I’m getting a lot of:  Jesus, didn’t you just go to Malta?  Well, yeah – sort of, but being.. er.. “unencumbered by the bonds of employment”, shall we say, it was an easy decision for me to cash in my frequent flyer miles and head to Australia for a couple of weeks.  Not only did the round trip flight from DC to Sydney cost me all of thirty dollars, but the powerful U.S. dollar was at an all-time high against the pathetic Australian version.  How could I afford NOT to go?  (Okay, that’s really a rhetorical question).

Nonetheless, it seemed like the right thing to do, and I’ve always wanted to go to Australia.  Additionally, I am scuba certified, but haven’t dived in about 7 years!  Australia just happens to have the best diving on the planet, so pack the flippers.. we’re going Down Under.

April 12

..but we gotta get there first.  I was NOT looking forward to 20 hours on a plane.  It’s about 6 hours to Los Angeles from Washington, then another FOURTEEN hours to Sydney.  Brutal.. a truly brutal flight.  In what seemed like wisdom at the time, I decided not to sleep (much) on the plane in the hopes I would be able to quickly adjust to Sydney time when I arrived that evening. 

Yeah, nice theory.  I got to my hotel in “The Rocks” at about 9p.m. Sydney time.  The Rocks is a hip part of Sydney with lots of bars & pretty young people.  In fact, my hotel room was actually above one of the bars.  In more fact, my hotel was over a bar with very loud, live, Riverdance-esque Irish jig music.  Sigh.  There goes the instant sleep theory.  I postponed sleep for a few hours while I went out exploring my neighborhood.  I constructed a mental map of Internet cafés, 24-hour convenience stores, and bars brimming with sexy Australians – all the things an extended stay in Sydney might require.

The Riverdance Revue ended about 1a.m. but I was nowhere close to sleepy.  It’s really hard to fool your internal clock, and I KNEW that I should be waking up even though it was 2, then 3, then 4 a.m.  I drifted off to sleep about 5..

April 13

..and promptly woke up at 7, actually feeling somewhat refreshed.  I knew this was some kind of biological illusion, but I decided to believe in it and proceeded to plan my day.

I wanted to knock out the Harbor Bridge climb first thing, as I was really excited about that.  I called and made a reservation for the 8:35 climb, giving me some time to down the free breakfast.  If you have read my Maltese Journal, you may understand why a free hotel breakfast might give me cause for alarm.  Alas, no worries, mate!  The Australians make a great breakfast with eggs, toast, sausage, orange juice and coffee.  I now have a surfeit of simple sugars and oodles of ATP for my bridge climb.

I arrived at the bridge climb office a little early and was able to join up with the 8:15 group.  After filling out the legal “Yeah, I know climbing bridges is dangerous, yadda yadda” form, I donned the (oh so gay) gray jumpsuit and positioned myself at the front of my 10 or so member crew.  Starting just under deck level, we climbed up several staircases built around the south pylon and emerged between whizzing lanes of Friday morning rush hour traffic.  From there, we ascended a series of ladders before beginning the climb up the 500m steel curve.  It was an absolutely gorgeous morning in Sydney and the views offered at the 134m peak were astounding. 

We crossed the 49m span at the top and descended down the other side.  The whole climb took a couple of hours and was such a fabulous experience that I can honestly put it in the top-10 of favorite things I’ve ever done (about number 6, right under “jumping out of a plane”).  Wow, less than 15 hours in Australia and I’ve already got a top-tenner..  I dared hope to continue at that pace.

There was one problem with the climb, however – we weren’t allowed to bring our own camera (They say you might drop it on the cars below, but I think the real scenario is interference with their big money-making operation of selling you their photos).  Whatever the case, I supplemented the bridge climb with a trip to the south pylon observation deck and took eleventeen thousand pictures of the Sydney skyline and Opera House.

I then made a quick stop at my hotel to change into shorts.  A quick word about the weather;  Unless otherwise specified, assume the conditions and temperature are approximately those of Heaven.  Sydney provided beautiful sunny days with temperatures in the 70s for the entire duration of my stay.

