Mad dingos and Englishmen

OK, so we hardly saw any dingos on Fraser Island, just two skulking about when we ate a picnic on the first day and one on the beach, but I liked the title, and there were a lot of English people around.

The four-wheel drive camping safari to Fraser Island was the highlight of my time in Oz - it had some stiff competition against the Red Center and the Whitsundays, but it was fantastic fun, and enough to restore my love for the seaside. OK, I still can't stand tacky beaches, but sitting round a barbecue to keep warm with a group of funny people, huddled between a four-wheel drive vehicle and a tent, drinking nasty wine and listening to a drunk Frenchman play a didgeridoo while the surf washes the shore in the background - this is the stuff that memories are made of.

Three groups from Palace Backpackers in Hervey Bay were prepared for their trip by the fastest talking Australian I have ever met. He spoke so fast I don't know if even he knew what he was on about, but it was something to do with putting the tents on the cars and driving to Woolworths to pick up food for three days. Our groups were all randomly assembled it seems, but to me, our group getting together was sheer luck - we all got on like a house on fire, and we didn't have the American guy that slept through the safety briefing and was heard to say "F*ck it man, I'm gonna catch a dingo". He could have got annoying.

Fraser Island was bigger than I expected, in fact it's huge, over 100 km long, all made of sand. Huge sand spits hide inland behind lines of trees, creeks and washouts run down to the sea from the island, the endless Eastern Beach is a national highway and aircraft runway combined, and the roads are only traversable by four-wheel drive. Dingos, goannas and birds rules the island, and whales, sharks, turtles and dolphins rule the waters. You can't swim in the sea because of the sharks, jellyfish and strong undercurrents, unless that is you're a Norwegian called Raimond who knows no fear. Fraser Island is beautiful, and getting onto the Eastern beach, facing away from Australia out to the Pacific, seeing dolphins jumping in pairs from the water as the sun rose, was truly memorable.

The group wandered the island following a loose itinerary set out for us by Palace - but the beauty of the self-drive format was that we took ourselves where we wanted to go. I can't stand being shepherded around the place by tour guides so this was perfect, but we still had our Danish drill instructor, Helle, to keep us moving on if we stayed in one place for too long. Our first discovery on the island was the stunning Lake McKenzie, an inland freshwater lake of incredible deep blue water over pure white sand. The photo on the right is a rare shot in that it doesn't have an overweight fifteen-year-old Australian kid being molested by seven of his mates in it.

We decided straight out to camp on the beach - the inland campsites had a no-noise regulation after nine at night, and the good thing about our group was that we immediately knew we would be making some noise after nine at night. By the end of the first night, we were busy laughing hysterically at something none of us quite seem to remember, and we didn't really stop for three days. The problem with a group of people getting together and having fun is that you end up saying 'you had to be there' to people who weren't, because the stories just don't sound as funny, and this was one of those cases. Nevertheless, highlights in the mirth stakes included Raimond being attacked by an underwater dingo, the sand monster, Raimond in general, Adam the 'Hand Grenade' going off after drinking enough Jack Daniels to make an elephant dizzy, Ping Pang Pong and Chris volunteering to drink for Helle, and the French lads complete inability to play Ping Pang Pong. You see, you had to be there.

With six drivers in our car we had six different people take opportunities to try and kill everyone. The inland roads of the island have holes a foot deep, are basically just sand tracks, and wind round and up and down hills, but it's incredible what a feeling of invincibility you have driving a filthy great Toyota four-wheel drive, a bit like being in an arcade game as Andy described it - it was great fun. The only problem was that while the driver was having great fun, everyone in the back was being thrown a foot off their seat by the bumps. Driving on the beach took an an extra element of danger with loose sand, deep washouts, creeks, planes and other cars - a couple of times, sitting in the back, we saw sky, then sand, then our lives flash before our eyes as the car bounced about over sand or dropped into a washout.

Fraser Island was a great combination of natural beauty and hilarity with a great group of people - we were all a bit cheesed off to leave. See the photos from Fraser Island here.

Strayan

I've written this in an Australian accent mate, so that's the best way to read it.

