Port Douglas - Queensland

Wednesday 28th October Port Douglas/Cairns
Oh joy! Oh wonder! Oh rapture! Is it because I am sitting on the balcony of my apartment which overlooks the ‘barbecue ‘ pool, watching the clouds above darkening as they herald the start of the Wet Season – it has rained twice today already. Is it because I have left behind the thrills, spills, and inherent dangers of croc watching and 4WD driving in the Northern Territory? Nope, it’s far more mundane than that. I have a washing machine! And a tumble drier! I’m so excited I am spilling more powder on the floor than I am getting in the machine. For the’ saddoes’ amongst you it is an old fashioned ‘top-loader’ - (I have just realised there is a pop group named after a washing machine!) – but who cares as long as I can have some clean clothes. You have to remember…very hot, muggy, weather, lots of dust thrown up by the 4WD - it makes no difference I am inside – and short stays at a number of places. I got the message when people started to stand back from my bag when it came along the airport conveyor. At first I thought they were being polite, and that the ‘hum’ was the machinery of the conveyor, but no – I needed a stopover to sort some washing out. It’s all nice and clean and drying on the balcony. I will be welcomed back into civilisation.
Yesterday was a day that in Black Adder terms started badly and went downhill from there. My plan was to set off from Katherine early and to take the Stuart Highway to Pine Creek – yes it really is called that, and yes it is really how it sounds…but more of that later. I began by failing to remember that I had asked the reception to organise my Katherine Gorge trip the day before so that when it appeared on my bill I said I had already paid it. The receptionist was very patient, even when I added that I had been charged for a drink I had not had. Coolly, calmly, she lifted my credit card from my wallet and made me pay. She was right but I still left a little grumpily and confused. From Pine Creek I was to take the road to Daly River then cut off through the Litchfield National Park – my last bit of 4WD driving before I returned the jeep in Darwin. The Southern Access Track as it is called would take me some 60km along forest and bush roads, past various Falls and creeks to a settlement called Batchelor and then back on to the Stuart Highway. Well that was the theory. Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for the ride.
First stop was Pine Creek for a ‘big breaky’ at Maisie’s Café. Everyone seemed to be in there – local drivers, the police – except the obligatory Aboriginal family who were sitting under a tree across the road. I bought the local ‘Northern Territory News’ which is like the Mansfield ‘Chad’ only more introverted. Top topic was still the earthquake – it had given some Darwin Buildings a bit of a shake – picture of a woman who had climbed on to her roof to see if there was a tsunami coming. Technical details said the earthquake, though strong, was too deep to have caused a tidal wave, and also it was unlikely to have reached the shores of Australia. Still it makes good copy and outranks ‘Darwin man bashes cop after late night row’ or ‘Darwin man smashes car then runs away’. In the middle pages a helpful article explained how all of Australia’s deadliest biting and stinging creatures could do you in! Just the thing to encourage me as I wolf down my ‘super-size sausages’ before heading into the wilderness. I did read it though and was somewhat reassured that fatalities from these creatures average about one a year, and that usually this is as a result of anaphylactic shock from a bee sting. No room for complacency and each time I use the toilet I check the bowl for crocodiles!
I calculated that if I had used about half my fuel by the time I reached the 4WD bit I would have more than enough to get me comfortably to Batchelor. I found the track easy enough but not before I passed a farmer ploughing his field the size of Derbyshire. I could see the dust cloud for miles before I passed him. A little later on I thought I saw another farmer ploughing but this turned out to be a dust storm! As soon as I left the road to join the track I saw my first kangaroo – and this was a real one – or rather he saw me which was rather fortunate as if he had not swerved as he raced across in front of me I would have recorded another road kill. He or she was big and deep reddy brown and bounded away like the wind into the surrounding bush. The signs at the start of the track indicated that all the route was open, so off I went. It had taken me about an hour from Pine Creek, and it would take an hour and a half to two hours to get to Batchelor. After about half an hour or so I reached a place called Surprise Creek. Actually there were two surprises. One was that there was no water in the creek, the other was that there was a tree blocking the obvious route. There seemed to be an alternative route just to the right of the fallen tree but this took me through deepish sand. I had negotiated deep sand when I went to Jim Jim Falls so I tentatively made my way through it…only to get stuck! A brief moment of panic was followed by me taking myself through the situation. If I really was stuck then I was not too far from the road and it was quite likely that someone would come by eventually. Secondly I had lots of water, some food etc. I worked through the use of the 4WD in deep sand. The theory is to switch off the engine and to engage the lowest gear possible, then switch on the engine again and move slowly forward. It worked. A little relieved but concerned that I might meet as similar hazard further down the track I moved on. I told myself I could always turn round and have a go at moving the tree – it did look moveable – if I could go no further. About ten minutes later another vehicle hove into view coming the other way. We stopped next to each other and I asked the driver if the road was ok all the way. He said there were a couple of hard bits but generally it was ok. I told him about the sand and suggested he remove the tree. He grinned at me and said ‘No worries, mate. I’ll just engage first low and plough on through it!’ Half an hour and two other creeks later – both of which contained water – I came upon my biggest challenge. I went down into a creek, drove across it, and was confronted by a very steep climb out of the creek bed. To make matters worse, the way out had very deep potholes and loose sand. I engaged the lowest gear and up I went. If you are an experienced 4WD driver, then this probably was negotiable, but I soon got stuck, and had to reverse back down into the creek. I tried three times before I said to myself ‘enough’. I settled down into the creek bed for a moment and did some calculations. I had plenty of fuel so I could reach a place called Adelaide River where I knew I could get diesel. I had negotiated the way to this point so was confident I could get back the way I came. A quick three point turn and I was off.
About twenty minutes later I saw the other truck coming back down the track. We stopped next to each other again, both of us surprised to see the other. The driver told me he had taken my advice and moved the tree – so that was a relief for me. He said they were coming back as they had gone to Surprise Creek Falls for a swim only to discover – surprise! – that there was no water in the pool. They were heading back to another falls near Batchelor. I told him about my failure to get out of the creek. He had come that way but it was easier to come down than get up. He wondered whether or not to go back the way I was going. I said it might be alright if he was an experienced 4WD driver, then left them to sort it out. When I stopped at the end of the dirt track about 45 minutes later there was no sign of him behind me, so I must presume he got through.
I stopped for a while and talked myself through the situation I had just left. Off road driving is risky, but this is the safer end of off road driving. Still, I had calculated the risk of trying to go on and had made the right decision to return.
The next thing that happened made me see that it surely was the right decision. For some reason when I switched the engine on to move off the jeep had got stuck in low gear. I tried everything to shift it out. I even got the manual out. But to no avail. If I tried to go above 60kph the rev counter went mad and I feared the engine would be damaged. I also wondered how much it would cost of the automatic 4WD transmission was knackered. Another stop and think moment. How far was Adelaide River? I calculated about 50km. It would take me nearly an hour, and when I reached there it was pot luck if I could find a mechanic but at least there would be a phone to get in touch with the hire company. Darwin was another 145km from Adelaide River, so if I had to drive on it would take me nearly three more hours. It was already four and a half hours since I left Pine Creek! So off I went, keeping a close eye on the rev counter and the temperature gauge, with the 4WD warning light flashing accusingly. At Adelaide River I pulled into a gas station and filled up as the tank was not far off zero. I asked the guy behind the counter if he knew anything about 4WDs on the assumptions that all Australians who live in this area drive them. He asked me if was computerised or manual ( it was manual) and he said he would help me when he had sorted his other customers out. I moved the jeep out of the way of the pumps to let an old pickup with a rather worn guy at the wheel come into my space. I sat looking at the jeep manual hoping for some inspiration, and after about ten minutes went back into the shop area. The guy I had spoken to was talking to the road-worn guy about my problem. The road worn guy said ‘ It’ll be wound up mate.’ He then followed me outside and said ‘Have you tried driving it backwards? That usually releases it if it’s wound up.’ I followed his instructions, drove it backwards in a straight line, then engaged forward gear and drove it forward in a straight line, and hey presto! I could have hugged him only he was a bit road-worn, and Australian and they don’t take kindly to that. I thanked him and was on my way. As I left the garage forecourt, I passed a group of Aborigine men – yes, under a tree – who had been watching the bit of theatre with a look of bemusement.
I had planned to visit ‘Crocodylus Park’ – which claims to have the biggest crocs in the area - on my return to Darwin but by the time I got there It was shut, so I had an ice cream instead!
My adventure over I decided to reward myself for a successful return by going ‘Northern Territory Mud Crab’ wrestling at one of the waterfront restaurants. The crab was done ‘Singapore Style’ which I will not try to describe except to say it was spicy and fabulous. I knew it was going to be a battle when the waitress appeared behind me and proceeded to wrap me in a full length ‘bib’ much as you do when you are at the hairdressers. Half an hour later the crab surrendered, and I had a ‘Singapore Style’ face pack, which I’m sure in the long run will be good for my skin. As my driver from the airport today noted, not a thing to do on your first date!
Up at 3.30am to catch a 7am flight to Cairns, followed by a 1 hour transfer to Port Douglas further north. It is raining as I go to the airport. There are flashes of thunder and lightning. It looks like the wet season has started in earnest. (It is raining unbelievably hard as I write this – like standing under a waterfall! I am on my balcony so it is not getting me…yet! It certainly cools the air when this happens.) The woman at the Avis counter seems very pleased it is raining. I can sympathise. It has been a long hot Dry Season. The flight is fine - we even get there early – and I am met at the airport by a courier, Bridget O’Brien! (Classic Irish name, but born and bred in Cairns). She passes me on to Michael who drives me to Port Douglas. He is happy to point out all the finer parts of the Captain Cook Highway (we will get to him later), including a partly rebuilt Aborigine school. This reminds me of the radio on my long haul back from Adelaide River to Darwin last night. I somehow picked up an Aborigine radio station – and here’s me thinking they all sit under trees all day long! The DJ is speaking a dialect, but is playing records in English as well as dialect. In one song I hear I recognise the words ‘jabiru’ and ‘baramundi’ . Some of the English words refer to things I have heard about such as ‘Dreamtime’, which I think is before the world began (like the Garden of Eden?) and to the ‘Lost Generation’ – this was when the British and Australian Governments forcibly removed thousands of ‘mixed race’ Aborigines ( often in the more remote parts of the land, white settlers took Aborigine ‘mistresses’ and had children with them) and sent them to Christian Missions to be brought up as ‘white’ children, separating them from their parents and culture, and many of them had no idea who they were or where they came from. Recently the Australian PM has publicly apologised for the policy which as been described in some circles as a sort of ‘genocide’. A little later on I hear some Country and Western on the same station. Gets everywhere, DJ, doesn’t it! Yee hah!
Port Douglas is wet and humid when I arrive and I can’t have my room for two hours. I leave my bags and go into town – ten minutes away – and seek out the Post Office to post a birthday card to Granny (Gill’s mum). The post mistress says it will take a week to ten days – provided the GB posties are not on strike! Her birthday is in two weeks so it should be ok. I also find the Tourist Information place and book myself on to the Barrier Reef trip tomorrow – recommended as it is forecast to get windy as the week progresses. Later I go and book myself a Daintree River trip (Sunday) and a sky –dive (Saturday).
When I come in off the balcony I get wet feet as either the rain has seeped in through some hidden route or the air conditioning unit has leaked. No one around until the morning to sort it so I just dry it up for now. Hey ho!

