99 Problems and a Seaside Silver Lining

"Cookies!" An old woman asks me. Slightly bedraggled, she carries a slender walking stick, wears a light green shawl and probably hasn't showered in a week. "Marijuana cookies or brownies?" This is the third time in a half hour I've been offered weed by a street hawker in the style of a 1940's newspaper boy. 

The small town of Nimbin makes the Oregon Country Fair look like a straight-cut prosecutor out of the prohibition. Nestled in the verdant maze of hills just south of Mt. Warning, the place is famous for hippies, weed, and a lack of concerned cops. Not that the town is geographically big, mind you: the main drag, spanning an entire two blocks, is a screaming mash-up of the outback, the '70s and modern fantasy pop whimsey. Apothacaries lie next door to Mad Hatteries, next to the town’s token seedy tattoo parlor, next to the general store, next to the tea shop (“Winter is coming… increase your circulation!”), next to curiosity shops filled with dragons and Buddhas and butterfly posters and chandeliers and VW bus cookie jars and wool leggings. Street vendors sell tie dye shawls next to Starbuds– some combination of coffee shop and brownie operation– while the town’s candle factory welcomes visitors a block down the way.

I left Brisbane late this morning in the jankiest old white ford van you could ever hope to see, straight out of 1990, sporting blingy Mercedes hubcaps. The Beast's owner, a young Dutchie named Maddie, includes a comprehensive run-down in her introduction: “Sorry I’m late; I had to replace the cable. By the way: there’s no air conditioning. And the speakers don’t really work. And the windshield wipers only work going one direction. And be careful of opening the side door all the way because it will fall off.”

... Right. Noted, noted and noted again.

After our stroll through Nimbin we roll into a backwoods pull-off for the night, and find ourselves sharing the site with the two most genuinely offensive people I've ever met. I spend the next hour staring into the fire as they carry on about how Trump and Putin would rule a perfect world, Bill Clinton is a rapist, we should expel all the Muslims and kick all the Mexicans back south of the border. Then they change tactics to, "I used to carry 14 rifles, but then that wanker had to go shoot up Port Arthur." Somewhere in the conversation, pig's blood makes a cameo. They wrap it all up by detailing backpacker murders in Northern Australia, telling me Orlando was hilarious, laughing in my face and making it clear that if we ran out of gas the next day, they'd be sure to come find us and help us out.

I wake up half way through the night to an abandoned campfire, glowing crimson logs collapsed onto the leafy ground.

Sunday morning we skip camp early and make our way to Coff's Harbour, following half-eaten back roads through national forests full of trees so straight and slender and evenly spaced you might think they had been planted. Occasional towns of ten or twenty buildings alternate with river crossing accompanied by multiple flood water depth indicators. Theoretically there's a superstorm coming in, and although we appear to have dodged the brunt of it freeway signs still warn "IF ITS FLOODED, LEAVE IT."

We roll into Coff's Harbor around midday to a roiling ocean and pounding surf. While driving rain and wind promptly snap my oft-ignored umbrella, they also insure we get to walk the harbour’s beach and pier sans company. We return to the car absolutely drenched.

Somewhere south of Coff’s Harbour, the back windshield wiper stops working. Then the Beast’s low battery indicator flares to life. We shut down the radio, turn off the lights and unplug our phones. A short time later the oil and break lights join the battery indicator. Also, the engine appears to be frying.

We pull off into a little town where a small pie shop’s big friendly giant of an owner does his best to help us out, while Maddie does her best to imitate your archetypal clueless blonde: “Do you have enough water in the radiator?” I don’t know about cars, I am a girl. BFG refills the van’s radiator, Maddie unceremoniously dumps some amount of oil into the engine, and we continue on our way.

We arrive in Port Macquarie just in time for the storm’s torrential rain and wind to arrive in earnest, booking beds for the night in quite possibly the coolest hostel I’ve ever stayed in, flip flops nailed to structural beams next to a movie room around the corner from murals and a woodstove and a pool table. While flash flood warnings inundate the news (no pun intended), Maddie tries to look under the van with a weak flashlight. My brother in Amsterdam told me I should look at the break pads… Oh, I just found my spare tire!!... Uh, right. When did you buy the van? Maybe six months ago.

The next morning the Beast greets us with a clanking rattle.

While Maddie takes the Beast into a garage I wander past a row of fishing boats and eager pelicans to Port Macquarie’s break wall. Local fishermen perch on the wall’s long stretch of graffitied rock, lines cast into post-storm swell as it crashes and rolls into the jetty. The sun  breaks onto turquoise water as my walk follows a winding seaside path along scrubby forested headlands and sandy coves accented by haphazardly piled rock. Two men at a small cliffside lookout lend me binoculars to watch southern right whales breach and spout offshore.

I detour inland to the Koala Hospital– a fully equiped wildlife rehabilitation center and the only one in the country dedicated solely to koalas. I wander amongst the permanent residents’ enclosures as they snooze the day away for the most part, although one one-eyed, one-legged gentleman makes a point of stuffing his face with all the eucalyptus as he can reach from his lazy lounge of a perch. A wild koala keeps an eye on the operation from the very top of a nearby tree.