Sickly-pale American legs exposed, I walked the couple of blocks to the Wharf area and the Opera House.  I was powerless in the presence of the world-famous architecture and was compelled to take exactly one (1) bajillion pictures.  From there, I decided to walk downtown and continue my photo safari, for downtown Sydney is teeming with really fantastic buildings.  About the time of my Japanese noodle lunch, I started feeling a slight tickle in my soul.  The tickle quickly became a longing, the longing exploded in a desperate obsession – I had to find the AMP tower and make POOP! (POOP, if you remember, is:  Pedersen Observation-deck Oriented Photography – it’s just one of those things I have to do.)

I made some of the best POOP ever, given the conditions in Sydney that day.  But it was right after my POOP that I discovered my body was starting to crash - severely.  I guess 2 hours of sleep in the past 40 was pushing some kind of limit for me.  So I caught a quick cab to my hotel where I napped like the dead for a couple of hours.  I awoke around 5pm, desperately wanting more of that sweet, sweet sleep, but I had a body clock to reset and giving in to silly survival instincts was not really in my best interest at the time.

So instead, I walked down to the harbor and signed up for the “Sundowner” harbor tour.  On the boat, a nice lady talked into a PA system and gave us an history of Sydney, from the early criminal inhabitants to the filming of “Mission Impossible 2” (quite extensive, no?), all while the sun set behind the awesome Sydney skyline.  About 2/3 of the way through the tour, the boat made a stop in Darling Harbor.  I couldn’t help but notice it was walking distance from Sydney’s casino.  “Abandon Ship!” I cried and sprinted toward the games of chance.

The Australian dollar was hovering around half of the American dollar at this time, so it was psychologically similar to gambling with Monopoly money.  I had an impressive craps run and headed back to my hotel 200 Australian dollars richer.  Not a bad end to a great day.

April 14

Good morning Australia, something’s screwy with my knee.  Has it started already?  Is my body starting to give out at my advanced age of 32?  Well, there are 2 schools of thought on knee injuries (Actually I have no idea if there are ANY schools of thought on knee injuries, but I had 2 choices..) – rest it or exercise it.  Hey, I didn’t pay 30 bucks to come to Australia to sit around a hotel room, so fuck it, I’m going to the zoo.

Good choice.  The Sydney zoo was awesome.  First, you take a ferry across the harbor, then you take a cable car to the top of a terraced hill, then you walk downhill the whole way, seeing all the cool animals before you finally end up back at the pier. Cool design.

For me, the funniest thing about the Zoo was the people.  All the Australian fathers sounded like the Crocodile Hunter guy from the Discovery Channel when they described the animals to their kids.  (This only works if you can think in that guy’s voice..) “This is one of the most poisonous snakes in the world – and it lives here in Australia”, a father explained – the accent was perfect.  It cracked me up.

Well, maybe I’m just easily amused..  Anyway, I took another six gabillion pictures, mainly of the chimps & lions (both had fantastic exhibits), and caught the ferry back to Sydney Cove.  There, I sought out an internet café in an attempt to contact a world left behind. After penning a few quick “nyeah nyeahs” to friends and family (I mean, what good is exotic travel if you can’t nyeah nyeah somebody back home?), I returned to my hotel for the daily “swapping of the films”.  In my absence, the entire area around my hotel had been converted into a thriving craft fair.  I’m sure I had a certain arrogance about me when I browsed the vendors, for deep in my heart I knew that my money was worth twice theirs – though I showed great willpower and bought nothing.

With the better part of the afternoon left, I decided to take a ferry to Manly, a touristy shopping & beach area on the ocean coast.  I was still unable to generate a “powerful dollar” shopping frenzy, so I concentrated on photography, but there really wasn’t much of that happening either (despite the occasional topless sun worshipper), so I caught a return ferry back to the Harbor and retired for a little while to rest my knee, which was throbbing like a.. uh.. big throbbing thing (That’s me, the master of metaphors).