Thursday 29th October.
Classic! Absolute classic! Survive 4 days in the Outback without as much as reddened ears – then get really sunburned on the Great Barrier Reef! (This one’s for you Donna). Picked up at 8.15am to travel on the Aristocat, a ‘spaceship’ of a catamaran which advertises itself as one of the most technologically advanced and environmentally friendly vessels of its type in the world. Beam me aboard Scottie! It has enviro engines, cruise control for ride stability, ergonomic individual seating…..you name it, it’s got it – but the one thing it clearly lacks is complete Pommie idiot control! Perhaps I am being a bit hard on myself as I sit here in a form of pain I have only experienced once before when Gill and I climbed Mount Snowdon on a sunny day with low cloud cover – the backs of our legs got it big style that day. I did read the leaflet. I brought my swimwear, hat, towel, sunglasses and my 30SPF sunscreen – in fact I brought two of them just in case. I applied the sunscreen liberally as instructed, particularly after coming out of the water. I put on hat, t-shirt and long-sleeved shirt to protect my skin most of the time. I kept a close eye on the exposed bits. But I paid the price for one simple misunderstanding. I thought that the sun could only get me when I was on the boat! But no, it got me when I was snorkelling and for most of the time just under the surface of the water. So I now have a rolling red stripe the length of my back down to the small of my back where it takes a break and then continues down the length of my legs. Painful? Yes. Irrittating? Yes. The joke’s on me now Donna!
Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the show?
Well, yes I did. Luckily I did not realise the sunburn bit until I was walking back to my apartment when I somehow noticed the redness of the backs of my legs. We were taken to the Outer Barrier Reef – an area called the Agincourt Ribbon Reef – in some style where we were promised an unspoilt area teeming with fish and coral life for us to explore along part of the largest living structure on Earth. Sounds a bit awesome, and it was. We were actually taken to three different locations and were able to snorkel at each one. Each section of the reef we visited is in relatively shallow water, so you can get right up close to the corals and the marine life – fish on this occasion but they do see turtles, Dwarf Minke Whales, and the odd reef shark (small and harmless) on some trips. We did see a huge Groper Fish at the third site, but it does live there and comes to get food from the daily boat visits. The picture of it in the leaflet makes it look like a giant cod with the face of Elvis! The only way I way describe the snorkelling experience if you haven’t done it is to get you to imagine your face pressed to the glass of a giant aquarium. Fish of all sorts of colours, shapes and sizes swim by you, beneath you, in front of you. It’s hard to keep track of what is there. I started off trying to guess what each one might be. Oh that’s a tiny little blue reef fish, or that’s a great big blue reef fish and, oh that’s a stripey sort of yellowy thin triangular reef fish - but in the end just decided to immerse myself in the colour and shape and splendour of it all. The corals too were incredibly diverse in size, shape and colour. Some were as big as houses, some the shape of brains. I did identify a giant clam which opened its mouth menacingly (gills really!) as I swam over it. A couple of the sites had huge ‘canyons’ in the reef so that you looked down a long way to see fish of all sizes in the chasm below. No turtles though, and no whales – but we did have Barry from Brisbane. More of him in a minute. You can whale watch on the Aristocat but you have to come in the breeding season from May to September when up to 8000 humpback whales make their annual migration from Antarctica to the Barrier Reef breeding grounds , and they are joined by Dwarf Minke Whales – or those that the Japanese whaling fleets don’t get! Apparently there is even a distant relation of Moby Dick to be seen – the only white humpbacked whale in the world. The Aborigines have given him a name – Migaloo, which means ‘white fella’.
On the more serious side, the Great Barrier Reef is a protected natural wonder of the world. We were given strict instructions not to touch the coral, stand on it, or stand on the sandy bits in between the coral – reason is that it is a very delicately balanced environment and something like sunscreen can kill the coral. It is under threat from over -fishing, land-based pollution, global warming etc etc. Certain areas of the reef are now designated no fishing zones (much to Barry’s chagrin), and part of it is also a huge Marine Wildlife Park. We were all charged an extra $5 reef tax which goes towards conservation activities.
Which brings me back to Barry from Brisbane. If you have seen ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ starring Toni Collete, then Barry is the image in sight and sound of Muriel’s dad ( ‘I made Porpoise Spit what it is today’ ). A huge man, I guess in his late 60s, with his wife whose name I did not catch and two other couples from the same area. Barry and his wife chatted to me whilst the others intermittently made some semi-derogatory comment about him at which he grinned and generally ignored - his wife explained to me that he was ‘deaf as a post’. We chatted about the UK and cricket – which was amazing given my limited knowledge – and when they moved away at lunch and reef visit time, I could still hear ‘Barry this’, and ‘ Barry that’ cutting through the noise of the engine. Barry used to own a boat and he and his mates would come up here fishing two or three times a year for a week. They were allowed to take home 5 kilos of fish per person on each trip. Multiply that by 20 million Australians and it is no wonder there are no fish left! One of Barry’s friends was a farmer from near Brisbane, and his skin told the story of a life in the sun. Like the Italians, he may live long but it will be mostly as a prune. There is a myth that all Australians are sun-tanned gods or goddesses, and I may see some ‘evidence’ of this on the beaches of Sydney, but from what I have seen so far people are either very careful – they follow the Slip, Slap, Slop campaign ie Slip on a t-shirt, Slap on some sun-screen, Slop on a hat – or they are like Barry’s friends frazzled! But today, I stand need to talk! At the third site, we were nearly all back on board the boat preparing for return when a voice called out ‘Hey, is that a whale over there ?’ and the quick reply came ‘Nope, it’s only Barry still snorkelling’. With Barry back safely aboard, they headed for the bar – drinks only on the way back for safety reasons – where they returned with ‘Crownies’ ( a popular bottled beer) all round. Nice group in the end. Enjoyed their company. Good on ya, Barry. There were only about 30 people on board this monster of a catamaran as the booking agencies had been telling tourists that the weather was likely to be rough – it wasn’t – and the pilot, Ian, said that there had been 105 the previous day. By the time this statistic had been through Barry’s party the ‘cat’ had been as overloaded as a boatload of asylum seekers!
Friday 30th October Port Douglas
Not a good night as I cannot get comfortable because of the sunburn. Am punished more by tuning in to the local Aussie Country Music station which must just about be the worst in the world. Samples of the ‘cheerful’ lyrics included a song about a man who has spent his life driving ‘roads trains’ – wake up at the back there, I mentioned these in an earlier blog! – and is now confined to a wheelchair and a lonely life. Another one was about a drover who had an Aboriginal ‘boy’ as his companion but when the local townspeople discovered that the ‘boy’ was really a ‘girl’ they tracked them down and killed them! If I could have moved without producing spasms of agony |I would have turned it off! On the good side they did play Kenny Rogers’ Coward of the County which raised the cheerful bar as it is just about bullying, rape, and associated violence. DJ, you have a lot to answer for.
As dawn breaks I determine to go into Port Douglas – about ten minutes away - and sort out a few things, including some strong ‘after sun’. Bay Villas where I am staying is a series of apartments around two swimming pools, neither of which is as big as Sal and Dave’s living room, but combined they just about outrank it. The receptionist is brusque – ‘Stand there! Leave your bags outside! What do you mean the air conditioning is leaking?’ – but efficient. I would be happy to have her by my side if I get into a fight in a bar. She gave me a map of the area yesterday, and then tried to sell me some tours. She was even more ‘brusque’ when I went a booked them elsewhere. She would probably be quite pleased I got sunburned. She was most put out when I asked for a towel to replace the one I had to use to mop up the water – which had after all leaked from the air con.
Port Douglas is small (pop 5867) – its ‘raison d’etre’ being the tourist trade. It is off the ‘Captain Cook’ highway on an isthmus, so there is just one road in and out. There is one main shopping street with lots of bars, souvenir shops, eateries. It boasts the most expensive marina complex in Australia and the guy who built it had to flee Oz as the Government were after him for a host of financial fiddles. One of the hotels in the complex boasts the biggest indoor hotel swimming pool – at the last guess equivalent to 13 Sal and Dave’s living rooms – in the whole of Australia! Port Douglas has for a long time been where the southern ‘wealthies’ come to escape the cold winters. There are lots of expensive restaurants. It is still a place for travellers including backpackers to use as a hopping off placed for the Great Barrier Reef and the wilds of Cape Tribulation further North. It has a long sandy beach – called Four Mile Beach – but at this time of year no-one is swimming because of the ‘stingers’ (box jelly fish). Pity really as the beach itself is very attractive. There is a place down the road called ‘Habitat’ – but this one is definitely not Terence and Jasper Conran. Rather it is a wildlife park where you can get close to nature – safely! I will visit there tomorrow.
Yesterday when I went to the reef I had signed up for scuba diving as I had had a go at this in Rhodes in the summer. However they did not let me do it as I did not have a medical clearance certificate – a definite requirement in Queensland. (In Rhodes they had a doctor check people before embarkation. I was ok about it but if I had done this I would not have got so sunburned as I would have had a wetsuit on! Never mind. I went to get my refund and at the same time decided to cancel the sky dive. I want to be completely fit for that so I will probably leave it to New Zealand. Spent the day wandering and snoozing, and this evening went on the Lady Douglas, a sort of steamboat that tours the mangrove swamps behind Port Douglas and finishes off with a quick trip round the harbour, hopefully seeing some good sunsets. The pilot, who was English, gave us a commentary on the one and a half hour trip which started at 4.30 but it was nearly dark by the time we returned. One of the highlights of the trip is supposed to be ‘crocs’ but they were conspicuous by their absence. In the end we did have a fleeting glimpse of one as it dived beneath the waters. This was more than made up for in my view by the sight of Ospreys and Fish Eagles which follow the boat for ‘tidbits’. Another highlight was feeding the catfish with cat food – dry bits. No sunset but some spectacular could formations as the wet season rumbles in. I did get a chance to read a ‘croc’ book on the journey. Only 1% to 2% of the eggs hatched mature to adulthood. The reason? They get eaten by bigger crocs. It is rule of ‘croc’ society that you allow yourself to be eaten by any ‘croc’ that is bigger than you. Of course the pilot had to throw in one or two tales of ‘croc’ attacks. He said the average was one ‘croc’ fatality per year but in the last 14 months there had been four, two of whom were the children I mentioned in an earlier blog. The five year old boy was taken in February this year in the Daintree River which is just north of here. An article in the local paper featured the outcome of a court case where a local reporter was accused of violating the family’s privacy by going uninvited on to their property. The magistrate described the reporter as ‘arrogant, pig-headed, and foolish’ but said that as he remained on the driveway he had not committed any offence. Tell that to the family, I thought.
Back in Port Douglas I was tempted by the notice that read ‘Fish and Chips and Rock and Roll’. Actually the heat reduces my appetite considerably, and I think the ‘NT Mud Crab’ episode is the only ‘full’ meal I have eaten since coming to Australia. I did try a barramundi burger and chips in Kakadu, but only got as far as the ‘barram’ before I capitulated. The café I now went to was on the marina – the cheaper end – and for $20 (about £11.50p) I had grilled barramundi, chips and salad to the strains of an Elvis impersonator. It rained hard whilst I was eating, but I did not get wet on the way home in the dark – it was after 7pm. My evening was completed by the sight of the ‘brusque’ receptionist explaining to a Lily Savage impersonator that the ferry for Birkenhead definitely did not leave from the Port Douglas Marina.
Now. Captain Cook. This is not going to be a history lesson. You can find the facts for yourself in any good history book. What I am interested in is the interpretation of history. I cannot remember who it was that said history is written by the victors – could have been Hitler! Anyway, what about Australia’s history? The accepted version is that the Aborigines were living a harmonious existence with the land and with other tribes and clans when along came the Europeans and ‘land grabbed’ Australia. You have to go back 60 or 70,000 years to find the first ‘land grab’ as the earliest Aboriginal settlers moved in from Indonesia to North Australia. Over the next 2-3000 years the various groups and clans staked claim to the whole of the continent. Most lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle but there were settled groups depending on the location and the environment. There is no ‘written’ history of these times. Accounts survive through tales and song. Little seems to be known about how exactly they ‘staked’ out the various territories. I find it hard to believe that this would have been achieved without conflict. The Dutch ‘accidentally’ discovered Australia, and by the time Cook came to the East coast, most of the West and North coasts had been mapped. So when he set off on a ‘scientific’ expedition, his task was really to grab the East coast for the British King before the Dutch got it. He duly did this by sticking a flag pole in the soil at Botany Bay in April 1770. He was followed 11 years later by the ‘first fleet’ a set of convict ships which landed in Sydney harbour. Australia’s destiny was set by those two acts. The Aborigines were doomed as a result. Theft, violence, deceipt, disease, sometimes outright massacre saw to it that they were pushed off their ‘lands’ in rapid time. Were they any more badly treated than the victims of the ‘clearances’ in Scotland and Ireland in the eighteenth century, or the citizens of Drogheda massacred by Oliver Cromwell’s troops. Perhaps not. All are victims of that ‘tenet’ that might is right. The Irish peasants dying in their thousands during the Great Famine were seen just as much as ‘sub-human’ as the Australian settlers began to view the Aborigines. It is not just Australia that has a lot to answer for. They were implementing a European, racist view, that they as the superiors had the right to take what they wanted. What we tend to forget is that those who own the land, say, in the UK do so by right of force exerted at some time in history. Land laws merely confirm that right. Australia rapidly became one of the most racist societies on Earth. When people were beginning to challenge the South Africans over aparthied, Australia was operating a ‘whites only’ policy introduced in 1901. It was not until the 1970s that the policy was finally ‘dumped’ as pressure came from the rest of the world . It may have officially gone but you only have to listen to the reaction to ‘asylum seekers’ to see that it still lies just below the surface. So, let’s not blame Captain Cook. He came to a sticky end at the hand of some South Sea Islanders some years later so perhaps that was a sort of justice.

