Crazy Weekend

This past weekend was surprisingly full. As of Friday, the only thing I had planned was watching a sporting tournament between JCU's Cairns and Townsville campuses and participating in the tug-of-war. Little did I know, my life was to become far busier. I showed up at 12 for the start of the tournament to discover that Townsville had backed down and wasn't coming. A lot of Cairns athletes had committed to playing so it became the Cairns versus "all comers" games. Since I was there, I became an all-comer. I got roped into playing a sport called netball within half an hour of my arrival. First of all, I had no idea what netball was, second of all, we were playing the official JCU Cairns netball team. My team kindly explained the basics to me, and I tried my best to follow them, I'm guessing somewhat unsuccessfully since I'm pretty sure that I got called for obstruction at least five times. For those of you who, like me, haven't heard of netball before, I will try to briefly explain the premise. My roommate describes it succinctly as "really polite basketball." There are two hoops (but without backboards) one at either end of the court. To score points you throw the ball through the hoop just like scoring a basket in basketball. There are several different positions, some of which are pretty much offensive (called attackers or shooters) and positions which guard (called defenders).  Each position is limited in what sections of the court they can enter and when. If you have the ball, you can pivot in place and pass it to someone or shoot, but you can't travel with the ball. If you're guarding, you can't knock the ball out of someones hand or touch them. You stand a meter away and try to intercept the ball.
So anyways, I played netball. I also played a game of rugby touch (they call it touch football, but it's the same thing) and tug-of-war. All in all a very active day. We were promised free pizza (and being a college student I never turn down free food) so we went to the after party to collect it. There we were (for once) the only Americans and actually got to talk to a lot of Australians. My friend and I were very proud of ourselves because we made a genuine Australian friend who offered to drive us to a local mountain called the Pyramid that we had been wanting to hike.

Sunday we woke up bright and early to go hiking. Unfortunately my water bottle had leaked in the bag that I had packed the night before and gotten my camera wet ( I let it dry while we were out and it's fine now, so no worries) so I have no pictures from my adventure. We met our new friend outside and climbed into his classic Jaguar and drove off towards the Pyramid. We stopped at a servo (a gas station in Australian terminology) and then the car wouldn't start. The gas station had one of those battery charging packs so we used that to get the car running. We decided that we would drive about an hour further to Josephine Falls to let the battery charge back up. The falls were beautiful and had a natural water slide which we slid down. The water was pretty cold and it was still early in the morning so I was cold but it was fun. We made some rock towers, including a super cool rock-bridge-sculpture deal. Once we had gotten adequately cold and explored a bit we went back down to the car to find that the battery was again dead. Eventually we found someone with jumper cables (which are apparently called jumper leads here) and got the car started. As we continued driving the car was clearly struggling and eventually we were forced to stop at the side of the road. We called for help and then a brilliant plan was hatched. We had an inflatable boat in the car which had a battery to run a motor. The battery wasn't really intended to run a car but we thought it might get us to somewhere where we could buy a new battery. Our driver plugged it in and off we went again. We bought a new battery and decided that what with all the excitement of the day, we'd rather go hang out at a lake than hike a steep trail up a mountain. We went to Lake Eacham which is in the crater of an old volcano. We blew up the boat and puttered about. We saw a turtle and we climbed one of the strangler fig trees that was growing at the side of the lake. All in all it was a very exciting (and unexpected) day.