Build Caves, Combine Temples
Tuesday, June 28th, 2005The Atherton Tableland is a high land located at Australia’s wet tropics area, just south west of Cairns. We arrived here because we forgot to confirm a booking we have for a hostel in Cairns (part of our Whitsunday sailing package was a few hostels) and when we called them yesterday they were full - so we did a small turnabout to see this area. The weather is not so good - since yesterday it is all grey and the drizzle doesn’t stop. This was the main reason we arrived at Atherton city rather than looking at the natural reserve around (it is supposed to be full of lakes, craters, and nice things - but we’ll see this tomorrow, when the weather gets better).
In Atherton we went to two places: the cristal cave and the chinese temple. The cristal cave is actually man-made, and not a natural cave. It is located in the middle of the city, and it hosts the most beautiful mineral museum I’ve seen. They actually managed to make a mineral museum interesting and not boring after 5 minuts! The way to do it was to stuck all the minerals in an artificial cave, and upon entering the museum you get a helmet and a torch. You than enter the cave, and you are encouraged to touch and feel any mineral you find - and the cave is packed with precious stones, minerals of all colors, cristals (some of them fluorescentic), and fossils (real dinosaur eggs!). It is an excellent place, truely worth a visit. We spent over an hour just wandering in this cave, looking at Australia’s largest cristal ball, as well as rare minerals and gems from all over the world. Outside there was a shop and I was almost tempted to buy some stones, but they were far too expensive for me…
The chinese temple was an interesting site with very disappointing site-seeing. Chinese people got to Australia during the 19th century gold rush. After not finding gold they became merchants and villagers. They built small communities, most of them had disappeared by now. One such community existed in Atherton, and this is how the temple got here. It was a temple of extremely poor people, and it looks accordingly. The interesting part is that the people were so poor that they combined three religions into the same temple. Thus, it served believers of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism altogether. It was always open so anybody could just come and pray or talk to the spirit world or do whatever they liked. I just can’t imagine this kind of thing happening in the middle east - three major religions combining holy shrines… Instead we will probably eternally kill each other over Jerusalem. Besides this nice spot there is nothing to see there. The people were so poor that they built the temple from wood and painted bricks on it, because they didn’t have money for bricks; so statues, decorations, or all the golden things from the far east are out of question.
By the temple there was a small river which supposedly hosts Platypuses, and we went looking for them, but the elusive animal has once again escaped unnoticed. Maybe I’ll have to go to Papua to see them!
