Ken's Travel Diary: October 2005

Monday, October 31, 2005

Last day in Cairns

Today was our last day in Cairns. Yesterday as I mentioned we went on a catamaran cruise around the Great Barrier Reef and I did some snorkelling. The day before we went for a long cable car ride over to Kuranda - it was a nice trip with a few stops through the rainforest on the way. The vegetation reminded me a lot of the funicular trip up the Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro and the lush forest around it. Cairns itself reminds me of the East coast of Florida - it's quite a sprawling low-level city with the outskirts littered with car and boat dealerships, while there is a concentration of shops, restaurants and bars near the lagoon and the port downtown.

Tonight I'm about to go out to a bar with some of the others, but here are a few photos from the last few days. Make sure you read right to the end of this entry...

The tattoo I got tonight

One of the fish I caught today

Out at the Great Barrier Reef

Out on the first night

Kangaroos!

Me cuddling a Koala

Some crocs

Jason dislocating his jaw to eat a huge burger, Jon trying to avoid the shot

A waterfall up near Kuranda

On the way up to Kuranda

The lagoon in downtown Cairns

PS. The tattoo is a temporary 5 day one...but I'll bet I had a few of you shocked...

K

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Update tonight Cairns time

Hi guys - sorry for the lack of updates but it's been a bit hectic - yesterday we were out on the Barrier reef all day, and then had no time to do any updates after that. Today I'm just about to go out fishing for the day, but I should have time to do an update after dinner if I take a taxi into town and back.

The weather here has been great, and I made the ever-stupid mistake of missing a few patches with the sun tan lotion, so I've got a nice burn at the back of my knees, and an inexplicable burnt patch on my left arm - I must have forgotten to reapply it to the left.

Snorkelling was fun out there - saw some sting rays, and all sorts of other marine life. I took some photos with an underwater camera, so I'll see if I can get them developed once I finish the roll and then get them scanned.

Anyway - I gotta scoot, so update tonight - probably around midday UK time.

Friday, October 28, 2005

A lot of pictures...

I've had to buy myself an account at Flickr now as Blogger seems to be having problems with image uploading at the moment. Hopefully I'll have some pictures for your perusal here:

Descending from the Valley of the Winds

Walking in the Valley of the Winds

Sun has set

Sunset with Uluru behind me and a glass of champagne

Sunset over Kata Tjuta

One of the local lizards

The pool at the hotel - you can see Uluru on the left behind the trees

Cave paintings

One of the watering holes at Uluru

Uluru

Long shadows

Sunrise at Uluru

At sunrise

And at Sunrise

Uluru at sunset

Arty, no?

Some of the eroded caves in Uluru

Cave paintings and shadows

Me with Uluru

My room with a view

I am at a loss to explain this...

James phones his stockbrokers while Jade pours tea

Mishy and James

Jade and me

James with "The slug"

Slug meets nose

Jade trying to eat my head with chopsticks

Jade flashing

James and Mishy in arty blurry photo

Here in Cairns now

The internet access here is not great at the hotel, so after I've done my laundry I'm going to try and get a taxi into town and find a better place to log on and upload pictures. It's not as hot here as it was in Uluru, but unfortunately there's a bunch of mosquitoes too...

Anyway, I'll try and upload the pictures this evening in a few hours.

Ken

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight...

There is something incredibly humbling about seeing the sky at night without light pollution. Tonight we had dinner under the stars. We drove about 10 minutes away from the camp and there was a silver service 3 course meal set up for us with a few candles and a camp fire. In the end we blew out all the candles as they were attracting the grasshoppers and so had an unobstructed view of the stars. We saw the Southern Cross as it fell below the horizon, we saw the Corona Australis, Alpha and Beta Centauri, the Seven Sisters, the Magellanic clouds and many more besides.

There were the usual fleeting shooting stars that you can see anywhere in the world, even in London, but we were treated to an especially long one about halfway through dinner which arced across the sky for almost a second and a half, leaving a fiery tail across the sky.

