Sydney to Cairns Motorcycle Trip
20 May -- 12 June 1995
by Dan and Judy Danz
{updated 97-07-27 with original photos}
Northeast NSW
Three glorious weeks of vacation/holidays on a motorcycle trip up the
northeast coast of Australia, to the vicinity of Port Douglas, north of
Cairns and then back to Sydney. We'll put 4,080 miles on the
 teal
'92 Gold Wing. Along the way, it will attract plenty of Aussies -- most of
whom have never seen such a bike. Great conversation starter! The usual
first thing out of their mouths: "Wow! How much does it cost?"
Since they don't import the SE model, we can only guess that in Aussie
dollars, the answer would be about $28,400.
Tamworth
 The home of
Australian country music and the heart of cattle country. But unlike the US,
you will not find cowboys on every street corner, no twirling lariats, no
high-top cowboy boots, and the only hats are Aussie Acubras.
We did find lots of steakhouses advertising steaks "like you would
find in Texas". But no way would you ever mistake Tamworth for being
anywhere near Texas. Among other reasons: no steak sauce -- they served BBQ
sauce for the steaks, but the main ingredients of all Aussie BBQ sauce are
tomato sauce and brown sugar, and little else.
But we did find a steak house that served steaks American style. This
means that 1) the steaks were actually red in the middle versus the normal
Aussie style of cooked until totally dry and often charred and 2) the salad
is served in a bowl and before the main meal. Here in Australia, when you
are asked at a restaurant if you want salad with your meal, what you will
get is the salad served on your plate with the main meal. Most folks have
never heard of being served a salad before the main course. At this steak
house, they served the salad like they do in most US restaurants, separate
before the main meal. There was a table of 10 or 12 Aussies next to us. When
the salad was served, we noticed that almost everyone in the group looked at
this bowl of "stuff" sitting directly in front of them, looked at
each other, then back at the salad trying to figure out just what they were
supposed to do with this "bowl of food". Then all of them politely
put the salad to one side (!) and waited until the main meal arrived to eat
the salad. If they had been in a foreign country, they might have figured
out what was going on, but being in small town Australia, they probably
thought they were getting poor service!!!
 Speaking
of Texas .... On the way up the highway, we stumbled upon a local rodeo. The
family takes the ute (utility vehicle, known as a pickup truck in the
USA) to the rodeo grounds and parks right alongside the arena. The announcer
talks about local riders who have done good -- they've gone on to
participate in rodeos in America. Even the quintissential Aussie Akubra hat
has been replaced by the traditional American cowboy gear. In fact, an
American plopped in the middle of the crowd would be hard-pressed to tell
where the rodeo was being held, unless of course the accent of the announcer
gave it away.
This is our third day out, and "high" in the mountains of New
South Wales we found Nimbin,
the hippie capital of Australia. We had heard about all the hippies on the
Australian 60 Minutes program a few weeks ago. We decided that since we
would be in the area, we just had to visit. The town itself is not large,
only a few blocks of businesses and not many more of homes. It is a very
rural community. We stopped at an espresso bar and had a cappuccino and were
offered a marijuana joint. Since we were riding the bike and had a few more
kilometers to ride that day, we passed on the cig. Sitting around drinking
coffee and talking about our bike, we did make several new friends. They
tried to talk us into spending a few days there in Nimbin to
"relax" and have a good time, but we forced ourselves to press on.
 It
was mid morning when we arrived and there were quite a few people just
milling around town. True to the hippie culture, there are a lot of
"unemployed" in Ninbim. Most of them make their living either by
selling pot or living on the "dole", the Australian term for
unemployment. The town is filled with tried and true dope smokin', free
lovin' hippies who extol the virtues of hemp.
The only exceptions we found that day we were one somewhat confused looking
college professor and two retired couples we later found wandering down the
streets. Both couples were definitely over 60, definitely middle class
retirees, and definitely did not know what the heck they had encountered
when they got out of their car in Nimbin. Judy discovered that they too had
seen the 60 Minutes program and had decided to check things out for
themselves.
