More Observations on Australia

A few more weeks in Australia has led to more observations of a whole new host of differences from home.  Let’s start with fast food restaurants.  McDonalds is called Maccas here (weird).  They still have the same McDonalds signage and logo on everything but in ads and when talking about the chain, they say Maccas.  In an unexpected twist that left me quite disappointed, Australian Pizza Hut is gross (and apparently I’m not the only one who has noticed b/c I learned last night that they are in bankruptcy), but Dominos Pizza, which I never ate at home (and is, ironically, I believe going through bankruptcy back in the US), is everywhere and has delicious pizzas.  KFC was definitely the worst though.  They don’t serve those delicious buttery biscuits you get back home (fair disclosure: those biscuits were the only thing I ever ate at KFC and they worked magic on a hangover).  Here, in lieu of a biscuit, they serve a plain dinner roll.  Oh the let down the day we went there for lunch L 

Any word can be shortened by cutting it off and adding a Y-sound.  For example, breakfast is brekkie, hosts are hosties, coolers are eskys, etc.  Peppers are called capsicum (imagine my confusion at the grocery store self-checkout line the first time) and no one knows what ketchup is, here it’s tomato sauce.  Beets are wildly popular and put on everything from salads to burgers (even Maccas burgers have beets on them).  Entrees on a menu are actually the appetizers and what we call entrees at home are called ‘mains’ here.  We have yet to get a bottle of wine with a cork in it – it’s all screw tops, which is hilarious since Alex toted a wine opener halfway around the world only for it to be rendered useless. 

I found out why we’ve seen so many pregnant ladies, Australia gives new mothers a $7,000 government subsidy that is fondly referred to as a ‘baby bonus’.  Sadly, we were told it is fueling irresponsibly pregnancies in the lower income socioeconomic class amongst women who fail to realize that, in addition to a small check, you also get a CHILD to take care of for the next 18 years.  Something else I could see contributing to irresponsible behavior over here is the abundance of drive-thru liquor stores.  Why would anyone ever be in such a rush for alcohol that they couldn’t get out of their car?  It’s odd, especially given Australia’s strict alcohol policies. 

I know about these alcohol policies all too well because, in order to get a job at the bar, I had to pass a Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) course.  It was super informative and I was surprised to learn that I personally can be fined $8k for serving a minor or drunk person, my manager gets fined $10-25k and the bar faces a $50k fine.  As such, it’s quite strict in the bars and people get cut off frequently (which is weird to see at 6pm on a weeknight) for behavior that would be considered common at home.  It’s the general consensus that it’s better to cut off a potentially drunk customer and deal with their wrath than risk a huge fine.  Bars here aren’t allowed to have drink specials or advertise happy hours either because it encourages excessive drinking and of course, shot girls are not allowed.  The aboriginals (who are much more prevalent up here than they were down south in Sydney) apparently have drinking issues as a people so in some areas up here alcohol is completely banned.  You can even get in trouble for driving through one of these areas with sealed alcohol in your car.  No joke.

For those who are able to drink in their area, there are a number of sizes you can select from when order beer; a pint, a schooner, a pot, a middie, a jug, a super jug, I would continue as there are more but I can’t remember them all.  Now, as if that weren’t confusing enough, different states refer to different volumes by different names.  A pot in Victoria is a schooner up here in Queensland, for example, and out-of-towners get upset when served the wrong size (even though they are the ones who ordered wrong).  As a bartender, it’s impossible sometimes!

Something you’d never see back home that has me baffled is a rugby series called the State of Origin.  It’s an annual three game grudge match between the states of New South Wales and Queensland in which each state picks the best players from their respective states (regardless of where they play) to compete as an All-Star squad against the rival state.  Nothing unusual about that except that the games are played during the regular season causing players to miss games with their actual teams and, because it’s super competitive and taken very seriously, players are regularly getting hurt, putting them out for the rest of their professional season with their club team.  Can you imagine any pro football player actually playing hard in the Pro Bowl or how pissed NFL coaches would be if they had to send their best players off three times mid-season causing them to miss games and frequently getting them back injured?!  Yeah, it wouldn’t happen.  But NSW and Queensland have quite the rivalry going on and this game determines bragging rights for the whole year so both states get really into it and, from our limited experience, it is the best rugby of the season.