Saturday 31st October
Haven’t bothered to get out my Haloween photo from Singapore! Think I can hear fireworks or thunder. No, definitely fireworks. It gets dark very early here – about 7pm- so you either head into town to a bar or restaurant or , like me, you head back to the apartment to catch up on the day’s blog, phone calls etc. Had to sort out my early pick up for the airport on Monday – it has gone so quickly! I leave her at 3.20am for a 6.30am flight to Adelaide. Tomorrow I go for the day to the Daintree River area on a guide tour, but it gets back around 7pm and I will be too busy packing and getting to bed early to record the day’s events.
Today as a fairly laid back day. Slept a little better after applying all the sunburn stuff I got from the pharmacists. Decide to go to ‘Habitat’ and hopefully have ‘wildlife’ served on a plate (not literally) for me to photograph. Port Douglas is serviced by a ‘round robin’ bus service that you just hail by the roadside. It is a ten minute journey to ‘Habitat’. The bus is quaint. A small coach with a piece of card in the front window which either says ‘Town’ or ‘Out’ depending which way it is going. The driver on the outward journey is Mr Cheerful who must have relocated from the Norwich to Dereham bus service as he could not be grumpy enough on that one! We travel through the ‘posh’ part of Port Douglas where the hotels are ‘complexes’ and they have their own golf courses. One sign advertises a house with its own course for $745,000 dollars (about £423,000). I check my loose change but I am 50 cents short. I think of asking the bus driver for a ‘sub’ but think he might throw me in the sea instead. ‘Habitat’ itself is surprisingly good – part zoo, part wildlife park. It is split into three parts – Wetlands, Rain Forest, and Grasslands. There are more birds and animals than you can shake a stick at – though this particular activity is frowned upon. I think I will while away an hour here but end up staying nearly four. I go round the whole thing twice, taking photos like mad. I calculate that the second tour will be ‘sunnier’ so better photos in some areas and for once I am right. The main exhibits are the massive – and I mean massive – saltwater croc, the wallabies and kangaroos, and the koala bear. The croc is wedged between two rocks and partly submerged on my first tour, but vey kindly is on the grass sunning himself on my second. The kangaroos and wallabies are used to being fed so they come up very close. I am just about getting used to telling my kangas from my wallabies when I am confronted with a sign that says ‘tree kangaroo’. This I have to see. It turns out to look more like a lemur than a kangaroo, but there we go. It persists on hiding its head as I try to photograph it, but I outwit it by arriving unexpectedly an hour later. The koala bear is the star in lots of ways. It is cuddly and sleepy as you would expect, but is much bigger than I imagined. For some reason I had also imagined them as silent creatures so I am a bit startled when is suddenly starts to howl like a grizzly bear! The keeper says this is a mating call, and that the local residents complain about the noise! Good old Aussies. If you can’t shoot ‘em, then shut ‘em up! Twice a day the koala bear has to ‘sing’ for his supper and be photographed clinging to eager children and adults. There was a bit of a pantomime to begin one session as the keeper – the spitting image of the late Steve Irwin – got out a step ladder and climbed up to where the koala was having a snooze. It was quite happy to let him stroke its head but not so keen on letting go of the tree. The keeper smiled in an embarassed way and tugged at its front legs. They eventually were loosened but the bear ‘s back legs resolutely clung to the tree. For a moment we had the sight of an elongated koala bear as the keeper leaned back on the ladder in an effort to loosen the bear’s grip. The gathering audience was waiting for the outcome of this ‘tug-o-war’, and secretly hoping that the bear might just win. After what must have seemed an eternity to the keeper the bear gave in and allowed himself to be carried to the photographic area, where he duly obliged by clinging in a very cuddly and co-operative way to each person that was prepared to pay $18 for the privilege. I had had my fun so passed on that bit.
The three ‘habitats’ described above were user friendly in lots of ways and I struck up a conversation with a lady from March in Cambridgeshire who was a wheelchair user. She said she and her husband had been there since 8am for the ‘breakfast with the birds’ session – I had signed up for the ‘lunch with the lorrakeets ‘ later on. We met later in the café and continued our conversation. She asked if I had been to the Barrier Reef – I missed out the sunburn bit – and said she had only found one firm who were able to accommodate disabled people (ie they had hoists etc). Another firm had, in true Aussie style, said they were prepared to ‘have a go’ and that they ‘liked a challenge’ – but she decided to pass on that one. She was determined to go though and was encouraged when I told her that the boat I had been on had taken a lady in her 70s who was a total non –swimmer and had got her to snorkel the reefs with two staff as guides. Her final comment was that Australia, like the UK, had a long way to go in terms of accommodating disabilities. Neither of us mentioned that in the early days of populating Australia after the second world war when people from England etc were encourage to come via the ‘ten pound pom’ scheme, people with disabilities were not allowed in!
I close this section with a reflection on the book I have just read. Bought yesterday in a café-cum-bookshop in Port Douglas, it is by an Australian author Alex Miller – never heard of him before – and is entitled ‘Landscape of Farewell’. It is the story of an elderly German academic, recently widowed, who through a chance meeting ends up in the Australian outback and forms a friendship with an Aborigine man of similar age, who is a tribal elder and adviser to the Government on cultural issues. They are both seeking some sort of understanding and reconciliation with their past, and journey together into the outback to seek the burial place of an Aboriginal ancestor. It is a fascinating tale in itself, but links in a curious way to my musings about Captain Cook as a central feature of the book is the weaving into the fictional tale of a real historical event - the Cullin-a-Ringo massacre. This was said to have been the largest massacre of white settlers by Indigenous Australians in the country’s history. In October 1861every member – (nineteen in all) men, women and children – of the strongest and most well-armed party of white settlers to enter the Central Highlands of Queensland ( where I am now) was killed by the local Aborigines in a well-planned and ruthless attack. It led as you can imagine to extensive and brutal repercussions against the local population. The book’s fantasy is that the ancestor was the leader and brains behind the massacre and that it was carried out because important and sensitive religious sites had been (perhaps inadvertently) defiled. The book does not seek to ‘judge’ the incident, but merely to place it in the historical context of the time. The view of the elderly German academic is that we are essentially a brutal race who at times does very brutal things to our fellow human beings. He also feels that those living in the present cannot be blamed for the deeds of those in the past – even if they are ancestors. He gradually realises that his own father who had fought in the second world war may well have perpetrated deeds which he would find difficult to forgive. The book ends with his determination to face whatever the past holds in terms of what his father had done.

