A Stranger is Just a Friend We Haven't Met!!

How to torture your child in a fun way.

Visiting people our parents know that to us are total strangers? No, haven't done too much of that on this trip. Mum was not to be denied however. Shona McDowal was Mum's best friend, and a very regular visitor to my home growing up. Mum insisted in the nicest possible way that we get in touch with Shona's nephew Wal, and his wife Rach in Emerald. We hadn't planned on touring anymore mining towns in outback Queensland, but then Mum had suggested we should, and so we did.

Impressive, old school form

 

"How do you want to start?" asked Rach. "Wine, beer, bubbles, or would you prefer to park the van now?" Dad's old idiom "first things first" came to mind, and the van was backed into the yard without delay. It became obvious rapidly that Rach's enthusiasm for a drink was equalled only by her enthusiasm for a chat. In half an hour, it became even more obvious that she and Wal were a match made in heaven and this visiting thing was off to a fabulous start.
















The next four days were a blur of water skiing, flying, swimming, loud talking, drinking and touring. We all went water skiing on the dam, Sara unable to resume her glory days on a single ski off a long rope but was a star on the short rope. Wal took myself and the kids for a tour of the area in his plane, possibly getting a little close to one of the local coal mines. Their kids, Georgie and William, although littler than ours, were great fun, as was Crinkles the dog.





Cotton circles from the sky

On the last night, we went out to Rob's shed. Rob's shed is the reason so few of the local farmers go to the local pubs. They can store their beer in his shed, and drop by whenever they want to drink it with people they actually want to drink with. A simple concept, but one that works nicely. On the night we went, Rob even put on a "son et lumiere" for us. A massive storm front pushed through just to our north bringing lightning and a bit of rain. Rob, Wal, Ryano, Bob, Glenn, Danni and Scott huddled around their iPhones, studying the radar just like their cotton farming fathers did in years gone by...or didn't as the case maybe. Cityboy Hamish got a good talking to re the future of farming (crap), government (crap), American government (crap), global warming (crap), and Brazilian cotton farmers (really crap), and mostly kept his mouth shut until Wal fell asleep and Cityboy had to fend for himself deferentially. After all, I was a guest in Rob's shed, and Rob is a big unit at 6'8".





Kids, Wal, and his toy (almost paid for)

We dragged ourselves away the next morning and headed gradually to the coast. The gradual thing was through no fault of our own, it's just that in Queensland, it appears to be against the law to drive on a road that is not being worked on. Back to the coast, Yeppoon (waterslide in the park), 1770 (surfing again!!!), Bundaberg (turtle laying eggs that needed relocating), and Rainbow Beach where the towball fell off the back of the Disco as I was perfecting yet another reverse park. No matter, money and time and a very dodgy bloke from Rainbow Wreckers who drives a Jaguar will have a crack at repairing it on Saturday. We'll be on Fraser Island.




The GT Hoses gang (William and Georgie on the right and Crinks in the middle)

 

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Castaways on the Island of Death...(not really)



Ivy and clown fish

 After 5 days in Townsville with the highlight being Oli bagging his 300^th bird we were all desperate for some action. Sara and Oli had scoured the towns op shops to find sufficiently ugly anti-stinger wear and I’m really not sure what happened to the other 2 days. We moved from one Townsville caravan park which wouldn’t store our van, to another which would. The car was packed with supplies for six nights and we returned to Lucinda to await the boat to Orpheus Island. We had no idea what to expect; this could either go brilliantly, or it could be a complete disaster.

 



 

 

 

 



Kids on the boat heading over to the island...of terror

Orpheus Island; there was something sinister about the name that reminded me of the movie “Jurassic Park”. It is a scientific research station after all and so my over indulged brain slipped into Hollywood screen writer mode. Enter stage left, Ian; the talkative, nut brown boat driver, with his sun and salt bleached mullet. As you looked into his eyes, you knew you were only ever going to get half of his story; that the bits he would tell were only hints of something far more interesting. From stage right, stepping out of a taxi, comes Marta, a young Brazilian woman who was about to start work on the island. And there was us, a young family of three blonde excited children, and two haggard parents looking for an escape from the real world. It was late when this motley crew left the shadow of Hinchinbrook, and as darkness fell over our shoulders like an inky, damp shroud , Ian steered us out into the channel.

