Icky-a

One of the joys of moving into any new place when you have no furniture is, of course, the trip to IKEA. Even when you have to carry piles of unnecessary (but cool and cheap) crap back on a crowed, rush hour tram it all just seems so much fun. Ah, how happy it is to be part of the IKEA generation.

Wish I’d bought that cool blue colander though…

How long is a piece of string?

Back down in Melbourne now and boy is it chilly! Bit of a shock to the system after two or so months of hot sunny weather. Luckily the smiles in everyone’s faces are making up for that somewhat, as is being re-united with the large stockpile of warm clothes I left at my godparents house before I left. Oh, and being back together with my lovely little Dell laptop again after a long break. The poor little thing was feeling lonely, so I’ve been giving it plenty of TLC and also trying to overload her hard drive with ten CDs of saved digital photos…

Random aside: While I was travelling someone described a theory on history they’d read about. This theory was based on the analysis of a historian who checked the number of innovations and historical events recorded for humankind by year. What they found was that although we take history to be about 2000 years from the ‘birth of Christ’ in fact there is a large portion of that timeline where very little seems to happen – in fact almost 500 years. Now this could be explained by a relapse into barbarism or alternatively it was proposed that recorded history as we know it is wrong.

Apparently the Roman Catholic church is mostly responsible for our current understanding of history, with a pope a few hundred years ago pushing some scribes to ‘go away and get a proper written history together’. The historians postulated that, for some reason, these guys got something wrong with how they translated some of the earlier dates and somehow added in another few centuries. An easy mistake to make, especially when you’re under deadline pressure. This would mean we’re actually around the year 1500 and not 2000 as we think – good news as it means armageddon’s another 500 years off or so. Sweet.

I’ve tried to find some references for this but haven’t managed – so please drop me a line if you find some as this is interesting stuff.

Sidders

Another few days in Sydney is drawing to a close. Somehow six months have managed to pass since I was last here, much to Pablo’s surprise when I told him. Nothing much seems to have changed apart from the weather (it’s a bit chillier) and the building next to the Maze Hostel is a lot higher (which is good as the sounds of building work are a lot further away).

Managed to squeeze a lot in though. Monday night went to see my first ever opera, Otello, at the Sydney Opera House (with big thanks to Catherine and Alison for sneaking me in as a student for only $40). The Opera House is a lot less visually impressive inside, but the sound quality is amazing. I have to admit to being a little under-awed by the world’s “perfect opera” – I loved the singing voices and the ensemble pieces between Iago, Otello and Cassio but somehow found the music to be reminiscent of bad b-movie scores! Suspect this is because what was innovative for Verdi in expressing emotion back in the 19th century is now common place and hence less impactful. Good experience though.

Tuesday was a trip with Oz Experience up to the Blue Mountains, so called because of the pall of blue mist that comes from the tea tree oil bushes that pervade the area. The scenery up there is stunning and I ended up wishing we had more time away from our organised tour to do some hiking. I’ve noticed that I’m now a lot more blase about snakes and spiders than I was when I first arrived in Sydney, happily tramping around the paths with nary a care. Highlight of the trip though was the orphaned animals zoo where got to stroke koalas, wombats, cookaburras and a strange looking owl-like bird. Nothing like a good bit of tourist fodder sometimes.

Yesterday was mostly spent walking across the coathanger (aka Sydney Harbour Bridge) taking pictures. Again quite grateful for digital film to keep my development costs down. I’ve just been banned from taking any more pictures of the Opera House by the way. Bah. Also got to catch up with Jeremy and Aoife last night and see Mars through a big telescope as it moves further away from Earth again. Bit of a disappointment really as I was expecting a huge red globe type image as we keep seeing in the papers, but of course that’s what you see from Hubble. So of course we got to look at a large white dot, about 5mm across where you could just see a brighter bit of the ice cap and some darker bits on the surface. Cool telescope though with built in tracking adjustment motors that follow the planet across the sky!

Next stop: Melbourne, where I stop for a bit – put my rugsac in the cupboard and enjoy the Melbo cafe lifestyle. Oh, and maybe get a job I guess.

Byronic young man

Another year, another birthday – this time in the hippy paradise that is Byron Bay. Yes, I’m back in Byron after a gap of almost six months and nothing much has changed other than it is a lot less busy. In fact it’s pretty damn near perfect at the moment. The sun is shining and there’s a nice, dry heat going on. Dolphins have been playing near the shore as well as a humpback whale the other night. Again I’m staying at the Arts Factory, but this time with less slumming as I’m staying in one of the tents on the island enclosure – nice comfy bed and good duvet which is quite useful on the chilly nights.

