By Erik Skye

January 14, 2011:

I stuck around Noosa Heads this morning and went for an hour’s run on the bush tracks of the nearby national park. It was probably one of the finest routes I’ve been on for that purpose, alternating between ocean side and jungle, hills and flats, and board walks and sand surfaces. After a dip in the ocean, I had more of that Bircher muesli at a nice café. One thing the fancy resort areas have going for them is good food.

The surf was much higher today. I think even the Hawaiians would've enjoyed themselves. I found a group of three playing cricket with a tennis ball at one beach. As I approached another beach, a big black snake was right in the middle of the path. There were hundreds of people all around, so I couldn’t believe this snake would be there. But it saw me about the same time I saw it, and it slithered away as fast as you could run. I was amazed.

I pulled into a little place called Peregian Beach to photograph a rack of surfboards with colorful red and white shade umbrellas. I decided to go in the surf shop. There I met Evert and Kirsty. Evert almost got me into a political discussion (it was a close call!) and accused Kirsty of being a horse whisperer. ‘Ah, so you’re one of those kind of girls’ I said to Kirsty. ‘You can trust horses better than guys’ she replied. I think all three of us concluded you can find good guys and good horses, but you have to search for them. Poor Kirsty - already jaded at age 19.

The drinking age here is 18.

They call neoprene boots (i.e. Xtra Tufs) “gum boots”. They’re using a lot of those right now in flood clean up.

For primary school grades, they say the year first. I.e. “year 10” (while we say “10th grade”)

I finished the 600-page novel The Fatal Shore today. I thought it would develop into later Australian history and themes, but it’s really all about the 80-year history of Transportation (England sending it’s convicts to Australia and using Australia for its penal colonies). In the author’s conclusion, he makes the point that Australians buried this past in shame. But Transportation was a product of England, and England should be the ones to answer for it. In any case, Australians are generally proud of this part of their heritage (i.e. see Day 5 when I found a society called “The First Fleet House”; i.e. today’s Sunshine Coast Daily headline reads “Capital Punishment” across a flooded photo of Brisbane, a clear link to the fact Brisbane was started as a penal colony).

On Day 30 I showed a picture of a Ned Kelly tee shirt. Ned Kelly was a despicable “bush ranger” (outlaw who evaded the police by living in the bush). He’s popular because he defied and stood up against what some believed to be an unjust and tyrannous authority and system. Meeting his end, the story goes that he and his men were in a shoot-out with police all night. Ned Kelly came out in a suit of armor around his upper body and a helmet that looked conspicuously like a bucket in a surreal atmosphere of fog and sunrise (something like this, according to one account). He was promptly shot in the leg and fell over in the bushes. His famous last words before they hanged him were ‘such is life’. It’s really kind of a quirky story, and I’m just giving you the gist. Ned Kelly’s an Australian folk hero. There is a museum and some type of show called the "Last Stand" in Glenrohan, Victoria. Apparently, the show's so absolutely terrible that it ends up being delightfully good.