Transcending Borders With Seeds in Our Hands

I went to the Billabong Koala and Wildlife Park in Port Macquarie today. The woman at the reception of my hostel told me to catch the bus at 9:05. I got to the bus station at 9:00 (it was 8:50 when I asked about the bus) and got down to the stop and waited and waited…and waited. I saw a number for the bus information line and I called and asked when the bus leaves for the Billabong Park and the operator said “8:55”. Great. When did the next one come? “10:55”. Awesome. So I kicked around the mall which was small and quite boring. I went into Big W, the Australian answer to Wal-Mart and as I was leaving one of the cashiers said, “Excuse me, sir. Can I have a look through your bag?”. It was my shoulder bag that had my sunscreen, camera, etc. in it. She looked through it and simply said, “thanks”. I was not really in the mood to deal with that but I didn’t want to make a scene and I definitely didn’t want to look suspicious.

Finally my bus came and I bought a round-trip ticket. We rode along and the bus driver yelled “Billabong.” I looked out the window and only saw a road leading to the right, hardly the park entrance gate I was expecting. I asked the driver when he would be back to pick me up (I was the only one getting off at the stop) and he gave me a slip of paper that had “150 350 505” scrawled on it. He said, “Just wait over there,” pointing in the most general direction; somewhere near the edge of the woods. I got off and walked up the road (which ended up being about the length of our dead-end road at home) and reached the park. I paid the entrance fee along with the 50 cents of kangaroo feed. I walked around the park and saw the most poisonous snake in the world, which can kill over 50,000 mice with a single bite. I saw strange marsupials and colorful exotic birds. Then I wandered over to the kangaroo, wallaroo, and wallaby feeding area. I was quite impressed and it was definitely the highlight. I got to lay down next to a little wallaby and feed it and pet it. The best part was that I felt like I had the whole park to myself. There were no rangers supervising me or any crowds of kids. I moved on the the baby kangaroos and they were the most adorable little creatures. They had those big, dark eyes and long eyelashes that baby deer have. They were a little bit more shy though and it was hard to get them to stay around for long before they hopped away. I got lots of great pictures, although I think that somehow my camera lost all of them (we’ll talk about that in the next post).

I left the park, after buying a traditional Australian leather hat. The particular hat that I wanted had no price on it so I was prepared to pay about $55 for it judging by the rest of the hats. I got up to the counter and the girl said that she would have to check on the price. She went away and came back and said “25 dollars”. I was sure there was some mistake but I wasn’t going to complain!

I wandered back down to the “bus stop” early to be sure not to miss the 3:50 bus because I definitely had seen enough of the park and had accumulated quite a nasty headache by then. I waited and then saw the bus coming. I assumed he was going to stop so I just stood there, watching him come towards me…and then fly past me. I was furious. A bunch of things started running through my head from “now I have to walk all the way back to town and I don’t even know how to get back and it might get dark…” to “now I have to wait around for over an hour”. I opted for the latter because I had already paid the fare and I knew that it was quite a long walk back. I had to sit at the end of the road, having that uncomfortable feeling as drivers drove past and stared at me as if I were a destitute hitchhiker. At 5:10 I saw the bus come around the curve a ways down and this time I walked right up to the edge of the road and waved my hand to be sure he knew to pick me up. I got back to town and walked to Baskin Robbins for a pick-me-up. It was a rough day from the bus to the Wal-Mart hassle to the bus, but I did have some great things to counter the bad, like the fact that I got to pet and hug and feed joeys and koalas. By the way, the koala was the softest, fuzziest animal I’ve ever pet.

I was pleasantly surprised by the country town of Murwillumbah. It is a sizable town but refuses to get any bigger than it already is. I checked into the Murwillumbah/Mt. Warning YHA and it sits right on the Tweed river with views of Mt. Warning. It’s a very nice hostel and the guy who was managing it, Gary, was a lot of fun. He served us free ice cream every night at 9 pm and he always made neat designs with gummy shape toppings. We played a game that is a tradition at the hostel called Zilch. It is a dice game where you roll and try to get certain combinations while avoiding a “zilch” which means you lose your turn and, after three of them, 1000 points. I sucked the first night but the second night I got the all-time high score. Gary made a certificate of achievement and hung it on the wall.

