Levels in the bush

As great as the coast has been, I needed to get away from it. And as great as some of the buses and tours have been, I needed to do it on my own. So, I rented a car and headed to points less peopled, in what the Aussies call the "bush".

First, the car: it was something of a hybrid between a go-cart and a Yugo. The engine, when pressed to its limit, sounded like a petulant kid having a tantrum--power best measured in mules rather than horses. But it ran, and that's all I needed.

I decided to make my first stop in Mt. Garnet, a town about 200km from Cairns with only about 500 people. The local pub doubles as a hotel, so I got a room there. There were a few locals in the pub, and the owners came out and had a few beers with them as I sat nearby having dinner. They brought me into the conversation, and before I knew it, we were all playing pool. I had conversations about the rules of cricket and the various places to show dogs in Queensland if one were so inclined, all with a fire crackling in the background. It was a great night away from tourism and into an Australia that's not in a brochure.

Later in the night, I walked past one of the locals. He looked like Santa Claus might have if he'd had a mid-life crisis and moved to the tropics. I asked him how he was doing. "Fantastic, mate, fantastic. I'll tell you, if you're not doing great, there's got to be something wrong with you."

There's levels to that, man. Levels.