Australia: Not For Pansies
Australia makes me feel like I’m five again, which is a pretty awesome feeling, in one sense, and a not so great feeling in another. Here’s why it’s awesome: when you’re five, everything is obscenely magical, utterly fascinating and requires incessant questioning; the color of sky, the smell in the air, an ant on a leaf, the vine on a tree, a log on the ground; everything deserves a closer look, a poke, a prod, and now and again a taste, often with wrinkled nose.
Here’s why it’s not so great: sometimes, upon closer inspection, you realize that what you originally thought desperately needed your attention, turns out to be quite the opposite; such as when the vine actually IS a snake, or the log actually IS a crocodile. Fortunately neither of those have rang true for me, yet; although in my 5 year old imagination, and out of the corner of my eye, every vine is indeed a snake, and every log is indeed a croc. Needless to say, I’m a tad jumpy in Australia; like an overly caffeinated, strung out, bomb defuser with post traumatic stress disorder kind of jumpy
For instance, this one time I was vacuuming one of our host’s homes and came across an interesting looking, rather large, and dead, bug, which I deemed worthy of further inspection. I delicately picked it up by a corner of its body, and holding it at arm’s length walked it over to Aemon, our host’s 12 year old son. “Aemon, what kind of bug is this?” I naively asked, with which he replied wearing a deadpan expression, “That’s actually a microbat; you might want to let go of that.” This was followed up by his mom, Frances, with her own deadpan face, “Yes and if you see any fruit bats, they carry disease so leave those be.” Welcome to Australia, where you think it’s a dead bug, but it’s actually a disease addled bat.
And so although this weird, wild, wiggling world of wonder called Australia (or OZ, as some call it) makes me feel like Jack Skellington with the number of times I have pointed and asked, wide-eyed, “What’s THIS? What’s THIS!?!” it also scares the shite out of me. And it’s big. It’s big, and it’s scary, and sometimes I want my Mommy….. or the big, tall German, who will pretend he’s brushing a bit of debris out of my hair, and then afterward tell me it was actually a Huntsman that found its way onto my head, he just didn’t want to scare me. And yes, that actually happened, and this is a Huntsman: http://www.escapethecity.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/scraps/scrap-huntsman-spider-australia.jpg
Let me give you a little more insight as to why Australia scares me (albeit less and less each day), and should scare you, too. I just finished a great book by the wonderful travel writer, Bill Bryson, called In A Sunburned Country; it’s about his own travels, and tribulations, around Australia. On page six he says this, “It (OZ) has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures- the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish- are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous cone shell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It’s a tough place.”
Along the way I created a new slogan for Aussie license plates: AUSTRALIA: NOT FOR PANSIES.
But sometimes I’m not scared at all, and just in complete awe; like the day Dave and I took a long walk down a dirt road in the rainforest on a sunny day, which was lined on both sides with hibiscus plants, as tall as two of me, and fluttering in and between the bright, orange flowers were the most incredibly stunning butterflies I have ever seen (outside of a glass box) with wings shimmering in iridescent, electric blues and greens, and had names like the Ulysses and Bird Wing butterflies, and it was all so enchanting I couldn’t even believe it wasn’t a movie set, and I’d just stand and watch, slack jawed, like when I was five.
Or like when we were standing in the middle of another rainforest, but on a rainy day, in an orchard of exotic trees eating homemade ice cream made from the fruit of those trees, with weird names like Wattle Seed and Soursop, and the guide who drove us to get the ice cream pointed out into the orchard and said, “Look, there’s one.” And he meant a cassowary; an endangered, flightless bird, standing as tall as me, hopping up to grab a piece of fruit from a tree, and looked like a cross between an emu and one of Jim Henson’s muppets, with a bright blue head and neck, a long, red waddle dangling from it’s chin, a shock of fluorescent orange around its neck, and a golden crest topping its crown. I just stood there, again, in awe, watching this bird that looked more like something from Jurassic Park than it did a real, live animal standing in front of me.
It was one of six cassowary sightings we were fortunate enough to experience in our three week stay in the tropical rainforests of Queensland, Queensland being one of the five states of Australia. We spotted another one on a nature hike, through the dense rainforest foliage, among winding swaths of vines and branches and leaves and casks of fig trees entangled in more vines and branches and an abundance of life everywhere you looked; we were certain a pterodactyl could emerge at any moment,
Another cassowary was wandering around outside of our sleepout one morning at the Rainforest Hideaway lodge, a brilliantly designed accommodation built single-handed by our host, Rob, a sculptor and wood carver, who dotted the trails, ponds and porches with his sculptures, and furnished the establishment with his hand carved furniture. Our sleepout consisted of a very, small, raised room, a treehouse essentially, with two raised beds on either side, encased in netting on three sides, with a rope and slat-board bridge linking us back to the lodge, which was wide open and backed into the jungle of the Daintree Rainforest. Cassowary sightings were common there, as the lodge stood in the heart of the rainforest; which is why we saw, and heard, verdant wildlife; four foot long monitor lizards ambling around the driveway, scrub hens, bush turkeys, white tailed rats, huntsman spiders, golden orb spiders, snakes slithering into the woodpile, geckos, skinks, tree frogs, a catbird that sounds like a screaming cat, and my favorite, the laughing kookaburra that, in my opinion, is the king of the jungle scream; here, listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0ZbykXlg6Q At night, we would lay in the dark, Dave on his side, me on the other (wrapped entirely in a duvet sarcophagus) and just listen in disbelief at a soundtrack we’d only heard in movies before we bunked in a tropical rainforest.
