Trials and Tribulations
Trip Start
Feb 26, 2004
1
57
84
Trip End
Nov 16, 2006
Magnetic Island, Cairns, Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation,
Australia
Saturday, February 4, 2006
Magnetic Island was a disaster. As soon as we got there the heavens opened and it pissed down non-stop. Possibly the heaviest downpour I've seen since I've been traveling. The creek, where we had set up our tent, was shallower than Nikki Ryan when we got there and almost overflowing by the time we left. With such awful weather there was little to do and for the first time in nearly 2 years I became offically bored. Captian Cook named the island because his compass went haywire and he lost his bearings. I nearly lost my fucking mind.
The tent leaked a little bit. Luckily for me all of the dripping landed on Soph. Unluckily for me, she didn't like it and moved in to a dorm
01 - Cape Trib
. In fact, we nearly fucking killed each other on that island. So it was agreed that we should get the hell out of there while we could. There were rumours that the flooding had caused the buses and ferries to be cancelled, but we managed to get out and carry on up north and repair our relationship.And our Greyhound travel came to an end, which was kind of sad. No more passing through these random towns whose names ring a bell: Bowen, 1770, Bellingen, and more. Towns who played a signifigant part in various friends' holidays but will probably never mean anything to me.
We only spent a short time in Cairns, having been warned that it wasn't great. It doesn't even have a beach. But actually we've been pleasantly suprised. It seems to be entirely made up of restaurants and shops selling crappy Australian paraphenalia. The whole town is so tacky it's good.
A gorgeous Swedish girl in Broome had recommended a hostel in Port Douglas where she had lived for months. She had also described a tea bag as 'a little bag of magic' so I respected her opinion.
Sure enough, the hostel was brilliant and cheap
02 - Rex, The Flying Fox
. They picked us up from Cairns for free, the camping was good and everyone was real nice. There were alot of insects, and a rat in the kitchen, but even these grew on me. We called the rat Humprhey and we watched happily during our dinner as he scurried around the kitchen, picking scraps out of the bin and taking them back to his house.The final frontier in Australia was a 2 day trip up to Cape Tribulation. It's beautiful and chilled out and very agreeable. But the tour was fairly crap. Our guide on day 1 was Spanish, which caught me off guard. His accent kept me entertained on an otherwise rubbish series of stops. I didn't understand alot of what he said, but I picked out the odd random phrases which I assume I misheard: "...fucking trees...", "...we eat shit...", "...lickin' Moses..."
We were made to visit a terrible zoo where the enclosures seemed to be far too small. There was a one metre crocodile in a tub around one metre in diameter. Because it had been 'bad' apparently. Our guide chose this inopportune moment to tell us he thought the animals were in "paradise".
Compare this to the Bat House sanctuary that we visited of our own will outside of the tour. It was fantastic. It operated on donations (which were definitely forthcoming) and we got to see a flying fox up close. He was happy to let us pet him, and happier to lick my fingers which were still salty from lunch. He was so unbelievably cute. The staff were informative. There was a photo of Batman on the wall. It was phenomenal.
In fairness, the Day 2 guide was better than Day 1
03 - Birds on Magnetic Island
. We swam in a fantastic watering hole which was great. And we took a crocodile cruise which wasn't so great. With 20 people scrambling to see only a couple of tiny cros I just kept comparing it to Kakadu and thinking this was shit.I think I've done everything in Oz I want to do so it's time to fly back to NZ for a bit more work, to save for the final leap back towards Europe. It'll be nice to settle again I guess. Sophie continues her travels in Australia for a bit longer, heading down to South Australia. She'll be joining me again in a while, but for the moment I'm on my lonesome again. I'll no longer have to stop every few metres to tend an injury and I'll no longer have to hang around while she goes in to every pharmacy we pass to browse (Browse!?). I know she's reading this so I'll save my compliments until we permanently go our seperate ways.
Our final couple of days are back in Cairns, where we've been staying in an unbelievably cheap hostel run by some woman who's as nutty as a fruit bat. She was telling us that she sometimes sneaks in to rooms, and if people are wearing their money belts while sleeping then she'll go through them to see if they wake up. Apparently they never do.
I think that's brilliant, and on that note I'll leave Australia...
