58. Things do in AUSTRALIA - Christmas at the Great Barrier Reef / Port Douglas

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Johnny mac and travel is back.
When I last left you, we were

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in Melbourne. If today we're heading
up to the Great Barrier. Reef took

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a flight from Melbourne up to Cairns. I think it was like three four

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hours. After that twenty hour flight
to Australia, it was not a big

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deal. Our shuttle van rode us
up to Port Douglas, a nice little

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beach town where we spent Christmas.
Now I had been forewarned before we went

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on the trip that Australia shuts down
on Christmas Day. Yes, the States

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kind of shuts down on Christmas Day, but Australia they were like, don't

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expect anything to be open. But
I had a little apartment there for three

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four days, so we were able
to stock up on food before we went.

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We just had a nice, chill
Christmas on the beach. And once

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again I'm just flipping through my pictures
and doing this from memory. Here is

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the family on the beach. And
one of the signs I had taken a

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picture of was similar to a yellow
road sign that warns you curve ahead or

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something like that. This one has
an icon of a swimmer with a really

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scary looking jellyfish, and below it
a warning sign with a pole with a

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bottle of vinegar, and the vinegar
says for use on marine stings, pour

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on, do not rub seek medical
attention. And I was amazed the bottle

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of vinegar was actually there. I
was thinking, if you tried that in

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the metro New York City area in
New Jersey, that kind of area,

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that vinegar bottle would be long gone
and never ever there. But in Australia,

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civilized people, the vinegar was there
also on the warning sign here at

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four Mile Beach. I'm not doing
a bit here. This is real.

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Marine stingers may be present these waters, okay, slippery rocks, okay,

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Crocodiles may be present in these waters. And there's a yellow diagonal sign with

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an icon of a crocodile on it. Ah. Yes, the rental cars.

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No. When we were going to
spend Christmas in Australia, the wife

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wanted to go to Christmas Day Mass, not an absurd notion. Australia is

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not a particularly religious country and it
is not a particularly Catholic country. And

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I had said to her, I
don't know where I'm finding a Catholic church.

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At the Great Barrier reef, but
I will look and I found Saint

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Monica's Cathedral one eighty one Abbott Street
and Cairns, so I needed to It's

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a car In Australia, they drive
on the other side of the road.

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So I rented a car and we
went out on Christmas Eve and we had

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one of those I want to call
it old style GPS things, those Gorman

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systems, so it wasn't using my
phone or anything. And it's pouring rain

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and I'm driving a car on the
wrong side of the road for the first

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time ever. So I'm telling the
kids, you guys would got to be

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quiet. I don't know where I'm
going, it's dark, it's pouring rain,

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and I'm on the wrong side of
the road. I needs a focus,

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and I need my wife to tell
me how we're getting to this church.

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The only reason I have the rental
car is to get to this mass

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And she's a terrible navigator and she
can't figure out how to work the things.

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And it's got voice control. Now
this is going to sound like I'm

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doing a bit. I'm not.
So the menu ask you like, you

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know, what do you want?
Maps, blah blah blah, directions and

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I'm talking to this thing and I'm
saying address, and the gorman doesn't know

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what I'm saying. It's like,
sorry, I don't understand you. Repeat

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again. Do you want directions,
maps, address, blah blah blah,

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I want address. Doesn't understand me
again. Now this sounds like I'm doing

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a bit. I had seen a
T shirt in one of the gift shops

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that said bananas are for paranas.
Now, back in Queens, I would

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have said bananas or for paranhas.
But in Australia, bananas and paranas rhyme.

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So instead of saying address again,
I said address and now suddenly it

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understood what I was saying. True
story. So we made it to the

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mass. That was fine. Then
on Christmas Day, with everything closed,

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I took the car out. Now
in the daytime when it's not pouring rain,

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and I had driven on the wrong
side of the road for a day.

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Suddenly I'm James Bond. I've got
this thing down. Plus the roads

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are empty. I'd ask my friend
Mark Francis, he hosts the Palace Intrigue

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podcast. I had asked my friend
Mark Francis, he's the host of the

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Palace Intrigue podcast. And he grew
up in Adelaide, Australia, and I'm

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like, am I going to be
able to handle this? And he triple

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checked with a friend who still lived
there, and the friend was like,

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it's Christmas Day in the middle of
nowhere, you'll be fine. So it's

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not like I was driving in downtown
Sydney, which may have been more challenging.

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So on Christmas Day this was fine
roads, more or less to myself.

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So we just started driving around and
I found this horse. I've got

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this picture of me in a horse. And then we came to the ferry

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crossing, and I've been obsessed with
this since I went on the trip.

