That town being... Cairns.
Yup, once again the clan pointed the sloop north and jetted off (apologies to future generations for the 2.7 tonnes of CO2 emitted) to FNQ. Both mum and Dad attended a conference at the very same venue where mum attended one last year and hence we're all, including Mike, feeling a bit like locals. (Go on, ask us... wheres the nearest Coles to city centre...?)
The highlight of the trip was not actually the conference itself, but rather Mike's first boat trip to the outer Great Barrier Reef - Moore Reef to be precise - with "Reef Magic"; basically a very fast catamaran that roared along for 90 minutes then moored at a floating pontoon.
Of course mum and dad panicked the whole time that the newly running man would sprint straight off the end of the boat and be lost forever, but luckily this never quite eventuated. Though not from want of the boy trying.
Attempting to keep him in one place - be it in the cabin of a rather large boat or the confines of a economy class seat shared with mum and dad on a Boeing 767 - is a bittova handful. To say the least.
Still, at sea it meant that the boy entertained numerous Japanese tourists with his laps of the boat's lower deck. Being all batty blue-eyes and blond hair, he appears to present a combination irresistible to your common or garden variety Asian tourist.
(Though the crowd of such which surrounded him on a later voyage to Green Island, then proceeded to make loud proclamations while pointing at the somewhat bemused lad, after which they all laughed uproariously, had us a little worried they were actually taking the piss (scuse-the-French). )
Still, all that running about meant at least one good thing. The boy got to sleep in all the best tropical places. On the deck of the floating reef pontoon. On the pier above the coral and fishies at Green Island. In the depths of the jungle at the Cairns botanic gardens and rainforest walk. Sleeping in paradise - It's some of his best work.
Frankly, the trip to the reef was glorious, and indeed the staff on the boat said it was one of the top 10 days of the year: clear skies, no wind, mild-rather-than-hot temperatures, and visibility of about 30m underwater. Dad saw seemingly millions of fish in all the colours of the rainbow, including one electric blue and orange splotched thingy that looked like a Ken Done painting gone mad(der). Mum went on a guided reef "wall" snorkel in 30 odd metres of water and saw not only giant parrot fish but also a gen-ew-ine swimming, breathing, chomping (well, at some stage in its day we imagine) shark. And Mike got to swim in the kiddies cage in the warm water of the ocean, which he appeared to absolutely love, and also got to watch the fish from the pontoon deck (but more on that later).
And then to cap it all off... on the way home the crew spotted a humpback whale. Which just as its continual water spout blowing got a bit dull, breached just for good measure (though mum was so busy trying to take a photo she forgot to actually look for the whale itself), landing with an almighty skin-reddening backwhacker, the likes of which haven't been seen since dad misjudged a leap from the tower at the Shepparton (a.k.a "Shepp") pool as a 10 y.o.Anyway; Mike's first whale.
Which got dad to thinking. Mike is now 15.5 months old. He has travelled in planes, trains, cars, gondolas, bikes and boats, and he's seen other countries (if you class New Zealand as "O.S") , the Great Barrier Reef and jumping whales. And what age was dad when he's experienced all this?
38.
Ok, 36 if you take out the jumping whales.
And 30 if you remove the gondola.
And thats in years.
Amazing.
The funniest /saddest part of the whole reef experience thing had to be Mike and the fish.
See, after lunch, Mike discovered that if you looked down through the cracks in the deck of the pontoon where the boat had moored, he could see the fishies!
(We say after lunch, as we suspect the fish have become acutely aware that pontoon floors with gaps in them become, at lunch time, a prime source of food. Like, who needs to spend their life living in amongst the continual stings of a sea anemone just to snap at some chance floating-by piece of parrot fish poo when you can hang around the floor of "Marineworld" and at precisely 12:30 till 2pm each day, get vege lasagne, honey soy & sesame chicken, bbq'd prawns, and a pineapple and cantelope chaser for dessert. Especially if you have little food-spraying boys (i.e., Mike) present who manage to eat half their
goddamn body weight in slices of fruit alone. Seriously... dad knows; he fed Mike for a full hour/three platefuls and more to the point, changed the follow-up nappy the next day. A nappy with a stink no man nor beast should ever have to experience. As Kenny would say; a smell that will outlast religion.)Anyway back to the story; Mike. Fish. Cracks in floor.
Mike's love of the fish meant that he spent the better part of the last half-to-one hour walking about with his head on the floor peering through the cracks in the pontoon deck at the fish massing below. (Probably eying off the little set of pinky toes that were deliciously dangling down said cracks.) The little bendy-over fish watching man was, indeed, a classic.
That said, there was a proper (and free) underwater observatory on the pontoon for which you simply walked down some steps, sat at a window, and instantly had an underwater view of anything caring to swim (or after Mike's lunch; stagger) by.
Herin lies the sad bit, given all the boys crack peering.
As they were boarding the boat to leave, mum turned to dad and said...
"So he must have loved the fish from the observatory!"
To which Dad replied...
"Errrr... I thought you took him down there... "
Whoooops.
(Guess we'll just have to go back.)
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