Team Taylor Tidings: Day 17

Today was a very full, very cool, and very fun day!

We got picked up from the hostel just before 8am by a tall lanky guy with short dreadlocks. He called himself Cousin Brad. He would take us on a tour of the Atherton Tablelands with the Uncle Brian’s Tour Company.

We hopped into a bus which carried about 20 people and we were introduced to everyone. We picked up a few more people on our way out and ended up with a completely full bus. There were people from China, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, France, England, and Australia. I think there were two or three other people from the United States too. So it was a very diverse bus, with most everyone in their twenties.

I guess I will start by saying that Cousin Brad was a little strange. First of all, he called the group ‘family’ all throughout the tour. “Well, family, I have a little something to tell you,” he would say. He also called our bus “Gus the Bus” and talked TO the bus and the bus “honked” back in reply. Yes, this really happened. Cousin Brad also talked quite a lot, telling stories and jokes. Sometimes he was funny, sometimes he was corny and over the top. So, on the one hand I enjoyed the tour because it was fun and different, definitely more silly than professional. On the other hand, I could have done without some of the bad jokes and corny games.

But on to the actual tour!

We started out driving to a place called Babinda, which supposedly is the wettest place in Australia. Ironically, it was incredibly sunny all day long (we seem to have brought very good weather with us) but Cousin Brad said they can get up to 20 feet of rain in a year. That seems pretty unbelievable because I have never heard of that much rain in one place but who knows, maybe it’s true.

Anyway, we passed through and went into a little park area with a creek in the rainforest. Now, one very interesting and very cool fact about this rainforest we are spending time in over the next few days, called Daintree National Forest, is that it is the oldest rainforest in the world, even older than the Amazon. They say it is so old because it survived the ice age.

So we went on a little walk through this area and came to a place in the creek with big boulders, called the Babinda Boulders. It was a cool little area but very dangerous to swim in with the quick current and flash floods that can happen there. Cousin Brad told an Aboriginal legend of a girl named Ulana who slept with a man from another tribe when she was betrothed to an elder in her own tribe. They got caught, the man was executed by his own tribe and Ulana was exiled by her tribe. So supposedly the creek comes from her tears of sorrow and she drowns young men who swim there, hoping they are her man. Cousin Brad said there have been something like 16 drownings in the past ten years and all of them have been men between the ages of 16 and 30. It could be Ulana or it could be that guys are just meat heads and don’t heed the signs!

But the Babinda Boulders were definitely not the highlight of the day. From there, we headed to a place called Josephine Falls. Below the falls is a natural waterslide. The water flows over a rock, tilted and smooth like a waterslide, maybe fifteen to twenty feet tall, and into a deep pool. There are bumps in the rock but the rock itself is not scratchy at all. So everything comes together to create this natural slide!

Well, I wasn’t sure if I would have the guts to do it. First of all, the water was pretty cold! But I got in and it was alright after a while. Second, I wasn’t sure how quickly I’d come down that slide. Well, Nick wanted to check it out so I was all for him experimenting. He was anticipating another Big Boy Slide experience, another quick shot down into the pool, but instead he went pretty slowly and smoothly. Okay so we are good on speed. But I was also worried that the slide would be scratchy and hurt your butt or your legs. Nick reported that the slide was plenty smooth. Alright, we are good to go!

So, I went down the slide and it was pretty fun. We both went quite a few times, getting pictures and video and having our own picture taken. Nick even went down head first on his back! What, where is all this daring coming from!? And at the top of the slide, you could see these beautiful falls behind you. It was all pretty neat and I was glad we were soaking up the experience. A lot of the tourists were just sitting on the rocks. Come on, guys, live it up!

It started getting a little crowded in that pool so we moved on. I did walk up a little trail to get a better view of the falls and that was neat. We have definitely had our fill of falls on this trip!

We participated in a very silly and very awkward game on the way to our next destination. Cousin Brad passed around a matchbox and we all grabbed a match and put it in our mouths with the stick sticking out. Then he passed out one of those hard mint lifesaver things and put it on one of the match sticks in someone’s mouth. That lifesaver had to be transferred from one person to the next, no hands.

Now this was pretty awkward because we had to put our faces right up to someone else’s in order to get the lifesaver from our stick to theirs. Nick got his lifesaver from a Chinese guy, passed it on to me, and I passed it on to an Aussie girl. That is probably the closest I have come to kissing a girl and I can’t say I was too excited about it, haha. It was fun to watch other people do it and was kind of a fun challenge. Nevertheless, it was just one of those parts of the tour I could have done without.

Another very strange part of the tour was when we went to see Gus the Bus’ girlfriend, some dairy truck or something. Cousin Brad said “she” wasn’t there so instead he offered to show us some wildlife in a tree nearby. He told us all to duck so we wouldn’t scare it off and then he packed up the bus to this tree. He told us to look up and tell him if we saw anything and we said ‘no.’ He said, “That’s because you’re looking the wrong way!” We all looked out the other side and there was this old lady in her front yard pulling colorful stuffed animals out of a bag and waving them around, like a brightly colored four foot long caterpillar. It was kind of cute but kind of random, like, how and why is this part of the tour?

Anyway, moving on.

We got to a little shop to eat lunch and it was such a good lunch! We had chicken and rice and these really good rolls and salad too. We sat at a table with two Aussies and talked about Aussie life and Aussie prices and compared them with the US. Nick even got up the gumption to admit we knew nothing about ANZAC day so they told us about a battle in WWI where the Aussies and New Zealanders lost terribly. So I guess it commemorates all fallen soldiers but remembers that day specifically too. Anyway, it was good conversation and we even had a little cake and ice cream afterward.

