Journal for hvietmei

It has been so wonderful having Mom here!

For those who don’t know, she came to visit me during my two-week “fall break,” and we went on an awesome trip to Queensland as well as exploring Sydney and its surrounds.

So, first, exploring around here before heading for Queensland:

Mom got here on Thursday, so I skipped a few of my last classes to come pick her up (it was okay – lectures here are always recorded and available online). The coolest thing we did in the few days we had before taking off up north was out “beach day.” We took off on the train at a reasonable time in the morning to Bondi Junction. From there, even though a few of the locals we asked for directions looked at us like we were crazy, we walked to Bronte Beach, which was pretty quiet even on such a pretty day. The tide was out and we found a great little bank of rocks for tide-pooling, where we saw all kinds of cool snails, hermit crabs, small fish, and a bright orange sea slug! From there, we took this cliff-top path to the even smaller and quieter Tamarama beach and then to the bigger, more tourist-y Bondi Beach. The walk was absolutely gorgeous and so were all three of the beaches (see pictures on facebook).

Let’s see… we also did just a little exploring of the city and watched about half of the episodes of Firefly, which is an awesome sci-fi TV show with an old-west feel that was stupidly canceled before it even finished its first season. Tim was a sweetie and sent the box set of all the episodes with Mom.

Okay, on to Queensland: Wow! So many cool things!!!

Our first day, we just flew into Cairns and got our bearings. We were really surprised and sort of excited about how easy security was for this little domestic flight. There we were with our baggies of gels in one hand and our shoes in the other, and they just sort of looked at us like we were nuts and waved us on through. It’s nice to be treated like a trustworthy human. Quantas also treated us exceedingly well, giving us a full (pretty good!) meal, ice cream, and a first-run movie on our little 3-hour flight.

The next morning, bright and early, the Adventure Tours van picked us up to take us to Cape Tribulation. We didn’t really know what to expect, but this was definitely the best “travel day” I have ever had (well, with the possible exception of some of our road trip days, Tim). Our tour guide was named Ben, and he was a graduate student in Biology/Environmental Science when he wasn’t driving tour vans. On the way, he told us all about the ecology, geology and history (encompassing pre and post colonization) of the region. We stopped at a couple of cool places, and never felt rushed. We got to see a really cool wildlife park/zoo, body-surf a little rapid in the rainforest, go on an hour-long river cruise in which we saw a big crocodile among other wildlife, look out over a amazing view, and eat delicious home-made ice cream. We got to our accommodation some time in the late afternoon feeling like we had had a great adventure rather than like we had spent the whole day getting from one place to another.

Our accommodation in Cape Tribulation itself, the Cape Trib Beach House, is worthy of comment. Basically, it is a collection of adorable little cabins in the middle of the rainforest and right on the beach. They have “dorm style” accommodation for those traveling even more cheaply than we were, but we stayed in a little place with two beds and a bathroom. You could walk down the dirt path (and you would frequently see big orb spiders, cool birds of various kinds, and sometime feral pigs during the short journey) to the “restaurant,” which was a collection of tables and a kitchen and bar under a giant canvas canopy, open on the sides and overhung with trees and vines. From there, you could walk just a few more meters out to the beach, which was beautiful and pristine, bordered by rainforest and dotted with patches of mangroves. Cape Trib is out of the way enough (the last few Kilometers from Cairns are along a dirt road which apparently gets progressively worse as you head further north) that it isn’t crowded with just your average “tourists.” A lot of the other people there were “backpackers” (people traveling the world or parts of it while living out of backpacks) from all over the world. We had a really good conversation with girls from Switzerland and England about economics, politics, health-care, etc. over our first dinner at the beach house.