Kakadu National Park

Friday 23rd October Kakadu National Park

Leave Darwin via the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs as instructed by the car hire person. Have to look for route 36 the Arnhem Highway. See signs for Alice Springs 1249 kilometres. The distances are mind boggling. Alice Springs is not even half way down Australia! Settle in for a 240km drive to my next hotel. I have spoken to the receptionist and she told me to look for South Alligator River and I can’t miss it. I’m sure I want to miss the river by the sounds of it. Route 36 not brilliantly signposted but I get on it. Need to explain to the uninitiated that a ‘highway’ in Northern Australia terms is really only a two lane road that snakes off into the horizon. I presume the scrubland on either side is ‘the bush’. As I move further from Darwin the cars etc get fewer. The roads are dominated by ‘road trains’ which are even more scary at night. Imagine an articulated lorry with a trailer attached. Then attach another trailer. Then another one. Big isn’t it? Even with these monsters bearing down on other traffic the roads get quieter and quieter. I drive for 15 minutes at one point without seeing another vehicle. And this is a main road! What the roads I will be travelling on tomorrow will be like is anyone’s guess. I see a sign for a Wetlands Observatory and stop for a while. It is very informative. Am captivated by the sign that says that one of the walkways to a nearby bridge is out of bounds because a large saltwater crocodile has been spotted ‘lurking’ in the area. Not bird-watching clearly. Helpfully they have provided a folder with details of ‘saltie’ fatal attacks – if you just lose a leg you don’t make the book! They are rare, but the posters and the signs make it clear that any contact is very high risk, and the advice is DON’T SWIM anywhere except the public swimming baths! Of course some visitors choose to swim in the rock pools and billabongs, and the park rangers do their best to see that the areas are safe. Fatal attacks occur mostly in the wet season – it is still the dry season now – when the rivers and creeks overflow and there are lots of places for croc to be. The folder recorded the last fatal attack in Australia as March 2009 when sadly an 11 year old girl was taken whilst swimming in a river with friends. The one before that was in 2008 when another child – this time a 5 year old following his dog into the river. I didn’t read the whole list which goes back some years, but tourists don’t feature heavily in the saltie’s diet. The reason? They don’t get complacent like the locals do. Both children lived adjacent to where the attacks took place. I think I got the message. As I left the observatory I heard a rustle in the bushes next to me. I was in my car before you could say ‘crocodile dundee’!

I ended up driving 40km past my hotel as it looked like an old gas station and I thought that can’t possibly be it! But it was so 80km later I was back and checking in. The gas station bit was only the front and the residences were not too bad. A bit log cabbinish but ok. Needless to say once I had checked in I had my now obligatory Oz afternoon snooze! At 5pm I headed for Ubirr, an aboriginal rock paintings site. I had been advised that it closed at sunset which was about 6.30 but that the sunset would be spectacular. Found it ok as the road off the main highway only went as far as the site. I got there in an hour so had some time to see the rock paintings before climbing with the 30 or so others to the viewing point. The sunset was on cue – very spectacular but a bit blurred by low clouds. Everybody was relatively quiet as this is an aboriginal religious site. Lots of photos taken. Spread out below lots of scrubland and wetlands in the distance. Someone said they could see kangaroos – but I couldn’t! Hardly seen any wildlife yet. A couple of cranes in a pool by the highway, some parakeets over the wetlands. Still, plenty of time for that. When the sun had set I was going to stay a while and just take in the view but a warden appeared and rushed us all off. I understood why by the time we reached the car park ten minutes later. It was getting rapidly dark and by the time I set off I had to use my lights to see the way. Journey home relatively uneventful – except I missed the ‘hotel’ again – but I did get my first ‘road kill’. Dammit, I thought, the road is empty for miles in either direction and this creature – a possum possibly – strolls out right into my path. I did try to miss it but I was not going to end up in a ditch. Sorry possum. Some other creature will have a meal of it no doubt.

Tomorrow I am off to Jim Jim Falls – this requires two hours driving on dirt roads there and back. That’ll test the four wheel drive! In the wet season the falls can only be reached by air!

PS
Some reflections on the Aussie male. It began with two stalls at the beach market. One was selling ‘stock whips’ – who the hell would want a stock whip unless you drove cattle? A hard Aussie that’s who. The other was called the ‘Roadkill Grill’ – motto ‘you kill it, we grill it’. Burgers to put hair on your chest mate! It continued with passing a sports bar. I had been warned by Eamonn that no bar will be without a TV, but this sports bar had wall to wall TVs, all with different sports channels on them! And then there’s the ‘ute’. Plenty of them in evidence on the roads today. So I wrote this fictional ‘male’ a poem.

