Queensland - bye and thanks for all the fish

So to the renowned Queensland (QLD) state and what I hoped would be one of the highlights, the Great Barrier Reef and sunshine coasts. To summarise, I found North QLD coast amazing, central and south too commercial for me. All the inland mountain ranges are good, getting more and more tropical as I went north of course - lots of areas are World Heritage Areas or National Parks, so its all about the geography and nature and no development. In the North, the mountains meet the coast, so the two merge into gigantic national parks and marine parks - absolutely beautiful, could spend weeks exploring, sailing and diving here, and very few tourists except in Cairns (central base for it all).

First to Brisbane and a couple of nights at Simon and Dawn's (and not forgetting Charlie - great fun, you couldn't forget him anyway!) place in Manly. Great to see them again (and thanks guys for the hospitality) - Brisbane is compact, modern and pretty laid back for a state capital - even less history than the southern cities! But still has the mix of architecture.

On to the tourist "Sunshine" coast above Brisbane, pretty much developed, smart and rather unexciting to me - nice beaches with surfing, high rise apartments, adverts everywhere for retirement properties, and holiday hotels / units. Headed into the hills behind the coast, a tip from my Sydney friends, to Looking Glass and Blackall ranges and the valleys behind them - very beautiful, and rich farming country - country fairs on as another "long weekend" for Labour Day on May 1, which were interesting - real locals and their families not tourists, but rubbish bank holiday weather works here too.

Also to Australia Zoo, Steve Irwin's place - concentrated on Australian critters, quite rightly, but now extending to include a SE Asia zone, shame. The other shame was piped Aussie "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" type music in the main areas and a mini-football stadium (the Crocadium, from memory) with cheerleader commentaries for the croc feeding (cheer for what country you're from!! Louder, I can't hear you - yuk, then named crocs doing their bit to a hyped-up commentator). But the redeeming feature was the kangaroo park, like a walkthrough their pastures, all quiet and almost natural. Worth 54 Aus dollar (27GBP) entry?? mmmm.

Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world - a 75 mile long beach serves as the main road, then tracks through the dunes into the interior rainforests and lakes, really interesting for a couple of days guided tour. 4WD would be possible on my own, but if I got stuck then completely stuck here, loads of soft sand driving - tricky. Turpentine trees from here were used to shore up the sides of the new Suez Canal, as they are resistant to saltwater and marine rot!

Up through central QLD, all coastal plains full of sugar cane and cattle. Built own cane railways for harvest time, musat be quite a sight as it goes for hundreds of miles and tracks are everywhere.


Diving: 4 trips (2 day trips to shipwrecks, and 2 live aboard trips to the outer barrier reefs inc 2 night dives, 1 complete with real shark - if you see one green eye it is swimming alongside you, if you see two it is coming towards you - stay still and either douse the torch to make it bored or keep on taking photos and let it hit the torch!). The weather sea conditions and quality improved massively as I moved north, so sorry but you have fish photos again!! The wrecks were totally opposite: HMAS Brisbane, a deliberately sunken destroyer was ruined by rough seas and very bad visibility; SS Yongala, a passenger steamship sunk in a cyclone in 1911, was fantastic - now in top 10 wrecks dives in world, but a grave site (122 people were lost and never recovered) so you can't go inside - but you can see portholes, stairways, etc (and full medecine bottles, baths and everyday stuff still in there if you did go in as some have, of course) - but it is a wonderful dive as an artificial reef anyway. Oh, and I passed my certification in enriched air mixed-gas diving!! Go further for longer, and more times is the idea but got to get the formulae right.

The Great Barrier Reef is all it is supposed to be, and doing it on liveaboard trips gets you to the real barrier (coral walls, caves, etc) reefs which day trips can't reach (also 450 people on one boat. No!!). The weather was great, the dives wonderful and some sailing too. Saw sharks, rays and a Minke whale too, and giant cod (these look docile if big, but are carnivorous, or is it fishivorous?... "if you get your hand inside its mouth, push further in so that it chokes and spews it out as it has rows of backward facing teeth that will lacerate your arm if you pull").

Whit Sunday Islands are mountain range peaks split from mainland when sea levels rose after Ice Age, close to coast and great sailing country - we had good winds but not great sun and currents, so good sailing but not great diving - just have to go back. Whitehaven beach was massive, and such pure silica that it was used to make lenses for the Hubble Telescope!

Went as far north as Cooktown on land, where Captain Cook first landed in 1770 (only because he had a hole in his boat from the reefs!). He was not a happy bunny - named places as Cape Tribulation, Weary Bay, Cape Flattery, Mount Sorrow. Good area though, would have liked to explore further north but no time now.

