Maggy

TOWNSVILLE, QUEENSLAND - 13th January 2010

As Ronan Keating so rightly said, "life is a roller coaster - you've just gotta ride it". It's not just ups and downs either - just like a roller coaster, when things start going downhill, they tend to accelerate. So, fresh on the back of having my camera nicked (the day I got back from the Whitsunday Cruise), I managed to spectacularly shoot myself in the foot in an attempt to be forward planning.

With 48 hours left in Australia, I'd planned to shoot up to tropical Townsville (at about 19.5°S, it's well inside the the Tropic of Capricorn and sits approximately as far from the Equator as Goa), not so much for the city as its illustrious and acclaimed neighbour - Magnetic Island. Named as such by Captain Cook on his 1770 Discovery expedition (and affectionately nicknamed "Maggy" by locals), the story went that the island possessed some strange force that sent Cook's compass off the kilt. Subsequent evidence that no such force exists suggests that the only thing off the kilt was Cook after a couple of pegs too many*.

He's not alone. For some unknown reason, I'd managed to convince myself that my 9.30am bus from Airlie Beach arrived in Townsville at 10.30 that night. Based on this assumption, and just minutes before leaving Airlie, I booked myself into an LPG-recommended joint next to the bus station to minimise hassle upon arriving that night, with the plan being to hit Magnetic Island for the day in the morning.

Whether it was the succession of 12 hour journeys up the coast that made me think the journey would be that long, or whether it was just plain stupidity (certainly the more likely), the crux of the story was that it actually took just 4 hours, arriving at 1.30pm.

This should have been good news, as it allowed me to head straight over to Maggy, relax for the afternoon, crash there overnight and spend the following day on the island before my late afternoon flight to Sydney. If only it were so simple. Because of my supposed late arrival, I had had to do a pre-arrival check for Globetrotters (the Townsville hostel) that meant my card had already been charged... and it was non-refundable.

Unimpressed, I wandered from the bus station a couple of blocks down the road to where my hostel was...and came face-to-face with a fenced off site with no semblance of a building left on it. A phone call confirmed what I was dreading - the bloody place had moved site and my LPG, published in 2004, had the old address. And the new address was anything but close to the bus station.

Long walk in savage tropical heat with massive backpack. Check in. Dump stuff on bed. Change t-shirt. Fill backpack with LPG and book to read on beach. Walk to Magnetic Island ferry terminal.

One final kick in the teeth, it transpired that ferries were return tickets valid for one month. Meaning that by not staying overnight on the island, I was going to get financially screwed if I wanted to come back again on the second day. Not happy.

The island itself is incredible, not so much for the fact that it is a jungle flanked with pristine beaches (regular readers would have gathered that Queensland essentially consists of thousands of miles of the above), but the fact that despite its formidable reputation as a tourist hotspot, the island is just oh so quiet. There is one road through it, linking the ferry terminal at Nelly Bay with the expansive Horseshoe Bay to the north, and the smaller Picnic Bay to the south (see right). Accessible only by foot are the other 20+ bays of various shapes and sizes scattered in every direction.

Arriving on Maggy at 4.30, I hopped on the shuttle bus to Horseshoe and took on a couple of recommended walking trails - the first to an inland creek that is supposedly full of birds, although apparently they all vanish on the second Tuesday in January in every 21st century year ending in '10. The second, as the sun set to the west, involved some serious physical work - a steep climb up a hundred or more rocky steps, over the top of the hill, and down a steeper, rockier descent the other side among hundreds, or even thousands of huge granite boulders. Eventually you reach the shore of Balding Bay; in my case you mistakenly take a ridiculously treacherous and quite possibly illegal off-track route and freestyle your way down the rocks after losing your way; and enjoy the sobering tranquility of having an entire beach, and indeed entire bay cove, all to one's self.

Long walk back to Horseshoe, and sitting alone by the bus stop listening to my iPod. If I were to describe it in one word? Passive.

Then, the rollercoaster turns. As down the beach walk two guys, one young, one middle age, the latter calls out "oi mate - come fishing with us!". Polite refusal, something about having a bus to catch, and "just get the next bus! You haven't got anything better to do!"

Two hours later, beers and wines were going down a treat with fresh chips, and Paddy, Pete and I had caught a tiger shark, some little fish, and had two lines snapped by big mamma barras too strong for the weak line. I'd sacked off the last bus, and was soon going so sack off the last ferry thanks to the offer of sleeping at Paddy/Pete's place. BASE bar was frequented, a few more drinks were had, and back at Pete's a controversial concoction of bacon, onions, tomato sauce and a large dose of curry powder was guzzled. Great evening.

