Chapter 11: “Come back flipper, I luuuuuuuvvvvvvv you"

Brisbane. Overnight. Aussie Way hostel. Grim-eyed youths watching bad television. Fat girls yacking in the room next to me, and then shrieking with laughter like cats fighting. I leave and walk to the center of Brisbane – streets are absolutely deserted - to see The Contender with Joan Allen. Good movie, though a little bit too heavy on the moralizing, but Jeff Bridges is fantastic as a rather devious president of the US of A. On the wall of hostel is a list of Things to Do in Brisbane. Oh God, not another Botanical Garden! Take bus to Hervey Bay early in the morning. Pass exactly by the hotel where I stayed in Noosa. Stunning and depressing realization that my travel routing was so poorly planned that I’ve spent thousands of dollars in airfares that I need not have spent.

Hervey Bay. Abomination. Strip development: realtor, burger shop, minimarket, realtor, tour company, gas station, realtor, minimarket, tour company. I can’t find a juice bar anywhere, and there is no public transport so I have to walk 40 minutes to the gym where my frustration pushes me to new heights of physical endeavour. I develop an acquaintance with my abdominal muscles. Hello, sweeties!

Fraser Island: Makes me realize why I am doing all this. What a miracle! A huge island 100 km long, 25 km wide in the middle, rising almost 300m above the sea – and entirely composed of sand. Seven distinct vegetation areas, including the world’s only rainforest on sand and there are also areas of open eucalypt forest, scrub and meadow, and dune grass areas. There are also a vast number of endemic species of plants which scientists cannot even cultivate anywhere else. The main road on the island is the beach, which is registered as a thoroughfare with the Queensland Department of Highways. The beach is dotted with the decomposing bodies of the dangerous Bluebottle jellyfish. They are a fierce electric blue colour. I think they must come from outer space. It rains and then clears. I don’t care. See a huge 2 meter carpet python in the sand track crossing the island. Tour guide stops our 4WD vehicle and picks it up. Girls scream and refuse to get off the bus. Honestly! Two of the girls are in the Israeli army and yet they also refuse to get off the bus. Later I pick a fight with one of the girls about Israel’s policies in The Palestine. The python immediately wraps itself around our guide’s arm. I have to help peel him it off, and am amazed at the muscular strength in this constrictor’s body. We can’t swim in the ocean due to currents and jellyfish. We can swim however in the myriad freshwater lakes and streams dotting the island. In one lake I swim with turtles. Giant ospreys circle. We camp at a marvelous campsite in the dunes with electricity and hot running water called Cathedral Park Island Resort. Dingos sit outside the campsite waiting for handouts. They look friendly, but apparently have bigger teeth than domesticated dogs. There are no koalas on the island despite appropriate habitat, and the biologists think that the dingos ate them. (Officer, the dingo took my koala AND my baby!). In my life I have only come across a handful of truly sacred places and I feel that this is one of them. I feel so fortunate to have been here. There is a wonderful aboriginal legend about Fraser Island and its creation. An ancient spirit who created the world had a beautiful daughter who helped him with his creations. She so loved the earth that she begged to be allowed to stay forever, and the spirit agreed, turning her into Fraser Island. The myth records that the freshwater lakes dotting the island are her eyes so that she can always look up into the heavens to see her father.

Bus from Hervey Bay to Cairns. 24 hours. Video on bus? My Best Friend’s Wedding. Despite my best attempts to ignore it the volume is on too loud and I can’t. It’s compelling viewing. But it’s still about the 7^th time I’ve seen it. Bus driver tells us (repeatedly) that his pet hate is people who stick their legs into the aisles. Apparently it is a major safety hazard, though I couldn’t quite work out why. You get the tenor of the trip. The less said, the better.

Cairns. Ugh. D’ya wanna buy a digideroo or a T-shirt? If so, Cairns is the place for you. But don’t even think about trying to find a bookshop or a fresh juice bar. I stay in 1824 James Street, a gay hotel recommended by a friend (you know who you are, and you have a lot to answer for!). Unspeakable, dreadful, monstrous. I can’t go down to the poolside for fear of the old letches, who keep knocking on my door. I was typing away on my PC and made the mistake of telling one of them, who stopped by my opened door, that I was writing a story. Later that evening at 3am I was awoken by knocking on my window. A drunk old man wearing just underwear wanted to stop by to “say hi to the writer”. Ugh. But I should have pity. I could be there one day myself! I distract myself one night by going out to Cairns’ one gay club. I should have been warned by its name: Nu-Trix. It sounds too much like a protein shake to be any good. And in fact, it’s awful. Nonetheless, I play team pool for a while anyway, sinking impossibly hard shots with stunning aplomb and panache and fluffing the easy ones. My partner is not amused. For the record, then, Cairns is a dump-o-rama of note.

