Hello again my readers,
I feel I must start (despite it being bad form) with an apology. Why? Well I have heard murmurs on the grapevine that some of you have been wondering what has happened to this installment. Well I am sorry to have kept you waiting. I hope you will not be disappointed and I must admit to feeling slightly flattered that anyone should be hankering after my humble scrawl.
Anyway on with the story. I left you last time at the end of a long line of happy accidents that had landed me in Ayr picking zucchinis. Well my first two weeks in Ayr saw me getting up at 5am and making my lunch for my day in the zucchini fields. I would dress in the same dirty jeans and t-shirt, cover every bit of exposed skin with sunscreen, put on the shabby blue hat I had got when tree planting in Wongan Hills. I would pull a pair of butchered socks on to my arms by way of improvised sleeves and a pair of once white gloves, now brown and as hard as glass from all the dries zucchini sap. This made me ready to spend anything up to 8 hours in the blazing sun, bent double in a muddy field with a load of freshly cut zucchinis stacked up one arm and a sharpened butter knife at the end of the other.
Before the day could begin though there came the all too treacherous journey to the farm. Treacherous because for transport I (and many besides) relied on the locals to give me a lift in their clapped out old bangers (of which they were very proud).
Having survived over 2 weeks of this I was given the sack on account of the waning season and so was left to my own devices in Ayr to pass the time before the mango season started. This was a bit of a shame as Ayr is a very dull place. It is just another Aussie farming town, and I can't blame it for that especially as that is why I was there. Knowing this however didn't give me anything more to do and not knowing how long I would have to wait before the mango season started didn't help either. And so I spent a lot of time during the next two weeks hanging around the caravan park I was living in. At first I had been living in my tent but the heat made this rather uncomfortable and so I moved in to their very reasonably priced 'hostel section'; a quadrangle of pre-fab rooms that resembled boxes. The caravan park itself was, despite being as dull as the rest of Ayr, actually a rather pleasant place. There were mango trees all over the place all full of unripe mangos, there were the obligatory palm trees and a banana tree and over the road was a coco nut tree. All of this combined with the produce brought back by the other 'pickers' meant we were never short of (free) fresh fruit and veg.
As you can imagine though I soon tired of wandering around looking at the trees and so I decided to try picking some of the less pleasant and less profitable veg. My first one day experience was picking chilies. The work itself wasn't all that bad but it was just impossible to pick enough to make it worth while. The next day I got roped in to picking pumpkins which was more profitable but was incredibly hard work. Myself and the other 6 people that started that day walked out before the end. And that left waiting for the mangos which 'did' eventually arrive. After all this waiting luck had decided to get involved and through my connections with other pickers I landed myself a job in the air conditioned packing shed (or the Mango Mines as I called it). The air conditioning incidentally was for the benefit of the fruit. I spent several weeks working in the mines doing at one time or another pretty much every job going. This included grading, sizing, packing, counting liding, stacking and boxing 'juice fruit'. Then the 'bad season syndrome' struck again and the work dried up leaving us to wait for the 2nd crop of mangos to ripen. Well I had been in Ayr far long enough and had replenished my finances to a degree, so I decided it was time to move on.
As I sat on the bus driving out of Ayr I cast my mind back over my time there. It isn't a place I will remember with any particular affection but the experience hadn't been all that bad mainly on account on the people I got to know there. It was an odd mix of backpackers and locals, some that come to mind are Jo a Samoan guy with a crazy afro a permanent smile and an agreeably laid back attitude. Then there was Rosco, an Australian who spent his life traveling Australia chasing the seasonal farm work (a relatively common life style). He was an odd ball with a love of snakes that extended to going out at night with a torch to find them. Once he asked me if I would like to see his new pet, and there in his caravan was a small 'brown snake' one of the most poisonous and vicious snakes in the world. He had found it damaged on the road and was looking after it until it recovered (what this involved I don't know). Apparently during his life he had been bitten a number of times by a variety of poisonous snakes and had survived; sometimes without medical assistance. Then there were a couple, one from Israel the other from Norway and never a more poorly matched couple have I met. He was calm, laid back, reasonable and generous where as she was moody, argumentative, self obsessed, scheming and only pleasant when she wanted something. They lived in a tent nicknamed the Taj Mahal on account of its size. It resembled a shanty town and was made up of all sorts of junk. At its core was an old tent around which tarpaulins had been strung between trees to create extra rooms. Furniture included an old bus seat and a rusty old bed, springs and all. They had a TV and video and sometimes held video nights - which was nice. Anyway 2 days before I left Ayr the immigration people came and raided the caravan park looking for 'illegals' and it turned out that these two had out stayed their welcome. They were unceremoniously carted off to jail and an awaiting magistrate. I'm sure there is a moral in there somewhere.
