Deep Thoughts

I got back from my Whitsunday sailing trip five days ago. 3 days of sailing, snorkeling, eating great food, and hanging out with cool people was definitely not my idea of a bad time. For many a backpacker, the Whitsunday islands are the highlight of their Australia experiences, but I have to say I think camping at Fraser Island was a more unique experience. The beaches on the Whitsunday islands are very beautiful, but NZ scenery has totally spoiled me and even the most beautiful beaches in Australia just can’t match it. Snorkeling on the reef, however, was pretty amazing, and it was pretty wild when I realized that the strange munching sound I heard underwater was actually the sound the enormous fish make as they nibble at the reef. The colors and patterns of the reef itself and the marine life inhabiting it are not to be believed. The most vivid purples and fluorescent greens and everything undulating with the current was so spectacular… I felt like a kid in a candy store. We had to wear stinger suits as it’s not quite the end of stinger season (the jellyfish here can easily kill a grown adult) so a few of us rocked em out by jumping off the boat in the most retarded positions we could muster.



At one point in the trip, a brief thunderstorm came through and left a full double rainbow in its wake. The rainbow hung around all the way through sunset and I’m pretty upset that I can’t show you what that looked like because left my card reader to my camera in Yepoon and can’t get the pictures onto my computer without it! I’ve actually managed to lose that, my sunglasses, my favorite black hoodie, and seemingly, my sanity all within the span of 3 days (and my little point and shoot is officially broken, so I’m pretty much useless).

Anyway, after the Whitsundays, I stayed in the area for one more night to recharge my batteries before boarding a bus to Townsville where I’d be getting my scuba diving certificate. I’ve spent the last week or so at Magnetic Island which is about a 20 minute ferry ride from Townsville working my butt off to get that certification. It was more labor intensive than I’d expected especially considering the fact that the course coincided with the monthly Full Moon Party (which was definitely not worth all the hype surrounding it). But I got through the exhausting 4-day course intact and I am now a certified diver. Scuba diving is definitely a much different experience than snorkeling. It’s very meditative in that you are keenly aware of every breath you take, and you feel much more a part of the underwater environment when you’re totally free to move around within it. There’s an incredible dive site here called the Yongala (a huge shipwreck) but all trips out to that point have been cancelled for the next week due to high winds so I’m a bit disappointed that I’ll be missing out on that. Hopefully I’ll be able to swing back down at some point to check it out.

So it’s almost the end of the line for my east coast leg of travel, and I’m feeling such a strange mix of emotions. Many of the friends I’ve made will be hanging out up in Cairns (the most northeasterly city) for a short while, so thankfully I’ll know a few people once I get up there, but I’ve had to say goodbye to so many people that I’ve grown very close to that it’s stating to become emotionally taxing. I sat on the beach at sunrise the other day and had myself a good cry as it hit me that in all likelihood, I won’t see those people again, at least not for a very long time. Along with the ups of traveling alone come the downs of knowing that once I settle in a new place, I’ll have to do the legwork all over again to keep making new friends. Once you get past the prerequisite barrage of questions about where you’re from, where you’ve been, what you do, etc, there’s rarely enough time to get much deeper before you have to go your separate ways, and when you do get deeper, it makes the constant stream of goodbyes that much more difficult.

This might be sacrilege to even write, but I’m also feeling very ready to work (never thought I’d speak those words)! After 5 months, I’ve definitely become oversaturated by beaches and small towns and need some measure of routine and hard labor so that I can start seeing it all with fresh eyes again. I’m also feeling like a change of scenery is in order… once I save up some money in my next location, I will definitely make it a point to see the outback and am becoming ever more interested in checking out SE Asia and South America. I’m craving more culture in general (there’s not much culture to speak of here on the east coast of OZ), and the more tales I hear of fellow travelers who have been to those locales just make my mouth water for those kinds of experiences. I’m feeling much more confident to take on trips like that now that I’ve seen that it’s not so hard to navigate the ins and outs of a new place.

I’ll be leaving Magnetic Island in 2 days and will be spending 3 days at another beach town to do some white water rafting before landing Cairns. If it’s as hard to get work there as it was in Byron By, I’ll be booking it over to Darwin ASAP where I know I’ll be able to get work pretty easily.

Well, that’s all for now folks…all there is to do at this point is go sleep on a hammock on the beach. Nap time!