Elad’s blog

Just a few general impressions from Australia thus far.

NO WORRIES. This is the common greeting here, which replaces “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “O.K.”, and any common form of speech. Regarding speech - they do have a tendency to swallow words, and they also have a most annoying habit, identifying me as an Israeli by my accent.

BEER. As a common sign here says, the Aussies only drink beers on days which end with the letter “Y”. In those days, however, they drink plenty of beer. Their best local beer, At least for me, is the “Carlton Draught”, which is not bitter.

GIRLS. Not all of them are blond, but many are. And those who aren’t - are also relatively bright and almost none have a dark skin ; entirely black hair is relatively rare.

ENGLAND. They adore it. Town names, culture habits, driving on the left side, even celebrating the queen’s birthday. Every manner here indicates that they really want to be british, although banished from Britain to a much better place.

ROADS. They have excellent roads here, but use extremely harsh steps against accidents. It starts with road signs (typical exmples: “Rest or R.I.P.”; “High Speed - Low I.Q.”), continues with frightening fees (I heard of a person who got 1600$ fee for driving at 150Km/h instead of 100Km/h on a highway) and goes all the way to their pubs. You can’t get into a pub (not buy a drink, just go inside) if you can’t prove you’re over 18; you can’t get in a hour before closing time; you are not allowed - by law - to drink alcohol on the street or in public places other then pubs. Everywhere there are signs saying “No more. It’s the Law.” with frightening do’s and don’t about alcohol.

MOON. The moon is upside down here. At the beginning of the month it starts to fill from left to right, and after the middle of the month it disappears at the same direction - opposite than in Israel!

CORIOLIS. Yes, all you physics students - he was right. When water goes down the sink on the southern hemisphere they do create a turbulence that is the other direction from the northern hemisphere.

KENGURU. My first meeting with a wild one was quite frightening and dangerous - I was driving the highway and it just jumped and crossed the road. I had to make an emergency stop to avoid hitting it. Beside this, it is a very nice animal - as are Koalas, Wombats, Platypuses and other members of Australia’s fauna.

PARTIES. Not what you think. Many Israelies think the east-coast is only crazy foam parties. At least in this season, the parties and general nightlife here is quite disappointing - maybe because of their steps against road accidents, and maybe just because it’s not the season.

ISRAELIES. Very disappointing. Most Israelies come here just for parties and not to actually see or feel Australia. Many many israelies smoke drugs here - both in big cities and along the way. I don’t really find my place among most Israelies here.

COOK. Widely admired here, did some really extensive naming, the closest thing they have here to a historical figure.

RUGBY. Australia’s national sports (nobody knows soccer), extremely violent, can be viewed in all the pubs and can make top news here.

Here’s a short astronomical issue. The fundamental reason our planet has four distinct seasons is that the axis in which Earth rotates about itself is at some 27 degrees to the plan on which Earth circles the sun. This bizarre celestial fact (I once tried to find out its reason, but failed. Anybody has any suggestions?) also has the nice geometrical outcome, that the sun can be viewed directly above the head (at 90 degrees precisely, a location usually termed Zenith) only at a relatively narrow strip around our planet’s equator. Conservely, this strip is called the “tropical” zone, with it’s southernmost boundary called “the Tropics of Capricorn” (a short historical remark: the name capricorn originates in the roman mithology, where - if I recall correctly - the god Pan used a capricorn to escape some cruel Titan. You are welcomed to look for the whole story and add it as a comment to this post. This is also the source for the name of the Capricorn star-group, usually regarded as part of the celestial Zodiac).

I crossed the Tropics of Capricorn on my way north two days ago, at a city called Rockhampton. They make here a big fuss about this Tropics thing. The Tropics of Capricorn is drawn as a line on some place at the city (guess at which latitude?) with signs saying “moderate zone” and “tropical zone” at its south and north faces. Actually, the entire region which I passed (where Lady Musgrave Island is located, and until Airly-Beach, where I am right now) is called “the Capricorn Coast”. Rockhampton is Australia’s cattle-growing capital, and we celebrated this fact with a nice, big, steak (four out of four pigs agree: eat more beef!). We also spent there a lovely afternoon at the botanic gardens, which also host a small zoo, where I got to feed Lorikeets - they just flew all over me, eating apples from a plate I was holding.

Yesterday we went a bit inland, to Eungala national park. This is a subtropical rainforest, typical to central Queensland. The forest is a very nice place, all criss-crossed with small rivers and waterfalls that generate natural pools of amazingly clear, flowing, water. It is a place of great and unspoiled natural beauty, which is homeland to the Platypus. We camped there yesterday, trying to find the shy animals, but they his too well - we just couldn’t see them. Nontheless, the area itself is worth a visit just for the views and the tranquility.