By early afternoon, a mechanic has managed to wrangle up the necessary bolts to fix the Beast, (as well as the seatbelts, which were apparently also obsolete).

On our way out of town we make a stop by Tacking Point to visit the country’s third-oldest lighthouse, watching wind catch spray and whip it seaward from monster swells coming into land below. We spot some gray whales breaching under a spectacular neon rainbow in the clearing sky, then follow the night’s storm south toward Sydney through rolling hills and golden fields.

We roll into the city after dark and pass within ten blocks of the place I'm staying as Maddie declares she needs me to navigate to her caravan park, and by the way, I'm not driving you back into town because I'm tired and I don't like traffic.

Awesome.

Two and a half hours, a nice long walk and a double-decker train ride later, I set my bags on the doorstep, take a nice deep breath and say hello to parents of friends of friends halfway round the world from home.

Snapshots

I moved on from Brissy this weekend, leaving behind the most mismatched,  disfunctional set of housemates in the most unsanitary house I've ever experienced. I feel like a year's experience living on a Vietnamese island, complete with "pet" rats, ants, spiders, snakes and a howling cat, combined with my general penchant for mild disorder, allows at least some validity to the above statement.

I also left behind the land of places known as the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, and Surfer's Paradise. (Yes, it's a legitimate place on the map. It also happens to be accessed through exit 69 off the Pacific Motorway.)

My last few weeks in the city were somewhat laid back, scattered with some super fun random experiences with a new roommate.

I watched night fall over Brisbane from Mt Coot-Tha, a promontory rising high above the rest of the city.

I argued with a group of 8th grade girls about the popular phenomenon known as Drop Bears, in which unsuspecting tourists are regaled with tales of koalas with butts made of stone that drop from trees to kill you on the spot. Oh, and slathering your hair with vegemite is a "natural" drop bear repellant... Obviously. 

I ate some stellar fish and chips in the 25th story penthouse of a five-star hotel in the city center... and paid absolutely nothing for the experience.

I went to my first Greek Festival since one memorable middle school field trip. I watched a speed eating champion decimate his competitors in a honey puff-eating contest while I munched happily on baklava and spanakopita, then wandered through a carnival ground complete with flying, spinning terror machines and giant creepy stuffed animals heavier than the kids who win them.

We took a solid day to explore the area around Mt. Warning, leaving early to visit a place called Natural Bridge. The winding road crested and dipped into Mt. Warning's ancient caldera amongst twisting ridges and rivers blanketed in old, dense forest. A mellow wander brought us to a short drop where a waterfall plummeted into a pit, glancing off a well-worn log before rushing past haphazardly piled blocks, through a cave and emerging from a dark stone span dripping with ferns. 

We climbed the mountain for sunset; although the more novel idea would be to watch the sun rise on Australia from the top, that would have required (a) putting up with some seeeeriously drugged out backpacking hippies and (b) a companion willing to wake up early enough to arrive and begin hiking around 2:00 am.

On the way in to the car park we crossed a small creek where dozens upon dozens of rock cairns and arches had been pieced into a miniature wonderland in the dappled shade. Soon after we began to hike a rhythmic scratching off-trail revealed a lyrebird-- probably one of the coolest animals on the planet-- foraging in the rainforest duff. (If you've never heard of a lyrebird, check them out here; those things are crazy cool! Even better: the bit is narrated by David Attenborough.) The trail headed straight up for 2.5 miles– none of that bullshit hiking up and dropping down to lose all your hard work before starting up again. We climbed until rainforest gave way to brittle, whippy trees and dry brush, and howling wind greeted us at a last small landing before chains lined a final scramble to the mountain's peak. 

From the summit we looked north through biting wind all the way to Brisbane, faintly visible between the caldera's border ranges. We looked east to the Gold Coast and the sea before turning south to spot Byron Bay, its distinctive cape marking Australia's easternmost point as it extended into the sea beyond Mt. Warning's lengthening shadow. 

As we circled back to our original position, a carpet python crept into the brush alongside our path. A sinking sun bathed the land in a golden glow before disappearing behind the westward mountains in blazing crimson clouds, and then we began our descent. 

I took one last walk along the river, soaking up this city of bridges half way around the world from home, before I began packing my belongings in classic fashion the night before I left. 

Rainbows for Days

I live in a room commonly referred to as "the closet," tucked into an unkempt brick house in a neighborhood that actually happens to be pretty schwank, filled with fancy houses, vintage op shops and narrow twisting streets. My house itself sits a half-block from Suncorp Stadium; if I knew anything about Aussie sports I'd be able to follow rugby matches solely though the deafening noise on game nights. A distinctive bitter, sultry tang often wafts over the neighborhood from the XXXX brewery, located just down the road, where monster crimson neon letters illuminate the night. I'm a short walk from downtown in one direction and from the river promenade to the other, with all the mass transit I could ever want in easy reach.