One thing I like about Aus is that taxes are included in pricing.  So if you go into a store and buy something that is $18, when you get to the register, you pay $18.  That being said, I still can’t get used to the dollar coins!  Another thing that’s been an adjustment is being the minority – I hardly ever meet anyone else traveling here from the US and everyone assumes I’m from Canada when they hear my ‘accent’ because they don’t get many US travelers.  And speaking of minorities, Africans Australians (?? – is that the PC term?) don’t exist.  As a result, because there is no minority to take slight, some unintentionally offensive comments that would cause outrage back home are said without consequence here… like when the national TV announcer on their version of the Today show said he “thought it was easier to look good in clothes when you’re black” then called Kanye West ‘a douchebag’.  No one even batted an eye, nor were there calls for his job or a forced apology.  Perhaps it’s because Kanye isn’t very popular with the Australian people – whenever his name comes up, in conversation or on TV, disparaging words quickly follow.  Hey, this one the Australian people and I can agree on!  What we don’t agree on however is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Aussies think the combination or PB&J is weird and gross.  Yet these same people find nothing amiss about Vegemite… really?!

One thing the ladies at home will appreciate – and I never get tired of – is that men are sexualized to the same degree as women on TV here.  On the Aussie version of Price is Right, there are beautiful male models without their shirts on alongside their female counterparts in skimpy dresses.  But, by far my favorite, are the guys on the ‘Mornings’ show.  Everyday there is some kind of pub quiz on the show and these handsome gentlemen are on-hand to award the winner with a meat tray (haha, literally a big plate with raw steaks on it – reminds me of meat raffles in Wisconsin).  They are all tan, buff dudes dressed in Chippendales attire and serve no purpose except eye-candy.  It’s perfect for the 9am stay-at-home Mom audience and never ceases to crack me up – I love it.  Well done Australia!

Final random factoid: black swans are only found in southern hemisphere. We saw a flock at a park in Sydney and I was mesmerized and thought they were so beautiful and unique as I’d never seen one before. I took photos and treated it like seeing a unicorn (though looking back I should have realized I was the only one quite so excited). Imagine my disappointment when, while rifling through kids books for my nephew at a local bookstore, I saw that they are common but only to the southern hemisphere. For those of you not planning on visiting the southern hemisphere anytime soon, here’s a pic – yep, same as a regular swan just black but very cool (in my opinion).

More Scuba Diving!

After our first trip, we were eager to go out diving again and less than a week later we found ourselves back on the boat for another three day adventure because we had a few days to kill before where we were going to be staying in Cairns would be available.  The boat had a totally different crew, and vibe of people, but it was no less fun and we got to dive together the entire time, enjoying much more of the reef (for me anyway) than we had on our first trip.  I remembered to take photos of our accommodations this time so here’s where we stayed on the boat, the view from our top bunk one morning and the teeny-tiny bathroom/shower.

I, unfortunately, had a bit of congestion (likely from the mold growing on the wall in the hotel room we’d stayed at the previous few nights) which is dangerous for diving as you can’t equalize your ears and can make it quite painful when you’re descending to depth but it only prevented me from going on the first night dive and didn’t otherwise impair the trip.  We had several exciting encounters underwater this time that we didn’t previously and this outing’s dives full of marine life.  We got an up-close view of a white tipped reef shark that swam within three feet of me on our night dive.  I was super pumped but Alex was less than impressed.  We saw a school of bumphead parrotfish the next morning that he was a bit more keen on.  Check out their ‘teeth’ – they look ferocious but they only use them to bit of bits of coral to eat.  I was quite excited to see a lionfish and it looked beautiful set against a piece of green branch coral (though poisonous so I didn’t get too close).  My camera was set on some funky setting so the photo is unusual but I kinda like how it turned out.  And one photo that I forgot to share from our last dive, a close-up of a jellyfish!

Once again turtles were my favorite!  We finally saw Bryan, a 140 year old turtle who is bigger than two dining room tables put together and quite famous on the reef, and two other huge turtles.  There’s no way to describe him other than ‘massive’ and he lives on the reef we dived the second day.  Our best bet at seeing him was in his den at night and sadly on our last trip our instructor didn’t find him.  This trip we navigated to his den ourselves and there he was, along with two other giants sleeping in dens nearby.  Despite hearing about him repeatedly, I was still surprised by his size when we saw him in person (since it was a night dive, I didn’t have the camera but no photos would have turned out anyway b/c it was dark and we only had flashlights).  On a different dive, we came across another, normal sized, turtle who was keen to interact with us.  He swam right up to Alex, checked him out for a bit, then snacked on some coral before swimming away through Alex’s fins.  It was awesome and I got a few photos of it so you guys could enjoy as well!

