ONWARDS with our Australian adventure! There's lots of wonderful tales to come. There really is. After our time in the just bloody lovely city (is it a city? I don’t think so. I'm going to call it a TOWN), the wonderful town of Cairns, we begun our journey southbound along the coast. At first, the idea of travelling by coach for the foreseeable future was not an appealing one. During our time in Asia we experienced many varieties of coach/bus related transport. Some were good, with nice drivers, lots of room and lots of air con. Others were bad. Rusty shit boxes driving way too close the edge, with drivers who seem to not understand the fundamental requirements of driving, and passengers of the non-human variety. (Dogs really do get car sick, FANCY THAT!) Many a time I sat on a 6-hour journey with some strangers stinking backpack pressed against my FACE. Also, one journey that I seem to have blocked from my memory occurred entirely with NO AIR CON. Oh god. The horror. Thank god for Diazepam. BUT, when we first boarded our Premier coach service, (Might I add, the cheapest of ALL the budget coach tours down the coast) we squealed like children with pig flu when we saw it. It was LOVELY. Always half empty, so we could stretch out on our long journeys, and with convenient flat screen tellies placed along the aisle, we even managed to catch some cracking films on our journeys down the coast. (Back to the Future and E.T! GREAT SCOTT!)Pretty soon after our first journey from Cairns, I actually found myself looking FORWARD to these trips. These were times when I could blatantly ignore every other person, watch the passing scenery in silence, and read my book or watch a film. I was a 100% anti-social passenger. And I fricking LOVED it.
As we approached our first stop along the coast in the early hours of the morning, I wriggled and jiggled in my seat with glee. What wonders would we find at Mission Beach? What glorious sights would we see? As it turns out, NOTHING. We saw nothing. Talk about boring. I actually can’t even call this place a town. It was a hostel. And a beach. Mission beach funnily enough. And lots and lots of fields of dead grass. Sure the weather was hot and there was a swimming pool, but other than that, Mission Beach was dullsville. Plus, I had a cold. This might have added to the suckiness I felt. One wonderful thing did come out of this place though. During our travels, as is inevitable, you meet people. Some are lovely, some are not, some are weird and some are hot (Wow I sound like Dr Seuss). Two lovely people we met in Malaysia, Lottie and Nick were in Australia the same time we were, but up until this point, we had not bumped into each other. Also, during our time on the Great Barrier Reef, we met a lovely chap named Charlie. What a nice guy we both said aloud after meeting him. The wonderful thing happened just after we arrived at our hostel, Scotties Backpackers at Mission Beach. Charlie was eating his breakfast, and looked up at us two coming through the door. 'Oh look, Chris and jo!' he exclaimed with glee in his bright little eyes. 'Hey, we know Chris and jo too!' exclaimed Nick and Lottie sitting opposite him. And voila, we had a group of friends at last. No longer would jo and myself have to pretend to talk to each other as though we have anything interesting to say anymore. We were pretty close to resorting to grunts and gurns for communicating with each other, (I kid, we got on fabulously) But after spending three weeks with just the both of us for company, it was lovely to once again have some other faces to talk with and plan the rest of our journey down the coast with. And even more wonderfully, the three Irish gals turned up later in the day too, pushing our friendship group to 'Posse' levels. We were now a posse. OH YEAH. Later that night, we all ventured out to the local bar. I say local, it’s about a 30-minute drive away. And I say Bar, I actually mean a room with some beers in. but it was not for the drink that we went there, oh no, it was for the free curry WITH a beer. Without wanting to turn this offer down, we went along with the rest of the hostel so we could stuff our faces and all catch up over a pint. Annoyingly, most of the other people in the hostel went along as it was a 'Bad Taste Party' and planned on getting utterly smashed whilst wearing some dead peoples clothes. Me with my sniffles, I wasn’t really in the mood, and we all decided we would rather just sit and have a laugh sharing our stories from over the last couple of weeks. This did not go down well with the other partygoers. Frequently throughout the night, douche bag after douche bag would come up to our table, and interrupt our laughing by screaming in our faces 'LIMBO CONTEST INSIDE FUCKERS, WHATS WRONG WITH YOU ALL? EH? WHATS WRONG? COME ON! GET UPANDFUCKINGDAAAAAAANCE' to which we all looked at him with blank eyes and carried on with our conversations. I know I might sound like a boring moron, but you know what its like, you haven’t seen some friends for a long time, you are really in the mood for pub like entertainment - sitting around, catching up, getting drunk and having a laugh. These people that we had followed out could not understand this concept. When we would try to explain this to them after the fourth attempt to get us to enter a wet t-shirt competition with a bucket of piss-ridden rain water, their faces would stop smiling after our fourth word, and begin to morph into a look of utter confusion and disgust. 'You mean...you don't want to enter the dance off because you're all, like, chatting and shit?' yes we would tell them. Yes, that’s right. We are not really in the right frame of mind to have a dance off to 'I Saw The Sign' by Ace of Base, amidst a bunch of imbeciles dressed like blind clowns and throttaging with each other whilst standing in a puddle of spit. Maybe another night, we would say. By the end of the night, when we had exhausted our chat and beer funds, we overheard the collective douche bags cunningly coming up with ways to get us on the dance floor. One plan, we overheard during their ridiculous shouty whispers, was to pour a bucket of water over our heads. Little did they know this would have had the opposite effect of what they desired. No we wouldn’t all get up and start dancing, covered in water, we would have gotten up and smashed chairs over their sweaty faces. So shortly after this discovery, we made a swift effort. Sadly though, this experience wasn’t the last. If we EVER considered spending a night NOT drinking in a public place down the east coast, most other backpackers and their staff would look at us as though we had small pox. 'What’s wrong with them?' we would hear them utter. So unless we were out drinking, we were made to feel as though we had brain damage. Luckily for us though, we were a POSSE, so we didn’t care! YEAH! (I promise that’s the last time I’ll use the word posse)
