Aussie terms of the day...
“Bitumen” – Another word they use for pavement. I don’t know if we
use it in the States or not, but it was a new one to me!
“Billy” – kind of like a pot you use to boil water over a
fire. It can be a bona fide pot if you
will, but I think originally it was basically just tin with maybe a handle that
could withstand the flames and faithfully hold water.
And back to Cairns it was this week, our time in
Townsville coming to a close by Thursday. The drive well, I would say it was
uneventful but that wouldn’t necessarily be the whole truth. We took a stop at Cardwell for some coffee
and another look off the pier (no luck again) and then we drove a little
further and took a stop off at the Giant Gumboot. Australians like big things apparently, like
the giant banana or the giant pinnaple… And who can forget the giant Bowen
mango? It made quite the headline a couple months back when someone stole the
thing for a publicity stunt. It may have
almost made the front page with that one! I think it was found a couple days
later behind some building in the bush.
What I want to know though, is how in the world they moved the darn
thing!
Anyways, so we visited the gumboot,
which I believe commemorates a big flood in the area, and it was there that
occurred the salad dressing incident… I was trying
to be helpful in shaking and mixing this rather cumbersome bottle of
balsamic vinegar and olive oil salad dressing.
I guess I may not have closed the lid quite well enough after checking
it at one point and boy can I tell you, if you ever want to know what it’s like
to be utterly drenched in salad dressing, I’ve got some first hand experience
with that one. I also now know how to
wash my hair in a public sink with hand soap by golly. Just in case you wanted
to know.
We
met Shane and Michelle shortly thereafter for our planned meeting and
stopover to spend some time touring the Spanish inspired castle of Paronella
Park. And wow, it really is beautiful! I
think it was originally started in the 1920’s by a young Spanish man who had
immigrated to Australia in search of his dream and his fortune. Buying land for cane, he would plant it, let
it grow and wait for the harvest season when he would sell the land and move
on. And thus he made his fortune,
eventually making enough to buy the land on which he would eventually build his
castle.
He originally chose the place
for the beautiful waterfall that cascades out the front. And I could certainly
see why! I think they say he took only 6 years to build it, most of it with his
own hands, and it became the sight of many a ball, movie showing, and public
event. Pretty amazing stuff there
really.
We of course had to stay long enough to get on one of the
night tours to see the place all lit up!
First stop was to Coffee Works to
start off the day with some energy and sugar because really, who doesn’t like
coffee and chocolate?! From there we made or way to a campground/hiking area called Granite Gorge and I think the best part of that may have been getting to feed all the little rock wallabies! They were simply everywhere and were seriously some of the friendliest little things. And don't worry, we were'nt just randomly feeding the wildlife, we were given a bag of feed when we paid for our entrance onto the grounds :).
We then tried to make our way to one of the big and
famous fig trees and got lost again which caused us to ask for directions at
this random fruit stand that turned out to have ANZAC biscuits, which we of
course bought for some parental culturing in Australian cuisine. We finally did make it to the
Curtain Fig Tree and spent a bit of time wandering around it and admiring it’s
huge amazingness.
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| The Curtain Fig Tree |
After that we drove the short jog
down the road to Yungabarra and the Platypus Viewing Platform. By about 5 minutes in I was sitting on the log staring down into the water and contemplating the meaning of some bubbles rising to the waters surface while
dad was wondering around somewhere and mom was reading the little information
board about platypus. She had just finished
reading the part that talked about their daily habits and that fact that they
are nocturnal animals and had informed me that, seeing as it was 2:00 in the
afternoon, we were unlikely to see one.
Almost right on cue, I discovered the meaning of those intriguing
bubbles and up popped the platypus! We didn’t see it for very long as it
shortly dove again, surfacing a couple more times down the river before
disappearing from our sights completely, but how cool is that?!
