Day 71 – 75 : Cairns – “Would you like some fries with your McFreeWifi?”
We emerge into the dry-heat of Cairns sometime in the evening, a little tired and tetchy from the long train ride up from the Whitsundays and eager to locate a bed. Any bed will do.
As we trundle along the pavements of Cairns’ streets, I immediately notice how low the city is. It makes sense, I suppose, after all, if I was living in a city parked about twenty miles from the sun, I’d hardly be building towering complexes to get even closer to the source of all the penetrating heat either.
The layout of Cairns is genius. You exit the train-station and you’re in Cairns Central, the city’s largest shopping centre. You walk through said shopping centre and you’re soon surrounded by some rough looking bars and dodgy restaurants with names like Fasta Pasta. And then a short walk leads you down to the esplanade and a man-made lagoon where people jump in and away from the heat at all hours of the day.
The activities of the previous few days and all the travelling has completely wiped us out, so we decide Cairns is pretty much going to be “dead time.” After the first night in a hostel which acted more like a waypoint than anything else, we move to the Traveller’s Oasis, a nice complex run by a Northern Irish woman. We spend our days walking the short distance over to the mall and meandering about checking out shops and a smorgasbord of culinary options.
Though we never actually buy anything at McDonalds, we do sit in the food court and munch on their free wifi. We drink coffee, eat muffins, sushi and healthy wraps, and generally become mall-rats for a few days. It’s cool inside the mega-complex, there’s food and caffeine and free internet. I might be crazy but, considering there really isn’t a great deal to do in Cairns at the best of times, I’m content to say that “Yes, I spent a shed-load of time in a shopping centre on my trip and I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
I walk into the site’s two gaming stores and talk bollocks with the staff. It’s always fun to play the “How much does this guy know?” game with the guys and gals who work in gaming outlets. It’s always a two-way test. Am I some schmuck who doesn’t know his Activision from his arsehole? And, just as important, are the clerks just shelf-stockers who don’t know that Vagrant Story is the greatest RPG to come out of Japan, not Final Fantasy?
I should note that I fully respect these people. After all, the vast majority of them are gamers; my brethren and compatriots. That said, they do talk an awful lot of twaddle at times. Of course, that’s their job. And, let’s face it, a large proportion of the people who find themselves trapped in the shiny confines of a gaming store haven’t one iota about what the hell is going on, and are there only to, somehow, get a product they have a vague idea exists for a loved-one who’s probably not old enough to play it in the first place.
The sales clerk opens with an enquiry, something about a pre-order for Modern Warfare 2. I fit the demographic: early thirties, male, partial to shooting people in the head whether they deserve it or not. So it’s hardly some telepathic parlour trick that he has started the ball rolling with this particular gambit.
My accent declares that I’m unlikely to be dropping any coin in the store today. I could have moved to Cairns of course, but I’m also sporting blotchy skin, a dishevelled look Geldolf would balk at, and a wardrobe choice that screams “I live out of a bag. Sometimes I don’t wear underwear, and not out of choice.”
After a few preliminary rounds of the knowledge game, the clerk lets his guard down a little. He can tell that a) I know a thing or two about the industry, b) I’m not a fanboy who wants to talk about how a particular game is better on one console rather than the other and c) I’ve been starved of gaming conversation over the previous few months. We talk nonsense for about half an hour, using the parlance of gaming only a designated few can understand.
Of course, spending nearly a week in a mall would be a sacrilegious so, toward the end of our stay in Cairns, we decide to partake of yet another boat trip.
This time, it’s a larger vessel with multiple decks, a real dining area and a crew that actually deliver the safety demonstration without making wise-cracks about drowning. Fancying a change, we’ve signed up for some scuba, both our PADI licences sitting snugly in our respective wallets ready to be pulled out and waved under the nose of any dive-master who cares. Closer to the date, however, and we realise that the snorkelling we’ve experienced so far has been more than enough, it’s probably overkill to have to encase ourselves in so much equipment to go a few extra metres, and, most importantly, we’re both sporting the remnants of sniffles picked up somewhere between Hervey Bay and Cairns; a particular malady dive masters warn against diving with. Considering the last time Sheila dived (in Iceland) with a cold she surfaced looking like Carrie at the prom from the eponymous movie, we decide to change at the last minute and tell our tour operator that snorkelling will be fine.
