfortable diving – and this wasn’t easy. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a fish. And now something that was not my nerves or my ability was messing with my opportunity to dive. I got an ice cream.

And then. Yes, there’s an “and then.” We haven’t heard about him in awhile, but my Sydney friend is still in the picture. We’ll call him Kiwi, as he hails from NZ (that’s “en zed” for all of my American friends). Kiwi has been off around the world in my original hemisphere chasing snow for the last few months. With a planned arrival back in Sydney around the end of March, and my schedule putting my back there a couple of weeks later, things were looking excellent for a reunion that was now only a few weeks away. And then. Kiwi found out that work didn’t have to be work for approximately another month, and after a courtesy “check” with yours truly, announced his arrival date in Sydney as April 28^th, so as to spend a little extra time adventuring around North America. Fair. It does only add a couple of extra weeks to the countdown, really, but it was just the rotten cherry on top of a rough day.

I do see a silver lining in this, and here it is:

Diving: Personal challenge. I will smash it tomorrow. I will be killing it. Winning. BAM! Whatever, however you want to put it, I’m getting PADI’d in t-minus 48 hours.

Kiwi: Before Kiwi reunion time comes best friend reunion time. After Cairns, I am flying south to the Gold Coast (I should put a map of Australia somewhere on this blog.) to meet up with my old roommates from our Canada days. With less of a pull to get to Sydney in a timely fashion (assuming we are ignoring the diminishing bank account and need for a job and apartment), I can sit back in Goldie with my long lost partners in crime and drink all of the wine.

I will talk to you in two days, when I am officially a diver.

Magnet

After relaxing in Airlie Beach for a few days after my sailing trip, I was back on the bus and continuing north to Townsville. The scenery along the drive was quite beautiful, and despite the lush tropical appearance, still somehow managed to embody a little bit of the sparseness typically associated with the Australian landscape. In the distance, green hills covered with vegetation sat on the horizon, but as we drove by I realized that the trees were scattered rather thinly over the landscape, and they never seemed to have quite enough leaves.

I arrived in Townsville mid-day, and immediately felt the difference in the heat. The forecast for the next few days was 33 degrees and sunny, which was a welcome (if somewhat sticky) break from the rain. Most people come to Townsville as a departure point for Magnetic Island (see a theme with Australian coastal towns?), which is a short ferry ride from the mainland. I would be heading to Magnetic the following day, but figured I might as well stay one night in Townsville. As most people just pass through, Townsville is not as infested with tourists as almost everywhere else I’ve been to in Australia, which was a nice change. The town feels a lot more local. It has the unmistakable signs of this, not all of them good; the number of closed storefronts along the main street was rather depressing. I was couchsurfing with someone who lived out in the suburbs, and the 45-minute bus ride helped to pain me a miniature picture of Townsville. Large shopping centers along the outskirts appeared to have taken over the small business core. Among the remaining shops downtown were some funky offerings, but I couldn’t help but wonder how long they would manage to stay open, much to the detriment of the town. I did discover the best coffee shop I have stumbled upon thus far in Australia. This is saying something, as coffee in Australia tends to be very good. The Sweatshop served up not only delicious, but reasonably priced coffees of all stripe, and didn’t even charge extra for soy! I visited it twice in the 24 hours I was in Townsville, and am looking forward to going back on my way back through the town.

The main reason I was there, such as the rest of them, was to visit Magnetic Island. My old coworker, Nikkie, was coming down from Cairns to meet me, and we had tickets to the Full Moon Party on Friday. This concept originated in Thailand in the 80s, and has grown and morphed and spread to different countries. It now essentially involves backpackers drinking for 12 hours, painting themselves in fluorescent body paint (a very serious affair – see photo), and dancing the night away while fire dancers and related entertainment pop up around the outskirts. This particular full moon down under was a bit quiet, but still had all of the necessary ingredients, and with the help of three Red Bull, I powered through the night to the bitter end when the music shut off at 5 a.m. The goal to see the sun rise sometime after six was a bit ambitious, as all of our group except for three had escaped to bed long ago, so we called it a night and spent the majority of the following day moving from lounge chair to pool to hammock to pool to bed to deck. Oddly enough, probably the most important component of the full moon party, it’s namesake in fact, was missing. At around 9 p.m. I looked up into the sky and marveled at the beautiful, shining crescent moon in the sky. Not sure who misread the calendar on that one.

