Cairns
Day 3 Wednesday, August 10
I got to the Brisbane domestic airport in plenty of time after an interesting conversational ride with the taxi driver. We covered everything from aboriginal affairs to the economy and back again. With enough time until my flight I decided to have some lunch. I ordered "crumbed" fish envisioning something like KFC's "popcorn" chicken. What I got instead was fish fillets with a bread crumb coating (burnt). Should know better than to eat from one of the airport fast food places!
Arrived here around 2:30 yesterday and felt as if I was walking into a blast furnace. They said it was 26 C but it felt more like 46 to me. What made it worse was the humidity. When I walked to do some shopping within minutes even my fingers were sweating and my shirt looked as if if I had just crawled up out of the ocean (maybe all of me looked that way for that matter). But I get ahead of myself.
No problems with the flight on Virgin Blue Air from Brisbane except that it was full and I had a mother and young (four maybe) daughter sitting in my row. The girl was in love with here own raspy, screeching voice and talked loudly non stop the entire two and a half hours. It was all I could do to read and sleeping was out of the question. Virgin Blue is definitely a "no frills" airline. even the water isn't free. $2.00 for a small bottle. Coffee is $3.00 and everything goes up from there.
As promised there was a car waiting to pick me up so as soon as I retrieved my luggage (that took a good fifteen minutes) we were off to the hotel. The short 4.5 km drive was interesting but the driver decided that there was too much traffic on the main street so took a back road. That meant I didn't get to see very much other than a variety of houses. Cairns is growing so rapidly with Europeans, Asians and Aussies form the "south" that there is a real housing and apartment shortage so there is construction going on everywhere.
Lucky for me there was no one else checking in when I arrived so it was smooth and easy. Until I got to my room that is. The first thing I did was to look out the windows for the "ocean view" that I was supposed to have. All I could see was the pool. Next I looked for an ash tray and then spotted the "no smoking sign". I immediately went back down to the front desk and was told that to see the ocean I had to go out on the balcony and look around the corner because my room was not an "ocean front" room. When I did look around the corner I could see water miles away but what I saw primarily was mud flats. At first I thought perhaps it was just low tide but it looks precisely the same this morning. As for the smoking she said I could smoke on the balcony. Even though it was her mistake to put me in a non smoking room she made no sign of being willing to change it. Once I tracked down a maid to get an ash tray I decided I would smoke inside if I felt like it. So far I have been pretty good about going out to the balcony.
Once I looked through all of the touristy and hotel information in the room I decided I should head out for a walk and to pick up some cigarettes because I hadn't found a place to buy them in Brisbane and for the next three days I will be touring form early morning to early evening and won't have time (or energy probably) for shopping. What struck me first was how INCREDIBLY touristy this part of Cairns is. The walk along the ocean is just one restaurant, tour company, bar, or souvenir type shop after another. People, people, people everywhere. A great number of Asians. I found a few things in stores that I had seen in Brisbane and noticed that, generally speaking, the prices here are 50% higher for the same thing. (At the gift shop in the Tjapukai park they were another 30-40% higher.) I ended up buying a hat, a shirt and my cigarettes. I need a hat for the fishing trip on Saturday and the shirt just appealed to me. As I said earlier I was dripping sweat from every pore on my body after I walked a few blocks. Adding to the misery was the fact that my back was very sore for some reason and as a result I had to sit down and rest every once in a while. Anyway I eventually got back to the hotel and had enough time to dry off a little before I had to leave for the evening's performance.
As I sat on the balcony drying off I noticed birds beginning to congregate in the trees at the edge of the property. Initially there were just a few coming in one at a time but then whole flocks began to arrive fighting for space on the choice branches. There were hundreds by the time the new arrivals dwindled. It was fascinating to watch. I don't know what kind of birds they were but they are obviously shore waders given their long skinny legs.
The bus arrived to pick me up more or less on time. I was beginning to get a little concerned because there was one other bus that was going to the same place but it was only for Japanese people. I have to say that so far the organization has been excellent even if the other things left somewhat to be desired. After stopping at a number of hotels and going around countless "round abouts" we finally arrived at the Tjapukai park. When I went to exchange my voucher for a ticket the woman was laughing because there another guest by the name of Brown and she thought it was quite funny to have Black and Brown there in the same night. I wouldn't have thought that it was all that unusual but I guess it was to her. She advised me that because they had a full house I would have to share my table with someone and asked if that was alright. As if I had a choice.
After about fifteen minutes we were herded into a large room in which the walls were covered with aboriginal art depicting the history of the people and their vision of creation. If there hadn't been so many people I would have loved to have spent more time there reading everything. As we entered that room everyone had to pick up two sticks to be used later in the performance. One might have thought that a bunch of adults (lots of kids too) would have just held on to the sticks until it was time to use them. No such luck. Almost everyone was walking around or standing around banging the sticks together constantly. It was so loud that I seriously debated leaving the room. eventually there was a bit of a sound and light show and a couple of large puppets told a little bit of history though the acoustics were bad and I couldn't understand much of what they were saying.
From there we were herded down to a field area where we stood in a circle around a "stone" stage where four performers were gathered. This is where the sticks came in. The leader of the troupe gave instructions and we had to follow them. Lots of noise and nothing that made any sense to me. Good for kids maybe but definitely not for me. They got a fire going after a bit and that lead to more singing, dancing and stick beating before we walked up to the big dining hall.
I guess the woman who got such a kick out of Black and Brown decided to take it to the extreme because I found myself sharing a table with Erin Brown, a social worker, from Sudbury who is touring around on her own before meeting up with her sister who lives in Sydney.
My disappointment with the evening deepened when I went up to the buffet. I had been led to believe that we would be having a lot of local foods. What we got instead was normal/usual stuff (pork, mashed potatoes, salad, etc.) with native names attached to them.
Things didn't get any better when the main stage show commenced. Once again it was more like a Vaudeville or burlesque show and had precious little to do with history or culture. I wasn't the only one who felt that way apparently because when I was talking to the bus driver she said that she has heard those comments before and suggested I write to them. I just might do that when I get back. It was decent enough entertainment if entertainment was what you were looking for. I wasn't. Unfortunately I had viewed last night as probably being the highlight of my whole trip. I can only hope that something comes along to replace it.