First Days in the Far South

  Caloundra, Australia
Thursday, September 6, 2007

    I awoke as usual to the sound of rain pouring on a metal garage roof.  I got into Australia on Tuesday morning, after roughly thirty-two hours of travel from Huntsville, Alabama to find the Sunshine Coast besieged by swarthy gray clouds bearing torrential rains and fearsome winds.  I have yet to see the sun's rays and can only trust the dubious wisdom of whomever gave name to this new home of my Aunt Jane and Uncle Neil.  
    So now I am on my third day here on the southernmost populated continent on Earth, a feat I have yearned to

Ian shooting at Robyn and Denis' place

accomplish since early childhood, and I have largely been confined to surfing the Internet, playing pool, and watching movies at the place where Jane and Neil are house-sitting for their friends Robyn and Denis and have generously, provided me a mattress in the garage.  In addition, as neither has started work down here, they have been my constant tour guides for the environs of their now resident Caloundra, Queensland.
    My first day, finding myself surprisingly rested, having flown on a half-filled flight and stretched out asleep across an entire row of seats for the duration, I was shown downtown Caloundra, a smallish city center with uncrowded, tree-lined streets and an impressive array of international cuisine and kitsch stores normally resigned to larger cities.  Jane, Neil, and I stopped in at the DMV so Jane could get her new Australian driver's license, and then we had lunch at a little bistro where I had maybe the best pizza of my life.  It consisted of the usual thin crust with tomato sauce, cheese, and then tandori chicken, Greek yogurt and cashews.  It may or may not sound appetizing, but I promise you it was an amazing culinary experience that is making me hungry right now just describing it.
    Yesterday I awoke at 5:30 am, hearing a small, but garish bird chorus greeting the lightening gloom and inexplicably thought it the perfect opportunity for a run, no matter the incessant rain.  So I donned my running shoes and a long-sleeved shirt and jogged the half-mile to the beach.  Once there, from atop the sand dune rise, I was afforded the breathtaking view of the back of my eyelids.  The rain was being whipped up the beach so hard I had to squint my eyes to avoid them being sandblasted from their sockets.  (A good day for a run, indeed!)  So, thinking better of a nice jaunt beside the waves, but determined to run off some of the travel anxiety, I headed northward along the coast, aimlessly weaving through residential streets, when I happily stumbled upon the beachhead where the Currimundi Lake meets the sea and a well-kept path meanders lakeside beneath old-growth gums and pines.  Unfortunately, by the time of this breakthrough I was already quite tired and so, rain-drenched and feeling coldly hollow in my chest, I turned homeward.  
    After a hot shower and some breakfast, my urge for adventure Down Under temporarily dampened, I found no reason to leave the house and passed the remainder of the day reading and watching movies with Heath, who had the day off from school.
    
    And then there was today-my first big tour of the eastern, so-called Sunshine Coast of Australia, the fifty-mile stretch of beaches just to the North of Brisbane.  After taking Heath and Ian to school, we headed down Steve Irwin Motorway to then take scenic Route 6 up the coast.  As we drove along we caught a few glum, gray-green views of the Pacific (looking so frothy and malign that I began to wonder if all place names around here had such cruelly ironic originators).  Then we began to climb the spine of the Blackall Range, rising into the low clouds, and quickly surpassing them so that, aside from the road ahead, all was a cool white, colloidal blanket.  Ocassionally air currents would allow glimpses of lush green valleys and rolling pastures, brooks and copses of ancient trees, parceled out by endless rows of barbed wire.  Or a neighboring highland would rise up from the fog like some moss-covered turtleback emerging from the water, its mysterious limbs and trunk invisible in the depths.
    This world was beautiful and maddening in its mystique, its unwillingness to divulge more than the slightest hint of the splendid view of ocean stretching to the horizon, which our current vantage should have afforded.  Neil made things worse by telling me time and again how amazing the view would have been, and the incredible sights I would have beheld, should this cloud have been as considerate as to rain elsewhere.  Not finding this currently to be the case, I passed the time smirking and thinking of tea and scones to come once we reached the top of our road and Montville.
    Montville is a small tourist-driven town full of shops and galleries, and which is apparently a bustling destination for Aussies and wandering Americans alike, despite whatever amount of water Mother Nature should deem to dump on them.  And so I soon found myself with my aunt and uncle in a crowded tearoom, shivering inwardly and clutching a cup of green tea and a bit of jam-smeared scone.  After lazily chatting, reading up on some tourist pamphlets (Did you know mother humpbacks, which harbor near Frazer Island every year, may produce fifty liters of milk per day?), and warming up a bit, I then decided that I will bring teatime to America.  It is a wonderful practice.
In any case, after Montville, we headed down the other side of the mountain, into pastureland meandering along the Obie Obie creekside.  The odd mixture of the normal and the exotic here never ceases to amaze me.  Along the way we saw herds of milk cows, goats, horses, cattle egrets, Australian magpies, and a galah, which is a common type of cockatoo with a gray body and a pink head.  (As we drove I constantly referenced my Birds of Australia field guide to familiarize myself with the local fauna.)
    We passed through the small town of Kenilworth and then headed on to Noosa,

Jane posing near Kenilworth, Queensland

a larger, moneyed tourist town fit with all the luxury hotels, stores and kiosks you could want, and then several more, tucked picturesquely between the mountainside and the shore.  Noosa is a big surfer's destination, as Neil informed me it is possible on a good day to catch a wave and ride it for a mile as it breaks around the headland.  So in light of this it should not surprise that on a miserably dreary day the parking lot was packed and the water filled with little black, bobbing specks awaiting a good wave set.  Still, you won't catch me out there till the sun decides to shoo off these blasted vagrant clouds.
And that was pretty much the whole of my first three days in Australia, and it is not really what I expected.  That's not to say I'm not enjoying myself, and immensely (I'm in friggin' Australia!), but I hadn't expected a cold, never-ending deluge upon my arrival.  And I am certainly enjoying the company of Jane and Neil and my two little cousins

My cousins Heath and Ian

Heath and Ian.  I only have six days left with them before I have to report to Wallaby Creek for the bowerbird project.  I'm really looking forward to getting out into the Bush to observe some wildlife and do some science.  But for now I'm digging the downtime with the fam, and tonight not having to set my alarm clock.