Cairns, Australia

We arrived in Sydney in plenty of time for my flight, which was a concern, so I ended up sleeping on the boat one additional night. Mike the engineer had booked a flight at about the same time as me so we shared a taxi to the airport. The flight was good. I had a couch surfing host arranged in Cairns but not a way to get from the airport to his place. I arrived at the airport and tried to find a way into town because that was close enough to walk from to the host's place while the airport was not. I got on some shuttle bus that would take me into town and figured out where I should get off that would be the closest to his place. Once I got off the shuttle I stopped in the nearest business to get my bearings. The business that I stopped at? A drug rehabilitation center. The long, dark haired girl with an unusual face, and looked like she has done a lot of drugs in her life gave me some excellent directions with the help of the phone book. I walked and made my way to my host's place and into my first negative couch surfing experience.

Right away I could tell my host, David, was a little off. I did not think much of it at first because, first of all, lots of people are weird, and second, there is a stereotype of the east coast of Australia that the more north you go, the weirder people get, and cairns is the northern-most town in the east coast (there is more north, and plenty to see, just no more towns). He tells me right away that we went to the airport to try to pick me up, which was nice of him, however, we never arranged this and neither of us knew what the other person looked like so the odds of it working out were slim to nil. Still, it was a nice gesture. Then he went to get himself another beer and handed me one as well. It was early in the afternoon but I did not have plans for the rest of the day and did not want to be rude so I accepted (plus it was a beer). It was clear the beer he had just finished was not his first. We started talking a bit and he just got more and more strange but still a nice enough guy. Should not be a problem, I thought, I have dealt with plenty of eccentricities in my life and during my travels.

His home is what is called a "Queenslander" or a "Classic Queenslander," Queensland being the state of Australia that Cairns is in. This homes are elevated off the ground so that what could be the second floor is the first, and almost always, only floor. The area below this is covered by the home and often used for storage, kind of like how Americans use a garage. This was/is done because, apparently, flooding is common enough to make this design logical, though I have doubts this is true nowadays. Inside, his home is pretty cool and this makes him less strange but confuses me because, after all, he clearly is strange and the inside of his home should be likewise. He has an English couple staying there as well except they are not couch surfing, they are paying rent. Omar, is in his late twenties and a fitness instructor. I have seen only a few people in my lifetime that are more fit than him and, according to him, he is far from his peak fitness level. His girlfriend, whose name I have forgotten and barely knew at the time, must have been in her forties and, well, was not a fitness instructor. I immediately assumed he was her instructor and the rest happened. I am confident I am right but never got confirmation. Omar was a pretty cool guy, softspoken, confident, seemed smart, and interesting, with plenty of stories. His girl friend was none of those things.

I was in Cairns to put my newly minted Advanced diving skills to work for me in the Great Barrier Reef. Before finding which tour I was going to hire I spent a day exploring Cairns, which is a medicore place. Its main draw, other than the Reef, is that it serves as a hotbed of adventure activities. Normally I am all about these but I decided to spread them out a bit and just do the Reef while here. One thing that put me off is that every business in Cairns seems catered to tourists. This can be helpful but it gives me the feeling that there is nothing real about the place; that it is just fabricated to serve tourists and has nothing to offer itself. I am confident this is not true because Cairns is the fastest growing town on the east coast and, I think, in Australia, and all of that growth cannot just be tourists so there has to be some full-time residents, but it is still the impression I got.

As you would probably guess, the diving in the Reef is not cheap. Because of this I planned on doing a simple day trip, which would include three dives. After a bit more research I found that if I did a live aboard for 2 days/1 night I could get six dives, in a better location, and at a comparably good value. The day trips were about AU$250 and the live aboards were AU$360, or, on a per dive basis, AU$83.33/dive and AU$60/dive. AU$60 for a dive, almost any where in the world, is a pretty good deal, not to mention it also included the cost of my meals while on the boat and was not just anywhere but in the Great Barrier Reef. In addition, I calculated how much I had spent to date in Australia and compared it to my budget and I was doing quite well in that department. All of these factors added up to me electing to the 2 day/1 night live aboard trip. The trip was set to depart in a couple days.

Once I decided this, I asked my host if was OK if I left some stuff at his place while aboard and came back to surf one more night before heading off. He said it was OK as long as I was OK with sleeping in a bunk bed outside, underneth his home in the covered area, because he was expecting another couch surfer, a "Spanish bird," as he always called her, who was pregnant, the following day. Of course that is fine by me. The next day, before the Spanish Bird was due to arrive I went to visit the Botanical Gardens nearly by. They were nice and made for a good few hours of walking around. Once I returned, after the Spanish Bird was supposed to arrive, I asked if she had turned up. David was visibly agitated, even more so than usual. He told me he told her to leave (he phrased it a little differently) and that she was not welcome to stay there. I asked if it was OK that I still stay there and he said yes. I could not get exactly why he did this out of him but for the next several hours he was constantly cursing couch surfers and after a certain point I had had enough of it and decided to leave. I packed up my stuff and told him that I felt like I was making him uncomfortable, uneasy, and prying in his space. He offered no objection to me leaving simply saying, "OK" and then going about his business. Omar watched the interaction and said afterward that it was very strange and kind of rude of David to act as he did. Omar was also concerned about me and what I would do but I had a plan.