 We
took a number of pictures of Dan on his motorcycle in front of the Nimbin
Museum talking with several of the more colorful locals. One guy standing
and conversing with Dan was barefoot on one foot and had one sock (no shoe)
on the other. Several people standing around were smoking, but only about a
third were smoking tobacco.
The Nimbin Museum was quite a psychedelic experience. The theme of the
tour was "live and let live" (i.e., don't bug the hippies) and
"save the earth". For the second case, Nimbin itself makes a
point. A mere 150 years ago Nimbin was nothing more than lush trees and
vegetation in a large tropical rain forest. Australia logged the forests
until what once was rain forests is now rolling green pastures and dairy
farms. Looking at the picturesque pastoral countryside around Nimbin, you
would never guess this was once a lush tropical rain forest.
Queensland
Brisbane
The capitol of Queensland -- dominated by a twisting river, and equally
twisting, confusing streets. The local GoldWing dealer quickly replaces a
bald rear tire for us, and regales us with stories of his trips on GoldWings
across America.
We had dinner with old friend Trevor Chorvat. When we last saw Trevor, in
1986 in Dallas, he was a young bachelor working on ON/2 on Stratus computer
systems for Olivetti Australia. Now, he's a lecturer (and has completed his
doctoral thesis on the structure of computer languages) at Queensland
University of Technology. He and wife Kate jacked up their small house and
built another ground floor under it to make room for their six kids.
GoldCoast
We stopped for lunch, hopped a monorail, and visited Conrad's Jupiter
casino. We had heard how the Gold Coast was the Las Vegas of Australia.
Maybe it impresses the Aussies, but we found it rather ordinary (an Aussie
expression that means considerably sub par). America has bigger casinos at
almost any highway roadhouse in Nevada.
Sunshine Coast
Again, we were not impressed -- neither by the Miami-beach-style
high-rises lining the shore nor by the age of most of the natives. Sun City,
Australia! but with an exception: we did not see any golf carts on the
highways, a usual sight in the USA retirement communities.
Bundaberg 
 We
stopped for a fascinating tour of the Bundaberg Rum distillery and learned
how they make rum from sugar cane -- first producing sugar and molasses,
then refining the molasses, fermenting it (for only 30 hours) and finally
distilling it to produce 78% alcohol that is aged a minimum 2 years (as
required by law) in oak casks and then diluted with distilled water. We
tasted a rum liqueur after the tour -- quite good; it's too bad that it's
not exported to the USA.
They keep 10-million liters of molasses around to distill during the
sugar cane off-season -- enough to make the same amount of rum! They move
the rum from the distillery building into a "maturing shed" where
the rum is put into large 4,000-liter casks made of American white oak. The
rum is moved by ordinary water pipes about 10-12 feet above ground. It seems
that years ago the pipes were buried underground, but smugglers plugged into
the pipes at the back of the building and ran their own smaller pipe down
the hill to the river where the smugglers would fill small casks of rum and
sell it. When the Bundaberg family found out, they decided to put the pipes
above ground where they could keep an eye on them.
We toured the maturing building -- a building filled with large casks of
rum that smelled of fine aged liquor reflective of it's contents. Each
4,000-liter cask contains about AU$3 million dollars worth of rum. But it is
not Bundaberg Rum Distillery that will get those big bucks -- it is the
Australian government that makes the most from a cask of rum. Of the AU$3
million, AU$2.3 million is paid to state and federal governments in liquor
taxes and fees. That is a tax rate of about 76%!!! Everywhere we go, cane
fields border the roads, and cane train tracks crisscross the roads and
fields. Fortunately for us, the harvest season doesn't start for another few
weeks.
Yeppon
 The
Capricorn Coast -- much more to our liking. Laid back beach towns, with
decent accommodations along the sea shore.
Macay, Proserpine, Airlie Beach
Another laid back -- but upscale -- beach area. Looking out over the
waterways and the Whitsunday Islands, the ocean is smooth, glassy, and looks
more like a large lake than the Pacific ocean. There's a notable absence of
children and teenagers, possibly because the protected harbor offers no
opportunities to the surfer crowd. However, the scuba divers manage to
attract a few groupies -- enough so that the most popular bar has weekly
bikini- and wet-t-shirt contests.
