Our life in Tropical North Queensland

I figured I should sneak one blog update in before the new month. What a month October has been for Cairns Unlimited! Loads of new advertisers, a serious spike in traffic through the site (up 40% on September, and in fact over the last couple of days more than double the September average!) Then Cairns Unlimited’s Google page ranking leapt straight from a zero to a three (non-webbies won’t really appreciate that, except in as much as it is obviously a good thing!)

And somewhere in there, we found time to buy a new car. Well, not new … better than new! A 1992 European classic, a calibra, built in Germany and brought into Australia between 1991 and 1996 as a Holden. It’s a trip down memory lane for me, as you’ll see by the photos below. The car on the left is the Calibra I bought in 1999 and sold before my last round-the-world trip in 2003. The pic on the right was taken last week at MACHANS BEACH, right here in Cairns. This one needs a bit of work, and it will be some time before it is back to its former glory. But we’ll get there.

We’re enjoying a great weekend with Steve’s brother, Phillip, and his Thai friend, Noo. Finally someone is visiting us in our new home in Yorkey’s Knob. If you remember, Phillip is the guy we worked for during a weekend in the markets, when we had recently moved to Australia. I must say that, although it was hard getting up at 2am, I really enjoyed working there. It was a completely different experience. But if I was asked again, I’m not that sure I would say yes. Haha, just a joke, I would be delighted to do it. And I think Steve would be too. He enjoyed it even more than I did.

Apart from sleeping in and enjoying the delicious Thai food that Noo has been cooking for us, this morning we went to visit the “Duyfken”, a replica of a 1606 Dutch ship. And the reason why this ship is so important is in the following paragraph, taken from the Duyfken website.

“The first recorded chart of the Australian coastline was made by Duyfken’s Dutch skipper, Captain Willem Janszoon, and the first time recorded in history when Aboriginal Australians met people from the outside world occurred during Duyfken’s 1606 voyage of discovery. Indeed, the indigenous people of Cape York still talk about the Duyfken landing in their oral history. For the crew of the original Duyfken, theirs was a voyage beyond the known world at the time. They thought that a land of gold known as “Nova Guinea” could exist to the southeast and they set out to find it. What they found was the Gulf of Carpentaria coast of Australia’s Cape York Peninsula and the oldest living culture on Earth — but no gold.”

As you can see by the photos, the ship really looks like an old ship, one of those we’ve seen many times in Hollywood movies. Or weren’t you thinking of Pirates of the Caribbeans? We did.

Marjorie and Yasmin were very kind to tour us around and tell us all the secrets of the ship. We really enjoyed their knowledge of the history of the Duyfken and their personal little stories. Thanks a lot, it was great!

And in between listening to the interesting histoy of the Duyfken, we still had some time to be ourselves.

And that’s all for today. We will be back soon with new photos and hopefully more adventures.