Carins and Back!

So this past weekend plus has been an absolute whirlwind. It started on Thursday evening with awards night. At this night ever class preformed a piece; we sang Go Tell it On The Mountain. And then at the end, the whole school sang Come On Ring Those Bells; if I never hear that song again I think I will be rather content (we had been practicing every lunch, as the whole school for about two weeks). Anyway all the practicing paid off and I think that they did a good job.

The whole school sing

The next day, Friday, was the last day of school and so the whole school went bowling. This was also loads of fun, it was a cool experience having the whole school being their all together. However in and amongst the fun I had to clean out the classroom, nothing was allowed to remain on anything. Now while I am not the tidiest person so I am constantly cleaning up after myself, but holy cow, I think I’ve met my cleaning quota for the year! I spent two days scraping 13 desks (that’s how sticky they were after we got the tape off) and also managed to sort through about a ton of junk that was piled on the teacher’s desk (Dad, it just about put your desk to shame and it’s only half the size). While this doesn’t sound like that much, I had to do all of this while entertaining 23 kids because my teacher was in the supply closet, tidying that up so that we could store pretty much the whole classroom.

Now that I am done with the cleaning rant… On Friday evening we had the staff breakup/Christmas party. This was a great evening and a nice chance to say thank you and goodbye to all of those who had been my colleagues for the past month and a bit. They gave me this great photo album of the kids and a ceramic gecko since I had so obviously enjoyed the wildlife (they went looking for a cockroach or a mosquito, but they couldn’t find them….bummer :D)

All of the staff at the party

The Shirt that all of the kids in my class signed.

In and amongst all of this, I had to pack up my room in Ayr. Oh, how stuff grows! and on top of that, a fair few of the students and teachers have given me gifts, so I am trying to figure out how to fit all of them in with the stuff that I already had.

However, after all of the stress of cleaning and goodbyes I was up early (7am) on Saturday to head off on one last in North and Far North Queensland. The ultimate destination was to be Cairns, but from there, I am pretty sure that we saw everything worth seeing in the area. The first day that we drove up, we stopped at Mamu Rainforest Walk.

This is still in the dry tropics, meaning that it is dryer and well, less jungle-ie. It was beautiful; on the way to the lookout tower (the end point of the walk) we walked on a canopy walkway. This sidewalk in the sky was a nice way to get a bit closer to the more interesting parts of these HUGE trees. On the way back we walked along the forest trail and were able to see some of the butterflies and some birds.

We then went waterfall hunting. I say hunting because of the whole dry season thing. Just like with Walaman Falls, these waterfalls were nowhere near their full capacity. Even still we found some falls that I can't remember the name of and Milla Milla Falls flowing at least a little bit.

Me at the falls I can't remember the name of

Milla Milla Falls

Apparently we traveled through some nice landscapes, but for some reason I could not keep my eyes open. I mean we walked quite a lot in the Mamu Walk but I got back into the car, and though we were only going down the road for lunch, I fell asleep. Well, eventually we ended up in Cairns.

The next day, Sunday, was a big day, no a HUGE day. We started out by heading up to Kuranda, a village atop a hill outside of Cairns; it was a nice tourist village that is mainly geared for tourists. The main place that we went to here was the butterfly sanctuary.

One of the main things that I wanted to see in Australia was wildlife, including butterflies. The problem is that in the wild, you only see these little guys from a distance. In the sanctuary however, there were thousands. The thing that was nice about this sanctuary was that they only had about 10 types of butterflies, but they were all local and native. One of the main attractions was the Ulysses butterfly. Unfortunately, because this butterfly knows that it tastes good, it is very skittish and when it rested it was brown on the outside, I couldn’t get a nice picture of how pretty it is.

Despite this, it was amazing being amongst all of these beautiful butterflies. After spending loads of time there, we headed out for the Daintree River/Rainforest. Along the way we stopped at the Barron Falls, the largest falls in the Southern Hemisphere, but because there is a dam at the top there wasn’t much water. Even though there wasn’t much water there was apparently more water than any of the others in our group who had seen it before.

Welcome to Kuranda

Walk to Barron Falls

At the Falls

After the walk through the real rain forest and marveling at the falls, we headed up the coast for the Daintree. There, we went on Bruce Belcher’s Croc Cruise. Much to everyone else’s dismay we only saw two very small crocodiles.

