Life in Cairns

Well it seems I have been in Cairns longer than I intended. I am not entirely sure how long I have been here, but I have been in Far North QLD, mainly the Tablelands and Cairns for exactly 2 months. It is an interesting life hanging out at a backpackers and spending days chatting to people from across Europe and North America, chilling out at the lagoon, and dancing the nights away after free dinner at the bar. It is amazing how easy it is to sit around and do nothing! There are plenty of people here who have fallen under the spell and have been here for way longer than intended and spent their time doing not much.

I have spent 9 days worth of my time, and most of my money here diving. I did a couple of introductory scuba dives, a 4 day open water course, a 3 day live aboard advanced course, and have volunteered for a day. All of which were awesome. The diving here is pretty good, with turtles, sharks, and interesting corals, plants, fish, nudibranches in abundance. Although signs of stress are evident on the reef with large patches of dead or bleached coral, and signs of human impact mostly broken coral etc at the dive sites. I haven't had the chance, but the ribbon reefs north of Cairns are meant to be the best spots, and where all the Great Barrier Reef documentaries are filmed.

That said I have seen more of the barrier reef than most people would ever dream of seeing - just not under water, only from the surface. I spent 10 days working on the F.V. Irene, a coral trout fishing boat. During our trip we travelled from Cairns north up the reefs to within a 100 nm of Cape York, and back south to the tiny community of Portland Roads where I caught the truck back to Cairns. More on the Irene in another post.

I have been on a couple of return trips to the Tablelands, catching up with Ian (the horse breaker) and seeing the sights, plus enjoying the cooler weather! But one of the most exciting activities in Cairns itself was a flying trapeze lesson that four of us did. We did a knee hang with a catch and backflip off the release and it took only 5 swings and an hour or two of practise, but is a fantastic feeling. Not quite flying, but great fun!

I have had plenty of great nights out with great people, but I am heading home today for Xmas, then Sydney for New Year, and back to Cairns to grab my car and start driving south!

Sunset from Grassy Hill Lookout - Cooktown. Capt. Cook climbed the hill to try and chart a course out of the Endeaour river and through the reef.

Cattle crossing a tributary of the Daintree River.

Sunrise at Mission Beach. The boat is the set of Sea Patrol, they were filming a new season.

Aerial spraying in the Tablelands near Millaa Millaa.

Coral Trout on the Irene.

Cairns Esplanade.

Lunch time on the live aboard OceanQuest.

Norman Reef - Troppo's dive site. Awesome visibility and perfect weather make for kick-ass diving.

The day boat, Sea Quest, coming alongside Ocean Quest to transfer passengers.

Mareeba Cattle Sale

I went to my first ever livestock sale a few days ago. It was the weekly cattle sale at the Mareeba saleyards. It was an interesting experience to say the least. When they first started auctioning I didn't understand a word they were saying - it was just a cacophony of noise created by only one man! Gradually the noise became numbers, though I was still baffled by who was making the bids, none of the guys leaning on the rails seemed to move. I moved around to the side and managed to make out their gestures, a slight raise of one finger, a small sideways nod of the head, or something equally as non-descript.



Auctioners in action

Occasionally there would be some intelligible words said, usually when there was confusion over which cattle were being auctioned. And it is easy to see why there is confusion - rarely are all the cattle in one pen sold in one auction. Some are painted on various parts of the body with blue paint to differentiate them although the paint job is so shoddy in most instances it is unclear weather the paint is on the shoulder, the rump, or in a line down the back. Other intelligible words were used when a buyer suggested the cattle should all be auctioned together, or wanted a particular beast left out of the auction.

The crowd - mostly watching the spectacle and catching up rather than buying cattle

A sale was followed by a jumble of numbers and letters that must be some sort of reference number but also included the price, the number of cattle, and the buyers name. For some reason unknown to me the price is then reduced by 0.8c/kg on every sale (you bid on cents/kg). Most of the cattle at this sale were heavy steers, cows or bulls that are bought by meatworks in the area to cut up. There are only a few 'store' cattle, which usually means small steers you can buy to fatten up. I think the confusing nature of this sale is partly due to the fact that there are only 4 or 5 buyers, and they are there to buy most of the 1000 odd cattle offered, so they have adapted ways to make it quick and simple. I imagine at store cattle sales where many more people who don't go to the same sale every week are buying might be a little easier to comprehend.

Once the sale had moved to another row of pens the yard staff moved individual pens down to the scales where the cattle are weighed as a group and placed in bigger yards - one allotted to each meatworks presumably. All in all it was very interesting, and man there were some big cattle there. There were a couple of horny caught bulls from the Cape that must have been as tall as me, and a couple of pens of Brahman steers who had withers almost as tall as me and must have weighed over 800 kg. At $1.60/kg that makes each beast worth about $1300!

Some of the steers on offer