Santa’s Christmas Beach Village and Other Inversions

The Great Australian Road Trip: From Sydney to Cairns

Camping on the East Coast of Australia seems to fall into one of three paradigms:

Option 1: The Tourist Holiday Park. (There are literally thousands of these, all up and down the coastal highways.) Take your whole living room and kitchen appliances and erect a semi-permanent structure with a floor plan that would put Roman architecture to shame.

Apogee: Santa's Christmas Village at the Beach, as I affectionately referred to one particular monstrosity in Maroochydore, New South Wales. The tent site was a little slab of hardened grass in the midst of the most absurd tent-and-lightcircus-show imaginable. Friendly suburban outglow-your-neighbor Christmas light displays wouldn't stand a chance against THESE vacationers. I declared it a consummate experience after walking past a life-sized, sparkling, blow-up Santa on a surfboard, with not one, but TWO sharks nipping at his toes (as the owner proudly pointed out while lounging in his speedo.)

Option 2: Bushcamping. Drive 100km or so on a windy, barely-paved thick rainforest mountain road (while constantly reminding self and companion that they drive on the LEFT here), in search of unspecified "campsites.” It will be raining, of course. RAIN-ing. Be on guard for spiders, venomous snakes (21 out of the world's top 25 live in Australia!), crocs, dingoes, kangaroos, carnivorous vines, and the noisiest tropical birds on this side of paradise. (They put the Hawaiian roosters to shame!)

Option 3: Lose heart. Stay in an overpriced motel. Complain about the exchange rate.

Great Keppel Island: A Summer Christmas

Our passage through the Whitsunday Islands included a brief stay at a wilderness resort, of sorts. We spent three days on a rainy sandbar, while the desalination plant was out of commission. An alliterative summary of our time on Hook Island: Sticky, Salty, and Snorkeling in full-body Stinger Suits, to protect ourselves from killer jellyfish. The lodge sponsors a fish feeding every day to guarantee a “real” barrier reef experience for the hordes of tourists who arrive each afternoon on a monolithic Easter-purple catamaran. This absurd practice hardly seems in keeping with the "wilderness resort" motif, but it was quite an experience to happen upon, nonetheless. I spent time swimming in a crowd of thousands of tropical fish, who seemed convinced that my fingertips were a dinner specialty. There might have been some underwater squealing.