Brisvegas again

I'm back at my Aunt's house in Brisbane...I was last here about 10 months ago with Vic...how beautifully symmetrical. Anyway, alot to update on...

First off, we were extremely thankful to find a buyer for the car. On saturday morning we bowed to inevitability and went around with new signs - this time advertising the car for $1400, down from a previous $1800 - and soon enough the calls started coming in. By the end of the day we'd sold the car - for $1200 - to a really nice English couple. They didn't mention the crack in the windscreen...so neither did we. I quashed my pangs of guilt with the thought that all's fair in love, war and second-hand car sales.

(Laura is sad about selling the car but I just look stupid)

After a couple of ecstatic nights out and a final day in town - the weather finally deigned to be sunny so we spent it by the lagoon (artificial beach) - we made a speedy exit from Cairns. I wasn't overly keen on the place. It's in a lovely tropical setting (the best day I had was when we left the city for Kuranda, a little village in nearby mountains and rainforest) and the reef is breathtaking.



The town itself does have some nice buildings with balconies and verandas galore, but the place is so permeated by tourism that it doesn't seem to have any identity beyond that. Add to that the proliferance of English/Irish/German/Canadian backpackers who've flown up from Sydney with the intention of getting wasted night and day...the clubs put on toad races, wet t-shirt contests and "Mr Backpacker" nights, and play insipid, soul-destroying commercial r'n'b, which gave me an attack of "the media is DESTROYING all advances made by feminism" depression. Not keen.

Anyway, Laura and I decided to part ways for our trip down the east coast - partly because we're working to slightly different timescales (her flight is on monday, mine thursday), partly because we both felt we needed more solo-travelling time, and partly because we've spent approximately 90% of our time together for about 5 months now and needed a break. We got on the coach together, and then I stopped in Townsville while she continued down the coast. (We'll be meeting in Sydney for a goodbye session, never fear).

Left to my own devices, then, I had a day and a night in Townsville, and another in a little place called Rainbow Beach, separated by a night on the coach (ouch, but it gave me some valuable reading time). I enjoyed the 3 days immensely - after travelling with the car for so long, it was nice to assert my independence again. The weather was glorious. Townsville - which we'd passed through on our way up the coast - is a lovely city very much in the tropical Australian model, charming but, I began to feel after a while, almost sinister in its perfection...the sea front is developed in a series of parks, skate ramps, swimming pools and copious quantities of children's playgrounds, with landscaped lawns stretching down to the well-patrolled beaches (netted for jellyfish, with vinegar dispensers provided in case of stings). Public barbeques abound along with toilets, showers and changing rooms, all eerily clean and well-kept...as a Dutch girl I was talking to commented, "Where's the graffiti?" In Europe these areas would be well and truly decorated with some urban art, the barbeque gas would have been set alight and the whole place would stink of piss. Are Australians just better at peeing tidily? Does the council clean up far, far more diligently? Or are there less disenchanted teenagers expressing pent up anger and hatred through vandalism? The whole population of cities like Townsville seems to be white and middle-class, to have young children and to take regular exercise...with maybe a couple of aborigines thrown in. We know where the asylum-seekers are - detained in camps in the desert. However, this doesn't explain the absence of all other ethnic groups and wage-brackets...I suppose they're all crammed into suburbs like Cronulla, Sydney.

My next stop, Rainbow Beach, is a tiny town - just a cluster of shops and hostels really - on the coast near to Fraser Island. I climbed off the coach, cramped and fed up, and ran straight into the sea, to be knocked about by the huge waves. I spent a beautiful, solitary day - I think I acheived self-actualization - eating, sleeping in the deserted dorm, reading, writing. At sunset I ventured out for a combined walk/run/explore and stumbled across the feature known as a "sand-blow", a sand cliff that must be upwards of 20 metres high, separating beach and rainforest. Sliding/running down it was immensely enjoyable. The rainbow sands of the name were a slight disappointment to me, I must admit: basically the sand comes in three colours: your typical Australian pale gold, black and white. Hardly justifies the "rainbow" moniker...I suppose it was wishful-thinking to expect green and blue sand. Damn.

My evening's reading was interrupted by some drunken Australians, one of which offered to marry me to get me a visa (I took his card; good to have a back-up plan if the career ladder doesn't work out so well back home) and then argued with me over the value or otherwise of aboriginal culture (According to this guy, it is the indigenous people who actually caused much Australian land to become desert. Oh, right - and I thought it was the immigrants with their mining, development and pollution who'd screwed up the ecosystem!) I did take his advice about getting up to watch the sunrise, however, but the cloudiness of the morning limited the experience somewhat. Then it was back on the coach and Aunty Fiona met me in Brisbane. Since then I've been luxuriating in being in a proper house!! with my own room!! a bathroom where no one will steal my shampoo! I can leave my ipod lying about wherever I like! It's like a dream.

And finally, a coming-home update...I've delayed my flight yet again, but just for a week - I'm now arriving home on the morning of the 10th. This is because I will be spending a week in the US!! Flying into Los Angeles, and then I hope taking a trip to San Fran as well. Uber-exciting...