Month: December 2012

  • Tubular

    8 years old again, I’m shivering with excitement and fear – and more than a little cold – standing at the top of a monstrously tall flight of metal stairs, ready to throw myself down a mysterious dark tube that threatens to gobble me up forever. Or at least this is the strongest memory that…

  • Insane in the Brisbane

    Taking the typical tourist route from Cairns to Sydney, you get a skewed impression of the inhabitants of Australia. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was filled purely with tour guides, tour representatives, and touring Europeans. I’ve met more Swedes in the last 2 weeks than the last 2 years in the UK, which has…

  • Just a Fraser we’re going through

    I yearn for my shoes! Hot sand becomes unbearable in approximately 2.5 steps barefoot, and if your walking surface is too fine, sandles spoon through it and unhelpfully lift clumps as you trudge along. And on a ‘9/10’ walk, feeling a bit dehydrated and fragile, I curse my previous decision to bring my hoody instead…

  • Daydreaming

    If you’ve ever played Bioshock, Far Cry, Dead Island, or any one of many adventure games where you start off on some ‘facility’ before disaster strikes, you might, like I did, feel a slight undercurrent of impending doom if you go to stay on an island resort. It’s so beautiful. It’s a tropical paradise. You…

  • I suck less at snorkelling

    Foooo–ishhhhhhh…. Foooo–ishhhhhhh…. Images flit through my mind of Darth Vader, or perhaps a morbid future self hooked up to a ventilator, but as I practice snorkelling in the Airlie Beach lagoon, I’m concentrating more on making it feel ok to breathe through a snorkel than anything else. As you may have read a few entries…

  • En-gorged

    On our last day in Cairns, Laura and I went for a trip up the coast with a friend we met in the hostel: Matthew, a fellow Briton from Newcastle. The plan was to see as much of the Atherton Tablelands as possible. Our intentions were far too optimistic, though, and we really only got…

  • Bats, man

    Walking back to our hostel in Cairns, we saw lots of bats roosting in a couple of trees. I’ve never seen so many bats during the day. It was weird, but somewhat demystified them for me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57rUNe0q99Y

  • Swaying Sex Zombies

    In my laceless trainers, jeans, and £6 ‘Pepsi’ t-shirt from Primark, I’m one of the smartest patrons in the nightclub. Yep, in a city where it takes the utmost mental and psychological acuity to wear anything but shorts, it seems that ‘pants’ is how you differentiate smart from casual. And perhaps there is a telling…

  • I suck at snorkelling

    It’s official. I may have generated enough tricks and bespoke styles to just about make myself buoyant at the average swimming pool, but with enormous flippers on my feet, a mask that prevents any kind of olfactory respiration, and the prospect of inhaling while one’s mouth is underwater, I’m reduced to a floundering wreck. And…

  • Cuddling Cairns Koalas

    On Thursday, our first full day at Cairns, Laura and I took a trip to Kurunda, a rainforest village to the Northwest. We took the ‘skycar’ funicular to get there, which consisted of a few miles of towers and little carriages propelled along the cable. It was very quick and we got some excellent views…