Today we arrived at Airlie-Beach, which is a coastal town near the Whitsunday islands. Tomorrow we’re going on a four-day sail to the Islands, just to see what’s in them.

Lady Musgrave was the wife of Queensland’s first governor. She was famous for her tea-parties, which - along with her husband - are probably the reason she got an island named after her.
Yesterday I went on a one-day two-dives cruise to Lady Musgrave Island, which is located some 60 k”m off the town of 1770 (some town. It contains exactly 138 houses and one liquer store.). This island is a representative island of the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef, which will accompany me from now throughout the East Coast. The island itself is a small coral cay (it takes some 20 minuts to circle it by foot), which hosts a forest of Pisonia trees and is surrounded by a large coral lagoon.
About a hundred years ago some politician, in hwat is one of the stupiddest actions I ever heard of, brought goats to the island and set them loose so “survivors of shipwrecks that arrive to the island will have something to eat”. The goats, of course, totally demolished the island, and it took the australians almost 70 years to get rid of them and let the island rebuild itself.
The island rebuilt a forest of Pisonias. The Pisonia is a large tree, somewhat similar to our Berry trees, which attracts plenty of sea birds to nest in. Actually, when the birds (specifically a bird called Noddy) build their nests, from leaves and bird-droppings, the leaves start to cover with a gluey material. Some birds (but not all) get glued, can’t go out, die in the tree, and then fall to the ground and fertilize it. A very smart tree!

The corals at Lady Musgrave are huge, but have much less colors then in Eilat. On my first dive we found a bunch of sea-turtles lying on a coral-bed (there must have been at least 10 giant turtles in this colony), and it was nice swimming with them. We also found one reef shark - a small white-tip shark, this time. It just kept escorting us for 10 minuts, it was really nice (don’t worry - it’s a harmless reef type, NOT the Giant White maneating Shark).
On the second dive my guide did the nastiest trick. We began our dive strait into a herd (is this the term? a large group of fish) of large Cod fish - they where around 45cm-50cm each. My guide gave them a few sardins he was hiding in his wetsuite, and after eating them they just escorted us the entire dive! We didn’t see big marine mammals or other exstraordinary things on that dive, but swimming inside all these cods for some 42 minuts was really nice.
The sailing to the island itself was also nice - we were escorted in part of the way by dolphins, and close to the island we saw several herds (I feel it’s wrong. What’s the correct word?) of flying-fish. Moreover, some marine birds where trying to feed on the flying fish, by catching them as they where flying. Right out of a Stevenson’s book.

Today we have this slightest problem - the australians celebrate the queen’s birthday (yes. The English queen. The one who sent them here.) so almost everything is closed. We’ll see what we can do.

In 24 May, 1770 Captain (at that time, still Leutennant) James Cook made a small stop in his exploration of Australia’s east coast. Hw went to the mainland and in the occasion put a flag there and declared it an english soil. After a short ceremony he came back to his ship, and continued his sailing north.
The austrailans marked this very event by building a small village on the exact landing point, and giving it the historical name “1770″. In digits. So when you look in the map there is this special coast town, the “town of 1770″, which is marked only as a number. I am camping in this town tonight, and tomorrow I am going to take a small sailing from it and have a couple of dives at Lady Musgrave Island, which is a corral cay at the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef.

In the way from Rainbow Beach to 1770 we passed two places worth to mention. First we went to Harvey-Bay, which is a coastal town just north of Rainbow. I went there to a small museum created by a guy who works as a shark hunter; most of the museum was dedicated to man-eating sharks and how much they are dangerous and how brave this guy is. There was a frozen giant white shark which was fished by this guy; and there were numerous films describing how he hunts the sharks, how dangerous they are, and so forth. One film claimed that sharks have no veins; their blood just runs in the extracellular matrix. I wander if it’s true, and if so - does it mean that they have no heart? If anybody knows or cares to find out, please comment me on this. In another film he hunted a shark, and then opened its stomach. It was fascinating: he found there food from the shark’s last five days, including a whole dolphin and a giant poor sea turtle (these sharks are really, really, big).

After the museum we didn’t find anything else to do in Harvey-Bay so we continued to our next destination - the famous city of Bundaberg. Famous, because it has a rum distillery (Bundaberg Rum) which is probably very famous (Uri, do you know anything about it?). Before visiting the distillery we looked for a place to sleep - there was none! It is high season for fruit-picking, and this city is packed with travellers who work illegally and earn tons of money (around 14$/hour). We ended up in a caravan park (actually, the second we checked, because the first one was full, in addition to all the hostels!). Thus I finally used my camping equiptment - it was wonderful. My tent is huge, I have this inflating bed, the bed-clothes and everything required. They also had showers and kitchen in this campsite, so it was really good. In fact, today we also stay in a campsite, just because yesterday was so good.

