Down under in Downunder

The bus took me to Colonial Log Cabin & Backpackers Resort. It's definitely more a backpackers resort than a colonial log cabin, mind you, but it's a perfectly good, cheap and fairly quiet one. There's even a pool with sea water, since the ocean here is so full of sharks and unfriendly jellyfish that going in there isn't really recommended. I soon discovered why the hostels here are so eager to get customers: They all also offer trips to Fraser Island. I didn't really know what that was all about, but since there wasn't much else to do, I figured I might as well go on one of them. Being in a little bit of a hurry, I opted for a one day trip only, at AU$65, while most people go on overnight tours.

My choice of a tour of the Fraser Island turned out to be one scoring very high on the grey hair scale. I was the youngest in the 4WD by far, but still managed to have a nice day. It was easy, really, as the island turned out to be quite an extraordinary place. It is 120km long from north to south and 30 km at its widest, and while that isn't very spectacular, the fact that the whole island is actually an old heap of sand makes it special. It formed between 500-800 million years ago, and has hardened a bit throughout the years, but it is still all sand, there are no rocks or stones on the island. A rain forest has formed on it, and there's a rich supply of fresh water there, since the ground water is being pushed up to the surface here by all the surrounding salt water.

Birds of prey are plentiful here, so many that they have made among other species the seagull extinct. A very praiseworthy initiative, if you ask me. The islands also hosts one of the last groups of pure-blooded dingos in Australia, as there are no dogs here for them to inter-breed with. There are even a few brumbies, wild horses, running around. 2000 of them were released here in 1930, now there are only 10-15 of them left. While they may live a quiet life out here, it is no horsie heaven, as they all die after 6-7 years of eating grass with lots and lots of sand in it, which is an excellent way to develop a serious case of ulcer.

Some nut has calculated that a whopping 4.5 million litres of fresh water runs off the island's rivers into the sea, something you could not have found out by listening to it happening. Because there are no stones on the island, the rivers are all flowing totally silent and almost invisibly as well. I stepped right into a river in the woods there, thinking it was only a small sandpit in front of me. While that was not too enjoyable, having a swim in the wonderfully clear fresh water lake in the middle of the island was. The beach surrounding it was among the whitest I have ever seen. It was fun watching the dingos steal the lunch from people who were out swimming, too.

I wanted to do the next stretch on a night bus, so I spent a day walking around in Hervey Bay. It seems everybody here wants to live down by the water's edge, so even if it is a small town, it's a really, really long town. Strange. Even stranger was the main attraction in the town, Vic Hislop's Shark Show. The overpriced, AU$8 museum has a nice woman giving you a short briefing on what you are about to see, and then you're free to roam the Shark Show as it is. It's not much. Vic used to be a used car salesman before he became a manly nemesis of the sharks. This you can tell from the gaudy signs and posters everywhere, the way everything here is overpriced and the way he wears his awkward moustache. It's probably a good thing to be sly as a used car dealer when you hunt sharks. Vic is not a big fan of getting permissions for hunting sharks. If you see something big with teeth, he'll be happy to kill it for you. A 3 ton great white shark was his record trophy at the time. And the Shark Show is a couple of rooms with freezers in them, where you can have a look at what he has caught, deep-frozen. I guess what I'm saying is that you shouldn't bother going here. In addition to the freezers, the museum consists of a thousand newspaper articles with pictures of Sid and sharks in them, with thorough explanations about what evil beings these big fishes are. Vic has been researching this for a long time, and his estimates are that 100 people in Australia are eaten by great white sharks, tiger sharks and hammerhead sharks every year, and still some stupid politicians are suggesting to protect the species from hunting, just because they are almost extinct. Go figure.

Encouraged by all this information about evil sharks, I chose to get off the overnight bus in Airlie Beach, where I wanted to learn how to scuba dive. I was now in a bit of a hurry, since my scheduled flight to New Zealand from Brisbane was on February 16, and it was now February 6. By some miracle there was a perfect dive course due to begin the same afternoon I arrived in Airlie Beach, so I signed up for it at once, AU$299, an excellent deal. Full of expectation I was transported to the harbour, where the ship where the course would take place on was waiting for me. I got there and everything seemed to be just perfect. Then the gear box exploded. Tish, tish, never mind. They just activated plan B, in one hour there would be another boat here to pick us up. Then that one exploded as well. At AU$299 you don't get a plan C. So I got my money back and was transported back to town. Somehow I figured it was probably a good thing those two boats exploded, maybe the rest of their equipment wasn't all perfect either.

