We flew into Cairns, on the north end of the east coast. The city holds little of interest but we experience the culture shock of being in a real place after sweet, smalltown New Zealand. We had to readjust to the reality of crime. In fact, to our horror, we noticed immediately the terrible plight of the indiginous people, the aboriginies, when the young, longhaired hipster working at our guesthouse warned us to stay away from those "filthy abos" in the nearby park. It was sad, so many aboriginies on the streets, hanging out outside the bars, so drunk they could barely talk. There was a great deal of political discussion going on at the time, though, and many strong affirmative action programs had recently been put into effect. For example, they had given back some land to aboriginal stewardship.

But I digress. Anyway, Cairns is a gateway to head north up to Cape Tribulation, home of the Great Barrier Reef. We stayed at the Crocydylus Village guesthouse in the middle of the rainforest. (Like New Zealand, Australia is a cakewalk for backpackers--you get shuttled from one charming guest house to the next, paying about $8 a night and cooking your own food in the communal kitchens there. We need these places on the California coast.) On rainforest walks we saw heaps of wild pigs and two cassowaries---huge, flightless birds, bright blue and very rare. And I'd never seen anything like the hanging vines except in Tarzan movies. Or like the the strangler vines, which would climb up the huge fig trees and suck them dry until nothing remained but the massive carcass (check the pic).