Marine Biology: boats, the sea and stuff…
Yo, yo, bleeding yo,
How are we all? It’s been a while since i donned my astronaut outfit and last visited cyber geek space. Now i’m more excited than a fat kid at Woolworths pick and mix as the footy seasons looms larger than my chum Alco’s belly after the close season break.
So just to prove to all you workers out there that i’m not just swanning around Australia drinking the place dry and lying on beaches (no, no, those speedo’s really suit you mate) i actually worked many moons ago.
Taking up residence in Bunderburg (Bumholeburger) where we had to pretend to be friendly and courteous at 5.20am when we were informed that we’d be picking zucchinis for the forseeable future. ‘ZU’ what??? I thought Zucchini was a mythical wizard or a Brazilian footy starlet. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They’re courgettes, they’re green and they are officially poo. Getting paid
by how many you pick was a small disaster given my tendency for a relaxed approach to graft.
Boo frickin hoo i hear you say, well as if getting paid a quid for picking green willys wasn’t bad enough someone soon shouted SNAKE!!!!! What the ….. surely you mean rake they’re found on farms, or cake, mmm that would be nice. When everyone legged it over for a better view i guessed the rake option was out of the window, so i approached and saw her pummeling this huge worm into the ground with a bucket finishing it off with a swift Dr Martens to the head as it thrashed around looking for a dirty backpackers legs to nibble!
We were then informed that it was a Taipan (3rd most poisnous snake of all time). I rubbished this instantly saying that Thai pans were cooking utensils found in Asian takeaways. So the first week ended with me sticking my hands in snake infested bushes approximately 312 times an hour for four quid. The second week was more suited to work shy Prescotts with farm duties including
pulling hoses, sitting on wooden stakes and riding large farm vehicles.
So about 40 pounds richer we moved up the coast in a our trusty steed ‘Frank the Tank’ to the sunny delights of Rainbow Beach. I celebrated our arrival by purchasing a sombrero (you never know when you’ll need one…), ate a kebab, drank some beers and fell asleep in the safety briefing.
Next day we all pooed ourselves as half the booze order was missing. All aboard and the first ring pull was snapped approx 37 seconds later. Basically we hammered around getting hammered in a 4×4 whilst taking it in turns to soil ourselves at each others questionable driving skills, looked at a few old wrecks (someone’s mum) saw a whale do a back flip, gave him 6 out of 10 because his splash was too big, shouted at dingoes who snarled back at us (pikey backpackers or something like that), dived down a big dune into a big lake, swallowing a big bit of sand and washed down with a big bit of green water followed by a big coughing fit.
Next to Airlie Beach where our first night was spent in terror as flowing water sounds filled the room, thinking there was a flood we grabbed our plastic bottles only to discover that the big weird American across the room had barfed uncerimoniously across 6m of the dorm floor, quite impressive but it still earnt him a rather vexed shout of ‘dirty b*st@rd’ which he clearly was.
Then it was the Whitsunday Islands, did a big tube ride where my puny arms were thrashed into a pulp and i gave up slumping into the ocean and taking my chances with Jaws. Did some Great (it is as well) Barrier (didn’t see any) Reef (oh place your hands…) snorkelling which resulted in people surfacing and going “mmmm fer fer mmm” which translates as “f*ck did you see that huge
shark type fish”. I myself was partial to underwater blasphemy setting a new record as big fish ran at me? nibbled me, and ignored me in equal measures, choice phraases included “jeefers mist” (jesus christ) and “homy moory” (holy moly).
At the mo i’m in Cairns which seems particulary quiet today, although this has a lot to do with the fact that i have half the ocean in my lugholes. Just been on a diving course kindly hosted by Arsenal F.C. with top advice from their best divers. I’m now PADI qualified which means i can drink with Irish people at my own discretion. Saw some awesome stuff including a sting
ray (supposedly named after one of these critters stung a diver called ray…), a huge sea turtle which i chased and stroked its shell, this was an egg-shell-ent moment (boo for bad jokes). Did a night dive as well with a torch and little else pretending to be James Bond on some espionage mission or something, only being a lot more scared and not as good looking.
For some reason those people who know me including family and friends have tagged me as a bit of a lazy swine, something which i’ve alaways venamently (or however you spell) denied….here’s why…
Having risen at 6am to dive early doors we dropped to the bottom only to spy a shark (thank god these wet suits are black and act like nappies, parp, parp, parp). The big finned mother was asleep on the bottom, naturally or stupidly we all piled in and gave it the v’s, all the while wondering if its mother had insomnia and had risen before it. With this i rest my case i can’t be lazy as i was awake before a shark????!!
The best bit however had to be when i answered one of Gareth Keenan from ‘The Office’ immortal questions…..
‘Will there ever be a boy who can swim faster than a shark’????
…..lining up alongside it i beat it by a nose or snout therefore the answer based on my above arguement has to be …… yes.
So you can see from my travels that i’m really making a difference to the world and learning lots of important things about life.
Off to Darwin next to go in (helen) hunt of crocs and sample the outback as opposed to the inner back which is meant to be rubbish.
Hope everyone is ‘Tony the Tiger’ style greeeeeeeeeeeeat, let us know about your summers (all of them, ever).
Love James xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tags: Australia, Fraser Island, Great Barrier Reef, Scuba, Travel
jamesbriggs11
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