The next day we headed up to the mountain to do the hike. It was overcast so we knew the view at the top would not be great but we had to do it because they only take people to the mountain two or three times a week. Along the way to the mountain we listened to a recorded commentary made by the owner of the hostel, Tassie (so called because he is from Tasmania). He had an interesting accent. It wasn’t that much different from the Australian one but put emphasis on certain words and was a little more sing-songey. We got to the base of the mountain after driving past cattle and banana farms and unloaded from the van with a big green mountain painted on the side door. We began the hike through the subtropical rainforest and I took my camera out to take a picture of a huge tree and realized, after several attempts to turn it on, that it was out of batteries. So I actually got to enjoy the hike, not worrying about whether some view would make a great picture. The Germans I was with (I cannot escape them!) said that they would put pictures on my USB stick. We didn’t see any rock wallabies like we heard we might but we did see these big, colorful turkeys on parts of the trail. We neared the top and it turned into temperate rainforest meaning that there are less species of trees and plants that can survive. The last bit climbing toward the top was LITERALLY a vertical, loose-rock scramble. There was a chain that you grabbed a hold of and hung onto for dear life as you tried to find the foot holds. It seemed to last forever and it took probably 25 minutes to do it. We got to the top and were not rewarded with much of a view. It was even cloudier at the top and we simply drank some water and ate an apple and then headed back down.

I’m heading to Murwillumbah, New South Wales this afternoon to try to find some farm work down there. There are heaps of farms down there in the huge tweed river valley and it is a nice place to be positioned for the long term because there are so many outdoor things to do around the area. Mount Warning and the Border Ranges national parks are all right there in the region, not to mention Coolangatta and Tweed Heads, two of the best surfing spots in the world, all within an hour’s drive. The town name is strange, I know. It’s pronounced “Mur-WUH-lum-bah.” Hopefully I can finally find some work and settle in a bit. If not, I’m going to keep heading south.

I watched the Manchester United v. Chelsea soccer game last night with a bunch of my rowdy hostel mates. Everyone gets really fired up about the games and they taunt, yell, and sing at the television the whole time. I was so tired though that I had to call it quits about 25 minutes into the game. I wish I could have stayed awake because it was actually a lot of fun to watch (both the TV and the half-drunk fans). They don’t even have the sound on because…why bother when you can make your own noises?

How on earth can I have a cold when it is sunny and tropical outside?! Ugh. There is nothing worse than that. Last night I just layed on my bed watching Anchorman for the fifteenth time on my iTouch, blowing my nose and sneezing every other minute. With every sneeze I cursed those Irish people who must have given me the cold on Fraser Island. Or maybe it was the fact that I absolutely froze the first night because I only had a sleepsheet. Oh well. All I know is that it does not help my case in the job search to go up to the counter with my red nose and droopy eyes and ask in a muddled voice if there are any openings.

I walked through the Queen Street Mall (as I do everyday on my trek to the library across the river) and there were TONS of people. They have an event called ROMP today and it is extremely popular. The people who were on microphones were saying that there were over 10,000 people signed up to participate in the part-race-part-scavenger hunt that takes them all around the city. Some of the teams had outrageous costumes. I watched a pack of smurfs pass by followed by a band of pirates. Maybe if I weren’t all stuffed up I would be interested in participating. But I have to be near a bathroom all the time so that I can be ready for those fantastic uncontrolled sneeze explosions.

