Third, I am not afraid of long flights! Nina's situation is similar, except she works for a quasi-public entity.
Radio conditions to VK and ZL over the months prior to our tentative decision to make the trip were not cooperative and so did not offer opportunities to strengthen ties with existing friends or make new ones. Personally meeting folks overseas who are friends by radio tends to fill otherwise quiet evenings and assures a profoundly more meaningful adventure. Fortunately, as FOC members we have a number of VK and ZL 'family' members, so lack of propagation is not a major problem. In fact, notes written to FOCers resulted in a number of enthusiastic invitations! I also intended to take 2 meter equipment with me, and I had already learned how to get the reciprocal permits in Cairns and Christchurch.
Ham radio even helped in planning our trip. Normally I don't deal with a travel agent, generally reasoning that I can organize my own flights and use guidebooks to locate suitable lodging. In this case, however, I turned to a supposed specialist in the Oceania region, relying on her to recommend reasonably priced beds and breakfasts (B&Bs) and hotels. I included the names of the lodgings she had suggested in notes to my FOC contacts. In one case, VK2BJ called me on the landline to urge me to change from what was plainly (to him) a poorly located hotel in favor of a similarly priced hotel within walking distance of all major sights! That alone saved a great deal of angst that might have affected our enjoyment of the five days we spent in Sydney, but more about all that later.
We decided that with a total available holiday period of three and a half weeks we would have to maximize diversity and limit cost. We therefore chose to divide our time into 11 days in Australia, limiting our visit there to three cities, and the remaining time in New Zealand. We would be on the run all the time, but we rationalized that we had the rest of the year to recover!
Our trip would begin with a Sunday midday departure from Washington, DC to glorious Newark, New Jersey and connection with our Continental cross-country flight to Los Angeles, where we would board our Qantas direct flight to Sydney. We would then connect with a flight up the east coast of Australia to Cairns (pronounced Cans) to see the Great Barrier Reef and meet our first kangaroos. We would then proceed to Darwin, along the northern coast of the continent to see the famous Kakadu Park and visit with VK8HA, Harry (and, perchance, operate some of the CQWW CW contest from his QTH, though I never mentioned that to Harry in our correspondence!!). Our final visit in Australia would be five days in Sydney, with its San Francisco-like beauty, Opera House and cultural centers.
We would then embark on phase two of the trip, flying to Christchurch, New Zealand and a visit with ZL3GQ, from whose QTH we would take a rental car for a week to see the sights of the South Island, including Fox Glacier, Dunedin and the unfolding array of natural beauty for which New Zealand is so well known. Our holiday would end with a three day visit to Auckland, including a short stop at ZL1MH's QTH and a visit to the kauri forest some hours north of the city. Finally, we would fly home on December 14 via Los Angeles and, again, Newark.
Our plan omitted a number of places where we have friends as well as spots that others had urged us to include, such as Ayer's Rock near Alice Springs and Perth. But we just couldn't do it all, not on this first trip.
On the morning of departure, Nina discovered a flat tire on her car. We actually found a service station open that Sunday morning, but the tire could not be repaired. We had to put the 'donut' spare on pending our return. This quasi-emergency created a stressful atmosphere just prior to departure, but Nina managed to complete her packing and we got to the airport on an even keel! So, on November 20 Nina and I left for National Airport to begin our trip 'down under.' Arrival. One tends to learn unexpected lessons in travel. For my part, I will forever inquire about the seating aboard any DC- 10 aircraft my flight uses, at least on Continental. The space between the reclined seat in front of me and my nose was not enough for me to see my own knees unless I too reclined. Pity the poor traveler behind me who had the seat just in front of the emergency row -- he could not recline, or enjoy watching his own knees. But Continental was on time and we made our connection to Qantas' direct flight to Sydney. For the next fourteen and a half hours we were fed, shown movies, fed, shown more movies and fed again. By the end of it I was surprised we could get through the aircraft door. But there we were, in Sydney airport! We had even passed the international date line. It was now Tuesday, November 22. Time sure flies when you eat and watch movies in an airplane!
Our arrival in Sydney was quite exciting, at least for a few minutes until we had to find our way to the gate for our Cairns flight. While waiting for boarding, I noticed that one of the duty-free shops was hosting a promotion for some kind of chocolate liquor, with rather scantily clad young blondes offering tiny samples for passersby. I am pleased to report that the effects of some 24 continuous hours aboard airplanes does not dull one's need for chocolate liquor samples.
Cairns. The flight to Cairns was about two and a half hours long, with another meal provided! We landed at midday, and took a shuttle bus that stowed our luggage in a flimsy looking towed carriage to The Motel Cairns. The city was quite warm, probably about 30 degrees Centigrade, but we had prepared for that with shorts, hats and light shirts. The hotel was basic, as were most of the budget lodgings we had selected, but the office staff were delightful and inordinately helpful. Somehow the reservation I had made did not appear on their list, but there were rooms aplenty so we had no problem.
