A Birthday

Ah, I had a wicked Birthday! It happened to be our last day in the Daintree, so Tina had very kindly given us the day off and offered to drive us to and pick us up from a waterfall walk. This sounded just like Birthday material, so we readily agreed. 

However, on the way there we started to realise we may have bitten off more than we could chew when all of her sentences started with things like…

“In the case of an emergency…”, “No I wouldn’t take your cameras as you don’t want them to get wet…”, “So our contingency plan if one of you gets injured is…”, “Lots of my Wwoofers haven’t made it all the way…”, “We need to start early in case we need to send people in to rescue you…”, “When the water gets as high as your armpits…”

…you get the picture. We got scared.

So it turns out that this walk was a proper trek up a river. And by that I mean IN the river. I wore flipflops (of course), but this was a big mistake as we quickly realised this was not going to be an easy walk as it’s the end of rainy season and this river was HIGH. It took us 3 hours of wading, clambering, swimming (yes SWIMMING!) and climbing upriver to reach the waterfall, by which time I’d fallen over entirely about 4 times, stubbed my toe and knocked the end of it off on a rock, grazed my thigh, and barbed my entire hand on a ‘lawyer vine’ whilst plummeting into a plunge pool. Needless to say we were pretty wiped out by the time we got there but my god it was worth it. One of the most impressive waterfalls I’ve ever seen (and certainly one of the highest), and we didn’t pass a soul the entire walk which just served to enhance our feeling of achievement (and nerves). I actually whooped with joy when we finally turned a corner and caught our first glimpse of the waterfall.

So a 6 hour round trip later and we made it back to our pick up point. It must have been one of the most unbelievably beautiful walks I’ve ever been on. No photo evidence as we couldn’t take cameras, so I've stolen one off the internet (above) to give you an idea, Just picture small river engulfed by rainforest, a kind of Tarzan heaven with dangling vines, interspersed with aqua blue water holes, leading up to crazy rapids and giant boulders. Simply breath-taking. And all ours!

The only bad thing about my birthday was that I didn’t get to share it with this incredible lady. 

It’s always bitter sweet when I can’t be with her, and even more so when she’s on the other side of the world, and when I know she has to work two night shifts.

I have never ever known anyone with as much passion, motivation, dedication and compassion as my Clairey. She is an incredible doctor who blows me away with her ability to cope with such a physically and emotionally demanding job so spectacularly. I have often had a stressful day at work and taken a moment to think how insignificant my stress must be compared to the kind of pressure and stress and overwhelming responsibility she has to cope with on a day to day basis, and that’s even before I mention the crazy hours and mental shifts she has to endure.  

I know I’m not just being biased. Everyone I have ever met who has worked with her or been treated by her cannot sing her praises enough. Mum once popped in to see her at work and while she was there the mum of an ex-patient spotted her and made a bee-line for her, only to burst into tears and thank her profusely for all she had done. And I’m 98% sure this was not even a set-up ;)

The children of Bristol are lucky to have her watching over them, and I am privileged and lucky enough to call her my twin and best friend. Happiest of happy birthdays my gorgeous Clairey. 29 years worth of awesomeness all wrapped up in one big wonderful bundle of INCREDIBLE. 

(I'm the fat one who looks like a boy. Claire is the incredibly cute one who looks like an elf)

A trip to A & E!

We’re sat in a little coffee shop in a funny little backward town called Mossman, waiting until 12.30 so that we can be taken in the back of a Ute back up to Cow Bay (our current home) by a lovely albeit rather weird market stall owner who we met only 15 minutes ago. Let me backtrack.

Three days ago, Bro started feeling ill. He woke up with puffy eyes, and felt achy and genuinely pretty rough all over. It’s not like him to feel ill and he even tried working, but after half an hour he gave up and went to bed and didn’t get up all day. This didn’t worry us too much as he didn’t seem too bad, but we were slightly nervous as Tina our host is away for 4 days, we have no car, and no reception. Plus the nearest doctor is about 12km away-not the kind of cycle you want to do when you feel ill. By the afternoon of the second day of him still feeling crap, I went for a cycle and met a lovely lady by the beach. I told her about Bro and our conversation went something like this...

Lady: “Oh hell has he had mozzie bites?