The next morning I got up at 7 and went to another company and booked myself onto an AU$450 course, showing the gods up there that I was really serious about this, it could not be stopped just by blowing up a couple of boat engines. This was a five day course/trip, so it meant I would not get to see any more of Australia this time, and that I had spent as much, AU$3500, on my 6 weeks in Australia as I had done in the 4 months in Asia altogether. I sighed, and signed on. Then, they told me, I had to fork out another 40 dollars, to the doctor who was to declare me fit for diving. I was, and my lung volume was 5,37 litres. I don't know why I needed to measure this. I mean, if everything goes wrong, swallowing 5,37 litres of sea water won't exactly empty the ocean so that I can avoid drowning.

The boat wasn't leaving until the next morning, so I spent the day at the beach, reading intensely on the course book, in order to pass the PADI course exam sometime during the trip. It was easy to stay with the book and away from the water, thanks to the numerous big, yellow signs warning of the water being full of the poisonous box jellyfish. After having read the book, going through the rest of the lectures together with the rest of the "students" was easy, and we were all done in 4 hours. To make sure we wouldn't forget to breathe (which is the number one reason for diving accidents, by the way) under water, we did one test dive in a 4 meter deep pool. Piece of cake, the only scary thing down there was Mats. He's from Sweden.

Before they would let me go on the boat, I had to take the multiple choice exam for the PADI Open Water certificate, which I scored 49/50 on. This proves that diving theory is quite easy to learn. A lot harder to learn is diver lingo. It's even cooler than surf lingo, as a few examples will show you:

• "The greener (or meaner), the cleaner" alludes to the practice of spitting manly goo from the back of your throat onto the diving mask and rub it around, thereby stopping a mist from appearing on the glass.
• "We are very excited and have a very big sausage", well, err... it's got to mean something, it was said by the instructor several times.
• "To go on a holiday" means to get lost in the sea and go with the currents towards the horizon, not a good thing.

Anyway, I got on the boat, and so did the others. The Tropical Princess was built to carry 28 passengers, and we were 12, so there was enough room for us. Good space, good boat, good equipment, probably a good reef and I didn't feel too bad myself either. My designated buddy was Anna, a Polish Canadian catholic, so I felt we would have at least a little bit protection from above down there. Our first dive was at Bait Reef, a site so popular that the reef is already so damaged that it doesn't really matter if you let loose a bunch of diver rookies there. I wondered why it was called bait reef, but when we came down there the explanation was obvious: A big sign at 12 meters depth read "Welcome to the food chain... You're no longer on top!". Talk about a deep message! Nothing ate me, but there were lots of big fish to see, making it a little bit hard to concentrate on doing the mandatory exercises. The only scary thing I saw on the first dive was when somebody on the boat flushed just when I passed the outlet. In the evening we did witness that the waters contain many beings that deserve respect. The boat had a powerful spotlight on the back deck, and when it was directed at the water, it attracted lots of small fish. The small fish attracted bigger fish, and the big fish attracted lots of sharks. They circled the boat with their mouths open, scaring the fish to jump out of the water to try and save their lives, but it didn't take long before the sharks were satisfied with their meal and left again.

The boat moved to another site during the night, and I woke up in Blue Pearl Bay on a green face day. I had my third and fourth dive with mandatory exercises, and suddenly I was a certified diver. Whoa! I felt so much cooler now and started saying things like "Gimme the air, dude" and "Big fish at eight o'clock" without really intending to do so. My body also looked a lot better in the wet suit than the day before, now that I knew which way to wear it.

With all the exercises done with, I could concentrate on enjoying the view down there. I have no idea what the fishes were called, so I just called them Fred and Barney and Grumpy and things like that. I later learned that they were really had names like "Moon fish", "Parrot fish" and "Big f*cking fish", but I didn't know which were which. Besides, those names were, in my opinion, not very personal, so I was happy down there with the Larrys, the Bubbas and the others. Some of them would come up and try to scare me off, in spite of me being two thousand times larger than them. Others would just ignore me. Some came at me in big numbers, while others just floated by, had a quick look and seemed to consider whether I would make a good meal or not, before they came closer and started chewing on whatever they could find. They all gave up, sensibly.

Have you ever felt lost? I almost never do. I would say never, because most often when I SHOULD feel lost, I just feel excited and my brain starts working in high gear on finding a way to feel in control again. But I have felt really lost a few times, and one of those few times was out at the Great Barrier Reef near the Whitsundays late one evening. On a night dive. I've been to many dark places in my life, but going below the surface of the ocean under an all black sky is by far the darkest one. Fortunately it did not turn out to be my darkest hour, so to speak, instead I felt quite adventurous. I had a good flashlight, beaming a 100 meters or so in air, but when I came down under the sea, it could only show the way 3-5 meters ahead, and everything outside the beam was totally black. The sounds from my breathing and my heartbeat were suddenly more present than before, and I suddenly discovered what it must be like to suffer from claustrophobia and at the same time did not know what was up and what was down, without the bubbles of air to tell direction from. It took me about 2 minutes to totally lose control of my depth. I thought I was exploring at about 10 meters depth, but was dragged back to reality by my buddy, who pulled my leg and pointed to his depth gauge when he caught my attention. I was about half a meter below the surface. When we finally made it down to the reef itself, there was lots of and lots to see. Sleeping fish who were very surprised when a personal sunrise happened just next to them down there. Strange, shining, blue somethings hiding in the rocks. Sleeping sharks in small caves. It all went very well, except I banged straight into the coral rock wall several times, with my head first. But we all survived, both the rock walls and I.