Gimme a “C”!  Well, I HAD to go back to the casino.. come on, it’s ME.  I proceeded to immediately run through most of my previous night’s winnings at the craps table, so I changed games and sat down at blackjack.  Now, understand that these are Australian dollars, but I managed to take an initial investment of $200 and walk away with over NINE HUNDRED dollars.. Even in paltry Aussie money, it was starting to get substantial.  Well, when I said I walked away, I meant that I walked right over to the craps table where I promptly lost about half of that stack.  With my gambling joy slightly diminished, I walked all the way away and still had plenty of winnings to pay my hotel bill tomorrow.  Neat.

April 15

I was up early, so I had an entire morning of exploration before my 11:30 flight to Cairns.  My knee seemed to be getting better (score one for the “exercise school” of knee injury tactics), so I grabbed my camera and walked over to the Royal Botanic Gardens.  They were fantastic!  Wonderful walking paths snaked through all sorts of expertly manicured and maintained flora. Exotic wild birds were everywhere, though they probably weren’t very exotic to the locals.  I mean, there were cool-looking ibis, wild squawking cockatoos, colorful parakeets, weird waterfowl - even trees full of scary-looking flying foxes – and they all live there.  It’s all pretty exotic to someone who sees sparrows & pigeons most of the time (Ooh, there’s a squirrel.).  So I took about 10 sesquijillion pictures and went off to the airport.

It’s a 3 hour flight from Sydney to Cairns (Oh great, I can see “Miss Congeniality” again).  Oh my - flying into Cairns is awesome.  Imagine thick rainforest spread over hills and valleys, all of it along beautiful stretches of coast - truly a paradise.  And warm!  It was in the low 80s during the day and cooled down into the low 70s at night.. que perfecto!

Well, there were a few bouts of rain, as the rainy season was just ending, but the rain tends to suddenly appear in short spurts and disappear just as quickly.  Anyway, I checked into my room at the “Tuna Towers” hotel, which sounds funny and probably should smell bad, but I found it to be most pleasant.  Plus it was a couple of blocks from downtown Cairns, where I went exploring that evening.  Uh-oh.. they have a casino..  We’ll just not worry about that now.  I found a great seafood restaurant, and since Cairns is right next to the Great Barrier Reef, you can be sure that the stuff is super fresh.  I had grilled barramundi with Egyptian spices on a bed of cuscus – great stuff.

My biological clock was still a little screwy, but I was able to cash in early, as I had to meet a bus at 6:30 the next day..

April 16

Why get up at 6:30 on a frickin’ vacation?, you might ask.. (Well, YOU might not ask it, but I did..)  And the answer is:  White water rafting through the rainforest, silly.  It was a 2-hour bus ride to the launching point on the Tully River, and there was some of that aforementioned spotty rain happening that day, but guess what?  We’re rafting – We’re gunna get soaked anyway – Who cares?  It was pretty cool.  I had 4 folks in my boat from Iowa, a 76 year-old New Zealander and a cute girl (my age) from England.  The Iowa crew hadn’t done this before, so there was about a 35% chance that we were all going to die.

Heh.  Not really, but there were some really nice class 4 rapids on the Tully, plus all the rain that had been falling in the weeks before I got there (and all the rain falling that day) made for a really fun ride.  As we floated downstream, we were treated to fabulous dense rainforest on all sides with scattered high cliffs, often sporting spectacular waterfalls.  Rafting through paradise, I was thinking..  Then we flipped over.

