Life in Cairns
I arrived here a little over a week ago, sorry I haven’t written anything, but I’ve been enjoying it here so much and I’ve made really wonderful freinds, the kind I’ve been waiting to make. I took a twelve hour bus to get here, it wasn’t a bad trip, I read a whole book and it was much better than I thought it was.
Sarah found a ride share so I was waiting for her to arrive at te ebus station to pick me up so that we could move into our new communal living, Digger Street. While i was waiting for Sarah this aboriginal man who was very drunk and hostel started to go around yelling, getting all in a hussel and using reallllllly strong language and even a bit violent. I had a bad feeling about him, but I wasn’t sure what to do. For the first time I was nervous that he might see my light skin and try to hurt me. I took a few steps back, leaving my stuff on the bench, which also made me nervous but I figure if he knocked that off, it was better than me. He was yelling at me the whole time, about being a white female and this and that, I wasn’t listening, I was treating him like a rabid dog… back away slowly, avoid eye contact.. he started to approach me and kept walking towards me as I was walking away. I was so scared that he would get violent because I saw him put his hands on the older black guy that was trying to calm him. And he obviously loathed white people.. I shouted..”will anyone help me here?!” so many people around and the only one to help me was a young guy. Which was nice ,but I saw a dad and mom walk by, (not with their kids) and another older man, and I thought surely they would intervene. A young guy, about my age did. The abbo backed off and the young guy helped me grab my bags and walked me down the street. That is teh first scary thing that has happened to me. I actually started to cry, but I got over it. I think that kind of thing is somewhat common around here. It’s not the first story that I’ve heard of such things. But now I have an amazing group of freinds and i have no worries.
The next day, sarah and I spent all morning, an exhaustingly hot morning, posting signs in all the backpacker spots stating we want a ride to the Daintree Forest. we came home, overheated and feeling defeated. We are sitting at the table when Levi, Louma, and James rock up. They are celebrating because James, Levi’s brother just moved here from Darwin (3000 k’s awaay) and jsut got here that day. We were supposed to go play volleyball with them, told them we’d meet them at the pool in twenty minutes..but can’t remeber..think we ate lunch with the community and arrived as they were leaving, so 20 minutes somehow became a running joke of sorts.. Apparently Sarah and I are “dominate” personalities. We heard they were planning a trip to the Daintree and also going out that night…sooo. we decided to become their friends and invited ourselves along! And a freindship was formed. awhhh. It took over an hour to get there because we spent forever around teh table drawing silly drawings and cracking jokes on eachother. We literally jsut met them, but it felt like being with old freinds.
The next day, we packed James’ car with camping gear because we were going to Innisfail to see their mom play at a blue’s festival. I rode on the back of Levi’s motorcycle, its over an hour away and a beautiful ride through banana feilds and mountains. It was the most beautiful day and riding a motorocyle around Australia is something that was high on my awesomeness list! Innisfail is a podunk tiny faming town..nothing there… The blues fest was awesome. Their mom, Kate, is a really cool woman, she plays drums and her freind plays harmonica and guitar. We danced and joked, and fire twirled the whole night and had a great time. With only a few hours of freindship between us, we had not stopped laughing since we met. And on top of that, we are all goofy people and just had banter the whole time.
Let’s see…Sunday we just hung out…laughed, played volleyball and swam…because on MOnday we were going to the DAINTREE RAINFOREST :)))) Levi and I rode the motorcycle again, and it was the most amazing ride I’ve ever been on. The rainforest literally cascades from the mountains directly into the most serene blue ocean I’ve ever seen. You look in front of you and you see mountain after mountain rolling into the sea on your right. On teh left are massive trees and rocks along the mountains. It was amazaing. I was smiling the whole time and didn’t even realize it. We get into the rainforest and the trees are just beautiful. Oh, and to make things even better, Levi is a professional tour guide through the Daintree. He knew all the best spots to camp. Day one: camping on the beach. we walk through cocnut trees, paper bark trees, eucalyptus trees to get to the water, where you see multiple jungle covered mountains falling into the ocean. the water is so calm and clear. We immediate
