Crikey

Memorial to Steve

I'm Resting

I AM awake

REALLY?

There are some leaves RIGHT in front of me too

Did you know that I knew Steve Irwin? He was a neighbour of my best primary school friend. We’d occasionally play at the creek on his farm.

In 1970 that four acres became the ‘Beerwah Reptile Park’ - known locally as ‘the Snake Farm’. Oh my, how you’ve grown.

Turing left off ‘Steve Irwin Way’ (formerly the Bruce Highway) we drive into the 4,500 vehicle car park. We walk past one of the Zoo’s double-decker buses, to the entry foyer. Here, a row of khaki dressed workers are waiting to receive our $52 entrance fee.

I open the map - we need a plan to cover the twenty-eight hectare zoo.

“How about we start on the ‘Rippa Red” trail, and then onto the ‘Billabong Brown’?”

The first exhibit on the Red trail is the snakes. A darkened building holds rows of large, glass display cases – in each one a snake or two are lying around doing snake things. Each case also has a description of the snake in Steve’s breathless style:

“This little beauty’s gorgeous green colour helps her stay hidden as she moves amongst the tree’s leaves …”

Back outside, we walk the trail towards the rainforest aviary. Two zoo staff are standing on the path looking intently at the short, round animal wearing a chest harness on the end of their leash. They turn to us.

“You can pet him if you like.”

I squat down and rub the wombat’s back. He looks a little indignant then goes back to scratching in the garden. The workers give him a tug but he’s not interested in moving. He has the physique and temperament of a furry bulldozer.

We’re looking for the koala enclosure.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if there were signs like this in the wild,” Jim says. The tree we’re standing next to has a notice: “There’s a koala in this tree.”

Down the trail, a small shelter has a half dozen koala perches, each with a koala and an ample garnish of gum leaves. Each koala takes its turn to be the object of public affection. I climb the two steps so I can pet the designated animal. The other koalas have a different sign: “I’m resting.”

I’m beginning to understand the term ‘animal Disneyland’.

The “Crocoseum’ is a 5000 person amphitheatre. Animal shows are held here twice a day. The production begins with footage of Steve doing typical Steve stuff. The live show involves elephants, snakes, birds and of course crocodiles. It also involves Australian humour.

“Why do more men than women get bitten by snakes?”

“Because women are smarter than men?”

“No – because snakes don’t go into the kitchen!”

The show pushes an educational and environmental message – with some pizzazz. The climax of the show is the crocodile feeding. Today the chosen croc is ‘Stormin’ Norman’. The arena has been built with a curved pool as its focal point. This pool is connected to the crocodile enclosures by a secure canal – nicknamed by the staff as ‘the tunnel of love’. The croc is lured via this canal into the main pool.

I admit it – I’m sucked into the spectacle. The handler stamps his feet on the cement pool surrounds to bring the croc close. The food dangles and Norman launches himself out of the water. I look at the staff as they work with the reptile. What a way to make a living. The show ends with more film of Steve – and his wife and children.

Leaving the Crocoseum, I stop cold. I’m looking at a wall about six foot high and a hundred feet long. This wall is totally covered on both sides with khaki shirts, plastic crocodiles, Australian flags, photos, paintings, carvings – all with condolence messages for Steve’s family and the zoo. It has been twenty months since his death.

With over a million visitors each year, the zoo combines its environmental message with a talent for relieving tourists of their money. We watch a kid feeding a kangaroo.

“You can buy Roo Food at the Dingo Diner,” I tell Jim.

For an extra fee you can go into the actual tiger enclosure, feed the Galapagos turtles, or hang out with the elephants. You can even have your photo taken with Steve courtesy of the computer lab.

After our lunch in the ‘feeding frenzy’ food court, we wander the trails of ‘Crikey Kha-Ki’ – the Croc area. They may as well be stuffed for all the action we see, but it’s morbidly fascinating to see them lying in the sun with their massive jaws open.

We manage to hit each of the seven coloured walks – our last being “Outback Orange’. The trail winds through beautifully tended native gardens. Not only isn’t there any litter – but even the koala poo is regularly swept-up by smiling staff.

Again I think of Disneyland. Another worker walks past us and down the trail. A six-inch thick snake is wrapped round his torso. A dingo in the adjacent enclosure starts howling. Soon his mates join the refrain.

No, this ain’t Disney – this is the Australia Zoo.

UP, UP AND AWAY …

Old Parliament & New Parliament (Distant)

New Parliament

Lake Burley Griffin

Inflating the Ballon

“So, you weren’t planning to do this?” It is my brother Trevor quizzing us.

