After three long drunken weeks, a diving licence and a few forgotten nights we (Robert, Ingrid and I) finally left Cairns. Rob stayed behind and got work on a banana farm in Mareeba so Ingrid decided she wanted to continue on with Robert and I. Initially Robert wanted to find a fourth person to join us, which he did but at the last minute he decided she wasn't the right fit for the group and so he told her she no longer had a ride on the day we were supposed to leave.. harsh reality of the backpacking world. He told her via text and she sent back a text a long the lines of "BUT I'VE ALREADY PACKED ALL MY STUFF AND EVERYTHING!"...womp womp womp... Honesty is not always the best policy when trying to secure a ride.
Anyway, we quickly forgot about the girl that was and began our journey down the east coast. Our first stop was Mission beach, we arrived at the beach rest area quite late and decided not to pay (as per usual) and just leave early in the morning. It was noticeably colder than Cairns eventhough it was only a few hours away, while there we met a group of French people. The one guy had been travelling for over 2 years (1 y ear Australia, 1 year Japan, and now back to Australia) and his brother and his girlfriend were starting their year long visas in OZ. Interesting thing about them was the guy that had been travelling for over 2 years didn't want to speak French at all, so he made his brother and his girlfriend speak in English all the time. Pretty uncommon among travellers who don't speak English as a first langauge to be speaking english with eachother with no English speakers around, but kind of cool, and a good way to practice. We chatted with them that evening, and they told us about some cool spots in the Tablelands (a region in land Queensland).
The next day we set off quite early to avoid getting caught by the campground owners. We did a couple of scenic walks in the area and ended up seeing some cool wildlife, most notable 2 pretty big goannas (no pics unfortunately, they are too fast and scared), and a bunch of HUGE spiders. The spiders were cool at first because the first ones we saw were off the path a bit, they were about as big as my hand, but then as we got deeper into the walk there were more and they were sometimes in the middle of the path. You had to keep a sharp eye or else you might end up walking into a spider as big as your face and that would be uncomfortable. Also, there were spider webs strewn across the path everywhere, so you had to walk with a stick in front of your face anyway to get the webs out of the way.
The walks themselves were very nice though, lush forest and a nice view at the end of both, well worth it. We continued on the the Tablelands after this, which was a very nice area, filled with waterfalls, wildlife and rainforest. We saw the Curtain Fig Tree, a fig tree that had another fig tree growing on top of it; quite impressive. We also saw tree Kangaroos (I think they got lazy with naming this animal, because it looks nothing like a Kangaroo, the only similarity is that it hops...but lots of things here hop), a Platypus (this was AWESOME, they are too fast to get any pictures, and when they are going slow its not actually a Platypus it was a swimming rat that looks like a Platypus). We had to go to a special place to see the Platypus, and we walked up and down the area for a long time (Ingrid was not pleased with this), but it was worth it in the end to see such a strange looking and rare animal. And as I said we saw LOTS of waterfalls, I won't go into too much detail about the waterfalls because there were so many, but the highlight was seeing the widest waterfall in Australia and Murray Falls, which was where we camped that night, but the falls were a bit of a surprise because we arrived at night. We could hear the falls when we arrived but we had no idea how awesome they were until we visited them in the morning, very powerful falls with a nice boulder-y backdrop (see pictures for wowness), there were a ridiculous amount of march flies though, when I got up in the morning my tent was covered in them and while packing the car I'm sure we let in at least 200.
After seeing the spectacular waterfall and almost being eaten alive by march flies we set off again and ended up in Townsville for the evening. We decided to stay two nights (Robert just slept in his car, Ingrid and I stayed in a hostel) just to chill out a bit and see a bit of the city. Didn't really do anything exciting just walked around, I got offered a job in a kebab shop.
Side story - Townsville: A Lively Nightlife
Robert got pretty drunk on the first night and almost got in a fight but ended up selling his shoes for $50 (he paid $20). This is a pretty funny story that started off with us getting free drinks from a couple of bosses (courtesy of Ingrid's flirting skills), they all owned other bars and were friends with the owner of the bar we were in so we scooped as many free drinks as we could. As the night progressed I slowed my drinking and Robert continued, he ended up making out with a girl in a cow dress (that was his pick up line too.. "You're wearing an appropriate dress for this bar" it was called the Mad Cow) and an older Asian lady whos boyfriend was somewhere else in the bar at the time. I decided to have an early night so I left Robert in that bar and went back to the hostel, before arriving I decided to grab something to eat. I stopped near the bar and was enticed by a $5 chips + gravy sign, my first thought obviously was, gotta have DAT poutine. Normally when somewhere offers chips and gravy if you ask for cheese on it they do it for free, because they think its so strange they just do it. I then go on to explain that I am Canadian and that it's something that started in Montreal and it's called a poutine and they should probably put it on the menu.
Anyway, I took my big box of delicious greasy goodness over to the club across the street and decided to watch the drunk people pile out of the club while I ate. This turned out to be an awesome idea, I saw all kinds of things, and girls kept coming up to me asking for some of my friends, I made a few of them do dances or tell me jokes before giving them anything. I saw all kinds of things while sitting outside, a few guys came out bloody, some were thrown out by 2-3 bouncers, eventually I saw Robert stumble out of this club so I called him over to sit down. We sat there for a while talking to all the people, we saw one argument between a homeless Aboriginal guy and a late 20s-early 30s Maori guy, at first the Maori guy was joking around a bit with the Aboriginal guy, but then suddenly something changed and all I heard was the Maori guy say something like "What do you mean this is your land? This is my land!" some kind of mad native argument, but he ended up shoving the Aboriginal guy over pretty hard and he hit his head on a wooden pole (made a really loud noise, and sounded really gross) and he started bleeding, while the other guy walked off. There were ambulance on the scene pretty swiftly, Robert was an ambulance driving for some time so he rushed over and helped the guy and told the ambulance what happened.
He then started to complain about all the people hovering around, saying they weren't helping so they should just go. Things settled down a bit after that, until this short Aboriginal guy came up to us, he first asked me for my shoes so he could get into the club, and offered me $50 for them.. seen as I paid $60 I chuckled a bit and declined. He didn't take too kindly to my chuckling, but he went ahead and asked me for some fries anyway, I obliged because I'm a nice guy, but then he sticks his whole hand in and is mad touching up my fries so I asked him to take his whole hand outta my food...blah blah blah etc...
Anyway, he then asked Robert for his shoes and he gave them to him for $50. I can't really remember how the conversation progressed after that, but the highlights are the guy telling us he was going to go look for someone in the club and bring them back out for his boss, and Robert threatening the guy (did I mention Robert is about 6'4 and pretty well built and the other guy was maybe 5'3 and a bit round) by gripping his shirt and telling him he's a muay thai fighter and he probably doesn't want to be drinking out of a straw for Christmas dinner. And the guy never ended up going in the club anyway! All in all a pretty funny night, and good times in Townsville.
Peace & Love
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