Next on our trip was a strange and wonderful island. As we boarded the ferry at a town called Townsville (Clever huh?), we sailed over foamy, blue waters towards a green, mountainous island. For a moment I stood in silence with the salt air rushing at my face and I begun to long for my favourite island. That’s right, the island from LOST. GOD I MISS THAT SHOW. Anyway, Magnetic Island was the name of our destination, still spookily LOST like with this idea of it exuding impressive magnetic fields, but our Lonely planet guide quickly dashed these wild fantasies of mine. Magnetic Island is so called as when Mr Captain Cooke discovered the place, he found it made his compass act strangely. Which it doesn’t (I tried mine, thanks Karen ^_^) Silly Captain Cooke. Regardless of the spooky name, Magnetic Island was very cool. Again, not a great lot to do, but this place was really nice. Really cute. Tall, green mountains surrounded little pockets of shops and restaurants, whilst long shiny beaches extended along the coast. Plus it was HOT. I found myself SWEATING. I was not PLEASED. However, the place and the people were so just damn cute, it made the place wonderful. Our hostel though, not so much. Staying at Arcadia Hotel, the rooms smelt of hot Stilton and the swimming pool was a cemetary for bugs, but we were there with our pals, so it wasn’t too bad, plus this hostel had an extra feature that only occurred at night. POSSUMS. Have you ever seen a possum? I always imagined them to be something like a hedgehog with no spikes that defecated over everything it touched, as they are a common pest in OZ. However, a possum is nothing of the sort. If they are a common pest, they can pester me anytime. OH YEAH. About the size of a cat, with short, shnuggly grey fur, long nose pink snouts, big whiskers and little human like hands (Admittedly slightly spooky), they are just so fricking cute. And sitting outside at night on Magnetic Island, you suddenly realised you were in POSSUM VILLE. These guys were EVERYWHERE. The sun would begin to set, the sky would turn orange, and then slowly, with a quiet snuffling, they would appear. Climbing down from tree's, poking their little faces round corners, and climbing out of bins. Yes, its true that when they mate they sound like babies getting murdered and they also snort like pigs, but come on...WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?
One particular night, we decided to try our luck with an evening out drinking, true it was only possible by visiting another hostel where the Irish Gals were staying, but we went none the less. Upon our return at 2 in the morning (After waiting, might I add for an 2 HOURS for a taxi as the response we received upon calling for one was that they 'Had to get the driver out of bed') we came back to discover that in the dead of night, POSSUMS RULE. These guys were everywhere. I half expected to look over at the swimming pool and see them jumping off the board or swimming with a Daiquiri in their little hands. Due to drunken, over affection, I actually found myself sitting down and chatting with two in particular and feeding them pieces of my peanut butter and jam on toast, They loved me. I named them Edna and Harold. Magnetic Island was a revelation for me in that it was the first time since being in OZ, other than the wonders of the Barrier Reef and the giant killer turkeys and spiders of Cape Trib, that I noticed that living anywhere in OZ, you were susceptible to the incredible wildlife this country has. Other than possums we were surrounded by weird, long legged, fat squawky birds, incredible flocks of multi coloured parrots, squawking, screeching cockatoo's and the odd giant cockroach and killer crocodile. But one of the best animal displays I encountered during my stay on Magnetic Island was KANE TOAD RACING. Oh yeah. Kane toads are some big fat frogs that Ozzies introduced to get rid of rabbits. But that was a big boo boo, as now these fat suckers are everywhere. They look more or less like a normal toad, but a bit grumpier. We discovered on our second night at our hostel, that they were having a Kane Toad Race. Could be fun we thought. When we turned up, I actually think the ENTIRE POPULATION of Magnetic Island had come to watch this strange old sweaty man race, Kane toads. Strange sweaty old man went by the unfortunate name of Crazy Bob and his cooky Kane Toads. Standing in the car park of our hostel surrounded by a huge crowd, Crazy Bob, sweating, spitting and jabbering like a man with rabies, he would place five toads, each with a lovely little ribbon round their bellies, into a compartmentalised container. After taking bets from the heckling locals, he would collect the money, then with a feverish excitement and quite often, a strange little jig, he would lift the container then scream like a man possessed at the motionless green blobs on the floor directing them to leave the chalk circle in which they had been placed. The first time we witnessed this ritual; we all turned and stared open mouthed at each other. Here we were, surrounded by more or less the entire population of the island we were staying on, all screaming, screaming and pointing, at five toads sitting cross-eyed and motionless in a car park. If toads have brains, they were either frozen with terror to the spot, or gloating at the only moment in their lives for which people actually cared for their outcome. I felt sorry for the little blighters, I really did. I never thought I would ever see such a fuss over a frog. However, by the fourth round I found myself screaming and shouting with the rest of them, and at one point, at the height of my passion, I had the sudden urge to run out, pushing through the crowd, into the circle and stamp each toad into oblivion. Mob mentality is not good for my feeble mind. At the moment this raging thought crossed my mind, I decided to retire to my chair, and talk with some far nicer creatures - with my possums.
Next stop is our Whitsundays Trip, but i have now progressed from Tea to Red Wine and the keys on this wonderful computer are becoming blurred so i shall depart, and return, oh so soon with more tales. I'm gonna go lay on a couch. Yep, all to myself. OHYEAH.
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