Great Barrier Reef 
Shute Harbour
 It's
a 2.5-hour 77-kilometer trip from Shute Harbour aboard a twin-hulled
catamaran -- the Monarch, operated by FantaSea -- to reach the edge of the
reef. Along the way, we pass some of the sheltering islands of the
Whitsundays, like South Molle island, that have resorts for people who are
into that sort of vacation. There are shallow reefs along the edges of some
of these islands, visible at low tide but nowhere near as grand as the coral
reefs farther out.
Hood Reef and Reefworld
 Reefworld
is a huge, man-made, glorified, overgrown raft anchored in the Coral Sea
smack dab in the middle of the Great Barrier reef. From its perch on the
edge of the reef, scuba divers and snorklers poke beneath the surface. We
saw the reef from a different vantage point: 500-feet above it from a Bell
JetRanger helicopter.  The
brown coral tops poke above lime green limestone, in an emerald ocean
pierced by deep troughs -- called rivers -- colored deep navy blue. At
Reefworld, we went underwater in a viewing chamber and watched schools --
and even colleges -- of fish swim by the windows. 1400 species of fish
inhabit the reef, which is protected all along its length, including
significant portions that are NOT open to tourists.
A semi-submersible ship with a glass bottom lets us view the living
creatures that populate the reef and whose skeletons form the massive
structures -- mushroom coral, table coral, tree coral and more -- every
shape imaginable. The daytime colors are plentiful but -- according to one
of two marine biologists aboard the tour boat -- the colors are much more
vivid at night when the coral polyps extend colorful tentacles from the
skeletons in order to capture passing nutrients from the ocean.
As low tide approaches, the tops of the reefs are uncovered. Solid enough
to walk upon -- but protected from such activity by stiff fines. It is
illegal to harm the coral in any way for any reason including the simple act
of standing on the reef which actually does considerable harm to the coral
underneath.
Townsville
We visit a huge aquarium -- with a large section of live reef, complete
with wave-making machinery and many species of fish. We learn about the
schools of parrot fish with one male and the rest a harem of females. But,
when the male dies, one of the females changes sex to become the new male.
Later, a television program teaches us about schools of another species of
parrot fish, with one female and one dominant male. When the female dies,
the male becomes female and one of their offspring assumes the dominant male
role. This child then has sex with his father now mother. The family tree
quickly becomes a tangled web.
Mission Beach
There's not much in this simple beach town, and that (and overcast skies)
is what convinced us to spend an extra night at the Castaways motel. The
secluded gently-sloping beach stretches for several miles, yet we see less
than 10 people on the beach in the next two days.
When we visited the Australia Post office to send some postcards back to
the US, we found they also were selling bunches of fresh bananas along with
the postage stamps. First time we have been to the post office and asked for
5 airmail stamps and 3 bananas, please!!!
Far North Queensland (FNQ)
Cairns
Definitely a tourist town -- and also a multi-racial town. An elderly
Japanese woman in a shop asks us "You 'right?" -- sounding just
like a native Australian shop clerk, without a trace of accent. In an
upscale Chinese restaurant, only 20% of the people are WASPs and most of
those are waiters and waitresses.
Motels along the coast are booked solid, and we have to settle for a room
along the busy highway. The place doesn't quite have its act together: twice
we're ambushed by a sprinkler system that attacks as we walk along the
footpath. And, they have a poolside bar with a sign that prohibits bathing
suits, singlets, and thongs. In view of the fact that this is the usual mode
of dress for FNQ males, it's no wonder the bar had few customers.
We stopped at the visitors center of the Royal Flying Doctors Service. A
team of 8 doctors, 10 sisters (advanced nurses), and 12 pilots fly 3
twin-engine Beechcraft KingAirs out of Cairns, one of eight such sites
throughout Australia. They provide medical services for those hardy souls
who inhabit 80% of Australia that lies outside the cities along the coasts.
The settlers are equipped with simple radio transceivers that are used for
education as well as medical emergencies. One RFDS crew handles emergencies
(an average of 3 evacuations a day), while the other two teams visit
outlying clinics, trying for once-a-month visits. In between visits, the
sick can get medical advice via radio and -- under directions from the
doctor -- self-medication from large standardized medicine chests where all
medicine is numerically labelled to avoid confusion over the radio.
