Nasal devastation

I try not to judge, because I smell too. I do... traveling can do that. I know I smell sometimes (mostly my clothes), and I do my best to curb it for the sake of those around me.

But the guy next to me in this internet cafe right now more than just smells... he's attacking my nose. It's awful, debilitating... deafening. He's like an Olfactory Stalin, decimating all of my senses by way of just one. I'm afraid to breathe right now, and I can't think straight. I have to get out of here.... I need to go. Send me good thoughts, please.

No-hitter no more

It's the no-hitter of hiking: a walk in the wild with zero human contact. And I had it. I had it. Almost.

I was deep in the bush now, and even here there was a place for tourists with buses and koala keychains. It was place called Undara. Most of the last 100km here was a one-lane road, but there's a 35 dollar buffet dinner at the restaurant on site. Defiant, I made due with what was at their little general store-- Processed ham on chicken-flavored rice crackers. I don't know why they felt the need to make the crackers taste like chicken. And I'm not sure why I tried to cancel it out with ham. Anyway, I told myself that it was what the Aborginals ate, and almost believed.

Surrounded by some of the things I was trying to get away from, I made for a hiking trail nearby. I was in the Gulf Savannah, which meant that all sides of me were dressed with knee-high grass and well-spaced trees that never got taller than twenty feet. The terrain changed as I walked though... from flat and grassy to big red piles of granite rock, stacked high enough to see the tops of the trees. The sky was grey, the wind was whirling intermittently -- and between the gusts there was just me and my silence. This place was the opposite of the rainforests to me -- everything struggled to stay green. The trees looked like old men; grey and twisted, and any green leaves on their branches looked like it was their last gasp of life before falling. The only other life I saw on the trail were a few kangaroos, who checked me out for a while before hopping off and disappearing.

I walked for two hours, stopping occasionally to take it all in, before running into two retired couples from Sydney about 200 yards before the end of the trail. My no-hitter was no more, but I took comfort in the fact that I saw more kangaroos than people, and that these retirees would probably never know the joy of Aboriginal Chicken Crackers.

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.