Our Last Stop Wednesday 3/19/08

It is a gorgeous morning in the outback and we stroll up to the local golf course ("sand greens and occasionally mowed fairways") and then to the other end of town and back. Chillagoe literally looks like a little town in central Mexico with a combination of trailers and shacks and yet we walk past an acre lot for sale for $130,000. We don’t get it. We stop at the "Hub," a tourism info center which has just opened for the day and visit with Jim who knows all the local news. This was a big-time mining center until 1998 when everything shut down. Now they are re-opening the mines and have already started digging for copper, zinc and manganese with hopes of finding a little gold and silver along the way. The mining company has built a mini-town for the 400 additional workers they will be bringing in to supplement all of the locals they have already hired. We drive out to the camp before leaving town and it appears to be a FEMA outpost with lines of trailers with electric and water generating plants and phone banks. It is interesting and in spite of our disappointment in what this visit could have been, we are happy we got this view of the other Australia.

We're zooming all the way back to the coast today and we backtrack through the mud and creeks to Mareeba where we slam on the brakes as we pass the local golf club. After our disappointment in not having a roo encounter in Chillagoe, here is a herd of fifty of the critters hanging out under a few trees along the 18th fairway. You never know when your luck will turn. We watch for a while and when the golfers approach the roos get wary but not enough to make them move from the shade. Our interim stop, Kuranda, is supposed to be famous for its markets and unique retail area. When we pull into town we see lines of tour buses and now we get it. We are only about 30 miles from the coast and this is one of those ultra-touristy little burgs that makes its living from dragging the folks from the beaches into the country for some "true" Aussie culture. After our last couple days it seems off-putting, but we're tourists too so who are we to complain. The great news is that there is a lady on a corner cooking some German sausages with onions and kraut and we each scarf one down for lunch. We spend a couple hours at the market and exploring the little shops and after John's Oddity Tour, this is Mary's payback. We do buy a few things before continuing on to Palm Cove, our destination for the next week.

Palm Cove is nestled between Cairns (pronounced locally as "Cans") on the south and Port Douglas to the north. Cairns is the major city of almost 100,000 people and is the jumping off point for most of the Great Barrier Reef excursions as well as being the local air hub. Our friends Dave & Mary stayed in Palm Cove for a mini-lifetime a long time ago and they described a sleepy little beach village with a coffee shop and some nice rooms near the beach. Now, of course, it is all flashy apartment complexes, fancy restaurants and boutique shops all wrapped in an upscale package of palm trees, cobblestone streets and perfectly groomed lawns. By no means is it offensive, just a bit more than we might have expected.

We have a one-bedroom apartment here that is roomy and well furnished and we are pleased. We hike to the other end of town and back, book restaurants for the next two nights and chat with the lifeguard about the beach situation. There are "stinger" nets around the beach that are designed to keep the highly poisoness box jellyfish out of the swimming area, but he advised that we stay well clear of any other part of the water, even if just walking along the beach. He also suggested that we might not want to walk near the beach in the dark since there could be the odd crocodile wandering around. There are also a few python around munching on local pets so we might want to watch out for that too. Sounds lovely. Actually we knew about the stingers and we have no intention of being anywhere near crocs or pythons so we are not freaked by the news.

We're up for Italian tonight and have a lovely table outside closest to the water at Bella Baci. Our server is new but is very good and gets help when she needs it, and the boss, with a daughter in LA, has a big interest in American politics so he is a frequent visitor at our table. The moon, shining on the water, is almost full and Mary has a very good "triple gnocchi" and John has a perfect Osso Buco. As we stroll back, staying comfortably out of harms way, we decide we are going to like Palm Cove. We have FOX on our TV here and there is an NBA and NHL game on when we get back so life is really good.

Today's local headline: Python swallows another wallaby Cairns Post (local residents got a picture of a whole wallaby half-swallowed by a python on a neighborhood street)