Today we visited the rum distillery. This is the center to which all the sugar-cane fields around send their product. They crush the canes into molasses, which they store in huge pools (5 meters deep, the smell can just drive you crazy) . Later they refine the room from it. They also send some very interesting products like Rumn-Cola, Rum-Ginger-Lime, and other stuff. The tour included two tasty glasses, and in fact we even bought some rum (it was really good) for later use in our four-days sailing of the Whitsunday islands scheduled to this Thursday. After this nice tour, we did some shopping and just headed to 1770, where we camp tonight. Tomorrow I have to wake up early for my Lady-Musgrave trip, so probably Roey and Alex - who don’t join me for the dives - will cook most of Shavuot Dinner by themselves.

Sand.
Sand is created when the soil is grounded by wind and rivers into tiny
particles. Then they are carried into the ocean, mingle there, and
arrive, being carried by the currents, to the seashores. From there
the sand is driven to the deserts, and forms huge dunes where almost
no vegetation grows, because of the poor soil and the harsh
environment - or so we were told as kids.
Fraser island stretches some 123 k”m, and is made entirely of sand
(The locals claim is hosts more sand than the Sahara desert). The only
thing is, that it is so packed with vegetation, including rainforests,
lakes, and an abundance of plant *species*, that I just don’t believe
anymore that the sand is a fruitless soil that needs constant help of
fertrilizers. Our nature conversation activists will have to make up a
new legend to explain to me why our sandy areas in Israel have so
little vegetation.

We arrived at Fraser from a small town called Rainbow-Beach, which
holds some colored sand cliffs (An ancient aboriginal legend says that
in this place *Yinigie*, the spirit god of the rainbow, fell down and
spread its colors after having died in a heavenly combat. The Dream
Serpent brought it back to life, but the cliffs remained full of
colors) - not very impressive, just cliffs of
black-brown-grey-red-blue-orange-yellow-green-white sandstone, pretty
much like in Israel’s MACHTESHIM. Before Rainbow we went to a small
park at Noosa, and so some Koalas in the wild (Cute bear-like
creatuers, living on Eucaliptuses an excellent life - 20 hours
sleeping, four hours eating).
At Rainbow we formed a group of nine - there were Dash and Sheena, a
cute couple from Canada; there was Marian from France; Hiroshi from
Japan; Alfredo from Spain; Thomas from Germany; and us three
Israelies. We got a 4WD Toyota Landcruiser, some camping equiptment
(tents, food, etc.), and headed to Fraser by Ferry.
As I mentioned above, the island is full of vegetation - totally not
what I expected from a sand island. There are no asfalt roads there,
and we drove on the beach and in forest routes - Yevgeny and Yosi
would absolutely love this three-day drive (it was entirely 4WD,
excelent that I had this army driving practice, and even better that
Dash happens to be a professional truck-driver, so we all felt very
secure having a pro with us).
After a small beach drive we headed through the forest to Lake McKenzy
- an amazing cristal-blue lake, surounded by white sands and the trees
just over them - a truely caribean atmosphere. We had a nice swim
there (the water whetre extremely cold) and continued driving the
sands. At the night we set out tents on the beach, had a fine dinner,
drank some of our beers (Marian drank, of course, wine), and had some
very nice time.

It is a common knowledge, I think, that the stars have colors. They
look white to us because of our poor sight, but using a binocular or a
small telescope it is evident that there are all colored in different
flavors - bluewish, reddish, orange and even yellow stars.
At Fraser moonless night I was able to see the colors of some bright
stars, Though I didn’t recognize any of them (it is the southern
hemisphere, you know…) I also got an excellent grab of the Milky
Way, which was very clear.

What also was very clear was the presence of Dingoes - Australia’s big
wild dogs, somewhat similar to Kna’anite dogs only with golden nice
fur, which went all around our camp (in the morning we even found
footprints just over our tents - they were sniffing us at night!)

It was a really nice day, one of the highlights of my travel thus far.

The second morning there was rain. It arrived at night, and remained
with us the entire they. Worse than that, I caught a cold (probably
the lake from the day before, it was really freezing) and didn’t feel
very well. We spent most of the day just driving in the island, and
having small walks when it was not raining - we saw some colored dunes
and cliffs, some more forests, an abvundant of bird-life, and of
course - the ship wreck.
The ship wreck was swept to the Fraser shore by a cyclone at 1935, and
was left there probably because it was too expensive to do anything
else with it. Nowadays it is slowly dissolving, eaten by the waves and
the wind, located just above the sealevel so at high tide the water
penetrate the ship skeleton and at low tide it is just stuck on the
beach. It is a very unique place, and looking at the beautifully
dissolving ship could raise some philosophical issues (if we hadn’t
been so busy taking photos of it).