So I am on the bus passing through the cane fields and mango plantations around Ayr and then later through the banana plantations of Tully. The bananas on the trees are grown in plastic bags which looks rather bizarre; apparently it is to help them to ripen evenly. Then at long last I stepped off the bus in to an oppressively hot and humid Cairns night. I hauled on my backpack and set off to find my hostel, passing on the way much of Cairns' crowded and noisy night life as I fought my way down the bustling neon lit Esplanade. After some initial confusion I located my hostel and checked in. I dumped my stuff and headed straight back out to absorb some of the tacky touristy atmosphere; a very pleasant change after 2 months in Ayr. I wandered around the 'Night Market' a whole indoor market dedicated to selling tacky novelty tourist items and t-shirts. I didn't feel inclined to buy and so I went back to the hostel and enjoyed my first nights sleep with air conditioning since I entered the tropics. Next day I got up early and went on the hunt for a nicer and cheaper hostel having discovered in the light of day that the one I was at was a poorly located dive. Cairns is over run with hostels so I only had to walk 500m up the street before I found what I was looking for. Once I had settled in there I dropped in to the hostels tour booking center to arrange my weeks activities.
Early next morning I am standing on the street waiting for a mini bus to take me first to the doctors to get a medical certificate and then to a class room to be shown educational videos. So had I booked myself in to rehab' ? No! I had gone back to school. Dive school, I was to spend the next four days learning to scuba dive. The first two days consisted of classroom instruction and practical lessons in the pool which was all great fun despite the homework and exam. It was very odd the first time in the pool learning to breathe through the equipment, trying not to breathe through your nose. At the end of the first two days we were all swimming about the pool underwater with confidence practicing our buoyancy control and the hand signals we had learned. Up 'till now had been fun but what we were all waiting for was days 3 and 4 where we went out on the 'supercat' boat to the outer reef to swim with the fish. On the way out on the first day we saw dolphins jumping out of the water which could only have been a good omen.
And so the time of reckoning was upon us. Time to put in to practice what we had learned. It was a beautiful day and the sea was dead calm. We kitted up and did our equipment checks and strode in to the warm ocean waters. We descended down to a mere 12m or so beneath the surface and then had to go through some of the skills' we had been taught in the pool. This included things like taking our masks off underwater and putting them back on again and clearing the water out of them. Then it was time to play follow the leader and go exploring on the reef. As we swam around we saw turtles, giant clams and loads of colourfull fish including parrot fish scraping the bacteria off the coral and clown fish hiding in the anemones and a huge friendly Maori wras who would swim up to you if you held out your hand and let you stroke it. Then there was the coral itself which was varied in both shape and colour. Over the last 2 days we did 5 dives in all and at the end of it we received our 'open water diver' certificate. It was a fantastic experience and something I would recommend to anyone even if you aren't much of a swimmer; if you ever get the chance give it a go. I will certainly be looking out for future opportunities to do it again.