Me: “Yes, loads!”

Lady: “Oh dear, he probably has Dengue Fever then. Or a tick, have you checked for ticks?!”

Me: “No!”

Lady: “Well we have ticks that can paralyse you. There’s loads of them round here. They could get anywhere…your ears, your crotch…[insert any body orifice here]…

Me: “Oh deary me”

Lady: “Or has he been walking around in bare feet/flipflops?..If so he’s probably stood in rat piss and has caught leptospirosis””

Me: “Leptospir-what?!….”

Lady: “Yup, nasty thing. My ex had it and it kept coming back year, after year. Simply horrible!”

So the long and short of this delightful and mind-easing dialogue was that the woman offered to follow me back in her car (me bombing it on my bike, quite dramatically in torrential rain with thoughts of tropical diseases and rat piss going through my head), and pick Bro up to take him to the doctors.

Unfortunately, the surgery was shut (it was 2.30 on a Friday!!), the out-of-hours number didn’t pick up, the emergency nurse was away for the weekend (is that even allowed?!), and we had no signal to call anyone. So the lady (we by now knew her as Rebecca) and her two kids drove us to a nearbye petrol station, where the manager took pity on us and let us use their phone to call the Ozzie equivalent of NHS Direct. After 15 mins going through his symptoms, Brodie was then advised to “Go straight to your nearest health centre within 4 hours” which as you can imagine scared the living daylights out of us. In addition, the nearest Health Centre was Mossman A & E which is about an hour drive away, including a ferry ride. And we don’t have a car. So thank God, Rebecca (rapidly turning into a saint!) said she would be heading that way later anyway, so she may as well go sooner and drop us off, so the five of us and their Teacup Chihuahua, Ruby, squeezed into her car again and off we went.

Mossman A & E was quite frankly a lovely experience. I think they were in need of something to do, so we were attended by 2 uber-friendly nurses and a rather dashing (Brodie’s words) Scottish Doctor. Brodie repeated his symptoms 3 times over, and they took bloods, and a urine sample. They concluded it didn’t appear to be anything serious, and definitely not Dengue Fever, but was likely to just be a virus he’s picked up somehow. Bloods come back in a week to check for Leptospirosis, but in the meantime he has antibiotics to knock it on the head if that’s the case. So we were sent of with 3 cheery waves, some anti-sickness drugs and two hydrolyte lollipops for Brodie (but alas not for his long-suffering girlfriend).

The problem was that we then had no way of getting back to Cow Bay, and nowhere to stay, so on the advice of the nurses, found accommodation at a local Hotel/Pub. This was super cheap (less than we’ve previously been spending on hostel beds), and when we entered the bar looking knackered, ill yet still decidedly touristy, the entire bar turned to stare at us. Still, it did the job and had air con for a poorly Brodie.

The issue is that we still have to get back to Cow Bay. We’d been told there is a daily shuttle, but after extensive searching this morning (the Tourist Information is shut as it’s Saturday!!!), and about 8 conversations with various locals, we established that there is no bus that goes that way (?!!!) and we’d have to hitch. As one local said to us, ‘It’s all very North Queensland’. And so it is.

However, we’ve lucked out by super charming a lady on a market stall, who took pity on us and dug out her friend Madeline from a different stall, who happens to live just down the road to where we’re staying. Hurrah! So that brings us up to date. What an adventure!

A day off for adventuring

Today we had a day off so Tina dropped us with our bikes about 14km from home and we spent the day working our way back ticking off everything we came across on our route.

We kicked off with a cycle along the beach and a coffee in a café overlooking the sea. We then went on a croc tour in the mangroves-fairly low key, and with a proper Bushman guide who’s taken the tour for the last 25 years, and reeled off a series of questionable facts throughout the boat trip! We were rewarded with two croc sightings and a couple of kingfishers!

After that we stopped off at an exhibition of entomology which was basically a hut with thousands of crusty old insect specimens. To most people (Claire!) this would be creepy, but to me this was heaven. Topped by the fact that it had live bird-eating spiders (could kill a baby and could be found in any Daintree wood-pile), giant stick insects, a butterfly breeding house and a creek, in which a little turtle was swimming around. To our joy the little turtle swam right up to us!