Strayans have some weird words, mate. More than two syllables gets a bit tricky, so fair dinkum, many words that would take too long to say get boiled down to two syllables, sorry, syllies, usually ending in 'o' or 'ie'. Too easy.

Mushies are what you can have on your burger along with your beetroot, no, they're not the peas, they're the fungus. Rego is what you've got to do to keep your car on the road. Brissie is up the coast from Sydney and the full name is only two syllies anyway so I'm buggered if I know why they shortened that one, champ. Tassie however makes a lot of sense because that is one long bloody name to be saying when you could be cracking open another stubbie. I'm not even going to bother telling you what a stubbie is, but rest assured that XXXX is not called that because Queenslanders can't spell 'beer', it's something to do with monks.

You can keep your stubbies in this esky mate, cos I can't stand warm grog - my mate cracked the shits yesterday and we nearly had a blue because he wouldn't chuck a U-ey back to the bottle shop for some more ice, even though it was the avo and the eskies were warm and the patties were starting to smell ratshit - he was only being a whinging bastard because he was rooted after a sick night with some Sheilas we met up the whoop-whoop, and he's a two-pot screamer anyway.

Island-hopping

It was a real relief to leave Cairns - Bohemia was getting to feel just plain strange, and I spent my last evening there in a one-sided drunk conversation (me listening, him talking) with a truck driver called Kevin who had recently crashed his truck and decided to come to Cairns for two weeks to drink himself silly. He was a very friendly bloke with hands like hams and a big red nose from all the beer he'd been drinking, but it was one of those conversations that worries you slightly because you're not sure where it's going to end, and it ended pretty much where any drunk conversation with a stranger has recently with words such as 'Bush', 'Blair', 'Howard', 'F*ckers", 'Oil', and phrases such as 'This world is going to hell'. Strange how if you talk for long enough you end up coming to the conclusion that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and yet here we all still are - goes to show how much those Jehovah's Witnesses know. I've heard some real gems while sharing a beer with a stranger, and such is the nature of the beast that it often takes a short while to recall them - in Cambodia I was talking with an American about tourists from different places and how some were very different from each other. I made a remark about chalk and cheese, and he paused for a moment before saying "Yah.... chocolate cheese...".

I'm in Byron Bay, a well-known, hippyish town about eight hundred kilometers north of Sydney - this is my last stop before returning to Sydney and then on to New Zealand next week. I'm still coming down from the hilarity and beauty of a three-day camping safari on Fraser Island and the relaxation and stunning sights of a three-day sailing trip round the Whitsunday Islands. After leaving Cairns, I headed for Airlie Beach on a very long Greyhound bus journey with a driver who virtually ate his microphone when he made announcements to the passengers, so the sound coming out of the speakers was half announcement, half porno soundtrack, slurping and sucking noises echoing round the bus. An old French teacher used to do that when she coached us on pronunciation in the language lab, and it was enough to put you off your lunch.

Airlie Beach was a one-street load of nothing-muchness to compete with Cairns, but a pleasant enough place to 'chill out' for the night before heading out to the Whitsunday Islands. When I say 'chill out' this is one of the activities you can engage in at the beach in Australia. 'Chilling out' usually means doing very little, which is OK for about an hour and then becomes a bit of a hassle. 'Chilling out' therefore has to be punctuated with short bursts of activity such as eating, drinking, and walking. If 'Chilling out' really starts to get on your goat you end up binge-eating, as drunk as a monkey, wandering the streets like a lost child. I'm not so good at 'Chilling out'. I'm going to try giving up ranting about beaches as it's not got me anywhere - they're all the same and have stubbornly refused to change their ways despite my going on endlessly about them. Australian Beaches are at least devoid of dodgy looking teenagers in hoodies sitting looking threatening in their Ford Escorts, and rubbish fairground rides operated by fat blokes with mullets who shout 'scream if you wanna go faster' to spotty teenage girls, which is more than you can say about Felixstowe.

