Orientation Week

Greetings!

Had an eventful couple of days during orientation, and they were as follows:

Monday, we left early in the morning and took a hike around Redden Island, at the mouth of the Barron River. Then we went to see the main water source for Cairns, a series of waterfalls called the Crystal Cascades. It poured rain, and we got soaked. After a brief stop on a Pacific beach we ended up in Port Douglas, which is sort of like the LA of the Cairns area. I made the mistake of wrapping my only towel around me when I went swimming in the ocean near the hostel, so I was wet for about three days.

On Tuesday we took a guided rainforest walk with Harold, our Aboriginal guide with a not very Aboriginal sounding name. He was a lovely man, though, and told us all about the local flora and fauna. Then we went to Mossman Gorge, and swam in water that couldn't have been more than about 60 degrees. Brr! And we went over a rickety suspension bridge that would have terrified my mother. After that, we took a boat tour of the Daintree river, an estuary nearby. We saw an amethystine python and two crocodiles, both quite small. The second one wasn't much more than ten or fifteen centimetres. And we also saw a ton of birds. There are these beautiful little yellow sunbirds that are fairly common.

On Wednesday we left the Port Douglas hostel (which was called the Parrotfish Lodge) and made our way to the more inland town of Yungaburra. Everyone was tired that afternoon. In the morning, however, we went to the Rainforest Dome. This is sort of a nature preserve crossed with a zoo. But you can walk through all of the animals except the crocodiles (thank god), and feed the kangaroos. I even got to hold a koala, which smelled pleasantly of eucalyptus until he, er, relieved himself on me. His name was Grizzly, and he was very cute. That night, we ended up at On the Wallaby, my favorite hostel so far. It was a little chillier up here on the Tablelands, but the hostel kindly provided fuzzy blankets free of charge. I got five. Wednesday night we went night canoeing (I don't recommend this as an activity for children or the faint of heart) to see the nocturnal wildlife, but all we saw were some water dragons and a timid little bandicoot. We also went to a wine tasting that evening, at a vineyard that was down the street. My favorite wine had an emu on the bottle.

All that was on the schedule for Thursday was "drop-off," so we were all a little wary. But Tony (our teacher) put us all in the van and made about an 80 mile circuit around the Atherton Tablelands, dropping one person off at each little town we passed. He gave us some money, which we had to spend in the town, and told us to be where we were dropped off in four hours. I got the town of East Atherton. I found a post office, and got a coffee, and then I made up an alter ego for myself (I had just moved to Cairns and was working in a vet clinic) and pretended I was on holiday but was looking for guinea pigs. So I went to a pet store and talked to the lovely young woman there for about 40 minutes. Her guinea pig liked me. He made happy little cooing sounds when I held him. And she showed me the exotic bird hatchlings that she was raising. So cute! And then I got my hair cut.

Friday we came back to Cairns, and stopped for a swim in a maar on the way. It was also very cold, but very pretty.

On Saturday, we took a boat called the Silverswift out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was beautiful. It was about an hour out to the first reef (we went to three). The third reef was my favorite, though, because you could swim out on top of the reef as well as around the sides. All told, I saw two white-tipped reef sharks (they're very shy and quite harmless to humans, although they do get pretty big), a six-foot sea turtle, a five or six foot sting ray, enormous blue sea stars that were twice the size of dinner plates, hundreds of friendly parrotfish (they like to come and check you out while you're swimming), and tons of cnidarians, nudibranchs, and beautiful varieties of angelfish. It was unbelievable. Glad I got my wet suit top, though, because the water was pretty cold. We also had to wear Lycra stinger suits. If a jellyfish touches lycra, its stingers don't register the fabric as stingable.

Sunday morning I met Bronwyn, my host mother, and her daughter Lila. Spent Sunday and Monday with them. Now it's Tuesday, and I'm in Cairns for the day at our classroom. I'll be with Bronny for two weeks. She's very sweet, and Lila is very enthusiastic about everything (she's turning six next week).

Photos later.

Best,
~a