Everyone should see the uninterrupted sky at least once in their life. Living in London you are lucky to see the big dipper or the North star once a month when there's little cloud to amplify the light pollution and obscure the sky. Get out into the country in England and you still have light pollution from the many towns and cities scattered all over the place, but get yourself to a relatively unpopulated country and you will be able to appreciate the incredible celestial world above us.

In a hectic city life it's easy to forget there are billions of billions of stars above us and that we're just a tiny speck in the universe. Our nearest star, Alpha Centauri is 4.5 light years away. That equates to 4.5 trillion kilometres away. Put that in perspective with our moon which is a mere 300,000 kilometres away.

I wish I was able to take a photo of the stars, but with a relatively cheap digital camera it's nigh on impossible to do so. For those of you that live in cities and haven't seen the sky out where there's no civilisation nearby, just imagine the most stars you've ever seen and multiply that by ten thousand. Wherever you look there's a cluster of stars, and you can see cloudy tentacles across the sky where the outer edges of the milky way are visible to the naked eye that wind their way from one side of your field of vision to the other.

Sunset tonight was pretty breathtaking. On one side we had Ayers Rock, and then on the other we had Kata Tjuta which is the other rock formation, the aboriginal name meaning "Many heads". The sun came to rest behind Kata Tjuta and made for a wonderful photo opportunity from up on the dune where we were having Australian sparkling wine and canapes.

This afternoon I opted to stay at the camp rather than go tramping around in the afternoon heat, so I went for a nice swim in the pool, and then dozed on the bed in my tent with the curtains open so I could gaze out on Uluru while I dozed off and woke up.

Aboriginal law and history has traditionally been passed down by way of the Tjukurpa. There was no written history or law in Aboriginal tradition, and so everything has been passed down by word of mouth, and learning of ritual from the elders. Parents teach their children in stages. The first stage of the Tjukurpa is all that non aboriginals are allowed to be told. This is the level of a 4 year old child. It teaches basic right and wrong and simple things such as where to find water etc. It teaches the relationship between people, plants, animals and the environment that they live in. The Tjukurpa is commonly referred to as the Dreaming or the Dreamtime, although the Aboriginals have now avoided this description as it implies that it is merely a myth, rather than an integral part of their history. The Dreamtime is in fact what the Aboriginals regard as the irrefutable path of their ancestry and creation. For a good background to the Tjukurpa, have a look at this website which explains it well: http://www.deh.gov.au/parks/uluru/tjukurpa/

Tomorrow I am up at 4:30 am again to go to Kata Tjuta for a sunrise walk among the rock formation, and then in the afternoon I fly to Cairns. I should be able to upload most if not all of the good photos I have from there, so expect a fairly substantial update around noon UK time.

Until then

K

Here in Ayers Rock now...

I had a very nice evening out with James, Mishy, Jade, and Ben who arrived later. We went out for Vietnamese food, which was actually the first time I've had any, much to Jade's horror resulting in a whack on the arm for me.

It was a good meal, although James took rather an interest in an unidentified part of the deep fried flounder that he found...it was nicknamed "The Slug", and continued to be a source of amusement until he asked the restaurant owner what it was and he pulled it off the rest of the fish, squeezed it a bit, sniffed it and basically had no idea what it was. Pictures will be forthcoming when I get to Cairns as I can't upload anything here unfortunately.

Afterwards we went to the Atrium bar up on the 35th floor of the Sofitel hotel - it has great views out over the city, and the bathrooms have a huge picture window that you can stare out of while at the urinals (and presumably people can also stare right back in while you're urinating for England on the 35th floor in a brightly lit bathroom for all to see).

We then went back to my hotel so Jade could pick up her CDs that she'd left at Amanda's months ago, and had a drink in the Casino complex before they had to get going.