It was most excellent to see Nikkie again, and I’m looking forward to the next few days on the island where I will be (hopefully) completing my PADI Open Water SCUBA dive course!

Sail.

Airlie Beach is lovely. I’ve heard it described as a miniature Byron Bay and, while I can see how people could make the comparison, it definitely has a different vibe. You have the similarities in that it is full of backpackers, hostels, backpacker-friendly bars, and other tourists, but it certainly lacks the hippy vibe of Byron and definitely doesn’t feel as laid back. Perhaps this is because, despite the name, Airlie doesn’t actually have a proper beach. Perhaps this is because there is more money in Airlie (I don’t know if this is actually true, but a glance at the marina full of yachts makes me think I’m on track). Regardless of the reason, there is certainly more of a push toward the proper in Airlie (in Australian terms), as many signs telling me to wear shoes constantly reminded me.

As with Rainbow Beach, most people don’t visit Airlie for Airlie itself, but for what lies just off the coast. The Whitsunday Islands are a collection of 74 breathtaking islands surrounded by fringing coral reef, and visiting these islands is something you essentially need to do if you find yourself in this corner of the world. The options for seeing the islands are endless, from a one-day speed boat trip for $100 to a three-day, all inclusive catamaran trip for upwards of $600 (and I’m sure you could spend much, much more than this if you were so inclined). I opted for a three-day, two-night maxi sailing trip that should have cost me about $550, but thanks to my old job, I managed to save a couple hundred of dollars and got the trip for a steal. The only thing that we had to contend with was the weather, as Airlie had been suffering a similar fate as Rainbow, and heaps of rain was in the forecast. Luckily, after one day of somewhat questionable weather and a couple of downpours, the weather turned and we had (mostly) beautiful sun for the remainder of our trip.

Now, for the trip itself. Our boat was Apollo, a famous sailing boat who won many races in Australia back in her day before she retired to the Whitsundays. There were 27 guests and 3 crew eating, sleeping, and playing on the boat for 3 days. And play we did. I’ve never done this before, but I will most certainly do this again. Sailing is fun. Like ridiculously-can’t-stop-grinning-never-want-to-get-off-this-boat-I’m signing-up-for-a-sailing-course-sometime-in-life-I-feel-like-a-happy-puppy-with-my-head-out-of-the-window fun. It took three guys significant effort to raise each of the sails on Apollo, and when the wind gets in those sails, this boat moves. At a very steep angle. One side of the boat was skimming the water as we all perched on the high side, legs dangling over the edge. Laying flat on the boat, feet to the low side (or “suicide”), you would almost be standing perpendicular to the water. At the end of our sail on the last day, even our skipper was floating on how exciting and good of a sail we had just had.

One of the reasons I chose this boat was that it offered a free scuba dive. The reef around the Whitsundays is referred to as fringing reef – the Finding Nemo rainbow of brilliant colours is not what you will get here. Add in the bad weather from the last few weeks and visibility is quite poor. Only a couple of boats visit the Outer Reef (the better bit) and you’ll pay for it if so inclined. Luckily, I was aware of this (it was kind of my job, after all), so I wasn’t expecting amazing diving. I just wanted to get a taste of diving to see if I wanted to follow through with my open water course in Magnetic Island and dive trip in Cairns.

The good news is that yes, I definitely want to do my PADI Open Water and keep diving. Breathing underwater has to be one of the strangest sensations a person can experience. What you’re doing is innately, fundamentally wrong. As I let the air out of my buoyancy vest and began to sink below the surface, most of me was expecting it to simply not work, and that at any moment I would take a huge breath of salt water. But it did work. With Darth Vadar-like sounds emerging from my regulator, bubbles flying towards the surface, I took my first few breathes fully submerged in the ocean, fringing coral reef and fish all around. Unfortunately, the dive was quite poorly executed and the dive instructor didn’t give us nearly enough proper instruction. Important things such as how to equalize and how to read gauges were not even mentioned. The dive was short, shallow, and poor, but gave me just enough to want to learn properly, get comfortable, and get back underwater.

The Whitsundays are basically ridiculously beautiful. You would be hard pressed to be unhappy while sailing around, lounging on Whitehaven Beach, or watching the sun set from deck while moored in a quiet bay. Here I shall insert photos as evidence.

