So, after New Zealand, back to Oz and starting in the northeast corner this time. Cairns was the first stop, and horribly hot and humid. I opted to stay at the local campsite, a mere 2km out from the centre, just a 30 minute walk which I would normally barely notice. After 30 mins walking with full backpack through the steamroom, I was half dead, every item of clothing soaked from sweat, knees trembling, parched for a drink. Luckily, my friend Kate - with whom I'd stayed in Sydney, who was now travelling around Oz - was at hand to help me with some serious drinking. So a merry night out of dancing on the tables was in order, in the local backpacker's crummy joint, before she headed off to the outback.
Don't think anyone ever came to Cairns for the town's innate beauty. It's a lowrise small city, one main street and not a lot beyond. Lots of strange people wandering the streets talking to themselves - apparently, one of the problems with the climate is that people tend to 'go troppo', crack up and become aggressive from the intense heat and humidity - I was glad I hadn't arrived in the height of summer. But of course, the reason people come here lies under the water: the Great Barrier Reef. I went on a 2-dive day trip and yep, it is totally superb! Giant turtles grazing the bottom, massive fish heavier than myself, myriads of schools of small bright fish; psychedelic canyons haunted by giant eels... wonderful!
Was chatting most of the day with a Dutch guy and we decided to rent a car and go driving through the Daintree Rainforest the next day, which was good fun. Went on a cruise down the Daintree river, where the last fatal croc attack in Australia happened (all of 10 years ago, so no worries.. a woman was sitting on the riverbank with a couple of local blokes at a party, and then they realised she wasn't. Her remains were found in a 25 foot croc a month or two later). It's quiet season for crocs, though, so we were lucky to see one 3 meter sunning herself. The rainforest itself was beautiful, of course. It's one of the few places where you find cassowaries - 5 foot tall birds with claws like razors, which you are warned to back away from if encountered. Frankly, it would go against the grain to run away from an overgrown chicken, so it's probably just as well I didn't see any. They had lots of warning signs on the roads which looked like a Gary Larson cartoon - one with one live and one dead cassowary was particularly peculiar (not sure why they were warning about dead ones - maybe in case you damaged your car off a corpse? death due to a dead chicken would be particularly embarassing..)
From Cairns, I got a bus ticket to go down south along the east coast, and a ridiculously cheap package of the traditional backpacker meccas - 10 nights accom, 3 days sailing on the Whitsundays, 3 days 4x4 self-drive on Fraser Island, 1 free dive, 1 month's free web access, 1 phonecard - all for 100 pounds. How bad! So first stop was Airlie Beach for the Whitsundays; sailed off in a catmaran - rather small for the 30 people on it, but we were overnighting on land in any case. They were a cheerful enough crowd; everyone started digging into the drink as soon as we set sail. Just went straight to the overnighting island, dined and drank and drank and danced in the pub there; crashed about 2 or 3 and were rudely woken just 3 hours later, time to set sail again. The catmaran had a handy boomnet rigged out front, which was perfect for waking up: it's impossible to stay sleepy when you have tons of cool water being poured over you every few seconds. On to one of the national park islands; a perfect few miles of pure white sand and turquoise sea; the beginners learned the basics about diving and the rest of us snorkelled and swam and lazed in the sun. Oz had just added a new item to the list of things that can kill you (like as if they needed any more..) - swarms of a tiny little highly toxic jellyfish had just appeared off the Whitsundays and a British man had died there the previous week. So we were all being Very Sensible about wearing lycra stinger suits. Onwards then for a spot of diving; very good, though the Cairns dive was better of course. And more snorkelling, and swimming, and sailing, and back for dinner, and then a night cruise to give us a chance to drink all the alcohol we'd brought since you couldn't drink it on the island - I think everyone managed to get through it all just fine. And another 3 hour sleep before another horribly early start for another day of similar happy occupations. Honestly, life is so hard... They also had a new sport to try; "The Tube of Death", where you hold for dear life onto the top of an inner tube being whipped around behind a speedboat and try to stay on top. It's pretty tricky - most people can hold on okay, but the tube tends to flip upside-down so you're being dragged underwater at speed, which is pretty uncomfortable. I found to my surprise that I have an innate talent for it, being one of the few to stay on - even managed a 5 meter skim through the air coming off the wake at one point. I'll add that to thumbwrestling on my list of useless accomplishments.