We then found the ‘Blue Pools’ that Tina recommended to us as a swimming spot. It was absolutely gorgeous-deep blue in colour and like being on the set of a Tarzan film!

Next stop was lunch in a café which doubled up as a wildlife centre. They had birds, snakes, lizards, a baby croc and kangaroos! Basically Brodie and Emma heaven! Still no sign of the infamous Cassowary though!

On our cycle home, we spotted a giant stick insect, two river snakes and a couple of turtles! This place is genuinely awesome!

Life in the Rainforest…

…Is very wet! And full of creepy crawlies. It’s living hell for an arachnophobe, but like a giant playground for me!

That said, within 24 hours of arriving we’d experienced…5 rainstorms, a cane toad, a Brown snake in the kitchen (hanging out in a drawer!...and yes they are poisonous!), getting stuck in a spider Web containing a spider as big as my hand, paddling our toes in croc-infested water, an unidentified spider by the bed, beetle larvae, ghekos landing on us all over the place, guanas (like a giant grumpy lizard who likes to steal our chicken eggs!) and more creepy crawlies than you can shake an entomology book at.

My favourite spot so far?!...we finally saw a praying mantis and she was a beaut!!! Photos to follow when we’re back in civilisation!

Arriving at the Daintree

Oh dear, I’ve been a bit shoddy the last week or so, so here’s a quick update on what we’ve been up to (sorry, still can't upload photos-sorry!).

From the Whitsundays we had an epic journey up to the Daintree. In a nutshell, this involved a taxi, then a nightbus, then a 5am arrival in Cairns, then a 6am shuttle, then a 7.30 bus to Port Douglas where we met our lovely host Tina. From here we had an hour and a half drive, including a ferry ride (the only route to her house), to finally reach Cow Bay in the Daintree rainforest. To say this is remote is an understatement.

So we set up in Tina’s lovely home-our accommodation is a small hut in the garden, with an ourdoor toilet/shower. The property is entirely off the grid (they don’t bring electricity this far up!) and everything is run on solar power, or backup generator. The water you drink and shower in is straight from the roof (and put through a britta filter to get rid of the ants!).

Our life here is pretty idyllic. We get up at 7ish and have brekkie over with Tina. We then work in the garden for 4 hours. This is pretty hardcore as it is super hot and humid, and we’re doing a lot of digging holes, digging up bushes, replanting etc etc which is pretty knackering. We feel pretty wiped out by lunchtime! It also rains at some point or other practically every day (it is the rainforest after all!), and on some days we have worked solidly for 4 hours in torrential tropical rain. It’s bloody satisfying when you finish though, and then Tina cooks us up an incredible lunch, sometimes with a glass of wine, and you know that’s it for the day! So can relax!

In the afternoons we are free to explore-sometimes we go on a walk, sometimes, take the bikes, and sometimes Tina drives us. And if it’s tipping it down, we all snuggle up in the living room and watch a film. Lush!

We killed a cane toad

So we just had one of the most horrific experiences of our lives. We killed a cane toad.

This sounds like a simple enough task, but for two people who have taken a year out of their normal lives to try to have a positive environmental impact, killing an animal is an abhorrent prospect. When you mess it up, it’s even harder to swallow.

So when we got home tonight to find a giant cane toad outside our door, having spent the whole of last night hearing what can only be described as Toadzilla mating calls outside our hut, having spent the last 3 days feeling bad that we let the other one we saw go, and having had a massive long rant about how ridiculously destructive they are to pretty much everything, we only really had one choice.

So we decked ourselves with every imaginable tool that we felt could do the trick and went to find the poor thing. To make it worse he just kind of sat there and stared at us with his horrible eyes and didn’t make any attempt to run away. Neither of us wanted to do the deed so we agreed on a team effort whereby I would pin him down with a spade (as mentioned this was totally unnecessary as he wasn't in any hurry, but it meant we didn’t have to look at his little face as we did the deed!), and bro would smack the spade with a heavy pole to squash him. Except it turns out cane toads are made of rubber and everything we tried just bounced off. When this didn’t work we tried the pole by itself, which simply opened up his poison glands and made him look rather grumpy. I won’t go into detail about what happened after this but it involved 4 different instruments and about 10 (no exaggeration) attempts from both of us to finish the tasl. The awful thing is we needed to kill it but neither of us had the guts to do it in a gruesome way so the poor thing just didn’t die. 