It wasn’t even a nasty stretch with dangerous rapids.. we just sort of.. flipped.  I think there might have been some sort of elaborate pneumatic “fun enhancer” constructed for the ride,  but regardless, I was now a floater.  Pointing my feet downstream, like they taught us, I managed to get carried in the vicinity of a potential rescue boat – An all Japanese crew who seemed to be genuinely amused by my predicament.  They were laughing and pointing at me (grinning ear-to-ear, and still holding on to my paddle like a good rafter).  I think I heard one shout “froater”, but maybe that was my own internal humor channel.  But they pulled me in, where I was surprised to see Alison (the Brit) who apparently floated downstream even faster than I did.  In a few minutes, our boat full of Iowans caught up and Alison and I were returned to our crew, shooting nasty glances and disparaging comments at our “professional raft guide”.  Actually Vince was a lot of fun and his little flipping escapade would cost him a round of beers to his peers later that evening, so I actually sympathized with him for almost killing us.

In all, a pretty remarkable adventure.  That evening I was absolutely exhausted.  It was quite an aerobic workout on the river that day.  I barely had enough energy to walk into town and find a nice seafood dinner.  When I finally made it back to my hotel room, I collapsed into one of the best sleeps I’ve ever had.

April 17

..and woke up SORE!  Ouch!  My arms were tender from yesterday’s frantic rowing, but I guess that’s one of those “good pains” (Like Cindy Crawford’s teeth on your nipple sorta pain - that’s a pretty good pain, but I digress..)

In the early evening I was to be picked up for my dive trip, but I still had most of the day to kill, so I dubbed April 17 “U.S. Dollar Power Shopping Day” and went out to find some suitable goods and services for purchase.

Cha-ching!  I hit the Cairns Center Mall and found most shops were putting their summer clothes on sale (as it’s about to be winter there – a crazy Southern Hemisphere thing).  There were shirts marked down to 10 bucks and 2 for 30 – and that’s Australian dollars, so I ended up stocking up on 5 and 7 dollar shirts.. nice ones too!  It was great.  I shopped like a woman.  I must have bought a stack of shirts over a foot-and-a-half tall all for about 100 bucks U.S.  I even had to buy a new duffle bag to put all my new Aussie clothes in!  During the day, I was forced to make several trips back to the hotel with my rapidly expanding wardrobe.

In the midst of the power shopping, I met another cute British girl, Alexia, and shared a nice sushi lunch with her.  I guess Australia is just teeming with cute British girls.  Had I known, I would’ve gotten over there long ago.  Uh.. or maybe England.. nevermind.

Anyhoo, back to the Tuna Towers, where I just got picked up for the 4-day dive adventure.  For the next few days, my home was to be a 72ft. long boat on the Great Barrier Reef.  The plan was to head north (all night) to Cod Hole, where giant potato cod reside and can even be fed by hand.  We (myself and about 15 other divers) were warned that the ride was going to be a “bit choppy” getting out there.  Er.. wow.. yeah.  That’s an understatement.  There were huge swells and bumps the entire way.  I popped one of my motion sickness pills (how’s that for power-shopping foresight?) and promptly got zero sleep in my tiny bunk.  No matter, I was getting good at this sleep deprivation thing.

April 18

We were rounded up for breakfast, but I didn’t eat much, given my woozy nature.  We were briefed on how and where to throw up, though I didn’t need to put an emergency vomit plan into action.  There were a couple of nauseous moments, but I fared pretty well throughout the trip.  Hooray, I finally got to use my dive equipment I bought about 6 years ago.  The original plan was for me and my girlfriend at the time to buy the equipment and go diving in Mexico together.   Well, we bought the equipment and broke up.  I think she went without me, so in theory, if I wanted to know if the equipment was safe, I could’ve just called her up – if she answered the phone, hang up - it’s safe.  Anyway, I guess I’ll know in the next few minutes.

There were other solo divers like me, and I was assigned Louis, a nice French Canadian as a dive buddy.  When we jumped in, everything seemed to work okay, and I was excited to be back underwater.  It’s really another world – The Great Barrier Reef is roughly half the size of Texas, stretched over 1200 miles.  There are over 1500 kinds of fish (and I think I saw them all).  The diving is among the best, if not the very best on the planet.

