Crash and Burn

After saying all my "goodbyes" and packing all my things I rode north to Townsville with Jodi's parents. They are living with their daughter and son-in-law, Michelle and Matt while their house is being built. They have a great stretch of land outside of the city and are surrounded mostly by scrub. The advantages could be missed by most people but I understood them fully. My thoughts were confirmed when Matt called me to help remove a carpet python from the garage one afternoon. If snakes aren't your thing, every morning several white cockatoos land in the yard to eat the chicken's food.

I had been looking forward to visiting the local aquarium and Billabong Sanctuary in town. Jodi's husband, Grabs, my co-worker and mentor and the crocodile farm, called his friend at the sanctuary ahead of time to let them know I was coming. I walked around the zoo in the afternoon waiting for the crocodile shows to start. When they finally did, I was the only person left at the zoo so I got my very own personal croc show. They do a great job of demonstrating the athleticism of these otherwise seemingly lazy reptiles. The big males leap nearly 8 feet out of the water to grab the food presented from a stick!

My favorite part of the day though was the behind the scenes tour. In the prep room there are walls of snake cages filled with native species. Blackheaded pythons, womas, water pythons, carpet pythons and the venomous snakes, taipans, browns and tiger snakes. My dream came true when they said I could get any snake out that I wanted. It would have been easier to ask which snake I didn't want to get out! I proceeded to get pictures with snakes I'd only seen in the pages of Reptile magazines and zoos back home. It was a very fun afternoon.

Earlier that morning I went to the Reef HQ aquarium to get a preview of what I might see the following week SCUBA diving. There is a large, underwater tunnel you can walk through and see different sharks and a sea turtle. I really wanted to see the sea snakes but what I was most surprised about were the flashlight fish. I didn't know what flashlight fish were but I stood there mesmerized in an area of the aquarium where the nocturnal species exhibits are, watching these green lights swimming in the water. It was unreal!

That afternoon Matt and I went for a motorcycle ride at the track behind his house. I knew I was out of my league on the 450cc Yamaha but after a few laps on the track I began to get a little braver and go a little faster. I liked coming out of the corners fast, it was fun. Matt was sitting on the quad watching me as I drove by with a grin on my face that seemed to grow bigger and bigger with every lap. Then I bit the dust. I planted my foot improperly on a corner and accelerated at the wrong time, sending the bike one way and me the other. It's precisely at this point during an accident, the point when you realize "This is going to be bad," that I was flying through the air telling myself to roll when I hit the ground. I didn't listen.

Not wanting to worry my host, I quickly jumped up and picked the bike up as Matt came over to access the damage. We laughed about it awhile, as blood dripped off my fingertips that were held behind my back. Once I assured him that I was okay-but that the day was over-I showed him my wounds, some of which I hadn't even discovered yet. I had slid along the right side of my body so I did a number on my hand, forearm, elbow, tricep, ribs, hip and knee. We went back to the house and I laid in the bathtub for a few hours slowly cleaning the gravel out of the cuts. We were all concerned about whether I'd be able to still dive or not in Cairns.

After everything was clean, and I'd had as many painkillers as Michelle would give me, Margaret came over to patch me up. Margaret and her husband are former missionaries to Papua New Guinea and now she works as a nurse just up the road. She was nice enough to come over and bandage me up and invite me to the fellowship dinner they were having that night at church. Now, I've been known to do a lot of things for a free meal but I've never wrecked a motorcycle for one. Although the dinner was really good and I was glad I went, I think there are many less painful options out there!

The following day I got an early bus to Cairns, my final stop in Australia. I was nervous about whether I'd be able to dive, about going to Indonesia injured and about leaving Australia when I'd had so much fun here. It's only a few hours from Townsville to Cairns, but it sure felt like a long time.