From there we went to Milla Milla Falls where some Herbal Essence commercials have been filmed. Now I thought the Josephine Falls water was cold but this was freezing!!! I took my time getting in and my teeth were chattering like crazy. But I had to do it! Nick was the first in everytime and I was inspired by his courage!

What was cool about this waterfall is that you could swim behind it. Nick showed bravery again and swam right through the falls, which were coming down from a pretty big drop! I tried to follow him through but the splashing was so rough that I couldn’t see anything! So I gave up on that idea and just swam around and then to the back.

It was really neat to look up and see the falls coming down from behind. I sat on the wet rocks there and was trying to get pictures and video but there was so much splashing and mist that I really couldn’t get a good shot without water on my lens. Oh well. We hung out there for just a little bit and I considered going through the falls again but thought better of it when I got closer. Just too much splashing and mist, I can’t keep my eyes open. How Nick did it, I don’t know.

Back near the shore, we got our picture taken doing a little hair flip in honor of Herbal Essence. Cousin Brad was taking all these pictures of the girls starting bent forward with their hair in the water and then flipping back so their hair and the water would swoosh up. Well, I got mine and then Nick joined me, haha.

Needless to say, I was happy to get out of that freezing pool!

We had one more swim after that, which was much more enjoyable. We actually swam inside a dead volcano which has since been filled with water to create a lake. It was a pretty big lake, very calm, and much warmer than our other swims that day. I really enjoyed the opportunity to just swim around and I even did some cannonballs off the dock there. I got a few people wet because of it. They were all impressed with my cannonball skills.

What I didn’t like was how deep it was to where I couldn’t see the bottom at all. I have always been nervous about swimming where I can’t see what is underneath me. So it made me a little nervous to dive under as much as I normally do.

We had one more destination after that – a platypus lookout. There was a wall with slats in it built by this creek. That way you could stand or sit behind the wall and look for the platypus through the slats without him knowing you’re there. A few steps from the wall was a bridge where you could also try to spot one.

Now we were all sitting behind this wall and I was feeling pretty impatient. I knew it was a rare thing to spot a platypus so I figured my chances were low and I was wasting my hopes. I grabbed some of the hot chocolate Cousin Brad was making and Nick and I headed over to the bridge. Cousin Brad stopped by to see if we’d spottef anything and we asked how often sitings happened. He said they are pretty rare, especially this time of year when a lot of them can live off stored fat and hang out in their burrows all day and all night.

Just then, a platypus popped up below us! Haha, talk about proving Cousin Brad wrong! We were so excited about it and felt so lucky. The platypus made his way up the river, away from the bridge, popping up every now and then, and everyone was able to see him once we got word out. I was able to get a few pictures and was feeling so happy that we saw one and so proud that we were the first ones to spot him.

Wow, we really couldn’t have topped off such a cool day in any better way than that. Cousin Brad said that only 2% of Australians have seen a platypus in the wild. The Aussies on the tour admitted it was their first time.

We went right around the corner to a hostel where we could pay for the tour and shower if we wanted. I had no shampoo or anything but I took the opportunity to heat up after a day swimming in cold waters. Wow, that shower was lovely, with lots of room to myself and plenty of heat. It felt so good to warm up. I turned it off with difficulty.

We sat in the lobby there and Cousin Brad brought out these didgeridoos. I was a little hesitant to try it but hey, I had passed around a lifesaver with my mouth with these people so there wasn’t any way to top that embarrassment. I tried blowing into it and it sounded terrible. Cousin Brad said I needed to relax my mouth more – I was kind of trying to blow it like a trumpet – so I worked it out and eventually got an okay sound coming out of it.

I thought that was pretty exciting but then Nick gave it a try and got a way better tone out of it than I did. The Aussies were saying the Aboriginies blow from the side of their mouths, which I tried but couldn’t do. Nick was able to do it, though. He missed his calling in life! He was definitely the one who could get the best sound, besides one girl from Holland who definitely got hers to sound like a didgeridoo with that twang in it. I was pretty proud of Nick, and proud of myself too for trying and somewhat succeeding. A lot of people didn’t try at all.

We were homeward bound after that and we sang songs on the way home. Yeah, it was more stories and jokes from Cousin Brad and more compulsory participation in silliness. A few of the tourists had had a beer at the hostel too so I guess that was enough to loosen up the vocal chords. We sang “Stand By Me,” “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” “Summer Lovin,” and a few others. At least we sang along with the music and weren’t required to sing a cappella. It was all good fun but I could tell Nick wasn’t so into it, haha.

Anyway, we got back around 8pm – Cousin Brad gave us hugs as we left - and we were not only tired but knew we had another big day coming up! But we did have laundry to do!

I went to ask about it at the front desk and it was so hectic there. This old lady works at the front and there was a younger guy working there too but the old lady basically took over everything that the guy was trying to do like a major control freak. So the guy would ask someone what they needed and they would start explaining what they wanted and the old lady would jump in, even as she was helping someone else, and either start telling the guy what to do and showing him how to do it or asking more questions from the person needing help. So she was wrapped up in four things at once with the guy standing back looking understandably frustrated. I wanted to strangle the lady and tell her to focus on one person at a time and let the guy do his job! I tried to give him an “I’m sorry, this must be frustrating” look.

So, anyway, it took forever just to learn how to do laundry and we were up until 11:30pm doing it! Oh well, at least we had clean clothes and were ready for our next adventure!

Pictures:

The Babinda Boulders!