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The ferry crossing, a forty vehicle
ferry operates from six am to midnight every

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day except Christmas Day. So I
got to the actual literal end of the

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road, and there was this whole
part of Australia to the north that I

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would have explored because I definitely had
the time on Christmas Day. But a

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forty vehicle ferry operates from six to
midnight every day except Christmas Day. So

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I went there on the one day
I cannot take the ferry crossing. The

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ferry takes about five minutes across the
river and averages one hundred forty crossings each

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day, traveling around fifteen thousand kilometers
each year along its wire ropes. Avoid

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delays by crossing outside the peak periods
of nine in noon and two to five

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while waiting for the ferry, stand
well back from the water's edge. Some

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large crocodiles live in this section of
the Dane Tree River. So here I'm

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looking at a map of what I
didn't get to get to, which is

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the Dane Tree National Park, the
Morpton Beach, Noah Beach, Alexander Bay,

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maybe some other trip to Australia someday. Here's another sign that says crocodile

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habitat keep away from edges. The
rocks are real, all right. We

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drove around. Here's a cool parrot
that I met, and then back to

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the beach. Here's the family on
the beach. I remember those jellyfish.

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My poor son got stung by one. He was in a lot of pain,

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but there was the vinegar, and
the vinegar worked. But he didn't

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enjoy Christmas Day at the beach as
much as we did because of the jellyfish.

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All right, I'll take the break
when we come back, let's hit

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the Barrier Reef. So in December
twenty six we explored the Great Barrier Reef.

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You take like a jetboat out.
Maybe it was like an hour,

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half an hour, I don't really
remember something like that, but you know

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it's far out enough, and then
you come to they have a base just

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in the middle of the ocean there, and it's like a two floor kind

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of restaurants slash locker rooms, lash
bathroom kind of place. And then from

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there you can start going out in
the Barrier Reef. So I took my

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two older kids, and I had
my goggles and my snorkel and my fins,

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and I started looking and I'm looking
at the pictures here and I have

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my face in the water, and
it is just gorgeous. I'm obsessed with

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the I can't believe how beautiful any
of this is. Then my youngest says

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to me, I dropped my retainer
and I looked down in the crystal clear

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water, and I see the retainer
just falling to the bottom, and I'm

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like, I can't free dive sixty
feet. I don't know what you want

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me to do here. And I
just watched her retainer go now slightly after

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this trip. Funny, not funny, there was a bleaching incident at the

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Great Barrier Reef, and the Barrier
Reef has not been the same. I

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swear I got there like two seconds
at the peak of Barrier Reef before it

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really started to deteriorate. But to
this day, I still blame my daughter

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for destroying the Barrier Reef with her
retainer. So there I am, and

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I'm floating along, and I've got
my face in the water, and I'm

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looking at all these beautiful fish,
and I'm skimming through the pictures now and

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I'm quite mesmerized. And at some
point I realized the ground dot is under

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me, and it's moving pretty quickly, and I think to myself, you

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should see how far you've gone.
And I look up and I turn around

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and I go, holy s,
I can't believe how far I've gone.

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Because the current was carrying me,
and it carried me a lot further than

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I thought. So I calmly said
to the kids, hey, let's turn

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around now. They had on a
life jackets. I did not, because

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I'm an awesome swimmer. Why would
I need a life jacket anyway? So

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I calmly escorted them back to the
thing. It took forever. Luckily we

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all had fins on and the kids
were really good about it, but boy,

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it was a long swim back and
I was kind of sweating it.

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Now. The good thing is the
Barrier Reef. People must know that idiot

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Yanks come down there. They have
like a guy on a jet ski way

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way out. I was way out. Jet ski guy is way way out

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and he's like the last resource for
dumb New Yorkers who get carried out to

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see. And I was like,
I'm glad I didn't become that guy.

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Then I did some quick scuba training
and we went down to the bottom and

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went with our guide and did the
bottom. Didn't see the retainer, but

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that was quite beautiful. The fish
there just gorgeous. The Barrier Reef is

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exactly what you would think it is. And then we did like this submarine

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thing that gave us a little tour
and we went back and here's the next

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day. In Port Douglas. We
went to a I don't know what's termed

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to call it, and reservations not
but a place that celebrates the culture of

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the Aboriginals. And here is my
family throwing boomerangs, and then we stopped

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for lunch and one of the things
they were serving is kangaroo, and okase

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my sons listening to this episode,
I may or may not have fed my

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son some kangaroo. He's still not
sure. What do you think happened?

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I will tell you. I ate
some kangaroo. I don't normally eat kangaroo,

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but I figured, hey, i'm
here, the aboriginals ate it,

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let me try it. It was
fine. Also on that day we took

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the Rainforest Cableway, which is quite
all the way up into the mountains.

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Here we're at a koala park and
here's my wife holding a koala. She

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loves koalas. And somewhere up there
we found ourselves with not a whole lot

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of time, but I spent the
money and I'm glad I did. We

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went into this butterfly house. This
is up in Karanda Village. The butterfly

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house was awesome. Again, I
wish I had more time. There wasn't

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something we planned. We just suddenly
saw it and it's just a big room

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with butterflies flying all over and it
was amazing and them all just landing on

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me. Just absolutely amazing. Something
to do now hear them on the Coranda

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website, and I feel like I
should go slowly here and tell you all

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about this and also tell you about
the Scenic Railways. Let's wrap up this

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episode. We are halfway through Port
Douglas and everything I told you in this

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episode is just basically two days up
in the Karensport Douglas Great Barrier Reef area

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just absolutely amazing. So we'll come
back next week and we'll explore Coranda Daily

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