A couple of nights then in the hostel at Airlie Beach - equally hot and humid like Cairns, but at least I had a dorm with a fan. (Sleeping in the tent in that humidity was not fun. Especially when a thunderstorm broke the first night. And the second night I was invaded by ants). There's a gorgeous massive manmade lagoon on the edge of town, so I spent most of my time in that - the water was pretty warm, but more comfortable than the air. It reminded me again of how little the UK councils provide for locals - I mean, every town in Oz has all these lovely free things, lagoons, swimming baths, gas barbecues, hot showers - and while I grant you the UK doesn't quite have the climate for the outdoors stuff, I'm sure they could do something... Airlie Beach is otherwise undistinguished; it's mainly a backpacker place and has 'appropriate' entertainment nightly - people competing for the title of Mr/Ms Backpacker, by seeing who'll be first to collect various items such as g-strings and bras from the audience; wet t-shirt competitions and jelly wrestling (the latter is rather good fun, actually).
And on to Hervey Bay, the base for Fraser Island, which is the world's largest sand island, about 100km long - apparently, it has more sand than the Sahara. The done thing here is to rent a 4x4 and go driving along the island, camping overnight wherever you feel like. There were 11 of us in the truck - some Israelis, mostly British - and mostly nice average people, apart from an irritating UK couple who thought they were managers for the trip or something of the sort. He was a complete boyscout (everyone else had packed minimal stuff for the 3 days; his luggage included duct tape and mixed herbs..); he had everything planned in advance and others' suggestions were never as good and sensible as his; others' ways of doing things were never quite right and needed to be explained to them. Think we were all getting pretty irritated at him by the end of the trip, but it never quite boiled over. Closest we came to it was on the last day, when we ran out of petrol in the middle of the island (the gauge had broken, and we'd been told that no-one ever needs to buy petrol on the island). It was damn hot, and we were looking at a few hours wait by the roadside. Some of the guys started breaking open the remaining cans of lager, and he started freaking out about how we shouldn't do that, that alcohol dehydrates the body ... possibly true, but his fellow backpackers didn't take too kindly to his telling them not to drink, as you can imagine.
Anyway. Beautiful island, with some really spectacular lakes and whorled sandcliffs and massive dunes. Lots of dingos; they warn you heavily not to interfere with them in any way, a kid was killed a few years before, and some British traveller was severely bitten just a couple of weeks before (apparently, she'd been lying dead drunk face down in the sand, and her ass was half bitten off before someone noticed what was happening. Which made me feel pretty uncomfortable when one night, I was lying by the fire with the others, and they all suddenly started pointing and shouting - a dingo had been about 2 feet behind me. I sat upright thereafter..). Loads of sharks and jellyfish - standing on the cliffs, you can see the sharks and manta rays just feet from the shore; and every few feet along the 100km coastline, big purple jellyfish are washed up; they made a very satisfactory squelshing sound when driven over at speed, as the guys made a point of doing. But no-one was tempted to swim in the sea - lakes contented us. Though a friend who'd done the same trip had been in the tricky positon of being alone on the beach and getting circled by 3 dingoes from different angles - so he couldn't do the usual protective manouver of just stand tall and look it in the eye. So he decided to risk it with the sharks and stuff in the sea and waded in to thigh-depth. Which horrified his friends when they came to find him - yelling at him to get out, what the hell are you doing in the water? and of course the dingoes scarpered so he had no proof of good reason.
But beautiful as the place was, think everyone relished the joy of being back to Hervey Bay again, and having showers, clean clothes, beds and other such luxuries. From there, went south again, to Noosa, where I had 2 nights accomodation from the package. Nice enough place; a bit cooler than the north and hence more comfortable. It had one nudist beach where I'd been planning on trying to complete my tan. When I got there, however, there was a large group of Japanese tourists with zoom-lens cameras, all click-click-clicking away - which left me modest and hence still incomplete. What is it with Japanese tourists, anyway? What is their obsession with photography, so they take millions of photos of people standing beside lampposts and letterboxes and other terminally uninteresting things? I'm sure you could use it as a scale of boredom - this measures one japanese photo-album's worth; that measures ten japanese photo-albums worth... Still, at least their photos from that particular beach might be more interesting than usual.
