frolicking

I am sleepy, and am yet refusing to go to bed because I am punk innit.

A few weekends ago, back at the beginning of October, in fact the weekend before we moved house, our old friends Sam and Georgina came to stay. They are currently inhabiting Auckland, just the other side of the pond from us, and dropped in on their way back from a holiday in Fiji, all brown they were. Well, Georgina was brown, Sam was more pink.

On our first evening together, a wednesday, shortly after their arrival, Mark took us all to a philosophy of maths lecture. Yes, a philosophy of maths lecture. Opera house? No! Harbour Bridge? No! Philosophy of maths lecture. Philosophy. Of. Maths. We foolishly agreed to this and along we went. Actually, it was ok. It was part of a public lecture series and was easy to follow and quite interesting. The questions did drag on a bit though.
The trouble with allowing a long time for discussion in a public lecture is that you do get some rather bizarre questions from members of the public. Mark says that it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between a brilliant question badly put, and just a bizarre question asked by a crazy person. So in a public lecture when the speaker doesn't know everyone, it is always best to assume the former, rather than risk offending the person. In case they are a maths genius who just doesn't know how to form a sentence. Unfortunately this does sometimes mean that daft questions slip through the net.

After the lecture, we gandered down King Street into Newtown for a meal at Kammandhenu.



I love Kammandhenu. Last week we accidentally unintentionally ate there 3 times. But it is so good and so cheap. Yay Sri Lankan/Indian/Malaysian fusion.

All dosed up on dosa, hoppers, roti and lassi, we then pootled a few doors up for a cocktail at Madam Fling Flong before retiring home to slumber.

The following day I had to go to work, but everyone else went to the beach at Manly :( Unfortunately it was a crazily hot day and it made Georgina rather ill, so we headed home rather earlier than planned. This did mean however that due to a lack of food, we ended up being forced to check out the Italian restaurant in Meadowbank, down at the Shepherd's Bay centre. But wow! We got some pizzas and they were amazing! Some of the best pizza I've had in Sydney. The service was also really friendly. It was generally an all round surprisingly good meal! This knowledge turned out to be useful as during the week we moved, Mark and I got takeout pizza from there everyday for about 3 nights in a row!

On Friday I worked again, but afternoon only and we had plans for the evening. We joined the lengthy queue for Mamak after some beers in the city, and had yet another brilliant Mamak meal. Mamak always seems to impress our visitors greatly as well! We ended up trying pretty much one of everything, including old favourite cone-shaped roti tisu, and we all enjoyed the rojak salad so much we got overexcited and ordered another one!



Me and Georgina full of the delights of Mamak.

Afterwards, we headed down to the Clare Hotel on Broadway for some beverages and just made the last train home!

Saturday was unfortunately a bit of a write-off due to the weather. It began to get rather wet on Friday night, and we woke up on Saturday to torrential rain. Unlike English rain, when it rains in Sydney it rains with attitude. You literally cannot go outside because you will get soaked in 3 seconds, even with an umbrella. And it won't 'brighten up in a minute' either. Rain rain and rain and rain a bit more.



We caught the train to King's Cross and ran to Bill's as fast as our leggy pegs could carry us. And we still arrived SOAKED.



Normal.



Frightening.

Fortunately, a lovely Bill's brunch soon cheered us up and dried us off.
Unfortunately, it was then time to go outside again. We headed back to the city, but after a couple of hours of hiding in shops were feeling pretty miserable. So we decided to give up, bought Peep Show series 1 from JB HiFi, went home and cooked a big chilli, drank wine and watched DVDs all night! Brilliant.

The next day Sam and Georgina flew back to Auckland, which was sad :( It was so good to have them over, and we are already planning to join them for a bit when they begin their tour of New Zealand in the New Year, in their new camper van!


Now I must head off to get my Poop hat on. We had to get up rather early to watch a Fritz Lang film named Der Müde Tod. It was the wrong time of day for Fritz Lang really, but was rather good! More soon. Nightypoos.

PS all photos other than the two at Bill's are by Sam or Georgina!

New house !!!

Here is our new building in Erskineville. It is great!!!



It's a converted factory, and they left the chimney on top. I think it's quite a new conversion, only done a few years ago. It's a small block, only I think 40 apartments in the building, and only 12 apartments per each staircase so each communal area is only shared by a small number of people.

Our unit is off the main road, which is nice.



Our balcony is the middle floor, which is good because it means it's covered over by the one above, thus less exposed to rain and hot hot sun.

Queensland: Day 6 - 17th August 2009

Day 6: The Daintree and Cape Tribulation

FINALLY here is the lowdown on our final day up in the tropics. And it was a good'un. We wanted to head up into the Daintree National Park, as far as Cape Tribulation, so named by Captain Cook in 1770 after his ship ran aground on the reef just off the coast. It now is also referred to as 'Kulki', the original aboriginal name for the site. People are now shifting back towards using the aboriginal names for certain parts of Australia (such as 'Uluru' instead of Ayer's Rock) as they have realised that renaming sacred sites in reference to Australia's European colonialists was actually quite offensive.