Alex face to face with a friendly turtle

This trip we also saw some bigger fish (not sure if you can get a sense of their size in the photo but they were quite large and let us swim right up to them) that I thought were quite cool so here are some pics of them.  The last one is a barracuda, they were a little more cautious of divers so this was as close as we got to any but it was still awesome to see them in the water.

We decided to get our Advanced Open Water diving certification this trip because we got a discount for being repeat customers and we liked the instructors so much.  All three of our Adventure diver certification dives counted towards our Advanced cert so we only needed two more dives – underwater navigation and one educational dive of our choice (we chose peak performance buoyancy).  Buoyancy isn’t my strong suit and Alex put me to shame on our course.  He was hovering in the water for a solid ten minutes or so before I was able to master the skill, much to his enjoyment.  I had the last laugh though because for our final exercise our instructor put a dive knife in the sand and we had to swim up and touch it with our nose without touching the ocean floor and I was able to do that first.  Of course Alex made him leave it there until he got it too so that dive I’ll give to him.  Underwater navigation went to me though (in spite of the fact that, on our first few dives of the trip, we got pretty turned around on and ended up quite a long swim from the boat).  The instruction consisted of using our compass to swim patterns underwater (a useful tactic utilized when searching for missing divers but only effective if you stay on course) and we both did well though my triangle was actually a triangle whereas Alex’s was not, giving me the edge for the dive.  (Even with our flaws, we were both good enough on both dives to pass the course, making us AOW certified and able to dive to depths of 40m!)  One other thing I was super excited about on our underwater navigation dive (besides besting Alex) was the up-close shot of a sting ray that our instructor took with my camera.  We’d seen stingrays repeatedly on our dives but never when I had a camera (of course) and I reaaaaallllly wanted to get a photo of one since they were one of my favorites underwater.  Our instructor pointed out the stingray before we descended so once down there I swam over and got a few pics.  He had a lot of underwater photography experience from his work on other boats so when I came back, sensing my ineptitude, he took the camera and swam back over for a shot of his own.  You’ll probably notice his photo is better than any of the ones I took.  The second shot is my original photo - I thought that was close enough…

Last but not least, I want to share the story of one of the guys we met on the boat, Randy.  He was a 60yo dive instructor from Phoenix, with well over 3,000 dives under his belt, who came to Australia to dive with his wife and two of their friends.  His friends’ daughter, also named Kristen, was along for the trip too and wearing a Chicago FPD shirt the first day so we quickly got to talking and were then introduced to Randy and his wife and her parents.  It was easy to see right away that Randy is just a great guy.  He was so friendly, offering us tips on our diving and sharing in our excitement for everything we saw underwater, and eventually he told us the story of how he’d ended up on this trip.  He was on the show Undercover Boss last year and, when the CEO revealed himself, he paid off Randy’s mortgage, gave him $50,000 in cash and a first-class trip anywhere in the world.  Incredible, right?  Well, even more incredible is that, the night we got off the boat, I was flipping channels on the TV while Alex finished getting ready and Randy’s Undercover Boss episode was ON TV.  Aaaand, Randy was actually on TV at the exact moment I flipped through.  Maybe you’re not that impressed, but Alex & I both could not believe the coincidence and are still talking about it.  If that didn’t do it for you, here’s a photo of Alex and I getting ready to dive and a shot of another beautiful evening on the boat for your enjoyment J      

Scuba Diving the Great Barrier Reef

Alex got scuba certified in Bermuda before we came on our trip and has been excited about diving the Great Barrier Reef ever since.  Given that it was winter in Chicago and we don’t have too many great diving locales, I decided to wait until we got to Australia before pursing my cert.  We arrived in Cairns a few weeks ago (where has the time gone?!) and immediately signed me up for scuba diving lessons and three days chock full of diving on a live-aboard boat (Alex meanwhile explored our temporary new home and took a two hour refresher to prepare himself for our non-stop diving adventure).  I lucked out with having a great instructor, small class and well-run dive boat all of which made for a wonderful experience and I’ve fallen in love with scuba diving! 