We shortly thereafter made our way
into the town of Yungabarra where we got some fixings for lunch/dinner and took
a duck into an opal shop. We somehow
made it to Lake Eachum, Lake Barrine, and
had a good long look at the Cathedral Fig Tree before the skies started to
finally get dark and we headed down the
Gillies and on towards home.
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| The Cathedral Fig Tree |
For the amazingness of Michelles
family, we were also able to swing one last day on the Great Barrier Reef, this
time to take my parents out my favorite spots of Michaelmas and Vlasoff
Cays. It was beautiful this day again,
the sun choosing to show it’s face a little more though the wind chose to pick
up a bit. Despite this, I was given the opportunity to take everyone's lives in my hands for a bit and drive the boat!
Don’t worry, we all survived... mostly…
After that one point where the boat all but went airborne I decided eeeeeh, I’m good.
If I had to pick one thing as the
highlight, I would probably say it was seeing the turtles! Michelle, Shane and
I came across the same one a couple times snorkeling off Michaelmas and both
times were unable to find a way of signaling my parents so they could get a
look. But apparently someone was determined that my parents see a turtle
because up popped another one over at Vlasoff Cay right beneath both my
parents!
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| Turtle! |
I may or may not have swum down and touched the top of it’s shell as
it swam by but hey, I never admitted anything. I guess what made it so odd was that none of
Michelles family had ever seen turtles at either place before and they had all
been to both places numerous times.
The tide was uncommonly low that
day so when we swam up and did our walk about on Vlasoff, we were able to see a
great distance of coral jutting well up and above the water line. That was
cool!
On our last day in Cairns we
finally made good on that promise to do one of the hikes Shane had recommended
to do during our trip, and so up Glacier Rock it was! I think in total it took us about two hours
and boy is the scenery lovely! You can see much of Cairns from up there, the
view a little different from the ones on Kuranda Range or the drive to
Copperlode Dam. Totally worth it.
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| Lookout from the top of Glacier Rock |
It was then
time for us to pack up and get ready to fly out to Darwin, but first, we had to
break into those s’mores fixings that my parents had brought over and do a
little cultering of American camfire cuisine! We had to throw in a little Pom
(or British) as well with some tea all around and then a little Aussie with our
introduction into the world of damper (pronounce "dampa").
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| Roasting over a campfire.... In the middle of the day... |
Basically, all damper is is flour,
water, and salt and you can either form a loaf to put on the fire or , as we
did, wrap a strip around a stick and roast it in the fire. Much like a
marshmallow actually.
Then off to the airport it was and
let me just enlighten you as to some of the totally acceptable things that
would never fly in the States. First off, when we were checking
our bags and trying to decide on what was to be our 3rd checked bag,
Mom said it had to be hers since she had some bottles of wine packed that she
was taking as a gift for someone. Can
you imagine how shocked we were when they were like “Oh yeah, that’s totally
fine as a carry-on.” WHAT.
And then they have a weight
restriction of 7 kilos for carry on baggage, which was not the case for any of
ours let me tell you, so we had to check them as well. Thank goodness the desk was closed so they
let us go charge free! It’s weird though, all we have are size restriction for
our carry-ons in the States. Next, I found that the full waterbottle I had in
my backpack was totally fine and they said not a word when it passed through
the security scanners and I took it on and through to the terminals. Apparently
they didn’t see the need to have me dump out perfectly good “outside water,”
that could totally kill someone of course, that I would simply replace once I
got on the other side. Yay!
And lastly, Michelle was able to
come through security and sit with us
at our gate. WHAT!? THAT was one I couldn’t wrap my head around.
About five hours later and we were
making our way out of the Darwin airport, all our luggage in hand and our
rental car uneventfully rented. I guess
one of the first things that struck me in the dark and humidness of Darwin was
that they water lots of stuff here. Of
course, my dad found this out the hard way when he got a bit of a shower
through the window when we passed by a rather high pressure sprinkler that was
watering the pavement and he had his window completely open…
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