My next trip in April brought me to one of the seven natural wonders of the world: the Great Barrier Reef. Off the coast of Queensland, it's the largest coral reef system in the world and considered the 'world's biggest single structure built by living organisms'. I guess what I'm getting at, which you probably already know, is this: the GBR is a big deal. My friend Bryan joined Linnea and me over Easter weekend to see what the fuss is about.
Bryan, a doctor (!) who is about to begin his residency at Duke, was the first person I met and first friend I made at Notre Dame after arriving at the same time on move-in day and realising that we lived next to each other. I'm still not quite sure how Bryan had enough time off in his fourth year of medical school to come to Australia for a couple of weeks (which was after a couple of weeks of honeymooning with his wife in New Zealand), but I was pleased that he made the trip.
When Bryan and I began discussing where we wanted to visit together, his options were limited to places that Linnea and I had not yet been. Luckily, there were several bucket list-worthy destinations still on our "to visit" list, including the Great Barrier Reef. Considering the recent news about how much of the reef is dying, due mostly to increasing ocean temperatures, as soon as possible seemed like the right time to go.
Linnea and I flew to Cairns (pronounced "cans"), which is in the far north of Queensland, on Good Friday. After dinner and an amble along the esplanade, we relaxed at our hostel where, at long last, we reunited with Bryan. And what a glorious reunion it was! Well, not really. We quickly settled into our 3 bed dorm at the hostel to rest up for the following day's reef expedition.
After boarding the Silverswift, we split up: Bryan with the scuba certified divers, Linnea with the snorkellers, and me with the non-certified scuba divers. Before we set sail, I decided to pay for the medicated seasickness tablets instead of relying on the free ginger tablets. It was my first time moving swiftly on the high seas, and I didn't know how my body would react. That purchase was a fantastic decision. There were a lot of unhappy, nauseous sailors on the ride out to the reef who regretted not handing over the $4 for medicated tablets. During the hour-long ride out to the reef, I got a crash course in how to scuba dive from my instructor. If you think that spending an hour on a boat learning how to scuba dive doesn't sound like enough training to be able to scuba dive safely alone, you're right. The non-certified divers dived in small groups with an instructor keeping a close eye on us. I felt safe, but that doesn't mean it wasn't scary. It's very difficult to convince your brain that it's okay to breathe normally when you're under 40 feet of ocean, especially when it's your first time using scuba equipment.
I dove twice, each for about 25 minutes. 10 minutes into the first dive, my instructor pointed at a cave on the ocean floor. A few seconds later, out came a gigantic turtle. I could have finished scuba diving then and there and been happy with the experience. Of the rest of my time underwater, half was spent focusing on breathing and equalising the pressure in my ears, and the other half was spent enjoying the reef. I want to describe what seeing the reef is like, but my photos will do a better job than my words will. However, I will say this: it looked and felt like I was on a different planet. From the very unique surroundings to the feeling of weightlessness, scuba diving is the closest to space exploration that I'll ever be. After my two dives were up, I was happy to be done breathing underwater. I had time to snorkel, which also afforded plenty of great views of the reef. In fact, Linnea saw more cool sea creatures than I did in spotting a stingray.
Cairns isn't known for much other than scuba diving, so we spent the next day celebrating Easter with mass in the morning and wine in the afternoon at the park next to the lagoon. Don't let the title "lagoon" fool you into thinking it's something natural. It's a public pool next to the ocean with a man-made beach along its edge.
On our final day in Cairns, we had a frighteningly late flight back to Melbourne because we bought the cheapest tickets we could find. It was at 11:45pm. This meant that we had another full day, but unfortunately I had to go to work after arriving in Melbourne at 3:10am. We took advantage of our last day in far north Queensland by driving up to the Daintree Rainforest, which is the oldest tropical rainforest in the world. On the edge of the Daintree, we took a crocodile tour where we saw crocs ranging from a couple of inches long (tiny!) to a couple of meters (scary!). While driving through the rainforest we saw dozens of 'Cassowary Crossing' signs, but didn't happen upon any cassowaries. If you're not familiar with this endangered creature, it's a giant flightless bird with claws big enough to kill a man. Now that I think about it, I suppose I'm glad that we didn't come across this terrifying beast. After a beautiful drive back to Cairns that included a chance encounter with a field full of wallabies (to Bryan's delight), we began our late trek back to Melbourne where we would get to rest up for our next trip.
