And today I shall talk about memories. Not memories per say in the sense of dissection in ‘inception’, but of the memory of a good week long break that we took. But, in simpler words, I shall talk. So we took a long break and based ourselves in Brisbane. There are a couple of reasons why Brisbane was a good choice, and free food and a place to stay is definitely the basis of the hierarchy of needs, but the story starts in Sydney itself.
I had been aware for a period of time, that we would base ourselves in Brisbane in near future, and so had been the others; and as goes with all things that one is aware for a period of time, nothing is done till the near future becomes dangerously close to present. In this case, it was the flight tickets from Sydney to Brisbane, which started shooting up like crazy the day I decided to book my tickets. They were going up in the air by the hour, so I grounded myself, I booked a train.
As it is will most natural landscapes in Australia, the landscape was amazing. For ‘you cannot miss it even if you sleep off’ part of the journey, the railtrack goes by the side of the ocean. (No it does not go through the beach, yes, you can see the ocean); and the ocean views are generally flanked by islands of greenery, it would not have been surprising had I heard Jurassic sounds in there. So I had my lunch at 2:30 PM, I took a train at 4:30 pm, it was dark by 6:30 PM, and the served dinner at 7PM. Dinner @7pm !, I was still burping from my lunch and it was time to have dinner. But I figured that it would not be a wise decision to ignore food and spend a sleepless hungry night, I had dinner and slept, happy and content with the thought that I am wise.
After spending a day in Brisbane making plans, we went to the Stradbroke Island, which is some distance away from Brisbane. We took a bus, then we took a train, then we took a bus, then we took a ferry, and then we took a bus, just to get there. As we approached reached the beach, I thought to myself “it is absolutely worth getting here, the ferry ride was amazing. Let’s see if the island is worth going to.” And it was. Apart from the turquoise blue ocean and the sand coloured beach and the multicoloured rocks, there were also dark brown coloured kangaroos and dark green coloured turtles. And if you see photographs of a couple of us in a surya namaskar pose, you should know that it was for those five seconds of our lives when we wholly embraced yoga. And then after spending the day at the island, we returned to the base.
Next up was a road trip to a couple of other place. We took a self drive car on and headed towards Noosa. As had happened the last time we rented a car, this time too we got an automatic transmission even though we had booked a manual transmission. I do not think automatic transmission is as much fun to drive as is a manual gearbox. But maybe the car rental agencies have their own business models.
Noosa is a small city, with a couple of beaches and a number of backpackers. My highlight of the place being our experience of (not)surfing and (but)bodyboarding. Since I did not know how to surf, body boarding seemed to be a good option at the beach. Since I do not know how to swim, it seemed to be a good option to venture only so far as I could have my feet on land underwater. So I took the body board and ventured into the sea. I stood in chest deep water for some time, saw a good wave coming turned my back around to the wave, climbed onto the board , and waited as the wave passed under me, without taking me with it. Oh well, I stood upright again and waited for another good wave. All in all, in a span of an hour, I think it was thrice that I managed to have the wave carry me all the way to the beach. Having watched innumerable surfers surfing on all other beaches, I would have thought that I would do a decent enough job of bodyboarding. But as elders say, not till you do it, will you know what most important observation that you made was. In simple terms, experience is good even in simple things. What I now know is that I should have always been on the body board, and should have paddled with my hands when a wave came and that’s how one catches a wave. One does not catch a wave by standing in the sea and jumping on the wave as if it was a wild horse.
Next up was Byron bay. It’s a bay, like any other, just a little less touristy and lot better. And this time, we ventured into the sea. Of course, we were on a kayak, and for a couple of times, the kayak was on us, but it was a very good experience. We saw turtles and dolphins and whale tales, and a lot of sea water, and we drank a lot of sea water too. It’s a good thing we had life jackets. For a start, the kayak needs to be pulled into the ocean against the waves. I think that is the toughest part of the entire excursion. One needs to hit the wave head-on, and then as soon as the wave crosses from under you, the front portion of the kayak falls one meter through air till it touches water. It’s a very bumpy ride. So the chain of events sounds like whoosh, right, thwack, thud; whoosh, right, thwack, thud; whoosh, right, thwack, thud. The whoosh when we hear the wave, the right (or left) is the frantic shout of the people in the boat to signal which side of the kayak to oar so as to hit the wave head on, the thwack as the wave hits your body, and the thud when the kayak falls back into the sea. In case the ‘right’ sound goes missing, it is substituted by ‘glug glug’ after ‘thud’, because the kayak capsizes and the occupants are drinking sea water.
Then you go deep into the ocean, where the sea is much calmer, and there are no waves. The ocean surface of course rises and falls about a metre and half, so much so that there are times when you cannot see a of the other kayaks as your view is obstructed by the ocean. It is there, that you hear a whisss and a whale creates a blowhole, and then you see a tail disappearing into the ocean. apparently the whales that loud a sound to signal to the other waves, the other more interesting phenomenon is whats called a body mark. The ocean surface generally has ripples, but when a whale splashes into the ocean, the surface become absolutely plane, and this mark travels for some distance. It is as if there is a pond within the ocean.
After feeling refreshed with the experience, and tired with the paddling, we set out back towards Brisbane, via a town called Nimbin. It’s a small village of about five hundred people, it was not so much about the town, as the journey was fascinating through the countryside. The roads are deserted so one can attain high speeds. The terrain is over hills, it is like a giant roller coaster some, 200 metres of rise and then 150 metres of fall. Through the hills, with green all around, and the cows and the horses absorbing their fair share of the greenery. Side note- we travelled a long distance to get to a petrol pump in Nimbin, and it turned out that it had shut down for the last two weeks, and will reopen in another 3 weeks. Good old GPS, we were out of fuel ! but thankfully, after a great number of phone calls and talking, we got some in jerry cans from road assistance.
So we reached the base Brisbane back, and followed the neon lights to Gold Coast the next day, before heading back to Sydney.