"Take two number 130's and signal me in the morning."
Kuranda
 When
the hippies and their culture descended on the beaches north of Cairns in
the early 70's, the townspeople ran them off. But not too far. They settled
in the mountains nearby. Soon, people were visiting the weekly Kuranda arts
and crafts markets, and last year they did A$24 million worth of business in
the town. For the next few months, Kuranda will be reached by 30-minute bus
ride or a 90-minute old-fashioned train ride on a track that circumscribes
deep Barron gorge. It's a pretty tourist-y trip -- with beautiful scenery
reminiscent of the Copper Canyons of Mexico set in the middle of a tropical
rain forest. In a few months, a huge cableway (called SkyRail) will whisk
visitors up the sides of the mountains and above the rainforest. To their
credit, they've built the towers without clearing huge gaps through the
magnificent trees, but the whole project still has the "greenies"
enraged.
Tjapukai
A group of Aboriginal people have put together a theater
dance company to tell the story of the Tjapukai (JAB-uh-kye) people and to
teach tourists about Aboriginal beliefs and culture.  It's
a first-class production -- a bit commercial -- but nevertheless tells a
compelling story of closeness to the land. The week we're visiting marks the
third anniversary of the landmark Mabo legislation -- named after a Torres
Straits Islander name Eddy Mabo who led the long drive to establish a
judicial procedure under which Aboriginals and Torres Straits Islanders can
regain title to native lands (and even the adjoining seas) that were stolen
by the white man. The white Australian population considered the land terra
nullus (unclaimed land) until it was discovered by Captain Cook in 1770 and
claimed by the British government. This meant that the entire continent was
now "owned" by England to be "granted" to appropriate
white settlers, totally ignoring any Aboriginal right or claim to any part
of the land. This new legislation basically voided that concept and allows
for Aboriginal people to gain title to land they can show was
"owned" by their tribes. Most of the land affected is that land
currently not titled to any landowner. A few white Australians were using
the land as open range -- and losing the open range impacts the amount of
stock they can now graze. Needless to say, the legislation is highly
controversial, as many of the white Australians feel that because they have
used the land for the past hundred years, it should be theirs forever --
forgetting that the Aboriginals "used" the land the 40,000 years
prior!!! On the eve of the celebration, vandals attacked a new memorial
marking Mabo's grave site, defacing it with Nazi symbols!! The act heightens
racial tension considerably.
Port Douglas -- Mossman
 A
good portion of the road between Cairns and Port Douglas is a world heritage
site and rightly so. The coastline is a narrow strip of sandy beaches
separating the mountains of the Dagmar range from the waters of the Pacific
and -- farther out -- the splendor of the Great Barrier Reef.
Nearby is the Daintree Rain Forest -- a protected area that has been
partly reclaimed by the Aboriginal people. A few steps into the dense
wetlands and we're cut off from civilization. We learn about the symbiotic
relationship between the forest and the birds. The trees produce seeds and
drop them on the floor of the forest. But, the seeds are food for the birds,
who carry them high into the umbrella branches of the dense forest. There,
some of the seeds germinate and begin to grow. Long vines begin to grow from
the canopy as the young plants extend roots to the ground, 50 to 60 feet
below. Many years later, the original host tree will die, but by now the
vines have a life of their own.
This is as far north as we can go on sealed, bitumen roads, some 2400
miles (3840 km) from our starting point. We could've called the trip Mossman
to Mossman -- Mossman NSW (a few km from our apartment) to Mossman QLD.
Atherton -- Tablelands
We took a half day to drive through this breadbasket area, marked by
rolling hills and lush green countryside. The peaks are in the clouds as we
travel, half in, half out of misty rain. It's a good ten degrees colder up
here, and we quickly decide to descend to the coast for the night.
Innisfail
This is an ugly town -- dirt poor -- in the middle of sugar cane country.
It's Friday night, but the only meals being served are at the hotels (bars),
RSL clubs (returned servicemen league clubs, like VFWs), and KFC. Everything
else is rolled up with the sidewalks at 5:00 PM.
