Vote or be charged, it’s your choice: Australia may be a democracy, but voting is compulsory. You can be fined significant sums of money (AUD$120) for not voting, even when you don’t live anywhere near the local voting region in which you’re registered. There’s no law that says that the votes have to be legible or that you even have to actually cast a vote—you just have to show up to sign in or mail in your absentee ballot. I guess that most Australians vote in the elections, even when they don’t really know who or what they’re voting for.
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Newcastle Surfest: Before leaving for Cairns (see below), I stopped by the Newcastle Surfest, being held at Newcastle Beach. It was going on all weekend long, but I only had time to stop by this afternoon. I got a couple good pix, one of which I posted.
This weekend’s jaunt is to the Great Barrier Reef town of Cairns, up in Queensland. Cairns is north of the Tropic of Capricorn, so it’s still very hot and humid this time of year. A cyclone went through last weekend, but lucky for us it’s cleared off to the west. We’ll be spending the weekend diving and visiting the rain forest.
Painless airport procedures: It’s been so long since I’ve seen a 5-minute line at security in the US that I forgot how nice it can be. Our entire airport experience was extremely painless. Eddie dropped us off about an hour early, which I was afraid wouldn’t be enough time. However, we spent about two minutes using the self-check-in kiosk, another two to go through security, and then we had 55 minutes to kill. The security personnel didn’t ask to see our passports or our tickets (you know, like the way things were in the US before 9-11). We did have to take our laptops out of our bags, but that was the only 9-11-related procedure that I saw. Personally I’m rather fond of the idea of not wasting my time on a bunch of security measures that are really for show more than any measurable gain. (My nail clippers are NOT going to be used as a deadly weapon, I promise you.) We’re not any safer when every third person is strip-searched and random bags are swiped with the magic cloth than we are without these Draconian measures, which just end up causing more problems for law-abiding citizens. For example, a year or so ago, my parents got stopped because of fertilizer residue (fertilizer can be used as an explosive, as we all learned after the Oklahoma City bombings) on their bags. The fertilizer was there because the bags were stored in the garage, with the lawn care equipment and chemicals.
Timezone craziness: Cairns does not do Daylight Savings time, so when we got on the plane tonight, the captain said it was an hour earlier than we thought it was. At first I thought his watch was wrong (however unlikely that would be), but then we landed and, again, he stated a time an hour earlier than expected. We finally figured out the lack of Daylight Savings time when we saw that the dashboard clock of our rental car was an hour ahead, too. I’m glad that there’s no Daylight Savings time, since we have to get up so early tomorrow morning.
Oh what a feeling: Drifting along feeling weightless, with long, languid strokes of my legs to propel me forward, I reach out towards the fish swimming right past my hand in their outrageous colors, as if they’re all off to a costume party. I hear nothing but my slow and steady breathing through the regulator… today I remembered everything I love about scuba diving and how much I’ve missed it these past five years. (The last time I went diving was July of 1999 with John B. off the coast of NC.) LJ and I went on the Passions of Paradise sailing catamaran for a diving and snorkel trip. Since LJ’s never been scuba diving before, he did the Introductory Diving course, where the instructor does almost everything for you and all you have to do is remember to breathe (which actually can be hard for first-time divers *grin*). After coming back onto the boat, LJ said he was hooked. His first dive was at the Paradise Reef and the second was at Upolu Cay. There were supposed to be sea turtles at the second site, but neither of us saw any.
Both of my dives were at the Paradise Reef, the first on The Wall, and the second at some other feature of the reef. Before going, I had to take a written test to see what I remembered about diving. I remembered most things, but I still got a few questions wrong. I couldn’t remember the maximum rate at which I was supposed to ascend, so like a good chemical engineer, I broke out my terminal velocity formula (which I’ve been staring at a lot since I got here to Australia, since I’m using it in my research here) from memory and made an order-of-magnitude estimate, which apparently was rather conservative (I came up with 10 feet per minute, and the rate is actually 10 meters per minute). At least I wouldn’t get bent (N2 coming out of blood too quickly—very bad) using my calculations. (Anyone out there who didn’t know I was an enginerd sure does now. *grin*) I did well enough on the test that they let me go dive (I probably would have had to get all the questions wrong for them not to let me go). I decided to do the guided dives so that I wouldn’t have to worry about navigation or my bottom time. I saw all kinds of cool stuff under the sea. The divemaster picked up a huge, fat sea cucumber for us to touch. He pointed out some tiny, almost invisible cleaner shrimp moving around in an anemone. And we found Nemo and his dad living in another anemone. The coolest bit was at the end of the first dive. As we were preparing to ascend, we saw a 1.5-meter-long whitetip reef shark swimming by about 5-6 meters away. When I later realized that I didn’t freak out at seeing it, I knew that one main worry about my long dive trip coming up in May—that I would panic when seeing a shark—was probably not a serious concern.
I love how I can lose myself in the experience of scuba diving. I don’t think there are many places in the world that I feel that sort of peace and contentment. I’m constantly amazed and stunned by the things that I see underwater. Even snorkeling can be pretty cool. At the second site, the snorkelers and the experienced divers snorkeled while the intro divers did their second dive. A huge rainstorm came up while we were in the water, dumping heaps of water and stirring up some waves—I was much happier being in the water than I would have been on the boat, since I have a tendency to get seasick in rough waters. While snorkeling, I saw a foot-wide stingray eating at the bottom of the ocean just 3 meters below me. I also saw some more huge (4-6 inches in diameter, 2 feet long) sea cucumbers, some outrageously colored parrot fish, and bunches of tiny little fish. I’m so excited for my live-aboard trip now, which will be in May after LJ leaves. I think I’ll have to try to rent a nice underwater camera for that trip and try to take some pix.