Here’s my dive class out on the boat…  next to me is Stephan, a funny German dude who could never understand what I was saying (more on that later), Holly, a super cool Cairns local whose partner, Megan, also joined us on the dive trip, Louise, our British instructor who was super strict but taught us a lot and sadly has now left Cairns for three months on a Dairy farm in Tasmania and Sarah, my dive buddy who was on the English national swimming team and swam the English Channel a few years ago.  Quite an interesting bunch!

The first day and a half on the boat I had instructional dives with my classmates so Alex was forced to find a new partner.  We were unaware when we signed up that it was self-guided diving, ie. there was no one to show you around, watch your air or bring you back to the boat – you were on your own, which was a little scary at first.  Alex’s partner Sam had him convinced he was an expert diver but it didn’t take long for Alex to realize that it was all evidence to the contrary.  These two burned through air in 20 minutes and were all over underwater (though they were very conscientious not to damage the reef) but they had fun and cracked me up with their stories when they got back.  My dives were obviously more focused on education but we had fun and saw a lot underwater as our instructor directed us to all the spots with turtles, big fish and occasionally sharks. 

After my course was finished, we had the option to take three more instructive dives to get Adventure Diver certified, which would allow us to depths of 30m (vs. only 18m with our Open Water Cert).  Alex and I jumped on that opportunity as we want to dive the Yongala, an 1800s ship wreck four hours south of here that is rated one of the Top Ten dive sites in the world (it requires Advanced cert. as it is in water about 25m deep).  The extra dives were cool, we had a deep dive to 27m (Alex’s favorite of the trip), an underwater photography dive (my favorite - my underwater photos are just ok but I hope you all enjoy them) and a night dive with sharks!  Not everyone enjoyed the night dive, though I thought it was pretty cool, and Sarah, my dive partner, freaked out when she saw a shark and couldn’t stop crying the rest of the night (despite me repeatedly reminding her that given her swimming prowess, had anything gone wrong it was me who would have been shark bait not her). 

Night Diving with Flashlights

I won’t bore you with every little detail but all of our dives were great and each of them had something special to excite us.  Whether it was touching a sting ray, getting a close up with a green sea turtle, encountering a new beautiful fish, large grotesque fish or pretty, colorful coral, we always had something we were eager to talk about once we got back on the boat.  I was always excited to see the turtles, they were so cool and swam right up to you.  It was all exhilarating!

We had some characters on our boat.  Ben, our dive supervisor, was a hilarious German guy who ran a tight ship but made it fun.  I was taking this picture of Alex about to do his first night dive when he popped in to get in on the shot. 

Stephan, my classmate, as I mentioned often didn’t understand anything I said correctly and would often type the word or phrase into his iphone for translation.  One night after our last dive, I came up to the galley where we all hung out and said I ‘felt like a whole new woman’ after my shower, he laughed and asked me to repeat before getting out his iphone.  James, an awesome Brit living in Sydney who we quickly came to adore, laughed as well as he knew what Stephan had misunderstood.  When I looked over Stephan had entered ‘horny’ into his translator and we all burst out laughing and as I clearly annunciated the phrase correctly, which made Stephan blush for the rest of the night.  Since it was Louise, my instructor’s, last trip on the boat, the rest of the crew pranked her repeatedly throughout the weekend.  It started with a live sea cucumber being thrown into her bunk while she was sleeping and concluded with her being doused in barbeque sauce on the last day.  So, needless to say, despite being on a tightly run ship, we had a lot of fun on top of our diving. 

The accommodations were cozy but we were so tired after early wake-up calls and diving non-stop that sleep came easy.  The toilets doubled as showers and cozy didn’t begin to describe how tight those were.  There were forty of us on the boat sharing six toilets, two of which were on the back deck and only used for rinsing off when we came out of the water.  We were allowed 30 second rinses and one three minute shower each day due to the limits of freshwater the boat could hold.  One thing that was surprisingly good on the boat was the food and boy was there a lot of it!  The cook worked non-stop feeding us from 6am – 10pm before and after each dive.  Sometimes it was something as small as a piece of cake and tea but it was always delicious (except for the break that she served fruitcake).

