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Sammi had leant me and Dane his car for the day so that we could go to Port Douglas- I wanted to check out a different Hogs Breath to compare. Whilst I was getting used to driving again, and to an automatic car with the indicators on the right (which doesn't make sense to me!), I don't think Dane felt very safe in my hands, but eventually I got the hang of it, which is good as the road to Port Douglas is very windy (as in lots of turns not gust of wind). I think it was quite good getting used to Australian roads with someone who understands them so that when me and Alice hire a vehicle to travel down the coast, I'll know the rules a bit more.
There doesn't seem to be a massive amount to do in Port Douglas, except eat at one of the vast range of restaurants. Whilst we were walking around Dane had a vague memory of a ship in the middle of town where he had had water fights as a child, but it was either a made up memory or it had been taken down. I had a flashback of being at the marina shopping centre when we came as a family- this excited me as I had had this memory but couldn't place where it was before I had gone back there.
The Hogs Breath is a bit more outdoorsy than the one in Cairns- it has a view over the marina, and so has a balcony and a smaller inside bit so has less paraphernalia to look at. Dane couldn't eat all of his mud cake, so I had one and a half portions- I think the Cairns one is slightly better!
On the way back we popped into Paradise Palms - a resort with a golf park, and a restaurant Dane used to work as a waiter. We had a bit of a play on the massive bouncy cushion thing in the kid's playground.
Later on, when we went to Tjapukai, we were greeted with a glass of champagne, and had a look around the shop. I quite liked the look of the 'story stones'. When it came to 7.30, we were taken into a room with loads of artwork on the walls. There was a stage in the corner where the performers came in, chanting and dancing, and then the main guy talked us through the artwork- in one picture he explained that the massive rainbow snake running all the way across the picture was the 'creator', and he pointed out that all the top animals were land animals, and all the animals in the bottom were from the water. He explained that within the tribe, you were either a land member or water member and you could only marry someone of the opposite group to you- this was to make sure you didn't marry anyone too close to your family, to prevent them interbreeding.
They then led us outside, and a guy put face paint on our faces. They lit a fire, and got us to chant and stamp our feet with them, and hit the two sticks they gave us together. They then lit a spear and shot that across a lake, which lit up another fire. From across the lake, two people arrived in a canoe, and they led us up to the place we ate the dinner.
The buffet dinner was alright, but it wasn't aboriginal like I think it would have been good to be- there was miso soup for the Japanese people! Despite having such a mudcakey day, I couldn't resist having some again, although it was really dry and not very nice- no comparison for Hogs Breath!
Up on the stage, they got two volunteers to help them light another fire, using a stick that had loads of holes in, so that the ashes could fall through and onto the straw. Once it had started to light, the woman blew into it and took it round the restaurant to give people in the audience a chance to blow into it until it got going properly- Dane was one of the people who blew into it. The volunteers got given a boomerang for their participation. One of them was Japanese, and he was quite cute- posing for photos with his hands in a peace sign. Next we got shown another chant- the left hand side (including Dane) did one chant, and the right hand side (which was the one I was on) did another. Some more volunteers got called up onto the stage to dance along- I was one of them! I didn't see all of what I was supposed to be doing so I think I was doing my own little dance instead of the one everyone else was doing, but I got one of the message stones for my efforts all the same which I was very chuffed at.
We had the opportunity to go outside and talk to the performers, so we had our photo taken with them.
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