Oh Maties, the Rainforest!

Stephen, Macky and I went to the Daintree Rainforest. (Cindy has informed me that this forest is 135 million years old. I believe that.) We opt to go for a bush walk. ( you guys already have the picture of us at the top of the walk) It is going to be a simple walk, 3.5 k up and 3.5 k down. No problem. I just wear my crocs. ( Not the live ones) The sign at the beginning of the walk says to allow 7 hours. Hmmm. Seven hours for less than 5 miles. Right. We start. It is up hill. Definitley up hill. Right off we are all huffing and puffing so that we can barley talk. Our chit chat goes something like this:" Steep" "yah" "Wicked" "Yup" "Beautiful" "uh" "True bush walk" "Yaa" Bush indeed. The density of the population has to be 2x that of Bejing (only taller).This place is thick with vegetation. We are constantly ducking under,climbing over,pushing aside or squeezing between or around trees, roots,vines, palms and ferns. The path we are following is small,hard to follow and covered with vegetation. If Stephen or Macky get 5 meters ahead of me I cannot see them. The ground is covered. Roots are everywhere, crisscrossing, recrossing and crossing again. They go on for 20-30 meters and are sometimes two foot tall. Vines hang like someone toilet papered a house. Vines of all sizes, some as big as your leg. Most of the vines have stickers,thorns or jabby things all over them. Some vines have large barbed hooks on them and hang down like Vietnamese booby traps. They grab you and cut as you go by. I begin to believe that sci-fi stuff about vines. There are these trees/vines that are called strangler figs that do just that. These figs slowly,very slowly over hundreds of years engulf a tree and kill it, all the while using it as a framework for its own growth. When their deed is done there is an eerie lacework of vine like branches in the shape of the former tree. Its spooky in a way. These fig trees in turn are used by other plants, but that is happening everywhere. Branches,forks of trees, tops of palms or the "basket" of a fern are all covered with other plants robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are these Fan palms that look like ridged potato chips but are 2 meters in diameter that house another kind of palm that looks like a house plant gone wild. It is an exotic,eerie,and wild walk. We climb for an hour non stop and reach a sign that tells us we have gone 1.5 km. Less than one mile an hour. Hmmm. Near this sign we meet an Aussie on his way down. He says "It gets steep up there". I say " you mean it hasn't been steep yet?" "Nahr,its pretty steep for the next 300 meters". Stephen says "Chit", I think it. Soon enough we know what the bloke means. We are in full time fourwheel drive. All I can see is Stephens butt and Macky can only see mine. We are climbing nearly straight up. We, as you can expect, get to the top and the look out is spectacular. It is an absolutely amazing ecosystem to see. But Stephen says it best " This is good chit, thick nature chit. Amazing chit". Strangler Figs:

new pics!

Stephen "chit!" is in the middle and the other guy is... chit! I can't remember his name, it's too close to Mokie, that's not it but all I can think of is Mokie, it begins with an "M" anyway. And of course our illustrious traveller Tracy. She said she is wet from sweat having hauled her a** in high gear up a huge mountain.

This is the other guy whose name I can't remember. Sorry. But this gives a great picture of how to live out of your van. I'm taking notes.

This is a sign that Tracy said is all over the coast and all the beaches. She said she first saw it after washing dishes in the surf. !. In case you can't see what it says: Crocodiles inhabit this area - attacks may cause injury or death. Keep away from the water's edge and do not enter the water. Take extreme care when launching and retrieving boats. Do not clean fish or leave fish waste near the water's edge. Camp well away from the water.

Several posts. Scroll down again to get " the rest of the story"

Bunnies and Melons

That night (yes it has only been one day) we cook fish on the public barbie, make coucous and eat dinner while listening to good jazz from the bar next door.More Smirnoffs. We're down to 60. They switch over to whiskey. Save the rest of the Smirnoffs for tomorrow. After their cocktail hour ( I had to beg off)they begin to think about where to sleep. Hmmm. Beach it is. Where else? So we all mokie over to the closest beach, hide our mokies down the street, pack up and move to the beach. It is dark, it is late, so it is easy to move onto the beach spread out our bags twelve feet from the water and go to sleep to the sound of the waves. I wake up first, and the sunrise is stunning. The beach is beautiful and secluded. The rest of the gang begins to wake up. We all sit and enjoy the sunrise. One of the guys gets up to pee. He stretches, yawns, and walks toward a huge rock that is twenty feet from us. As he begins to round the rock he stops in his tracks, whips around and looks at us, eyes big as saucers and his mouth wide open. One of the other guys jumps up runs toward the rock, stops in his tracks as he peers around, whips around to look at us, big eyes and mouth wide open. All of us jump up simultaneously. We run to the rock and peer around the corner. The guys cannot believe their luck, or their eyes. Smirnoffs one day, playboy bunny photo shoot the next. Only half her swimmie, no sunnies, no runnies, big boobies, no CHIT! We all sat on the beach watching the sunrise and of course, the playboy bunny. Then had Smirnoff's for breakfast.