Pretty Flowers!

Apparently, this is nesting season and the two main male crocs are up the creeks looking after the females and the smaller 2 and a half meter croc was hiding or underwater (that’s almost 7 feet long!). Anyway, I don’t think I could have really handled the huge ones. Even thought it was a bit disappointing on the croc front, it was great on the scenery front; it was a huge river lined with huge mangrove trees. It was so nice just to cruise along with the light breeze and the water and the almost setting sun.

The biggest of the two crocks that we saw

Cruising up the river

The next day, Monday, was my big drip to the Reef. It did not get off to a good start, I woke up and it was raining (not spitting). After finally finding the right dock, I came to find out that the boat’s clutch was shot and therefore the trip was cancelled. Then I had to set about finding another company to take me. For those who know me best, you will know that I try to completely plan that which is controllable. This is because I cannot handle making snap decisions, especially those that involve substantial amounts of money or an impending deadline. The main problem was that the trip that I had picked was around the $75 mark and all of the other ones are at least $125. To shorten the story of my panic, I ended up on another boat that was heading straight out to the reef pontoon.

Green Island

The Boat at the Reef Stop

The Weather, pretty even if it wasn't the best for snorkeling.

It was great! Once we got there, I took a semi sub tour which allowed us to see some of the outer areas of our location which had bigger fish but were too far out to make sure that we all stayed safe.

Some fish

This was the only point of the whole experience where I felt like throwing up. Because the boat had two sides, the driver was trying to make sure everyone was able to see certain things; we were doing tight figure eights in the waves talk about wanting to barf! Anyway after that I had a nice lunch and then it was into the water for snorkeling! It was cloudy and fairly wavy so I know that the pictures that I took with the underwater camera are not going to turn out great but I tired. It was so great just to sit there in the waves and see so many things. There were two main areas, the little fish area and the bigger fish area and it was neat to be able to go back and forth between them and see so many different fish. I mainly saw parrot fish, but I saw so many varieties of it. I was starting to feel that it was about time to get out the water when past me swims this 6 foot white tip reef shark. I had seen it swimming kind of off to the side earlier, but this time he was a LOT closer and wasn’t just passing through. I know that they are really docile and that they are actually almost friendly, but they look like what a shark is supposed to look like and thus triggers all of my shark fears. Needless to say I made an efficient job of getting out of the water. After a rinse off and a change, it was back to the mainland. I thought that I had made it sunburn free, but I found out later when we were eating dinner that I was/am bright red right on my butt. Of course this is the same place that my undergarments rub so needless to say it is going to be red for a while.

The next day we made our way out of town back to Townsville (it’s about a 5 hour drive). Along the way we stopped in Tully at this huge gumboot. It represents the amount of rain that they had in one year (I think, though I seem to think it was in a 48 hour period for some reason, either way it's a lot of rain)

One sadish moment was that on the way home I saw my first live kangaroo (it was a little so it was possibly a wallaby)! Why it was sad was because two seconds after I spotted it, it joined the rather long list of dead kangaroos that I have seen. It was literally like look! a...bump bump…dead. (if you didn’t catch that, we ran it over…)

We then spent the night at a place that is right on the beach, it was pronominal to just stand on the balcony and be blown by the breeze. That night we went to a place called Outback Jack’s; it is like Outback Steakhouse but loads nicer. For starters we had Crocodile and Kangaroo kabobs, and while Crocodile is not bad, it’s the consistency of pork but it has a slight hint of fish about it. The kangaroo was great! It was really dark, rich meat, they told me it was game-ie, but seeing as I have never eaten any game I couldn’t tell you if they were right. After that it was back to the hotel to make my check on bag less that 23kgs (which I did!). There were only two downsides to the whole trip, the first being that I had to sit in the back the WHOLE time because apparently Ros (my master teacher) gets really car sick (yet she can read maps and turn around and talk to us while we are going on winding roads) this was sad because I like sitting in the front because you get a better view. The other downside was that at the last place we stayed at there were honey ants all over my room walls. These ants are tiny and very fast. This meant that they did an effective job of getting in to things like my computer and I didn’t know they were there until they run across the screen. The next day I was put on the plane to Brisbane and that is where I am now. It was a very fun whirlwind to say the least.