Morning was early. 7.30am early. I called Globetrotters to let them know I wouldn't make check out time - and with the rollercoaster very much moving my way by now, the lady told me not to worry, just swing by later and pick up my stuff, and thanks for ringing!

Thoroughly pleased about the way things were working out, my Australian adventures had one final, and quite literal, high to come - Paddy, 20, born and raised on the island, took me back over to Balding Bay, but this time we climbed our way over the rocks that bend around the left edge of the bay forming the beginnings of a lagoon. At the apex stands one huge mass of granite - towering 10 metres above the ripply blue waters below, its front face flat and shear (see arrow, right). You'd be mad as a hatter to do it on your own accord - especially as a tourist - but fate's cards in the form of local hospitality were destined to provide the biggest adrenaline rush I've had since sky diving in 2007. Like a roller coaster, what goes up must come down... so it was 1, 2, 3, JARANIMO!!!...

(...*splash*)


* Strictly unofficial speculation

CSI: Airlie Beach

AIRLIE BEACH, QUEENSLAND - 11th January 2010

No point beating around the bush here. About 2 hours ago I had my digital camera stolen from my hostel room.

In the 5 minutes I was out of the room walking to the laundry room and back, or the 5 minutes I was out at the supermarket, a French girl staying in the same room was stupid enough to not just let in a complete stranger when he claimed he'd "left something behind", but leave him alone in the room. 20 minutes later, I'm making a sandwich and the girl comes asking if I've seen a man from our room, because her "camera is gone". With mine gone as well, it doesn't take much imagination to guess I was far from impressed.

Thankfully, the summer 2008 theft of my mobile phone with 4 weeks of travelling photos in Kho Pangan, Thailand - unofficially known as the "Curious Incident of the Berghaus Bag" - left its mark on me in terms of securing my photos, and everything up to and including Brisbane is safely backed up on my portable memory stick. Unfortunately, all my photos from Fraser Island - which were both plentiful and, arguably, the best photos from all of Australia (particularly of Lake Mackenzie) - as well as those from the Whitsundays are all lost... which is pretty gutting.

One other blessing is that as a result of doing four dives on the Wings II Whitsundays cruise, I got a free DVD with hundreds of photos from our time there, including many duplicates of ones on my camera. The police (who blatently agreed with my assessment of this girl's stupidity) said CCTV might give them a lead on this one, but even for a camera that has been lost twice before finding its way back to me (most notably at the Reading Festival in August, when these kids picked it up, snapped a load of photos of themselves, then returned it to Lost Property), I can't say I'm optimistic.

Silver linings are always around though, and in this case it means I can get the money from insurance and spend it on buying myself a fancy new SLR-esque camera in duty free before I leave to New Zealand in a few days time!

THE DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
#9 - Trusting the French may be fine, but trusting those trusted by
the French will probably end badly.

Finding Nemo (or not)

AIRLIE BEACH, QUEENSLAND - 11th January 2010

The list of things I've got to try at least once in my life has got one item shorter, and the list of things that are gonna cost me a lot of money due to their adrenaline-inducing addictive nature has an addition. Scuba Diving? Check.


Fraser Island's team festivities culminated with an all-you-can-eat pizza bonanza back at Hervey Bay on the mainland, which formed the prelude to yet another overnight journey. Waking from an inertial state of slumber that certainly isn't conscious, but is too uncomfortable to be considered sleep, I had to admit that spending 5 nights in 8 days on a bus is far from ideal - not to mention just 3 nights on a bed a bed since leaving Melbourne 12 days back. However, with the age-old adage of "man up" drilled into me from years of Juddian conditioning, it was hop skip and jump out of the Premier Motor Coach when, 14 hours later, we arrived here in Airley Beach - the gateway to the Whitsundays.

To quote the LPG, "just about every outdoor-loving Australian dreams of rocking up the says and reef on a yacht in the Whitsundays". Thanks to a $1000 splurge of bookings back at Byron Bay, I'd already sorted mine, and just about managed to find my way to Abel Point Marina at 1pm all set 48-hour 2 night trip aboard the catamaran "Wings II".

Of the 24 of us on board, a big solid majority were intro divers - and I was far from alone in having doubts about whether I actually wanted to do it. However, just like most things that might involve a morsel of two of fun, I was pretty easily convinced by the dive instructors on board, and just a couple of hours after leaving the mainland we were docked at Blue Pearl Bay, loaded with scuba gear, and out doing our "skills". Confirming we all had the mental capacity to breathe through our mouths rather than our noses was easy enough, so it was straight down underwater and in amongst the schools of fish and vast masses coral that give the Great Barrier Reef the awe-inspiring fame it commands.