Port Douglas. My friend Bryan, whom I met in Capetown at Christmas, arrives from New York. Yay! I’m starved for normal company, and he’s super fun to be with and very literary. I whisk him off to cute little Port Douglas where Madonna stayed. Very sweet little town, but we don’t see Madonna anywhere! Beaches are messed up, though, by the King tides which took away about 5 metres of sand roughly a week before we arrived. We stay in Coconut Grove Hotel one night, with lurid purple and yellow paint job. Eat some nice food and catch up. Early in the morning off to Daintree National Park, the untouched Queensland rainforest, where the “rainforest meets the reef”. It is the oldest rainforest in the world and hence the one with the widest variety of plant species. It used to cover most of the upper east coast, but 90% of it has been chopped down to make way for sugar cane. We stay in the Beach House – a magical place of wooden huts set in the rainforest just a short 2 minute walk from the beach. It rains with frequent bursts of shower but it’s warm. The restaurant is a big tented deck with a pool table and 4 internet terminals, right in the middle of the jungle! Food is superb, the best I’ve eaten on my trip. Everything is damp; my clothes are growing mold, and my books and papers are disintegrating. Bryan’s day revolves around eating; an appetizer and two main courses are consumed at every meal. It’s awe inspiring. He scares me. We go sea kayaking. Waters are quite rough. Bryan capsizes, and gets washed up onto a protruding nub of reef. He looks uncomfortable. I, master of the sea kayak (having done two kayaking holidays, ya know) effect a dramatic rescue that will get me a starring spot on one of those television rescue shows. I manouever my kayak slowly into the gap, where Bryan’s kayak has washed, and promptly tip over myself. I have to walk/swim/crawl over a ledge of submerged coral to the beached kayaks, while Bryan is still clinging grimly to his nub of coral, as the swell tries to wash him off. I’m thinking: Yikes! Stonefish, jellyfish, sea urchins, reef, and other nasties apparently inhabit the murky waters near my feet. Barb, from the Beach House restaurant (all pierced tongue, big boobs and wonderful attitude) tells us later that the ferocious man-eating saltwater crocodiles (salties) have been observed swimming some 50 meters out at sea along the reef. Yikes. We are glad to get back into our kayaks.

We go horseback riding through the rainforest and onto the beach. They make us wear helmets. Mine smells REAL bad, making my skin crawl. We take saddles off and then take the horses into the salty frothy water. Very cool! It rains steadily on us, but it doesn’t matter because it’s warm. I take excellent photos of Bryan on his horse. Photos of me on the horse make me look fat. I am fat. The super restaurant at the Beach House has sundered that lovely familiarity that I had struck up with my abs. I fervently pray for a healthy dose of dysentery in Indonesia.

We go hiking through the rainforest to a waterhole where we can swim. There is mud everywhere on the path. It squelches between our toes. I am grossed out, thinking: leeches, bacteria, sharp thorns buried just below the mud’s surface, nematode worms, tropical PARASITES. Bryan marches bravely forward through the mud. I feel like a big sissy with my squirmishness. We get to the water hole. It’s lovely with river perch swimming in the clear water, which is dappled green-yellow with the hot light filtered through the rainforest canopy. Giant electric blue Ulysses butterflies are everywhere. Bryan is dubious about swimming, fearful of crocodiles. My chance to be macho here, making up for the mud: I tell him, this is Australia, not America. We live on the edge. But basically, it’s just cause I simply have to get the mud off me.

We go tropical fruit tasting at a local orchard, and decide to get there by a long walk along Cape Tribulation beach. It’s a peach of a day: sunny, high clouds, no one on the beach. We lie in the sun on the wet sand, and Bryan teaches me a new lunge exercise for firming the glutes. I’m in pain for the following two days, but I stoically don’t say anything. Then we walk through the mangrove swamp where we do Tarzan impersonations on a vine. At the orchard, we eat durian, purple mangosteen, two kinds of rambutan, mamey sapote, grapefruit, Australian wild plum, aboui (or something like that) and others. The durian has creamy white flesh and smells like vomit, though it tastes somewhat like a fragrant custard. Amos, our guide, tells us that the durian is very high in protein, but Bryan is obsessing because he’s certain it’s fat. Amos tells us the purple mangosteen is their most expensive fruit retailing for $6 per fruit in Sydney. It’s my favorite. We like them. Very much. Their taste reminds me of when Ruth and I went to Indonesia and we would buy bags of them to scorf. Amos roots around on the ground to find us a second fallen purple mangosteen to taste. Too late. We’re busy behind the trees with a huge stick knocking whole laden branches down. I don’t think Amos knew what to say. The aboui glues my lips together, with a sticky kind of juice. I can’t breathe. I die.