It is great to be back in Brisbane after my long journey up the coast. It seems that there are some job prospects here. I saw signs in several cafes and a Starbucks (which would be neat because it is a global chain). I had the most artery-clogging breakfast I think I have ever had. It was called “The Power Brekkie” and consisted of 2 eggs, 2 sausages, a pile of Aussie bacon, two hasbrowns with ketchup and two pieces of toast with butter smeared on them. I saw several people drinking beer with their breakfast which was quite interesting! I chose orange juice. But they put ice in it which I thought was odd. They don’t like to put ice in their water…but they like it watering down their juice. Hm.

I needed that big breakfast because I am continuing my job search. It is tough to get into that kind of mode after having been on pre-planned tours for the past few weeks. Hopefully I can get my resume together and printed (they say it “resh-um-ay” which makes me want to laugh). I’ll keep you posted on the job hunt.

I got back from sailing and settled back into my hostel. It was in the afternoon and I was sick of the relentless sun I had encountered on the deck of the Prima ship so I went and had a kebab and got some stamps to mail some postcards. As I was walking down the street I heard “HEY BRANDON!!!” in a familiar London-English accent from across the street. It was Vicki and Lorraine from the Fraser Island tour. I yelled to them that they had better cross the street because I was still a little skiddish of trying to cross the roads with such unusual driving directions. They ran over and we chatted for a bit, saying how weird it is that you keep running into people you have met in the last town. We decided to get together for dinner that night before we headed our separate ways again. I told them I was heading to Townsville to try to find some work and, surprise of surprises, they were heading up there too in a few days. We said a “goodbye for now” and then I hopped onto the not-so-premiere bus for yet another bus ride. This time it was only a four hour trip but it got boring to see nothing but sugar cane out both sides of the windows.

My first impression of Townsville was one of awe. The largest city in the tropical north, it is a compact harbor city that is scrunched between the imposing heights of Castle Hill and the ocean. As I stepped off the bus it was noticeably warmer and more humid. I worked up quite a sweat just walking from the bus depot into town.

My second impression of Townsville was that it was one strange city. For one thing, there were hardly ANY people on the streets. A town with 150,000 residents should have at least a few people on the street at all hours of the day. I probably met 7 people walking by on my way to one of the hostels. Most of the shops along the “revitalized” central business district had their gates closed or were boarded up and covered with graffiti. It was then that I knew that I had made the wrong decision to come here for the long-term. The “sophisticated port city with true Australian flare,” as my guidebook had promised, was a tired, shell of a city that seemed to be hovering on the brink of becoming abandoned or else crammed full of seasonal tourists at any moment. As a city that is seen as more of a stopover on the way to the ocean’s big attractions, it seemed not to have a life of its own, opting to look out onto Magnetic Island which pulls most of the tourists out of the city limits.

I finally found a hostel that actually had someone at the reception and checked in. I almost immediately started looking for a plane ticket out of Townsville and ended up just reading some ridiculous book that had all the predictable shocks of a soap opera. The next day I walked to the ANZAC memorial park which was pretty. It had lots of palm trees, a big fountain, and looked out onto the marina. I walked back into town and located the start of the Goat Track which went up to the top of Castle Hill. My guidebook warned that it was a very strenuous hike and since I had to check out of my less-than-appealing hostel, it felt like I was not only carrying myself up the hill but had acquired a small child on my back. I began to theorize as to why it was called the “Goat” track–anyone who has any smarts will RIDE a goat to the top : P. I had to stop and take a breather several times because it was a never-ending and steep stairway to the top. I got almost to the top and stopped, thinking I had better go down and get some water, content with the view and distance I had gotten so far. It wasn’t a good time to do the hike anyway because it was exactly midday and the sun was very intense. But then an Aussie woman came up the trail behind me and asked “Howaryagoin’, mate?,” to which I responded “it’s some frickin’ hike up this hill.” It seems to be the running theme in Australia; amazing sights but you really have to work for them. She smirked and said “this is my third time today”. I had no response at first in my heat exhausted state but then managed a “wow…good for you.” I got up after she had gone by and stopped one more time and the same woman had already begun her descent, this time doing a little jog on the way down, and said, “You’re almost there, mate. There’s ice cold water at the top as a reward!”. And then she disappeared into the trees. That was all she needed to say. I found a spring in my step similar to the one she had and as I got to the top, I didn’t even admire the view but headed straight for the sign that said “Chilled water.” I must have drank a gallon and I pledged that from then on I would always carry lots of water on any and all hikes in Australia.