On our first full day at the Beach House, we were supposed to go out to the Great Barrier Reef, but the boat ended up needing repairs that day. We rescheduled for the next day because our travel agent had told us that this little boat, the Rum Runner, was way better than any of the bigger boats that went out of Cairns. Unfortunately, we couldn’t reschedule our “jungle-surfing” tour, which was supposed to be the next day, but it was okay because we got a refund for that and ended up spending the day just exploring the Cape Trib area on foot. We ended up walking about 10k that day, most of it on the beach, which you could pretty much take along the whole stretch of civilization in the region. We went inland each time our local map told us there was something cool to see, and we ended up spending time at the “Bat House” (a quirky, one-room natural history museum and conservation center including rescued flying-foxes), the Mason general store and water hole, and a few cool little nature walks. I also had a pretty exciting lunch of “chips, beans, and eggs” at a local take-away place, which is exactly what it sounds like if you speak Australian: French fries topped with home-made baked beans topped with two fried eggs. Yum! That night, we went on a night-hike through the rainforest with a really knowledgeable guide and saw all kinds of frogs, “dragons” (a kind of lizard), a giant centipede (seriously creepy), a snake, and a patch of phosphorescent mushrooms that look like some kind of fairy village in the dark.

So, the next day, we DID get to go out on the Rum Runner. Oh my gosh. Amazing. I don’t even know how to describe it. Anyone who ever gets the chance to see the Great Barrier Reef absolutely should. It was the first coral reef I had ever seen, but Mom, who has snorkeled some of the reefs in Hawaii, said that this was a totally different experience. We traveled a couple hours offshore on this little boat with 26 passengers and six crewmembers. Once we got out, we had McKay reef pretty much all to ourselves (a few small fishing boats showed up a ways away from us for a while) for about 3.5 hours, and they served us a really nice lunch between stints of snorkeling. Wow. I could have gotten lost out there. The coral is so big and everything is so bight and alive. You just have to go. There’s no way to describe it. To my D&D group: start thinking about “breath underwater” spells/items and about and forests of bright-blue, spiny coral taller than your characters.

Sadly, we had to leave to go back to Cairns that evening. I would love to go back to Cape Trib someday for a much longer time. I’ve fallen in love with the rain forest.
The good news is that we got to go white-water rafting on the Tully River the next day. It was an early start again, but well worth it. We headed back into the rainforest but in a different direction, and then spent all day on a very beautiful and rather wild river with experienced and knowledgeable guides. I’m not even sure how many class three and four rapids we did, but it was a blast. Our Swiss friend (from the Beach House) happened to be on the same trip and ended up in our raft, so that was cool too. Our boat didn’t even flip over (a few of the others did though), we had a few adventures but nothing really went wrong, and I got to jump off of a couple of really tall rocks!

The next day we wandered around Cairns, said a long and bitter-sweat goodbye to the rainforest, and headed back to Sydney.

Since we’ve been back in this good old eucalypt-dominated ecosystem, we’ve had a few perhaps smaller, but still pretty cool adventures. I had a practical session for my Biology of Australian Vertebrates class, but we managed to weave that in and work around it.

On Monday night, Mom and I stayed at this adorable hotel on “The Rocks,” a historical district in the city. We got down to the city early so that we could do a walking tour day. We saw a good portion of the botanical gardens, visited the Hyde Park Barracks Museum, ate lunch in Chinatown, and went to the aquarium. I think my favorite part was the Museum. For those who don’t know, the Hyde Park Barracks was one of the first buildings in Sydney and served first as housing for convict workers, then as a depot for female immigrants, and finally as a refuge for insane and destitute women. The museum is in the original building, which has been adapted and restored to show all of the major phases in this history. On Tuesday I had to do some “animal behavior observation” at Taronga Zoo, so Mom tagged along and we explored the zoo after I was done. Then we explored the botanical gardens a bit more before reclaiming our bags and heading back to my apartment.

We spent a few days laying low (learning about hair identification and giving a presentation on frog conservation for me), and then yesterday (Saturday) we had a Blue Mountains adventure. We took the several hour train ride out to Katoomba, which is a cute little town with lots of fun shops, cafes with delicious food, and a whole bunch of trails just a little way away. Since we got a late start, we were only able to do a short hike, but it was still really cool. We paid for our train tickets, but when we got to Katoomba we discovered that it wasn’t really necessary to do so, since they don’t have the little kiosks where you scan your ticket there. So I hope to go back with this friend of mine who also really likes to hike – a day of beautiful hiking, totally free of charge! Sounds like a good deal to me.

So now Mom is all packed and she heads out tomorrow. Classes start tomorrow as well. We’re both a little sad, but we’ve really enjoyed our time together. I’m just so glad that I got to share a little bit of my Australia adventure with her!