The Finale: Australia Week 5

Whenever I thought of the rainforest, my initial thought would always be the Amazon. That was before I went to Australia. Now I think of the Daintree Rainforest in the province of Queensland. The Daintree Rainforest is 180 million years old, making it the oldest rainforest in the world and tens of millions of years older than the Amazon. It spans 1200 square km from the Mossman Gorge and the Bloomfield River on the eastern coast north of Cairns.  I wish I could've captured even a fraction of one third of Australia's frog, reptile and marsupial species, 65% of its bat and butterfly species, 18% of its birds species, and countless endemic species living in the Daintree Rainforest.

As soon as I stepped out of the van that had driven us from the pier at Cairns to the Silky Oaks Lodge in Mossman, all around these species roamed sheltered by the bottle trees, cluster fig trees, the 300 million year old King Fern, and hundreds of other species representative of the botanical evolution throughout the world. My parents, Brianna and her mom, Heather, and I each had our own villa elevated 25 feet off the ground on stilts. They by no means dominated the surrounding ecosystem, but rather blended in with dangling leaves, vines, and ferns and served as pedestals for perching for the squawking parrots, king fishers, and brush turkeys. Even the pool was hidden within the organized knot of flora and fauna and disguised by artificial waterfalls and aquamarine water reminiscent of the Great Barrier Reef.

The first of our two days we went to the Mossman Gorge. The gorge actually runs adjacent to Silky Oaks and lodgers can swim or kayak in it, but the national park associated with the gorge is 15 minutes away. Our tour guide, a member of the aboriginal tribe indigenous to the Daintree nicknamed Skip, led us through the narrow trail blockaded by intricate spiderwebs stretching nearly 2 meters wide. He explained the significance of every piece of nature Daintree has offered his people, formally known as the Kuku Yalanji, for the thousands of years they have called this rainforest their home. For example, the buttress roots of many of the trees were used to make canoes whereas their bark can be used to build the structures of huts and the bark of the vines can be dried out to make string. They were carefully to never stay in one area too long, transitioning from the deep rainforest, to the coast, and to the grasslands so as to not decimate the land for further use.


Skip talked more and more about the abundant utility of the rainforest's resources, including using eucalyptus leaves for soap by rubbing them in water and the sediment from different rocks to paint peoples' bodies with their personal and families history. What I found most admirable about his tour, though, was that he only mentioned the persecution by Westerners once. He said that white people had kidnapped his grandfather and much of his extended family in order to forcible claim the rainforest for commercial uses. On the surface, his tone was merely informative, but underneath a indignant spite burned. Yet he, like many of the other aboriginals who white people have apathetically relocated, have worked to coalesce their culture with the commercial realities and necessities of the modern world. He exemplified an indigenous worker committed to his field, an indigenous worker that many white people, including the government and some of those that we talked to at Myella, do not confidently say exist.

The next day, we experienced the rainforest and the adjacent coast from the more Westernized point of view: the biological and ecological. With an extensive background in outdoor leadership and adventure sports like backcountry skiing, backpacking, mountain biking, and kayaking, our tour guide, Barney, instantly tapped into my academic and personal interests. In the Jindalba Boardwalk, he spoke about the ability of the young, two foot high tree to live without ample sunlight absorbed by the older, taller trees for long periods of time and then to sprout up rapidly as soon as one of the older trees fell. On Cape Tribulation, he pointed out the small crustaceans that burrow in the sand, leaving stacks of perfectly spherical sand balls and hieroglyphic-like patterns. And he clarified that the violet, speckled ovals lying all over the ground were not cassowary (very rare bird about the size of an emu with black feathers and a blue head) eggs but rather a cassowary plum. The two species are mutualistic: the cassowary eats the plum safely, which is laden with poison and toxic to all other animals, and then spreads the seeds all over the rainforest in Queensland. I couldn't believe the extent of his knowledge nor could I resist eating up every piece.

