I got let go pretty early from the strawberry job. The price
crashed and the farms have started spraying out their strawbs. The season’s
over and now I'm out of a job.
Though I was expecting, and coulda used another month’s
salary, I'm pretty ready to move on. I'm flying up to Cairns. The main jump off
point for the Great Barrier Reef.
The GBR has been on my bucket list since I was little. I
would watch Jacque Cousteau and his buds do all these grainy film dives. And I
wanted to be like that. I set up a little tent, and filled it with books and
VCR tapes of fish and would sit in in contemplatively. It was my fish library
and I was six.
I'm on the bus leaving Caloundra. There's an old couple
going to the zoo (Steve Irwin's). Caloundra is my second hometown. I declare
it. There's like 2 coffee shops per person. Fruit comes right off the farm.
Small enough that there's really no one here, but big enough for a pet store
and a guitar shop. Yesterday I was surfing and I surfed over a school of fish.
And the water was clear and it was warm and I saw a dolphin. I surfed so much
that I got land sickness. Which is what I call when you're trying to sleep in
your bed and you still feel the waves pushing you so you get a little nauseous.
It's weird. I'm past the halfway point on my visa. I have a
plane home on nov 11th. Which feels way too close emotionally and too far
financially. I'll probs have to get another job. But who hires someone for like
two months? Oh well. It’ll alllllll be fine.
I booked one night in a hostel and booked a 3 day 2 night
trip SCUBAing on the reef. It’s a moderately nice boat. I wanted to get out of the budget backpacker
slum boats and spend the money where it counts.
I puked on the boat ride to the main boat. Boats to boats. I
woke up before the kitchen in the hostel was open so I didn’t have any brekky
and was low blood sugared. And I was light headed getting on “Reefkist” but
when we started smashing through waves it became a battle. And I was with a
German girl and you know you don’t want to throw up in front of a girl. What
you can’t keep your insides together? C’mon.
But eventually the Axis won and my French innards were
pushed out of their homeland. I grabbed a flimsy brown paper bag as per
procedure and fled to the back of the boat. I spewed all water. And I laughed
because it was so silly. My dream of the Great Barrier Reef begins with me
finding out I get seasick.
Eventually the German girl spewed too and a nice girl with
the tour company handed me more puke bags.
