Smaller, small and smaller yet :)

Cairns was a delightful little tourist town....down from Sydney's six million to hundred thousand....perfect. Clean place, friendly folks, most making a living from tourism....the Great Barrier Reef trips, the Daintree Rainforest, Tribulation Bay, Tip of the North excursions, national parks everywhere...... makes for some peaceful exploring and hiking. Seems the rest of the population is made up of students!!! Lots of them as there is a great university nearby and thanks to all the students, mini rock/folk concerts in the parks during the afternoons and evenings every day! Not everyone's cup of tea, but was mine, one fine afternoon, as I sat on the grass along with everyone else, enjoying the musical ambiance along with a cold beer. It is often so much more fun to be around young people who are just full of so much, well, fun!! Growing up seems to make for crabby people by and large, no matter what fun and free spirits they may once have been! They say a young toddler laughs up to four hundred times a day, an adult, once or twice!! When one travels on their own as much as I have been these past few years and certainly the last two months, I notice how few adults (and older married couples in particular) smile, laugh, hug each other or seem to enjoy each other's company at all .......hmmmmm. I have taken a page out of my friend Mickey's book and will act stupid and goofy just for the hell of it.....how can anyone not laugh!! .... and it works to rid me of my own grumpies!! Maija is another who just cracks me up ..... maybe Maija and Mickey are long lost twins!!

I am moving along into my third month away, and the loneliness can be pretty intense at times ..... I wonder if I am as crazy as some of my family and friends believe me to be, going solo for such an extended period of time!! Missing family produces an actual physical ache .... hard to describe, but very real ..... that is when I head out to search for an internet cafe, tune into facebook and look at pictures of everyone!!! :) Hurray for internet cafes!!

It is winter in the Southern half of Australia, or really all over the country....winter in Cairns however, is mild, and it is also their dry season, where the temp hovers around mid to high twenties.....very tropical and pleasant....back to flip flops, errrr thongs as the Australians call them :) the helicopter ride into the GBR was spectacular! I opted out of the slow party boat route to the reef, cutting the day from a twelve hour one to five! The reef is enormous! ..... and so far away .... 40 - 50 km from the shore and over 2,900 km long ..... the views from the air ....... stunning aquamarine landscape! ........ Lucked out with the day as well ..... clear blue skies, little wind, and of course, here I was at yet another World Unesco Site!!!......wonder if it will be so wherever I go in this vast country?? A tour with an environmental group into the rainforest was on slate for my other day in the area ..... a small SUV truck, with seven hearty souls, all keen for some exploring.... really quite remote. We hiked on paths throughout the rainforest, some well trod by tourists, some not, took a little side trip along the Daintree River, viewing the bird life, a number of crocodiles lazing in the mud along the banks, soaking up the sun (refueling their energy) ..... no snakes, although they are present everywhere ..... they don't like us much either and keep well hidden. Patrick the guide, was missing a few fingers on his right hand and although we were more than curious, hesitant to ask how that happened ..... if I was a betting sort, I would say something to do with crocs....lots of strong hints about not dangling our hands out of the boat while on the river .... there are tourists that ignore this advice every year at their own peril! Apparently, the teeth of a crocodile are not that great for chewing and they merely drown their victims, leaving them under a log or somewhere to rot first, making it easier for them to eat! Yucky thought! Even though it is dry season and the box jelly fish are supposedly not in the ocean, there are warnings everywhere.....they mean, there are not MANY stingers around .... the box jelly fish prefer the warmer ocean temps of the summer when the temperature can reach the high forties on a regular basis!! .... I am a big chicken and opted to just walk along the shores rather than enjoy a swim, despite the warmth of the day!

Australia is a strange cross section of multiculturalism today ..... I am currently in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, another small town of around hundred thousand, but made up of at least fifty different nationalities or heritage rather, for of course they are all now Australians. Twenty percent Aboriginals, the rest, Chinese, (they came for the gold rush of the 1800's and stayed), Indonesians, Pakistanis, Indian nationals, Japanese, Europeans, British of course, and a host more......multiculturism seems to be working here. Darwin was a town of 45,000 in 1974 when Cyclone Tracy hit, levelling the town....everyone was evacuated and the town has been rebuilt, with strict cyclone reinforcements on all building codes..... Darwin is very tropical and a popular holiday destination for Australians from the southern regions of the country during winter time (now) as the temperature lingers in the low thirties most days, dry heat with a gentle ocean breeze cooling things down. Their summers are rainy, humid, and very hot, with temps in the high forties for months, lots of flooding and of course, cyclone season....Darwin has experienced many smaller ones over the years and is due for another big one.....for as long as someone has kept count, it seems every forty years a big cyclone hits somewhere in the Northern region and Darwin is exposed. Don't think I will head to Darwin in the summer any time soon :) I love the energy of the place, and interesting to hear theAussie accent from Asian, Indian, Pakistani faces ..... most have been born in Australia and are probably into third and fourth generations! Did find out that Darwin is where you will most likely see a crocodile along the river beds, or even in the ocean. They trap around two hundred of them yearly just in Darwin center, using rotten meat as bait ..... don't know if this is a commercial venture, keeping things safe for tourism, or just getting rid of an excess of crocs. I got a different answer from everyone I asked :) Saw barbequed crocodile skewers at the Mindl Beach Market one night ..... I passed .... don't care to eat the meat of something that itself eats rotten crap!! In fact, I have refused kangaroo, snake, and croc meat at various functions ........ my vegetarian dining preferences have resurfaced. Off to the "outback" tomorrow via the Ghan Railroad to Alice Springs, and Uluru!