Three days flew by way too quickly.  Alex got eleven dives and I got nine and we both had a blast.  We made new friends, saw the GBR with all its beauty for the first time and had a new shared hobby to enjoy.  It was bittersweet as we began our three hour rocky trip back to shore but everyone was exhausted and ready to continue on with our respective journeys.  Stephan was heading back to his girlfriend in Germany after three months in Australia, Holly & her partner, Megan, only had a few weeks remaining in Cairns before they moved to Adelaide, Sarah was headed to Dubai where she had accepted a four year position training Olympians for the 2016 games, Louise was preparing for her farm work in Tasmania and Alex & I were looking forward to settling in Cairns and unpacking our bags for a few months

Magnetic Island and the Koala Sanctuary

The best part of Townsville wasn’t in Townsville; it was 20 mins away on Magnetic Island.  It’s a small island (roughly the same square mileage as Bermuda) with one road that links three small towns and only a few hundred residents.  The ferry runs from Townsville every hour and the island’s primary revenue is from tourists who come over to see koalas and snorkel.  The YHA we stayed at in Horseshoe Bay was home to the Bungalow Bay Koala Sanctuary so we were able to interact with the koalas on several occasions AND we saw three of them in the wild while we were hiking – it was awesome!

The YHA was one of the most rustic accommodations I’ve stayed in since I went to summer camp back in middle school.  Our room was in a small wooden A-frame building big enough for a double bed (I use the term bed lightly considering it was basically a mattress on the floor) with a little deck on the front.  Fortunately, our room was located pretty close to the restroom/shower building because when you went out at night you could hear all the critters scampering across the courtyard.  Less fortunately, the building didn’t have doors or windows so it was crawling with bugs, moths and spiders.  I mentioned this was rustic, right?  Even the reception area and bar were just outdoor patios with a corrugated metal roof.  It sounds worse than it was and we actually had a blast at this place but here are the photos to prove I was not exaggerating about the room…

Our first day there was still slightly cloudy and chilly so we decided to go hiking and explore the island.  At our YHA, we were told we could feed the wild rock wallabies (basically small kangaroos) and given food pellets so we hiked a few miles over to Arcadia to check them out.  They were SO cute and literally ate out of your hand.  When Alex was feeding them, one of the smaller ones reached up gently and pulled his hand down to make the food more accessible – they were that unafraid of people.  Apparently there is an unusually large concentration of them on the island because of the regular feedings they get from tourists, as was evidenced by the dozen or so that showed up in the short time we were there.

That night we joined our fellow travelers in the bar for a fun game of trivia.  We didn’t win but we put up a valiant effort (Aussie songs were our undoing) and placed in the middle of the pack despite having the smallest team.  We also met some cool travelers who shared with us all the awesome places they’d enjoyed in Aus so we have a whole new list of hidden gems to check out on our way back down the coast. 

We kicked off the next day with a champagne brunch in the Koala sanctuary where we got our first peek at the wildlife and got to pet a koala.  Then we wandered into the quaint town of Horseshoe Bay to poke around and check out the beach.  Unfortunately it was too cold to get in the water but we had a nice walk and saw some cool beach homes.  Early that afternoon, we went back to the Koala Sanctuary to spend more time with the animals and interact with them more closely.  Holding the koala was the best part; it was something Alex and I had both looked forward to since first seeing one in Sydney and it did not disappoint.  She was so soft and cuddly! 

We also got to handle a saltwater crocodile, snake, cockatoo and lizards and see a hairy nosed wombat named, what else… Harry!  At the end of our tour, our guide brought out a bunch of native spiders including a big paper bark spider, hidden in tree bark that appeared large and hairy like a tarantula.  He was holding it in his hand but you couldn’t really see the spider so we all keep inching closer trying to get a better look when he threw it in my direction and I screamed bloody murder (wouldn’t be surprised if they heard me all the way in Townsville).  Turns out it was a fake spider, much to the amusement of everyone in our group, especially Alex, who later claimed he ‘saw it coming’.  You’d think he could have warned me?!  Our sanctuary guide was quite a comedian but full of knowledge.  He explained to us that palm trees are not native to Australia.  You only see palm trees on postcards because it’s what it takes for them to sell as tourists expect a palm tree in any tropical beach scene.  We also learned that more people are killed by falling vending machines each year than sharks and crocodiles combined, even though we kill them in the hundreds of millions each year, to the point of threatening the ecosystem.    