Oh Sheila, oh Sheila, you know you’re a beaut
But you just can’t compete with my 4-wheel drive ute!
I love you, I love you, you know that it’s true
But you’ll have to excuse me, I have to meet Blue.
When we first met my darling, you liked the odd ‘stubby’
But four cans a day love have made you quite chubby
If you add that to having a liking for balti
You ‘re no wonder the size of a five metre saltie!

PPS
Rolf Harris featuring a lot as I drive along.


Saturday 24th October Kakadu National Park Day 2

Sleep glorious sleep! My first proper night’s sleep since I left the UK last Sunday. Made myself stay up to watch The Da Vinci Code – what an awful film! – so went to sleep around 12 and woke up at 8! Yahoo! Horrendous noise from white parakeets – they are like starlings around here – and some very strange geese which are the equivalent of our Canada Geese , but they do fly into trees when startled. Opened curtains to find an ibis feeding on the grass outside. Quick shower and breakfast as off to Jim Jim Falls. The Kakadu guide says that the Falls are only accessible by 4 wheel drive vehicles and not at all in the wet season. It also says to allow two hours to the Falls and two hours back once you leave the main Kakadu Highway. I calculate the turning is an hour away so I will allow six hours for the round trip. I am both nervous and excited by the off road bit – but assured by the fact that Brother Frankilry survived the trip at the end of the wet season two years ago! I check my fuel and decide to go on a full tank so have to call at Jabiru on the way. Take a wrong turning at Jabiru and then am directed the wrong way again by this stupid Aussie bloke out walking. Lose fifteen minutes with this palaver. Fuel gauge stays reassuringly on full! Reach the turning for JIm Jim Falls ok and stop to consult the manual re the 4WD bit. It is easy to switch on but it does say that if the road gets sandy or muddy then to up the ante 4WD wise. Never having driven a 4WD this means nothing to me – but I am about to find out. The sign says Jim Jim Falls is 59km. the first half an hour or so of the road is red gravel and the road is wide enough to take two vehicles side by side. Clouds of red dust are thrown up as I follow the signs and stick to 60km. One vehicle comes from the opposite direction, and then shortly after another speeds past me in the direction of the Falls throwing up so much red dust I have to stop as I can’t see the road! I don’t see another vehicle for over half an hour. ‘Piece of cake this off road driving,’ I think. Half an hour later, just as I pass a sign for a camping ground, the red dirt road abruptly ceases and is replaced by a very narrow single width dirt track. By my calculations this was to be my ‘road’ for the next hour or so! I stop and engage the next level of 4WD. I soon realise I need it. The ‘track’ is a mixture of soft sand, red gravel and stones - sometimes all at once. The local Aboriginal council have very kindly installed speed bumps at regular intervals just to make the ride more interesting. Some bumps are considerably bigger than others! I hope the vehicle can stand it. I would not have got more than ten yards in my Mazda! My up and down journey is made more exciting by the regular ‘sand traps’ where the 4WD has to work especially hard. I keep saying the word ‘traction’ as I reach these in some vain hope that this will ‘magic’ me through. I keep telling myself that even if I get stuck there will be other vehicles passing – eventually. Almost by magic one appears – and I have to pull over to let it past. I don’t see another one for the next forty minutes! I do however see the council guys responsible for the speed bumps. They are very kindly installing a few more on what had once been a nice flat section.

Suffice it to say the 4WD got me there ok. I noted at various points that the road dipped into dry river beds and that next to the edge of the road were indicators for possible depth of water during the wet season I presumed. A little alarming to see that these topped out at 2 metres!

The car park at the Falls was moderately busy – about a dozen vehicles. It was mid-day so very very hot. I had got all the bits I needed and sprayed myself liberally with insect repellent as I could see coach loads of flies gathering for the feast! The first thing I came across was the sign saying that due to the temperatures the 6km walk to the top of the plateau was banned! Oh dear, just when I ….who am I kidding? In this heat! The next thing I saw was the now obligatory ‘croc’ sign. Danger – crocodiles inhabit this area. Attacks can cause injury or death. Keep away from the water’s edge. Do not enter the water. And then where does the path go – yes, right along the water’s edge! It’s very difficult to walk no tiptoes in hiking boots but I did. In case I might think it was all a fuss over nothing – which I assure you I didn’t – there was a crocodile trap set at the edge of the lagoon. Probably the length of Sal and Dave’s living room! A local paper yesterday had featured an article about the capture of a 4.5 metre ‘saltie’ in another part of the park – not the one at the wetlands centre. So they are about. The paper also featured what it called ‘idiots’ and showed a photo of a guy standing on a croc trap holding a beer can! A middle aged couple in front of me as I walked up towards the Falls asked me if I was going to swim in the rock pool at the bottom of the Falls. Not a chance I said, haven’t you seen the notices. They had also read the same newspaper. The woman cheerfully said that some trekkers had swum there earlier for 20 minutes and none of them had been eaten! Trouble with crocs I said – sounding like a veteran – is you can’t predict where they will be. I was keeping well away from the water. I left them to go on up the path. I will have a look in the paper tomorrow – see if they made it back.

The journey back to the main road was easier as I now knew what the 4WD could do. I passed the council men who very kindly let me are the first to drive over a new speed bump. I thought that if the water gets to 2m high they must have to redo most of the road each year never mind the speed bumps!

By way of contrast decide to visit Nourangie Rock, an aboriginal painting site on the way home. This was fascinating – still had a croc sign though – as the series of caves and overhangs had some of the paintings I had already seen in guide books and on post cards etc . People had actually lived here for thousands of years. It was very sheltered and cool so I could see why. The paintings are very striking and in a way humbling. Made me think about the importance of place in people’s lives. The observation point overlooked the vastness of the bush below. I could see for miles. I could also understand why the Aborigines regard these places as sacred.
Back on the main highway I see my first real wildlife – and manage not to kill it! Two dingos – Aussie wild dogs – are standing by the road observing the traffic. I could have sworn they waved as I sped by.

The Australians have what seems like a curious relationship with their wildlife. I suppose they cannot be blamed for initially thinking it was all there for the benefit to shoot, kill, skin etc (c/f USA and the Buffalo or us and the wolf) but very quickly certain species got to the edge of extinction – including the ‘saltie’ which made great handbags and shoes, but could not replace itself fast enough. Eventually they had to declare a number of species ‘off limits’ – including the ‘saltie’ – to let them recover. Some recovered faster than others – the ‘saltie’ in particular. They are now thriving and the Aussies are trying to balance the fact that it’s great to have them back with the fact that given half a chance they will have you for lunch!

Tomorrow it’s croc spotting from the safety of a big boat on the Yellow River, the off to Katherine to visit the Gorges.

Sunday 25th October Kakadu to Katherine

Croc spotting, Charlie Drake, electric cars, the café with no customers, termites, road kill, wallabies, wild horses, earthquake, aborigine health and welfare.

Early rise needed to catch 9am Yellow River Cruise. Not helped by earthquake at midnight! Woken up by movement of the bed. It went on for some time – 20 to 30 seconds – and it was as if someone was holding the end of the bed and shaking it. I lay there thinking is this the start of something or just a shock wave. When it stopped I fully expected it to start again. I remained awake for another two hours afterwards , watching yet another awful film, and doing calculations in my head about the distance we were inland vis- a-vis a possible tsunami! Mad? Not quite. At breakfast lots of talk about the tremors. The girl who serves said it was her second of the season – but as she was from Chile she was used to such things. Did the earth move for me? No jokes please cause it did! On the radio on the way to the cruise the news was that there had been an earthquake in Indonesia of 7.5 magnitude, and the Indonesian Government had thought it wise to issue a tsunami warning which they later withdrew. That’s the way! Panic the population then say –oops, sorry! Shock waves had been felt as far as Katherine where I was heading which is 250k from where I was. Who’s laughing now? As I left the Kakdu lodge I saw my first proper marsupial – a wallaby – which scampered round a bush near my jeep. I saw another one when I parked up for the cruise. Definitely not big enough to be kangaroos.
The Yellow River cruise turned out to start in the Yellow Billabong – think small lake – and entered the South Alligator River. I have mentioned this river before. It is a brute of a river made even more so by the presence of saltwater crocodiles. It was named by an early explorer – or rather renamed from what the Aborigines called it – who did not know his alligator from his elbow! History does not record if this was a fatal mistake or not. The tour was fabulous. Two hours on a slow cruise around the area with a very informative guide and some very co-operative wildlife, including Mr and Mrs Croc and the little crocs. Sea eagles, azure kingfishers, jabiru (a big stork), whistling ducks (not Colonel Bogey but clearly not a quack) and thousands of magpie geese – these are the ones that fly into trees. And of course crocs! Shed loads of crocs. No 5 metre males – these are the stuff of legend and nightmare. But plenty of 3 metre females and one solitary 4 metre male. When you get close, and I assure you we did get really close, you see why these things are so fearsome. Jaws like clamps, silent deadly movement. We would be looking at one and suddenly it would disappear. That’s what makes them so dangerous. You never know where they might pop up. We saw them in the water, on the sand banks, hiding in tree roots – and the guide said they frequently hide in the long grass – which is why the route to the boat’s on a raised walkway. We saw five gather in one place and two females have a standoff – the guide said they do sometimes fight and kill and even eat each other! Keep well clear! Respect! We all had to have a sit down in the café afterwards!

