Down Under the Sea

Down Under the Sea
One of the - many, sorry mum I am falling in love! - things I am loving about Australia is how so much is exactly how I had imagined it. The immense blue sky, swaying palm trees, low pastel coloured buildings and plethora of disorientated backpackers on every corner is so exactly the Cairns of my mind's eye that it is almost startling to be here, amongst it. I almost want to reach out and touch it to make sure that it is real, but one disgruntled backpacker soon cured me of that particular urge ;)
I love that, unlike us Scots who have never, in my experience, uttered an "och aye the noo" unless taking the piss, people here genuinely employ "g'day" and "no worries" in every day conversation. I have even been called "doll" on a couple of occasions (still no "flaming gallah" sadly.) This afternoon, as I lay in indulgent bliss by the lagoon reading my book, I even got to listen to an old man playing a didgeridoo. And yes, of course he may well have been cynically pandering to the gathered tourists, but the effect was the same for me. What can I say, I am easily pleased.
No mind's eye or immagination, however, could fully have prepared me for the Great Barrier Reef. Because it is exactly as it appears in books and magazines and nature programs - but so much more so it literally is astonishing. Yesterday at the soul-destroying hour of 6.30am I rose and crept out of the hostel dormitory, congratulating myself for maturely resisting temptation to wreak revenge on my very entertaining but bloody noisy roommates, and headed down to the quay. Once on the smallish boat - there were about 20 of us - with the sun just finishing its ascent into the almost gleaming blue sky, and the sea breeze providing pleasant respite to North Queensland's current winter heatwave, I nursed a welcome cup of tea and thought to myself that life doesn't get much better than this.
A thought I had to take back when, an hour or so later, we pulled up at our first destination: a tiny island some 20 miles off the coast which serves as a bird sanctuary for over 20,000 birds - they swarm almost disconcertingly insect-like above the beach - and the site of my first snorkelling experience. The guide chucked some food in the water in order to show for us some of the fish that we were likely to encounter once we joined them in the water. I won't deny that I was slightly apprehensive at the sheer size of them - at least a couple could have swallowed my arm whole, had they chosen to. From above the water they looked pretty, colourful, interesting, and the coral shapes murkily outlined below certainly intriguing. However, the view from above the water did not begin to hint at the other world that awaited us once we jumped off the boat. The sight that greeted us - coral in sandy peach, fiery orange, deep purple, and electric blue, silver, black and yellow striped fish in all shapes and sizes; some darting around, some leisurely picking at the coral, some moseying through the water as if on a Sunday walk, a brave few investigating the silly looking people who were gawking at them - was nothing short of breathtaking. There is something peculiarly isolating about snorkelling - while I could almost always see a swimmer from my group bobbing around as I was, the silence below the surface - save for my own Darth Vader-like breathing - gives the impression of being totally alone, and also not entirely present. Maybe it's the sheer weirdness of the sight, so far removed from the more solid world we're used to on land, that gives the experience a surreal, hypnotically trippy, feel.
After an hour and a half, it was back to the boat for some lunch as we headed out to our second location - the outer reef, 40 miles from the shore. While I'd been entirely comfortable in the water during the first dive, I have to admit to being somewhat... disconcerted to jump into the sea when there was no visible land. And once I was in, to look down and realize that I couldn't see the bottom. This time, the inexperienced snorkellers were led by the guide. She stopped to point out giant clams - ginormous shell like creatures with a deep purple, velvety inside - and invite us to dive down and stick our hands in it to make it defensively close. Which didn't sound like the cleverest idea to me - fond as I am of possessing all ten digits - but I am a sucker for suggestion and am glad to report that even closed, a giant clam boasts plenty of room for a human hand to be withdrawn. We also met slimy sea cucumbers and a giant fish who goes by the name of Wally. Bizarrely enough, I returned from the trip to see an email from my sister, who dived at the Barrier Reef a few years ago, telling me to look out for Wally. Nice to know that he's getting to know the whole family.
We swam past the area which we'd been told was the best place to see reef sharks, and I still couldn't tell you whether I am truly relieved or disappointed that there were none! Our guide did point out the very edge of the reef, around 100 metres away, where the sea bed fell off with cliff-like sharpness into ocean proper, and mentioned that that was where the "big boys hung out." A few minutes later when I cut my leg on some coral, I did pause to wonder just how quickly those "big boys" might traverse the 100 metres if they got a sniff of blood. It seems that they weren't peckish for Scot so I made it back to the boat. It was at that point, as we headed back for the distant shore, again enjoying the breeze and the sun, my mind reeling from all I'd seen - and yes, I was nursing another cup of tea - that I thought to myself that life doesn't get much better than this.
Which I had to take back a few minutes later, when someone at the front of the boat called everyone's attention to a black dot on the horizon. Within moments we'd all clambered out on to the outside of the railings at the front of the boat to watch as three Humpback Whales approached us. Suddenly it was party time off the coast of Cairns, as a handful of Minke Whales and numerous dolphins appeared and the surface of the sea was awash with black dots, some close enough to make out the shape of the mammal, others only discernable by the wooshing spray of water above them. We all watched in silence and - for my part, at least - something approaching awe at these awesome - in the original sense - creatures in their natural habitat. Somehow, because we weren't on an official 'whale watch' it was even more of a treat to happen upon them.