Despite the fact that, as my dad mockingly noted, our tour could have been advertised for members of the AARP since the other eight people were couples over the age of 70, the Forster-Magliozzi clan managed to thrive. Heather made friends with a kangaroo at the café we ate lunch at who, according to her, "stared deep into her eyes," I found an Australian to talk with about backcountry skiing, and my dad managed to last yet another day with four very, shall I say, open females.

Early the next morning, we drove back to Cairns to the airport to fly to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, a desert national park and World Heritage Site in the center of the country. We stayed in tents at Longitude 131. When I say 'tents,' though, don't picture in your head a rain fly, poles and stakes; instead, picture a sleakly modern, metal cabin raised about 15 feets off the ground with a canvas tarp stretched in a curved pyramid across the top. And if you can't picture that, you'll at least be able to begin to understand when I tell you that Prince William and Princess Kate stayed at Longitude 131 in late May. Yeah. You get it now.

But that was just the tents. Then there's the food. Yes, breakfast, lunch and dinner are all 5-star quality. But little can compare to the grill marks charred on two perfectly portioned pieces of chicken breast seasoned lightly with salt and pepper and served over rainbow quinoa soaking in the chicken juices. I couldn't stop my fork from returning over and over to the bright wasabi caviar bursting with the refreshingly pungent spice as I bit into the sesame crusted mahi mahi. Even their homemade muesli, the European/Australian version of granola that is served cold, with milk like cereal, swept away the nighttime desert chill lining my torso with warm spices like cinnamon and all-spice.


I needed that warmth every morning since we would leave for tours of the two rock formations, Uluru and Kata Tjuta, before sunrise when all the heat that had escaped the air and the sand had yet to be replenished by the sun. The land in the national park, as of the late 20th century, is owned by the local aboriginal tribe, the Anangu. Despite this, most all the licensed tour guides there are not Anangu but rather white. At first as we walked the 10 km perimeter of Uluru, and through the 32 rock heads of Kata Tjuta, I was greatly turned off by the supposed ignorance of the guides in terms of their knowledge of the sacred cites of which the visitors could not take pictures and ceremonies of the Anangu. They would shrug their shoulders and say, "We can't tell you about them because we don't know." I wanted to know everything of this massively flat landscape interrupted and dominated by two burnt orange rock formations radiating mystery. Even the most indifferent tourist couldn't avoid the raging curiosity sparked by the holes on Uluru that create an image of a human brain used by the Anangu as a male sacred site.

I finally began to understand during our last tour of the trip that focused solely on the cultural history of Uluru and the Anangu, I finally understood. Our tour guide told us all that she could, again which isn't all that much, and that she had no other information because the Anangu wouldn't tell her. At first I thought, 'Great, another tour of incomplete information.' But then she said, "I can't tell you because the Anangu have a hierarchy of information they allow certain individuals in and out the the tribe to know." Within the tribe, the elders know everything and only tell others if they seek out the elders' guidance, and if the elders' believe they are mature enough in terms of both age and character to handle such information. Even so, women know nothing of the men's sacred information and vice versa. Outsiders, thus, are eligible for even less information not so much out of spite for the intrusion by Western and white society but more so because the vastly different means by which we live that are dictated primarily by commercialism do not coincide with the priorities in the lives of the Anangu.


In a way, I compare it somewhat to the education system. Although people do not openly deny aboriginals or many urban minorities in the United States the right to quality and higher education, their eligibility for such an education is for some reason inferior to that of whites. Obviously the Anangu's reasons for not sharing their cultural information with others is rooted stronger in cultural history than my example, but in comparing the two, I can begin to understand the division between groups of people at the most basic level.

As much as I loved waking up to such a striking environment much different from the view of Pike's Peak I wake up to every morning at school, I was satisfied to leave on our last day. I felt as though I had a much of a grasp as I could on the Anangu and the reason why Uluru-Kata Tjuta was named a World Heritage Site and had hiked every trail in the park (typical Forster family mentality, right?). Besides, I was a bit tired of waking up at 6:15 AM when it was 30 degrees outside while sleeping in a 'tent' without heat and a floor so cold I'd have to wear slippers. Underlying that satisfaction, though, was a remorseful acceptance that my trip had basically ended. All that was left was our second stop in Sydney for higher quality food in Chinatown and at Pie Face, and finally the plane ride home.

