Cairns Blog Number Two, Part One

So I took the train to Sydney.

…now, that sentence makes it sound quite easy. In truth, my last two days in Melbourne were absolutely insane. I was scrambling to say goodbye to everyone that I had spent time with and become close to, and it was an awfully hard thing. These are people I’ve come to love and respect, and it’s going to be strange to live without them.

My train was at 8:30 am. I caught the 6:39 tram, with Ingrid helping me with my three bags (I owe her big time for getting up so early with me, though God knows when I’ll be able to repay it, given her home being in the Netherlands and mine in the States). I was very early to the train station, but that was alright – better that than late! We boarded at about twenty past eight and the train pulled out at exactly 8:30. I’m talking on the dot here – we got in at exactly 7:55pm that night too, which was what the internets said! I loved the trip. It was gorgeous the whole way, and I found out that I can sleep on trains. So that was good. Here’s the whole trip, by stops:

Start at MELBOURNE.

MELBOURNE  Benalla (where Fitzy lives)  Wangaratta  Albury  Culcairn  Henty  The Rock  Wagga Wagga (where Jason lives)  Junee  Cootamundra  Harden  Yass Junction  Gunning  Goulburn  Bundanoon  Moss Vale  Bowral  Mittagong  Campelltown  Strathfield  SYDNEY

End at SYDNEY CENTRAL. I then caught a train to Parramatta. A lightening strike knocked out the power and I got stuck three hundred yards from the station before Parramatta. After about 40 minutes, the train moved on and I got off there, at Lidcombe (?). Tim picked me up. I spent the next few days hanging out with the kids, and then took off for Cairns.

The Cairns to Whitsundays trip was… epic. I think I left part of my heart there and I want to go back. The flight up was easy as – it took maybe 20 minutes to go through check in and security at the Sydney Domestic airport, the flight was about three hours, I caught a shuttle to my temporary hostel, the Calypso Inn. When I got there I dumped my bag and talked to an Irish boy for about an hour. Then I went into town, had lunch, bought a towel, was interested to find out that there were many more Aboriginals in town than I’d seen before. Then I went back and went swimming, and read a book I picked up from the hostel’s shelf (a Carl Hiassen two-in-one, that I would later hand to someone else, after I was done). Had dinner, showered, checked my email, went to bed. Got up the next day, packed up, then headed out to the Cairns Colonial Club Resort, where the Contiki Tour Group would be meeting.

…There were forty-eight other people. I was expecting like fifteen others, maybe. But the group was large, not quite equal boys and girls – I’d say 40-60? There were about six Americans, including a girl whose hometown is 20 minutes from Wooster, and a few more Canadians than Americans. Four Kiwis, four Aussies, four Irish, four South Africans, four Germans. The rest were mostly British. There was a pair of brothers, a brother and a sister, and three couples. The youngest were eighteen, and two of the 18-year-olds were irritating. I mean, they were nice. Just very young, it felt like. The oldest was 35, turning 36 the day the tour ended. This is pretty funny and pretty perfect, because Contiki is billed as an eighteen-thirty five trip! It was all sorts of people, all sorts of professions, all sorts of temperaments. One boy ended up being called Jude, because he looked just like Jude Law, Matt got called “the naked boy” due to an incident the first night out, and the youngest two were called ‘the Barbie twins’ when they weren’t listening. All the Ireland kids got called “hey, Irish!”; actually, many of us were referred to by nationality or jobs (the Doctor, the Nurse, the Pharmacist, and the Drug Maker, for example).

…I got called adorable, as per my ENTIRE LIFE, and “the one we’re going to get drunk whether she likes it or not”. Mmmyeah.

So we had a bit of an intro, then hauled out to Tjapukai, an Aboriginal cultural center. I fell in with a girl named Heather, a Canadian, right off – we sat together on the bus and talked. Turned out we were both in 4-H! At the center we learned how to throw a boomerang (at which I am a failure) and a spear, with traditional spear-thrower (like an atlatl, used to throw spears at mammoth, at which I have had practice and am much better). He showed us bush tucker and bush medicine, and how to play the didgeridoo, which I had to write about six times before I got right. We also saw some traditional and modern indigenous dance.

…did I mention that it was crazy-hot all that day? And the previous day? And the next day? AND ALL WEEK? I enjoyed it, but it took a bit to get used to.

Then I met up with Mary (Irish), Nicole (Aussie), and Faye (South African), to get on the Skyrail, a ski-lift-like enclosed car that runs for a couple miles over the Queensland rainforest. It puts you down at three places, two where you can walk around and explore and one that is the end. We chatted the entire way, it was a lot of fun. It helped me relax and start feeling more confident about my ability to make friends with these people. We waited about at the top for Shaz, our tour guide, then went back to the hotel. I hung out by the pool for an hour or so, getting to know people, then we all got changed for dinner and the subsequent pub crawl.

Now that was interesting.

Five bars. Five free drinks. I actually had… let’s see. I only bought one drink extra, but I skipped two of the bars, so I had four over about three or four hours? That’s my usual amount. I had great fun. We played games! I missed the paint-your-chest-in-the-pattern-of-your-native-flag contest because I went home, exhausted, but I did see vertical bungee jumping (long story) and strip musical chairs. That’s how Matt ended up with his nickname. He didn’t even win, poor boy, one of the girls did. We were all howling with laughter, though. Shaz got smashed and threw someone’s bathing suit on the roof, then bolted.

Next day we headed out to the reef, about which it is very hard to say anything other than this: You must go see it. It’s really quite impossible to describe what it’s like being there, in a whole other world, under the water. Becky and I (Becky is a 26-year-old English girl, very thin and funny, who ended up being my particular friend) went snorkeling together and got to pet a giant Maori Wrass – we got a picture taken of us, in which neither of us seem to be aware there is a photographer. We are clearly going “fish fish fish fish lemme pet it”. We both went ahead and bought that photo, it’s terrific. I ended up pretty sunburned, mostly on my poor shoulders, from being out in the sun on the ferry to the reef.

That day we went out to dinner at Woolshed’s, which was great, but I fell down the stairs, which was not so great. I skinned a knuckle and twisted my ankle, but I got a free drink and went home early to ice it. Watched some bad TV, took care of my foot. The physiotherapist doctor girl said it looked sprained, and it was stiff the next morning but not too painful.

The next day I went riding! For the first time in five months.

END PART ONE OF BLOG TWO BECAUSE I AM TIRED.