We appear to have left Tassie just in time and Tassie appears to be largely closed for the present by the volcanic ash from the Peruvian vocano - no flights in or out for nearly a week. That might well have resulted in my doing serious bodily harm. To myself or others.
But, we made it out successfully just ahead of the cloud and off to the tropical wonderland of Cairns, Queensland - well inside the tropics. A small version of Cancun in many ways: large high rise hotels and plenty of stuff for the rich and super-rich. Gotta travel a way for the beaches, though. And, if rumor is correct, about half the hotel rooms are "backpacker" hotels.
The backpacker label appears to be a rather specific lifestyle in OZ - even in Launceston, there were lots of backpacker hotels. Cairns is full of them - with many subspecialties: women only, hostels, cheap hotels, etc. They're mostly back from the beach a bit and in a district of cheap restaurants (though some were quite good), and plenty of alternate lifestyle shops. The backpackers apparently live the lifestyle long enough that many of them drift from job to job - and right now, Queensland is short on temporary jobs such as banana picking (trashed by the cyclone), cane cutting (mechanized), and tourism (down by the global economy, and by the extraordinarily strong Aussie dollar).
We spent 4 days on a small cruise boat (18 folks on a boat that normally holds 50, 1 Kiwi, 2 brits, and us 2 Yanks) out on the Great Barrier Reef. Loafing, and getting in a couple hours of snorkeling each day. Pretty stuff and enjoyable. The highlight seemed to be the giant clams, which are not only large, but quite colorful. Disappointed to not see any Octopus. But, the super highlight was having a whale (not very big - maybe 20 feet, Minke) swim by while snorkeling. I've seen (and petted) whales close up from my kayak, but seeing one under water was quite special.
As much fun as anything for me, was hanging out on the bridge (open bridge policy). Got to know the captain a bit and learned a bit about the navigation and weather issues. Quite fun was watching the "trainee", and the first mate, and the captain - and other sailing staff - interacting over the trainee issues of the boat: very much akin to medical residency training. The trainee is filling out logs of stuff that he's done - and the mate's evaluation forms of his performance, and picking the brains of the mate, and practicing tying knots and having the mate tear them apart (the knots, not the trainees), while the mate did all the formal calculations of the navigation and filled out the paperwork, and the captain sat somewhat aloof and shmoozed with the passengers (me, mostly), and occasionally critiqued, corrected, and taught the underlings. Cool electronics with depth meters, radars, GPS, and lots of different ways of displaying the data on a bunch of different screens. Great fun. I think I could sail it now.
Got a chance to get out mountain biking a couple days, including one day riding the system of trails used for the 1996 world championships. The hardest bit we just walked to and looked at (and when I later looked at a video from the world champs, nobody successfully rode it - though I heard that one guy made it down successfully on 1 of the 6 laps). A number of other sections that I didn't ride, though I think with some work I might get down them.
Spent one day hiking, and one day on a guided tour in the rain forest - got to see a cassowary on our unguided hike - quite a treat and rather rare. The guided hike was kinda a quirky guy that has his own private nature preserve and feeds the animals and birds a lot, so they get quite close (actually one bird tried to grab some food from inside my mouth - I think that's pretty close). Pretty knowledgeable and entertaining.
Now we're in Sydney doing city stuff - including a symphony orchestra concert. More later if anything interesting happens.