I wouldn't say this trip surpassed some of my others in terms of extreme adventure or exposure to exotic culture especially when I compare it to backpacking in Alaska for a month or learning first hand about non-violent political protest in Serbia. I'll never forget this trip, though, because it was the first time that I traveled without adults or a paid organization and planned four weeks of constant travel with someone about my age. Rather than having every hour or every day planned as with most of my previous vacations, I embraced the spontaneity and budgetary restrictions of traveling as a college-age student (even though I hated looking at my drained checking account when I got back to the United States). We could explore cities without the rehearsed, sometimes narrow perspective of a tour guide, sleep on the beach without a to-do list lingering in our dreams, and giggle sinisterly when we tell our parents we went sky diving and bungee jumping.

Of course I would've loved to stay in Australia for the rest of the summer riding the Greyhound Bus and sleeping in bunk beds at youth hostels throughout the rest of the continent, but that's not what I miss the most I think. Maybe it's Brianna and my furry, kangaroo friend Bendy, but what I think I really miss most is waking up next to this crazy loser every day. Cheers, my friends.

Australia Week 4

Brianna and I had two days left of freedom in Australia after leaving the Myella Farmstay, and we were intent on exploiting every last second of “do whatever you want” time before meeting our parents at 12:45 PM sharp on June 21^st. After that, we would no longer accept various colored sheets from the receptionists at youth hostels to stretch over the shabby mattresses on our bunk beds, eat $10 meals in Chinatown, and throw our packs into the storage area of the Greyhound Australia buses. Instead, we would be cruelly confined to plush pillows in private rooms, five star quality, four course meals, and porters to transport our packs. Such a shame, right?

In all honesty, it was hard to let go of the lifestyle Brianna and I had grown so accustomed to the past four weeks. It was the first time I had felt homeless. There was a increasing satisfaction in that homelessness, that day after day I had yet another city, beachfront, farm or teepee to crawl through and feel their respective cracks in concrete, jagged shell remains, brittle grasses and coarse strands of dreadlocks on the pads of my fingers and toes. Every step, harmonized by a creak in my weary back, was another diversion from the routine of my life in the United States. I was intoxicated by that melody, and not sure if I was ready to fast forward to the next beat.

I figured if I had to (and there was no changing my parents plans), Brianna and I would leave on the highest note possible. To do so, we figured we had to actually plan for at least one of these two momentous days unlike acting spontaneously the morning of. With our track record, though, it was to be expected that our activity itinerary for one of these two days would be as last minute as possible. Our original plan before Cairns was to stay in Mission Beach for two nights. We lasted all of 24 hours, plagued by a cloudy drizzle and stunned by a 'town' consisting of a strip of four restaurants and six stores. Out of immovable boredom, we rescheduled our bus for a day earlier, leaving us with an extra day in Cairns before jumping out of a plane. So when the receptionist at the Cairns youth hostel asked if we needed help booking any activities in Cairns, what else would you expect us to answer but bungee jumping?

My dad had bungee jumped in the past, and when I was younger, I thought he was crazy. That was before I indulged in, rather than quelled, the sweet nectar of adrenaline. Now, I was equally crazy. I dared to climb 196 to the top of a 162 foot tall platform at AJ Hackett's Cairns Bungee Jump Center. As the employee on belay wrapped towels around my ankles and clipped the carabiner onto my harness, I stoked the fire burning in my blood to elevate the scale of the upcoming explosion. And when a bolt of fear electrocuted my brain as I looked below from the edge of the platform, I absorbed the shock with a deep inhale and, well, jumped. I expected to scream in excitement, but instead, I was completely calm. My body was so weightless that I couldn't feel the adrenaline pumping inside me but rather revolving around me in a color-shifting aura. I stretched my hands towards the top of the miniscule pond below that grew in size drastically disproportional to the two or three seconds I was actually free-falling. It expanded more like viscous molasses rather than thin cake batter. I could have free-fallen forever, never retracting the smile stretching across my face for miles and exposing every one of my teeth.