The dive course ending however had left a bit of a void as all of a sudden I had to decide what to do next. I knew I wanted to get out of Cairns, not because I didn't like the place, simply because it was just too unbearably hot. Just sitting in the shade doing nothing and I was running with sweat and then there was the other annoyance. Mosquitoes! Hundreds and thousands of them. Well I assume there were that many as I never saw a single one but I was living testament to their existence. I had experienced tropical mozzies first in Airlie Beach and then more so in Ayr but nothing had prepared me for the 'Super tropical strength stealth mosquitoes' that inhabit Cairns. The worst thing about them was their preference for biting my hands and feet which in my mind are the two most irritating places to be bitten (except perhaps the face). It was at this point that I caved. So far I had resisted resorting to mosquito repellent on account of it containing so many toxic chemicals. This is the stuff that they assure you is safe to put on your skin but is able to melt plastic and other man made fibers. Not to mention that it stinks. Anyway at first the stuff seemed to be doing the trick, of course I still got bitten where I hadn't applied it but it was keeping them off of my hands and feet and so I was happy. This state of affairs was however not to last as unbeknownst to me I had offended "Mozzilla" the great mosquito god. Within 2 days word had got back from the front line to their exhaulted leader who sent a crack commando team of repellent resistant ninja mosquitoes to teach me a lesson. The next day I discovered almost 40 new bites almost entirely on my hands and feet and even in places that had been covered by my shoes. Well as Popeye once said "I've had all I can stand. I can't stands no more" so I dumped the repellent and bought a ticket back south. My original plan had been to visit Cape Tribulation to witness its natural beauty but the late rainy season arrived in force and so I decided against it.
Before leaving Cairns however there was still time to experience a part of the backpacker scene that is as far as I am aware peculiar to Cairns. That evening myself and 3 of my dorm-mates (2 Germans and a Canadian) set off to town, vouchers in hand, to a 'bar and grill' called the Woolshed. Here we queued up and in exchange for our voucher and one dollar we received a meal served to us through a tiny hatch in the wall. We took our plates of nosh (chicken curry in my case) over to a high table and sat down. As I cast an eye around the dimly lit room I saw backpackers of every nationality sat on high stools lined up around the walls, faces down shoveling food in to their greedy mouths like so many pigs at a trough. For some reason this amused me, it was like a backpacker soup kitchen. The food was OK though.
Next day it was back on the bus to retrace my journey back down the east coast, back through the bananas of Tully and Innisfail and through in to cane country. I got off the bus in Townsville, the main town near Ayr, only a short distance north of it. I had, on account of its proximity to Ayr, assumed it to be a horrid place. A sort of guilt by association. Quite wrong of me of course and I was pleased to discover the place to be most agreeable. I stayed in Townsville that night and took the opportunity to explore. The whole town is overshadowed by Castle Hill, a high steep and not terribly attractive rocky hill, perched precariously on which were a number of stilted houses of modern design. Another curiosity I found there was the almost space age war memorial with its multimedia information points activated by placing a hand on the hand shaped outline engraved on the steel panels. Presumably this was to encourage the towns youngsters to take an interest in the history of their ancestors.
Townsville despite being nicer than expected was only a stopping off point before I continued to my final destination in the area. Next morning bright and early (as ever) I boarded the fast catamaran ferry to take me down the Ross Creek out of Townsvill and over to Magnetic Island. Magnetic Island, so named by Captain Cook who wrongly blamed it for his malfunctioning compass, is a rather lovely laid back place. It is also a place where the happy coincidences I had been experiencing before started happening again. Upon arriving I got off the ferry and walked down the jetty to where a couple of hostel mini busses were waiting to tout for business. I had been recommended a hostel called 'coconuts' and found their bus but it was unattended and so while I waited I inquired of another waiting bus from a hostel called 'Geoffs place'. Their terms and location seemed decent enough and as I boarded fates hand helped me with my bags. The bus tore along a significant portion of the islands 35km of road including a few perilous mountain bends overlooking rock strewn slopes that led down to the bright blue sea. We finally came to a stand on the opposite side of the island from which we had started and were now in the vicinity of the gorgeous Horseshoe bay. The hostel consisted of a number of wooden cabin type things each with a number of beds in and also had a camping area, so I thought I would give my tent an airing and camp. I checked in and set off to choose a shady spot. Having done so I was just heading back to reception to get a hammer when the coincidences started up again. Someone was shouting my name and when I looked over to the pool I saw the unmistakable afro of Jo, one of the guys I had known in Ayr. I knew he had visited MAgnetic Island at the same time that I had left for Cairns but it was supposed to be for a couple of days to go to a 'full moon party'. Apparently having got back to Ayr after the party a number of people had been fired from the mango shed as a result of the imigration people checking up and so he and Susan (a swis girl I met in Ayr also) had come back and had been working at the hostel, cleaning and such. Jo then tells me that Susan is leaving that day and so there is a job going (coincidence number 2). I go and enquire at reception and get the cleaning job, 4hrs a day in exchange for food and accomodation. Bye bye tent, hello staff quarters. No sooner than I leave reception I bump in to JP an irish guy I had worked with briefly in the zucchini fields and so the bout of hapfull accidents was complete.