We made a moderately (by Fellows standards) early start and headed north out of Port Douglas to the Daintree River, which marks the entrance to the National Park. There is no bridge across the river: instead, they have preserved the original way of entering the rainforest, which involves the Daintree River Ferry. This is basically a flat topped boat which you drive your car onto, and then drive off when the boat reaches the other side! Quite an experience! There is also a little section for pedestrians to stand in.



It holds quite a number of cars at once, so we didn't have to wait too long to board. Once over the other side, we were off into the rainforest!

The road is narrow and windy within the National Park, and since we were stuck near the back of all the cars that had been on our ferry-load, it was a bit slow going as people drove carefully. So, we decided to stop off for a bit and do the Jindalba boardwalk.
There are a handful of these boardwalks in the Daintree. They basically build a raised wooden path along a short route, which allows you to enter the forest and have a look. Of course, it would be near impossible otherwise to go for a walk as the forest is too thick and the ground to uneven, in some areas too swampy, and of course the undergrowth may harbour all manor of deadly wildlifes.



Bec on the boardwalk.

It is surprisingly cool under the canopy, and it's a quiet, peaceful place. Although we were on constant guard for any wandering Cassowaries that might appear! The Cassowary is a huge, flightless bird - as big as a man - that inhabits this area. It is critically endangered, only an estimated 1500-3000 currently exist in north Queensland, but they all live in a very small area in the wet tropics and are actually sighted on a reasonably regular basis. This does make them sound rather fascinating, but the trouble is, they are incredibly aggressive and have razor sharp spurs on their legs. They run at you to attack, and are capable of disemboweling you, probably before you've even realised what you are looking at. The Guiness World Records book lists the Cassowary as the world's most dangerous bird. So we didn't really want to meet one of them. There are numerous advice signs around the boardwalk areas advising you that if you see one, to try to put something in between you and it, like a tree.

After the boardwalk, we continued on up the road, which was now clearer of traffic. After stopping at a cafe for lunch, we arrived at Cape Tribulation in the mid-afternoon.



[Perephoto]

Cape Tribulation has such an amazing feel, it is like nowhere else I have ever been. The light is strong and very harsh, which meant my photos didn't come out that well. It is a beautiful, golden sandy beach but is eerily quiet and relatively person-bare. There were a few people walking up and down, but none of the usual beach activity, like swimming and sunbathing. The main reason for the lack of swimming is clear from the prominent warning signs all along the beach - you are deep into crocodile territory. Crocodile attacks can kill you in an instant, and the croc population is thriving in the rivers and creeks that open into the sea around Cape Tribulation due to the area's relatively untouched state. My Rough Guide says that you may even see them sunbathing on the beach at Cape Trib.!







Cape Tribulation feels like the End of the World might feel. A calm, peaceful place with an undercurrent of vague unease. It is also literally the End of the World for many visitors to the north Queensland tropics. The sealed road to the north ends just after the turn off to the small car park, and continues as a mere dirt track up to Cooktown and the nothingness of the northernmost tip. Impassable to all but experienced 4WD drivers most of the time, and for parts of the wet summer season completely impassable to all due to flooding, many travellers simply make Cape Tribulation the end of the road.



Cape Tribulation is also one of the only places in the world where two World Heritage Sites meet - the Wet Tropics and the Great Barrier Reef. From the lookout point up on the Cape, you get a good view out over the Coral Sea.



We had a stroll up and down the sand and up to the lookout point. Mangroves line the edges of the sand, feeding from the salt water. Beyond is dense rainforest.

After a good bit of exploring and crocodile aversion, we drove a short distance back down the road to the Dubuji boardwalk, a longer boardwalk that takes in mangrove swamps.





These leaves were HUGE!



Swampy. There were a lot of shapes moving in the water. I don't imagine that stagnant brown water is a particularly healthy environment in which to live, but apparently in the wet season there is a lot more water so the creatures must just cling on to life until it gets good again.



Mangroves!

On the way back to Port Douglas, we stopped off at another couple of beaches on the Daintree coast - Myall beach just the southern side of the Cape, and Cow Bay further south.



Stinger warning. Fortunately, dry season is stinger safe as they are all vacationing in other waters. There seems to have been a lot of worry about dangerous animals in this blog post so I'll round it out with some info about marine stingers - or to give them their correct title, Box Jellyfish.
Box Jellies are, quite simply and quite officially, the deadliest living thing on earth. They contain enough venom to instantly kill 60 adult humans, and there have been over 5500 recorded deaths since 1954. Even if you survive the sting, you may suffer a heart attack and drown before you can get back to shore. Their tentacles can be up to 3 meters long and in the water they are so transparent that they are practically invisible. The pain of the sting is agonizing, and tales are told of victims continuing to scream even after being knocked out with morphine. Best avoided.

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So that is almost all for Queensland. The following day was the day of our return to cold cold Sydney. But before the flight we just had time to go check out the marina side of Port Douglas, and the resort of Palm Cove north of Cairns. Pictures to follow in another entry!

As usual, additional bonus photos!! can be found at Flickr.

Please hold !

Not lost in the Daintree rainforest, honestly....just moving house! Normal (i.e. moderately less infrequent) blog service will be resumed shortly!


Daintree Wet Tropics National Park, Tropical North Queensland

copyright Perephoto