The view from the top was nice. I don’t know if it was worth the hellish time, but it afforded a look out over the city and on over to Magnetic Island. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to get to the island after all since it has the largest population of koalas in the world. I started to head back down after lapping some more water at the fountain of life. The walk down seemed much shorter and I wasn’t tempted to throw my pack off like the way up. It was much more slippery however, and I slid on the loose rock a few times. One of the times I almost fell backward, being so top-heavy with my pack and tried to compensate by leaning forward only to almost do a tumble. I must have looked like a cat trying to balance on a pool floatie. And yes, there were houses around that would have given an entertaining view of my acrobatics.

I slowly hiked back to my hostel where I booked my flight back to Brisbane that night. I got into Brisbane at 11:30pm, long after all the buses and trains stopped running to the city. I had to take a cab and I was warned by the reception at my hostel that it would be about 25 dollars (versus 12 on the train). It ended up being $37. I about cursed. There was no other option though and I was content to at least be in a vibrant city once more. I tucked into my bunk and slept like any weary hiker would.

I arrived in Airlie Beach in the morning and was immediately drawn away from the bustop by the beatiful lagoon and surrounding marina filled with boats that had really tall masts. I walked around for a bit and concluded that everyone who comes to Airlie Beach must love to lay in the sun all day. The park by the water was filled with sunbathers and people swimming in the artificially created beach. I layed in the sun for a bit and then went to my hostel to check in for my room and my sailing trip for the next day. I piled the sunscreen into my bag, having experienced how intense the sun is on land let alone the reflective waters of the ocean. I kicked around Airlie Beach for a bit but bored of it quickly because it is just a bunch of t-shirt and shorts shops one after another, mixed in with more travel agencies than I could count. I walked around the boardwalk for a bit until dusk and then headed back to the hostel to go to sleep (since I didn’t get good quality sleep on the bus).

The next day I had to wait until 12:45 when the sailing boat would leave, so again I went to the lagoon and lounged around there. I headed over to the pier and met all the people I would be sharing a boat with for the next two days. There were two (surprisingly) nice French people, two Germans, a couple and their daughter from Chicago, and one Japanese girl who didn’t seem to know a lick of English. It was awkward because she didn’t listen to any of the safety briefings given by the skipper and he kept saying “Emi, DO YOU UN-DER-STAND?” and she would say yes but nod her head “no”. The crew were making our afternoon snack and one of the girls asked Emi if she was a vegetarian and after asking her threee times to no avail, Emi did the same mixed yes and no answer. They asked her if she could swim and she said “a little” and then proceeded to ask if we were going to be able to dive on this trip! I’m thinking how can she even be wanting to snorkel if she can barely swim?! Anyway, she went up to the front of the boat and slept or meditated (we weren’t sure which because she did it frequently) until evening.

We stopped at False Nara, the place where we were to do our first snorkel. I put on my stinger suit and we jumped into the water, which was suprisingly cold. We saw a lot of neat coral formations. Some coral looked like gigantic mushrooms while others looked like unfolding heads of neon green lettuce. The fish were not many but the ones we did see were very brightly colored and interesting. I saw an eel that was sticking only its head out of a crevice in the coral. Eventually we got really cold so we got out of the water and headed to Whitehaven Beach. There was a full moon so it fully lit the bright white sands of the beach. We dropped anchor and Adam (the skipper) took us out to the beach. We were the only ones on the beach and we layed in the sand and sifted it through our hands, marvelling at how the 97% silica sands felt like flour. It was unlike any sand I had ever seen. We chatted about French, German and American cuisine and funny quirks about our languages (it always seems to be that way). And I discovered that I know more French and German than I thought!

