Australian Adventure

A couple carpet pythons and an amethystine have wrapped up my luck since then. Although luck is a dubious term...how do you explain picking up a roadkill snake by the side of the road on the way to the lake, and then sitting by the side of the road exactly opposite that spot because of an overheated engine?

At the end of the month, Monika and I decided that it was about time we had an adventure on our day off, so after flipping around in Audrey's walking trails book, we found an entry for Mount Emerald. Audrey had never heard of it, so I went to the Omniscient Google Search in quest of information. There was practically nothing. Well, what better way to get an adventure than to go on a sketchy mountain that doesn't appear to exist?

Hiking some trail

We left early and between the two of us, managed to follow directions successfully and drive to this end-of-the-dirt road trail out past Tolga in the middle of nowhere. Layered with sunscreen, loaded with water, and laden with our backpacks, we proceeded to debate which of the three tracks was the correct starting point. I think we were right in our choice, but the dodgy thing was that there was some sort of 3.5km trek we had to do before we even got to the Mount Emerald footpath, involving a series of "t-intersections"... and no hardcore trail map. We followed the words in the book to the best of our ability, hiking up some brutally rocky 4WD hills, but with some spectacular views on the way. At higher elevations, with the strong wind blowing and the fog rolling away, we were presented with an astounding panorama of the Atherton Tablelands. No panoramic picture would ever do it justice.

Despite our constant searching for these ambiguous "T-intersections", we ended up just following the rocky track, never seeming to get any closer to Emerald, which we weren't sure was really Emerald anyway, seeing as we didn't really know where we were in the first place, and which we decided was just some mystery ghost mountain that probably swallowed anyone who tried to find the path. It was notable that the entire landscape on one side of the trail seem to have recently burned, littered with the eerie black charred stumps of resprouting cycads.

Although a better-known lookout on this trail was assertedly Bones Knob, we didn't know whether we actually climbed it. Assuming we did, and giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt, we turned around and hiked back to the van. Sweaty and tired, we drove to Atherton and sat in a coffee shop to rest our legs before taking a dip in Lake Eacham. Upon our return to the Centre we discovered that we had missed quite a bit of drama: a student had gone to the doctor for an ear infection, another for a stomach bug, and yet a third for taking a hit in the head with the ceiling fan.

Our third weekend in Cairns was quite relaxing, complete with swimming at the esplanade, sipping drinks at the brewery, and three hours of karaoke that left us quite hoarse. Lake Placid enchanted us, a cool retreat from the hot stuffy mugginess of the city. Basking in the cool water, I decided to swim across the lake since everyone told me there weren't any crocodiles...even though you'd think it would be perfect- the murky, slow moving water and overhanging vegetation. As I neared the opposite shore, smugly rejoicing in my achievement, I grabbed hold of a long, thin, slick cylindrical object underwater that felt pretty close in shape to what might be like a ...oh, maybe a crocodile snout perhaps. Freaking out, I thrashed back toward the other shore. As I swam desperately, I crashed into another (probably another log) long thin cylindrical object underwater. Now almost completely convinced that I was being tracked by a cohort of underwater crocodiles that were just herding me into the deeper waters of the middle of the lake, I took advantage of my adrenaline and swam as fast as I could for land. Sneaky logs.

Lake Placid

Ah, the coolness of the water...

The dongas

My room

It's always so refreshing to come back to the Centre after a day out for field lectures, for time in town, or for
the weekend in Cairns. Every time we drive in to the carpark, Monika and I heave a sigh of relief and mutter "We're home!" Indeed, it feels like home now: the familiar bumpiness of the access road; the Centre with its little offices, the cantankerous printer that makes everyone yell, especially Siggy who constantly threatens to have a holiday with a hammer; the super slow internet that makes me scream with frustration because all my windows crashed in the middle of my search for a paper. The shaded walk back from the Centre, littered with cane toads hopping across the path, pademelons, musky rat kangaroos and wallabies sent scampering down the hill in disturbance, and the little walkway to the dongas under the overhanging vegetation. The best part is throwing open the door to the dongas, kicking off your shoes, and walking out onto the back porch to throw yourself in the hammock and lazily gaze out onto the backyard lawn fringed by rainforest that creeps up the hill farther on. And watching the sunset from the porch, lesser sooty owls calling like falling bombs, the sky gradually darkening, until a whole mess of stars and galaxies peppers the black sky with a glittering maze of white beads and stardust.