Between our walks we got time to pay a visit to the info center. There
was a small shop there, and as I was not feeling very good I invited
myself a cup of tea. They offered me some milk in the tea, and when I
asked for a lemon they replied that there are no such “exotic fruits”
on the island. It was very funny, and when we came back I checked it -
indeed, both in the vegetable store and in the supermarket here
pineapples are cheaper than tomatoes!

Just before sunset we climbed a cliff there, and had a really good
look on the bay and the island. They promised we could see white
sharks on the bay, but we didn’t see any - probably they dove because
of the storm.
We made a camp at the hills, this time, and I admired Hiroshi’s way of
cooking (he made us an asian dinner - he kept washing the rice until
it was totally clean, and then he closed it in a pot and said when it
was ready only by its smell. Most impressive. Moreover, he has a way
of slicing vegetables so fast into the thiniest slices that I can only
envy and admire).
We camped this night at a declared campsite, so we had facilities -
water, toilets, etc. There were so many insects, spiders, mosquitoes
and other friends at the facilities, that it was a reall exploration
using them .

The third day we went to another freshwater lake, less impressive that
the first one, and than we had to return. Over all, Fraser is a real
beauty - don’t miss it when in Australia!

There is this nightclub in Brisbane, called ‘The Family’. It gained some prizes as being the best nightclub in previous years. It is really big - four floors, different kinds of music, full of things. It opens only at weekends, and even has a “dressing code” upon which it selects which people go inside. Roey and Alex talked about the ‘Family’s Party’ for three days.

So they were quite dissappointed when they wouldn’t let me in because I failed to meet their dressing code because of my … (Karen, hold still) … shoes.

Brisbane just didn’t fail until our very last moment there.

We went instead to a pub (’The Birdy Num-Num’) and spent there an hour or two. I knew how eager they were about this party, and so we split later (they didn’t want at the beginning, but I was having it my way) and I went to another place where there was a nice show - just some band with guitars and live music. They went to the Familiy, paid 12$ entrance, and found out that the place was totally empty. In fact, it was so bad that they returned for the Birdy-Num-Num for the rest of the night and kept talking about how bad (the exact term is Ma’Afan) this Family thing is for a full day. I, on the other hand, had a very pleasent evening.

A good thing that happened in Brisbane is that Roey bought a small guitar, and now he spends some time playing it while I drive the car, and we’ll take it for our sail later this week and he’ll give us guitar lessons.

So we arrived at Noosa. Noosa is a quiet beach-town, just north of Brisbane, at the Sunshine-Coast. The name is misleading, because it was pretty cloudy and there even was some drizzel, which turned into rain in the night (but today it is over, and there is sunshine once again). We arrived at Saturday just ready for the weekend parties.

A few years ago, Ofir tried to introduce me into nightclubs and parties. I didn’t like it because it was full of smoke, too loud, and too crouded. In Noosa I found a place (the Koala’s) where there was an excellent party, with absolutely no smoke at all. None was smoking, there was no smoke machines, and the air was - well - clean. I had a great time. Roey and Alex enjoyed it to a lesser extent, because they were very tired from the day before.

Today we concluded that the parties here are not what they expected. Instead, we are now going to a small natural reserve here at Noosa, where we hope to see Koalas in the wild. Later we will go to our next destination - the promising Fraser Island.

The last few days we just had bad luck on everything we did.
It all started the night before we left Surfers. Roey and Alex did some laundry, only to find out that the dryer didn’t work. In fact, they found out that almost every dryer in Surfers-Paradise doesn’t work, which costed them quite a few dollars to realize. For me this meant that we only left Surfers prety late, after spending some half a day on Surfers-Paradise waiting for their laundry.
Than we arrived at Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. As dull a city as it is big.
They were very anxious about the nightlife in Brisbane (they generally are more after parties than me), and we took a hostel very close to the city center so everything is walking distance. I wanted to do some fixes to the car, but the garage was full (they only accepted us today, after we booked in advance - very different than garages in Israel). At the night we went looking for the crazy Brisbane parties. We went and went, and then we continued looking for the parties. We must have past some 10 different night-clubs in two hours, just to make sure that there is not a single party we miss at Brisbane - in fact, there was no party at all in Brisbane. All the nightlife here is probably just in weekends, which we will find out tonight (we stayed for the car). In the meanwhile we are looking for a small guitar - Roey is playing for some years, and we think it will be really nice to have a guitar in our coming sailing days, and he will give us lessons! In any case, tomorrow we will head north and return to the beaches - the next destination is probably Noosa, and than we will be heading to Fraser Island.