Remember! Never smile at a crocodile! You can’t get friendly with a crocodile!

A brief visit to the nearby Warradjan (pronounced Warradjan) Aboriginal Centre was followed by a 250km drive to Katherine. Getting radio stations is not easy so I have to listen to what I can. It breaks the monotony of the journey as the roads can be very empty. As it is Sunday it is serious talking – no Dale Winton here! I relax into the programme which is about the near destruction of Aboriginal health and welfare by the onset of colonisation – thanks Captain Cook they say. Aborigines are SEVEN times more likely to die of diabetes, respiratory and heart diseases and alcoholism than white Australians. They also suffer depression very much more easily. Reason? Loss of culture, purpose etc. the Oz government are trying hard to redress centuries of destructive oppression, but it seems like a losing battle. One Aboriginal interviewed said change is good but destruction is not. Parts of the Northern Territory are given over entirely to the Aboriginal clans and their traditional lifestyle. Visitors need a licence to go on to the land. Very few tourists do. The future doesn’t look orange!

Last night I was in the lounge bar having a bite to eat when an Aboriginal man came in. He asked the staff to serve him an alcoholic drink. The girl who served him politely refused as he was not a resident but said if he was thirsty she would be happy to serve him with a soft drink. He had a coke and then asked if he could sit at the outside tables to drink it. The girl said yes. When he left you could have cut the air with a knife. As an individual he was no trouble but he represented a huge problem which is Aborigines and alcohol. Big trouble. The Government have gone as far as to ban alcohol sales and drinking in public in certain areas. They have also brought in an alcohol-free fuel to stop the young men ‘sniffing’ fuel.
Long journeys with little change to the scenery and no other traffic to observe and few animals as they mostly lie low during the day have led to the onset of ‘Highway Madness’. I find myself talking in a stereotypical Aussie accent and singing songs I had long forgotten. The engine of my jeep sound like a didgeridoo, so it’s not long before I launch into ‘Sun-arise’ in a Rolf Harris type accent. This is quickly followed by ‘Waltzing Matilda’ whenever I see a billabong sign. Even more bizarrely I rake up from the dustbin of my memory an old Charlie Drake number (see below). It may be sectioning stuff back in the UK but here in the Outback it’s what keeps us going!

Crossing the Mary River and leaving Kakadu behind perhaps forever, I take a rest at the Mary River Roadhouse. It’s sign advertises all the services you could need but when I pull in it like something out of a Sergio Leone movie. I half expect to see Clint Eastwood and Jack Palance facing each other in front of the store. There is a Volkswagen van at the petrol pump and two girls sitting at an outside table. The sign on the door says ‘Shut – back at 10.30’. Seeing as it is 2pm I have a long wait! I try the toilet door and that is locked too. I am about to go when the girls say the café is open. Inside it is empty. A woman comes from the back and serves me with coffee and a biscuit. I need break but am not staying here long. I ask for the toilet key and the woman says it is open. Perhaps someone was inside. I look out to see the third occupant of the van walking with the girls to the van and it very quickly departs, leaving just me, the woman, Clint and Jack. I look up at the fan spinning above my head and try to imagine what this place must be like when it’s quiet!

A little later on the Stuart Highway to Katherine I think the ‘highway’ madness has given me mirages as I think I see a traffic jam in front of me. I count at least five vehicles. I haven’t seen as many since I left Warradjan (pronounced Warradjan). As I get nearer I see flashing lights and a sign on the back of the van in front which says ‘beware slow vehicles’. Of course! It’s the Darwin to Adelaide electric car race! I had seen a news item on it when I was in Darwin. The cars are only allowed to be solar powered, and teams from all over the world have entered. The UK is represented a by a team of scientists from Cambridge University. They are aiming not just to complete the race but to end up in the top ten. I find myself getting quite excited. Will I see the Cambridge car? I pass about four of them and their support vehicles over the next ten minutes or so – some of the cars can do 60KPH – I actually see one overtake a slow lorry! Then I pass the Cambridge car. I honk like mad and flash my lights. They probably think I am some Aussie clown complaining that they are slowing the traffic. When I reach Katherine some of the lead cars are already there being dismantled for an overnight stop. By my calculations the UK team are in fifth place! Go for it boys! Only 2700km to go!

I finish my day with a visit to the Katherine Gorge to watch the sunset. I climb a very steep path to a viewing platform. The sunset is stunning and I take lots of photos. No one else is around. A youth had passed earlier but did not stop. I follow the path he took which is the longer but easier route. A girl passes me going the other way. I think she is a ranger by her garb. I am conscious that it will get dark very quickly so I hurry. About three quarter of the way down I meet the youth who walks with me chatting. He is working for the season at the camp near the gorge. It gets darker as we come nearer the He produces a head torch which helps light the way. It takes us a good twenty minutes to reach the car park from where we met and by that time it is pitch black. I thank him for his company and get to my jeep. I am tired and a little bit irritated with myself for nearly having to come down at least part of the way in the dark. And then I realise, of course, he had waited for me! He and the girl were a team whose job it was to sweep up late comers like me. He was going one way, she the other. He hadn’t embarrassed me by letting me know that. For a moment I was reminded of the story ‘Footprints in the Sand’. But he was a real person. I know that because I shook his hand as I said ‘Thank You’.

Monday 26th Katherine

Charlie Drake! Charlie Drake! Now where did he come from? Those of you who have just said ‘Weybridge, Mr Pugh!’ are older than you think. Sometime slapstick comedian of the 1960s, he ventured into the recording business with limited success. Fill in the gaps where you can as I can’t remember all of it but one song began………..

In the bad, badlands of Australia, many years ago…..
(memory gap here)
I said my boy Jack what’s wrong with him?
My boomerang won’t come back!
Your boomerang won’t come back?
My boomerang won’t come back, my boomerang won’t come back
I’ve waved the thing all over the place, practised ‘till I was black in the face
I’m a big disgrace to the Aborigine race, my boomerang won’t come back!
Well I can ride a kangaroo (yeah, yeah)
Make kinkajou stew ( yeah , yeah)
(memory blank here – I bet you’re glad of that!)
It ends up with him consulting a tribal elder who tells him…
The thing you have to know is, to get your boomerang to come back,
Well first you have to throw it!
A not very PC song but then it was the 1960s!

Up very, very early – 5.30am – for a 2 hour breakfast cruise down the Katherine Gorge. We were promised sunrise over the gorge ( missed that), early morning mists (too hot for that), freshwater crocodiles ( we saw one – in a trap!). Apart from that the gorges are stunning and a reminder of the power of nature and water over time ( there’s an equation in there somewhere). Chatted over breakfast to a young couple who had lived in Edinburgh and were returning to Melbourne via most of Australia over the next four months – driving all the way! A retired couple originally from Sheffield heard my accent and were keen to tell me how great Oz was – they took advantage of cheap flights and were full of praise for Richard Branson who they said had broken the Quantas domination of Australian airways. We visited two of the thirteen gorges that form the Katherine complex. Our guide pointed out the levels to which the waters had risen during the great flood of 1998 – Katherine itself is 29km away and the whole town had been under six feet of water! It’s not a place for wusses to live. If the sun doesn’t get you the crocs will. And if they don’t get you the floods will. There was another flood in 2006 but not quite as bad.
Got really excited on the way to the Gorge as I thought I saw my first kangaroo – there are some Australians who have never seen a wild kangaroo. It was real enough and bounded across the road in front of me – at a safe distance I hasten to add given my road kill record. Turns out though that it was a wallaby. I saw another one in the car park drinking from a leaking tap and so was able to photograph it. More were hanging round the waiting area for the boat and it was there that I heard the guide tell someone that they were more likely to see wallabies than kangaroos and besides they would have no problem identifying them because they are so bloody big! Still time yet, I said hopefully. After the trip I passed a very lifelike model of a Kookaburra sitting on a post ..that is until it moved its head. I thought whether or not animatronics had reached Northern Territory yet, decide it hadn’t and got out my camera. Now normally birds scoot as soon as you even think of talking a photo, but this thing had the patience of Job and waited whilst I fumbled in my rucksack for the camera. It even turned its head and smiled when I said ‘Say Cheese’.
Back at my room at the hotel I had a sudden attack of the ‘sleeps’ thought I’d have ten minutes and woke up two hours later. It’s the heat. I decided then to have the rest of the day as a ‘lazy’ day – went into the pool for an hour, did a bit of shopping in Katherine, did this. The centre of Katherine is very small – there are about 11,000 people live here (it was 250 in the 1930s!). walking around the town you quickly become aware of groups of Aborigines of all ages (family groups?) sitting under trees and other shady places, wandering through the Mall, hanging around the drive-thru Bottle Shop ( off licence). They seem to be doing nothing most of the time. Other people in town seem to have a sense of purpose – even if that is only shopping. I’m left wondering if the gap between white Australian expectation and what the indigenous population can deliver is too wide to bridge.

Tomorrow I return to Darwin via the Litchfield National Park where once again I will be testing the 4WD capabilities.