I arranged to take a bus from Rainbow Beach to Airlie Beach, since I had booked a sailing trip through the Whitsundays. It was to be a grueling ride from 7 pm to 9:30 am. I have always underestimated how far apart everything is in Australia. It is a HUGE country. I joked around with my new friends from England, Vicki and Lorraine, about the strange bus driver I had from Brisbane to Rainbow Beach. We had all met on the Fraser Island trip and, oddly enough, we were booked on the same bus. I told them, “What would be the chances that we have that weird bus driver that I had once?”. I shouldn’t have said anything because, as fate would have it, it WAS my favorite foreign bus driver who loves to talk the whole way and make everyone uncomfortable, not knowing whether to humor him and listen or stare listlessly out the window. We loaded our stuff without the lecture because we made sure we were early to the bustop (it helped that it was literally outside of our hostel). We got on and after getting settled in the bus driver came down the aisle and said “I don’t want to scare you guys but I’m having a little bit of a headache. Uhh…If one or a bunch of you could come up to the front and talk to me as I drive it might make it go away.” I felt really bad but I couldn’t help but let out a big laugh because now Vicki and Lorraine knew I wasn’t kidding about him! We died laughing, hiding our rudeness behind the seat in front of us. Finally some guy agreed to go up front and talk to him on the way. I couldn’t believe my circumstances being in a seat that, of course, was having seat belt problems and a bus driver that was delirious from a headache. We made it safely to a town called 1770 where Vicki and Lorraine got off and the bus driver switched with another one. I fell asleep and, after what seemed forever, we began driving past sugarcane fields and came to the ocean.

I had the most ridiculous bus experience I’ve ever had on the way from Brisbane to Rainbow Beach. I had a lot of trouble finding the place where my bus left from and I finally found it at 1:55 (it was to leave at 2:00). The bus driver came down from the bus with a clipboard and said, “and you must be Brandon Doyle”. He continued, saying that I was late and that I had made the whole bus wait…and now we were going to be late to all the other stops…nd he had to take the time to put my bag underneath. I wanted to say that I was actually early according to the entire rest of the world’s standards and, indeed, we were EARLY to every stop on the way. So whatever. But he had a strong accent and a microphone that came right up to his mouth. He kept thinking he was a tour bus guide, telling us to look back at the Brisbane skyline and to note the big waves around Noosa area. At one point, he asked if we would rather take “the bush…or the sea.” Everyone kept staring out their windows and no one answered. It was awkward but we didn’t really care which way we took and we were definitely not planning on being part of the driving decisions. We stopped for a meal break and then we loaded back in (early…so that there would be no more confrontation) and headed the rest of the way to Rainbow Beach.