After all the excitement of the Koala Sanctuary, we set off hiking to the Forts (used in WWII to monitor Japanese activity off the coast but since abandoned to ruins) where we encountered even more koalas in the wild.  We’d already seen our first one the day before on our way to feed the rock wallabies but it never got old.  The first little guy we saw was sitting on the ground not three feet off the trail just napping.  It was adorable and we stood there watching him for more than ten minutes.  We’d learned from our sanctuary guide that, despite how cute they looked, koalas can be vicious when approached in the wild so we admired from afar.  Then on our way back we encountered two more in trees enjoying dinner.  It was an awesome way to end a great weekend on the island and, up to that point, the most awesome nature experience we’d had in Australia (we’ve since scuba dived the Great Barrier Reef, which left me awestruck, but you’ll have to wait a while longer for that post). 

We’ve since moved on to Cairns where we plan to stay until the end of July.  It’s a gorgeous oceanfront paradise in northern Queensland that is very popular with backpackers so we should be able to find short-term work while we’re here.  Despite being winter, temps average 90 degrees and it’s the dry season so I’m excited it’s where we’ve elected put our transient ways on pause for a few months.  We are able to move into our apartment here on Tuesday and will, at that point, have unlimited internet so I should be able to do a better job of keeping in touch and keeping the blog updated. 

I Spoke Too Soon About Avoiding Disappointment

Our next stop after the Whitsundays was Townsville.  It is touted as the ‘big city’ of north Queensland but it was hardly a city and the rain that had plagued us the previous few days followed us.  Adding insult to injury, this normally 90 degree tropical town experienced their coldest day in May while we were there.  Now, to be fair, it was still in the mid 60s but it was surprisingly chilly and made the water too cold to snorkel.  Despite all that, Alex and I were still determined to have a good time but, in all honesty, our adventures here were pretty terrible.  We had originally booked two nights there but ended up extending our time an addition two nights because we saw a brochure for a YHA on a Koala Sanctuary on the nearby Magnetic that we wanted to stay at but not until the weekend when the weather was supposed to improve. 

We didn’t do much the day we arrived.  While we were waiting to check in we walked down to the beachfront walk they call ‘The Strand’ and had lunch on the water.  We also eyed Castle Hill, the big mountain smack in the center of town, (much like Camelback in Arizona) but decided to tackle it the next day.  The next day was cold and rainy so we went to the Reef HQ Museum, featuring the largest coral reef tank in the world, and the Tropical Museum of Queensland.  The history museum wasn’t much but it was interesting and had a fun children’s learning area that kept us entertained for over an hour (as you can see from the photo below). 

Sadly, the Reef HQ was dilapidated and a big disappointment.  The indoor reef was huge and they had a large predator tank but exhibits were leaking and the tanks were dirty so it didn’t live up to the hype of the brochures and travel books.  After spending our morning indoors, we headed out to tackle Castle Hill via the ‘goat tracks’ that started nearby where we were staying.  The walk was steep and I’ll admit to being passed by a 70 year old man on the way up (when I cringed as he passed us, he casually mentioned he’d done the walk once or twice before, as though that made me feel any better) but it felt good and we had beautiful views of the ‘city’ and surrounding areas, including Magnetic Island, from the top.  You may notice in the photo that Castle Hill looks like it’s been tagged, we thought it was graffiti when we first saw it, but it’s not, it’s the Townsville Saint and has been there since the 1970s.  Apparently, for the locals, it’s as much a beloved part of Castle Hill as the hill itself. 

Now, I’m sure you’re all thinking ‘well that doesn’t sound so bad’, and it wasn’t, but I haven’t gotten to the lowlight of our stay yet either.  With the extra two days to kill, and Townsville thoroughly explored, we decided to rent a car and check out some of the inland attractions a few hours away.  Paluma and Walloman Falls both looked gorgeous and worth the drive so the first day we set out in our small Hyundai hatchback anticipating a great drive and beautiful sites.  Boy did we overestimate how our day was going to go.  It wasn’t a sunny day but it wasn’t raining when we left Townsville.  When we got to the bottom of the mountains by the Falls though, it had started sprinkling and by the time we got halfway to the top, the rain had picked up, along with the clouds, and we should have known what we were in for.  The fog made for a cool drive through the tropical forest but when we got to the top, this was our view…

You could hear the water rushing over the Falls but you couldn’t see ANYTHING.  And as if that weren’t bad enough, even the hiking path was closed so we had driven all that way for, literally, nothing.  At that point though, we were both still in good spirits and had a good laugh.  It would figure that would be our luck, right?!  Before I move on, so you can get the full irony, here’s a photo of a photo of what we should have seen at Walloman Falls.

