We'll having written a post about every day since we got here... I've been slacking somewhat... so what's happened? I sense this might all be a but brief... but I'm sure that's fine for you having read all the other posts!
Well... the rainforest cablecar thing was cool. Although... it did stop for a prolonged period... I'm kinda glad that there was only John and I in the car when it did... the air was somewhat blue... with "What the fuck's going on?" "I'm not liking this swaying shit..." "It's a bloody long way down that!" Eventually it began to move again and we breathed a sign of relief.
At the top of the cable car thing, well I say top... up and along... (the whole trip is about 45 mins of cable carage) is the village of Kuranda - not exactly what you expect at the top of a rainforest... it's somewhat tourismified... first building we saw was an Irish Bar! That said it was alright wandering about and looking at all the shops full of tat.
We managed to get stung for $16 each and went to the Austrailia Venom Zoo (or something like that) [pun intended!]. It wasn't exactly worth the cash... John suggesting that if it was $16 cheaper it might have just been worth it. Looking at Australia's most dangerous snakes and spiders and stuff sleeping in a cage isn't exactly that exciting. There was no fury to be unleashed, that was for sure. I also decided that it wasn't worth $15 to have a photo of me taken with a python around my neck.
We wandered around for a bit waiting for our scenic train to take us back to Cairns. The train was indeed scenic... but taking photos didn't work that well... you see something scenic... prime your camera and then start passing a load of trees! Ah well. We remembered what the tour bus guy who'd picked us up from the hostel in the morning had told us... "Just to give you an advance warning... the best seats are on the left... that's where the best views are. That and there are no seats on the right." At least he tried :-)
When we got back we went to the conference venue and signed I in - I also checked to see if it was still possible to buy tickets to the conference dinner.... apperantly, yes it was. Basically, I'd not been fussed if it was in a hotel... but it turns out it was to be held outside on an island on the reef on a beach.
Then we went for food... another place where you get given a flashy vibrating thing... at least I know how to use these now :-) That said, I was instructed on their use... maybe Cairns is just better for that stuff that Sydney.
So... the next 3 days were taken up with conference... there's not much to tell you about it... other than my talk didn't go particularly well... didn't go amazingly badly I guess... but I'm still feeling a little embarassed!
Yesterday was conference meal time... so John and I headed off to the marina for the ferry - both a little worried we might be a little under dressed in jeans and a shirt. Luckily everybody elses idea of 'casual' sort of matched mine :-)
The 45 min ferry trip to the island took 1 hour. It was also rough. Not good. When the sea is rough, I feel rough also. I wasn't the only one, so that's ok. Quite a few people talked of how they found it a little nasaous - with one poor girl yarking over the side :-(
The idea of a meal on the beach in the dark with lanterns sounds really nice... in practice it's a bit of a bitch. Everytime you get up you have to rebed your chair into the sand to make it stable... and the lack of light also means you can't really see what on earth you are eating! John had been a little worried there would be too much shop talk around the table and he'd not know what was being talked about... by a stroke of luck we ended up sat on a table with people mainly being from "Industry". It was quite stimulating talk.
As the island is a way off the land... and there's not much light pollution in the area anyway... the sky was truly amazing. As much as I hate to say it... the southern sky kicks ass compared with the north. It was kinda strange... I'm so used to looking into the sky at home and looking at the stars, and to be fair not being an astonomy geek I only know a handful of star names and constellations. I just used to look at it as on the whole as random light specs in the sky... so it came as a suprise that the sky here looks totally different... that is I recognise the 'random' northern sky. I'm not sure if I've explained myself that well, but ah well...
I might have come up with the quote of the trip... we'd gone to the dessert table and asked what some cake was... "chocolate" came the reply... so we had some. When we got back and started to tuck in, it was clear that it wasn't chocolate cake, it was pecan cake... I'm making up that name... it had pecans in it... anyways.... so I exclaimed some words of advice... "If it's brown on the top it doesn't mean it's chocolate cake". "Wise words" according to my new found table mates.
Right, the ferry back wasn't that bad, although I'd better positioned myself on it for the return and tried very hard to wipe all bits of the boat out of my view so I was only looking at lights on the shore for the whole trip back.
The conference ended today at lunchtime, so in the afternoon we wandered around looking for tat. There was lots of it about... but I have real difficulty in buying any so we came back empty handed. We did however walk through a supermarket to play the game of "spot-the-difference". The major difference is that the Aussies colour their crisps totally oddly... Chicken is Green... Cheese and Onion is Yellow... Blue means Ready Salted... and Pink was BBQ... crazy.
And that's it for now I think.... turns out this post was longer than I thought it would be! Off to Brisbane tomorrow!