Random Aussie word of the day: “oi”, an interjection shouted for various reasons; in this case, it was used for roll call. When we would get back on the boat after diving or snorkeling, a crewmember had to check off the list of passengers every time to make sure someone didn’t get left behind. One time, when he was down to a few names he didn’t know, he asked everyone to give him a big “oi” if they heard their name. I was the only one who actually “oi”ed, but I did a good job of it, if I do say so myself.
Tonight we ate dinner at the Woolshed on the discount meal tickets that we got from the hostel. *ASIDE: Many pubs have deals with hostels for cheap or free meals. If you remember back to one of my first posts, I ate on a free hostel meal ticket my first night in Oz. I know that the pubs do it to bring in young people who are likely to spend lots of money on overpriced beer and liquor, but I’m okay with that.* We talked with a backpacker named Carrie, who was traveling quite a few places, including New Zealand and various parts of the Caribbean.
Heading inland: Today we spent driving aimlessly around the rainforest and plains areas near Cairns. First thing in the morning, LJ made a turn that started to put him going the wrong direction on the road (even with all the “Keep Left” signs posted for the prolific numbers of tourists), but I quickly reminded him and he changed directions. Luckily there was no oncoming traffic nearby. We drove north out of Cairns to the Kennedy Highway, which took us inland towards the rainforest and plains. One side of the road up over the mountains had washed out in many places, due to the torrential rains from the cyclone last weekend, so we had slow traffic going up. The road crews have probably been working nonstop since last weekend to get the road fixed. We stopped at a great lookout where we could see all the way out to sea over Cairns. We finally decided that what we wanted to try to go see was the Barron Falls and the Granite Gorge, so we set out again on the road. The Barron Falls were rather breathtaking. After the falls, we did a little window-shopping in Karunda (I’m starting my souvenir shopping now, so hopefully I’ll be done by the time I leave two months from now) and then set out towards the Granite Gorge. Along the way, we tried to stop at Davies Creek, which was supposed to have some pretty views, but the water was up over the road (as shown here by LJ) so we couldn’t get through. (We weren’t even supposed to be on the dirt road in our little Toyota Seca hatchback rental car, so don’t tell the Avis rental place.)
The Granite Gorge was not exactly what I expected, but it was still cool. We got to get really close to some rock wallabies, who are obviously used to people, considering that they let us pet them. I really wanted to take the cute little one home with me, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t get him through customs. J I was really fascinated by seeing the mama wallaby with her baby peeking out of her pouch. We also took some nice pictures of the surrounding area. (Look, Mom, here’s another picture of a beautiful landscape spoiled by us being in front of it, since I know you like pictures like that. *grin*) We then headed back to Cairns, stopping at the Crystal Cascades, but unfortunately it was too dark to see much there. Tomorrow morning we catch a really early flight back to Sydney.
7 kg? Is that all?: 7 kg (or 15.4 pounds, for the metrically-challenged) is the weight limit for carry-on bags on Virgin Blue, who we flew back to Sydney. We flew Qantas on the way out, which is why we hadn’t encountered this stringent weight limit before now. *ASIDE: I love that all airline tickets are sold as one-way prices. For most of our travel, we’re flying VB one way and Qantas the other because that got us the cheapest flights.* My overnight bag was under the limit, but LJ’s wasn’t, not even when he moved his camera to his backpack, so he had to check his bag. I’m sure that he’ll spend plenty of time griping about it in his travel log (he spent enough time complaining on the plane J), so I won’t say much more, other than the fact that the requirements meant that there were very few bags in the overhead bins.
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Risque advertisting: Just another sign of the difference between American and Australian cultures. The Australians are a great deal more risqué in the advertisements that you see on billboards. I was reminded of this fact while on the train from Sydney back to Newcastle, when I saw the new Pepsi Max ad. Pepsi Max is a new low-carb cola, probably invented for all the Atkins dieters out there. A key piece of information for understanding this ad is that sugar packets here in Oz look more like the good old Pixie Stix we ate as a kid than the sugar packets we see in America. They’re long and narrow and rounded, rather than flat and rectangular. In the ad, the tagline reads “Give Sugar the Flick” and shows a Pepsi Max can on the right and a sugar cup on the left, with the sugar packets shaped in the form of the internationally-known hand gesture of flipping someone the bird. (You know, the symbol for “the mother of all curse words, the f dash dash dash word”, for you “A Christmas Story” fans out there). My guess is that the stark differences in how our cultures were founded—America was founded by the Puritans, while Australia was founded by English prisoners too evil to be kept in the English system—have contributed significantly to these and other cultural differences.
Half a world away: The NCAAs, which I normally watch quite a bit, seem so inconsequential and unreal here. Part of that is the lack of TV coverage, part of it is the timezone difference, and a big part of it is my alma mater’s team (the NC State Wolfpack) falling out in the second round. I just can’t get into the March Madness this year.
Soft “r”s: There’s a sound in the Aussie dialect that I’m not sure I’ll ever get: the soft “r”. This sound appears in the word “Cairns”, which is not pronounced like the rock piles that mark trails in the US, but sounds much more like the film festival (Cannes). However, there is a hint of the “r” in the word, so it’s not exactly like “Cannes”. This “r” is also present in the word “cheers”, which is a multi-purpose word used for everything from saying thank you for holding a door to a closing on emails.
If I don’t post again this week, I’m not sure when my next post will be. Starting this Saturday, LJ and I are off to Tasmania and Melbourne for ten days and I don’t know how much internet access I’ll have to post stuff. Until next time. -Michelle