The remaining of my in total eight dives went fine, except once when I tried to dive with my snorkel instead of my regulator mouthpiece. I still remember the taste of the South Pacific and the sound of it floating around in my lungs. A cyclone was starting up somewhere out in the ocean, so I was glad to return to land again after four days at sea. I walked almost straight onto the bus southwards and would probably have felt safer at sea with the cyclone than I did next to the businessman operating in the field of extasy and other artificial reality enhancement drugs. His appearance was fairly startling, even to me who had just gotten used to facing sharks. I withstood his eager sales pitch, and arrived in Brisbane carrying no new drugs. (Of course, I WAS carrying the morphine from Nepal in my first aid bag, but this I did not know about yet.)

In Brisbane the YHA hostel was full, so they sent me to another place, The Yellow Submarine, a slightly more hippyish place closer to the railway station. I groaned when I picked up a backpacker magazine there and discovered that Elle Macpherson's sister runs a whale safari operation in Airlie Beach, which I had just left. I hope she doesn't look like her sister at all.

I spent a day visiting with a friend from Norway, Tor-Andre, who studied at the Griffith University just south of the city. I took the local bus there, and it was the first time in my life I have taken a bus like that which actually drove faster than 100km/h, so I guess it was either some kind of express bus, or the driver must have met and done some business with my friend from the bus from Airlie Beach. Anyway, I arrived in one piece and was given a tour of the campus. It was summer, hence the university was a slow place. Almost no people, and half of them were Norwegians, it seemed. It was a very good opportunity to seriously catch up with my e-mailbox, so I spent a couple of hours doing so. Then Tor-Andre took me back to the city where he showed me some good record stores and let me hold very rare CDs from bands with names like Lull, Oombah and so on, in my hands. We had dinner at Sizzlers, where we sneered at all the Valentine's Day couples who were occupying the rest of the restaurant with their mushiness, and then we parted.

Since I was about to flee the country anyway, I seriously contemplated murdering someone that night. He was Chinese, and very close to the fattest one of those I have ever seen, at that. Horrible man. Snoring like there was no tomorrow, and, as I said, for him there almost wasn't. Instead of resorting to manslaughter, I formed a new society in my head. TASMANIA, I called it. Travelers Against Snoring Men And Noisemakers In Australia. Other people's snoring can trigger my imagination sometimes. I find it totally unacceptable when people who know they have an above average snore stay in dormitories. I've said it before and I say it again: There is only one crime that justifies death penalty. Enough said.

My last day in Australia was as Australian as it gets without drinking beer and having a barbeque. I went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and walked around with the animals there. It felt like the perfect thing to do. I sat there, between a group of kangaroos in the shadows from a group of eucalyptus trees, and made up my mind about this country/continent. Here's the lowdown:

• I liked the desert very much, it was how I hoped it would be. The east coast, however, I felt was very overpraised, not to say overpriced. There's nothing here you won't find better elsewhere, with a very few notable exceptions.
• The Great Barrier Reef was very good, but the visibility in the water in February is not very good.
• The major cities are very "American", with Melbourne standing out as a little bit different from the others.
• The aboriginals will ignore you, unless you take photos of them while they play the didgeridoo. Then they will make a canoe out of you.
• The backpackers in Australia won't ignore you, but sometimes you wish they would. A large part of the backpackers here go just here, and are not the kind of insightful, culturally interested people who have actually read a book, but if you're looking for someone to discuss beer with, you'll be fine in any hostel in Australia. The average age of the backpackers is extremely low compared to in Asia, and there are also a lot of Japanese and Korean backpackers, who do not speak or understand English and always look lost. Please help them, it is necessary.
• It's hard to be a traveler here, everything is organized for tourists only. This means there are lots of expensive options everywhere, you have to hunt down the low budget options, something which often requires quite the effort.
• Most of the culture you will see in Australia will be the kind you find in yoghurt.
• The country is blessed with a wide variety of scenery, the only thing the different places have in common is that you seldom can see or do anything for free, like you can in most other countries.
• Food is cheap, and you'll never be far away from a Big Mac.
• All in all, Australia scores 4 out of 6 stars from me.

That taken care of, I was ready for New Zealand.