Aussie terms of the
day…
“Buckley’s chance” – kind of like saying that there is no chance at all or that
something is as good as impossible. As the
story goes, Buckley was a convict way back when and while being transported to
New South Wales, managed to escape off and into the bush with a couple other
convicts. The group later split up near modern day Melbourne and Buckley was
left off on his own wandering the bush.
At one point he unknowingly took a spear from a recently buried
aboriginal tribesman and later ran into the Wathaurung tribe who, upon seeing
the spear, believed him to be the returning spirit of a fellow tribesman. He
lived among the Wathaurung people for the next thirty some odd years, learning
their language and customs. He even became a prominent figure of influence and
became an expert in Aboriginal weapons, though he was banned from participating
in tribal wars for his position as a reverend spirit. In 1835, he found his way
to a European camp where he later revealed his identity as the reportedly
deceased William Buckley and he was granted pardon for his past crimes. There
are some arguments as to the truthfulness of the story of course, but there it
is in a quick, run through fashion.
“Dunny” – basically another word for the toilet
“Taking the mickey out of…” – means making fun of something
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| Lake Tinaroo |
This past week was the final
week of study, finals, and all things uni and boy is it weird to say that I am
now done! I had some rather… painful... finals I must admit, but if I had three
weeks to study and spent almost all of that time sitting in front of my computer
doing just that, I don’t really know what else I could have done. But of course
as my last week in Townsville, study wasn’t the only thing I did (though it was a good 90% of it).
Monday
was the last Monday night Bible study for me before I head off on my other
adventures and as a goodbye Crystal made cake! Gosh, I’m really gonna miss
those Monday nights and that awesome group of people!
During
one of my many evenings home studying in the lounge, I was released from the
responsibility of putting on my own study music and was instead serenaded by
the loud and clear country twang of Keith Urban as he performed a concert
across the way from the lodge at the nearby stadium. That was cool and I can
now say I have heard Keith Urban live right here in his home country!
I had
three finals this week, all of them bright and early in the morning, and since
I obviously wasn’t stressed enough Michelle and I decided driving home from
each one was a good time to teach me how to drive manual on the “wrong” side of
the road. Gosh am I glad I’m pretty
solid driving a stick shift! But I am proud to report to you that I didn’t
stall the car even once, almost killed us maybe once, and only turned on the
windshield wipers to indicate turning about 7 times in the 15 minute drive. That was honestly the weirdest part, the
windshield wiper and indicator switches being flip flopped to the cars at home. That’s going to take some getting used to…
And just
to tell you how wiped all our minds were getting by the end, we finally checked
one of the bucket list and phone ordered fish n’ chips under the given name “Lord
Voldemort.” I must say that the fish n’ chip shop staff gave us a mighty weird
reaction and had to double check that we were actually being serious. But it
made all of us at the lodge exorbitantly happy with uncontrollable fits of
laughter once we hung up the phone and Michelle had to make one of the boys go
in with her to pick them up. Best batch of fish n’ chips ever!
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| Just passing through on the way to Cairns |
The end
of the week brought the end of finals, with my last one being Friday morning,
and Michelle and I had to finish clearing out our rooms and packing up the car
for our drive up to Cairns.
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| 5 hour drive, here we come! |
I think we
finally left Townsville around 1:08 and by 6:00 that evening we were walking
through the front door and getting hugged in welcome by Michelle’s parents in
Cairns
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| The sunset behind "The Pyramid." |
The
following morning we hit the ground running as far as showing me all the sights
and experiencing all there is in the next two weeks. Michelle’s family owns a
boat and upon hearing I had never been water skiing or tubing before, knew they
had to right this terrible travesty. So to Lake Tinaroo it was with a side trip
into Mareeba along the way to pick up Hannah, one of our housemates from the lodge.
And thus ensued a fun filled day of water skiing, tubing, knee boarding,
and other boat and water related activities!
I was no good at the water
skiing bit, which was to be expected for my first time, but Shane and the rest
of the group were really patient and by about the 3rd or 4th
try I actually got up! Sort of...
We dubbed
it “butt skiing” and I was thus for a good half the lake before stacking it
again a ways out.
Tubing got a bit interesting
near the end of our last lap around the lake when Hannah’s elbow decided it
wanted to try it’s darndest to break my nose. I told Hannah she didn’t try hard enough as I don’t think it’s broken
though I do think the cartilage may have detached from the bone for the loud
crack and snap I heard upon impact… But someone had chocolate and ice and that
always fixes everything!
As penance for her elbows
actions, Hannah was stuck with me for the night as we had planned a sleepover a
while back before the end of uni. While the rest of the crew went on home to
Cairns, Hannah and I had dinner at her house in Mareeba and made a night of it
watching the first two X-Men movies. We
went to bed late and got up early the next morning, making it in to the morning
service at Hannah’s home church.
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| The Tablelands |
We later had a lovely lunch at a
chocolate and coffee “shop” in town called Coffee Works where they sell lots of fancy chocolate and coffee beans. It was fun to just walk around there and see all the touristy stuff they had there. I then got an afternoon tour of Kuranda, the very touristy village about half way between Mareeba and Cairns, where we took a stroll through the open markets and
a tour and walk through the butterfly sanctuary. I have never seen so many butterflies in one place before! It was definitely a place I would want to go back to in the future, next time remembering a spare and full battery for my camera! When the markets closed around 4:00, it was back to Cairns for me and to Michelle’s place for the evening. Hannah heads off to placement and then Western
Australia in the coming week so I was incredibly blessed to just spend even the
little time I did with her before she heads off on adventures of her own!
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| Sugar Cane fields near Cairns. They have LOTS of sugar cane in this region! |
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