Darwin NT

G'day. Welcome to 'Stralia. I have looked up my old guide book 'How to Speak Strine' in an attempt to get along here in the northernmost part of Oz. Landed at some godawful hour and reahed hotel where receptionist told me I had arrived early (doh!) and my room would not be ready until 2pm. One strop later ( I needed to do it Dorrie) I was in a room throwing all my bags in a corner and leaping - no staggering- into bed. Six hours later emerged to mid-day temps of high 30s. ( the sort of weather to make your throat 'as dry as a dead dingo's donger' according to my guide book) showered, changed and ready for anything I set off to explore Darwin. Ten minutes later I'd done it! well not quite, but there is not a lot to see. 'Head for the Mall' another receptionist said helpfully. i envisaged the Trafford Centre but got Mansfield's Rosemary Centre - but smaller. I did however find a really good food stall where I had lunch - spinach roll with lots of add-ons. wandered down to the Esplanade after that. Beach there but looked a bit crabby. No-one on it. More of that later!

returned to hotel soon after to sort out posting photos on blog. feeling very pleased with myself so far. (ps you may have noticed the blog is a bit eecummings - i can't be bothered at the moment correcting all the punctuation). read uop on Darwin from my Lonely Planet guide. ironically it is about the size of Mansfield and is here partly because the British needed to defend Oz etc from countries further North. A bit later the cattle drovers came and gold prospectors. The Aborigines - who had been here first - were a little put out by this, but settled into a life of subservience and alcoholism pretty quickly so everyone was just fine....except the Aborigines of course! There is an Aborigine legend that says that stealing land etc wil bring bad karma or whatever the Aborigine version of that is. So no surprise then that Darwin has got a bit of a kicking over the intervening years - destroyed at least four times by cyclones ( the last in 1974 when Cyclone Tracey flattened 90% of all buildings in the city!) and once by the Japanese who bombed it to bits. Surprise then that the Aussie Government passed an act in 1976 giving huge tracts of the Northern Territory back to the Aborigines...and asking them to please have a word with the weather gods!

Population is 60,000 but swells in the holiday season. felt quiet today, but found them all this eveing when I went to the Mindel Beach Sunset Market - Darwin's best attraction. the sunset ws a bit of washout as it was cloudy - plenty more chances of them I think. The market, set right against the beach, was fabulous. Stalls galore and food stalls to die for. By accident and spotting the longest queue I found the Malay food stall. Not long after gorging on a beef thingy with lots of vegatable thingys to accompany it . Woman next to me asked me what the 'veggies' were. I said I did not know or care I was just having them anyway! And they were gorgeous. Hot, spicy, gorgeous. Went and sat on the beach to eat it. Got sand in my teeth - Mary! - but who cares. Sun had gone down. Lots of folks on the beach just eating - watching the game, having a Bud! - and I thought if I had to choose between this moment and break duty at Oxford......!!!!

the beach was full but no-one in the water! Crocodiles you think? Killer whales? Nope. But something just as deadly - box jelly fish. all the beaches have 'vinegar boxes' to spray on yourself if you get stung then an instruction to get yourself medical attention asap. Needless to say the sea is a no-no for me!

toured the market afterwards and that is when I started to notice Aborigines. I stopped to listen to a band playing didgeridoos aided by electronics - very earthy. Some Aboriginal youths were watching too. I saw more around the stalls in small groups - usually boys and girls separately. They were clearly here for the fun, but the boys groups reminded me so much of groups of youths at Goose Fair. Not quite hostile but letting their presence be felt. a little later I saw one group playing abit of 'come-catch me' with two security guards. The guards looked more bored than anything else. one group of girls was buying chips from a stall - no Malay food for them. I saw a boy in a cap carrying a coke bottle. Ordinary young people, bored, a bit in yer face, but not a real problem. i wondered what other people were thinking. I wondered too - in the awe sense - at how deeply deeply black their skin was. History has a lot ot answer for. the story of the white and black Australians is far from over. Tomorrow I go to Kakdu, real Aboriginal country.

PS I think I speak clear English but this is not always what other hear. In Singapore I though I agreed to have berries on my ice cream but ended up with a Baileys! Today I asked the bus drive for a two dolar fare and ended up paying two lots of tow dollars! Hey ho!.

Rafles Hotel, Singapore

Singapore - first stop

Wednesday PM Singapore

Waiting for airport pickup so spending another 'ten dolla' on this!

some more strange things from yesterday. heat brings out people - mainly women - with umbrellas. Little India as you would imagine it. An assault on the senses - colour, smells, sounds - it's Diwali so lots of lights! China Town definitely the best. Visited it twice yesterday. went to Taoist temple in the day. Red the dominant colour - lots of paper lanterns - ok to photograph as long as no-one praying. Guide says Singapore a very tolerant place religiously. Hindu temple next door! can't get over the cows on the roof. China Town by night fantastic. narrow streets filled with all imaginable shops, stalls, restaurants - wanted to eat it all but having meal as said earlier (see Racist Aussies!). Fresh produce everywhere. Men offering to make me a suit there and then. Trying to sell me elctronic goods. Fabulous. Passed bric-a-brac stall twice before I worked up the courage to purchase. :Looked at copy of Thoughts of Chairman Mao - 'original signed copy , Sir' - before settling on my good taste purchase of the trip so far. A Chairman Mao alarm clock! complete with picture of yer man with his arm waving to the seconds. Classic! now for the haggling. How much I enquired into the newspaper at the back of the shop. A face enmerged, looked me up and down, thought "Gotcha" ( or whatever that is in Mandarin) and said "twelve dolla'. No way I thought! ' I'll give you ten' I bargained fiercely. 'Done' he grinned. Outside I thought 'you fool, you should have offered him nine!' Clutching my clock, little knowing even if it worked, I hurried away. probably worth about three I thought. still it was a hag if not a full haggle! turns out it did work, alarm and all. unfortunately I set it going and the only way i could have stopped it would have been to drop it out of the hotel window 11 floors up! it ended up buried in a towel in my case. Mao would not have been pleased. Conficious he say ' Western fool victim of own stupidity!"

slow day today after all the rushing yesterday. A couple of hours at the Raffles Hotel, a tour of the National Museum at my own pace, and a nice calm cool swim.

Raffles Hotel. Where do I start? colonial past gone modern. Indian servant in white Raj uniform at the door - marked 'residents only' - poilitely guided me to the Long Bar home of the famous Singapore Sling. slightly incongruously Beyonce is playing in the background as I enter. i sit beneath mechanically operated 'fake' reed fans which give the impression they are keeping you cool but really it's the air-con. bar offers snack menu that includes fish and chips - colonial style of course. all tables are wicker as are chairs - which arenot v ery stable as at one point I lean forward and the chair shoots out from beneath me depositing me on the floor! I bounce to my feet like Cassius Clay - float like a bttuerfly! - as I am surounded by concerned waiters and waitresses. Luckily my drink - if not my dignity - survives! Tables have boxes of unshelled peanuts on them. tradition has it - my Aussie 'friends' let me in on this one - that you eat the nuts and throw the husks on the floor. constant background crunching noise as people make their way about. I join in happily, confident that this is the only place in Singapore where you are actively encouraged to litter without fear of having your hands chopped off!

at airport now where internet is free - no dolla! - and have time to kill before 4.5 hour flight to Darwin. Back to Raffles. finished my fruit cocktail reasonably slowly so as not to look as if I was thrown by my acrobatics. leave when everyone's back is turned but given away by peanut shells crunching beneath my feet! 'Safe journey Sir' the staff chorus. the hotel is a huge white marbled maze. i find my way to a balcony and take soome photos. nearby is a sign for the 'Raffles Museum'. worth a look i think. disappointed to find that the hotel was not founded by Sir R himself who shuffled off this mortal coil when his very own 'ticket' (geddit!) came up at he age of 45 - in deep debt too....the British Gov charged him for buying Singapore! - some time in the mid 19th century. The hotel was established by the Houdini Bros (wrong name but I will check later) early in the 20th C in a chickenshack (that one's for you Rosie!) next to the harbour. over a century later it is still owned by the Hiduja Bros - sorry that's Peter Mandleson territory - and has taken over the world. Not only does the hotel itself occupy land the size of Texas, but there is the Raffles Tower, Raffles Boulevard, the Raffles Medical Centre, Raffles on Ice (made that up) etc etc. Sir R would have been proud of the Gamja Bros but for the fact that they have made a pile of cash out of it and he didn't. Still he has a statue and the hotel named after him. The Ouija Hotel Singapore just doesn't have the same ring does it.

lots of famous folk have stayed there including Noel Coward (plus 'friend'), Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, that Royal that abdicated and ran off with the American, Trevor Howard, Hayley Mills, Kylie (probably), Elizabeth Taylor - oh, and the Japanese....did I mention them before?

leaving there after a trenmendous thunderstorm that hel;ped cool us all down i reflected what it meant. A vast colonial edifice - no, not Sir Stanford Raffles - marble pillars and floors, sumptious restaurants and shops, palm trees and exotic plants, staff dressed to serve the Raj.....a bit of a contrast with two things I sawon the way there. One was migrant workers building pavilions on Singapore Cricket Club. they were on a break and in hammocks below the scaffolding to keep out of the sun. a fag and a bottle of water - no gin slings here! the other was a frail man walkiing by a litter bin. he had a drinks can in his hand and approached the bin but instead of putting the can in he reached in and took another one out, then just walks on. he clearly knew where he was taking them. It reminded me of what our guide had said yesterday. credit to him for beoing proud of his country. No more beggars on the street he said. The Gov banned them. the police arrest them. Just where do they go then? They clearly exist!