Bowen
After fighting high winds and some showers along the coast highway, we
pull into Bowen, the oldest town in FNQ. The new national route 1 highway
has bypassed the town which once was a thriving sea port.  Now,
Horseshoe Bay is the site of a few resorts. One mom-and-pop operation
catches our eyes: the Waggon Wheel motel is really a converted ramshackle
beachfront holiday home that has grown haphazardly into an inexpensive but
comfortable place to stay. We liked it so much, we stayed an extra day that
was spent relaxing under the palm trees or beachcombing for shells and bits
of broken coral from the offshore reefs.
Place Names
 Many
of the places along the way were named by Captain Cook and other early
British explorers, and thus have British names, like Cape Tribulation (where
he ran aground causing him much tribulation), Kennedy, Cairns, Cape Upstart,
and Gloucester Island. We even found a Marlborough -- though not in Isis
Shire,  where
we found the Isis Pharmacy, the Isis Bowling Club, the Isis Cultural Center,
Isis Tyre Power, and even Isis Secondhand.
We pass many towns, creeks, and places with strange-sounding names that
obviously are based on names from the Aboriginal people: Milaa Milaa, Bingil
Bay, Walkamin, Toobanna, Paluma, Gumlu, Gunyarra, Biboohra, and Mareeba, to
name a few.
Wildlife
We see many strange and different species of wildlife along the way.
Driving at dawn and dusk is hazardous because of the danger of kangaroos
running across the road -- in fact, all of the time on the road was spent
watching out for 'roos who like to bound out of the tall grass along the
highway directly in front of traffic. Many cars here have roobars on the
front (kinda like bull bars in Texas if you've ever seen 'em). A goldwing is
a big bike, but still, roobars won't fit -- so it's all on the driver (and
luck).
We saw plenty of kangaroo steaks at the RoadKill Cafe (probably about 25
for the whole trip) but only saw one live 'roo on the highway. A full-grown
one hippity-hopped across about 50 feet in front of us. Too quick for Judy
to get a picture, though. Besides, it's hard for her to take a picture from
the back seat at 110 km/h when the driver has bent and buried the foot brake
and has full clamp on the hand brake. :-)
But, besides the well-known kangaroos, we see emus (an ugly ostrich-like
bird), wild turkeys, cassowaries (a blue-necked turkey), long-legged
long-beaked fishing cranes and herons, hundreds of pelicans, and thousands
of the ubiquitous sea gulls.
At Bowen, the "mossies" ate us alive -- and the sand flies
swarmed 'round at low tide time. Strange creatures burrowed in the sand,
digging gopher-like holes and leaving mounds of dug-up sand without giving
us a clue to their origin.
Several tourist traps which we pass along the highway flog (Aussie for
tout ) live crocodiles, but -- fortunately -- we didn't encounter any in
their natural habitat.
In the Wet Tropics, we saw and heard many different species of frog,
including one roadside variant in black and orange coloring.
Several times as we cross bridges over coastal rivers, we're surprised to
see wading black swans.
 And
the birds. Everywhere we go, we come across galahs, parrots, and lorikeets.
A family of multi-colored parrots took up residence in the palms outside our
motel in Bowen, and the youngster of the bunch is quite unafraid of humans.
At Kuranda, we shared our table at a coffee shop with a huge flying ant
who tried to muscle and lift a raw sugar crystal that weighed as much as the
ant.
One of the nicest places we stayed during the whole trip was The
Sanctuary Motel in Coffs Harbor, NSW. Besides having great Italian food in
the restaurant, the grounds of the hotel held a wildlife sanctuary that
attracted lorikeets, peacocks, some kind of wild chicken, kangaroos,
wallabies, ducks, mallards, black swans, and (in cages) parrots, galahs, and
cockatoos. You could wander among the wildlife in a rainforest setting. Very
pleasant and informative.
The motel in Cairns had a huge bird cage with 12 birds of varying bright
color schemes. When the birds slept, rats and mice invaded the cage to grab
scraps of food.
Another species of songbirds works in duos -- one starts to whistle a
melody that is then finished by the other bird. The song sounds like two
young boys whistling in the dark to scare away the bogey man.
And, of course, the unique laughing cry of the raucous kookaburra -- the
national bird of Australia -- can be heard all along the way.
    
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