“Never crossed our minds – not for a nano-second.”

“Good – this will be my gift for you.

Wednesday morning finds us on a field below Old Parliament House, in the half light of a cool Canberra dawn. A large, very large, blue nylon shell is being rolled out on the grass. The wicker basket is in place.

We’re about to go hot air ballooning – courtesy of Trev.

There are fifteen passengers, the pilot, and two ground crew. Passengers are enlisted to help, spreading the envelope to its characteristic shape on the grass.

Jim is one of two chosen to hold the mouth of the balloon open as two large fans blow air into the bag. It is loud, cool work. The balloon grows.

And grows. This is the biggest balloon in Canberra – home for two year-round ballooning companies. Fully inflated it reaches eight stories high and it holds 350,000 cubic feet of air.

The roof of the wicker basket houses a series of four propane burners. Fire is shot ten feet into the balloon in intermittent bursts. The warm air begins to lift the balloon off the grass.

Ten minutes later, we are all in place. The burners are firing. The last rope (the one attached to the ford truck) is untied and we begin to rise.

Canberra began as an artificial town, built around the shores of an artificial lake. Capital city of a nation of cynics, it has been described as ‘a good way to ruin a sheep station’ – which it was before construction began in the early 1900’s. But Canberra has grown in to a beautiful and sophisticated city.

Walter Burleigh Griffin designed Canberra with the focal point being Parliament House. From the air, it is easy to see his vision achieved. The double boomerang shaped building is topped with a flag pole over eighty meters high. The importance of this grass roofed building is accentuated by the demarcation of the three lane traffic circle that surrounds it. From here, Griffin’s wide boulevards extend like the threads of a spider web. It’s fascinating to see from the air.

Our balloon is quiet (unless the burners are flaming). There is no sensation of wind as we are moving within the breeze – not that there’s much. It’s a beautiful morning.

“I can spin the basket,” the pilot, John, tells us, “but I can’t actually steer the balloon.” The mystery of steerage is explained to us. At different elevations, there are different wind patterns. So the height of the balloon is changed to catch the current of air the pilot wants. It’s a subtle thing.

We continue to float over the wakening city. We fly over the Museum of Australia and along Lake Burleigh Griffin. We watch rowers training on its glassy waters. We point to embassies, official residences, sporting venues – even the National Mint.

It’s time for the flight to end – however breezes don’t co-operate. We hang above a lawn bowling club for about ten minutes.

“They wouldn’t appreciate it if we landed there,” John tells us as he looks down as a worker tends the grass.

It was less than a kilometre from there to the field we wanted to land in. Eventually we slowly float that way. That morning, the motorists on Cotter Road driving towards that field, turn their regular corner and see a hot air balloon. It’s almost stationary as it hovers forty feet above the pavement. We wave to them.

As we creep past the road, a rope is dropped and our ground crew pull us over the field as we descend. We gently touch, and at the pilot’s request, four passengers climb out of the basket and we are again airborne but only a foot off the ground. Grabbing the handles, they push us to exactly where the pilot wants. The second touch down is as placid as the first.

The French invented Ballooning – and it is very French that they added the tradition of Champagne. Bless them for that.

So, after the balloon is back in the bag, we gather around and sip. Our pilot dips a cork in some Champagne, and dabs it on each of our foreheads. He recites the ‘balloonist’s prayer’ as he dabs.

“It’s tradition,” he says after. “We don’t like to do it before the flight in case it scares you.”

Swimming with Critters

Meet and Greet

Pleased to meet you

This is the Family

Just a light snack

Whale Sharks:

Whale sharks are the biggest fish in the ocean. We know they’re big but even so they manage to disappear for months at a time. However they always show up to feed on the plankton and coral spawn at the Ningaloo Reef every autumn. We’ve come to swim with them.

Because they’re so big, the whale sharks hang out on the outside of the reef in the deep water. Our boat carefully follows the channel out into the open ocean. The two meter swell is accompanied by wind and chop. It’s not very comfy on the boat and we watch a mother and daughter team puke off the back starboard corner, and we thank the heavens for the invention of Gravol.

This isn’t a unique idea of ours. Whale sharking is huge business in Exmouth. Four tour companies line up to take the willingly offered $350 from each customer. If they’re there, you’ll see a whale shark because a spotter plane is sent to find them. The Australian Government has strict guidelines on the interactions: how many swimmers, how close they and boats can get, and for how much time.

Well, the word’s out – there’s a whale shark by lighthouse bay. Our boat turns and heads up the coast. It’s time to prepare to go swimming!

