Something different

I wanted to experiment a little with this post about the Yongala. I only did that once, with the tree, and I think it turned out well, but I had more time to revise that. I haven't revised this at all. It's straight from the gut, which means that it's highly probable that there's a bit of purple prose present. One reason I just pumped it out is this: I leave Australia tomorrow. Yep.

I don't know if I'll do a retrospective or anything--I certainly won't do one tonight, and likely will hold off until I've had some time to digest everything that's happened this semester. I do have a post in the tank that may or may not ever see the relatively dim light of this blog that addresses one thing in particular, but we'll see what happens. At any rate, expect some New Zealand updates, if not while we're in the country than immediately afterwards. Thanks to everyone who's been reading. Thanks especially to those that leave comments!

And now, the aforementioned short Yongala piece:

We moored, and the boat, relatively calm save a few jarring bumps on the three-hour ride out to the wreck, immediately began to roll and pitch. The divemasters had warned us of the likelihood of seasickness this far out on the water, but my stomach, notoriously weak, had never really been troubled by the movement of ships. But this time was different—my equilibrium was thrown off immediately, causing me to lose the physical composure that had allowed me to read (read!) on the moving boat. Waves of intense nausea overwhelmed me, making it nearly impossible to don my wetsuit, adjust my BCD, slip on my fins. John, a bald man with a Patrick Stewart face and disconcertingly large scar on his stomach who would be leading our dive, put me together: “Get this boy in the water!” No glasses, just a less-than-prescription mask the world was blurry sweat inched out my pores down my face shuffling along “Get him in!” can’t lift my feet (fins) “Stand here. Left hand on weights, right on regulator and mask. Go!” giant stride…falling…bliss. As soon as I hit the water, the nausea vanished, whisked away by the cool waters of the Pacific. I swam to the rope, and began my descent.

The S.S. Yongala wrecked in March 1911, en route to Townsville from Mackay. It was a large steel passenger and freight steamer, 111 meters long, 14 deep. Currently it lies 29 meters below the surface, an isolated monument three hours off the Townsville shore. Over the years, coral has slowly covered the ship’s frame, coating it in branches and fans of purple and yellow, a patch of anemones, and the occasional fire coral. (Worried passenger: “How do we identify fire coral?” Our guides: “Touch everything. When it feels like you just stuck your hand in boiling water, that’s fire coral”). The coral overcoat, combined with the isolation, is the reason people pay to dive the Yongala. The wreck, on its own, is not particularly interesting; divers are forbidden from penetrating what is left of the structure, and there are few remnants of whatever the vessel had been carrying on its last day. The coral, however, attracts marine life. It is the only coral for miles around, and that is made abundantly clear as soon as the wreck is reached.

I looked to my left, and almost lost my regulator. There—majestic, serene, enormous—was a manta ray. It glided through the water, probably six feet across, attended by dozens of cleaner fish feasting on the ray’s leftovers. It was alien. It was prehistoric. It made it all worth it. This summer I was perhaps reluctant to take the scuba certification class, I had a bad experience in Vietnam. But this…this manta ray made it all—the money, the nausea, everything—worth it. I will never forget that moment.

The ray was only the start of our amazing marine life adventure. A laundry list of sorts: a bull ray (almost as large as the manta), sea snakes (writhing away from John’s grasp or slithering vertically through the water), turtles (asleep), moray eel (motionless but alert), angelfish (vividly colored), giant travelly and Maori wrasse and grouper (large, four foot fish). It was the most diverse place we’ve dived in terms of marine life, and the coral wasn’t half bad either. Not as structurally impressive as the Great Barrier Reef itself, but what it lacked in stature it made up for in color and form.

The boat’s engines revved, and we started the trek back to Townsville. The nausea was gone, and I smiled an irrepressible smile.

Two dreams fulfilled

Something to add to the list of differences between JCU and Swarthmore: JCU makes old exams available in the library and online as study aids. I’ve never had access to old tests, ever, so the existence of five or six of these for every class is just unbelievable. Recognizing patterns in test questions does wonders for study habits.