When the tips of my fingers finally did graze the surface and my body bounded back upwards like a rag dog, my squinty-eyed smile burst into a light-headed giggle. Even as the length of my rebound decreased and I reached for the raft paddle held upwards by the employee on the pond, I kept laughing with hopes that somehow its vibrations would lift me back to the top of the platform so I could jump again. Sadly, I was detached from the bungee cord too fast for my far-fetched fantasies to even begin to come to life. Instead, I relived my jump over and over in the five pictures I had paid $50 extra to receive and imagined jumping off the 200 METER (about 600 foot) tall platform AJ Hackett's company was building in China. Some day, I kept thinking. For now, though, we had yet another adrenaline-junky activity for which we had to prepare ourselves.

Day two, our final parent-free day, was actually planned three weeks prior when we were staying in Byron Bay. I had wanted to dive in Colorado for my eighteenth birthday, but with the start of my freshman year, free time was not really an expendable resource. Looking back, I'd say it was for the better. Now, I would sky dive over the Great Barrier Reef the day after arriving in Cairns three hours before meeting my parents at the pier.

The night before our jump, Brianna and I meticulously pried through our heaps of clothes we had poured out of our packs and onto the floor, ensuring our diving outfits were as perfect as a wedding dress. So, when my alarm screamed at 6:15 AM, I pulled on my signature shirt that I wear in at least half of the pictures I am tagged in on Facebook: my obnoxiously neon yellow, synthetic shirt with “SoccerPlus Goalkeeper School” written in bold black letters. Anyone in Friday morning traffic would look up at the sky and see me: the little, yellow dot hurdling towards the ground.

Unlike with bungee jumping, during which the threat of the ground is only a few feet away, during sky diving, you have almost 34,000 feet between you and the ground while free-falling. The reality of the consequences of part of the equipment faltering is so far away physically, that my mind could only comprehend the experience with blurred, unrecognizable lines like bleeding watercolor painting. While free-falling, I thought more about the beauty of the swelling ocean and the lush, dark green masses of rainforest below than the fact that I had just jumped out of a plane with a stranger on my back. After the parachute deployed, I calmly transitioned to my task, steering the chute and spinning wildly in circles, rather than regaining feeling in (what I assume was) my pounding chest. It wasn't until I slid smoothly across the grass on my butt upon landing that I had even the slightest sense of what I had just done. Even a now, a week later, after looking through my pictures time after time, I still can't really wrap my mind around it.
 

We headed back to our hotel, dazed partially from the drastic altitude gradient we had just experienced and partially from lack of sleep, and grabbed our packs, backpacks and two overstuffed bags of yogurts, cheeses, eggs, bacon, and Tim Tams. After two 30-day backpacking expeditions and countless multi-day ones, I'm obviously used to a heavy load. But this, this was unbearable especially for a 25 minute walk from one side of downtown Cairns to the other. Every two minutes or so, either Brianna or I would have to stop and rearrange the positioning of our hands to regain some sort of circulation. Ten minutes into our trek only seconds before both of us would have collapsed, some heavenly angel cast its blessing and granted us with the greatest gift even a higher being could ever give: a shopping cart. There it was, resting on the edge of the sidewalk just to the left us, waiting to be claimed. There was no hesitation, no self-conscious fear of judgment. That cart was ours.

We plopped our backpacks and grocery bags inside the cart and strided forward towards the pier with overwhelming relief and a new-found vitality. There's no denying it: we looked like hobos. We were the happiest hobos, though, with the most swag of anyone glaring inquisitively at us. As we sat on the pier leaning against the back of the shopping cart, our parents, who had just landed in Cairns, walked towards us asking each other who the hell those two girls at the end of the pier could possibly be. "Maybe that's Brianna and Elizabeth." "No, it can't be." "Wait, it definitely is. That's Elizabeth's neon yellow goalkeeper shirt!" Brianna and I galloped like crazy monkeys towards them, and embraced them for the first time in almost a month. The Forster-Maglozzi clan reunited at last.