With pretty much the whole boat deciding to dive, and being in the last group out, we got to see a bit of a transition between the day fish and their nighttime counterparts, but before we knew it it was time to resurface - cue general elation over going diving!

Back in Byron Bay the travel agent - going by the name of Will Smith - had shown me a few Whitsunday tour operators, but any indecision over which to choose was settled when food was brought up. Wings provides a veritable feast, 3 times a day, for the duration of your trip, and the proof was indeed in the pudding - we arrived back at the boat to the wafting smell of barbecued chicken (there's a barbecue on board everything here), pasta bake, Ceasar salad, all sorts of veg, and all of that followed by apple strudel for dessert. Fantastic.

Beer o'clock followed while we watched a couple of Giant Trevallys circling the back of the boat (see right), but fatigue booze combining with the prospect of an early start (with rough seas) in the morning, I was out like a log by about midnight. Next thing I know its morning and we're in Manteray Bay - all set for another round of diving. This time I'm in group 1, so it's straight underwater in amongst some deeper and more complex reef, seeing sea clams and angel fish and some amazing coral.

Whenever the boat is docked for people to go diving, anyone else is free to go snorkeling to see what they can see. Cool as my early morning's dive was, it was trumped about half an hour later when I went snorkelling with a guy called Robbie. The sun was shining, the water was clear, and thanks to a great stroke of luck Robbie managed to spot a whopping great big turtle that we proceeded to follow for the next 15 minutes, taking turns to duck dive under and around him and give him a pat on the back (/shell). At one stage, his route in and around the bay took us through the middle of a school of millions of tiny fish - everywhere you looked there were these tiny creatures floating in the water, dodging out the way of the colossal mass of Mr. Turtle as he whiled away another of his days. If an underwater camera was ever needed, it was then.

We moved down the coast to Luncheon Bay where, sure enough, we had lunch - but the Subway sandwich-esque array of breads, fillings and salads was not before another scuba dive by "Nemo City". As Adam the dive instructor so rightly said, once you've seen one Nemo fish you've seen them all, but it was still a bit of a shame to not see any! Nemo was not found...

Water-based activities ceased post-lunch, as we took on the wind and ploughed through mega-choppy waters down to the little piece of paradise known as Whitehaven Beach. Ranked by both National Geographic and Lonely Planet as one of the best 2 beaches in the world, Whitehaven's sand is 98.7% silica, giving it the most phenomenal white colour and flour-like texture of anything I've ever seen. A lookout provides spectacular views like these...


While the beach itself isn't half bad either:

Cheesy photos, art in the sand, back the bid and beach football in the sunset all exhausted, we trekked back across the island to Tongue Point, back to our boat, and tucked into another salivatious dinner - BBQ sausages and steak with potato, tuna, and egg salads, with chocolate and/or caramel cakes for dessert.

Post-dinner we headed back north so that we'd be nearer to our final dive point this morning - and I was woken up at 6.45am with the news that we were all set for one last dive before heading back to land. 35mins or so 12 metres under the surface, seeing stingrays, batfish and loads of little guys - then back to the surface, back to the boat, and 2 hours sailing later, back to Airley Beach and dry land. Phwoar.

Fun and games on Fraser Island

HERVEY BAY, QUEENSLAND - 8th January 2009

While in Byron Bay I made a decision to properly organise my last 10 days in Australia in order to get the most out of them, and stage 1 of this was the self-guided safari tour on Fraser Island - the largest sand island in the world.

The way it works is pretty simple - a load of people book the tour with a particular hostel - in our case "Palace Adventures" - and are put into groups, who are then assigned a big 4x4 van, tents, cooking equipment, cool boxes, and basically everything you need to survive on your own for 3 days. You go shopping as a group, load up on food and bevs, and hop on the barge across from the mainland. From there, you're on your own... sort of.

With 30 of us in total, we were divided into 4 groups and, in general, stuck together for the duration of our trip. Furthermore, our prep talk back at Palace included a recommended route based on the tides - and tides play a more crucial role on vehicle transportation on Fraser Island than anywhere I've been with the notable exception of l'Île de Noirmoutier's Passage du Gois on the west coast of France. The reason? Fraser Island does not have roads. It has inland tracks that are at best bumpy, and at worst giant bogs of sandy muck that are wholly unnavigable to all but the best drivers or hardcore 4x4s. And, it has the Eastern Beach.