For this reason, I was able to take time off on Sunday to visit Magnetic Island once again, accompanied as always by Natalie, and this time a special guest: Swarthmore friend, former hall-mate, fellow engineer Tristan. Tristan had studied in Adelaide for the semester (where he had met Melbourne travel-buddy and long-time Indianapolis friend Emma), and was making his final rounds of Australia, traveling to Queensland to see the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, his plan hit a snag. He booked a snorkel trip for Sunday, but it was canceled due to excessive winds, so we decided to spend the day on Magnetic Island.

We caught the 10:30 ferry to Maggie, and on the way pondered the question of our mode of transportation while on the island. Last time, we had rented scooters, and while that was excellent, we wanted to try something a little different. So we decided on a moke, an open air, jeep-type thing apparently constructed for the express purpose of loudly identifying tourists. Really, nothing screams “TOURIST!!” like a teal, doorless vehicle with a large picture of Winnie the Pooh emblazoned on the front hood. Due to poor planning, we had not realized that one had to be 21 to rent such an impressively garish means of transportation, but we lucked out: Tristan is 21. Crisis averted. We planned on splitting the driving, since Tristan was our guest, but when we got to the car, we found that it had a manual transmission. Uh-oh. But Tristan, playing the Trinidadian Reggie Miller, came through in the “clutch” yet again. Crisis #2 averted, and we headed out.

We tooled around a bit in the moke, reveling in its absurdity and taking countless pictures of us in and around it. After a tasty lunch, we intended to go to the beautiful Arthur Bay, where we had snorkeled on the first trip, but it turns out that mokes aren’t allowed on the unsealed road that leads to the bay, and we balked at walking the few kilometers along the road. Instead, we made our way to Alma Bay, where we found some of the biggest waves I’ve seen in Queensland. Normally, waves are small here because they’re blocked by the reef, but these were huge, and several hours were spent in the water or relaxing next to it. Tristan had an underwater case for his camera, so he took pictures of us in the water, which was kind of cool.

After we left the beach, we attempted yet again to fulfill one of Natalie’s lifelong (or possibly just Australia-long) dreams, which was to see a koala in the wild. We had failed in our previous attempt the first time we were on Maggie, mostly because we did the koala-sighting hike during the middle of the day, when they were all asleep and hiding. This time, however, was different, because after about twenty minutes of walking and grilling the people walking in the opposite direction about if they had seen any koalas, and if so where such a momentous sighting had occurred, I looked to my left and BAM! There it was, a koala, high up in a tree, just hanging out. Natalie died of happiness, which was inconvenient, because Tristan and I then had to carry her body down the hill. Um, that didn’t happen, thankfully. What really died was her concern about never seeing a real live wild koala. So we snapped pictures and gawked and told everyone who was passing about it, and then we headed back to the moke and back to Townsville, where, unbeknownst to us, an extremely exciting chain of events was about to occur.

Tristan, understandably, was disappointed about not being able to see the reef. Throughout the day, we had pondered various ways of rectifying this unfortunate situation, but as of about 7:30 PM were unable to come up with a satisfactory solution. No companies in Townsville were going out of Monday because of heavy winds, and all the other places that go to the reef are hours away, and we were running out of time to find a means of transportation to these other places. So here’s what happened over the next hour: Tristan visits an internet café, where the proprietor informs him that there are late-night buses to Cairns; he books a bus ticket that leaves Townsville at 12:50 AM and arrives in Cairns at 6:30 AM; books a snorkel trip in Cairns that leaves at 8:30 AM; buys a bus ticket back to Townsville that leaves at 12:30 AM the next day and arrives at 5:30 AM; then somehow finds his way to the airport to catch a flight to Sydney at 10:30 AM. It was incredibly exciting to help him do this. My RA, who felt somewhat indebted to me because I’d been helping him with math for the past few days, drove us to the bus station at midnight, and on the way we drove up Castle Hill, a large hill/small mountain near downtown Townsville and the entire city was lit up beneath us and it was breathtaking. It was the impulsiveness of the whole evening, I think, that contributed most to the beauty, but the time of night, the unseasonably cool air, the dots of light that were simultaneously deliberate and chaotic made it a memorable experience.

