It might be something to do with being in a place where English is common. In South America, writing in English proves to be an outlet to return to my native language, but here there is no such need. Whatever the reason, my posts from the outback have trickled down to a mere smitten. What happened to Buck after Fraser Island? Well's here's my attempt to recover some history.

After Fraser Island, up the coast I went, doing more photos for Oz Experience. This is a vast country, as big as the US, and everyone drives slower, so it caught me by surprise when I took a 30 hour bus ride that essentially brought me from one small town to the next. Yikes. You've probably heard it before, but yes, Oz is a lot bigger than you think.

Upon reaching Cairns, all I wanted to do was stand in one place for a while. Fortunately, I found a good hostel to do some R&R. Here I found a city which had recently renovated its library - which was excuse enough for me to turn into a college geek again. I managed to find several fascinating books on Bunyips as well as aboriginal culture and history. Three days flew by thusly, and at long last, I decided it was time to face my demon.

It was time to try scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef.

Now, don't get me wrong, swimming is fun. It's a great sensation to pull and kick yourself through water, so long as when you want a break you can just put your feet down. Course, when you're diving, that's just not a perk that comes along. You're several meters underwater, and if you have a problem you really have a problem.

So I took an introductory dive with about four other people, each of us for the first time, and more or less shivering in our wet suits with fear. Nevertheless, we all went in. I'll never forget this first jump. The instructor, Jay, told us that there was a big fish named Wally that had been getting friendly and hanging out with him recently. I had no idea that he'd be right there! just a few meters away as soon as I jumped off the boat. Meanwhile, Wally is a Napolean Maori Wrasse, about 2.2 meters or 7 feet long. Surrounded by yellow-tailed furliers. It was surreal right from the start.

To my surprise, Wally swam so close to us I was afraid of striking him with my fins. At the start, Jay had to pull me along to keep up with the rest of the group, because I was too absorbed with Wally. We would eventually reach the bottom, about seven meters down, where we held a sea cucumber, and felt the texture of a clam as large as a watermelon. A little later on, we'd see a ray buring itself into the sand. I was amazed at how close fish would swim near us.

After 22 minutes that seemed to pass in 5, we resurfaced, and I sadly gasped the air again. I loved it and it was sad for it to be over. I've discovered that my fear of water doesn't apply when I'm connected to a 10kg tank of oxygen. With the success of this dive, I think I'll try to get a certification in Thailand on the way to India.

Afterwards, i went for snorkeling, which was just as rewarding as diving. The water off the east coast of Australia is amazingly clear. I really enjoyed seeing the parrotfish, and the crunching sounds they make when chewing parasites off the coral. They reminded me of the fish you'll see in the movie Yellow Submarine. Also out for show were more Wrasses, a trumpetfish, a boxfish I still can't identify, and so many more. This was certainly the highlight of Australia for me thus far.

To the Outback

The next day, I was off on the Desert Venturer to go from Cairns to Alice Springs. Along the way, we stopped by a termite mound that was over 5 meters tall. Imagine, tons of termites about as long as your fingernail, regurgitating dirt in a big pile until it's 5 meters high. I really didn't know what to think about that.

The best part of the trip might have been talking to Lisa (a pseudonym) about the Min Min Lights. Nearby the Queensland/Northern Territory border, witnesses report seeing inexplainable lights, an indeterminable distance away, because they are often occur in long flat stretches of land. Lisa actually saw these lights in 1998 along with her husband and children. They saw them off to the side of the road while driving home one night. Characteristic to previous sightings, they appeared to be a light that was constantly bobbing side to side, forward and backward. There was no moon. She and her family watched the lights for twenty minutes, guessing what they could be, but they could come to no rational conclusions.

As with the story I gave you about the creation of Fraser Island, there are two aproaches. One could say that the Min Min Lights are an optical illusion related to flat areas with high heat at night. Or one could say that the Min Min Lights are something more supernatural. Local legend explains that there used to be a prostitute who worked at the Min Min Hotel. She was found murdered, and shortly after, the hotel burned down. As the story goes, the Min Min Lights look just like this lady who would often carry two lanterns while walking between the hotel and her home.

Lisa thinks that the history goes back even farther, because she knows an aboriginal lady who says her grandmother saw the lights, and that there has been a long history for these lights, long before the hotel was even built. Lisa conjects that Min Min is an unusual name for a hotel, and that it's possible that it was named after the aboriginal name for the lights. Due to a fire in 1940, much of the history of this small station in the outback was lost. Despite this possibility, no one alive today has said what the phrase Min Min could mean

As Lisa told me all of these details, I was surprised that I had never heard of this. She said she used to tell the whole group that came in on the tour buses, but she grew tired of the connotations that came with being an expert on local unexplainable phenomena. Often she would be asked, "Do you think it's true?" To this question, she felt disrespected. "To me, I've seen these lights, and obviously they are real. As to what they could be, I just don't know."

As with many towns nearby lake monsters, the town of Booya (sp?) had endured an increase in tourism thanks to the Min Min Lights. They even created an information center to accomodate the many visitors who wanted to learn more. Once, a film crew came out to do a documentary. However, Lisa is cautious about the increase in tourism, because at a certain point, it could grow out of proportion, and become an artificially inflated phenomenon, aimed at outsiders instead of existing as a small local tradition.

Along the realm of Bunyips, Lisa mentioned that there's a billabong nearby where her husband grew up that no aboriginal person would go near. They knew the legend of the junjuddy (sp?), a half-human sized hairy man that would come out and throw rocks at visitors. One man even had scars to show. She said that her husband enjoyed going there, because the water was always very clean, and that he'd never seen anything like the junjuddy. When I asked how she felt about this herself, she said she wouldn't mind going, because until she had seen one herself, she wouldn't worry about it.

About this point, we'd both been talking quite a while, so it was time for me to turn in for a night under the stars in my swag (Australian bedroll). Before I went to bed, naturally I had to take a scan of the horizon myself. I had already removed my contact lenses, so I didn't expect anything conclusive, but I simply had to. A full moon blazed above. And, just past the cattle fence, I couldn't believe it, but there was a light, off somewhere that I did not remember anything being before. The light seemed to shift slightly. I was a little spooked, so when I walked back to find a friend, a German guy named Manuel, and had him follow me back where I had seen the light. He asked where it was, and just as I pointed, the generator for the campsite's electricity was turned off, and the light was no more. I laughed at myself, and so did Manuel.

As I fell asleep, Orion spun above me, still upside down. How that must have seemed to those first visitors... not only was their whole world upside down, so were the heavens above. If I dreamt anything that night, I don't remember, and I'm not sure that I'd want to.