14 September 2016

It’s been over three weeks since I last imposed on you my steams of consciousness so I thought it must be a time for a new log.  We are now well into a southerly transit meaning arriving home is now an inevitability.  Before we get too far south however I thought I would provide a catch up on our travels from Cairns heading south.

 

Turning South

• It was a salutary moment in the trip when at a campground in Cairns we were asked which way we were headed.  With a slight hesitation and a quavering in the voice I had to admit we were headed south or in the direction of home.  Now home might be three thousand kilometres away but it seems the trip had reached a definite milestone.  We were now heading towards home rather than away from home and the I don’t want to go home syndrome is firmly in control.

Five Star Campgrounds

• Five star camping doesn’t seem right and yet there exists such facilities.  So for all of my friends that claim they will only camp under 5 stars I have found your campground.
• What defines a 5 star campground I hear you ask.  Before we checked in we were taken on a ride in a golf cart to have a look at the site they were proposing to see if it was ok by us.  I have never before had such an offer.  The camp had three pools and one spa that was for adults only.  The sites were huge, the whole camp was like a lush garden and all roadways were paved.  There was also a café and pizza shop and even flowers in the bathrooms! More importantly it wasn’t the most expensive camp we have stayed at on this trip.

Fishing Tournament

• Country radio can be very entertaining out here in the boonies.  The radio report of a local fishing competition went like this: Windscreen Wal  won the fishing competition.  He had a fair lump of a boat that handled the lumpy weather pretty well and was able to get out when others couldn’t manage.
• I think what we had here was a chap who in the past fitted or currently fits windscreens and his name is Wal.  Now Wal has a large boat that is able to handle stormy seas and therefore was able to be at sea when others couldn’t and therefore was able to catch the winning fish, thereby winning the local fishing trophy.
• I wondered if Windscreen Wal was a fair lump, I have my suspicions.

Hot Date and the Random Visitor

• We were enjoying a picnic lunch at Port Douglas when a random chap wandered up to us from the harbour and asked if he could sit down with us.  Did he want to share our picnic or did he want money we wondered?  What was going on?  He joined us and told us he was a yachtsman and had been sailing around the world for the last eight years.  His yacht was moored in the harbour.  Fascinating we thought.  He went on to tell us that soon he would be heading for Indonesia before the wet season storms hit the Australian coast.  He had arrived in Port Douglas just 8 days ago.
• It seems our weathered and well tanned sailor had worked on oil rigs making enough to buy a yacht and sail the world.  We continued our lunch as he regaled us with his life story. This was all in a few minutes as we enjoyed our picnic.
• Abruptly he announced he had a hot date and had to go.  He explained it was ok to keep the date waiting a little but not too long.  And off he went.  I think we were a convenient stalling strategy.
• We stared at each other wondering what had just happened as the lone yachtsman headed off to meet his hot date. We felt we had just lost our new best friend.  It was about 2.00pm.
• We went off on our walk down the main street of Port Douglas and down to the beach.  On the way back to our car, about 3.00pm, there he was in a pub with the hot date!  There was a moment of intimacy with a brief kiss as  they left the pub together just in front of us.  We heard her call her friend to say she would be making her own way home.  Curious we thought, quietly chuckling to ourselves.
• The relaxed couple wandered off toward the harbour where the yacht was moored. But alas this story doesn’t have a happy ending; the hot date was about to implode.
• The yacht was not moored to the local jetty or dock but was in the middle of the harbour and a ride in a zodiac tender was required if this date was to continue on what seemed to be its logical conclusion.  From a respectful distance we could see she baulked at the continuation of the date.  While we were some 200 meters away we could observe a brief and animated discussion between the two after which she headed back in our direction and back to town.  He was left on his own on the jetty, staring at the water looking very rejected. A very learned friend suggested the idea of getting into a small craft to head across the harbour and be isolated in a boat would have been a deal breaker.
• We drove away with fond memories of Port Douglas and our random friend, the lone yachtsman and wondered what might have been.  This was probably the most random event of our trip.

Country Pubs

• In country Australia there are several common names for country hotels.  There is usually a Commercial, a Railway, a Grand and maybe a Cricketers Arms.  The Commercial was for commercial salesmen, the Railway was usually close to the railway station and the Grand isn’t anymore.  The Cricketers Arms probably once sponsored local sporting clubs but now just displays sporting trophies from the 1940s.
• To add to this nomenclature there can be a top pub. Now the top pub is usually located at some high point and is geographically above all other pubs.  A top pub is one that serves good food, has great staff and cold beer.  To add to the confusion The top pub can also be A top pub.
• I was in the town of Monto and asked the local butcher where I could buy a bottle of wine.  I mean who else would you ask? She thought for a moment and then said the top pub would probably be the best place.  She didn’t say the Grand or the Commercial the two pubs in town and yet I knew exactly which pub she meant.  This is one of those things that all Australians inherently understand.

Aircraft Disaster

• There was a copy of an old newspaper in the shop window, something of a local museum.  The newspaper article, dated 1948 was about an aircraft crash that occurred in 1943.  It was five years before the crash site was found.  A crew of eight Australians were killed along with a similar number of US Air Force members.
• The newspaper article described in some detail who found the aircraft after all those years and who was with him when the wreckage was found.  The article went on to describe the relationship between the two who had found the plane, their professions and what they were doing at the time.  So we learned the chap who found the plane was with his father-in-law who was also a local farmer who at the time was rounding up sheep.  Several lines were dedicated to this information that had absolutely no bearing on the fate of the aircraft.  1940s journalism combined gossip pages with disaster reporting; entertaining and informative. In the days before TV or the internet, newspapers were the social media of the day.

Ruined Resorts

• We have visited the ruins of  what were tropical island resorts back in the 1920s and 1930s.  Now a trip through the Whitsunday Islands includes a commentary of the resorts that were all the rage in the 1970s that are now deserted and abandoned.  Recent cyclones haven’t helped the tourism industry and our preference for Bali as a holiday destination has surely impacted these islands.  Oh, and  foreign interests have just bought Daydream and South Molle islands.  Maybe they know something we don’t.

Country Towns

• This part of the country has some amazing small towns that must have been thriving economies in the past.  The days of manual labour would have filled these towns with sizeable populations.  You can tell they were once a big deal because you can still find a store with the sign that announces it was once an Emporium.  These were the department stores of their day.  The timber floors, timber walls and timber ceilings, and the smell of these stores evoke a time long gone.  Down the main street there are still bakeries with wonderful smells of freshly baked pies and now of course the coffee shops which I am sure never existed back in the 1950s.
• One of our objectives on this trip has been to spend some money in these little towns to help them stay alive.

 

This is probably the penultimate log for this trip. We are now on the outskirts of Brisbane (this log has taken a while through poor discipline on my behalf) and will be heading into NSW early next week.  I hope to get one more log out before we get home with some reflections on the 13,000 kms we will have covered.

Yours in perpetual cartographic wonderment.