Cairns I Kick It? (Yes, You Cairns!)

Ok, that title is a poorly executed attempt to make a pun on the pronunciation of Cairns ("cans") using a call-and-response from a song by A Tribe Called Quest.

Cairns is the self-proclaimed “capital of Far North Queensland,” a title that I believe has no actual meaning (but I could be wrong). This past weekend, Natalie and I chipped in on a rental minivan with four other American girls (Bette, Meredith, Trish, Rachel) and made the four-hour drive from Townsville on Friday afternoon. Who here is surprised that I was the lone male in a large group of girls? No one? Me neither.

Since the other girls were staying what is described by the Lonely Planet as “the Hilton of hostels,” where doubles cost $130, Natalie and I booked a room in a much smaller, more isolated hostel. When we pulled up, it looked like we’d made a horrible mistake, but upon entry it became apparent that the dilapidated exterior thankfully bore no resemblance to the tidy, cozy interior. After checking in, the two of us wandered around the city, making notes of possible souvenir-purchasing locations, before deciding to eat at an overpriced, wildly mediocre Thai restaurant. My soup tasted as though it had been laced with Lemon Pine Sol, Natalie’s Pad Thai was sub-par (to me, at least), and we suffered the consequences of Australia’s no-tipping policy, as our waitress had no incentive to act quickly. Then it was back to the hostel, because we had to get an early start the next day.

Saturday dawned cloudy, with intermittent showers, reminiscent of our nasty Whitsundays weather, which was appropriate because it was the day we had chosen to dive. Fortunately, the rain was short-lived and the sun soon showed itself, burning Natalie’s legs something fierce in the process. The other passengers, much like on the Whitsundays trip, were a mélange of colonial powers: English, French, American, Australian. While we were being briefed on our dives, the French group avenged the Louisiana Purchase fleecing by stealing our seats. The boat was staffed by a few English dive instructors, a German divemaster with Paris Hilton glasses, and a short-tempered, snappy Canadian who had the most body hair I’ve ever seen on a single person.

After about an hour and a half, we reached the first dive spot. The fish life was perhaps lacking, not nearly as spectacular or plentiful as the spots in the Whitsundays, but the coral was incredible. We swam by fifteen-meter-high walls, through narrow passageways, around gnarled branches. I was not as careful as I should have been, and ended up knocking into the coral once or twice. When we surfaced, karma hit me for this carelessness. I had a minor headache for the majority of the time underwater, but when I reached the boat, it erupted into splitting pains, coupled with a sudden bout of nausea that was not in any way aided by the gentle but persistent rocking of our vessel. It was lunch time, but I would have none of it aside from the occasional piece of bread. Lying down helped, and I hoped that my symptoms would subside before the next dive. Unfortunately, they did not. I ate the cost of the second dive (we had already paid for two, you see), while Natalie once again experienced the wonder that is the world’s largest living organism. As is typical with these things, I felt better as soon as everyone piled back into the boat for the trip back to shore.

As we were tired, the night was short, spent with our traveling partners for a pizza dinner and some hang-out time at their hostel. They are mostly Natalie’s friends, and those of you hoping for a similar critique of this clique as I did with the Sydney group, it won’t happen. Although I pulled my usual don’t-speak-unless-spoken-to-or-making-a-loosely-self-deprecating-comment routine, I was much more comfortable around them.

Originally, the plan for Sunday was to make the trip to Kuranda via Skyrail and Scenic Railway. This idea, however, hit a roadblock when we went and talked to the owner (maybe) of our hostel on Saturday evening. He told us, very plainly and in a vaguely racist manner, that it wasn’t worth the $75, and that it was for “Japanese and old people.” After some conversation that elaborated on the nature of the rides (slow, and the waterfalls would be dried up because it hadn’t rained much yet) and the town of Kuranda itself (a thinly veiled tourist trap), we scrapped the idea. He presented some other tours as options, but Natalie had seen most of the highlights during her farm stay, so we decided on something much closer and much cheaper: the Crystal Cascades.

