After watching the New Year ring in from the Yarra river's north shore in Melbourne last night, I now find myself comparing my future ambitions with my previous plans. Back in September, I had planned on travelling to Sydney and Darwin. Not longer after that, I decided (more or less on a whim) to fly instead up to Brisbane. I had never been there, and thought that it might be a good place to look for work in a dive boat. Four days in the city convinced me that I should move on. It is a nice enough city, but seemed rather dull to me. I decided to go down to Byron Bay to see what the fuss about the place is all about. For a small hippy town, it sure did have a strong sense of tourism. Although I worked for Sundive dive shop for a few days, I couldn't see myself settling there for any extended period of time. On a whim once again (are you sensing a pattern here?), I then flew up to Cairns with high hopes of finding a boat to work on.
After just a few days on the Esplanade, I felt comfortable enough in the town to move into an apartment building in the traditional Queenslander style. It was there that I spent the next two months or so. I did manage to find work stints on three different boats (RumRunner, Compass, and Spoilsport), but learned a few frustrating lessons about the dive industry in the process. While in Cairns, I also had the chance to meet a few interesting people, including Markus (my German roommate), Giulia (Italian housemate), and Zara (who works at the YHA Esplanade hostel). Also, I met a very talented young musician by the name of Simone Ellias. It wouldn't surprise me if her songs made it onto Australian music radio stations within a few years.
As I said, I'm back in Melbourne now. Well actually, I'm back at Mikey's place in Geelong with plans to hang out until it's time to fly off to Thailand on a week's time.
While the series of coordinated bombings in Bangkok last night are disturbing, I don't feel that the threat is great enough to warrant revising my plans.
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