On the first dive, Louis and I explored Cod Hole, marveling at the size of the potato cod and the giant (3-4’) clams, with their gorgeous blue.. uh.. meaty bits (That’s me, the expert marine biologist). This was the first dive where I used a dive computer.  These things have to be the best diving advance since fins.  You can go down to your max depth (which it records), then it calculates how much nitrogen is building up in your system based on any change of depth you experience.  It tells you when you’re going up too fast or  if you need to make a safety stop at 5 meters or so.  Such a wonderful improvement over the manual dive tables of my youth (all those years ago).

For dive 2, we remained in Cod Hole for feeding.  The dive master, John, brought down some tasty fish bits to feed the giant potato cod.  The trick  was keeping the lurking, vampire-looking red bass snapper from taking a chunk out of his finger.  During this dive, I brought down an underwater camera which I rented from the dive company.  Getting used to the controls and lens attachments, I took several pictures of big-ass cod and a couple of John’s severed fingers.

The boat started heading south, back towards Cairns and we hit the next of our 8 dive locations.  The cool thing about a live aboard (which I learned in Belize 7 years ago) is you can get out to really pristine dive locations where the day-trippers can’t reach from shore.  The difference is amazing – the coral is in much better shape and the diversity of creatures is exponentially increased.  Our next location, Challenger Bay was absolutely packed with fish.  Highlights included:  Barracuda, hogfish, unicorn fish, and several large parrot fish.

In the evening, we did our first night dive.  Night dives are fantastic because there’s a ‘changing of guard’ for marine creatures.  A new set of animals become active while the day fish try to find safe places to hide and sleep.  It’s not uncommon to see large moray eels probing the various nooks & cracks in reef for prey (of course, I didn’t see one, dammit).  I did see some large humpback parrotfish and a bright red lion fish.  I also took the opportunity to “play God” as the dive master called it.  By illuminating small (and so innocent) fish on the reef, you call attention to them for lurking predators.  You can just hear the little silver guy saying “What are you DOING?!!  Turn it off, TURN IT OFF!!” right before a big red bass came in and swallowed him.  Hee hee.. it was fun.  When the dive was over, I was pretty tired.  I don’t think I’ll have any problem going t..zzzzzzzzz……

April 19

Man, that was some sleep.  The first dive today was a place called Clam Garden.  There should be a lot of.. yeah, you guessed it.. clams.  And there were.  Big ones.  And lots of them.  It was like a garden – of clams!  There were also large angel fish and big brown cods (or were they groupers? -  Damn, I should’ve been a marine biologist).

Dive 2 was at a place called “Temple of Doom”, and by this time, Louis and I are learning that it’s good to be among the first in the water.  You have a better chance of seeing cool things before they decide to boycott the human observers.  We jumped in early and were rewarded by spotting several sharks!  A clarification for you, the home reader:  Sharks are usually pretty rare, and for me are things to be sought after, not avoided.  I’m not saying I want to see the business end of an 18-foot Great White, mind you, but the 6-8 foot white-tipped reef sharks we saw were fantastic - definitely a dive highlight.

I had a camera with me this dive, and the “Temple of Doom” was a great place for it.  The coral formed a large, columnar structure (bomme) that allows a diver to start at the bottom and just circle slowly as he rises to the surface.

Giddy from the sharks, Louis and I exchanged our fish stories until we got to the next dive:  Steve’s Bomme.  This coral formation is named after Steve (well, duh), who died (yikes!) right where we were diving.  John wouldn’t tell us how he died before we went in, which I found vaguely alarming, but we went in anyway and dove to 20m to check out a plaque affixed to the reef with his name.  From there, the lazy spiral up afforded us fantastic viewing of several grabillion fish, including a big lion fish, some cool anemone fish (clownfish), and a cool octopus that probably wished we hadn’t found his secret hiding place.  My underwater camera was clicking away with wanton abandon.