Just kidding.

We go out on a nite walk through the rainforest jungle. Yakety yakety yakety English girls just won’t shut up. Bryan getting very peeved. Me too, because the rainforest is full of otherwise interesting sound, which we can hear in the small gaps when the English girls are drawing breath for their next round of screetching. (Celsey, Linda, Nancy – if you are reading this I want you to know, you so do NOT belong in this dreadful category!) We see: a sleeping bird, two crickets, a lizard (which the guide spotted and tried to rev us up into a fervour of excitement by announcing that he’d “found something really, really good”, a giant cockroach (a good spot by Bryan whose well developed New York survival instincts were clearly at work here), two and a half snails and half a slug. In case you are wondering, the arithmetic in this last animal counting is courtesy of the Daintree Rainforest which is home to the missing evolutionary link between snails and slugs: the Heli-something-or-other semi-slug, whose body is beginning to consume its shell. This little critter left copious amounts of brilliant orange slime on our guide’s hands. We do not see the tree dwelling kangaroo or the cassowary. I’m, well, not upset but lets just say disappointed. After Africa, the fauna was simply not quite mega enough for me. Still, our guide was very interesting, a real biologist and not just some jumped up high-school sports jock who takes up tour guiding because it’s the only option which doesn’t involve manual labour. He told us some really interesting facts such as the reason why so many plants are poisonous to eat in Australia. It is because the continent evolved in isolation and specifically had no primates which were a key medium for seed dispersal of many plants on nearly all other continents. So, in Australia, plants and trees did not co-evolve to be palatable to and edible by primates. Bird and reptile biologies are just very different from primates. The guide also points out to us luminescent fungus, and explains that the winking fireflies all around us are able to fire up from eating the fungus, which in fact houses the source of the luminescence: bacteria which break down phosphates in a particular way, emitting light.

Back in Port Douglas we go diving. The water is very rough – a strong wind warning the night before - and most people on our fast catamaran out to the reef are sick, and badly so. One Japanese lady looks near death, she’s so green. She’s completely prostrate on open-air deck right at the bow of the boat. The boat is slamming up and down in the huge waves – causing her to bounce - and massive sprays of salt water are washing over her every time a wave leeps above the prow of the boat. She’s drenched. I’m afraid she’s going to wash over the edge if she bounces just a little further to the left next time….. (Two ladies from the boat crew are trying to help her in case your wondering whether I haven’t gone just a little overboard with my journalistic observation and impartial noninvolvement kind of thing.) Thank goodness Bryan and I had motion sickness tablets first. We arrive at the reef, and quickly break into diving groups. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Japanese lady. She’s up, and busy, quickly putting on her snorkling gear. She’s determined she’s going to “do the reef”. I’m impressed. 15 minutes ago she was near death, and now she’s got flippers and a mask on, and she’s elbowing her countrymen out of the way to get to the front of the boat. I go up and congratulate her on her recovery, and wish her good snorkling. She doesn’t understand me, but catches my general drift of good wishes, and smiles. Sadly, the diving is so-so, the reef pretty degraded and colourless due to the leaden gray skies and the effect of the wind which has stirred up particles from the floor and clouded the water. I feel sorry for Bryan (and if you’re reading this, my friend, pay attention now) because it can be sooooo much better than this (see my comments on the Reeftel below). I hope that Bryan tries again, another time. Once back in Port Douglas we climb the bluff down at the beach front. The wind is fierce, but it has cleared the low-hanging clouds and we can see mountains of the coast receding off into the distance, layered and rolling into an ever lighter blue grey shade, until they simply merge with the sea and the sky. Bryan leaves. Boo hoo. He was great fun to travel with.

Stay in Cairns overnight, go to the gym. Pump, pump, pump. Darn, I’m still fat.

