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.

Townsville and Reef HQ

So this weekend, I went up to Townsville. This is the main city in the area and is about an hour north of Ayr. The first thing that we did, once we got into the area, was we went to Reef HQ (make sure you say it 'hay-ch'). The best way to describe this is a smaller version of the Monterey Bay Aquarium but for Australia, and especially North Queensland (including the Great Barrier Reef).

I think I could have stayed in this place and watched some of these fish for hours. It was so cool to sit there and have these fish swim around in front of you, but there was no one else there scaring them off because they wanted a picture and you weren't getting that odd chapped lip feeling from the extra salty water and you were guaranteed not to burn!
Tropical fish have always cracked me up. I mean there was this one fish, of course any attempt to take a picture turned out like a black blobby blur, but it was all black but it had orange fangs. I mean it was just so neat to have it all right in front of you.

One area that sort of freaked me out was the 'predator tank' this tank was not that large, but in it were some of the biggest fish that I have ever seen. Sitting on the bottom alone with this really large swordfish (not a marlin), a nurse shark and a few leopard shark. Swimming around the top were platter sized turtle, sharks with black tipped fins and a bunch of other fish that I don't know the name of. Anyways, I have decided that if half of those things come anywhere near me if I go snorkeling, then I am DONE! No way!

Anyways, after we spent a fair bit of time there, we went out side of town, up a mountain and had coffee at the oldest slat house in (North)Queensland- the ()s have to be used because the answer depends on who you talk to. One of the things that they are famous for is that they sell this coffee that is $50 a cup. It is supposed to be this amazing coffee because the beans are taken out of the poop of some sunk looking cat and then roasted and grounded and brewed. Apparently it is really good coffee, but you best be a coffee snob who can really appreciate the differences- seeing as I am not one, I didn't bother, plus the thought of drinking something that is made from something like that is more than disgusting.

After a relaxing cup of coffee (which yes it was all hot coffee even through it was close to 95degrees in the sun) we headed back down into the city proper. Once in the city, we did a bit of shopping. I found a normal Target, and yes, it looks exactly like ours, with the only difference being the size of the isles; we had to turn side ways if you wanted to pass some one (the whole time I was think about how my dad would be having a cow; no easy escape if there was an earthquake :) )

After the tour of the new huge mall, which most malls in the US would put to shame, we headed out for our dunch, seeing as it was close to 3 in the afternoon. It was another great picnic lunch on the water. We could have sat there for ages, the wind was constant but not cold so it was the perfect temperature and there was not a single insect! It was close to paradise, just sitting there looking out over the water.

However after a long sit, it was time to head back and even though it looked as though it was going to rain, it didn't. Which meant that I got to sweat all night, just like I am doing right now! The humidity is here and it is not going away. Even though you take a cold shower or hop in the pool, you never fully dry; the water dries just enough that you have your own personal bubble of hot, thick air. Oh how I long for the cold!!!
This week is the last week of school, its full of concerts, awards nights, and parties. Then on Saturday it's off to Cairns for a look at the Tropical Rain forest and maybe even the reef! Even though I like getting to know one place really well, I love this part of traveling, the part where you get to discover new exciting places.

Another weekend trip!

So I know that I just posted, but I thought that it be foolish to wait, just for the sake of putting time between them.

The floating (it's not on pontoons) Silverlink bridge that is currently high above the Burdikin River

So this past weekend, my principal and his wife took me south to Airle Beach in the Whitsunday Area and everywhere on any significance in between.

Whitsunday area

When we got there, we had discovered that we were crashing Schoolies. Schoolies is when the entire equivalent of graduating Seniors, party on the beach for a week, getting really drunk and sunburn. Anyways, thankfully it was just the first day so there weren’t that many people yet, so we enjoyed our nice picnic on the beach. Mom, this picnic would have made you proud; full cold-cut sandwiches, fresh cut fruit, various salads. The one added thing that was brought to the picnic that was not appreciated was Vegemite- SICK!!! and this is now from firsthand experience.

My 1st Aussie Seagull and I live 15km from the ocean.

Where we had our lunch

Bowman

After walking around and driving to the coast, and then up along it, we headed to Bowman. This was apparently where the opening scene of the movie Australia was filmed. We drove past the lot where most of it was all filmed, but nothing was left. Then we drove up to the top of Flagstaff Hill, a hill sits over the mouth of the channel into the Bowman ‘Harbor’, it was a nice picturesque view to end of the traveling around.