Our first stop was the Spectrum Management Office, about four blocks away. I had faxed them some weeks before asking them about licensing. We chatted for about half an hour, at the end of which I was assigned the callsign VK4DJT, a surprise given I had expected only a permit to use VK/N3JT. I nevertheless tended to use the latter, especially on 2 meters, to be sure nobody was misled about my status as a tourist. I did meet several VKCairns operators by radio, but our busy schedule did not permit any eyeball contacts. The remainder of the first day was devoted to getting our sea legs, organizing tours for the next two days and visiting the Cairns Museum which offered history of the area and insight into aboriginal culture.
That night we enjoyed our first meal in Australia, a buffet at the Beach Hut, a restaurant in a large, modern shopping mall overlooking the Cairns port, about fifteen minutes by foot from our hotel. I must admit that my first formal dinner dish was kangaroo stew. I loved it. We also ate 'bugs,' which are like shrimp with heads still attached (which the customer removes before eating), and an assortment of local fish and vegetable dishes. It was a superb meal.
Our first full day in Australia was our outing to the Great Barrier Reef. It is possible to organize an almost infinite array of visits to coral reefs with or without hotels out of any number of ports along the coast. Our intention was more modest; we just wanted to visit the reef and one day would be quite adequate. We boarded our tour bus early in the morning and were taken north about 45 minutes to Port Douglas, a somewhat upscale town clearly catering to the tourist and boating trade. There, we boarded the Quicksilver, a large silver colored catamaran, with about 200 of our newest friends from Japan and more southerly parts of Australia.
It took us about 90 minutes to reach the barge-like floating station that featured a variety of reef-oriented attractions, including scuba diving and snorkeling tours, and underwater through-the-glass viewing. The scuba diving was optional, meaning another $100 per person, so I opted for the snorkeling tour. We were guided to one corner of the station where I donned a wetsuit and joined six others in a small motorboat that took us half a mile away to tour a particularly interesting portion of the reef. The water was no more than twenty or thirty feet deep. We were buoyant with the wetsuits, and the snorkels were easy to use. In fact, they even had masks with optical correction so those of us otherwise helpless without glasses were not handicapped.
While the Great Barrier Reef is by far the longest such phenomenon in the world (2000 km) it is not alone in offering fantastic views of undersea life. Indeed, our visit coincided with a high tide which we were told tended to reduce the variety of fish we might see. I had seen more varieties of fish at Cancun, Mexico. But it was great fun and instructive having a guide to point out assorted coral species and varieties of fish. Meanwhile, Nina, who had never ventured into water over her head before, had managed to attract the sympathy of the Quicksilver's engineer and was guided hand-in-hand in an enclosed area adjacent to the barge.
Lunch was served buffet style, with cleanup coinciding with all sorts of signals and warnings for departure. We were told that nobody yet had spent the night aboard the barge, and we could tell why. The ride back was really beautiful, with the sun setting over the land offering an impressive display of colors and shadows. For me, that part of the day was as memorable as the reef itself. We arrived at our hotel in the early evening, with enough time to try a restaurant we picked purely at random near our hotel, called the Red Ochre Grill. They served a mixed platter of kangaroo, wallaby and emu. We liked the wallaby the best.
The next morning we embarked by bus on our tour to Kuranda, on the Atherton Tableland some 40 km northwest of Cairns. Kuranda is known as the 'Village of Rain Forest.' It is really an Australian-style adult theme park featuring outdoor markets, restaurants, Butterfly Sanctuary, Noctarium and an assortment of specialty shops. The butterfly 'aviary' was one of those terrific surprises one experiences so rarely in travel. Imagine a large caged environment in which dozens of species of butterflies, of all colors and sizes, fly about your head, land on you, and seemingly smile at you! My favorite was the Ulysses species, strikingly bright blue and simply magnificent.
In the darkened Noctarium we saw (or met?) a dozen varieties of nocturnal animals native to Australia, including various marsupials, the dominant kind of mammal inhabiting Australia, and fruitbats (which clung to the side of the caged area to have visitors rub their noses). There were echidnas, wallabies, and an assortment of other species I have already forgotten. All were interesting variations on the marsupial theme.
The day spent at Kuranda was very special in part because of the memorable ride back to Cairns on the old railroad, constructed at the turn of the century in connection with gold mining in the mountains. It took us through a multitude of tunnels, over old iron trestle bridges, by Barron Gorge adjacent to an immense and magnificent waterfall, along steams and through valleys as we travelled down from the rim of the Great Plateau back to within four blocks of our hotel. It was nice!
That evening we were introduced to a custom which caused us some surprise, if not annoyance. In restaurants almost everywhere I have been in the world, bread is served free of charge with the meal. In some more expensive restaurants in Italy I remember being charged for those breadsticks that are already on the table when you are seated -- as well as, if I recall correctly, use of the silverware. But this was not Italy and I did not expect to see this practice in Australia. In the Italian restaurant we dined at in Cairns we were charged $3.00 per for the little rolls served with our meal. It was not mentioned anywhere on the menu. The owner made it abundantly clear that this was his 'normal practice.' More surprisingly, it was also the standard practice in many other restaurants as we continued our journey. |
