I suppose, if I'm going with that particular conceit, that makes my uncle Paddy the Wizard - though I suppose he is kinda Henry Gale-ish in some ways! (see what I did there? No? Don't worry about it!) He doesn't exactly own a balloon, but still.
Anyway, let's back up a little bit. I was just leaving Bali when last I wrote. Flight went without a hitch but when checking in my bags I was told I would need to pick them up again in Darwin at the baggage claim and then get them scanned and checked by quarantine and all that jazz. The Australians do not fuck around with that shit. Never, ever try and smuggle drugs into Australia boys and girls, because they will find them.
Got off the plane in Darwin and walked through to immigration. Went up to the nice, attractive lady and explained that I had lost my uncle's address in Cairns, but I could get it if I could get on the net. She said it was fine and just scribbled Cairns in the address box of my entry card, but then kindly informed me that I would need to follow her.
I was greeted by another, less attractive lady, and when I say greeted, I mean, by name. She had a sheet of questions with my name on it. It was all very informal and casual, but both of us knew one wrong answer and it was going to move from the hall into the nice little glass interview room beside us. Basically I think she was just making sure I wasn't sneaking into the country on a tourist visa with the intention of working. But they were on top of that! They were waiting for me, someone has probably known for a few months that I was coming in on that flight and I'd need to be interviewed.
After that I picked up my bag at the baggage claim and went through quarantine, which is a very serious business. Basically, you declare everything you've done for the last few weeks and everything you've got in your bag, and try not to forget like me. Way back in August or September my cousin Niamh gave me a little bag of stuff for my travels, a 50c coin a mint, an angel medal, that sorta stuff - one of the things though was a set of miniture chopsticks, made of wood. Now, I remembered I vaguely I had the bag, but it's in the end of my bag quietly keeping me safe so I don't really pay it much conscious thought. So when I was filling out the form I completely forgot about it.
While it was going through the scanner though, it popped up and set off an alarm. Next thing there's a lady asking me to open my bag and having me go through it, where upon I find and remember the little bag. And the lady is not one bit happy when she sees the two little chop sticks.
She actually told me, after she'd cleared them, to "be more careful next time, you could get in a lot of trouble." Well, it's grand, because my next flight is out of Australia and home, where we're pretty crazy and paraniod about what you can put in a bag, but not quite as much as these guys!
Then, it was back to the check in desk and then back through security again. But the part of the airport I got into was the domestic terminal, but my plane was a stop over from Singapore going on to Cairns, stopping in the international terminal. At three in the morning they don't have anyone working the international security though, so they send everyone into the domestic and then open a second security checkpoint through there into the international departures lounge.
I bought a cake and a coke and settled down for them to upon the through way at 5, but they actually opened it at half 4. I'd barely touched the coke, but I figured it'd be grand since I was in a secure part of the airport, having been through security already . . . right?
God no.
Then I was randomly selected to be padded down by a large, balding man who looked like he might eat boulders for dinner, but it was only minimally invasive so who cares? Well, some other dude did care. He got very irrate, and there was shouting, and then he nearly got arrested, but there you go, some people are just stupid. You can't argue with airport police - you just can't!
Though, I did hear this one story from a friend of mine about a girl in skin tight pants and a skin tight top who got padded down . . . and you really have to wonder about that don't you? I mean, seriously. Unless she had like a giant Gregory House dimple that she'd filled in with contraband (FYI - she didn't), which seems unlikely.
Once I finally got in, I saw my uncle Paddy sleeping on a couch, but since he was sleeping I decided not to go and wake him up straight away. I figured I'd let him have a little nap so I found a seat nearby until he was ready for me! This here is my uncle Paddy by the way, though when I found him he didn't have the glass of wine - or "plonk" if you're in Australia. Also, for your reference, an off-licence is a bottle shop, a "goon" is a carton of wine, rather than some villian's henchman, "hectic" means "some sort of crazy, possibly dangerous situation" and "cold" means "Oh, I think the temperature has tipped ever so slightly below 20 . . ." or the thing that beers are.
