Uncle Brian's Tour

It's a shame that so much time has passed between this journal entry and the tour, because I'm sure there are tons of funny anecdotes I no longer remember. But alas, that's how it goes sometimes. My last day in Cairns, I decided to go on a tour of the Atherton Tablelands, highly recommended by Karenza, the FINA volunteer I had met in Melbourne.

Uncle Brian's Tour is a tour (obviously), but it is as much about silliness as it is about the scenery. Since Uncle Brian had a newborn at home, we were guided by "Cousin Paul," aboard "Gus the Bus". Gus has emotions and feelings of his own; for example he was very upset when we didn't encounter his "girlfriend" Volveena (a Volvo milk truck) at her usual spot on the tour. He expressed this by almost stalling and letting his windshield sprayers go on full blast.

The tour is billed as "Fun, Falls, and Forest", and I think that's pretty accurate. We went swimming in 4 different places over the day, each with a different unique geological feature. The first was in a temperate rainforest and involved floating down some very small rapids. Next we went to Jospephine Falls, which actually consists of three waterfalls, all running into each other. This one sports a natural rockslide which is tons of fun to go down, provided you can get to the top of it without slipping on the very slick algae covered rocks. I needed a push from the person behind me more than once. I went down feet first, head first, backwards, and spinning. Except for the water up my nose, it was tons of fun.

Easily the most impressive waterfall on the tour is Milla Milla (the Aboriginal name meaning lots of water), a single waterfall cascading past fern covered rocks into a large pool. It has apparently been featured in a Qantas commercial, and a very cheesy shampoo ad from the '80s which involved women throwing back their wet hair to create arcs of water droplets as they posed in front of the falls. Many in the group felt the need to re-create this ad; I didn't. I did, however, go behind the falls and swim through it; the force of the water as you pass through is impressive.

The final swim of the day was in a huge lake in a volcanic caldera. Unlike the others, this one was actually quite warm. There were also turtles to watch as they stuck just their noses out of the water to breathe. Turtle locomotion is very specific; they move opposing limbs together in a precise rhythm. The animal highlight of the day, however, was definitely seeing a platypus swimming in the river. Unfortunately he didn't stick around long (I'm sure the noise of everyone pulling out their cameras scared him off), but I have now seen a monotreme in the wild, which is a great thing.

The ride home consisted of more silliness, mostly sing-alongs. Lots of '60's Motown and some musicals. But no John Denver, even after I made a special effort to remember the words to Country Roads and Leaving on a Jet Plane. Ah well.