 

 

The Best Laid Plans

At this point I’m basically telling myself, “I told you so.” Plans. See, plans just don’t work for me. And it makes for so much more fun this way. After a great time in Brisbane and Noosa, I figured I might as well hit up Rainbow again on my way north. I would be driving right by it, after all. I also had a friend who is one of the guides for the Fraser Island trips who offered to let me jump on his tour. Sounds good.

This was all easier said than done. The road to Rainbow was still flooded, so after an extra couple of nights in Noosa (and I’m not alone in this), the 4WD company from Rainbow organized a caravan of Land Cruisers to come and collect stranded backpackers from Noosa. The ratio of people trying to get back to Rainbow to spots in cars ended up not being in my favour, so Amanda and I were left behind in Noosa. Amanda is another Canadian working in Rainbow for one of the hostels. With a second pick-up later that afternoon, we were confident in the fact we would be getting to Rainbow at some point that day and spent the afternoon having a couple of drinks and chatting. We were at the Noosa Junction on time, ready to get picked up, when we received a call from the 4WD boys, essentially culminating with, “We’re not coming.” A moment of panic was followed quickly with reassurance they had booked us on a privately chartered minibus. We somehow managed to become responsible for organizing said minibus and getting the remaining stranded backpackers sorted and on their way. I never thought that I’d be trying this hard to get back to Rainbow. With a higher level of excitement than I would have anticipated, we finally saw signs for town. I hadn’t told too many people that I was coming back, and even after having only being gone for a few days, I had a brilliant reception. Nearly everyone I knew happened to be at the bar when I walked in, and I had an excellent welcome “home” night. I hit the hay and woke up late and cheery to greet grey skies, a three-day trip to my favourite island on the menu.

The weather would have had to try quite hard to be much worse. For the most part, though, our group kept their smiles on and we had an amazing trip. I had a bit of a different experience than my first tag-a-long trip, and spent most of my time chilling in the guides’ area of camp. I think this may have had something to do with the fact that my patience level for backpackers was pretty low after the travel job. I was more interested in relaxing, sipping on rum, and chatting than skulling goon (really cheap, horrible, awful “wine” that is the backpacker staple) and partying with 150-odd travellers.

The first time I visited Fraser on a tag-a-long, we stayed at beach camp. This is essentially a couple of rows of non-permanent tents, and a pail with a plank on it as an emergency toilet. Gas cookers and a string of Christmas lights for both ambient and functional lighting completed the ensemble. This time around, I was at K’gari, the permanent campground (though still with non-permanent tents). K’gari is on Aboriginal land and I got to meet a couple of the Aboriginal people who live there. Spitting into the fire and whistling were believed to bring about evil spirits and were not to be done while in the campground. Not whistling is harder than you think, especially when I’ve been trying to learn to whistle for the last couple of years and have been practicing at any given moment.

After a lovely three days on the island – intermittently spoiled by drunken Irish antics – we headed back to the mainland. I was set to head to a place called 1770 in the next couple of days. 1770 is where Cook first landed in Queensland, (his second landing in Australia) in the year 1770 (go figure) and has two things that appealed to me: cheap surfing and a deserted island castaway trip. Such is my luck with getting where I’m meant to be; the buses were not dropping anyone off at 1770 for a few days. (Is this getting repetitive and boring yet?) I swapped some dates around (take that, Plan!) and decided to head straight to Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands. I booked my bus for Tuesday evening (arriving Wednesday morning), and shuffled my boat forward a couple of days to leave on Friday morning.

With little of the fanfare from previous “I’m leaving Rainbow” nights, I had a quiet drink at Fraser’s on Rainbow, and said goodbye to the people who happened to be there. Approximately twenty minutes before my bus would take off, I got word that buses were only going as far north as Hervey Bay (about two hours north of Rainbow) and that everything north of that, including Airlie Beach was not accessible. The woman at the call centre for Premier bus must have thought I was a bit unhinged, because when she told me this I could not stop laughing. The hilarity of my inability to get out of this town was not lost on me, I assure you. With little hope, I changed my ticket to the following day and ordered another drink.

Luckily, the sun came out and dried up whatever particular patch of road seemed to be the issue, so I was on the bus the next night (for a cruisy 14 hours), and arrived in Airlie with plenty of time to catch my boat the following day. Next: the boat.