Heading Home: Mary River, Toowoomba, Brisbane, LA… Pt 185, April 27 – 30

            There is a tradition that some say is particularly Australian, the long farewell.  This is when your host walks with you out the door and talks some more, and then down to the car and talks even more, and then while you are sitting in the car…Driving back from Inskip and Gympie was something like that.  We took a new longer way home to see just a little bit more. On the way we passed one of the infamous Australian “Big Things”, a giant pineapple, actually there is now an even larger pineapple south of Gympie in Nambur and this one was fading.  We were surprised after traveling through some country along the Mary River (that looked much like Northeast Washington) to realize that we were driving by pineapple plantations.  Further on we were driving by orchards of macadamia nuts.  The Mary River Valley, known for its dairy farms, is slated to be drowned behind a new hydroelectric dam.  We saw the construction site and many road signs protesting the corporate-political grab for land and power.  It was nice just to see a flowing river when we stopped at a park for lunch.  There were interpretive signs about the endangered Mary River cod, and a local collection of freeloading wildlife.  It included a Butcher Bird, known for its hooked beak used to tear apart carrion and for occasionally hanging dead prey in trees for later use.  Another carrion critter, a three foot+ long goanna lizard scampered up a tree nearby.  Ponds, lawns and shade trees made us want to linger, but we were off again past the new yuppie haven of Maleny and on to Beerwah.

            On the way we passed the Australia Zoo.  It would have cost us $100 and a lot of time struggling through crowds to visit this famous attraction.  With the afternoon waning and a tight budget, we drove on.  Coming around a bend, the Glass House Mountains loomed into view, volcanic crags rising out of a flat valley floor.  Aboriginal stories see these peaks as remnants of a dream-time family.  I’m not sure what Captain Cook was thinking when he named them.  We were driving through Peachester.  This area is known for its organic agriculture and sometimes Bush Tucker, though these latter foods, harvested in the wild, are usually sold to gourmet restaurants at top dollar, discouraging bulk commercial development.

            Speaking of eating, we decided to eat out one last time.  We stopped at a pub in Crows Nest where locals were watching footy (Australian Rules Football) on the telly (TV).  Dinner was not going to be served for another hour, so we drove over to a local “Milk Bar”.  This is a cross between a burger joint, a deli and a quick stop.  The food is reasonable.  We could have had any of a large selection of seafood, but chose another Australian Burger, this time a “Steak Burger” with the “Works” (fried egg, ham, cheese, pickled red beets, grilled onions, pineapple…).  I thought they would substitute steak for the burger, but no, they just added it in there, so there was a regular burger patty AND a piece of steak!  We split it between us and barely finished it off.  I also tried a soda pop made and bottled locally, Crows Nest Cola.  It tasted good but was probably not a good idea.  Not needing anything more to eat, we arrived back at the Genos’ in Carbala at dusk, ready to spend the next few days cleaning the tent, camping gear, Nissan and A-Van, packing up and settling our debts.  None of this was painless, but like this story, it felt good to have some closure.  One last attraction was a brief trip to the Carbala monthly community market with Larry…part of that long Australian farewell.

            The inevitable day came when we had to leave.  We were up about 4AM and Larry had us down to the Bus Station in Toowoomba long before the coach to Brisbane left at 6AM.  The bus arrived late in Brisbane after being snarled in traffic.  But they were ready for us and a smaller shuttle bus with trailer for luggage whisked us to the International airport in good time.  Soon we were aboard another Boeing 757 Longreach flying with the wind for a12 hour hitch to LA.  We watched the sun set in our wake from 35,000 feet and tried to catch some sleep or at least some entertainment on the plane’s barely functioning multimedia system.  We arrived in LA as it was waking up and we had been mostly awake for 26 hours.  LAX was definitely the most unfriendly airport we had ever experienced.  We were yelled at, questioned and queued and then had to scramble to the other side of the airport to find our Seattle flight’s boarding gate.  At least Customs was fairly easy since we declared much less than the $800 worth of imports that peaks their curiosity.  Once on domestic flights we relaxed a little and after a short layover, a chair massage for Cheryl and change of planes we were relieved to see daughter April waiting for us in Spokane.  After watching hundreds of suitcases come down the carousel but not our own, we realized that something had gone wrong.  It turned out that the person checking our luggage in “Brissy” (Brisbane) had routed it to “Spo-caney” on a later direct flight from LAX.  Horizon airlines figured it out and had a van deliver it to us the next day.  36 hours after we left Carbala, we were back in Kettle Falls.  Our pets were healthy – though Scruffy, our dog, was depressed until she figured out that her same old humans were back again.  The house was probably cleaner than we had left it.  My business was busy.  The snow was gone and trees were flowering.  Though we had a great adventure on the other side of the planet and still miss the cheaper abundant tropical nuts and fruits, there really is no place like home.