Arrival in Mission Beach

18 July, 2010

Sitting at the picnic table with Carlotta and Nico, Swee joins us. We're listening to the soft, steady patter of rain on the veranda roof of Absolute Backpacker’s front porch and talking about travels: plans for travelling in Aus, travels so far in Aus (of which I've had shamefully few), around Aus, and elsewhere. We're recounting shared experiences; namely, the previous day (having known each other for 12-18 hours at this point).

It has certainly been an eventful 12-18 hours:

17 July, 2010 (the previous day)

With a few hours of alone time and a page in my journal under my belt, I arrived in Mission Beach around 3pm Saturday and was met by my new friend David. Ben had told me that David would be driving a van between the Greyhound stop and the hostel and was awarded a free beer for every two backpackers without bookings he brought back to Absolute. Our first interaction was approximately as follows:

“Hey, mate, have you got accommodation in Mission Beach?”

“Hey, you must be David.”

“And you must be Tim! Ben told me you were coming.”

We waited for the van for about 10 minutes under the 10-foot Cassowary statue near the gas station, grocery store, and two Thirsty Camel bottle shops--the entirety of the town. It arrived to let people off in “town,” and we piled in. The van took about as long to turn around as it did to then drive to Absolute Backpackers. We unloaded, I saw Ben across the kitchen, the two of us reunited with a hug, and I scampered off to get a photo of the wallaby I’d seen on the other side of the pool area (success! See photo of wallaby).

“That’s nothing, mate,” he told me. “I’ll show you some animals!”

But for me it was something: my first proper marsupial in eleven months in Australia! Still no wombats, no platypuses, no koalas, no kangaroos. For shame! (A quick farewell trip to the Melbourne zoo should hopefully rectify that).

Ben took me around the side of the patio area, back behind the staff quarters to where a broad-leafed tree overhung the concrete. To the bottom of one leaf-stem clung a 4-inch long praying mantis. The second and final of the animals on Ben's impromptu tour was sitting implacably on its meter-wide web near the entrance to the parking lot, the largest spider I’d ever seen. None of my helpful new friends knew what type of spider it is; any ideas, dear reader?*

*This just in: the spider appears to have been identified correctly as a Golden Orb Spider by Rachel Dutton. Golden orb spiders have been documented, on more than one occasion, preying on birds that have flown into their webs.