I went on a four-wheeling adventure on Fraser Island with a random group of people and had a blast! I got in to the hostel late at night (after a five hour bus ride) so I missed the briefing on how to get around the island and what to do. So I basically woke up with no idea what I was getting myself into. We loaded all of our stuff onto the top of the vehicle and then fastened a tarp over the top to keep everything dry. I shared the vehicle with four Austrians and six Irish, so it was an interesting mix. The Austrians pretty much kept to themselves but the Irish were fun and turned up the music and most of them sang along although they were completely tone-deaf. We loaded the vehicles onto a ferry and ten minutes later we rolled off onto a deserted beach. I was expecting a road at least at the ferry drop-off but no–we hardly drove on a paved road the whole time we were on the island. We had to drive close to the ocean because the sand was hard and drivable. But a few times we got stuck and we had to use our second engine (a.k.a. we got out and had to push) to get out of the soft sand. We drove on and on for several hours until we got to our camping site. We set everything up and then started to make dinner. We were given all of our food for the entire trip, so we had to follow the instructions on how to ration everything. We grilled steaks and were supposed to make potato salad but we were with a bunch of Irish people who wanted their potatoes plain with a little butter. The meat was a little chewy and not very flavorful since we had nothing to spice them up with. We talked for a bit but then I wandered off to meet some of the other people who were in the other groups that were traveling with us. I met a large group of English people and they were a ton of fun. I got tired pretty quickly though, so I went to the tent. I wasn’t able to bring a sleeping bag because I have been staying in hostels and they do not allow them because they can carry bedbugs. All I had was my sleepsheet. I absolutley froze. I was thinking it would be nice and warm all night but I guess I forgot that deserts can get pretty cold at night! I got up at what I think must have been about 3 am and decided to get into one of the vehicles to get up off the ground which was absorbing all of my body heat. I lost one of my flip-flops on the way and all of a sudden I head something rustling nearby and, not wanting to stick around to see if it was a dingo or a snake, I ran and got into the van and shut the door. I woke up in the morning quite sore from being on a narrow padded bench for several hours. Everyone was gathered around the van and they were looking through the cooler of food. Well…there was no food in the cooler! Turns out that what I had heard in the night might have actually been a dingo. Some person from our group took the cooler out and neglected to put it in the vehicle or on the roof. All of our chicken, milk, and cheese had been eaten with no trace left save a few ripped-up plastic bags. Luckily we still had another cooler which had all of our veggies and eggs. We were a little disheartened, but we had lots of bread and three cartons of eggs.

We headed out for Lake Mackenzie and it was absolutley gorgeous. The sand was white and the water was three shades of blue. The water was nice and cool; a pleasing change from the hot, hot sands. We swam and lounged for an hour or so and then headed up north to set up camp again and relax for the rest of the evening by the ocean. We could not swim in the ocean at all because there were strong riptides and lots and lots of tiger sharks apparently. The next day we drove up to Indian Head point which looked out over massive inland sand dunes and the ocean. We headed back down the coast after that and stopped at the impressive Maheno shipwreck. It was a scrap metal ship that was run ashore by an unexpected winter cyclone. Now it is just a big heap of rust that you cannot walk on. We set up camp just up the beach and started to cook dinner, substituting the eggs for the chicken that the dingoes ate.

We hopped into the vehicle and headed down to Lake Wabby, one of the most southern freshwater lakes on Fraser, stopping at Eli Creek on the way. We waded up the creek and drank some of the cold, pure water. Little did we know, we needed as much water as we could get because we had an 800 meter walk through the desert to get to Lake Wabby. The walk was worth it though as the sand dune just suddenly dropped off into a bright blue-green lake that is half-surrounded by rainforest. The sand is gradually swallowing the lake and forest. We trekked back to the vehicle and piled in and headed to catch the ferry before high tide came.

Remember the post where I talked about the insane huge fruit bats here and I said that I thought the noise they were making was a kookaburra? Well, I was telling that story to a bunch of Australians and laughing it up, saying, “I wouldn’t know a kookaburra if one hit me upside the head!” Well guess what? That very thing happened today! I was walking in the park today and I passed a statue and all of a sudden something hit me hard in the side of the head. After collecting my bearings, I saw that it had been a kookaburra. It had hit me pretty hard right above my left ear. I don’t know if it hit me with its beak or wings or claws, but the side of my head is still a little sore. I was wearing white sunglasses, which I think she may have wanted to swipe since they would match her black and white feathers nicely. I went up the street and into a Starbucks to find some shelter and they told me that I probably just got too close to her nest without realizing it. Apparently they attack people all the time. One of the ladies told me to watch out for the mudpies because they’re even more aggressive. Great. Such friendly wildlife they have here!

In other news, I lost my US driver’s lisence and debit card. Don’t know how or where. They could be mixed in with all the shoes and clothes and bags that were strewn about my hostel room by a group of French guys. I should have Michael Phelps swim through all their stuff and find it for me. haha.