The final three cassowary sightings occurred at the yoga sanctuary we spent nine days at, which had a spectacular view of the Coral Sea from the apex of the mountainous hill the sanctuary sat upon. If you were fortunate enough to stay in one of the eco-tents at The Sanctuary, as I was, every morning the sun rose at your toes, through one of the screened in walls, and looked as if the Sea were on fire with pink and red and yellow and orange flames. Each morning I would gently open my eyes, see the sunrise, smile with sweet satisfaction, and fall peacefully back to sleep. This was a place where you were alone on long, steep walkways to and from the main building, where we would have our meals or work in the kitchen, and where you could turn a corner and happen upon a cassowary, or easily step on one of the thirty or forty cane toads that littered the paths at night in the pitch dark, or, if you were lucky, see a python, or a rare, ring-tailed possum (which Dave did) or a kangaroo in the middle of the road on your way to swim at a waterfall with a cute German (which I did.)
Yet if only these scenic destinations and momentous occasions could be as innocent as they sound, because they aren’t. Australia is like that, though; it’s this wild rollercoaster of, “Oooooh, WOOOOW! Look at THAT! How beauti- Ooooooh…. my GOD what IS THAT!?!!!!”
For example, on our walk to the beach from The Sanctuary, we could see and hear and smell the beauty of the Sea in the distance. But, as we’d approach the entrance between the breezy, coconut palm trees, there was the most morbid, yellow caution sign you’ve ever seen, of a man entangled in either a giant squid or a box jellyfish, the latter which will kill you in just about twenty minutes if you’re unlucky enough to encounter one. Maybe you’ll be fortunate enough to avoid the box jelly, though, and only get stung by the iricongi that is literally the size of your pinky fingernail, and will cause you so much pain and agony, for WEEKS, you only wish it were a box jelly sting so that it had killed you. Oh, and then there’s the saltwater crocodiles; here’s a little story for you…..
Paul, our host at The Sanctuary, was taking a swim out to Sea one day (at the same beach we frequented during our stay) only to glance over and, lo and behold, greet a croc swimming right next to him. For some reason or another it bypassed Paul (he thinks it was because it was mating season, so it was looking for a mate, not Paul) and calmly, yet shocked with fear, he turned around and swam back to shore. No big whoop. Just fourteen feet of jaws and teeth so perfectly engineered for tearing flesh that it hasn’t needed to evolve in 200 million years. In life, you only get bit by a croc once; after that, game over man.
With that said, let me tell you something we’ve noticed about Aussies and all of this deadly creature business; from the moment you arrive in Oz, you are bombarded with information about what can and may kill you during your stay. From the Sydney airport, where inside the walls are covered from head to toe with pictures of underwater scenery, and pictures of creepy, sprawling spiders, and the text asks you to guess which creature is the deadliest from the lot of deadly creatures displayed (answer: the box jellyfish and the Sydney funnel web spider) to books provided by our hosts, books in gift shops and in small markets, and on posters in our host’s homes and in their garages, to the stories about swimming with saltwater crocs and bites by redback spiders that cause death by heart attack; it’s all fascinating stuff, until you consider that it’s not just in a book; in reality, it’s all around you.
Yet when we show the slightest bit of hesitancy when we’re asked to go into the tall grass behind the old, dead bathtub and rotting garbage bins and start pulling weeds (when we’re way the hell out in God’s country, hours from a hospital) or we show the slightest bit of fear when asked to get into the pond and start wading around and reaching in to collect debris from the bottom, or when we dare question as to whether there might be a snake or spider or man-eating leech in said weeds or pond, this is what we get, “You silly Americans and your crazy ideas about Australia! It’s fine! Just do it!” I’m not even exaggerating. I have the good Bill Bryson to back me up on this one, where, on page 151 he says, “Australians are very unfair this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that there’s nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it’s okay now because he’s off the life support machine and they’ve discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.” Thank you, Bill.
Aimee: “Paul, you’re sure it’s safe to go down to the beach?”
Paul: “Oh yeah, sure, it’s not a problem.”
Paul’s daughter, Eve: “One time Dad was swimming and a crocodile swam right up next to him!”
Paul also has a huge jellyfish laceration/scar across his chest.
Aimee, three feet up on a ladder: “Paul, what’s this spider you have here that looks like a scorpion and moves every time I do? Is it dangerous?”
Paul: “Oh, I don’t know; it’s kind of cute though, huh?”
Aimee: “Yeah. Cute. That’s the word I was looking for. I just wanna give it a cuddle.”
Next scene: scorpion spider, meet Aimee’s shoe.
And that cassowary? All six feet of it that looks like an adorable, funny faced muppet?? Hear this; on each of its feet it has a razor sharp spike, and when provoked, or whenever it feels like it, it will come running at you and kick you with BOTH feet (both spikes that is) and slice you wide open, spilling your guts all over the rainforest floor…..which is probably great fertilizer, so you’d really only be adding to the beauty.
But oh, those Ulysses butterflies…. they’ll just dazzle you…. and distract you, so that you don’t see the hill of electric ants you just stepped in…..
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