That evening, (oh wait, you’re probably wondering how Steve died – well, he was a free diver, meaning he went down without any tanks or equipment.  When a diver returns from depth, all the gasses in the body expand, including the built-up C02 produced while the body uses up oxygen.  Sometimes the C02 overwhelms the brain upon ascent and flash blackouts occur.  It’s a real drag when these blackouts occur while underwater, because a person tends to die when this happens, which is what happened to Steve of Steve’s Bomme.)  Anyway, that evening we went on our second night dive in a place called “Beer Garden”.

I’ll tell you right now that there’s nothing spookier than sharks on a night dive.  When your beam barely illuminates a nice sized white-tipped shark on the fringe of your perception, you tend to wonder how many others are out there (and how big they might be.. and how hungry.. and if there’s one RIGHT behind you.. but I digress).  Well, we were still happy to see ‘em, even if it is a bit creepy.  Louis and I found a HUGE loggerhead turtle camped out for the night under a coral outcropping.  We tried to admire it without disturbing it too much with our beams.  It had to be as long as I was – about a 6 footer.  We swam away, leaving it to rest, but when our random ambling in the dark brought us back to the turtle, we saw that everyone else had discovered it too and were lighting up his little nap with about 50 million candlepower.  Well, he would have none of that and started to swim away.. right towards me.  What I see is this BIG turtle, heading for my head, spectacularly backlit by a half dozen dive flashlights.  At the last moment, he diverted, right over my head!  It was like the beginning of Star Wars, with the big star destroyer passing over the camera.  I flipped my own light on, illuminating his belly. I  swear I could’ve just reached up and pulled off one of the pair of remoras that swam with the enormous reptile.  It was one of the greatest moments from my diving experience – hell, it was one of the greatest moments, period.

April 20

Oh sad day!  It’s the last day of scuba, but I was sure I would enjoy the last couple of dives.  Well, the first one (“Hog’s Breath”) was actually the worst one of the trip.  The visibility was limited due to the early a.m. hour and murky conditions (well, limited compared to other dives, but still better than most of the rest of the planet, I’m assuming), but I still enjoyed it.

The next dive in “Kelly’s Krack” was considerably better.  We saw jellyfish, and a really long, thin fish, which I had no idea what it was.  Also spotted was a rockfish;  These guys blend in with the coral almost perfectly.  If you chance to step on one, you would probably die from the venomous spikes, which is kind of a drag.  There were so many wonderful things to see on this dive that it actually seemed like a good one to end on.  Back in the boat, poor Kelly, a fellow American diver, had to put up with the barrage of “Kelly’s Krack” jokes.  I myself noticed that I had lost the rubber fastener to mount my tank to the dive rack.  I complained to John that I lost my rubber in Kelly’s Krack, which he enjoyed tremendously, but for some reason, Kelly didn’t seem to find funny.  Oh well, to each her own, I guess.

Arriving back in Cairns, my sea-brain started freaking-out on the stationary terra-firma.  It still felt like I was being gently swayed by waves, and I probably looked like I was slightly drunk to any passing landlubber.  “Perhaps beer would help my condition”, I thought.  I didn’t really think so, but a big beer sounded real good nonetheless. 

I picked up my Sydney photos that I had dropped off before I left for sea and enjoyed looking at them while I downed my frosty brew and tasty seafood pizza.  I stopped briefly at the internet café for a couple of good-natured, scuba nyeah-nyeahs and retired early for the evening.

April 21

Jeez, I still felt like I was on a boat a little, but it seemed to be subsiding.  On the agenda for today was an afternoon / evening rainforest safari, where an experienced Aussie guide takes a small group (4 people or so) to several places around Cairns where exotic wildlife like platypus, lemuroids and rare opossums may be glimpsed.  I was really looking forward to it.

But I had to kill a morning first.  I suspiciously eyed the casino and (against my will, of course) went in for a closer look. It didn’t seem to be lucky like the Sydney one, and my “test 60” Australian dollars didn’t last very long, so I bailed and found a theater playing a morning matinee of “Finding Forrester”, a movie I hadn’t seen yet, so I knocked out a couple hours with that.

