The Big Mango

21 October 2009

From Townsville along the coast, stopping in Bowen for a picnic lunch on the gorgeous Horseshoe Bay. This is Australia as I was led to believe...clear blue water, crashing waves, tanned kids toting surfboards around. Also home to the Big Mango. I'm so pleased to have seen it, it wouldn't have been a real trip to Australia without some sort of enormous fruit, you know?

Driving down to Airlie Beach, hub for the Whitsunday Islands. And by hub I mean there are a lot of 20 year olds hanging out in tiny bikinis and tattoos and not much else. It's a nice little town, stacked up on a hill overlooking a picture-perfect harbour, and has loads of bars and restaurants and bikini shops. Also Cold Rock Ice Cream, in which they chop up bits of candy into your ice cream on a heated metal plate so it all gets gooey and mixed up...Bailey's ice cream with chocolate mint cookies is my new favourite thing. Or maybe coconut ice cream with Snickers bars.

Booked ourselves onto a day trip out to the Reef, through the Whitsundays. It's not cheap, but how often are you here? Well, none of you are here at all, so that just proves my point. Anyway, up early yesterday for the 3 hour trip out to Knuckle Reef with a company called Cruise Whitsundays, in a posh double-hulled fast ferry sort of boat, to the floating pontoon thing anchored at the reef. Chatted with a really nice couple from Tasmania called Rob & Vicky, about everything from Tall poppy Syndrome to why beards are a good thing. As we are not sociable people in general, we were surprised to have had such a good time—especially as the sea was a bit rough and there was some vomiting going on.

Out to the pontoon, equipped with a water slide, semi-submersible boat, a glass-bottomed boat, and loads of snorkeling and diving equipment. They also fed us—huge fresh shrimp and guacamole (have I mentioned I love Australia?). David did the requisite Dive the Great Barrier Reef thing (for 4 times the cost of a dive in Malaysia, natch), and we both snorkelled and I went around on the semi-sub thing with some really miserable Germans and a large woman who turned green even though it felt more like a ride at Disney than a boat trip. The snorkeling meant we got to have wetsuits and flippers and look like complete tools; on the plus side, I apparently wear size small flippers, and that's the first time my feet have been classed as small since about 1985. Saw some gigantic prehistoric looking fish and mountains of coral, yadda yadda. David saw a shark. I did not, thank god.

After our blissful and very expensive day, we left Airlie and the hippies to drive down the coast a bit last night. Driving at dusk or night is stupid, of course, as there are mases of animals about and death by kangaroo is always moments away. So we stopped at the first rest stop we came to, and parked ourselves for the evening for free. Ahhh...back to the good old days, peeing in drainage ditches and trying to find the headtorch at 3am. Ooh, al most forgot to mention that we're driving through Sugar Can country, and apparently Australians don't keep packs of Haitians around to cut the cane, unlike in the Dominican Republic. They do have a whole lot of cane railroads, though.

Today we're in Rockhampton, the cattle capital of Australia. Lonely Planet tells me there are like 250 million cows in a 250 mile radius of this place. Whatever. We've got local steaks for dinner from the IGA (pretty much all chains in Australia appear to be American). Spent the afternoon at the free zoo—where I was forced by peer pressure (and the fact that the 4 -year olds had already done it) to touch a koala bear. Photographic evidence and all. Koalas are the only animal whose brain size has devolved, they tell me, and is in fact smaller than their skull. They need more energy to eat and digest the poisonous eucalyptus. Call me crazy, but maybe the fact that they have small brains has something to do with eating poisonous plants? Anyway, have now ticked off the koalas, kangaroos, wallaroos, emus, dingos, and black swans. Australian wildlife—check.