From there we decided to take the scenic drive talked about in our brochure to Paluma through Mt. Fox and Hidden Valley.  Now, I should mention that it explicitly stated in our rental car agreement that we were not allowed to drive on unpaved roads, probably because our Hyundai sat low to the ground and wasn’t made for any rough terrain.  We didn’t pay that clause any mind (in my own defense, Alex was the one who signed the rental contract, not me) and the unpaved roads to Walloman Falls weren’t anything too rustic or bad for the car, thought it was clear early on that we’d have to visit a carwash before returning it.  So as we neared Mt. Fox and the paved road ended, we didn’t think anything of it and plowed ahead. 

To give you an idea of distance, Mt. Fox was 30km from Walloman Falls and it was another 47km (about 29 miles) to Paluma.  We were 15km on the other side of Mt. Fox before the road became very hazardous and we wondered if we’d missed a turn and ended up on someone’s unmaintained private access road through their property (for those of you at home, it was worse than Wilderness Road on a bad day).  About that time, we came upon a man on a dirt bike and asked if we were in fact on a real road.  He scoffed at us and replied yes as though we were complete morons, even though sections of the road were flooded and large trenches had been gouged from the rains.  Now, I’m from the country and have been on some torn up gravel roads but I’d never been on one this bad and I should have known better than to keep on driving.  But for some reason, we just kept telling ourselves it was going to end soon and the paved road would be just over this next hill (why? because a random stranger told us it was a real road?!)  I know, I know, it’s times like these a little common sense would come in handy. 

The harrowing drive continued for what seemed like forever, at one point we drove into a huge gully and weren’t sure if the car would make it through the flooded section or back up the hill on the other side, but we made it (surprisingly).  In the end it took us more than two hours to drive the remaining 32km (roughly 20 miles) to Paluma and we somehow missed the Hidden Valley (guess it was indeed well hidden).  Now, you’d think Paluma would have been a sight for sore eyes after what we’d just been through but nothing was going our way that day and Paluma was no exception. 

The brochure touted it as a quaint mountain town with artsy cafes and cozy accommodations (I expected it to be like Jerome, AZ) but whoever wrote that brochure lied.  The ‘town’ consisted of one small road with a dilapidated motel, the kind where you’d expect to be murdered, a pottery studio and a visitor’s center.  It is situation in the ‘misty mountains’ so it was dark as night and so foggy we couldn’t see a quarter mile, not to mention creepy, and, just for an extra kick in the pants, the only restaurant was closed for the weekend because the owners had gone on vacation.  We’d planned on staying up there for the night and hiking the next day but we sure as hell weren’t staying in that motel and we were hungry with nowhere to eat so we made the slow, curvy drive down the mountain and hit the highway back to Townsville.  Hands down the worst day in Australia so far!  Wish I had more photos for you with this post but there wasn’t much worth taking a picture of.  In lieu of any relevant photos, here’s one of me beneath a giant fake spider outside the museum. 

The next day we still had the rental car so we gave it another shot and headed to the town of Charters Towers in hopes of getting a glimpse of historic rural Australian cattle country.  Charters Towers was a treat compared to the previous day’s adventure.  The drive itself was beautiful but there wasn’t much to see once we got there and it was raining again so we just had lunch there and left.  On our way back, we stopped at a carwash but even that couldn’t wash away the shame from the previous day so we had to hit the grocery store for some sponges before heading back to our hotel and hand-washing the car in the parking lot in the rain.  We got some weird looks but the car did eventually come clean and we were able to return it the next day without any repercussions from our adventure. 

The next day we went to Magnetic Island and spent the weekend on a koala sanctuary where we were both able to hold koalas and other wildlife so the Townsville area wasn’t a total bust...  I’m working on a post about that but we’re headed out on a three day scuba trip aboard a dive boat so it won’t be up until next week.  Sorry I’m getting behind; I promise to try and catch up soon.  We’ve decided to stay in Cairns for a month or two and work while diving and enjoying northern Queensland so hopefully we’ll have a semi-permanent place with good internet by mid-week next week (keep your fingers crossed for that).  Hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend!