Venomous, Dangerous & Deadly

18 October 2009

Praise Jesus, we've reached the coast. I can now personally vouch for the existence of water in Australia...and you thought it was just a myth. We did too.


Originally we planned to drive up inland and then over to Cairns, but given that the only road is sealed-but-single-lane, we've come straight across to Townsville. This may sound like it belongs in The Simpsons (east of Shelbyville, left at the dead kangaroo. No, the other dead kangaroo.) ; in fact, it's a nice little city on the coast, strung along the Pacific, with some really beautiful public parks. Said parks are clearly home to most of the other campervan people in this country, all parked up for the night next to the free barbecues, picnic tables, bathrooms, and stinger enclosures. Before appreciating the plethora of free stuff, we'd signed ourselves into Rowse Bay caravan park, which is very nice and has the most impossible site to pull into on earth. But it's on the sea, and the palms and breeze and washing machines made it worth the $30.

Out for drinks (Saturday night and all) at a place called the brewery, really nice ales. Saturday night is sort of like Newcastle, only it's actually warm enough to be wearing those hooker-esque fashions here. Bits of detritus scattered about on Sunday...

Did picnic on the water, though, on clearance chorizo (he is a Ludwick, and therefore unable to pass up meat on sale—it's charming, no?) sandwiches and kebab-flavoured chips. Townsville has a stinger emclosure and rockpool—saltwater lagoon-sized pools on the sea, but strung with safety nets to keep out the slightly-deadly and incredibly painful box jellyfish, or 'stingers', and also the really-deadly and also painful irukandji jellyfish. As I say, Australia is dangerous.

Spent the afternoon at the excellent aquarium here, called Reef HQ, as we're in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. I'm not a fan of sealife if it means touching it, but through plexiglass? Brilliant. It is home to the skeleton of a fish called Oscar who lived there for like 20 years before dying by choking...on a fish bone. They have some smart fish down here. He was not one of them. Also saw a green turtle who is apparently enormous for her age (no, she's not American.) We watched the shark feeding, wandered the recreated reef and mangrove bits, and had a little talk with a sweet little old lady volunteer in which she categorized the seashells of Australia in three categories. These are (and I quote):

1.Venomous
2.Dangerous
3.Deadly

Seashells, people. Seashells.. I begin to grasp why Britain had no use for this continent until they needed someplace to keep criminals. It is pretty, though.

Anyway, we actually ate out in Townsville, seafood on one of the restaurant streets. It's almost like the real world again. Stocked up with VB beer, caffeine, and free wifi at McDonalds, and off we go down the coast.