 



 

 

 



Looking towards Hinchinbrook Island at sunset

The lights of the manager’s cottage appeared over the blue bruised swell. Ian cut the engines and squeezed the Challenger 2 across the jagged reef. Our gear was transferred into the basket on a forklift, and we stepped onto the beach. Haley, the island’s manager, welcomed us with a grin, showed us our accommodation, and in her soft Kiwi accent, suggested we meet for the induction tomorrow morning at 7:30.

 

We were on time. Even Oliver had sprung out of his bunk bed in anticipation. Haley’s soft accent told us about the island and with the briefly mentioned menace of 4 hours of work from each of us hanging over our heads, we signed forms releasing James Cook University from any responsibility for our death or disfigurement, then returned to our quarters for a cup of coffee. Enter the mad and hairy English scientist. Professor David Bellwood. The scene was complete. Cue thunderstorm. Cue greedy, disgruntled employee. Release the mutant man eating fish.



Giant clam garden

Coral and fish, coral and fish, coral and fish etc

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Walking on the beach at low tide

None of that happened. Haley the Betadine Queen didn’t abduct us and sentence us to a lifetime of slave labour. Instead she gave assignments to the kids including coral, fish, and bird identification projects, with only brief periods of toilet cleansing. Ian’s stories never became menacing; only more amusing as the week went on. Marta wasn’t the first to be eaten by the mutant fish monster, but she did introduce us to the local black tip reef shark population, her babies! And the mad scientist popped in for a chat and promptly told Oli to become a marine biologist for work and an ornithologist in his spare time. As we stood around the fish tank he taught the kids and us a lot of things about fish that we’d never thought we needed to know, in a sing song voice that meant you were never sure as to whether he was telling the truth, or just making stuff up.

 

Coral and fish, coral and fish, coral and fish etc

We walked over to the other side of the island and weren’t trapped in the massive webs of the golden orbed spider. We swum over the reef and weren’t stabbed by coral spears, or eaten by a giant clam. The seven nights we had planned to stay turned into fourteen. Haley provided food including a leg of lamb until I was able to head back into town with Rhonda and Terry for supplies. Again the film script threatened to rear its predictable head. Rhonda had never piloted a motor boat back across the channel alone. Now she had to do it against a savage outgoing tide and increasing 18 – 20 knot winds, with the most inexperienced first mate in the world. My time on a Dutch barge in France counted for little apparently! We’d only gone 200 metres when she suggested Plan B might be returning to the dock, and settling down in the pub. But she pushed on and got back me and my bruised bum back in time for sunset with prawns and beer and wine, just as Terry said she would.

 

Boris the Green Tree Frog in the sink

It was a remarkably quick 11 days and became the longest we have stayed in one place to date. The kids revelled in an environment that revered knowledge of all things natural, not to mention one that supplied as much white bread as you could eat. We snorkeled and paddled and read and hiked in as beautiful a place as we’ve been. Who knows, we may just return to Orpheus, for if nothing else, it has ensured our children will never clean toilets for a career!

 

 

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Goats, Moats and Boats

Without the grace exhibited by it's more nimble cousins in the Swiss Alps, Elizabeth the goat leapt between the two wobbly podiums and made the crowd gasp in awe. The toothless ringmaster gave Elizabeth her reward and duely saluted, absorbing the applause and perhaps thinking, as we were, "What the bloody hell am I doing with a performing goat in this dead end town called Mourilyan?"

