a time to mourn: tragedy strikes freeman...

as many of you have no doubt come to suspect, i go just about everywhere w/ my little travel companion. traveling w/ this little guy makes people stare & wonder what's wrong with me, but i don't care. he's responsible for many of my pictures here and is dear to my heart. on this trip, he's fallen out of my bag and down a flight of stairs, sat with me in the rain while i check email and still always hung in there. i should have known that the calm before the storm was going to yield terrible results. i dare not post his picture here as it will be hard for many of you to stomach. but if you must see the devastation i've suffered, here it is. who'd of thought a backpack buckle could be so ruthless?

picture of destruction

now, on to some brighter things....


while in mackay, i met two classic blokes. "yeee.... aye beeen to californya. it ain't that good. mickey mouse has no dick. minnie mouse has small tits. it sucked."

so after 3 beers & two hours w/ these guys, it was time to move on.

i did a 3 day tour of frasier island. here's me climbing a vine.


this was a really strange plant. it grows out of the side of trees and gets nutrients from rotten leaves that it catches. really weird!


this is also weird. these vines start from the top & then grow down. over the course of 100 years, the tree becomes completely covered up. it then dies and the vine continues to live for another 100 years. during last 100 years, the tree rots away leaving a totally hollow center.


back in the day, the japanese purchased an old cruise liner to use for scrap metal. a storm hit while they were towing it and the boat was washed on shore. there were a bunch of funny stories about the passengers not knowing where they were and refusing to get off the boat as they thought the aboriginals were cannibals, etc.


this was a really cool hike. in the span of 10 feet, you could find around 6 different colors of sand. then over the hill in this picture, the rainforest started. one minute you are on the set of spaceballs, the next you are on the set of rambo. kind of a strange thing to think about while hiking, i suppose....


while on one of my hikes, someone spotted an eel. so we got in the creek and took his picture. they don't bite, right?


spelling your name in the sand? damn..... he's a freakin crab and he acts like he's never been to the beach before...


this is what i look like to a fish. or a crab underwater, i suppose....


after my 3 day frasier island tour. i wanted to do a 3 day canoe tour of the noosa everglades. but since i'm out of time, i had to join the rest of the local senior citizens and take a "cruise". i guess there are worse things. but for the first time in my trip, i saw some bathroom air freshener. so being the white trash guy that i am, i decided to freshen up my shoes. you call it cheap, i call it resourceful. anyway, here are some pictures i got from my cruise:





my trip is basically over. :( i've got 2-3 days to get to sydney to catch my flight home. i'm going to stop at byron bay for a day to hang w/ all the hippies and then catch an overnight bus to sydney. i feel like i've just wet my mouth and i'm going to need to do this all over again a little more thoroughly. i'm thinking i need a year.... who's with me?

see ya'll soon!