For a final destination in Australia, (this time,) I travelled to the Great Barrier Reef. The easiest way to see the Reef, and dive or snorkel there, is by boat from Cairns and Port Douglas. Or, as I did, you can hop aboard a fast, rubber Zodiac boat from the beach off the coast of Queensland. In half an hour, you will be exploring some of the inner reefs of the Great Barrier Reef.
Truly, you can spend a lifetime of adventure here because the Reef has over 900 tiny islands and 2900 individual reefs stretching out over 133,000 square miles (344,400 sq. km.) It is the biggest coral reef system in the world. My guides tell me the Reef is in good shape, and I agree. They look healthy, colorful, and full of fish. Atop all of the different kinds of fish and coral, I spotted a Reef Shark, which was great if you just let it do its shark thing.
I hope I can keep coming back for more views of the Great Barrier Reef in the years to come. It is really a place no nature traveler should miss.
NOTES ON THE VIDEO:
Song Title: “Silvia’s Young Blues” written in the Poetic Form Quintilla (from the Spanish quintain, 15th Century.) A Quintilla is a short, rhyming, poem with the following qualifications:
- Lines are eight syllables.
- Stanzas are five lines.
- The last word in each line is a rhyme, and stanzas have the rhyming pattern abaab, ababa, abbab, aabab, or aabba. (For fun, challenge, and variety, my lyrics used all five patterns!)
- No three consecutive lines may rhyme.
- Stanzas cannot end in couplets, e.g. aa or bb.)
Lyrics to “Silvia’s Young Blues”1
We laugh and we cry, we fumble.
We depart from the teenage kind.
We live and we die, we stumble.
Our first love lives are unstable.
“Grown-up” acts in a youngster’s mind.2
Sylvia’s feelings are doubled.
Two boyfriends at once are a crime.
One follows her just to cuddle.3
The other pet is in his prime.
Not knowing things are a muddle.
Choking on words he thought prayerful.
Martin looks to her for a sign.
“Is there a chance for study time?”
“Now, this afternoon?” he mumbled.
Fearful Sylvia will decline.
The other boy is not humble.
Nor is he impressionable.
He lives off good looks and Dad’s dime.
He is not careful or helpful.
His parlays, he thinks, are sublime.
This age – most are vulnerable.
We live outside of our bubble.
Without truth, “love” is just a line.
It’s worth waiting to truly shine.
Lighting haunted eyes of trouble.
- This song is about Sylvia, a student resident of the Boarding House, and her feelings about young, mysterious, love. ↩︎
- The first stanza is in the pattern abaab. The following stanza is ababa. The stanza after that is abbab. The next is aabab. The final stanza is aabba. ↩︎
- There are two rhyming schemes — a words are rhymes like cuddle, fumble and bubble; b words sound like crime, shine and time. ↩︎