Surviving in Cairns

So I guess it’s time for another update. Surprise surprise, I’m still in Cairns. However, things are looking a bit more positive. Meaning, little by little I’m making plans to leave Cairns. It was about to get time, it’s been 17 weeks.

So the past few weeks have been a little tough on me. As I wrote before, a few friends came over and also I made a new friend Matt. About a few weeks ago Rose left, Matt left and also Zaïda is no longer in Cairns, which leaves me all alone again #SAD. Oh well not completely alone, I made some new friends and some pretty unpredictable things have happened. But more about that later.

18th of July I turned 24, and even though my family wasn’t there, luckily I still had some familiar faces around me to celebrate with. And with familiar faces I mean people that I’ve known for about 11 years now. Zaïda was still in Cairns and her parents and brother came over to visit. Also, Zaïda asked many of my friends to record a little video message and she edited into this big birthday video. The video is not suitable for Facebook so I’ll spare you the content.

My birthday was actually like any other day in Cairns: I woke up, did my 2 hours of cleaning (as you may or may not remember, I’ve been cleaning a hostel for about 7 weeks now in exchange for free accommodation) and took a shower. However, AFTER that I got picked up for a very special birthday activity: bungeejumping!! And boy did I love that. I actually jumped twice and I would not have missed it for the world. Unfortunately no one was able to join me for support, but once I got in the bus I saw one of the Gilligan promoter

guys and that was nice. After the bungee jump I invited Zaïda and family over for some cake before I had to go to work. I know I was way to excited about this, but I couldn’t help but smile whenever I looked at my self-bought-rainbow-birthday-cake.

So after my birthday Zaïda left and everything went back to normal life before all of my friends were here. And then this happened…

It was a regular Friday night and as usual I was working in the restaurant. I was just chatting with some customers like I usually do when it’s not too busy and then all of a sudden the conversation went towards cars and buying cars. The customer asked me if I was looking for a car, to which I responded that I really wasn’t, because I could simply not afford to buy one. And then he dropped the bomb that he was selling his car for about $100. So naturally I thought: Yeah right what’s wrong with the car, but I still was interested, so we exchanged phone numbers and I sent him a message the day after.

I went over to his place with some newly made friends to see the car and picked it up for a mechanical check. By this time the price had already dropped to basically zero, because the registration was expiring soon and he did not want to spent any more money on a car he didn’t need and didn’t use. So after a quick mechanic check I went to another mechanic for a road worthy check. Some of you might not now what that is, but it’s basically a certificate which you need in order to drive with the car. Especially now that the registration was being transferred to my name, I could only renew the registration once I got a road worthy certificate. And this is were it could potentially get tricky, because mechanics know that we need such a certificate and can really screw you over with random repairs you don’t need. The check itself is roughly $80, but as I said, sometimes you need to do repairs. In my case I was really lucky and only needed to replace the seatbelt buckle and the foglight. All the engine stuff looked good and I got a second hand seatbelt buckle for just $50, thanks to a few trips to the carwreckers. Saved me about $130 there if I bought a new one. Unfortunately the foglight was a bit of a problem, since these parts were so so hard to find. Eventually I found a new light, but it would’ve cost me $400 dollars so I decided to buy the fog light covers for $140, and since those parts were not going to be here in time, I had to pay another $80 for a new road worthy.

Also some spectacular random news. I think I mentioned this before, but I booked a dive master course here in Cairns and was not able to start that when I first arrived in Cairns due to some money issues. I did not have enough money for 3 weeks of accommodation, so I decided to work for a bit and do the divemaster course right before leaving Cairns. After my last couch surf experience I didn’t think I wanted to try couchsurfing again, but I can’t keep working for accommodation AND do the dive master course, so was willing to give it another try. As I was looking for host, an event appeared saying Free Cruise to PNG. My curiosity took over and I was mainly just curious what PNG meant. I googled for a bit and found out it was short for Papua New Guinea, which instantly made me more interested. Sure a free cruise I thought, so I liked the event as a sign of interest. But then I thought, well that’s not going to bring me anything, I might as well just shoot a message. And within a few messages it was clear: I was going on a 7 day cruise to Papua New Guinea for FREE. I left on the 17th of August and returned the 24th. People often have been asking me where I’m going after Australia, and that answer had always been New Zealand, Fiji and Philippines in no particular order. Though, the last few weeks I played with the idea to go to Papua New Guinea too, at some point. I mean, I’m close to the country now anyways, so why not just give it a go. So it

was such a weird coincidence that I found this message about going on a cruise there.

So I came back end of August and I had such an awesome experience. We went to Alotau, capital of the Milne Bay Province and visited a few islands around Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately we couldn’t visit one of the islands due to heavy wind, but the other islands made up for that. Also the people there were very kind and I met this woman who showed me around the island, showed me her village, her house and introduced me to her mother. It was so interesting to see their lifestyle and experience the difference in culture. I snorkeled at Conflict Island which was absolutely stunning. The water was so clear and I saw some fishes I had never seen before, so that was a really good experience. I only had 2 days back in Cairns before I went on the next boat trip: my liveaboard trip on the Great Barrier Reef! 3 days and 2 nights spending on a boat and diving everyday. This was simply amazing. I forgot how much I loved diving, so after that trip I was super excited to start my divemaster course. As I said I wrote most of this blog a month ago so now that I’m actually posting this blog I finished the divemaster course and even went on another trip as a volunteer! I must say that it was a lot. The divemaster was 2,5 weeks and it was a busy schedule. I barely had any money at this point so I also crashed on a friend’s couch, thanks again Ana!!! I even considered sleeping in my car to save money.

All together I did spend a little more money on the car than I expected and losing my job (because I started the divemaster course) caused a minor financial crisis. Also my plan to drive to Darwin after Cairns has changed and I will probably go down south to Perth or Melbourne or to the working hostel where Zaïda is at the moment, to find my farmwork and get the 88 days done. So that’s why I put my

car up for sale and until then I’ll try and become an Uber Eats driver haha. Desperate times call for desperate measures!! (Update: SOLD THE CAR WITH $1400 PROFIT)

Ok that’s it for now, I’m so relieved that I’m finally out of this financial crisis that I’ve been in for the past months. Cairns equals surviving but it was some experience. I’m gonna stay here for a little bit longer, get everything settled for leaving and go on another volunteer trip. And after that, bye bye Cairns!