Snorkeling The Great Barrier Reef, Skydiving, rafting, and casual racism.

Have you ever wanted to see the north coast of Australia? That beautiful, tropical part of Queensland where you can put your feel up, enjoy the sun, and leave your worries behind? Well I did just that. About a week and a half ago I decided to go on holiday to sunny cairns! The flight there was smooth, quick, and painless. Upon leaving the plane the attendant announced “It’s been a pleasure to fly with you!”. A pleasure? By sitting on a seat and asking for a beer? That couldn’t be right. I was tempted to ask the attendant just how happy she was to be in everyone’s presence, but I ignored the false sincerity, grabbed my stuff, and exited the plane. The 1st thing you notice is the heat. The kind of hellish devil heat that makes your skin melt. After checking into the resort I decided to venture into town. It’s a nice little area. Fresh seafood everywhere, smiles, pubs, and people enjoying a relaxing stroll. Except on a Wednesday. Everything seems to close then for some reason. Oh well. Moving on. My partner and I didn’t waste any time booking our adventure activities. Skydiving, boat cruising, snorkeling the Barrier reef, and white water rafting! Skydiving was the 1st thing to do. We jumped in a bus that took us to a little place known as Innisfail. We got geared up jumped into the small plane. Upon reaching 14,000 feet it was “go time”. The door to the plane was a perspex roller door (nice and safe) which my guide told me to help him open as it was stuck (read: worked properly and safely…) , then I dangled my legs out of the plane and stared down to see a landscape of white. The tops of the clouds looked like huge fluffy mountain tops waiting to be bounced upon. “Go!! Go, get out!!” was screamed into my ear. So, I did what any self respecting human who wishes to live a long life would do. I jumped. Well, I say “jumped”, it was more like “fell”. The free fall (where you travel at min 200kms and hour and drop like a stone) was amazing. No noise, no distractions, just tranquility. Then reality hit. “S#*%, I guess this is happening now!”. Before I knew it, the parachute opened and I sailed peacefully down to earth. Amazing. If you’ve never done it, I suggest you do. Next adventure was snorkeling the reef. Less dangerous, right? It was an all day cruise out to the reef and back again. Upon reaching the reef we were told to put our “smurf suits” on (read: wetsuits). We all jumped in and had a look. It was amazing, it was spectacular, it was… a bunch of rocks and fish. Now, I don’t want to rip on the reef too much. It is actually very beautiful for the 1st few minutes you’re there. But after awhile you end up going “Jesus… guess I’ll see if that rock looks different over there. Nope! Oh wow! A rainbow fish!”. Two lessons I learnt that day was: 1, Fire Coral doesn’t need to be touched before it shoots venom at you, and 2, a wetsuit provides fuck all protection! I got home and found I couldn’t walk or use my right hand. Yep. Andy 0, Reef 1. The next adventure was rafting. FUCK YEAH HIGH OCTANE GRADE 4 WHITE WATER RAFTING ALL DAY LONG BRING IT YES OH MUMMA SWEET JESUS!!! The rafting was amazing. My partner and I were put on the “couples raft” with two other couples. One couple were a pair of doctors, while the other were a primary school teacher and a nuclear physicist. The two men on the raft were in competition with each other for who could say “mate” the most, and laugh the loudest at our rafting guide’s jokes. The women on the other hand were in direct competition as to who was the most useless with an oar (I think I was smashed in the back 3 times and my partner 4 times by these useless women). The trip down the water was amazing. Getting flipped over, crashing into rocks, and… helping people. Yup. There was a large Japanese tourist group going down the river that day with us. I’m not sure what raft they were in, as most of the time I only saw them as they individually floated down the river into rocks. We became the rescue raft! It was all very exciting! Enough so, that I forgot all about my hand and legs recovering from the coral poisoning. That was until I pulled my shoulder out and received 3rd degree sunburn to my white pale Caucasian legs. We went back to the resort, put our feet up, and passed out. One thing I noticed during this whole time, was the amount of accepted racism up there. While talking to a particular bus driver about life in Cairns, he slipped in “This place is great. I mean, there’s the ‘blacks’ but you just don’t go there. How long are you up here for?”. Almost every day someone felt the need to drop in the word “indigenous” or “black” or “dark” in almost every conversation. Even when skydiving, our instructor thought it would be funny to talk to the Korean tourists by saying “You likey da skydive? Make you very happy long time!” (Later, he clarified that it was “funny” because they were Korean. And because he married a Japanese woman, and my partner is a Chinese girl, this apparently gave him the right to make a racist joke and share it with us). I’ll remember to bring my gong with me next time. In any case, I had a ball. The food is great, accommodation is cheap, there’s places to swim in nice tranquil water everywhere, and every day there’s specials on prices for activities like skydiving, rafting etc. But I have to say, thank god I’m back in Melbourne. The place where the sun isn’t too hurty, you can catch a tram with people of all races and smile at each other, and where shops are still open on Wednesdays. You can find more stories I've done at my comedy blog at potato revolution dot com (warning: Contains adult language) http://potatorevolution.wordpress.com/