Bro's piccie of the first one we saw 

We eventually thought we’d done it, so miserably returned our tools to the porch with heavy hearts, but on walking back past the wretched thing saw it take another breath! So we had to repeat the whole bloomin saga again, and this time on about our fourth attempt we finally got him. It was bloody traumatic! Brodie described the whole thing as “Like one of those teen horror films where a group of gormless teenagers have to murder someone and don’t have a clue how to do it!”

There is no point to my story, I just want you to all take a moment to think about the poor cane toad and his ultimate sacrifice for the greater good of Australia. And maybe a moment to think of two animal lovers who were not up to the task. 

A rant about Cane Toads…

Cane Toads...

…Are the devil incarnate. I have known about these things for years but never met them before last week and they seriously suck ass.

The thing that bugs me is that this is such a bloody typical example of humans (sorry mum) fucking up once again because we just didn't think.

They are originally from South and Central America, and get along very happily over there. Back in the 30s farmers in Queensland, Australia were having huge issues with a cane beetle which were destroying their crops, so some bright spark suggested they brought in cane toads to eat the cane beetle. So without so much as a second thought on the matter they shipped over 102 toads and distributed them amongst a few farms in the Cairns area.

The problem is that cane toads don’t eat cane beetles or their larvae as intended. But they do eat practically everything else. They’re generalist feeders which basically means they aren’t fussy, so they eat almost anything they can swallow. This includes beetles, bees, ants, termites, or any living insects, but also can include pet food, carrion or small rodents. The significance of this is that they’re not like specialist feeders (such as koalas) who are restricted to live in only one environment. Instead they are free to migrate as they wish as long as there is a basic food source, and this is a huge contributor to their success in Australia. It also means they often out-compete other native feeders who share a similar habitat.  

In addition to this, they are practically indestructible. They have poison glands behind their ears which are toxic to most potential predators who are not familiar with this invasive species. Their tadpoles are also highly toxic which means they have very few predators, and to add insult to injury, they are also cannibalistic, in that they often eat tadpoles of other toads and frogs if found in the same environment. 

We were also told by a local the other day that apparently you can freeze cane toads for a short while, and then when defrosted they come back to life, however the biologist in me smells a rat with this one (or at least a rather stinky toad). That said, if you speak to any local Ozzie, apparently a good boot in the head or a swift smack of a spade on their head will do the trick.

All of this as you can imagine has significant ecological repercussions for native species….If they aren’t out-competing them for food or space, they’re poisoning them (fresh water crocs and turtles are among those affected in this way), if they aren’t poisoning them they’re eating their young…it’s having a severe effect on the biodiversity across Australia and there’s not much we can do about it as no strategy yet employed has been successful. Like I said, they suck.

Bro and I first saw cane toads in Noosa in the everglades…not live ones but we saw about 5 dead ones on the track leading away from the campsite. If there are 5 fresh dead ones, you can guess how many live ones there are sneaking around.

At the farmstay we were chatting to the owner who said that each evening at around dusk, 20-or-so hop past the farmhouse. Their trick is to spray Dettol on them which apparently is rather effective, but the issue is how to dispose of them without leaving them for other animals to eat.

And then finally, on our first evening in the Daintree we see our first live one in the headlights of the car. It was bloody huge!!

There are now over 2 million cane toads in Australia. 2 MILLION. That’s a lot.

I wrote a blog about all of the invasive species in NZ but never posted it as I felt a little preachy and moany, but I think it’s worth telling people about these things. I know there’s not much people can do from their homes in the UK (unless you want to book some long-haul flights and join in the cane toad bashing events they apparently have over here!), but we can definitely raise awareness over this kind of issue and collectively work together to avoid this kind of situation happening again. We are LOADS better at avoiding this kind of situation now and it is now a legal requirement in most countries that all species within the ecosystem/food web are considered in depth before any new species is intentionally introduced, but we’ve already messed this up too many times before (and I’m sure will do so again).  

If you want to read about more situations like this, have a google of some of these invasive species…

Possums in New Zealand

Nile perch in Lake Victoria

Burmese Python in Florida

(among many!!!)