We'd left Cairns and were headed for Etty Bay where the cassowaries walk on the beach when we saw the red and white striped not so very big top. A floppy haired English back packer introduced us to the ringmaster, who then introduced us to the monkeys and then invited us to the show that night. Turned out the floppy haired one was an "acrobat" who teamed up with a lanky Dutch back packer who could breakdance quite well according to Oli. The monkeys weren't part of the show because they were on heat, but one did liven things up by trying to rip the guts out of a local kid while his dad was concentrating on rolling a ciggie during the half time break.

If you're going to die, it's good to die next to a pretty woman says Ned

The show ended with the toothless ringmaster doing a bit of whip cracking. How he managed not to kill anyone I'll never know. It certainly felt like the Eton Brothers circus was managing to stay half a step in front of total disaster. We may not have seen a rodeo, but we managed to be entertained by jumping goats, tumbling Brits, prancing Dutch, and a weary, wobbly Aussie ringmaster.



Cassowary and our rig

We did see cassowaries on Etty Beach. I missed the one with chicks because I was barbecuing. We stayed a couple of nights with the kids having a homework day to bring them back to earth after the night in the big top. We'd also heard about a place called Paronella Park, some ruin of a castle built by a Spanish cane cutter back in the 20's. Might be worth a look according to the greyies. Sara and I expected to find a little bit of the over hyped Gold Coast transplanted into northern Queensland complete with bad robotics and overpriced souvenirs. What we got, was the ruin of a castle built by a Spanish cane cutter back in the 20's. But it was more than that.

Paronella Park, named after Jose the cane cutter, had been a sprawling palace of sculpted gardens and concrete that he had created over 30 years. Time, neglect, and cyclones had worked hard to destroy it, however the guts of his dream remained and somehow, the guts were beautiful and entrancing. Add Yeng the funniest tour guide ever, who told us how the bush turkeys are making love to his mates chickens with the result that his mates chickens now have no feathers on their necks, Sara almost falling into crocodile infested water to escape a rat, and all the fish and eels the kids could feed, and you have a winner of a stop. From there it was a quick pause in Tully for the big gumboot and the sugar mill, (I was so proud when the kids managed not to stick their ear protectors up their nostrils to ward off the smell), and into Mission Beach.

With the weather in our favour, we boarded Big Mama, a sailing boat and set off for the Great Barrier Reef. Previous attempts in Cairns had been thwarted by poor conditions, but that ended up being a good thing. Stu, Lisa, their nine year old son Fletcher, and a 20 week old chihuahua called Coco live on Big Mama. Fletcher has never lived in a house! They take up to 12 people at a time out to the reef, today it was just us and a German girl, Delia, which I thought was an odd name for a German. After a day of snorkeling among coral more varied and colourful than anything we'd seen on the west coast; after a BBQ lunch with homemade salads; after listening to Stu tell me how easy it was for him to make a reverse osmosis unit that generated 200 litres of  fresh water a day from sea water; after seeing how worldly Fletcher was and how happy Stu and Lisa were with their life on the ocean, I couldn't wait to get back to Google. I mean, I can reverse a 23ft van now without too much trouble, how hard could it be to buy a boat and sail it around the world?



Paronella Park by night

That's not Sara but it could be...

Not as hard, apparently, as getting across to Orpheus Island. Stu had said this would be a great place to camp, and that you could snorkel the reef right off the beach. The problem was, no charters would take us out there, and we couldn't afford the $1400 per night to stay at the resort which didn't want kids anyway. Not that I would have had too much of a problem with that last technicality. Then we met John the volunteer wearing shoes with zips in the information office in Ingham. There is a research station on Orpheus
Island. We could volunteer our services, working for 4 hours a day, and in return, they take us over and provide accommodation. Imagine that, a tropical island to ourselves in exchange for a spot of weeding. Surely there's a catch somewhere. It could be brilliant, or it could go horribly wrong. We'll find out in a weeks time. I hope it's got nothing to do with shoes and zips...

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