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.