Rant over! (Thanks for listening)

The Whitsundays

The one thing we wanted to tick off on the East Coast was the Whitsundays. Bro had been before and loved it, so I was super keen to see what all of the fuss was about and it didn’t disappoint!

We went on a two-day, two-night boat trip on the Condor, an ex-racing boat which could host 30 people. After rather worrying weather reports we totally lucked out with incredible weather, not a spot of rain, and to remind us even more how lucky we were, we even had cracking views of the nasty thunder storm that was rumbling on the mainland.

We’d been told to take our own alcohol, so this time we made sure we weren’t the only dry couple in the group by picking up two boxes of 4litre wine (yes, a little overkill admittedly) that cost eleven bucks each!! Our smugness at having remembered this was somewhat subdued by the fact that the cashier took one look at us and said something to the effect of…”you know this isn’t proper wine, right?! This is ‘Goon’….(pause)…it’s what all the young backpackers drink”.

Age snub aside though, it was an absolutely fab few days of sun, fun and frolics on the boat with what can only be described as an awesome and eclectic bunch of people (25 Europeans and two rather disgruntled looking Chinese to whom I made frequent attempts to befriend but who just smiled politely in return). We went to Whitehaven Beach, which is just magnificent, and we went snorkelling on the coral reef (a fringe coral of the Great Barrier Reef). It was awesome! After one immensely sweaty night in the bunks (no aircon and plastic mattresses!!) we ended up spending the second night sleeping on deck under the stars which was pretty bloody spectacular, and meant I got to enjoy a rather gentle but magical sunrise before anyone else had woken up. One of those moments I’ll think about when I’m back at work this time next year! 

Pretty bloody awesome. 

I milked a cow

Another item from my bucket list ticked off! Two in fact.

We decided to do a day trip to a Farmstay so got the bus to Rockhampton (a creepy town where fat tattooed cowboys seem to aggregate in over-sized Utes), which conveniently arrived at 2.25am(!!). This gave us an enjoyable 4 hours to kill in the early hours of the morning before we were to get picked up. So we trundled our bags into a nearby 24hour service station and piled ourselves and our belongings into one corner and took shifts snoozing/keeping an eye on the weird visitors that sidled in and out throughout the night. I definitely saw a different side of Australia in that place. 

Anyhoo, we finally got picked up in a minibus by Shane, a rather scarecrow-like character who I initially thought was a little creepy, but after an hour and a half in the van with him, realised he was quite an interesting man who was deceptively switched on, and had an interesting outlook on things (some I agreed with and some I very much didn’t). He told us all about his family, as he currently fosters 3 Aborigine children under the age of 5, and has ‘permanently fostered’ a 12 year old (he told us you’re not allowed to adopt in Australia unless you’re under the age of 35!!!...apparently a law from decades ago that hasn’t caught up with the times! Ridiculous!). He has lived in the area his whole life and has worked on the farmstay for the last 12 years.

Anyway, it turns out Shane would be our host for the day, so when we arrived at the farm we were given farm clothes and brekkie, and after a brief distraction where someone found a carpet python (a non-venomous constrictor) down the side of a cupboard which we of course all had to see, we were then sent off to meet the horses. Bro and I have both only ever been on a horse a couple of times, and apart from when I was really young my only experience on a horse was when Luce, Sar, Emily and I went on a budget holiday to Majorca and Sara and Emily convinced Lucy and I to tag along on an ‘intermediate-level’ horse ride which required the rider to know how to canter. This probably scarred me for life. So the two of us were a little apprehensive to say the least. Luckily we got to practice on a tin horse first, and the horses were so institutionalised that they practically did everything on autopilot anyway, so once we’d got over our initial fear, we actually had quite a fun 2 hours trotting around the huge farm on the back of Atlantic and Bundy our trusty steeds!

In the afternoon we went motorbiking (bucket list #1) which was quite frankly petrifying. However, all three of us (Bro, me and a random French man) were pretty scared so we started off slowly under Shane’s guidance and gradually picked it up, which meant we could then go off over the fields which was actually pretty fun too, once I’d finished stalling.

Then my favourite bit…we got to milk a cow (bucket list #2)!! I have always wanted to do this, and it was totally as fun as I thought it would be!! :) We looked ridiculous and got absolutely covered in milk but it was great fun. When I grow up I definitely want my own cow.