The Eastern Beach, a.k.a. "75 Mile Beach", is unlike any other stretch of sand you're likely to see wherever you go in Australia, or anywhere else. For one, it is 75 miles long. It never ends. You can see the horizon of sand straight ahead, but you'd have to repeat that process about about 20 times to get from end to end. Secondly, for the most part it's straight. Dead straight. The map of Fraser Island to the right doesn't lie - from Indian Head in the north-east right down to Eurong, the distance as the crow flies is identical to the distance as the 4x4 drives. Which leads nicely to the third, and most unique thing about the Eastern Beach: it is both a highway and a runway. For the four hour period that covers two hours before and after low tide, the sand of the beach is broad enough and compressed enough to allow 4x4s to cruise up and down it - and being both long and straight, it's by far the quickest way of getting anywhere. All normal highway rules apply, with one difference: you must give way to any landing aircraft...

Our trip took us first to Lake Wabby - a patch of inland freshwater that is gradually getting eaten up by an ever-expanding "sand blow" - an image that can be seen fairly well in the picture I found online to the left. Fraser Island is the primary victim from the theft of my digital camera, so this particular blog is going to be missing several of what were some of my best photos from Australia. For shame.

Like every other vehicle in this part of the world, the license plates on our 4x4s proudly declare themselves as being from "Queensland - Sunshine State". Apparently at least 300 days a year are sunny... so with sod's law being what it is were always gonna get a couple of those other 65. Light drizzle while we were swimming around in Lake Wabby wasn't too big a deal - one of the girls was soundly berated for complaining about getting wet while head deep in water. And, unlike the crappy English drizzle that forms such an integral part of our national psyche, this stuff is warm. You just lay back and imagine having a nice shower while floating in a bath!

A couple of hours later and we were setting up camp - erecting tipi-like tents, assembling BBQs, all sorts. Thanks to a tidy purchase of some high quality meat from a butcher on land, our BBQ lamb burgers and sausages were fantastic and nicely accompanied with fresh salad. Eating was followed by a solid group get-to-know-one-another session with beer and cheap wine flowing and my little iPod speaking pumping out some massive choons well into the early hours.

The inland tracks through the sandy rainforest that sprawls across the middle of the island are seriously slow progress - the you occasionally find yourself having to power the vehicle up on top of a 2 foot tree root, only to have it crash down into a 2 foot deep puddle of sandy muck on the other side, all the while descending a hill and a 30 degree gradient. Pro driving is needed, and for our group that was
Dan - a 26-year-old Swede who spent a couple of years actually working as a driver - and yours truly. Dan drove for the afternoon on day 1 and the final morning, while I had the whole of day 2; I think the best description of my stint would be "rain affected". And that would be one whopping great big understatement.

Our overnight camp had been set up to the southern end of the Eastern Beach near a famous freshwater stream called Eli Creek - famed for you ability to jump off a bridge and let the vast current of the water wash you all the way down to the sea along the sandy riverbed. However, when we arrived early morning after packing up camp, there was more than enough water thumping down from the skies to make anyone want to soak themselves in the creek - so instead we powered across it all the way up to the top of the island - the fantastic views out to the north from Indian Head, and the amazing gushing waters of the Champagne Pools. The latter was particularly unique - rocky outcrops enclose an area of sea water that - as the waves crash into the rocks as in the photo on the right - is filled with foamy, frothy bubbles à la champagne. The rocky enclosure means it is the only bit of sea around Fraser Island you are allowed to swim in - the open waters are infested with jellyfish, stingrays, sharks - and January is breeding season. The pools won't be forgotten by me for some time not just thanks to memories - they're left a lasting mark on most of my body thanks to an ill-advised decision to climb atop of the border rocks; the sea crashing down to my left, the wind and rain battering down from above. Covered in sea urchins, oysters and all sorts of damn sharp shells, the rocks are not a hospitable place to be, and I came off spectacularly worse for wear after getting wiped out my a colossal wave crashing behind me - feet, hands, arms, legs and back were all sliced and diced as I was sent crashing into the salty water, soon creating my own mini-pool of leaking red blood from every side of my body. It looked worse than it was, but by God did it sting later that day... all over.

Once the tide had gone back out over lunchtime, we bombed it back down the full length of the Eastern Beach - checking out (and generally fooling around in) the awesome iron shipwreck parked half way along the coast (don't let sunshine in the photo on the right fool you - for us it was grey skies and rain) before setting up camp in a cool little clearing just inland from the beach. More food, more drinks, more partying... a few cameo appearances from the native dingoes to keep everyone entertained - an all round classic right...