Paddy had his wife, Murni, and her daughter, Sari, with him, so I got to meet them for the first time ever. For those that don't know, they're Indonesian, from Balikpapan Murni's English is pretty good, but Sari's is really really good. Like I noticed with a lot of the Japanese I met a few months ago, she has a very American twange to her accent which was weird at first, until I thought about it for three or four seconds and realised that that makes perfect sense. American teachers, American music and TV and film are bound to have a massive impact and unlike in Ireland or many European countries, there isn't an English speaking population that has developed it's own "accent" yet, so inevitably the only way a person learns to speak English is with an American accent.
A short flight later and we were in Cairns, but it was grand for me and longer for them because I had already cleared immigration and quarantine and they hadn't. Apparently they're a lot stricter in Cairns too, so it's probably a good thing I'd already had my little incident with the chopsticks.
Then it was a simple case of finding Paddy's rental car - he hasn't been around a lot lately so he sold his old car a few years ago but he'll be getting a new one soon. It didn't really take too long, considering we had little more that "it says cruising on the back" to go on.
I've gotten fairly used to the heat over the last few months, but still, it was pretty warm to wandering around with my bag on my back looking for a rental car in a carpark full of rental cars . . .
Then we found and it and drove out to my uncle's house (see right), where I immediately through as much of my clothes as I could into the washing machine because, knowing that I was about to have free washing for awhile, I'd let my supply of clean clothes dwindle a little . . . a trip like this can make you pretty fucking cheap!!!Got that done, started airing out the house, and then it was time to jump back in the car and head back to the airport to pick up my dad!
It's nice, by the way, to see familiar faces after all this time. Like, actual familiar faces. I may have mentioned this before but concepts of familiarity become rather warped while backbacking on your own. Someone you met yesterday is a friend, and someone you hung out in a different city, a week ago, is an old friend . . . seeing actual familiar faces was a real change. Good though!
Then it was back for some lunch and some drinks and catching up and some more drinks. We cooked food on the barbecue - my first home cooked meal in months - for dinner! Mmmmmh! I ended up having a look at Paddy's internet and then setting the whole thing up. The modems and all were there so it didn't take too much effort. Apparently he'd scheduled some guy to come and set up that and the T-Box up the next day, and he was gonna pay this guy $150 to do it! People'll charge insane money for simple tasks!
Then eventually there was sleeping, which was cool since I'd been awake for two days again . . . that keeps happening. It's not fun - though the Masters gave me a lot of experience dealing with it.
Day two was a day of shopping and not much else, and I think I'll do a seperate post on shopping and stuff like that later in the week after I've done all my Christmas shopping so you can hang on for that! I bought myself Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, though, which came out in Ireland two whole days after I left and I haven't been able to get my hands on it since! How fucking annoying is that? It would have been more use the last part of the journey, but there you go. I've some travelling coming up on the 2nd or 3rd of January so it'll be grand, I'll get stuck into it then.
We also bought two bikes in some place, one for Sari and one for whoever. And then, later that evening, I had the dubious pleasure of putting one of them together. I would have done both, but Sandra, Paddy's daughter and my cousin turned up with Glen (husband) and her two kids, Xander and Xavier, just as I was finishing the first, so I was able to stop instead! Course I had to finish it the next morning instead.
On Wednesday (day three) then, my uncle Fran arrived from Canada. We picked himself and my uncle's friend O'Brien up from the airport at about 4 and then headed back to the house, where there was more reunioning and more drinking! To the right is a picture of everyone. Bren (my dad, for those who are new), me (if you didn't know that, why the fuck are you reading this?), Sandra, my cousin, uncle Fran from Canada, and down in front pretending to be tiny, Paddy. Funny thing I've noticed about Australia is that I find it impossible to sleep late. The sun comes up pretty early and it gets pretty warm and bright early, so by about 7 or 8 I'm normally awake, even if I lay in bed til about 9. Getting up some early then, you tend to be in bed a bit earlier than you would back home. Though, it gets dark at about 7 so you've normally had a fair bit of night by then anyway. It's a bit different to back home, where 9 is early, or even standard. Here, things that wouldn't open til maybe 11 are open at 9 and everything is closing up/closed by half-5 or six!
