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.