Don't feed the dingoes!!!Just back from a day at the lagoon in Cairns in North Australia. But let me go back about nine days…
We arrived in Melbourne slightly worse for wear from the party in Shauna’s house the night before. After meeting up with Brian aka Brizer (Fi’s cousin) at the airport we headed back to his place to drop off our gear and headed straight out again to spend a night in Lorne. Lorne is a small town somewhere along the Great Ocean Road and the parents a friend of Brizer own a holiday home there. We set out and saw many interesting things on the road to Lorne including Koalas. Although we had already seen Koalas in the reserve in Sydney, seeing them naturally in the wild was a little more exciting. We arrived in Lorne slightly after dark and when we rocked up to the holiday home we were very pleasantly surprised. It was a bloody mansion! The house was large with plenty of comfortable bedrooms and the whole place was very tastefully decorated. It also included a large balcony with tables, chairs and a patio heater, perfect for those late night sessions. The icing on the cake though was the outdoor fridge on the balcony. When I asked Nick and Chrissie (Brizer’s mates – Chrissie’s family owned the house) why there was an outdoor fridge the response was simply
“Because Chrissie’s parents are lazy people and can’t be bothered going all the way inside every time they want a beer.”
Fair enough! After spending some time there making good use of the outdoor fridge we headed to a bar for some food. After that it was on to another bar which had more of a club feel to it. We had a fantastic night with some really lovely people and the beautiful part was when I woke up the next morning Nick was already on the go whipping us up some bacon, toast and grilled tomatoes. Delish!
It was tempting to hang around the beautiful house all day reading the Sunday papers and making civilized conversation but the Great Ocean Road was calling and we’d already spent a great deal of the day sleeping. We still had over half of the road to complete and it was the part that contained most of the interesting stuff to see including the twelve apostles. Although it was a pretty overcast and dismal day we still got a pretty good view of the apostles. We also got to see the beach where surfing all started and some pretty cool cliff, rock and sea anomalies that created massive waves with big splashes and big crashes. We had just seen the blow hole when darkness finally arrived and Brizer decided we were well in need of some food. He casually suggested fish and chips but when we rocked up to the fish ‘n’ chips joint it was apparent that fish and chips were always on the agenda. To give you an idea of the kind of establishment it was, here is a sample of a conversation that took place between me and the woman who ran the joint:
Me: “What kind of fish is the fish?”
Woman: “What do you mean?”
Me: “I mean is it cod or whiting or…”
Woman “It’s just fish, mate.”
It went down surprisingly well and by the time we arrived back in Melbourne we were knackered after a fun filled weekend and hit the sack pretty pronto. Our first day actually in Melbourne was spent doing the obligatory touristy sight seeing stuff. Amongst the places we hit that day were the museum of moving images, the waterfront, the largest traveling ferris wheel in the southern hemisphere and generally all the groovy streets that make up Melbourne. It was fast becoming apparent that although Sydney was a party city with plenty of tourist attractions, Melbourne was definitely the funkier, cooler city which would be more suited to actually living there for an extended period of time. Although Melbourne hadn’t been invaded by as many Andrews people as Sydney there was still the token few. We met up with them (Dyra, Lia and Laura Liston) that night for dinner and afterwards to a cool bar with a great reggae covers band. We wined, danced and chatted through the night with some humorous photos to show for it at the end. The next day we did more of the token touristy stuff and this time we made it to the Melbourne museum. As someone who doesn’t generally enjoy museums I was well impressed by this one. The standard exhibition is about the life and history of Melbourne but somehow they manage to make it very interesting, fun and interactive. It even included a bit of the set of Neighbours! Other temporary exhibitions we saw were the history of runners (as in shoes) and Japanese screens. Afterwards we headed back to the area we were staying in, St. Kilda, via a well known street that contained many funky and cool bars/cafes/shops. We stopped at one of the cafes and reflected that we were getting more pissed of with Melbourne because it was so cool and we had only 5 days there to experience it – far too short a time.
The Melbourne comedy festival was on while we were there and Brizer was kind enough to sort us out with tickets to a Scottish comedian called Danny Bhoy. I went along worried that I was in for a night with a loud, rude Scottish bloke similar to Billy Connolly but ended up being pleasantly surprised as he was far more quiet and subtle. As the next day was ANZAC day meaning everyone had the day off work, town was pretty hopping. Despite this myself and Nik headed home pretty soon after Danny Bhoy leaving Fi and Brizer to their own devices. I was more interested in saving my stamina for ANZAC day itself. Brizer had again pulled through for us and sorted us out with a pair of tickets to see Essendon Bombers Vs Collingwood Magpies at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. This is a very significant Aussie rules football match in the league every year because of the rivalry between the two teams and it is always played on ANZAC day and always sold out. Excitement heightened as we approached the stadium and the incredible size and atmosphere inside only heightened it further. Not sure who to support I decided to wait and see how the first quarter of the game panned out before choosing a team. I didn’t even have to wait that long. The extremely loud and raucous cheering of a couple of young women behind me convinced me that I was a passionate Collingwood supporter. Also their vast array of names for their team was impressive: Maggies, ‘pies, Woodies, Collings and just plaing old Collingwood.
