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aki in Cairns, Australia @ Sep 4, 2004 12:31 PM
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While in Cairns we did two tours. The first was with a company called "On the Wallaby", which is an Aussie expression for "On the Road". It was quite informative and the information presented well.
For some reason, I've become quite a watcher these days for any other interracial couple where the male is asian and the female is not. On our trip, there appeared to be another couple (we weren't quite sure about this) where the girl was german and the boy was chinese... it was a bit of a thrill since this appeared to be the first couple that I saw like this while on our trip. In some cases, I could of sworn that people frequently gave Lainie and I a puzzling look. Quite a change from Vancouver where it's become somewhat common and at the very least not a tourist spectacle.
Anyhoo, back to the tour. We saw the Cathedral Fig tree and several waterfalls (located on the Atherton Tablelands) on the first tour. The tour guide and driver was a cocky long haired hippy sort (walked around most of the time without shoes on) who he really knew his stuff. He had a female tour-guide with him that was learning the ropes and while that wasn't anything special... we started to think they were flirting with each other and by the end of the trip, romance had started to bloom as we saw them hugging... in that way yanno?
Lainie has read that 50% of travellers on the East coast have casual sex... why exclude bus drivers? Maybe it's one of the perks of the job! I mentioned the naughty story to the hostel people and they effortlessly one-upped me when they started to retell stories, all gut busting, of walking in to find people masturbating and girls bouncing from bed to bed... and to suggest that it's more than 50%!
The Cathedral fig tree we saw was quite impressive. Massive, complicated and beautiful. It's life history is quite interesting too. Apparently, it starts off with the fruit which a bird eats and while flying over the rain forest, takes a massive dump spreading the seeds of the fig tree onto the canopy of a tree. When the seed is triggered to germinate (some seeds need a freeze-thaw before they start growing) it will extend a single root to the ground. If the root takes hold, it will then extend its network and eventually encase the tree with its roots. The problem for the host tree is that the fig's root network will eventally strangle it to death as it can't grow outwards anymore... and after a long enough period of time, such as with the Cathedral fig tree, the host tree will have died and rotted away leaving only the skeletal framework of the fig tree which would keep growing. Creepy eh?
We then stopped by three waterfalls, Millaa Millaa, Zillie and Ellinjaa all from the aboriginal names. On the first and the largest we saw, Millaa Millaa, we were able to swim across the basin and find a cavity behind the falls we could rest behind. Quite a neat sight.
The second tour we did was probably the best day trip we went on during our entire trip. On the ship "Ocean Free" we ventured out to the Great Barrier Reef and also stopped by Green Island. While Green Island is a bit of a tourist trap and an expensive one at that, spectacular views of the reef are found from the beaches. God, the colour! It's so so so beautiful! I've never seen water so irridescent and blue!
And the reef... Wow. Aside from the massive sunburn on my back, it was a perfect day. The staff of the tour was amazing. Courteous and willing to put up with my obessive shutterbugging warning me at the appropriate times when my laptop or camera were about to eat salt water. (Must of annoyed them a fair bit, though they didn't show it)
So now we're off to Sydney again... and hopefully we'll get a chance to see some friends before we leave...
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