Spiders, skinks and Greyhounds

Cairns is rapidly wearing thin. While sunny, it is full of cheerful and bronzed bodies by the massive communal swimming pool. In rain, the place suddenly resembles nothing so much as Freshers Week in a grim northern town, boom and bust on the back of some obscure industry. Every bar runs nightly wet T-shirt competitions and national flag body-painting... there are drinks deals and much school-disco style dancing to the tune of covers bands. I haven't seen a Pied Piper yet, but I'm sure he's kicking around somewhere, drinking fizzy beer and leering at the girls. I wasn't much keen on Freshers Week the first (two) times I tried it, and the rest of the East Coast is starting to sound fairly similar from the jungle drums that beat along the backpacker trail. I've bought a Greyhound bus pass - $330 for unlimited stops covering the thousands of kilometres between Cairns and Sydney. I'm leaving tomorrow for Townsville and Magnetic Island, on which there is supposed to be some decent bouldering.



Trying not to break my ankles at Trinity Beach. V1? 5b?

I went out to Trinity Beach yesterday and scared myself with some low climbs over ankle-breaking landings. Amazing friction on the rock - I lost a lot of skin, but this is normal. I'm going to sell T-shirts to climbing walls with my new slogan: 'Bouldering. Because who needs fingertips?'


A life of crime is beckoning...

The climbing is right down on the beach, and partly covered at high tide. Quick lunch of bread and cheese with huge grey waves pounding spray against the granite. It was quiet. The rocks were full of tiny striped skinks basking beside smashed bottles. The tiniest dents in the rock are pasted over with minute spiders webs. I was paranoiacally careful to avoid these, partly from the point of ecological preservation, but mostly from Sylvester preservation. I don't care what species they were, I'm convinced virtually everything on this continent is going to have a go at killing me eventually... not least the locals when we retain the Ashes.

I won't be sorry to leave Cairns - there was a small gang of us here at Gilligans, but Resh has flown home, Sarah and Eliza have pushed on to New Zealand and Michael is two days ahead of me on the Greyhound heading south. Gilligans is a backpacker processing machine - whereas the place I've booked in Townsville seems ramshackle, disorganised and a lot more fun.