Some thoughts:

• Why can't bowls clubs at home be like here, and act as pubs? Walked into one, through the ranks of white-clad bowls players on the rinks to find JJ Cale playing "Cocaine" on the jukebox, bookie shop in one corner and the machines in the other and cheap beer too! Plus these are community clubs so profits go back to local projects, etc. Great idea, would bring clubs at home back into centre of social life in the right places.
• What a waste! Miles and miles of beaches that can't be used for swimming. Signs up in northern areas - not only will you get stung by life-threatening jellyfish, so small that they can get through normal nets, but if the sharks don't get you the saltwater crovcodiles will! Oh and by the way, here's a free bottle of vinegar to douse the stings with until / if you can get to medical assistance - seriously!
• What is it with obsession with giant fibre glass figures? I have given up taking photos, but in QLD they have risen above giant prawns, lobsters and bass to include: a gumboot the height of the rainfall in that town one year (Tully, 9.7 metres (about 32 feet)) - there's a staircase up it!; Captain Cook (a really awful "statue" at the start of the Captain Cook Highway in Cairns; fruit - "The Big......" mango, banana, pineapple....

OK, now heading west towards Darwin and Northern Territories national parks. Only 6 weeks or so to go! Bugger.

Photos are at http://picasaweb.google.com/laurentmik/Aus_QLD_2009

Cheers!

NSW: State and Sydney Bye with...

...chips. Dropped my camera and it bounced on the attached wide angle lens of course. 120GBP to replace, but very lucky to find one in Sydney. So, you will find either a fly or white fuzzy marks on many photos (inc some of those from last blog) until I got the replacement - bugger.

Been ages since last blog it seems as I missed the opportunity to do it in Brisbane. Managed to get the photos loaded but not do the blog. Its a hard life.

So, headed into Sydney via the Royal National Park and to friends of my dad and Val's - Phil and Liz. Not the royal family but a very kind, retired couple with a manic lifestyle of 7 children and 24 grandkids plus.... They have been, and will again be, avid travellers - they went to Uluru when it was still desert tracks with the kids in the back of a car in the 70's! They live in the outer suburbs, Revesby, a 45 minute trainride into the city, so I became a commuter again for a few days (not good memories).

Sydney is a fantastic place, waterfronts and gardens everywhere - and commuting by ferries from suburbs or down the river. Quite a sight, could spend many days there, partic if I stayed in the nightlife areas and the weather allowed more time on the beaches, but I did get to Manly and Bondi and have a very quick swim - it was more like Newquay in midwinter than some sexy Aussie mecca. Like Aussie cities, so far, a mix of modern and Victorian / Edwardian architecture and layouts and all starting as a port on the coast or a permanent freshwater source inland.

Then into the nearby Blue Mountains, spectacular scenery and hikes (if still changeable weather), then zig-zags up the coast to the Queensland border between coast and mountain / gorges / waterfalls national parks. Didn't manage to escape the autumnal weather which swept up from Antarctica for a few days, catching me in the mountains - frosts and ice on Lindie in the mornings (comments anyone?).

Exceptions were detours into central NSW, to Orange and Bathurst for a view of the central plains areas, and Tamworth and "New England's" farming and gold mining towns. Great diversion was to drive around the Bathurst motor racing circuit, Mount Panorama, which used to hold the F1 grand prix racing (bikes and cars) until the 1960's and is a hell of a climb and drop around the mountain - now does famous endurance races, etc. Weird, it is a 2-way public road (60kph/45mph limit normally with turn-offs into houses and farms!) in normal times - that's how they got the govt to help pay for it back then, as a scenic drive apparently, clever. So Lindie has done 3 laps of a racing circuit now!

Thoughts:

• Aboriginal names: is it a con? The tribes didn't speak the same languages but managed to come up with similar names for places, all with loads of "o's" and "a's" (how many "O's" can I get away with in a name joke = Wooloomooloo in Sydney), and all meaning logical things like "place of many waters" or "place where one can see for f****ing miles, mate, trust me". That was until I got to Angourie Point, a great surfie place - now either the dopy English explorer accidentally talked to a Frenchy taking the piss or the locals had got bored of the joke, but Angourie means "place of angry seas"?? No way.
• For some reason remembered it was my very old mate, Jon Pearson's birthday on St George's Day. Should have kept up with him, a great bloke and wonderful friend all those years ago, somewhere in NZ still I believe - too late now. Got that way with all the old North London crowd too, probably. Still can't change history.
• Anzac Day, remembering all Aus/NZ forces, very serious over here. Dawn services of remembrance then a wake at the pub. Special licensing, cheap offers and a gambling game as played by the veterans in the trenches, betting on 3 coins landing heads or tails - only allowed on Anzac Day in the local pub (saw this in a gold mining town called Hill End - Royal Hotel's beer garden, whole families, BBQ and friendly betting betweeen each other (no bookie or central bank here). It was a special afternoon.
• Great names for places if not Abo or copying Euro name: Buckaroo (near Mudgee) and Broke (Hunter Valley)
• Aus still very much a rural country, well into horses (breeding, racing and betting), farming and local communities for locals only. The cities are isolated hotspots almost out of character, except on the coasts where they are suffering from the same problem as UK, all the retirees going to the good places and skewing the demography, and thus the local economies.
• Lindie got a good servicing in Sydney

OK, so now in Queensland but I'll save that, except to say many thanks to Dawn and Simon (and little Charlie, aka "Bob the Builder") for their hospitality and friendship in Brisbane, before it seems too late to say it.

Photos link at http://picasaweb.google.com/laurentmik/Aus_NSW_Sydney_2009

Cheers! Mike