I'm still getting used to viewing the coastline as situated to the east, and I have to remind myself almost every day that the sun shines from the north at noon. I'm also still adjusting to seeing lorakeets flock over the city in lieu of starlings and foot-long lizards sunning themselves next to ibises on the riverbank. City parks greet me with bronze platypuses adorning picnic benches and monster trees, and mantises make themselves at home in my living room.

Communication, too, at times proves simply baffling. Don't get me wrong– we all speak English here, but the words coming out of our mouths tend to comprise utterly different languages. Gas stations are called servos, freeways motorways, downtown the CBD (central business district), and neighborhoods suburbs (once I figured that one out, everything seemed a whole lot closer together). Ketchup is tomato sauce, Jello is jelly, red peppers capsicums, SUV pickups are utes and afternoons avos. "Mass transit" doesn't exist in local vocabulary. I will never, ever bring myself to instruct a class full of sixth-graders to make sure they have thongs on their feet. Just as I've cringed at a few phrases heard in "sophisticated" conversations here, one or two words used in daily conversation in the states would probably result in writeups if I let them fly at work in Queensland. Sometimes I feel like I walk a super fine line between dialect clarification and presenting myself as an utter idiot.

The stars, however, have begun to feel more familiar: Orion hangs in the sky every evening, a welcome reminder of the first constellation I ever recognized on my own one crisp winter night after a school event. I've learned to find geographical south from the Southern Cross and its pointers, following in Orion's path, and I get to see Scorpio in all of its blazing glory.

Work in late April takes me southwest of Brisbane and inland, to an area filled with mountains and ridges and the occasional lake. I spend two days backpacking near Lake Maroon with rowdy 13-year-old boys, hiking through dry forest to the top of Mt. May to look southward over a sprawling web of worn ridges and mountains, and an occasional lake nestled in the arid land. We spend the last day canoe orienteering, criss-crossing Lake Maroon from shores lined vibrant lily pads and dead trees as sea eagles accompany us overhead. The boys provide a day filled with comic relief, complete with tantrums thrown over (intentionally) capsized canoes and compasses disregarded for "general haunches."

Later in April I work further north, at a site where the road to high ropes looks down over the Glasshouse Mountains, glowing through the golden hour as they rise from the plains while I gather firewood with my girls. The place also introduces me to Aussie snakes: a red-bellied black greets us from smack in the middle of the cow paddock as we head toward our orienteering session. Which would have been way super cool, had I not had 17 antsy twelve year olds in tow.

Outside of work, I play. In early May I head north one morning with a friend to the Eumundi Market, which once upon a time was probably a quaint, slightly touristy, classic Aussie coastal craft and produce market. Today it's more of a historic tourist trap, half-chintzy yet still totally enthralling: I wander rows of organic wraps, tropical produce and handmade jewelry. I also find imported games (repackaged and sold by independent shops), stalls brimming with chintzy jewelry and belts... and cuddly stuffed koalas made from very real, silky-soft kangaroo fur.

I spend the night south of Brissy with friends camping in Springbrook National Park, arriving to set up tents just in time for a frogmouth owl to determine my rainfly the ultimate evening roost. We wake early to cocoon ourselves in sleeping bags and watch the sun rise over the gold coast, flaming rays punching through low clouds to spread over the sea. Our hike later that morning (after coffee!) follows a mellow down and around the cliffs curled around the Purling Brook falls in a widespread embrace. Vegetation changes drastically as we descend, merging from dry, windswept gumtrees to fully buttressed rainforest complete with bromeliads latched to canopy branches. A delicate, fickle rainbow greets us from the mist at the bottom of the falls, where water plunges into a pool below bands of orange and white columns stained black.

The trail eventually arrives at a deep, shade-dappled pool beneath a short drop where we break our cheese and apples and crackers as we watch a monster brown eel makes itself at home among the rocks below us before beginning our walk home.

I spend another Saturday climbing with my friend Paul at Mt. Tibrogargan, the largest of the Glasshouse Mountains. We climb 200 meters through awkwardly angled basalt begging to explode beneath us, dodging golden orb spiders the size of my palm in webs suspended amongst the sparse brush spotting our route (I very nearly pull off a torso-sized block and shred our second rappel rope in the process). I watch rainstorms move across the coastal plains beneath us as we ascend, rainbows taking shape in the sky next to me. Paul leads the last pitch through a somewhat infuriating downpour, topping out to a sweeping view of the Glasshouse mountains to our left and the sea to our right before we descend to dry sweatshirts, water, and a stop into a nondescript fruit stand serving a locally known gem known as Pineapple Crush.

At times the rock we climb on around here likes to test my faith in the world's integrity. But: it makes me think and guts up and trust myself, and I get to place gear while I'm at it. And the rainbows... I've seen more rainbows since arriving in Queensland than I ever could have imagined. They're just so mindblowingly vibrant; they blaze and linger in the sky, just long enough for the rest of the world to fade for a moment, before picking up and continuing on my way.