Returning to my hotel, I found a message from “Wait-a-While” tours, the rainforest people, waiting for me.  When I called, the nice lady explained that I was the only one signed up for this evening’s tour, so they had to cancel.  In my ‘sad, sad voice’ I asked if I might be able to pay for another slot if that might help.  She was real sorry, but didn’t think she could do that on short notice.

So I resigned to watching a silly cheerleader movie while I went over my dive pictures, until I could come up with a “plan B”.  Twenty minutes later, the nice lady called back and said she found a guide, but it would cost 200 (Australian) bucks - Would that be okay?  Well, a hundred bucks for a personal Australian rainforest tour sounded pretty good to me, so I accepted.

Darron, my guide, was great.  He really knew his stuff, but I’d like to think my interest (and 6 bloody years of higher education) in biology and the natural world made me a reasonably intelligent hire that evening.   We first stopped at a flying fox hangout.  Fruit bats are so cool.  We then high-tailed it to some private land where platypuses were known to hang out.  The tour company has negotiated viewing rights of these extremely rare (and freaky) monotremes, and Darron allowed me to bring my camera down to the creek (something he normally doesn’t do, but I seemed like a responsible and well-behaved photographer).  We spotted a couple of the duck-billed mammals, and when the moment of photographic truth came, I found that had forgotten to turn on the fucking camera.   I think I lost major cool points with Darron over that, but at least we got to see them (pretty close, too!).

As the sun set, we went higher up in elevation, where the various opossums hung out.  To spot a possum, you pretty much just shine a big light up into the trees.  The theory is, the nocturnal marsupials eyes shine back when the beam hits them.  Simple enough.   Darron explained that most of these little guys are pretty rare, but it was a nice evening and he felt our chances were pretty good.  We did a little spotting from the moving truck, and then got out for the ol’ hike-and-shine.  I quickly observed that the very bright stars (wow!) at this altitude can trick you into thinking you’ve pegged a possum, but I learned not to ‘cry possum’ until I was absolutely sure (I didn’t want to lose more cool points with Darron).  Well, we had a great night.  In total, we saw 5 of 9 possible opossums and lemuroids – and the final tally was over 20 of the little guys! We got back to Cairns at about 1a.m., and I chalked up another 5-star Australian experience.

April 22

I had a full morning of shopping to do before my flight back to Sydney today.  First, I developed all my Cairns film, including the nocturnal photography from the last night’s adventure.  Then I shopped for my chosen personal souvenir of Australia:  a didgeridoo.  I got a few free lessons with the cool one I selected, much to the future annoyance of my apartment neighbors, to be sure.

Back to the airport.. Wow, I was becoming some kind of Qantas frequent flyer.  Taking off, I was transfixed at the natural beauty of Northern Queensland.  This kind of place definitely demands a return trip.

For my last night in Australia, I decided to spend the night at the Medina Grand, a nice hotel in the middle Sydney’s downtown financial district.  In my travels, I have established a simple test to see if you are in a nice hotel.  If the guest bar has multiple brands of bourbon, you are probably in a nice hotel (I was).

April 23

Fantastically refreshed, I hunted down the elusive Australian egg Mcmuffin for breakfast.  Did you know that Australia has something called a “McCafé” which has numerous pastries and espressos and cappuccinos and trendy stuff like that?  Cool.  I wish we had those here.  Probably soon, but I digress.  I got to the airport and boarded my homeward bound Quantas 747.  I was SO looking forward to the 13 hour trip, 5 hour layover in L.A. and 6 hour flight to D.C.  But it all went off without a hitch, and here I am!  Writing this all down for our mutual enjoyment.

I don’t have to sum up and say how great this trip was.  You can already tell – Turtles and sharks, platypuses and possums, blackjack and bridges – it’s all good.  I recommend heading “down under” to anyone who still enjoys adventure (but wants to remain firmly entrenched in the first world).  So until the next time we meet, my readers, I bid you good day.. Er.. G’day.

Mark
April 2001