Aside from my usual pie eating antics (yes Louise – I have been eating too many as usual, although Patrick has been putting in some late breaking French competition for the title to make up for his current losing streak in draughts, hee hee) I went out to Julian Rocks yesterday for two stunning dives. Go check out the picture of the grey nurse shark that scared the sh*t out of me as we came round the corner onto it and our guide threw himself back out the way. He admitted later he wasn’t initially sure what type of shark it was and being that it was over ten foot long he got out of the way quickly. Very cool to just float there and watch this majestic creature swim by. Grey nurse sharks are hugely protected at the moment and are the species used most in films to get that realistic “oh my god a shark!” look. Believe me, it works.

Tonight I head back down to Sydney and then onto chilly Melbourne. Yep, although the sunshine lifestyle is very tempting indeed the big city is calling me home…

Bulls – douglas rushkoff. Random purchase that has turned out to be really entertaining. The story revolves around a hacker who has found himself in the midst of New York Internet powerplays in brokerages. A lot of the tale revolves around the relationship between ideas, computers, power and money and is at times very scary in the ideas it presents. Good read, especially if you work in or around Internet business.

Post by Matt Hobbs

Brissie

Ah, city life again. The bright lights of Brisbane beckon me on for (yet another) night out on the town – this time to a celebrity look a like party. Perhaps being constantly told I look like Mr Bean could come in useful for once. Either that or I’ll go as George Clooney since he’s the dead spit of me as well.

Since my last missive the delights of Hervey Bay and Fraser Island have been sampled. For Harvey Bay that meant a lot of drinking, and for Fraser Island a lot of sand. In fact HUGE amounts of sand. Possibly more sand than you could use to make a very large sandcastle indeed. Although surprisingly never got around to making a sand castle. Did get around to being followed by dingoes (which look like scraggy mongrel whippets and run just as fast next to the 4×4), see the most amazingly clear fresh water Lake MacKenzie (stunning) and watch schools of manta rays from on top of Indian Head. Oh, and I got drunk.

Perhaps what impressed me most was that even though every backpacker here goes to Fraser Island it’s actually still just stunning. I kind of imagined it would be stupidly busy full of drunk Brits, but even with me there drunk there weren’t that many. The natural beauty is just overwhelming so everything else just gets put aside. The huge expanses of fresh water ponds – many crystal clear – is something that has to be experienced to be believed. That said the trip was really made by a luverly bunch of folk (with a couple of notably entertaining exceptions) sharing the 4×4 and a big shout out to them.

Next stop after Brisbane is most likely Byron Bay at the moment – where I suspect I will be for my birthday having not quite made it back down to Melbourne in time for that. Plus apparently it’s bloomin’ freezing down there. Brrr.

Airlie to bed

Next stop: Airlie Beach. Airlie Beach is another constructed town that relies purely on tourism and its reputation as the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands. The Whitsundays are a collection of islands a short way off the Queensland coast, believed to be the tips of mountains that have since flooded. The town itself is nothing much, although it does have a beautifully constructed lagoon even bigger than the one at Cairns and the weather has been significantly better than it was at Cairns – oh, and there are drunken backpacker style nights out to be had.

The trip I chose to go on was the Reefdive ‘Romance’ boat, a mix of sailing and diving which had gone on standby (definately something to watch out for if travelling at the moment as a lot of boats/trips aren’t getting that busy so a lot are dropping rates last minute). The boat itself is getting a little bit past its prime but seemed to survive just fine to get us out to Whitsunday island to see the beach voted “Best beach in the world” by readers digest readers… and it is quite nice indeed. The whole beach is stunningly white silica sand, constantly replenished from an undersea crevice that throws up volcanic silica for some reason. Very beautiful indeed, although the fairly high number of tourists prevents it from being my favourite beach ever (Culebra just off Puerto Rico has that privilege at the moment).

From there we sailed round to moor just off Harvey Island, a private resort island that is far from cheap. On the way we saw a couple of humpback whales – in fact they came right by the boat but I missed most of this by running downstairs to get my camera – d’oh! In fact we saw truckloads of whales on this trip at varying distances, and again I got to hear whale song underwater – which I’d first done at the Yongala – an amazing sound to listen to although you do have to stop breathing a bit to really hear it which is about the most dangerous thing you can do while diving. Well worth it though. The dives at Blue Pearl bay were nothing special, other than stressing me out because my camera fogged up completely when I entered the water – oh, though did get to roll backwards off a rubber dinghy to get in the water for the first time which was great fun. Just after we got out the water from our night dive we saw four manta rays circling round under the bow of the boat before swimming off – another amazing sight.