To top off a tiring, grubby, achy, sweaty, unique, but quite frankly awesome day we were recommended a super cheap and rather apt steak house for dinner by our hostel so we found ourselves eating one of the best steaks I’ve ever had for a measly $5 (that’s just over £2.50!!). Sides were a dollar each, so needless to say we had chips AND salad AND onion rings. YUM! 

Bobbing Along...

Canoeing in the Noosa Everglades

We signed up for a 2-day, 2-night camping/canoeing self-guided tour of the Noosa Everglades. What we thought would be a nice quiet trip made up of the two of us, a canoe, a tent and tuck bag ended up being a crazy kind of ‘I’m a Middle-Class Twenty-Something Get Me Out of Here!’ type scenario, complete with 19 people (of which Bro and I were two of only four people over the age of 24), no showers, snakes, remote campsite in the Australian Jungle, and meagre rations to distribute amongst us.

It also turned out that of everyone there, only 5 of us hadn’t brought alcohol, so we found ourselves sharing a canoe with a young German girl fresh out of Uni, most of our Eskys (cool boxes in Australian) full up with Goon (Ozzie alcohol, equivalent in quality and price to White Lightning), and off on a ‘team adventure’.

However, what started out as a potentially disastrous trip, ended up being a brilliant few days in the everglades. After an awesome speed boat ride through from Noosaville (passing, among other things, one of Richard Branson’s private Islands which would set you back a meagre $20,000 per night), we were deposited on a jetty and pushed off in canoes on our merry way to find our camp, without the precious maps we were promised (for our ‘self-guided tour’ remember). The lack of map resulted in 3 of the 8 canoes overshooting our camp and taking a 3 hour detour before arriving much to our concern and their annoyance.

Meanwhile the remaining 5 boats (of which we were one) arrived at the camp via canoe and promptly discovered that the “two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners” as promised was rather an ambitious statement. Our suggested breakfast was a mere bread and butter, and it became apparent rather early on that the bread had been forgotten. Lunch on day one consisted of 2 sausages each, and on day 2, consisted of a chewy bar and a pack of 2 minute noodles which “are a tasty snack when eaten dry!”. Finding ourselves without reception and in the middle of nowhere this was less than ideal, but luckily we managed to corner a tour guide who was passing on a nearbye trip and threaten him with 19 crap reviews, so we were promptly (about 6 hours later) delivered with some bread. Not the ‘bakery fresh’ we were promised, but enough for 3.5 slices per person. 1.75 slices of bread per day would have to make do for a breakfast set to fuel you for a day of hard canoeing and trekking!

Not all bad news though as everyone bonded over the lack of food, and it turns out we’d been thrown together with a rather lovely bunch of people, and they’d also already put up our tents and allocated them out. Luckily Bro and I were the only two with a tent to ourselves so were thankfully spared the dorm-style sleeping the others had to endure (and putting up with careless people leaving doors open to let mozzies/snakes/guanas/insert-scary-Australian-creatures in, like the others).

So we spent a marvellous two days in the company of lots of wonderful young (er?) people, swimming, canoeing, trekking, playing football/volleyball/cards and generally enjoying being in the wonderful outdoors. The water was incredible-a very dark orange/brown colour which had been stained by tannins from the tea trees, and resulted in a black appearance which when undisturbed made a perfect mirror! Very impressive to see on those rare moments when you could catch it without having a fellow canoeist mess it up. We were told it was safe to swim in (totally counter-intuitive to everything you’ve ever been told about Australia), and were told to ignore the Bull-shark warning signs which were up everywhere, so after a bit of coaxing, and some rather token safety strategies (making sure you were never the person furthest into the river and therefore ensuring you’re not eaten first), we happily went in the water.

On the middle day we canoed for an hour and a half up the river, where we tied up our boats then trekked to an incredible sand opening in the hillside which had views for miles and was like nothing else I’d ever seen! So weird to be walking through forest and suddenly it stops and you’re on a giant sand dune!

Overall it was a fab trip and after initially feeling a little old, I very quickly realised that I was in awe of these amazing young people who spoke incredible English and almost all had an incredibly mature and thoughtful approach to life. It reminded me why I love teaching sixth-formers.