Thursday, March 12

...aaaaaaaaand we're back! Sorry about that. Bit of a schmozz getting back on the Internet. I must admit this business of blogging is addictive. I think I was actually starting to feel withdrawal symptoms!

Anyway, we are now up in Cairns for what they have dubbed "Recovery Week" (from Mardi Gras, one presumes). It's quite the tropical paradise -- very hot, humid and steamy. In the full heat of the afternoon, I almost find it unbearable as it saps all your energy. Just walking feels like a chore! Well, it's nothing that a cold cocktail in our air-conditioned apartment won't fix!

So, to bring you up to date, on the Saturday morning of Mardi Gras, Colin and I headed over to Paddington to check out thePaddington Market. This is an open-air craft/flea market held in a church/school yard. It was your basic market, nothing outstanding to note, but it was fun to people watch! Paddington is a neighbourhood a bit east of our hotel h eading towards Bondi Beach. If you refer to the map I posted at the beginning of this blog, scroll to the right (and maybe up just a little) and you should find it. It's noted for its architecture and has many of Sydney's original shops.

Since that killed all of an hour, we then caught a bus back downtown to Circular Quay and hopped on a ferry that went more or less straight across the harbour to the north side. It did go past the front of the Opera House, though, so I managed to get a shot of it.

Colin also got a couple of great shots of the bridge, showing the people climbing it. There's always quite a number of climbers on it. I'll pass, thanks!

Back on dry land, we figured it was time for a bit of refreshment, but coming out of Circular Quay we couldn't help but see the rather majestic Customs House. Crossing the street to get a better look, we discovered that it now houses a branch of the Sydney Public Library. After a quick look at the Customs House building, we found a nearby pub and stopped for a pint.

We still had loads of time to kill before the Mardi Gras parade started (unlike Toronto's Pride Parade, which usually starts at 2 or 3pm, Sydney's Mardi Gras Parade starts at 8pm in the dark!), so we hopped on another ferry, this one heading west up the harbour.

Having finally had enough of the nautical life, we hopped on the subway at Circular Quay and went back a couple of stops to "our" stop, Museum. Museum station sits on the corner of Hyde Park and the staging area for the parade was on Elizabeth Street which runs along the west side of the park. Hyde Park itself is a little bit bigger than Queen's Park in Toronto and like Queen's Park, it's in the downtown core. As it's the starting point of the parade, a lot of people gathered in the park, wandering around (like us!) taking pictures of the floats and the parade participants.

Around 6pm, we found a spot at the edge of the park, facing Liverpool St, which is where the parade started from. The crowd was about 10 people deep at this point, but we were on a bit of a rise, so it wasn't too bad.

However, once the parade had started, everyone crushed forward and we were pushed down the slope towards the street just enough to take us off the top of the rise and make picture-taking more difficult. I chose the best few to post here, but mainly they're all pictures of hands sticking up holding cameras.

By the time the parade started to wind down around 9:30, I had been standing crushed like a sardine for over 3 hours and not feeling terribly sociable any longer, so we headed back to the hotel "far from the madding crowd". After a shower and a bevvie, I went out the Mardi Gras Party.

While Toronto has Church St. closed off for the weekend with beer gardens and stages, the Sydney Mardi Gras has one huge party near the end of the parade route. It's held in an area much like Exhibition Place (although not quite as big) called Moore Park with pavilions connected by roads and walkways. The whole area is closed off and licensed, so you can grab a beer as you come in, then wander around with it from pavilion to pavilion. Each pavilion was set up as a huge dance floor and each had a different style of music (no polkas, though). The party started at 10pm (!!) and ran until 8am (!!!!). I got there at 11:30 and lasted until 1:30. Not bad for someone who's usually in bed by 10! The party was fun, just the usual drinking and dancing, and the people watching was great!

I walked back to the hotel along the parade route and I wished I had had my camera with me. It looked like 9/11, the day after! I've never seen so much garbage outside a dump! And drunken kids. Literally falling down drunk. That's something else we've noticed, Aussies really are a hard-drinking bunch. It's definitely part of the culture here. The government seems to be starting to try to address it, though, as every once in a while we'll see something about responsible drinking. But, they have nothing like M.A.D.D. here or the RIDE program.

Anyway, the next day (or, actually, later that same day) was Sunday and as it was a day of rest... I rested.

Monday was a bit of a wash as we were leaving Sydney to fly up here. We had to check out of our hotel by 10am and our flight wasn't until 7:50pm, so we basically had all day to wander about. The hotel let us stash our luggage until we were ready to head to the airport, so that was nice.

We decided to find a Gloria Jean's (Australian answer to Starbucks) where I could hopefully log on and do a bit of blogging. Fat chance. Couldn't get a signal to save my life. Should have gone back to the Gloria Jean's on Oxford Street from where I last updated this, but it was too far away. Tried again at the airport and managed to find the same provider I had back on Oxford St., which was good as I still had an hour left on the account. I just nicely logged on, when I lost the connection and couldn't get it back. So I still have about an hour left on that account. As we will be back again in Sydney for a few days before we come home, I will make sure to go to that same Gloria Jean's on Oxford St. and use up that hour!

We landed in Cairns at about 10:30 pm, so it was getting on towards midnight by the time we were installed in our apartment. However, we were booked on a tour of the Great Barrier Reef the next morning and had to be up at 5:45 to catch the bus. Argh!

However, it was well worth it. We were on a large catamaran-style boat with about 70 people and we stopped at two different spots on Opal Reef, one of the hundreds of reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef. At each stop you could either scuba or snorkel, and although I have scuba-ed before, I was quite content to snorkel.

The reef was absolutely amazing. It's everything you imagine and more. The colours are breathtaking! I bought a disposable underwater camera at the airport in Sydney while we were waiting and I took 27 shots of the reef. We're going into Cairns today and I'm going to try and find a place where I can drop off the camera and have the pictures developed and put on a disc so I can post them here later.

Here are a couple of shots of the resort we are staying at on the outskirts of Cairns.

Your faithful blogger, hard at work!