We are divided into two groups of ten. Jim, I, and eight others are suited up in wetsuits, fins (flipper is the name of a dolphin), snorkel and mask. We all gather as close to the back of the boat as possible ready jump in.

Andrew, our guide, goes in first to locate our quarry. He swims, face down and looking, and indicates he sees the whale shark by raising his arm vertically out of the water. He lifts his head and points his other arm in the direction of its travel.

“Go, go, go GO!” the boat’s coordinator launches us into the sea. Arms, fins and snorkels are everywhere as the ten of us splash around bumping into each other as we try to find ourselves space and locate the whale shark. Everyone’s faces are down in the water. And then we see it.

Ours is a small whale shark by comparison – of a possible eighteen meters he’s only about four meters long. He (adolescent males tend to hangout out at Ningaloo) is swimming straight to us barely under the surface. His mouth is over a meter wide and open just a bit. He has a surreal blue color dotted and striped with pale markings. His flank comes into view and I watch his enormous gills ripple as he swims. Several sucker fish are suckered under his fins. His massive tail gently sways back and forth …

Wait a minute – TAIL – that means he’s passed me by!

Eyes forward and now watching the back end of the whale shark, I swim hard to try and catch up. Rules state no more than four meters from the tail, or three meters from the side. No worries there. I catch up to the rest of the group and now all I see are bubbles from everyone’s efforts.

Some whale sharks are quiet and slow, occasionally almost sleeping. We aren’t meeting that kind of animal. Our whale shark is out for a swim and we’re in for a workout if we want to keep up.

Soon after, Andrew signals our first interaction is over. B Group is in the water, while we have a rest on the boat and get ready to go in again.

Back on the boat there’s much excited chatter. It seems all of us got a look – some better than others. I tell Jim about my bubble woes.

“Get up front,” he replies. “Remember, only the lead dog gets a different view.”

Five times we are told “Go, go, go, GO!” as we are herded into the water an appropriate distance in front of the whale shark. The pandemonium of the entry, our placements, the waves and swell somehow all seem to liquefy into a world of turquoise blue as our faces submerge, and this huge creature gently moves though his water world, and passes us by.

The brochure’s hype tells you to swim with the whale sharks will change your life - perhaps for some. For me it’s definitely an experience I’ll always hold in awe.

Swimming with a manta ray is the same – only different. We are now at Coral Bay. Mantas can grow up to four meters across their wings – but even so are smaller creatures. They also feed on plankton, but inside the reef - so there’s no need for open ocean swell. They also spook, so we’re careful not to startle them.

Again we’re sitting on the back of a dive boat – all kitted out. Again the spotter plane has told us where to go. Again our guide is in the water, one arm up, one arm pointing.

On the signal we slip quietly into the water and our faces turn down. Five meters below, the unmistakable kite shape of the manta ray is moving though the powder blue water. The murkiness is what the ray is eating. It slowly swims, his great wings lightly flowing up and down. This time we aren’t in a race. I float on the surface and marvel.

When it comes to underwater creatures in Australia, none are as famous as the dolphins of Monkey Mia. They have developed into their own sideshow. It started over 50 years ago when a local lady started feeding them. Now, over 100,000 people a year come to this one-stunt town for the spectacle of wild dolphins visiting humans each morning. Jaded and cynical, we arrive too.

Here also, the government has set rules. No one is to touch the dolphins. A specific stretch of beach has been designated the ‘dolphin interaction zone’. No boating, no fishing, no people to enter the water beyond knee deep.

We walk the beach at sunset and watch several dolphins cavorting around 100 meters off shore. We wonder what the morning will hold.

It is 6:40AM and the sun is only peeping above the horizon. Jim has been up for almost an hour as I reach the water and start to walk towards the dolphin zone. And then I see it. Less than a meter off shore, there’s an unmistakable ripple through the water. My pace quickens.

There are only three of us and we stand calf deep. A dolphin (her name is Puck) quietly swims in front of us and then stops. I could reach and touch her but I don’t. The water is so shallow that her blowhole is exposed. It opens and closes and I listen to her breathe. She wiggles her tail, does a tight loop and comes back into shore to face us at 90 degrees. I squat down.

“Good morning beautiful,” I say quietly to her. She lifts her head from the water and turns it so her eye is looking directly into mine. She is less than a meter away, just lying in the shallow water. She is looking at me.

I am transfixed.