I got up about 6 to get ready to drive over to the airport, and it was a fairly early flight up to Alice Springs where we stopped over for an hour and a half before flying on up to Ayers Rock, or Uluru as it is known by the Aboriginals. There were a few of us picked up at the airport and then driven over to the hotel here. The hotel consists of a large tented building where the communal areas are, and 15 smaller tented buildings which house each of the 15 double rooms that the guests stay in. They are arranged so each has an uninterrupted view of Uluru. Website of the hotel is here: http://www.longitude131.com.au/

We went out for a drive around Uluru yesterday evening, and a visit to the Aboriginal cultural centre which was fairly interesting. Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the handover of the land to the Aboriginals and the simultaneous lease back of the land to the government.

The one thing I wasn't prepared for here is the flies. They don't bite, they just irritate you by flying into your face, tickling your arms and legs, and generally being a pest. We were fortunately given fly nets to put over our heads, and that does help, but for someone from England where you'd be unlucky to have more to worry about than a couple of bluebottles buzzing around the garden and a handful of mosquitoes, it is a bit much sometimes.

They do however go away after dark, only to be replaced by incredibly dumb grasshoppers and moths. Out here there is very little light pollution, and last night it was possible to look up into the sky and see all the major Southern constellations. It's also fairly easy to spot shooting stars - I saw 2 in the space of about 15 minutes.

This morning I got up at 4:30am in order to leave at 5 to drive over to Uluru for a Sunrise walk. It was pretty warm even then, so shorts and a t-shirt were all that was necessary (and the fly net of course). Sunrise was pretty impressive, and we walked about two thirds of the way around Uluru before being picked up and returned for breakfast which we have just had.

There are plenty more things that I'm going to be doing here, and I've got another 5 am start tomorrow too, so right now I'm going to do a bit of relaxing and go for a soak in the pool.

Photos will be forthcoming (I have plenty to upload) when I get to Cairns, where I should have an opportunity to spend a reasonable amount of time uploading them.

All the best...

Ken

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I am now here in Melbourne and it's another beautiful day. It's rather windy here, and landing the day before yesterday was a bit hairy - we weren't in a large plane - probably a 737 or something, so we were being buffetted around
by the wind something awful. For a moment there I thought we were going to clip a wing on the ground when there was a gust just as we were landing, but the pilot landed fine in the end. I had a relatively chilled out night when I arrived as I was still a bit tired from my Connections trip.

The day I left Christchurch, Amanda picked me up and we went back to her house and made breakfast. After we were suitably bulging, we went over to the Arts Centre where there's a market, and the botanical gardens are nearby as well. Bumped into Stefan, Johan and Lissette at the market and then went for a walk in the gardens and then a quick beer at the Dux de Lux bar and sat out in the glorious sunshine. They then drove me to the airport and it was back on another plane over to Melbourne.

I spent last night in Port Fairy - about 6/7 hours west along the coast after rather a long drive out there. The scenery wasn't particularly interesting at first, but after a few hours I got to the coast road and then it improved from there. The rock that the cliffs are made from is fairly soft, so the cliffs are constantly being eroded by waves. This has left some unusual looking towers of rock standing in the middle of the sea. One of the most famous areas is the 12 Apostles, and a short while further along the road, the Bay of Islands. I stopped and saw the sunset there and got a few good pictures.

Port Fairy is a cute little town - with the two main industries seeming to be commercial fishing and tourism. I got in after dark so I only got to see it this morning for a while. Had a nice meal at a local hotel restaurant as the place I was staying didn't do dinner. I tried some of the local scallops and abalone which I'd never had before. Very tasty!

This morning I went for a walk down the coast a bit to the lighthouse, and on the way back to Melbourne stopped in a nature reserve and saw some Emus and Koalas. Back here in Melbourne now and going out to meet Jade, James and Mishy tonight all being well.

Only a month to go on my trip...I'm going to be lost when I get back to London!