We climbed on the ferry to Fitzroy Island, an island composed almost entirely of a national park about an hour off the coast of Cairns. Until arriving in Cairns, nobody Brianna nor I had talked to had ever heard of Fitzroy which could have been either a cause for concern or a greatly appreciated relief from the populated cities. Thankfully, the coral-lined shores and undulating inland hills of the island proved to be the perfect secret hideway for the first leg our of family journey. We started first with the hills, hiking up painfully steep but short sections of crumbling stone alternating with short downhills. The island has in fact the highest summit elevation of any of the surrounding islands reaching a monstrous 882.5 feet. Watch out Colorado 14ers, you've got some competition. 

The trail ended at the island's lighthouse, from which we could see the various shades of blue blending into one another as the depth of the ocean increased and decreased. The next day, we would snorkel throughout similar areas forty-five minutes away from the island. I would get to see the pearl white coral brutally massaging the bottoms of my feet on the beach bloom into vibrant shades of peach, plum, kelp-green, and sunset pink from the polyps living inside. I would float silently over schools of metallic fish flickering their tails, propelling them towards the algae and kelp. And I would be nearly paralyzed by the sight of the dull-grey reef shark flashing its needle-point teeth. I saw this and so much more, yet I had still only seen a miniscule fraction of the largest coral reef in the world, spanning 344,000 square kilometers of the waters off the coast of Australia.

Could you imagine if that entire area, or even a portion, bursting with an infinite color wheel of environmentally productive organisms and ecosystems essential to the health of our planet was gone? Although not on such a large scale, such degradation is ongoing due to an increase in sea surface temperatures and consequently, an imbalance in the calcium carbonate levels. The majority of the damage to the Great Barrier Reef since the end of the 20th century was caused by tropical cyclones, whose power is proportional with sea surface temperatures. The coral polyps that give the coral its color and its nutrients also die with the acidification of sea water caused by this chemical imbalance and oxygen starvation primarily. When the coral dies, the organisms that use the coral as a shelter or a source of food die, thus leaving their respective predators without prey on which to feed. I would never wish for the Great Barrier Reef to disappear, but if for the most unfortunate reason it ever did, I'm eternal grateful that I was able to experience its vibrantly, bio-diverse wonder now before it may be too late.

Fitzroy Island is also home to a turtle sanctuary and rehabilitation center run by the Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre, a non-profit organization formed in 2000 by Paul Barnes and Jennie Gilbert. The turtles residing in the Fitzroy Island location are in the second stage of rehabilitation after spending an average of eighteen months in intensive care at a veterinarian facility. Many suffer from floater's syndrome which occurs when a turtle ingests a substance that they cannot digest. Unlike in the human body, which would manage to break down the substance despite its consequences, the substance would cause the turtle's other essential bodily systems to falter or even fail. Their muscles begin to break down and weaken substantially, causing them to float. They no longer can dive to find food, avoid predators and weather patterns, and continue maturing. If not rescued, floater's syndrome can lead to death.

The Fitzroy Island Resort, the only place of accommodation on the island, pays for the rehabilitation centre's lease and offers to its guests a tour of the turtle sanctuary (during which I learned all the information above). On the tour, you also get to meet two of the turtles, Barney and Bettie, who have had some of the most miraculous recoveries of any of the turtles currently at the sanctuary. In learning about their stories and those of the other turtles, the effects of pollution and the rising sea temperatures on the severity of storms (most recently Cyclone Yasi in 2011) in particular are evident on a peaceful, graceful species. And with the recent world-wide call for immediate action to curb the rate of climate change after the release of some dismal climate change reports, including one from the International Panel on Climate Change, the medical disorders plaguing these turtles are all too relevant to the drastic consequences climate change scientists are predicting if we don't change our engrained habits.

So, I left Fitzroy Island with an appreciation for two staple components of Australia's and the world's ecosystems that are currently at risk for eventual extinction, both of which suffer greatly from the increase in sea surface temperature and associated climate changes. With my equally environmental-hippie-dippie book, "Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution" by Caroline Fraser, in my hand, I was ready to venture into another ecosystem with ample endemic species and essential resources: the rainforest.