In the soft glow of dawn, Puck glides up and down the beach greeting the early risers. By sun-up she is joined by Nicky, and the process continues. Now we hear the dolphins whistle and click and well as the intimate sound of their breathing.

A Parks Service Representative arrives on the beach. The growing crowd is shepherded in a straight line along the water. We listen to the dolphin story while we wonder at the sight of them lazing in the shallows before us.

Female dolphins are very territorial while males wander in and out of the social circles. This beach is in the territory of only three matriarch’s families: Puck, Nicky and Surprise. There are over 900 other dolphins in Shark Bay that don’t take part in this strange ritual.

Assorted members of these three dolphin clans hang with us. They jump, they gambol, and they cruise up and down the beach. At one point, I count fifteen in the water in front of us.

So, each morning, when the Park’s coordinator thinks the visit is long enough, the buckets of fish come out. The feeding itself takes only a few minutes. Of the group, only five specific females are fed and only 20% of their needs. The remainder they must catch themselves.

From the audience, people are chosen randomly. Each gets to offer one fish until all the fish are gone.

“You in the red jumper,” a guide points to me.

I follow the routine. I am handed a fish about five inches long. I hold it by the tail and lower it into the water in front of Nicki. She lifts her nose, opens her mouth and takes the fish.

I walk back to my place in the line. Jim is smiling. So am I - and I don’t stop smiling for a long, long time.

Scuba Diver

Dive Buddies all dry

A Swimming Blizzard

Divers

Diving Buddies

“So you promise me that if I take this step I won’t sink like a brick to the bottom of the pool?”

I am talking to my diving instructor, Junko. I am in the full ensemble; including a belt of lead weights around my waist and a large stainless steel tank on my back. Standing reminds me of my worst backpacking nightmare as my knees wobble under the load. I am standing by the edge of a pool marked 3.68 meters. This is our very first exercise – a ‘giant step’ into the deep end.

Junko laughs. “I promise.”

I step.

I am in Exmouth, North-West Western Australia - the service centre for Ningaloo reef. This is Australia’s largest fringing coral reef and as such is home to 250 species of coral and 500 species of fish. I am taking my Open Water Diving Certification course. Friday and Saturday are classroom theory and practice in the pool.

“You guys are buddies,” Junko tells my fellow-student Catherine, and me. We have to be, we’re the only two in the class.

Catherine has come from Paris to learn to dive. She is very petite, and has a gentle demeanor and beautiful smile that enhances her French accent.

We spend hours together breathing underwater on the bottom of the pool. We take off our masks and put them back on, take off our vests and put them back on, we pull out our regulators, and put them back in – or share our buddies, and we practice hovering weightless midwater in the pool.

Now we are on the dive boat.

“Time for you Buddy Check,” our instructor tells us. We’ve got ourselves ready but this is where we check each other – our buddy.

Bruce Willis Ruins All Films – our recall phrase.

Bruce: BCD (buoyancy control device). Is it on, working, inflated?

Willis: Weights. Present, secured correctly?

Ruins: Releases. Done up and secure?

All: Air. Is there enough? Is it on?

Films: Final check. Catherine spins me around for one final look.

“Ready to go buddy?” She gives me a big smile and we walk to the back of the boat.

I’m trying to remember it all. Right hand on your mask and regulator, left hand over you weight belt clip. Look up and … giant step.

The buffeting of the water’s surface chop fades as we begin our descent. Our breathing through the regulator takes on an otherworldly sound. For our first dive we go hand over hand down the anchor line.

You can speak underwater, but you won’t be understood. Diving has developed a system of hand signals to compensate. The circle of your index and thumb, three other fingers extended, means O.K.

Catherine and I use it frequently for each other. Buddies are central to the culture of diving. They check you before you go into the water, and during the dive. You’re responsible for each other. There is even a buddy signal. Point your two index fingers and tap them gently together. To me it’s a comforting sign.

Catherine and I dive four times together. To gain our ticket, skills from the pool are repeated on the sea floor at twelve meters down. Each dive brings more confidence and discoveries.

There are working dive signals, and fun ones. The fun ones are discovery ones. A hand pointed straight up from the top of your head means ‘shark’. We see several small white tipped reef sharks. A biting motion with your fingers means eel. One part of an eel visible from its rock home shows his body to be six inches in diameter. I’m glad not to see his biting head. An octopus hides in a pothole in the coral. We watch as she instantly changes color from sandy brown to black and white speckles. And then there’s the fish.

Dive sites have names, and this one’s called Blizzard Ridge - an accurate name. A school of large, silver Trevaley come from my left. They’re hunting. A cloud of thousands of fleeing fish hurtle past me, filling my vision. It feels as if I’m in a fish blizzard.