We board and, unable to contain myself, I notice a couple of the deck-hands are Japanese and, you guessed it, I pluck up the courage and launch into pigeon Nipponese with one of them, the ever helpful Yuta. He gives me that “Ohhh!!” look when he hears his native tongue and folds into a deep bow, telling me how splendid my Japanese is. Either that or where the life-jackets were. It could have been either. Throughout the excursion I throw snippets of Japanese at him which, I think, he finds hilarious. Of course, my Japanese is severely limited, and I think the most complex (and bizarre) thing I said to him was “Ja, sore wa tsumarakunai deshita yo.” (“Well, that definitely wasn’t boring!”) after exploring one of the more cavernous and beautiful coral locations.
The whole purpose of the trip is the aforementioned snorkelling. We zoom out from Cairns at a rate much faster than any of our previous open-sea voyages. It’s because of this excessive motion that I start to feel exceptionally queasy near the end of the journey. In fact, if we hadn’t had stopped at the first dive location when we did, I’m pretty sure Yuta would have been cursing my Japanese-butchering soul as he cleaned up all the free tea and muffins the crew had plied me with earlier.
We wiggle into Lyrca suits (this time they incur no charge) and explore the Great Barrier Reef. For me, this was the pinnacle of our diving experiences in Australia. Sure, Bali Hai was more intimate and the coral a lot closer to the surface, allowing for a more leisurely drift and view type deal, but here on the Great Barrier Reef the range of coral and fish species is almost innumerable.
We dive at three separate locations, each slightly different and populated by varying local inhabitants. On the third dive, Yuta dons fins and mask and takes us on a guided tour of the area. As we follow him, bashing into one another at times or accidently sticking a fin into someone’s face, he dives and explores, resurfacing often to point below and blurt out a few choice words before a wave disrupts his broken yet passable English.
Finally, on my fifth and final dive in Australia, I find Nemo. Or the elusive clown-fish, to give him his more accurate moniker. Well, if I’m being honest, it’s actually Yuta who actually finds him in among the swaying anemones. He’s tiny, and just when I think he must be a baby Nemo, his young appears next to him, ducking in and out of the watery fronds. No, Nemo is just a lot smaller than expected.
Other highlights on the underwater trip include spotting a giant green turtle. Swimming silently and slowly about five metres below the surface, we line up behind him and, at least temporarily, become part of his migratory pack. He’s missing a foot, a malady Yuta explains as quite likely the result of a shark attack. He seems nonplussed about the missing appendage, however, and quietly drifts with the currents, holding his breath for a lot longer than any human (bar David Blaine) could muster.
Interspersed between the mall runs and diving, we take in a couple of jogs down by the esplanade. It’s a pleasant area of the city and I can see why most of Cairns are uncontrollably drawn to the boardwalk and surrounding amenities. On one particular run, the skies darken and a downpour so thorough is unleashed that I’m literally spitting mouthfuls of water as I pound pavement and boardwalk alongside Cairns’ coastline.
We change hostels simply because Traveller’s Oasis is full up, moving up to Tropic Days, a sister hostel around the corner where we avail of the “deluxe” room. Which is basically a room with a TV and DVD player. Amenities we never use.
Cairns reminds me a lot of an outpost town. Off the beaten track and thousands of miles from the rest of civilisation, there’s a nomadic quality to the place, its inhabitants seemingly a bit more rough around the edges and wilder than the other Australians we meet on our journey. As we walk along the sun-drenched promenades, live bands blasting out rock music at two in the afternoon, we finally reach McDonald’s down at the water’s edge where “Johno”, a slightly touched but amenable fellow, knocks out Jimi Hendrix classics on various guitars. It’s all very laid-back, isolated and carefree.
In truth, there’s not a lot to see or do in Cairns other than to use the place as a stepping stone out onto the Reef. But it’s still a nice place to visit, to eat and drink, but also to hide behind the pretence of someday buying a Big Mac while you “steal” the free wifi.
Tags: Cairns, Great Barrier Reef, snorkelling
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