Australia 5: Back on the Road - East Coast

Pete was kind enough to drop us off in Canberra where we picked up the Greyhound to Sydney. He even lined up a place for us to stay with his friends Aaron and Fiona! We stayed just across the bay from the Sydney Opera house and spent 2 days wandering around on foot. We saw the opera house, the bridge, the botanical gardens. All were beautiful, especially the gardens next to the opera house. They sprawl for miles and have amazing views. One of the interesting things in the garden are the "grey headed flying foxes" (fruit bats). There are thousands. It was a nice city, but we didn't spend much time there since we had promised Lazar we would meet him up north in a few days.

We caught another Greyhound bus (we probably Greyhounded for close to 4,000km and spent many nights trying to sleep on red eye buses since it was cheaper than paying for a hostel at night) and headed to Port Macquarie. There, we visited a koala hospital and saw many of the furry little guys. We hit the beach and went swimming in the ocean for the first time in a while. As we headed north it was becoming noticably warmer despite winter getting closer in the southern hemisphere. The most depressing thing about stopping in Port Macquarie is that this is where Nath's camera stopped working. That's right folks... no more cameras for us! :( We tried to get it fixed, but it was not only too expensive but a logistical nightmare. At least we didn't lose the pictures this time (not that we've uploaded them yet since the camera was broken).

Next Greyhound stop was Brisbane! Lazar picked us up at the bus station, miraculously finding us on the 4th or 5th floor of the enormous building, and we headed to the car. As we walked to the car, I noticed his wasn't in the parking lot in front of us. I still laugh at when I asked what happened and he just calmly replied, "There have been events." Apparently, his car overheated, blew a hose, and lost any power uphill. Luckily, he had met a fellow climber at Frog Buttress where we were headed and she had let him borrow her car for a few hours to pick us up! Yeah climbing community! We arrived at Frog Buttress, set up camp quickly, and headed out to bag a few routes. We were both rusty with all the time taken off from climbing. The next week was spent climbing dreamy splitter cracks, and heading into town for food, swimming laps on rest days, and attempting to repair the car. The car was repaired for a reasonable amount of money. The busted hose was replaced and some liquid to stop radiator leaks was applied and all seemed to be running better. Lazar and Nath were both leading well, and Nath managed to onsight another 22! It was a beautiful 35-40m crack in a corner that required much stemming and technique. I worked on onsighting the 23s, and on my last day redpointed a beautiful 24 that was supposed to be the best route there. I would have tried climbing harder, but the harder routes were unimaginably thin. In route descriptions there would be mentions of 6 black aliens and 2 blue. Lazar had climbed with people with ballnuts, etc. Well, I just didn't have enough of that size gear. For the 24 I had just enough small cams with Lazar and my rack combined and it was still scary squeezing 00 TCUs into flares, or two lobes of a cam since that was as deep as it went. Luckily, the climbing was relatively secure (but hard) until the top where the gear got a little better and the route harder. Anyways, we had fun, got rained on (which was the theme of our climbing in mainland Australia), played darts in the campground, and hit the bar when it was too cold at night. Nath and I were both sad when Lazar dropped us off at the bus station. He is a great guy, really positive, super funny, and we both hope to see him again. Lazar, if you read this, you really should come to the states to do a bigwall! ;)

Another Greyhound bus brought us to the famous Airlie Beach, the adventure center for the famous Whitsunday islands. They are a group of islands out near the Great Barrier Reef that are just beautiful. Nath bought one of those disposable cameras that can go underwater, we booked a 3 day 2 night trip on a sailboat and we headed out! We visited the astounding Whitehaven Beach, probably one of the most beautiful beaches on earth. Our tour guide told us that the sand was so pure, it was what the lens of the Hubble Telescope was made out of. We slept and went scuba diving near Turtle Island, but the visibility wasn't too good (quite horrible actually). However, next we headed out to the Great Barrier Reef for our first time! Nath and I went scuba diving and snorkeled. The water was amazingly clear. The coral created enormous reefs that rose up out of the ocean for a few hours since we were there for an abnormally low lowtide. This protected us from waves, and we spent the night sleeping well far out in the ocean surrounded by the GBR. We woke the next day to more snorkeling before the long trip home. Unfortunately, although we were on a sailboat, the winds were low and we were under motor almost the entire time. We did get about an hour of sailing on the way home when the winds picked up which was great. We would have been more disappointed by the small amout of sailing, but lower winds mean better visibility in the water so we were glad to have an excellent opportunity to see the reef and it's beauty!

We returned to Airlie Beach with enough time to grab food, some new used books, and jump another overnight Greyhound to Cairns. Cairns is the main place to go the GBR. The GBR is closer to the land up north, and the water is warmer. We only stayed one night in Cairns before heading north to Port Douglas. We heard that although it was more expensive, the reef was even closer and the the diving better since fewer people were impacting the reef up there. We spent another day scuba diving and snorkelling on a day boat trip and that was awesome. I saw a cuttlefish (like a squid), a black tip reef shark, and we found a giant clam that lived up to it's name! We spent another day doing a tour of Cape Tribulationon which we saw giant salt water crocodiles in a zoo-like setting and in the wild. Also, we walked in the jungle learning what to avoid in Malaysia on Tioman island (more on that in a later post).

By the way, Australia is teeming with stuff that will kill you. Maybe that's why there are so few people per square mile? There are two types of spiders with fatal bites, many poisonous snakes (some are the most poisonous on earth), salt water crocodiles which make any waterway salt or fresh a potential hazard since they can and will eat people if given the opportunity, in the north the box jellyfish and the irukandji jellyfish will make you want to die if they don't kill you, and the great white shark patrols southern Australia. Even the freaking platypus is poisonous! No, I'm not joking, look it up...

After Cairns, a short flight brought us to Darwin. At this point we were back in high temperature/humidity, it was preparing us for SE Asia again. We rented a car and headed south to Litchfield National Park where there are beautiful waterfalls and rivers to swim in, as well as the bizarre termite mounds. The termites build these enormous mounds over 6m in height that are engineering marvels keeping the dry from the wet season and controlling the temperature by orienting them along the N-S axis. Quite fascinating to see and read about the little guys. There are soldiers that spit acid from funnel shaped mouths. We saw them while they were doing some outside repairs! We spent two days in Lichfield since the swimming was so nice, and I managed to tear it up in one of the pools doing many deep water soloing routes. It was awesome, and wet/barefoot I'd say some of the routes were up near the 12a range. I was really pushing my limits and loving it. Some of the lines were probably first ascents, but who knows. Seems like most accessible stuff has been climbed these days....

When we got back to Darwin, we took care of some odds and ends like getting the photos processed from the disposable camera. They were of expected quality, unfortunately. Don't buy those things, ever! When all was ready, we headed to the airport. We were off to Singapore, back to SE Asia!