The three-day, two-night sailing trip round the Whitsunday Islands on the Providence V was fantastic. A small-ish group half comprised of stern-looking Germans gathered at the marina to board the replica topsail schooner, welcomed on board by a three-man (well, two-man one woman) crew, after being equipped with stinger suits (wetsuits to protect swimmers from jellyfish stings - box jellyfish stings in this area are potentially lethal) by a lady called Mrs Snorkel. I was desperate to ask her if she met Mr Snorkel before or after she'd got into the business. We headed out from the marina to Hayman Island and Blue Pearl Bay, sailing some of the way, using engines when the wind was too low, on the beautiful Providence, all colourful ropes, gleaming chrome and freshly repainted deck. You could tell it was going to be a good three days - even the Germans turned out not to be that stern.

I was really nervous at the prospect of snorkeling, seeing as how it involves swimming, and I am a truly pathetic swimmer, but after donning stinger suit, snorkel, flippers and waterproof camera and stepping gingerly from the beach into the chill waters of Blue Pearl Bay, I became a converted person. Snorkeling rocks. We swam out, made more buoyant by stinger suits, over my first coral reef. Even underwater, 'whoooaaaaahhhhh' comes across quite well. It was beautiful. Coral formations shaped like mushrooms, brains, antlers and spaghetti were patrolled by fish so colourful you can't help but think evolution just wanted a bit of an underwater Mardi-Gras because it was bored with using browns and greys. Parrot fish in stunning greens, pinks and blues flapped tiny flippers lazily while bottom-feeders pecked at the reef floor, and a humungous Mauri Wrasse chugged slowly along the fringes of the reef. We told Grant, the skipper, about the Mauri Wrasse, and he coolly responded with "Yeah, that's Elvis". When we sat on the beach afterwards and got talking to two lads who worked in a resort there, they explained that all of the Mauri Wrasse in that area were called Elvis.

We had plenty more opportunities to snorkel on the trip, in coral gardens that seemed to get progressively bigger and more impressive, some of the most stunning sights being coral reef dropping away like cliffs to reveal ocean floor thirty of forty feet below, the bottom still visible through the deepest blue water. Inquisitive fish would still be swimming around your ankles even as you walked on to the beach, and new colours and shapes always appeared from the gloom to surprise you. Floating above the reef, looking down, gave me a weird sensation of flying and peering into a completely different world. When we weren't snorkeling, we were taking it easy on the deck, reading, chatting and cracking open the beers in the evenings to watch the sun set.

Even though I haven't been too keen on beaches, Whitehaven Beach on was a revelation. Pure white silica sand like snow lay in giant semi-circular spits around blue-green waters off Whitsunday Island. Even the Italian who insisted on taking his shorts off and jumping up and down in the sea seeking the attention of four beautiful girls in bikinis like Honeychile Rider wasn't enough to spoil it, and the four Honeychiles turned in disgust and left the Italian alone and looking like an utter berk, so it was all good.

Next post (because I haven't been outside in way too long and I need to eat) the Fraser Island trip - the Hand Grenade, underwater dingoes, and laughing until your cheeks hurt.

Tribulation and sunbathing

I'm back in Cairns after a quick and quiet trip to Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation was named by Captain Cook after he ran his ship the Endeavour aground here on the Great Barrier Reef. There are also, named by Cook, Mount Sorrow and Weary Bay. He then moved on to name some other less well-known sights such as Cheesed Off Cove, Not Again Bay and Why Does This Keep Happening To Me River.

Cape Tribulation is host to a mix of environments all meeting by the coast - tropical rainforest, mangrove swamp, reef, and backpacker hostel. I stayed in (inclusive in my tour price) PK's Jungle Village, a fun budget backpacker place, as someone has probably described it in a brochure. It provided all of the necessary elements of a backpacker's place, namely pool, beer, carvery dinners big enough to floor a rhino, and the same fifteen songs that play in every other hostel. These songs include anything by Jack Johnson, Joan Jett singing "I love Rock and Roll", and "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I really do like Jack Johnson, but the swine is on everywhere here.

Cape Tribulation was beautiful, but activities were thin on the ground unless you forked out another couple of hundred dollars to go sea kayaking or jungle surfing, whatever the hell that is. The highlight of Cape Tribulation was not the German tourists with the rude stares at the beach, funnily enough, but a boardwalk through a section of rainforest and mangrove behind Myall Beach. I was up and out early enough that I was the only one on the path, and stopped several times to admire the foliage, look for frogs, and jump out of my skin every time I thought a cassowary was about to jump me.

