Oh my God! The retreat is incredible! You have to checkout the complete photo gallery so far of the "treehouse" or cabin that I had entirely to myself, completely isolated with no sign of any other people or buildings on a 230 acre property of protected rainforest bordering the National Park.
You can also checkout the video tour I made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBhyYQJF9Jo
But read on for spiders, leeches and platypus (lack of). By the way, fuck is such a fabulous word since it captures the essence of my day and last night so well - also since I watched a documentary on FUCK! last night which i thought was good.
I arrived at Cairns
airport, grabbed some coffee and my very large rentacar from Hertz and trundled
off in the general direction of Malanda and the National Park where Rose Gum's
retreat is located. It has a full kitchen so I stopped at a shopping center to
stock up at "Woolworth's" which was a very nice store. Was compelled
to buy clothes I don't need and the theme song CDs for the road trip - Daughtry, Furtado and some Ministry of
Sound.
After a very pleasant drive of about 80 minutes or so into the mountains, I
turned off into some very tight country roads which turned into dirt to reach
the retreat. The owners greeted me, they were very nice, and showed me where
my "treehouse" was located. Off I went. It is SO cool. Unbelievable for something so isolated. Two levels
with a loft and two bedrooms, full kitchen, separate shower and large jacuzzi
bathtub looking out over the valley, and huge deck also looking over the
valley. I didn't get the true sense of the place until the next day.
PROBLEM!
So there I am, shambling around in my pajamas and flip flops and I go into
the bathroom to brush my teeth on the first night. I turn around and there is this big
fucking spider - I mean BIG - on the wall. So I think "Great, tired and
now I have to get a spider with a body the size of a nickel and legs
the size of a computer mouse out of the bathroom. For fun I grab my
toothbrush and try to take a picture of it so you can see the scale, before I
can snap the shot the FUCKING THING ATTACKS THE TOOTHBRUSH! I almost fall
on my ass and drop the camera and I let out a high pitch squeal (I'm not embarrassed
to admit that either!). Now we have escalated to level 2 panic (level 1
being running outside waving my arms, but that would be worse since there are
more outside and it's dark so I'm stuck with it inside).
Just for scale, the white thing on the second pic is the bottom of the
shower stall. The fact that the thing moves like a freshly hatched "Alien" from the movies didn't help.
So I have visions of getting bitten, swelling up, my throat closing and
convulsing on the floor until I suffocate. The owner's house is a good 5 mins
walk (half hour crawling if you're dying) and there is no phone, no cell
service, nada. A buddy subsequently turned me onto this "tourist reminder video" of how much fun it is to visit Australia and die.
I stick a towel along the bottom of the door so the thing is at least
contained in the bathroom, God forbid it runs out and I lose it in the
house. I retrieve a ceramic dish with lid from the kitchen and proceed to
coax and finally slam the dish over the top of it at an opportune moment which
REALLY PISSES IT OFF! Now if the things get out my risk of getting bitten
has now risen. Great! I count to three and move the dish and slide
the lid on top as fast as I can. I take the second pic and then throw the
thing outside. This takes a good 45 mins! By this time I am totally
freaking out about what might be in my bed, above my bed, under my bed, or what
might decide to join me in there. I proceed to get the biggest flashlight
I can find and go through every crevice of the place looking for other
nasties. All clear. By this point it is 1:30am. I take a
large quantity of sleeping pills and go to bed, I figure I might as well be
unconscious rather than witness a snake jumping at my face. Welcome to the
tropics!!!!
Gets Better Yet
I wake up bright and early the next day, get breakfast on the deck and then
head off for a walk on the grounds (remember there are over 200 acres!). I figure that it should be an easy ramble, oh
no. Bushwhacking practically for a good
90 minutes and I don’t see another person the entire time and I don’t leave the
property. I am assured that there are a
bunch of platypus in the creek on the hike – now I wasn’t particularly fussed
about seeing platypus until I didn’t find any, now I am obsessed that I will
damn well find at least one before I leave.
So I’m wading through brush and climbing over fallen trees to reach another
part of the creek (and this is ON the trail).
I stop by the creek and look around but no platypus to be found. I think my leg is itching and I am wearing
long pants that go way down over my boots, so I wonder what is up with
that. I look down and see what I think
is a caterpillar, and think “Oh, a little caterpillar”. Then I see a bunch more. Then I try and flick them off but they will
not budge. Then they get on my hands and
then I realize THEY ARE FUCKING LEECHES! Level 3 panic ensues, Level 2 would be
when they are stuck to the skin on my legs and sucking blood. Level 1 is me passing out. I finally get the fuckers off except for a
couple that I need to douse in DDT to remove.
So here’s the thing, if someone said “You might find some big spiders, don’t
worry, just coax it into a jar and throw it out” or “You might find some
leeches so just douse them in DDT to get them off” then I would probably have
been fine. BUT, not expecting to come up
close and personal with jungle conditions on the retreat property I got pretty
stressed out. Now I’m fine, I know that
we’re not messing around, I’m not in Hyde Park in Sydney, and I need to take this shit
seriously.
I subsquently find out that the spider was a Brown Huntsman, with a potentially nasty bite. I gave up chasing and catching them since there were quite a few inside and most people say just leave them alone (a general rule for everything in Oz), and actually ended up talking to one in particular after several days of solitude and I started getting a little Twelve Monkeys and weird.
Anyhoo
So the plan for tomorrow or the next day is to hike Mt Bartle Frere, Queensland’s highest
peak at 5,300 ft. About 8-10 hours so
need to get up at 5am!!!
