Today Frank drove me a hundred kilometers north of Cairns, to a place called Karnak Playhouse - right at a foot of a really beautiful mountain with a hiking trail going up it. An acquaintance of his owns the place - an actress Diane Cilento, once the wife of Sean Connery and now doing her own productions in what can only be described as one of the most scenic places conceivable for a theater.
The road there passed through Mossman, where we stopped to go walk the (touristy) hiking trail at the mossman gorge. It was quite nice, although I am slowly getting used to all the rainforest already so nothing too spectacular or jaw-dropping. We had quite an interesting conversation though - on topics raging from standard Australian english slowly decaying to what the gay community is like (Frank is gay by the way, although he does not believe in labels).
When we arrived at the playhouse (synonym for a theater), we went up a flight of stairs and arrived at the cafe/open-air theater. It was quite a spectacular sight. We went up to the counter and ordered coffee.. the girl at the counter had a slight accent which I recognized correctly as being a Finnish one. Frank asked about the whereabouts of Diane and we were politely asked to wait while they were trying to get in touch with her.
Two cups of coffee later, Diane shows up, unexpectedly to everyone (she had not been answering her cellphone). Frank introduces the two of us and tells Diane that I am the person interested in WWOOF-ing. "Willing Work On Organic Farms", as I later found out. She said that she currently had too many people as it was, but on hearing I only wanted to stay for one day to just go hiking up the mountain things worked out. I said goodbye to Frank and dragged my stuff to a luxurious green house out in the back.
I then reported back to Diane and asked if she had work for me. She introduced me to Alex, one of the other woofers, who then led me to a large patch of weed right around a tree trunk and explained I should try to uproot the weeds as best I could, and then potentially tidy up by also raking the leaves from the surrounding area.
Two satisfying hours of hard manual labour later and the job was more or less done. I went back to where Alex was and then started meeting the other Woofers, one at a time. Two brits, two Americans, a German and the Finnish girl I mentioned before. The latter had a job interview in the evening, but we sat down and had dinner with the rest of them... and then watched 4 episodes of "How I met your mother" from a dvd player one of them had bought with them.
At some point, the American guy said he was heading for bed, so I also decided to get going, back to the house I had dropped my stuff at. Problem was, however, that it was pitch-black darkness outside and I had left my phone to charge so I had no light source. Thankfully, they borrowed me their flashlight.
I have two bats flying around in my room as I am typing this. This place is seriously cool :)
Im going to try to get going at first light tomorrow. The climb is supposedly pretty hard, but we'll see. I think after that, I will just try to hitchike to Cape Tribulation (another 60 km north), spend a day hiking there and then hitchike back to Cairns to catch my flight. At least that is the initial plan.
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