Passed rapidly through Brisbane, and on again to Byron Bay, which I'd promised myself I'd like to revisit (rather useless of me to revisit when there's so much of Oz I haven't seen, but since it was on my way to Sydney, figured I might as well). Stayed in The Arts Factory Lodge, and was damn happy I did. It's a great place; way chilled and alternative; people are accomodated in teepees; facilities include a 'didge pit' - a dedicated area for making digeridoos - and free classes in yoga, drumming, fire twirling and capoiera (I did the latter: my legs ached for 5 days after) - as well as a swimming pool, free boogie boards and a sauna. And it's just a generally gorgeous place, lotsa trees and flowers, a small lake in the midddle, odd art and sculptures and paintings everywhere. Plus, an excellent cinema-restaurant next door, where 5 quid gets you delicious thin pizza and a film where you're lying near horizontal on the fake fur cushions - "The Man Who Sued God" is pretty good, especially after a bottle of BYO wine..
And south again to Bellingen, sleepy little village with an excellent organic foods market where I had the best fried breakfast of my life - and it was vegetarian too; almost tempted me away from meat. I was surprised to find a gay cafe in such a small place; the owners said they had quite a lot of support from the local alternative groups - apparently, there are several communes in the area who come into town to sell their wares. The local community in the village were less enthusiastic, but not too bad - most hassle was just from the kids and teenagers; some people like the local garageowner proved to be incredibly supportive.
And south again to Wauchope, where I'd planned on staying in a nearby hostel/campsite - which proved to be 60km away, and too expensive to get to. Thought I'd splash out and stay in a "hotel" - they're the rather non-salubrious joints which are based on pubs; they used to be obliged to provide accomodation for those who were too dead drunk to get home. They're more expensive than hostels, and not as nice to stay in as the "boutique hotels" which are the equivalent of normal hotels. But there were two of them in town and not much else, so I asked around and found to my surprise that they were all fully booked for the night. It seemed odd: there was nothing happening in the town that night; the whole place was dead; when I went out in the evening, the Saturday night crowd consisted of a few locals in each pub, and nothing else. But apparently full of tourists sitting in their hotel rooms. Still, found a campsite - it was the typical Australian sort, which tends to be used as accomodation for the less affluent; lots of mobile homes and screaming kids. Not a place I'll return to.
And finally, got to Sydney again. Theory was, I'd kill a week or so here, do the Mardi Gras, and go on to the States. But then my sister's place was full at the crucial points, and my girlfriend would be coming to the states at the end of April - so it wound up with me being there for 3 weeks, and being a right lazy git. Found a nice cheap hotel - just one other bed in the room and I've had it to myself most of the time; fridge, shower, sink and generally unimaginable luxury after tenting most of the way down the east coast; all for about the same price as renting - oz$130/wk. The only bad point was the kitchen, where the facilities were limited to a microwave. I saw some Japanese people taking bread out of the microwave at one point, and thought - hmm - wonder if cheese sandwiches microwave into something delicious? The answer is - no. So I resigned myself to eating out a lot. King's Cross, where I was staying, is backpacker central, so there were plenty of cheap places for food. There were also a lot of very strange people around - it's homeless, alcoholic and druggies central, not to mention being the redlight district for Sydney. I felt right at home: just like being back living in King's Cross, London.