I really like the design of the cafe. It was light and open so you could really enjoy the view

On the way home, we drove up to the top of Mt Inkerman. This is a random hillish mountain that sits right on the edge of the Burdikin aquifer so there is a fabulous view for miles. The roads that led up to the top put our driveway to shame! After a good look around, we went across the road to one of the student’s cane farm. The family was great and now I know so much about planting and watering can in this region that if teaching falls through, I now have a backup job if teaching falls through :)

Panorama from the top

On top of the mountain (Km to...)

Anyways, I'm off again this next Sunday, we will see what I get up to!

Living Up to My Visa - FINALLY!!

So two weekends ago I was invited to go to Ingham. It was Friday afternoon and we were outside waiting for all of the kids to be picked up when I was asked if I wanted to join a family as they went about a two hour drives north of Ayr. I raced home, threw what I thought I’d need for the weekend in my bag and then hoped in the car and left for the weekend; literally I think there was maybe 45 minutes between the decision and us leaving. As we left, they laughed at me because this was the first time since I arrived in the country that I had left the tiny town of Ayr.

The next morning, we went on a drive (kind of a long way) to Mission Beach. While it a really long drive, it was so beautiful. It went from cane fields, to mountain covered with the deciduous almost tropical rain forests and then gorgeous coastline. On the way we entered cassowary country, there are these HUGE signs about being careful and to make sure that you don’t hit them. Right as we were about to enter the main town area they pointed over to the side and there was one of these huge emu type birds. They asked if I wanted to take a picture, I said that I was alright, so we kept on going, little did I know that I am now like the only person in Australia who has seen one of theses in the wild…WOOPS!

Anyways, we then made it to Mission Beach where I had my first shrimp…and it was sick; they didn’t de-vain them so they were crunch and sandy.

We went down to the beach; it was absolutely beautiful and completely vacant.

The boys of the family that I went with. The one in red is in my class

It’s really too bad that they have jellyfish, stingrays, sharks and crocodiles that they constantly have to worry about. I mean there was a family on the beach that was playing in this little ankle lake on the beach rather than in the beautiful surf right there!

Beach!

The next day we went out to Wallaman Falls, the longest free-falling waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere.

The only problem thus far with the vegetation aspect of the traveling around is that we are at the end of the dry season, so everything is rather dusty and the waterfalls are not huge (but at least it was going). It was while we eating lunch I was introduced to March flies. These are stupid, huge (like the size of a half dollar) flies that bite and when they bite, it feels like someone is sliding a needle sideways into your skin. They are slow and easily whackable but it was so weird whacking something that huge. Anyways, I was good, moving my legs constantly and stuff like that but as we were getting in the car... bam, I got bit! and it hurt and it left a mark (which it’s not supposed to happen but leave it to me).

Well, before the bite, we went walking down to a river in look of some place to swim. We found this place that was good,

but because there was not tons of movement in the whole river, it was a bit slimy on the bottom. We went on a really nice ‘bush walk’ through the jungle and we even saw a Rock Wallaby (since I didn’t get a picture it looks like a super small kangaroo) it was super cool. Anyways after that, we went back and wrapped up the weekend. It was super exciting and I really enjoyed getting out for the weekend!

I really like wildlife, but from a distance.

There are two things that I have learned about myself and being in nature. The first is that if there is a mosquito or "mozzy" as they say, within about a mile of me, it will find me and it will bite me. While I have been thankful only to have one or two bites at a time, when I do get them, they are HUGE, we're talking the size of a nickle. And they get all weird blotchy so it looks like I'm coming down with some sort of 'condition'. No joke, one night about a week ago, the door had been left open all night, so the next night, I stayed up for about an hour and killed around 25-30 mosquitoes that were in my closed room alone! Seriously, I am either going to have malaria or no blood left by the time I leave.

The other thing I have really learned is that while I love living in nature, you know with trees and rivers and what not, but I now know that I am not really a fan of the rest. I am over the I really am bugs, geckos, any bird that chirps/squawk in a flock incessantly, or crickets that sound like a vibrating phone. I don't like when 6 inch geckos running around my room. I don't like either huge ants crawling all over you, or tiny tiny ants crawling all over anything you set down. Half of these insects I have never seen before and now they are crawling all over me.

The other thing that I loved and now Im not such a huge fan of are the birds. Oh gosh, the loracites sure looked pretty with their blue heads orange tale feathers and green bodies, but now that they wake me up at 4 am every morning, I am over them. Also, because it is spring, all of the birds are nesting which means that we have to keep the kids away because a few of the species are known to dive bomb those who get too close; its crazy. The weirdest thing though is we are 15km (so I've been told, thus I have no idea how many miles that is) from the ocean and I have yet to see one sea gull, not that I am complaining, but it is just odd.

Ok this post is random and somewhat ranting, but now it is done. Back to the crazy animal kingdom that I am living in.