MAY 13, 2007
Hope you all had a great Mum’s Day (as it is known here).
We have done the kinds of things you can do in this tropical setting. Let me document at least three.
First is the Great Barrier Reef, to which I was about to set sail when I last wrote. It is about 2 1/2 hours off the coast here, and for size and sheer beauty is like the Keys in name only. We did some snorkeling off a reef, one with an island, and saw lots of fishes and corals and…you name it. It is one of the areas known for its biodiversity. It is also, like much of Australia, a potential weathervane for climate change. The pull of tourism is balanced by the need to protect the coral, plus all the changes in climate and pollution, etc. Australia has a very fragile ecosystem, which Europeans, travel, and trade have challenged. To take one example, rabbits were introduced by an Englishman who wanted to shoot them for sport. They got away, and rabbits being rabbits, proliferated the countryside and drove away many of the marsupials, killed the grasses, etc.
Cairns being in the tropics also has rainforests nearby, and, of course, we had to see them. We took a bus ride into the mountains (about 350 meters high) and walked around a national park that had a rainforest. The forest contains many deadly animals (Australia has the most venomous snakes, the most venomous spiders, etc.), but fortunately we saw them only in a zoo. The guide told us that the rainfall has been below average for the last five years here, with the exception of an occasional cyclone, but everything is lush and green. We also went to a zoo, which had most of the indigenous animals (joeys are young marsupials, not just kangaroos, we learned) and they had koalas for picture taking, and a great croc show. There are actually two kinds of crocodiles in Australia. Freshwater do not eat people or dogs. Saltwater ones do, but I am sure I would not want to see either in the wild.
The third thing to do in Cairns is to visit an Aboriginal village. The original settlers (before British convicts in the 1780s) came from somewhere about 30,000 years ago. The Brits treated them pretty much the same way we treated Native Americans. The Aborigines did not become citizens until 1967 (there were some celebrations marking the 40th anniversary); we went to a village where the students were taught how to throw a boomerang and to play a diggeridoo.
Of course, there are Fred things to do here. I ran yesterday, and then went to the Coral Sea to do yoga. Picture it: yoga beneath a statue to the Aussies who died in the Great War (WWI for those of you younger than your Scoutmaster!), watch the sun come up over the Coral Sea, listening to Gilbert and Sullivan on my iPod! Not much better than that.
Well, off to breakie (as they call it down here), which includes the British delicacy of stewed tomatoes. Good thing the Brits had an Empire. Otherwise, they’d probably starve on fish n chips.