Archive for Personal Rant

Jet Star

For our flight from Brisbane to Christchurch, New Zealand we took an airline called Jet Star. On our tickets was a Qantas code, but it turned out to be code share flight with Qantas’ discount subsidiary Jet Star. Oh, my what an experience.

I can summarize thus: Avoid at all costs.

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Johnstone River Crocodile Farm

We soon left the swamp, and were on our way to the Johnstone River Crocodile Farm. I have mentioned before how the Aussies know how to do Zoology, well this place blew me away. This was the raw edge.

As we arrived, the owner and his small team greeted us. Mick, the owner, had a pronounced limp, and he and I got talking pretty much immediately. He was such a great guy, asking where I was from, and as we walked, asking me if I was interested in working there! I was not quite sure if he was serious or not (You can never tell with Aussies), but either way as we approached the first crocodile, I had made up my mind. Hell no.

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Oliver’s

As I had mentioned in my last post, we had been originally scheduled to go on a rainforest safari today. The reason we made the switch was that the owner of the safari company had called to explain he had some staffing issues, and wanted to see if we were available at any other time. As we were fully booked in Cairns, we had no days free, he offered to make the effort with our other tour operators and juggle our schedule. As a way of compensation he offered us a nice bottle of wine if we visited his restaurant, which he runs in additon to the tour company. He even vame to pick us up, and dropped us back off afterwards.

Oliver’s is located in the centre of downtown Cairns. It is slightly hidden, but no more so than any other premises. Oliver is German, and used to be a maitre de of a high class restaurant. When he came to Australia he worked in another fine dining establishment, and started the touring company on the side. As the business grew, he was able to to focus solely on the tour business until it grew to a point where he could open his own restaurant. And provide the local area with a high class, cultural experience.

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Tjupuki

I was expecting this aboriginal experience to be similar to a Hawaiian Luau. In some ways I was not too far off the mark. On arrival we immediately sat down for lunch, which was very good and we got to try even more varieties of kangeroo meat).
After we had stuffed ourselves (trust me I always make the most of all you can eat buffets), we were taken to an outside auditorium where we were witnessed a dance show. The dancing was mostly traditional with didgeridoo playing and chanting, but they finished with a CD they had released which basically was a modern pop song. It felt a little surreal. We were then taken to see a further didgeridoo demonstration, and a talk about the rainforest “tucker” or food.

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