Mokies and Marriage

What I have not told you guys is that I picked a pink mokie called Cinderella as a joke. Of course no one got the joke because they don't know me but I enjoyed it anyway. This comes into play later. So, eight of us are running around in two mokies, I am driving one ( other side! other side!) and Stephen is driving the other. We have spent the day going to several beaches, drinking Smirnoffs, snorkeling and having lunch. Now these people don't eat sandwhiches for lunch. They are French. They cook pasta and eat cheese for lunch. We had brie cheese, chicken and pasta for lunch. Yum. After lunch they decide to go to a pier and fish for dinner, I go along as I can't talk to any of them and therefore have no voice in the decision. ( Believe it or not I am enjoying not voicing my opinion.) So we mokie on down to the pier and are hanging out. Antony has catches three big fish and is working on his fourth. It is a beautiful spot, so beautiful in fact that a wedding party pulls up, piles out, and begins to assemble for the traditional wedding pictures. That's when they spot the mokie. My mokie. The pink mokie. They are wearing pink. They ask if they can borrow the mokie. Of course we all get a charge out of it. Here is a decked out wedding party asking to borrow something of ours. They climb in the mokie, take their pictures, thank us and begin to leave. Then one of our guys claims we should all have a picture together. The marriage of mokies, gypsies and wedding parties. Funny!

Cleaned up the previous blogs.

Sorry, I was in a hurry when I wrote those last blogs so some of those sentences did not make sense. I'll try to do a better job with "the rest of the story". Here goes.

More to come the cafe is closing.

This is the last of a few posts for this day. I needed to seperate the stories. I cannot wait to tell you guys the best yet, but this darn place is closing. Scroll down to the first blog so they all make sense. Thanks for making this so much fun. Talk to you later. Love Tracy

Mokies on Magnetic Island

So we get to Magnetic Island loaded with Smirnoffs and we are ready for fun. It is a very small Island, definitely a tourist spot, so all the tourist accoutrements are there. We rent some Mokies or tiny,tiny jeeps that barley seat four and we are off. We head to the parking area of the beach we want to go to. We have a little hike to get to the beach and of course, on the way, we get lost. Could it be the Smirnoff's? We end up at a look out far above the secluded beach we are looking for. The leader Stephen says "let's go" so we start climbing down, Smirnoffs in hand. Now this is a mountain side I wouldn't climb down without a Smirnoff in hand but I start down behind them. Maybe it is because I have the Smirnoff. We are bouldering,handing backpacks and the Smirnoffs down first then climbing down the rocks oursevles. I am chuckling with dismay. We get to this absolutely beautiful beach and go snorkeling and swimming. This all in the first 3 hours. And it just gets better.
more about magnetic island

Holiday with the gypsies!

We drive to Townsville in a carravan. Four cars and vans, 7 gypsies, and me. The town is relatively big. There are a few skyscrapers, high end hotels and night life galore. We arrive in Townsville with plans to go to Magnetic Island for the weekend. It is afternoon when we arrive and we need to get supplies for the weekend. We split up and start our chores. Slyvan and Christophe busy doing their chores and are in the street next to their van when a "ute" or flat bed truck turns the corner and spills 8 or 10 cases, yes cases of Smirnoff Ice at their feet. They open the sliding door and start chucking ( well they are gypsies you know). Holy "chit"! Whoo Hooo! They slide the door shut, get in, get out, and call Steve the leader of the band (my personal gypsie). One hundred and forty eight Smirnoff's later we are ready for the weekend! " Fuck yeah mate, this is good chit". That is only the beginning.

Same rest stop different story.

Okay so picture the same rest stop but now it's sunrise. I walk 20 meters behind the rest stop and onto the beach. Beautiful. Tidal mangroves,sunrise,birds singing (cockies,lories and kookabarra's) and a man combing the beach. He's an older man about 70 and he is bent over with a bucket and I figure he is crabbing or something. So I go over and talk to him. Turns out he is another gypsie living at the same rest stop but behind the rest stop and right on the beach. He has an old 1978 Ford pick-up like my old one hooked up to a "trailer" he calls home. Now this "trailer" is a very small old R.V. camper, 1950's style, rounded on the back, baby blue and white, with crank out windows on the side and back. It is very delapitated; I wouldn't keep my garden tools in the thing but he is living in it full time. We talk about trucks, what is in his bucket and his life. And then as people do, he begins to show me. He say's " wait here my trailer is filthy (and it is) I don't want you to see it but I want get something to show you". He brings out a digital camera and shows me a bunch of sunset and sunrise pictures he has taken. He shows me every photo and he is proud of them. Tells me when and how he got them and how this gives him something to do. Then he shows me a Bower birds nest that is right outside his front door. He and the bird are friends and have known each other for 2 years. (The Bower bird woos the female by collecting colorful objects and putting them in front of the nest he has made.) I am so excited, I have seen these birds on film but here is a nest right in front of me! This bird has chosen green and has collected enough green glass shards to adorn his "front porch", a spot about one foot wide and two feet long. It is so cool! After awhile I leave George the lone gypsie for "brekkie" with my gypsies. Later that day when my band and I were getting ready to leave the "Big Mango" rest area for our holiday trip George came through the beach brush and asked if I could wait 15 minutes or so before we left. He dissappeared and came back with two pictures of the Bower bird's nest and the only CD of his sunset and sunrise pictures he owns. He gives them to me. Amazing. And he is a gypsie.