Lush life

I'm blogging from my phone, so apologies for the layout: it's wall of text for dinner and wall of pictures for dessert!

Plus, it's gonna be a short one, I don't like typing on the phone...

I spent the last weeks in the tropical paradise that is Newell Beach in Far North Queensland.

Hans and Wendy are managing a handful of luxury holiday accommodation around the area, and they always have about a dozen backpackers staying to help out with the housekeeping and cleaning. It's great fun with my backpacker housemates from all over the world (well,  actually mostly from France haha). We live right next to the beach and go to sleep listening to the waves. It's just paradise.

On the days off work we can go and explore the area. We went to a Wildlife Park to look at all the native animals and to Mossman Gorge.

Thanks to Julia I even have the most wonderful pictures of me in the clear waters of Mossman Gorge - and HOW beautiful is this place!!

Yawn - good night!

All but the sun

Steady my bones

Leave my heart a stone

I'm glad to be numb to

All but the sun

And the warmth in her eyes

Let the world decide for

Some things you follow, some things

you find

.....

Hear me out

I have a tale to tell as well

I fell and I'm falling

But always a dream and

Always it seems I wake to be numb to

All but the sun now

___________________________________________________________________

I hitched from Bellingen to Murwillumbah. I went there because for years now I have wanted to climb Mount Warning, and it felt like now or never.

Strangler Figs. Aren't they creepily beautiful? How they hug another tree so tight, until it dies.

I reached the summit and just hung out up there, basking in the sunshine and doing a lot of lookout looking. When I, for a change, looked down - I saw a python, right underneath the metal grid I was sitting on. He wasn't very big, but with such pretty patterns on his smooth skin. He looked at me for while, and then slowly slithered on his way without the slightest sound.

  

The next morning I said good bye to the"Bones" and Kendall and Connor drove me to a petrol station on the highway. After a while a young couple pulled over, telling me that they never picked up a hitch hiker before, but when they saw me, they turned around and came back to get me. Aww, unbelievable! They asked me where exactly in Brisbane I wanted to go, and it turned out that they lived quite close to the house of Tim and Grace, where I was going to stay. So they delivered me right to the front door! Perfect lift.

With Grace and Tim and their housemate I ventured out into The Valley (Fortitude Valley) that night, and now you guess who I met up with! None other but Tweety! It was so good to see her again and talk and catch up, and laugh and table dive, and get a little tipsy! (it was her first day off work in weeks, so.... ) I love Tweety!

The following days I spent enjoying the terrific company of Sonya and Russell; oh they are  the best!

Then it was time to head to the Planting Festival at Woodfordia. Sorry I do not have time just now to write more about it, but I had, of course, another bombastic long weekend at this amazing place! Oh, how I am going to miss it.

At the Planting, I met Andy again - she was boss of the Fencing Crew the Woodford before last. She mentioned that she'd be driving up to Airlie Beach straight after the festival. "You're going to Airlie Beach? Can I catch a ride?"

So Monday morning Andy and me started a little road trip. 1000km, two days of driving, one night in Rockhampton, and many, many hours of listening to the Illawarra Folk Music Mixed Tapes in Andy's Isuzu. Yay!

Airlie Beach has been Andy's home for some 8 years, and for about 5 of them she worked as a diving instructor on the boats cruising around the Whitsunday Islands. These Islands are what makes Airlie Beach a famous tourist destination - you all would have heard of the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef, right?

Famous Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island. I didn't use a filter; those colours are real! Can you believe it?

Snorkeling and seeing the world famous coral was on my list of things that I have to do before I leave Australia. 

And here is another lucky Pony story. Because Andy worked on the boats for so long she knows the people in the scene, and it only took a little text message to her friend Gary to get a day trip on a boat for both of us - for $25 each instead of paying the normal price of $180. Thank you Gary and Andy!!

This day might well have been one of the best days of my 2016 and mind you, my 2016 so far has been absolutely incredibly bombastic, no bragging or exaggerating.

I love snorkeling! I love looking at the reef! I could look at it for hours on end, I won't get tired of it. I really didn't want to get out of the water.

 All the characters of "Finding Nemo" were there, as well as many many many others, my favorites being the parrot fish that glitter and shine in all rainbow colours.

(Those photos were taken at an artificial reef in a man-made lagoon. Because I don't have a waterproof camera ;) )

But Gary had an underwater camera, of course.

Best faces!

A Manta ray

Guitar shark

Posing with the mermaids at Daydream Island.

Airlie Beach is a lively little beach town, not very big but busy with backpackers as well as locals, all having fun in pubs, cafes, and bars along the main street. Every night is a Saturday night. Every night there's live music in several places - there are so many musicians in the area!

Walking home from the sailing club after midnight along the marina, barefoot on the dimly lit boardwalk, with the waves lapping and the stars shining - almost the best part of the evening.

What a wonderful piece of paradise to call home.

But after a wonderful week with Andy, Darren, Craig, the music and the Islands, it was time to go, further north.

Cairns.

Never did a city manage to impress me so much that I wanted to hang around for long. But I still like to give every big place I go to a chance. I stay for a couple of days and explore, and then move on again to greener and less crowded places. So I found a lovely place to couch surf in Cairns - with Brent, a local in his late fifties who is a hero on the guitar although he has got a broken left arm at the moment. His house seems to be always full of backpackers, most of them young Germans, and that is something you can basically say about the whole town of Cairns. It's teeming with Germans! 

Germans in the public pool, 

Germans in the street, 

Germans in the hostels, 

German is everyone you meet.

Germans on the esplanade, 

Germans encircling you, 

Germans in the shops and cafes, 

Remind yourself, you are German, too!

Must be because they love the tropical climate, like I do. It's great if you can just always walk off barefoot in shorts and singlet; even if you come home in the middle of the night, you won't be cold. 

I caught up with Fiona and Sonnie who I knew from last Confest, yay!

Fiona is wwoofing at an urban permaculture/social experiment place called the t-house, a place where everything is painted and dead hippie vans are sitting in the big overgrown veggie garden. 

I also spent a wonderful evening of vegan ice cream and story sharing with Azrae, who I was fencing with at the Woodford before last. Man, it was so good to see her again! 

There's some funky people in Cairns!

Now I am in Newell Beach just a bit south of the Daintree forest, where I found a wonderful place to do some wwoofing and veging out in the sun.
And I am fighting to get this post together - damn you smartphone, of course it does not just work as easily as promised. I thanks to Rachel I can use a computer to publish it at last, but everything is in French, so I will just leave it be now: becquse zriting zith q french keypqd is neqrly ipossible zhen iù, not used to it1 qctuqlly this is fun ,qybe I should do so,e ,ore of this just becquse itùs q,using ,e hqhq no just kidding i%, gonnq stop noz qnd go to be qnd leqve so,e poor freqk to figure this out Good night1

Sorry for the holes in the story and the missing photos! I hope you enjoy it anyway.