I had only intended to stay on the island for 2 days but with the good hand that fate had delt me and with Christmas on the horizon I felt it would be foolish to move on untill the festive season was over. This also gave me much more time to explore the island and its many secluded bays, some reachable only via steep trecks through the bush. An extremely sweaty business but always worth it. It also gave me the chance to witness the islands pleantifull and none too shy wildlife. Even around the hostel grounds I would often encounter pea cocks, rainbow lorriketes, white makaws, lizards and geckos, possums scavanging and kuckaburras who would sit on the bar and wait for scraps to be offered. One of the creatures I am pleased not to have encountered was the box jellyfish which were apparently present all along the shore. Fortunately there was a netted swimming enclosure on Horseshoe bay so that I could enjoy the unexpectedly warm tropical ocean in safety. Oh... and I almost forgot. On one walk away from the coast, myself and 4 others from the hostel went up to am area called 'The Forts' where the remnants (mainly just foundations) of fortifications built during the secon world war remain. Most of these are just blocks of concrete on the floor but there is also an ammo dump now home to the tiny bent winged bat and from the look out point at the top of the hill you get fantastic vistas of the island and bays. This however is not the best part as it is also an area populated by koalas and the amazing thing is that "I" spotted them first! Yes it was "me" who saw them. After my problems in seeing them as explained in Part 6 I was truly awe struck. Perhaps the islands manetic quality is one of animal magnetism.
So there I was on a gorgeous tropical island at a time that was not only near Christmas but also in the Aussie summer holidays. So was the island packed with backpackers and local tourists and thir kids? Well no. It was oddly empty actually and most of the reason for this is because despite being a few hundred kilometers south of Cairns it is still incredibly hot and humid and some recent storms had also deterred people. This meant that those of us that were rattling around the hostel (most of us were working there) had little choice but to group together and keep each other ammused. After all no one wants to be "Billy no-mates" on Christmas day. This in turn gave me yet another chance to meet all sorts of interesting people. One such chap was Jung (pronounced Young) am old dutch guy with a wicked sense of humor who had been on the island for a few weeks on account of the unique granite rocks. He was a photographer who had been comissioned to take pictures of the curious rounded boulders many of which were perched atop cliffs or other rounded boulders just as if some giant hadn had picked them up and balanced them there. Anyway one day he was hiring a little boat to go around the island to photograph the rocks and cliffs from the sea and he invited Jo and myself to go along for the ride and to help. After all contorlling an out board and taking pictures at once is pretty hard and impossible if like he you only have the use of one arm. Anyway it was great fun zooming around the island and it allowed me to see parts of it that otherwize I never would have.
And so that leads me on to Christmas itself. It started with cleaning duties as usual and then much beach lazing and a bar-b-q that evening followed by some time by the bar and a low key beach party that night. It was all pleasant enough (except the cleaning) but all too similar to any other day on the island. I think tropical Christmases compared to what I am used to would always be rather a non-event. Boxing day was remarkably similar and the day after that it was time to move on again. I packed up my stuff, said my goodbyes, caught the hostel bus to the ferry and the ferry to Townsville and got on the bus for a grueling 23 hour trip to Brisbane. Why such a long journey? Well time was of the essence, as I am to leave Australia on the 5th of January and have to be in Sydney to catch my flight. Also I have yet to see Sydney. To make things worse New Year gets in the way. It seems that Sydney is booked solid untill the 2nd Jan which is cutting things a little fine. I had hoped to get to Sydney over a period of days stopping off all down the coast but it seems that most of the east coast is 'chocka' for New Year. This means I am stranded in none to zany Brisbane untill the 1st and then its an 18 hour bus ride to Sydney for a whirl wind tour before jetting off to New Zealand.
And so you are all up to date again. I hope you have enjoyed this belated issue. Have a "Happy New Year" and I will see you in New Zealand for Part 8.
David.