Brush Fire

For the past week or so we have been staying with a host Michael Davies. Mike lives and works on a palm tree farm where he grows a wide variety of indoor and outdoor trees. He plans to transform some of his property into a campground and paintball field but for now the palms keep him busy enough. Most of the work we have been doing is collecting and transporting large rocks for garden beds and digging up trees to sell. One afternoon as we were working around the farm Mike drove over to us said “hop in, were gonna go help with a brush fire”. On one of his neighbors plots of land a brushfire had started, when this happens it is in everyone’s best interest to lend a hand to make sure the fire doesn’t get too out of control. The local fire brigade started burning fires along the road downwind from where the wild fire had ignited. When we drove up to the blaze the brigade asked us to help out as spotters to make sure no embers jumped across the firewall. After a while, once the firewall had surrounded most of the plot we went back to Mike’s to go for a swim at some water holes in the Palumba National Park. While there, I made an attempt to do some dive spear fishing, and even though I was not successful it was still fun creating my tool and trying it out. We came back to the fires later that night to see some incredible scenes of glowing red bush with plumes of smoke billowing in the backdrop. We drove around the plot checking out the different burns and throughout the drive I couldn’t help but think that my cousin David Soffa would have a field day photographing it. It was truly a beautiful experience.

Hope all is well,

John

Walkabout

Walkabout is a way of life for the aboriginal. Walkabout refers to a rite of passage during which male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months. Coming to Australia I knew that I will want to make m own attempt at a walkabout; and although I am not prepared to spend six months in the bush I kind of consider my whole trip to Australia a form of walkabout. A couple of days ago after finishing work around one-o’clock I wanted to go out on an adventure, John was not up for it so I figured this was a great opportunity to venture out on my own and brave into the Australian bush. I set out to find an Aboriginal cave which Mike had described its whereabouts a day prior. So off I went with my water bottle and walking stick in hand out into the bush. The path I took started out along a fire-burn but eventually I had to leave the cleared area and head into the sticks. Walking deeper and deeper into the underbrush my viewpoint of the mountain face (where I set my bearing) was becoming more and more difficult to see. The dense brush prevented me from seeing anything off in the distance so I occasionally would climb upon the trailer-sized boulders to keep my heading. As I traveled further I noticed the tall grasses were coming up to my armpits and I could only help but think about the two 6-foot Tiapans and other venomous snakes I had spotted just two days prior. But never the less I pushed through keeping confident in my awareness and abilities, climbing over yet larger and larger boulders. And finally as I cleared over the top of one of the boulders the entrance of the cave came miraculously into view. Looking back towards the way I came I was overcome with a sense of pride thinking that I had done an excellent job at finding an efficient route and sticking the course through the brush. After exploring around the caves I notice a couple of aboriginal cave drawings, I could make out one to be a Crayfish (Lobster) but was at a loss for the other two. I then climbed above the cave to look for the palm farm that I had waked from (if you look in the last picture your may be able to spot a couple of palm fronds and white structures off in the distance towards the middle/right of the picture). All in all the experience was something I thoroughly enjoyed and am looking forward to taking on longer and more self-reliant trips into the wild.

Magnetic Island

Hey all,

I hope everyone is doing fine back home. Here in Oz, I have recently headed down south from Cairns to Townsville and then took a ferry over to Magnetic Island, just a 20 minutes off the coast. Magnetic Island is approximately 5184,Half of which is National Park. Twenty-four kilometers of tracks guide visitors through thickly wooded bushland, ranging from dry wattles and stunted eucalypts to moist forested valleys. While there we stayed at a backpackers hostel where we met a number of interesting people. During our days we ventured out on a number of trips to check out some of the cool features of the island, one day we even rented scooters for a fun way to get around quickly to the different hikes we took on. The island is inhabited by some pretty interesting wildlife including Koalas, Rock Wallabies, Brush-tailed Possums, and an abundance of different bird species. Although the Island was pretty fun after a couple of days we figured we had seen most of which it had to offer, after that we took a ferry back to Townsville and are heading about 80 kilometers north to Mutarnee to stay for a week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

John