I kinda planned on trying to get a job as a waitress or something, once I realised I was going to be there for a long time. So spent a few days hunting, sending out my CV, going to agencies and all that - no joy, and talking to other travellers suggested they'd had no luck either. So I resigned myself to an economical few weeks of doing no tours and nothing particularly adventurous. In a vague effort to get fit after my weeks of sitting around drinking, I walked everywhere and even went to the extremes of trying to jog around the place (very unsuccessful: 1 minute and I'm having a heart attack). But it was good to wander around the city: I'm getting really fond of it. Besides being built on such a beautiful water location, they've added lots of nice public art, water sculptures and suchlike abound. Series of steps with water trickling over arranged in a corkscrew shape; occasional bursts of steam flowing up from the ground to carpet everyone kneedepth unexpectedly; numerous fountains such as one which looked like a dandelion-clock head. A bit more interesting than the stern imperial statues which dominate the London streetscape (though I rather like the Victorian statues of MPs which clothe them in Roman togas; essentially ludicrous). And, as usual, there are masses of nice free things for the public, from the barbecues along Bondi, to the Women's Swimming Baths at Coogee (technically not free, but 20c - 7p - is damn close, and a good place for sunbathing on the grass next to the pool which is cut into the rocks, with the waves breaking in from time to time. The only drawback is vast numbers of crabs, which came to check whether I was really a beached whale if I lay still for too long) - to the massive Botanical Gardens in the city centre where thousands of giant bats squeal and yammer overhead in the palms, occasionally flying off to provide a gothic contrast to the glass and steel cityscape.
I did find a job, as it happens, but only for one night. I was walking through King's Cross around midnight, feeling not like going back into the hotel, but also not like going out clubbing, and wondering what at all I would do. And passing one of the lapdancing joints - "The Pink Pussycat" was its subtle name - the bouncer asked me if I wanted a job. So I said sure, why not. It was a waitressing job, which involved convincing the customers to buy drink (easy enough) - and, more particularly, to buy me champagne. The job was not paid directly, but you got paid as follows: any tips; 50c per drink sold; $1 per drink sold to each person you brought in off the street by chatting to them from the doorstep (you're not allowed onto the footpath for insurance reasons); 35% of the value of each bottle of champagne (which meant I got $10 for a small bottle - about 33cl; or $30 for a large one). If someone got you champagne, you would sit down and chat with them for as long as it took you to drink the bottle; otherwise you just wander around chatting briefly to the gentlemen to get them spending. The place was middling seedy, though no worse than many other late night pubs - dark interior; catwalk going halfways down the middle; rows of cheap seats and tables ranged around. The customers included small groups of countrymen in Sydney for a big weekend; occasional lone young male travellers; and a few random couples in their 20's. Two other girls were working there; a tall slim blonde Australian girl, Geordie, expert at flirting and getting the champagne; and a short dark half-Samoan woman, Chantelle, plump and cheerful; both were wearing slightly more tarty clothes than myself (I'd just come in the clothes I'd been wearing all night, which fortunately weren't the very worst in my wardrobe). The two dancers separately did about one show an hour, each lasting maybe 15-20 minutes, gradually removing one piece of clothing with each song, until she was naked apart from a garter into which money could be stuffed, and long boots. Neither seemed particularly good at dancing, but I guess that wasn't really the point. Some customers dismissed them as being just "alright, like.."; the younger male customers seemed a bit more enthusiastic. The place was fairly empty for most of the night, rarely having more than half a dozen people. So I started working. Geordie and myself took on an uncle-nephew country couple; she managed to wrangle a large bottle of champagne out of the nephew in no time; I was just chatting about politics with the middle aged uncle for ages until I decided I really ought to do my job and got up to go, explaining that I was only meant to talk if fed champagne - so he bought me a small one, probably out of pity, figuring I wouldn't be getting any more from my flirting technique that evening. So the night wore on. I'm crap at flirting even when I really want to, so I ended up spending most of the evening chatting with the various guys about literature, history, travelling, their jobs - anything but flirting - but though, in retrospect, it was probably not in the least what they wanted or expected, the various gentlemen paid up most honourably, most saying I seemed like a Very Nice Girl and probably shouldn't be working here, and bought me a grand total of 4 bottles of champagne, which with the tips and other drinks, got me $100 cash by the end of the night, 6am - placing me midways between the other two's scores. According to the owner, John, that was pretty good going for a quiet Thursday, and I should be able to make twice as much the next night. But when I woke up the next day, the idea of doing it all again was really offputting; trying to con guys into spending far too much money, even though I didn't really follow the others' advice about spilling the champagne so they have to buy you more, and even though it is of the guys' own free will. Thus ended my brief career.
And of course, there was Mardi Gras, and some interesting people met while clubbing, and LA, and travels around the states. But that will have to wait for another entry; 3000 words is plenty for today. The perils of not writing things up for ages...