Go out on a two day dive trip, staying overnight in the Reeftel, an anchored floating hotel (OK, well basically a dive boat) anchored on Moore’s reef. Ears are playing up, but I get five great dives in anyway, though I can’t go very deep. Fantastic coral, and I see turtles, sharks, squid, huge red snapper, and wonderful tropic fish. Wish Bryan could have come on these dives! I go on a night dive (verrreeeeee cooooool!) and see the turtles sleeping in their caves at the sandy bottom of the reef formation. I also see huge red snapper who keep darting over my shoulder into path where they chow down on the small fish gathered in the cone of my flashlight. This is the closest one can ever get I think to flying in an alien world, and it’s a very cool thing.

Later, in the Reeftel saloon, I hear a Canadian taking one of the dive courses going on and on and on to his course mates about how Canada is different from the US and how special Canada is, what Canada’s main exports are and blah, blah, blah, blah. He reminds me of me, 15 years ago, and it’s frankly uncomfortable to watch. I wish he’d shut up. One day he’ll realize like I did that nobody in the world gives a toss about Canada except Canadians themselves. Everyone at his table looks either embarassed or bored. I am assigned the top bunk in a little box cabin which seems sort of glued on to the upper sun deck of hotel/boat. So basically, I am at the very utmost top of the boat, 3 decks and a bunkbed above the water. And the seas are still rough. So as a wave rocks the hull a bit, I’m a-swinging back and forth big time, like metronome (a soft of reverse pendulum used to keep the beat in piano lessons.) I bounce physically off the edges of my bunk bed and mentally between nauseous awakeness and nauseous sleep. Still, there’s a hottie in the bunk below me, and I think of him to take my mind off my stomach.

Get up at 4am to fly to Brisbane, meet my friend Duncan from Sydney and drive onwards to Byron Bay, an alternative, hippy, yoga, marijuana, fruit bar, rasta, organic kind of place which is really a heavenly place to visit. We are blessed with perfect weather. We go to the beach, and eat, eat, eat. For example, for breakfast I have ricotta hotcakes with blueberry sauce and honeycomb butter, or a wholewheat crepe with organic feta, organic roasted vegetables, and organic pesto (yeah, everything’s organic). When I’m not ordering a fresh squeezed juice (of, say, an apple, pineapple, beetroot and ginger mix) I scorf blueberry smoothies because Bryan told me blueberries are full of anti-oxidants, and I’m hoping they’ll do something dramatic for the oxidants which are so clearly going to work in the corners of my eyes. I don’t make it to the gym in Byron Bay despite the fact that it’s right beside our hotel. Coming back to the hotel, I have to pass the gym every time after gorging myself and thus am regularly shamed. Something’s is definitely working with this organic food, because everyone in Bryon Bay is so friendly.

Duncan makes me watch Survivor. I’m hooked. It’s compulsive viewing. Colby’s too smug; they cannot allow him to
win. Though he is cute. I’m rooting for Tina. She’s a nurse, tough as old shoe leather. I simply have to be a contestant on this show! How do I apply?

Duncan and I go sea kayaking in a little group. They want us to wear helmets but I refuse, since it’s totally pointless. I mean, like I’m going to bump my head on the water surface or something? Dolphins circle our kayaks and swim right under us. I desire a spiritual communion with them, but they must have sensed my lapse when I ate Skippy the Kangaroo in Alice Springs, because they don’t stay around for long. I forlornly call out to their retreating fins: “Come back Flipper, I need you” but they take no heed. In a calm spot of the bay we all slide out of our kayaks for a cooling swim. A girl (fat, English, natch) can’t get back in her kayak. Eventually I slip out of mine, and have to deep dive below the surface and then powerfully kick up to the surface while pressing both hands on her enormous bum. We tip her kayak over three times doing this. We are all laughing so much, we’re nearly breathless. Eventually we get her in. Big waves means surfing with the kayaks. Great fun, and don’t need as much skill as a surfboard. Duncan and I flip our kayak twice. We go out to Kings Beach, a quiet little cove, for suntanning. Everyone skinny dips while body surfing in the enormous surf. The water is a crystal clear green like old glass and the sand is so white and soft that it squeaks when one walks on it. The green and the blue and the rushing hiss of the waves reminds me so much of Clifton Beach in Capetown. I love Byron Bay. I could live here, very, very happily.

Well folks, that’s all for now. I’m right now on the plane to Bali, where I’ve decided to bike around the island. I’ll write more when I can get to the next e-mail facility. I don’t know when that will be.