spent the rest of the afternoon at the National Museum. Very high tec exhibition of Sinagpore's history. Especially interested in the fall of Singapore in 1942. Basically two things happened. Churchill decided not to risk the navy in defending it - only sent a token force - and the Japanese commander ourwitted his British counterpart. GB had far more troops etc and could easily have repulsed the invasion....but Japanese commander had got to 'gates' of Singapoer so fast it shook the British commander so that when the Japanese commander offered them a chance to surrender...well, the rest is history. Japanese occupation was brutal. Thousand were shot out of hand. Troops were force marched to their deaths. Women and young girls forced into slavery and prostitution - if they were lucky. Lots of first hand accounts in the museum tour. chilling really. how they took us back after the war I don't know, but they did. more irony of course in that Singapore cannot ignore modern Japan as an economic rival and sometimes partner. Deep feelings must be being surpressed by some of the population thoough.

museum teeming with perfectly turned out school children. guide of course tells us that Sinagapore schools the best in the world! noticed 'edges' to uniforms - trainers, wearing of ties, some jackets - youth will push a bit even here.

final reflections on Singapore. Exciting, bustling, colourful, hot, sticky, wealthy, clean, busy. They seem to want to put the whole of the city underground as there are huge building projects everywhere. Lots of reclaimed land from the sea. ordered - a bit too ordered for me - low crime - that's good - hard on drugs - good too - generally safe. but peel away the skin, and I am not too sure what will be beneath. off to OZ now where everything is 'in yer face mate!' Ta ta for now.

Wednesday 21st October - Singapore

jet lag has really kicked in. am sleeping intermittently. not helped by Rosie Fewer ringing me at 4am thinking I was travelling next weekend! As I said not to worry the phone was ringing anyway (old Irish joke!). yesterday was a busy day. met my first aussie and kiwi racists - HFOB you did warn me! - visited China Town twice, went to botanical gardens - very peaceful - and saw range of Singapore accommodation. Am not guaranteeing any of this is in order as mind a bit fuzzed. managed to try out the rooftop pool for an hour or so. met up with a Scouse couple heading for Oz to see children - a growing tale with people I meet - he was an Everton fan so was glorying in the beachball incident! he will be even happier this morning as Liverpool lost again.

decided to go on Singapore tour. coach supposed to be air conditioned. small man at front with battery fan. toured 'high rises' which are where most Singapore residents live. guide vey proudly announced that 90% of Singaporeans owned own flat in high rises. land at a premium. lots reclaimed from the sea in the last forty years or so. further back Singapore - 'lion country' - basically swampland occupied by very few people until the British got their eyes on it - spotted potential of natural harbour - aren't we good at that! problem was that the Dutch had got here first. so in 1819 Sir Stanford Raffles - more of him later - 'bought' the island and its 100 inhabitants from some stoned Dutch sailor who couldn't remeber he sold it the next day so that caused a bit of a row. compromise was that Dutch took Indonesia - more 'hemp' there! Population now 4.5m. Good investment Mr Raffles! stayed British until 1942 when Japanese took it over. Remember the bikes? well Singapore was one of the best defended places onm earth as lopng as you attacked it from the sea. The Japanese of course cycled the length of the Malay peninsula and popped in the back door and Bob's your uncle. British surrendered with hardly a shot fired and paid the price for it in japanese prison camps and on the Burma railway!

the japanese of course had to surrender it back in 1945 when our own Dickie Mountbatted took the surrender on the steps of the Parliament building. we kept it unitl 1963 when we handed it over to Malaya - the residents not happy about this and so went independent in 1965. Guide vey proud to tell us a saga of foreign investors, banned strikes, low wages, market forces and rapid economic growth. government set up Provident pension fund for all workers - took 20% of pay but made employers gicve 20% too. thus able to fund cheap housing and guaranteed pensions. 'Boom' helped by lots of foreign workers. gov very heavy on crime - crushed Chinese gangs ruthlessly. Area now 'low crime does not mean no crime'. I did notice the 'death for drugs' on my landing card. guide proud to say Singapore a very safe place but I did notice the plethora of CCTV and high fences in the wealthy areas. death penalty for kidnapping too.

back to the racist aussies and kiwis. wnet in the evening on a tour of China town, which included a meal. sat with retired Oz couple, retired kiwi couple, and two women from oz - one of whom on way back to have first baby at home. nice conversation until retired Oz lady mentioned she had seen a young woman with twins in Stockport of all places - problem was that one twin white and the other black! up pops her husband with ' it'll come through you know. Like cattle. the strain will come through. not like in aborigines. strain can't come though in abos.' well it was like the flood gates being released. off they went down racist lane. the maoris got it - 'they tatoo their faces you know! it looks filthy!' people with tatoos got it! people with ear and body piercings got it! and then they launched into foreign toilets! the Oz gut was such an expert on the losiness of toilets all over the world that I suggested he write a "Rough Guide' to them. the attempt at humour went down like a tatooed maori with body pierced mixed race twins at a Melbourne beach party. I was still rolling with the punches when the meal suddenly ended and we spilled into the street to catch our Trishaws. glad to say the evening got more surreal but for the right reasons. there were eight of us each in a trishaw powering in convoy through the streets of China Town, and on to the main thoroughfares. one of the trishaws had its own sound system so to the beat of Bony M - "Ra ra Rasputin!' - and Michael Jackson's "beat it" we traversed the city.Great fun! even the racists were smiling - but not at the irony like me!

time to pack for my flight to Darwin. hope to visit raffles Hotel this afternoon - if they let me in!

Tuesday 20th October 2009

Singapore. Day 2

If you really have to take a 12 hour flight then Heathrow at 10pm is as good a starting point as any. It's quite, efficient, calm. Yes - I did say Heathrow! Apart from argument with car hire firm - which I lost- all went ok. I wanted to drop car at Terminal 4, they insisted I brought if to Terminal 1. I agreed if I could check in on time. I was all for leaving the keys at their empty desk. Dorrie, you know what I'm like when I feel a complaint coming on! well, the thought of the bill when I returned from Oz made me see sense and I took the car to them. to their credit they rsuhed me back and I got through checkout with time to spare. So glad I booked Premium Economy! lots of leg room, nice service - the people next to me were whalloping the free booze before they got their seat belts on! Mind you they did sleep nearly all the way. i foresook the booze and stuck to water. I slept badly. You do the maths. plenty of leg room, but I am too long for getting really comfortable. Numb bum syndrome I'm afraid. I still just don't get the physics of flying. How the heck can a thing that big be up in the air for over twelve hours! Still, glad to say it was and we landed safely in Singapore just after six local time. 32C.

Journey to hotel uneventful. first imp[ressions of Singapore - very like Chicago in terms of skyline, coastline etc. lots of tall, brightly lit buildings. all road signs in English. cars right hand drive. saw the Singapore Flyer - allegedly world's tallest giant observation wheel. felt a tad sick looking at it! memories of Goose Fair! Perhaps? perhaps? arrived hotel abour 7.30 and did the settling in bit. by 9pm had decided that I was going out into town for a while. Chinese taxi driver was aNeil Diamond fan - said good music transcends all....or something similar in a heavy Chinese accent. Nice man. In a rash moment I said " Take me to the Singapore Flyer!". Half an hour later I was 165 metres or the equivalent of a 42 storey building above the Singapore night sky. the view must be fanatastic if you have your eyes open! tried lying on stomach and holding on to the floor but no better! no, you will be pleased (especially Mary!) to know I managed it ok. great views, took lots of photos. when I got to the photo booth was a bit miffed to find that the only decent photo they had of me was in a "Happy Halloween" frame that they could not change. Oh well.

Moved on from there by taxi to Clarke Key, passing Outram Street and Upper Pickering Street. Thought I was back in Sutton in Ashfield! Clarke Key is riverside restaurant center. Very busy even at 10 at night. Had a bit to eat then set off to get taxi to hotel but ended up getting bicycle taxi instead - ten dolla! fun if a bit hairy at times. no brakes or lights. cutting across lanes of traffic. all the time smiling and chatting in version of English I could hardly follow. somehow in a mad sort of way relaxing. and very environmentally friendly - not a Sinagapore strongpoint I feel..

asleep by midnight. Woken at 3 by message from Tess who had forgotten time difference. back asleep about 4.30. woke 9.30. missed breakfast. one thing. room service efficient. phoned for plug adapter and it arrived before I had put the phone down!

it is now 11.38. I am running out of time as booked half an hour at exhorbitiant cost - 10 dolla again! plan is to go on City tour this afternoon and on a guide tour of China town tonight - including meal. enquired about Raffkles Hotel. was told in no uncertain trems that I would not get in dressed like that! hope I have suitable clothes as will try tomorrow.

one image I cannot get out of my mind is Japanese troops and bicycles. it's about the fall of Sinagapore in the second world war. I will have to come back to this.