Eventually, Friday the 10th of December rolled around and it was time for the Wizard's 60th Birthday (remember who we started this calling him the Wizard? That's apparently not stopped yet). We left the house at about half-5 to be there for 6. It was in a local restaurant, Clifton Capers, and we had the whole inside booked. There were a few other groups seated outside, looking in, but meh, who cares about them?
I'm not even going to try and remember everyone who was there, but there were more familiar faces and even more Germans, because what part of my holiday would be complete without the persence of Germans. They're the new Irish, apparently!
There's Kevin and his wife Lyn, from England, who've moved over to Australia now, and their son Matt, their daughter who's name I've forgotten and her husband Scotty. There was Holmer (Paul Holmes) and Colleen his wife and Dylan/Dillon, who I met a few years ago. That mega-drive I have, and the games from it, I bought off Dylan a few years ago actually. For like a tenner. Fucking steal that was! Haha! Wins! Trevor and his wife Tess, who's house I was in last time I was hear, and Bill and loads of other people and I've just decided I'm giving up naming them because none of us really care who was there that much, do we.
As for the Germans, well the head chef and co-owner was a German and one of the bar staff.
Gibb, a guy my uncle knows from Scotland played the music, mostly old ballads/drinking songs, a surprising amount of which I actually knew, which was good. My uncle Fran, who does what Gibb does, but in Australia rather than Canada, played a few songs too, and even played Whiskey, which was awesome, though he plays the old Luke Kelly version, not the one that Thin Lizzy did.
The other story also happened a long time ago in the distant past of like 2008 (?) when we were in Nordweig for the first time and Charlie and Jonathan were just getting it on. Or possibly it was the second time we were there. But I'm pretty sure it was the first time. We asked Charlie to play Whiskey and she gave us a roasting because every crowd of Irish that wandered into the place ended up asking for Whiskey to be played! Because we are that predictable!
Back to the party anyway. There were people, and there was food, lots of it, brought out on plates by a succession of girls who also brought beer! Yay for the girls with the food and the beer, it's a regular Valhalla! All of this food eventually culminated in a large and delicious cake, which looked a little something like this.
Or rather, exactly like this - since it's a photograph, not a painting.
Everything wound up around 11 because in Australia that's about one in the morning and the guys working there really wanted to get home! Trevor's wife gave us a lift home because she wasn't drinking, which was cool considering I'd gotten lost the day before walking from there home and a ten minute walk turned into a forty-five minute wander as it slowly got darker and darker! I've gotten better by now though!
So we got back and eventually stumbled and clambered back into bed! And that's another thing ticked off the list! List, you say? Yeah . . . there was a list once upon a time!
The list is more or less done (which is scary). Actually, I call that a list, really it was a plan, a very limited, undetailed plan, but still, a plan!
So this blog is more or less done, but before I do I'll provide a few photos of the locality, just so you can think of me as you wade through acres of snow, to get to your job that you hate . . . Sorry, stopping now!
The first time I came down to the beach there was a girl sitting just off the main path, in the world's most summer-y dress ever, a dress so summer-y it makes all of Sarah Lonsdale's dresses look like some kinda winter dresses, eating a coconut that was clearly from a nearby tree, and I thought to myself, yeah, that's more or less what I was expecting! It's a pity I couldn't take a picture of her, because there wouldn't be a better advertisement for coming out here than that photo - but for some reason pretty girls generally find it a bit weird and disturbing when you randomly start snapping pictures of them . . . For whatever reason!
It's a nice beach though, and it doesn't seem to mind me taking pictures, so that's good, right? Can't really swim off here at the moment though, because the box jelly fish are in, but there's swimming nets about ten minutes walk down the beach either way. You really don't wanna fuck around with box jelly fish. Sometimes there's string-rays and crocs too, so really, swim in the nets, or in your pool. Because everyone has a pool.
Time to finish up this one I think, hope you've enjoyed my first few days in Cairns - I certainly have! :-p
Talk to ya soon,
Shane.
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