Sure enough the women’s voices weren’t hoarsed in vain and the pies ended up thrashing the bombers. The rest of ANZAC day was spent much in the same way as Paddy’s day is back home. We knew we were getting a flight to Alice Springs the next morning so we let ourselves go a bit wild with the intention of recovering on the flight. Alas it was not to be. Our flight was scheduled for 8.25 am and funnily enough this was the exact time I woke up. Thinking I was maybe missing something I went into Fi and Nik to see if I was imagining it but it turned out I wasn’t dreaming and we actually had missed our flight. A closer inspection of events revealed that Brizer (who was actually on a flight to New Zealand 10 mins after our flight) had set his alarm for 6.15. The alarm had gone off and he diligently woke up and headed for the toilet. Unfortunately poor Brizer hadn’t gotten quite enough sleep and decided he would go back to sleep for a further 10 minutes. Over 2 hours later, we were all still asleep. Oops! It wasn’t too bad though – we just had to spend another day in Melbourne (boohoo). For our unexpected extra day in Melbourne we decided to visit a famous cinema called the Astor (http://www.astor-theatre.com/). It’s a really old school theatre with only one screen but all the staff are dolled up like the 50’s and you’re treated like a king. In Melbourne, the cinemas are very proud of their home made ice cream and each cinema makes its own. As you might expect, the Astor is generally regarded to have the best ice cream and so I indulged in an Arctic banana flavored one. Mmm!
Thankfully we didn’t miss our flight to Alice Springs the next day which was probably something to do with the 7 alarms we set to wake us up. We made it onto the plane with no hassle and very soon after landing we were in our rented car and cruising through the outback on our way to Uluru or Ayre’s rock. In this area of the world it is not recommended to drive at night because of the kangaroos, cows and donkeys that can jump into the middle of the road without warning. Because of this we stopped to stay at a place called Curtin Springs, about 60km from Uluru, which was a free “camping ground” with a bar and petrol station. The camping ground was a big open space with rock hard terrain. This made pitching the tents rather difficult and so we used our respective initiatives to come up with ways of keeping the tent on the ground. We used logs, rocks and branches and ended up with quite a contraption. At least the tent wouldn’t blow away but we didn’t expect to get much sleep on the rock hard ground without ground mats. “Ah well”, we thought. “Might as well have a pint”. And so we found ourselves sitting around the bar in a place that can only be described as the Australian version of hick America. It was a weird place with weird people so we didn’t spend too long there figuring the hard ground would be a more comfortable environment.
We actually slept surprisingly well but were up early to make the final 60km to Uluru. After arriving there we swiftly set up our tent on ground that was far more soft and springy than than that at Curtin Springs. However we were slightly nervous about the signs all around the campsite that read
"Don't feed the Dingoes."
There are dingoes here?! Around lunchtime we headed into the national park to see the rock that everyone was making such a big fuss about. It was pretty impressive as it was just this great big rock with nothing else around it for miles. We decided to be the respectful travelers and not climb it at the wishes of the aboriginals. We also refrained from photographing the spiritual hotspots of the rock and enjoyed a pleasant but hot 3 hours walk around the base of the rock. Sunset was spent at the Olgas, some other rock formations nearby but sadly was quite average as sunsets go. Nothing like that we experienced on Easter Island. The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn again but this time we were off to King’s Canyon about 200km away. This was a far more spectacular sight than Uluru or the Olgas and we embarked on a 2.5 hour hike up to the top of the canyon and then around the rim of it. Although the walk was stunning with dramatic cliffs and absolutely dry as dry can be, the heat and pesky flies were becoming too much to bear. We headed back to our tent and chilled out until the sun went down taking the flies with it. The next day we woke up early yet again to get back to Alice Springs with the car and grab our 2.30 flight to Cairns. This all went according to plan and the first thing we noticed disembarking in Cairns was the heat. Alice Springs and Uluru had been mega hot but the difference is that they were dry. Cairns is just impossibly humid. Every time I complained about the heat/humidity an Aussie would pipe up and say “You should come here in summer, mate!”. Well I can safely say that I most definitely won’t be coming here in summer especially since our first day was officially the first day of Aussie winter and was 37 degrees Celsius! We made the best of the day though; spending it by the lagoon which is a makeshift beach created by the government to compensate for the lack of good beaches in Cairns. Tomorrow we begin our 5 day diving course which includes 3 days/2 nights living on board a boat and a total of 9 dives,one of which is a night dive. Bring it on!
# posted by Grum @ 4:52 AM