...and then it was the morning - packing up, and straight inland to Mackenzie Lake. This is the stuff dreams are made of - the pictures you see in brochures that look unreal. Blazing sunshine, white sand, clear blue fresh water. With good weather, it is a little piece of paradise surrounded by jungle in every direction - and was where all sorts of fun and games went down in the 4 hours or so we were there before departing back to the mainland. The photos on my camera were, annoyingly, rather good - but as a few of other people's have appeared on facebook, some idea can be guaged from the below.

Brizzy

FORTITUDE VALLEY, BRISBANE, QUEENSLAND - 5th January 2010

In spite of my last "feral"-fuelled post (which now adorned with some pretty pictures for you to look at), I'm not a massive fan of using local slang when I'm travelling - I can't help thinking that you sound like a bit of a pratt (imagine an American saying "let's have a butcher's"... it just doesn't work). In particular, I cannot bring myself to join the entire nation and the company itself by calling McDonald's "Macca's". Maccy D's is stupid, but Macca's? Really?

Anyway, up here in the Queensland you find the Aussie "strine" slang used a lot more than I did further south - with everyone's yakking on about "sheelas" (women) "chooks" (chicken) and "fair dinkum" the whole time you really feel like you're in the Australia of Steve Irwin and all the other stereotypes. Brisbane, of course, is "Brizzy".

My first taste of Brisbane was a half an hour walk at 11.30 at night from the Transit Centre in the CBD over here to Fortitude Valley ("the Valley"), where my hostel, "Bunk", resides in the heart of the city's "entertainment precinct". Having not slept on a bed since the 29th December, I was out like a log on the mattress, emerging at about 10.30 yesterday to take on the town.

Brisbane's transport system is excellent - like London you can buy a simple day travelcard for just $6 and get unlimited travel on the buses, metro or river ferries in the "Zone 1" (city centre) area. Interestingly, Brisbane has 23 zones - concentric circles spreading further and further out of the city all the way up and down the Queensland coast - confirming the words of a random motorcyclist I got talking to in Byron Bay: "everywhere you go in Queensland will have a train to Brisbane".


Once in the CBD, I did my usual walking tour covering as much of the town as possible, including the impressive Town Hall (above) that, unfortunately, closed on the 31st December for 3 years to undergo major renovation works. Before then, you could go right up to the top of the bell tower for free... . The old General Post Office that's still in use (right) is another impressive bit of architecture, but the thing that really stood out fore me is what is now quite possibly my favourite cathedral in the world.



St Stephen's Cathedral is by European standards pretty new, but by Australian standards is positively ancient. Indeed, the chapel to the side of the main cathedral is the first church in Queensland, built in 1850, although was superceded by the cathedral a couple of decades later when it became obvious that the growing city was going to need something far more substantial. Unsurprisingly, most of the inside is similar to any other Catholic church, but it is the way in which it has been done in St Stephen's that stood out for me. The stations of the cross, for example, are small, colourful oil paintings by an artist called Lawrence Dawes that veer away from the very traditional imagery of classical churches. The crucifix above the altar (which can be seen behind the nativity crib in the photo to the above-right) is also different - made of solid bronze, it is solely a horizontal bar - a move that literally gives the symbol an extra dimension that is not normally seen. Best of all is the baptismal font (below) in a modern new transcept behind the altar - a stream of holy water flows from it in a semi circle around the back of the church. It is truly serene.


The day also included a tour of Queensland's Parliament building, which happily follows a great many of the Westminster formalities that make us feel right at home - including maces, ridiculous clothing, and all sorts of Royal conventions. As is traditional in the Westminster system, the lower house (below) is green and the upper house is red - but Queensland has the distinction of being the only Parliament in Australia, and one of the few in the whole world (New Zealand being the only other to spring to mind) to operate a unicameral legislative system, following the abolition of the upper house in 1921 after the in-power Australian Labor Party filled it with members sympathetic to their view of it as undemocratic (or, alternatively, as limited their ability to pass whatever they wanted into law).


More walking around took be to The Gabba - Brisbane Cricket Ground - and onto a ferry trip across the Brisbane River a couple of times, and by the time I'd caught the bus back up to Fortitude Valley I was in time to snag a fairly decent sunset photo looking across Brisbane's most famous landmark - the Story Bridge, designed by the same man who designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge.


Incidentally, I decided against visiting the renowned Australia Zoo just north of Brizzy - Steve Irwin's turf is widely said to be the best zoo in the country, but having already seen many an animal and zoo already, it felt leaving this for my next trip (whenever that might be) would prevent zoos in Oz going the same way as temples in India and churches in Europe in terms of diminishing marginal utility... once you've seen one, you've seen them all!


P.S. I've finally managed to upload the photos to allow me to publish a post about the menagerie of animals at my cousin's place. Check it out here