While all this was going on I had been in contact with another host in Cairns, Frank, a 52-year-old, gay, HIV positive, nudist, whose couch I had requested but the dates did not work out. We had arranged to meet for a drink that night if I was in town when he would be eating. I had no real intention of going but it turned out to come in handy. With my stuff I left David's and started walking into town to try to find the restuarant Frank was dining at. After some trouble, I finally located it, "it" being a gay-only backpackers and restuarant that serves a special on beef roast on this particular day of the week. I found Frank in the restuarant, sitting alone, eating. I introduced myself and he was happy to see me. Straight away I gave him a breif summary of what had happened and asked, directly, if I could couch surf at his place for the two nights until my tour begins. He was delighted and said yes and that tonight was going to be the first night in long time without a couch surfer and he was going to miss the company. I was relieved that I had found another couch and that while skeptical of couch surfing with a 52-year-old, gay, HIV positive, nudist, Frank was extremely nice and was clearly not going to force me or anybody else to do anything they did not want to do. From his profile and CS messages between the two of us I had already learned that he does ask his surfers to either go nude themselves, as he does, or wear a sarong in addition to being accepting of his, the host's, Frank's, nudity. I told him that I did not think I could bring myself to go nude but would be fine with the sarong and his lifestyle.

Once we reached his home I learned that Frank has altered his life on numerous levels to better accomodate couch surfers. He sectioned off part of his garage to make a bedroom for them and, in doing so, made the garage part of the garage smaller so he traded in his car for a Smart car that would fit into the remaining space. Frank is one of the most polite people I have ever encountered to that point that it is sometimes frustrating. He is passive and quiet and indirect. He likes routine to a point that makes me (well, me before I started travelling) look spontaneous. I would wager that he has a minor case of OCD. Meeting him was a pleasure and he did me an enormous favor by letting me surf at his place on such short notice and his positive qualities far outweigh his negatives, if you even want to call those traits negative. Frank records foreign films on DVDs like nobody else I know and part of his routine is watching one per night. We watched on that night about a gay French couple that was not bad but was more strange and awkward than anything else. (The following night we watched an Israeli film called "Lemon Tree" that was better than expected and well done.)

The following day I returned to the Botanical Gardens area because just north of it is a area that has two good treks. I borrowed Frank's bicycle to ride there. While on the walk I met and ended up walking with a 64-year-old guy named Patty. He does these treks (the red and blue arrow treks) every day partially because he has little else to do. He was an interesting guy and it was nice to have somebody to walk and talk with. He pretended to be upset with me for pushing him harder than he would otherwise but once it was over admitted that when he does the walk again tomorrow he will keep today in mind.

The next day I was headed out to the Reef and as Frank was expecting another couch surfer he would not be able to host me upon my return. I woke up around 5AM to give myself enough time to catch a bus toward the marina and then walk the remainind distance to the boat that would be my home for the next two days. Said boat was modest, nothing fancy in the least and was, to be honest, a little disappointing. It was fine, of course, I guess I just had different expectations. It has become the norm that any tour I do in Australia is filled with French and this was no different. (The French are everywhere in Australia; it is amazing, and annoying. Then Germans. Then English.) About half the passengers were French and other than myself, only two other people were from English speaking contries, a couple from England. Only about half of the boat staff spoke English as their first language. The staff was pretty cool, cooler than most the passengers anyway. The food was good but I suspect just about all the meat was low quality pork. (The exception being the salmon that we caught [awesome].)

None of that matter, though, because the diving was outstanding. I have not done many dives, I think only nine before this trip, but five of these six dives were the best five I have done and it is not as if the other dives I have done were in bad dive sites. The odd dive out was the night dive because we got a little unluckly with the marine life and night dives tend to not be my favorite anyway. In other words, the diving was sweet and it was AU$360 well spent. Of course, I forgot my dive log book in Brisbane so I was not able to log the dives but that really is not too important. There is no way that I will not return to the Great Barrier Reef to do more diving at some point in my life. It truly is a wonder of the world.

Upon returning to land I booked a backpackers for a night. This was only my second paid night's accommodation in Australia. I took a shower, got some dinner, and tinkered with my plan to hitch hike to Airlie Beach the following morning.