From there, at the unthinkable hour of 4am, we heading out to the reef for three more dives starting at 8am. The reef dives were much better than the bay. Again we say manta rays on the surface, but managed to miss them underwater by about 10m – bugger. Did see lots of sharks, turtles (loggerhead this time) and huge cod as well as my first barramundi cod which are strange fish indeed. It was around this point that I passed 24 hours, a full day, under water… not bad going having only learnt to dive a month or so before.

We headed back to moor at Blue Pearl Bay again that night and awoke the next morning to perfectly flat seas and more beautiful weather. A few dives later and we headed back to Airlie Beach for more drunken backpacker bars…

Maggie Island

The first of a few belated posts due to a lack of good internet connection/lying in the sun too much…

Magnetic Island is a small tropical paradise just off the Queensland coast from Townsville. Yep, I’ve finally left Cairns only a month later than planned (for which I hold my current scuba diving addiction to be mostly responsible). A short Greyhound bus journey later (well, six hours and a viewing of ‘What Women Want’ which was very amusing) followed by a cab and Helen, Patrick and myself were on the ferry heading across to the island. We stayed at the Travellers hostel in Picnic Bay which is only of note due to having a large crocodile in the eating area – fenced off most likely to prevent drunken backpackers from harassing it more than to stop it escaping since it was so fat. Can’t say I can recommend Travellers as a hostel, but we were being too lazy to move to Coconuts which is a more hippy style place located on a beach and probably where I would recommend.

My first day on the island was actually off the island – as I got up at 6 to head out to the Yongala wreck courtesy of Adrenalin Dive. The SS Yongala, which sank in 1911, is located a fair way out from the shore and so can only be dived with good conditions. Fortune smiled on my diving trip (for a change!) and the seas were almost flat with a clear sunny day. After a few hours at sea we moored to the bow of the wreck which starts 15m down, continuing to 28m – we all kitted up (my first dive in full length suit due to the cold) and jumped in following the line along the surface before we started to descend…

As soon as we got under the water’s surface the wreck could be seen the water was so clear that day. A dark, long shadow surround by the shimmering clouds of fish of varying sizes. As we descended hand over hand down the rope following our guide the shape could be made out more clearly – encrusted with huge amounts of mostly soft, purple coral. Leaving the rope we dropped down below the bow of the boat under which large fish sheltered. In fact the whole boat is surrounded by so many fish you just stop seeing them after a while. We swam along the wreck looking at various parts such as the fin, mast and storerooms amongst other things. At the bow of the boat a huge grouper sits watching – this is the more ‘friendly’ grouper as opposed to ‘grumpy’ the grouper who is called that because he once attacked a diver who’d taken too many photos of him with a flash in his face (he stuck the whole diver’s head in his mouth and sucked off the diver’s mask – leaving a huge ‘hicky’ on his neck – from then on he was called grumpy). At this point my air started to run out so I headed back down the other side of the wreck to do my two safety stops hanging on the descent line. Below us what looked like hundreds of sharks just lying on the bottom of the sea turned out to be kingfish which are very similar indeed. All this time I’d been taking truckloads of photos as I’ve finally invested in a waterproof case for my digital camera.

Surfacing I could hardly stop from grinning inanely, the dive was so good. Back at the boat everyone was chatting away and none of us could wait for the next dive. When it finally came we all jumped in again only to find that the conditions had completely changed underwater – with no surface sign for this. Whereas before there had been no current and 20-30m of visibility, now there was a strong current away from our descent line and visibility had dropped to 10m with lots of sediment. Still saw lots – the highlights this time were a large hawksbill turtle munching away on the boat’s surface and a bull ray with a three metre wingspan, an amazing sight as it flew over us – its huge eyes flicking around. Coming back to the surface the current was so strong all of us had to hang onto the line with both hands to avoid being swept away. All good fun though and everyone was so psyched on the way back to the island.

The rest of the maggie island trip was going to be hard pressed to beat that first day but it made a valient attempt. We hired a moke to drive around in and hiked up to the forts, seeing wild koalas asleep in the trees on the way with amazing views from the top of the old WWII emplacements. The next day we hired bikes and cycled up to the north west point on the island for more beach walking. The whole island is pretty quiet and extremely beautiful – with protected park on most of it. When our time came to get on the ferry and head on down to Airlie Beach I was in two minds – the temptation to stay was huge but figured ought to keep moving south otherwise I’ll never get out of Queensland!

Captain cook – Interesting biography of this master explorer and map maker, coming out in favour of him as an enlightened and scientific man in an age of slavery and empire building. Interesting read with the strange slant of also being an account of a guy who set out to dis-credit Cook as the discoverer of Australia (it’s now believed the Portuguese got there about 100 years earlier).

Post by Matt Hobbs