Dorm sleeping is a mixed bag - in my very limited experience of dorms so far, I've found good chats with friendly dorm mates combined with irritating and even disturbing noises in the dead of night. At PK's, the room was all kept awake for a short while by one fellow who was suffering from a simultaneous fit of coughing and farting while he was awake, and snoring while he was asleep. First thing in the morning, the alarm call of choice is the rustling plastic bag. I shouldn't complain too much about the dorm at PK's - in the dorm I stayed my first night in Cairns, one of the three other lads in the room came in during the night with a woman, and the room was then treated to a combination of slurping and choice quotes such as "but everyone's in the room!" and "why don't we go in the showers?". Drunk people don't seem to realise that their whispering has all the subtlety of a herd of stampeding rhinos.

Having returned to Cairns, I'm staying at Bohemia Resort, a pleasant, clean, newish place miles out of town with all the atmosphere of an aircraft hanger full of young Conservatives on valium, in my own private dorm to avoid slurping and plastic bag-related disturbances. Back in Cambodia, an Aussie fellow I met described Cairns as a 'nothing little town', and I can see what he means - there isn't much here after you've had a meal, a fruit smoothie, a sunbathe and a cold stubbie, and it's a hell of an anticlimax after hearing the name of the town over so many years as being a backpacker mecca of some sort. I'm happy here for forty-eight hours but any longer and I'd be climbing the walls. A walk around town earlier today took me to the Esplanade, a place where the grass is carpeted by bodies, skinny and fat, white, yellow and brown, all toasting themselves in the sun. They have to do this around a giant shallow lagoon-style swimming pool built behind the actual beach, as when the tide is out, there is a mile of mud between the sand and the sea, making it a bit like sunbathing at the side of the Orwell Estuary.

Sunbathing as an art form is intriguing to me. I've got a suntanned face and arms from wearing short sleeves, but the rest of me is still standard pasty English white, with the exception of the tanned chevrons on my feet from wearing sandals. I never quite seem to get my act together to working on a tan, but the guys down at the Esplanade are obviously putting in a lot of effort. People apply suncream and then cook one side before turning over to cook the other - I haven't actually heard any timers going off to prompt this, I assume it happens when you start feeling just crispy enough. I'm also not sure if it's necessary to prod anyone's thigh with a fork and see if the juices run clear. The irony of all this is that these people, predominantly Westerners, are all trying to achieve the perfect bronze (shoe-leather) tan, while all over Asia, women cover themselves from head to foot in the sun and bleach their skin to achieve the white skin that is in fashion there. Westerners want to be brown as they think it makes them look healthier and maybe more prosperous, Asians want to be white as they don't want to look like they work on a farm.

I've also noticed a worrying trend amongst older married couples - that being the complete illiteracy of one member of the couple. The evidence I've seen for this is that they wander past shops and restaurants, and then stop to read a sign or menu. Rather than both reading the sign or menu in silence however, one of them has to read the whole thing out aloud to the other. I've noticed this before at home, so it seems to be a worrying international phenomenon.

Letting the pictures do the talking

Sunrise at Uluru
Originally uploaded by Big Trippy Nathan.

I've just got to Cairns after flying here today from Alice Springs, following a three-day trip to see Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon. I've seen some of the most stunning sights so far on this trip, and colours so vivid they punch you in the face.

Uluru and the surrounding area was very beautiful, but very, very empty. Cars were few and far between on the long, long roads, and small settlements such as Mount Ebeneezer and Erldunda popped up out of the landscape once in a blue moon. The outback is stunning, harsh, and empty, and the scale of things blows your mind. The drive from Alice Springs to Uluru alone is several hours over several hundred kilometers.

Anyway, now it's Cairns, and tomorrow a trip to Cape Tribulation. Cairns is easy-going, packed to the rafters with backpackers, and music is coming from everywhere. The hostel I'm in is like a small town on its own.

Enough for now - take a look at the latest pictures in the photo album, all with notes, so it's a bit like sitting through a slide show, but if you get bored you can come back to it later...