If the number of fish is not impressive enough, there is the dazzling display of color. Parrot fish are my favorite with their iridescent greens and purples. Potato cod aren’t that colorful, but man, are they big. We see one that is the size of a medium dog.

This set in a garden of coral – all colors, all shapes.

Our days are full. As Jim says, the ‘fiddle fart factor’ in diving is enormous. We arrive early to the shop to organize our gear, cart the gear to the trailer, then boat, motor out to the dive site, set up, dive, reset, dive, pack up, motor back, empty boat, back to shop, clean up and store gear.

The expression ‘travel half way round the world’ almost literally fits this experience, but it is worth it. A girl on one of the dives has a t-shirt –‘explore our oceans – understand our world’. Perhaps overstated, but it feels a privilege to explore under the sea. The crew and our instructors, Junko and Jane, are patient, professional and supportive. And for my Buddy Catherine - we start as buddies - we end as friends.

Photo Blog

Mamoth Cave

Michelle and Ringneck Parrots

Wave Rock

Salmon Beach, Esperance

Rottnest Island Lighthouse

Photo Blog

Elephant Rocks

Victoria Ferns

Fitzroy Falls NSW

Grass Trees W.A.

Greens Pool

Tales of Tall Trees

Michelle and the beanstalk

Treetop Walk

Going Up

Can you find Michelle?

Karri Trees

The South-West part of Western Australia is very proud of their tall trees. It has lots of them, and lots of ways to experience them.

The most famous way is the “Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk”. Here, four tall circular platforms are linked by bow-like steel walkways that climb gently into the forest canopy. We watch a couple turn around at the first platform and come back down.

“I didn’t expect it to sway like that,” is their excuse to us as they exit though the entrance gate.

Jim and I walk up to the platform and look at each other.

“It does have quite the sway, doesn’t it?”

The literature tells us that the structure is designed to sway to ‘enhance the feeling of being in the forest canopy’. The actual walkway surface is open for the same reason. You can look between your feet, forty meters straight down or look out into the thick, green gum leaves of the rare Tingle Tree or the more common Karri Tree. These trees can reach eighty meters high and can live for almost 500 years.

The walkway is 600 meters long. To preserve the forest it was built to display, the walkway was constructed using only pulleys, hoists and jacks. Impact on the forest floor is minimal – occupying only four square meters.

There is another well known way to experience the tall West Australia trees – climb them.

Eight fire lookouts were built around the 1940’s – actually built in the tops of some of the tallest trees in the forest. One is still used for fire spotting on occasion. Two others are maintained solely for tourists to climb.

This is a ‘jack-and-the-beanstalk’ kind of thing. Picture a huge Karri gum tree. Stand at its base. Look past the warning signs explaining that you might die. On the tree trunk are metal spikes; less than an inch in diameter and just about three feet long. They’re pounded into the trunk in a spiral fashion – the rungs of a tree ladder.

I stand at the bottom of the tree with a couple of English travelers.

“I thought there would be more of a net,” one of them says. There is thin mesh above you with holes about eight inches square. It might stop a branch from hitting you if it fell, but it would do nothing to stop you hitting the ground if you slip off a rung.

Of the over 200,000 people who visit the Gloucester tree each year, less than a quarter of them climb to the top. I was determined to be one of them. The English couple climb a short way then head back down.

“We’ll pass,” they tell us.

Heights are about mind games. You can climb a step ladder, have no thought of falling and feel no nerves. What difference should another hundred or two feet make? Hang on tight. Always three points of contact. Don’t think about it - just go up – 153 rungs up - two-hundred feet up.

I have to stop and catch my breath. I look down. Oh my, the van seems small. Those spots are people. Hang on tight – there’s no reason to think you’ll fall. My shoulder brushing the tree trunk gives some security.

Diamond Tree has an added challenge. A sudden storm blows in and thunder crashes as I’m ten feet from the top. Then there’s the ladder.

To enter the lookout platform itself, one has to leave the spikes and go onto a regular ladder. This ladder is very secure, anchored by angle iron beams. However, at seventy meters above ground, the ladder is actually away from the tree trunk by about a foot. The transition gives me pause, and some more pause.

I think of my niece Hayley. We were scrambling to a peak in the Rockies and it got a bit dicey. I told her we’d come a long way up and we could turn round no problems.

“What!” she yells back at me. “Then I’d get to say ‘I nearly climbed a mountain!!’”

I think of Hayley, reach out to the ladder, and climb.