The Crystal Cascades are located about 20 km from Cairns, and provide the public with a series of natural swimming holes. For those of you who have been to Lutsen, it’s essentially a tropical Temperance River, even down to the jumping spots. We spent a relaxing afternoon lying on rocks, watching small children slide down mini-rapids and then traversing them ourselves. In the evening, we went out for sushi.

On Monday we finally investigated Cairns’ many shops for possible souvenirs for ourselves or presents for loved ones. Who here is surprised that I didn’t buy anything? No one? Me neither. I did, however, get a much-needed haircut. The big story of the day was lunch. Natalie and I dined at the Red Ochre Grill, a restaurant specializing in Australian cuisine made with native Australian ingredients. The main attraction: trying kangaroo, crocodile and emu. We started off the meal with an amazing bread made from wattle seed, accompanied by peanut oil and a mixture of spices for dipping. It was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best bread I’ve eaten in this country. Next, some spiced fries, which were good but nothing compared to those of Indianapolis’ Brugges. Finally, the real treat: a platter with samplers of exotic Australian cuisine. The contents: crocodile wontons, a bit of kangaroo steak, emu pate, a tiny vegetarian omelet, and ocean trout. I liked everything, Natalie passed on the trout and some of the omelet. Crocodile, it turns out, tastes like a slightly drier ground beef. Kangaroo is reminiscent of lamb. The emu was very hard to place; it had a familiar but unidentifiable taste. All in all, a wonderful dining experience, and for roughly the same price as the bad Thai food two nights earlier.

We started back to Townsville at around four, but made a detour in Innisfail to meet up with a friend of, well, everyone but me, apparently. Our meeting place, some sort of club, had slots, and Natalie was actually “successful” in her ventures here, winning two dollars. The rest of the ride back featured moments of group bonding over Romanian pop songs (Dragostea Din Tei) and sappy 80s music (Toto’s Africa), chance encounters with tree frogs in rest stop bathrooms (not me, sadly), and entirely too much Nelly Furtado. If I did have one complaint, it’s that my musical tastes did not mesh at ALL with those of everyone else, but it’s a small price to pay for the freedom of personal transport. We arrived back in Townsville at ten, ready to study (not), but that’s what I’ll be doing the rest of this week.

I need to go; I think I might be getting sick. (After such a long period of health! Oh well, it had to happen sometime, but this is extremely inopportune. To bed, then.)

Unexpected...

Something I learned this week: there is no unexpected ego boost like being offered a job. Perhaps I should explain. I was in my transport engineering class, which (I will not lie, and hope with all my might that my professor never finds this blog) has been unspectacular. We had a quiz, which I bombed--really, I did not do well. Afterwards my professor took me aside and basically said that if I wanted to work in Queensland, I could; he would set it up. I was surprised and grateful, of course, and I suppose it's something to keep in mind, but what it really did was illustrate the difference between JCU and Swarthmore. At Swarthmore, I'm a middle of the pack engineer. Here, I stand out enough that my professor (under orders from his other employer in Cairns, I believe, who apparently instructed him to pick out high-achievers and recruit them) singled me out. That hasn't happened in quite some time, and it's enormously flattering. I kind of feel bad for complaining about his class now, and for not really giving it the effort that I would a Swarthmore class (um, Swarthmore engineering department, please disregard that last sentence, I really want credit for this!). Anyway, I thought it was blog-worthy, if only as a piece of somewhat interesting ego-fluff (and isn't that really what blogs are all about?).

In other news, we weren't able to dive the Yongala last weekend, but we will be traveling to Cairns over the coming weekend. A dive is scheduled, as well as a trip on the Skyrail and the Kuranda Scenic Railway. As of today, I only have three weeks left in Australia. Time's got wings, you know.

Also, what should happen to this blog after I get back? I'll write about New Zealand, for sure (probably a three or four part deal, we're there for two weeks), but then what? I don't really want to neglect it; I like writing about things that happen to me. Suggestions are welcome in the comments!

(Hey, remember in my first post when I said that Natalie would probably post more than me? WRONG. I guess I just love being informative and she doesn't!)