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Published: July 17th 2010
I’m back from my fabulous tour around the Whitsunday Islands. The trip was pretty darn excellent and, very important for this type of thing, lucky; lucky with the weather, lucky with what we saw, lucky with the people on board the boat with whom I sailed, lucky in almost all ways!
It’s funny how much you can learn about a nation from its bus drivers. I’ve taken long-distance bus journeys all over the World, and I consider myself to be a bit of a connoisseur of them! I often use them as a general barometer of the culture at large. Think about the cold matriculations of the average monosyllabic monsters manning the buses of England and America. Think about the power mad anti-heroes of the buses in Central and South America. Climbing onto the bus in Townsville, I was quite eager to see what would transpire. It turns out that the bus drivers have a lot in common with Australia generally: a courteous, pleasantly informative, and wryly amusing style, which is playfully teasing, warm, generous, relaxed, and kind to young people! Lovely people, these bus drivers and the same was true for the boat Captain and his crew!
The
boat was a three million dollar catamaran. The Captain was a jaunty New Zealander, about thirty years old named Harry. He had that earthy, macho, sarcastic, light-hearted, sense of humor that seems to typify the antipodean male. Everyone is easy to get along with. Everyone keeps it light and funny. At the same time, the range of opinions and attitudes seems deeply circumscribed, so that it makes it particularly challenging to talk about anything outside the frame of the allowed topics. Vegemite, football, drinking tales, exploits of male bravado: All OK. ‘Emo’ bands, philosophical speculation on Politics, religion, the Nature of Being? Perplexed expressions: how awkward, anyway, back to drinking stories and football and vegemite! Of course, there was also the little matter of the age-gap.
After walking along another dashing and lovely esplanade/wooden boardwalk along the cute front of Airlie Beach and waiting at the appointed spot for some time, the main host, a chap from Essex named Richie Rich, who was a lovely bloke, although deluded about still retaining his accent after twenty years in Oz, begins the boarding protocols. (Later tonight, another deluded person is going to receive his comeuppance about his accent, when it is
described as ‘50% Manchester, 50% Boston’ by a Canadian - that’s right, the ‘other person’ is me!) With mounting horror, I realize that this large group of half naked twenty something males who have been guffawing and high fiving all around me for the last half hour are to be my shipmates! Something like twenty males and five females are boarding the ‘Emperor’s Wings’, along with a crew of six: four females and two males. I am the oldest human on board the ship. There is a gigantic Swedish chap, in his forties, married to an early forties Brazilian from Bahia called Iris who are the next oldest. After that, the next oldest is a withered old twenty-five year old! A perfect time for my burnt lip from the weekend’s V8 sunshine exploits to blossom into a blistered, leper mass across my bottom lip. ‘A perfect start,’ I thought to myself.
As if being a midget geriatric wasn’t enough, I had to look like a midget, geriatric leper!
It’s like Club Med on board the sailing ship as we leave the Airlie Beach harbor, and I’m wondering what I’ve got myself into here as everyone starts stripping down
and cloud-bathing at the front of the boat, while the interminable instructions drone on from Richie and the various crew members: Marion, the cute Host and cook, Caroline, the lead dive instructor, who lets me know that introductory diving is not going to work out due to my Thyroid medication and condition ( I should have lied on the epic form I had to fill out - I knew it!), Leila, the general ‘dogs body’ on her second trip with this boat, with a propensity to say things like ‘well, you can stand there if you like - of course, you will get chopped in half by the sail, but if you don’t care about that….’
The weather clears and improves as we sail towards the most Northerly Island, Hayman Island, reserved for the rich and famous - and Blue Pearl Bay is available to us for a lovely little snorkel. There are tons of fish, but the coral looks rather weathered and beaten. Also, the water is slightly less warm than I anticipated: despite wearing a wetsuit, I only swim for about 45 minutes before feeling chilled and coming out of the water. The boat leaves for a
lovely sunset, then a cruise around Hayman Island, along the East coast of Hook Island, then Whitsunday Island itself to nest in a sheltered bay for the night. We all enjoy the delish food prepared by Marion and start getting to know one another. It’s quite an International cast - mostly Europeans, including French, Swiss, Slovakians, Germans, Canadians, English, and, of course, Ozzies. A few beers were drunk then along came a slide show of photos taken during the day, narrated by Richie. By the time that was over, it was already 11:00pm and all the swimming and afternoon sun had tired everyone out. Into the bowels of the ship we slithered, to where the claustrophobic spaces we were to sleep in waited with gruesome sloshing water noise soon to be only one instrument in a cacophony of slurping, slushing, sloshing, explosive groans that were destined to pervert the night. The ugly symphony of snoring began just as the collected body heat and lack of ventilation pushed the temperatures up to humidly unpleasant. Even with ear-plugs in, I realized I had no chance of sleep in here - Igor from Slovakia was sawing wood in perfect synchronicity with sixteen year
old Ehem directly above me, while the fake Slovakian blonde, was making strange strangled gurgling sounds and weird little squeaks, meanwhile Serge’s French-Canadian bowels were clearly rejecting the evening’s fare, while Marie, his Britannic, French mistress suffered next to him in silence: Two out of eight people silent - the other six making a shifting, gurgling, dorm opera accompanied by the violent sloshing and slapping from the building ocean.
By 3:30am, I was on deck with a pillow, laying on a hard bench, but blissfully alone, accompanied only by the gurgling slop and the delightful cool wind and sleep came to me in a gorgeous rush. Sunrise was lovely. Soon I am seeing turtles rising, taking breaths then going back down. I see what I think are cresting dugongs also rolling across the surface, their backs rolling across the surface like finless dolphins. There are evocative clouds stuck to the island hills. They are destined to clear away to unveil an utterly perfect day, with nary a cloud to blister the sky.
After breakfast, we take the dingy to the utterly fantastic Whitehaven beach. What a gorgeous spot. I go for an epic walk along the white silica expanse.
Sand rays are plentiful in the shallow water as the tide creeps in. The twenty something group stays in one place making giant collapsing pyramids out of themselves, crashing into each other, doing dares, that sort of thing, while Marion takes illusion pictures for the evening slide show: twenty something on beer can, twenty something holding other twenty something like a Barbie - I must confess they were rather clever and amusing pictures - but I didn’t buy the $30 DVD at the end of the trip. We go to a great lookout, see a dangerous golden orb spider ( I didn’t know it was dangerous when I took the photo!) Meanwhile, Iris has lost her giant boyfriend, so Caroline and I search for him, only to discover that he somehow got back to the boat - poor Iris was really worried, but we were all relieved he was OK.
After this lovely beach, we set off across the Ocean for four hours of delightful sunbathing and coruscating light out to the Outer Barrier Reef and the ‘Stepping stones’ and ‘Paradise Lagoon’. Here we snorkel and dive, then eat and sleep, then snorkel and dive again the next day
before heading back for home. It was lovely out there - but the coral was not in pristine condition - a cyclone hit the area and knackered the stag coral as recently as March, and there are Crown of Thorn starfish voraciously munching away at the surviving coral. Apparently, the approved way to kill these exotically strange and yet fiendishly destructive coral pests involves injecting them with petrol!
My favorite sightings included playing with a beautiful cuttle fish, about the size of a small dog that changed its skin color repeatedly to blend in with the coral, following a whopping great sting ray with two large fish swimming under it, playing with the large Trevally fish that all hung around the boat attracted to the lights and the opportunity to ambush predate, following the giant parrot fish to the wrasse cleaning station, tickling the giant clams with their strange blue lips and golden eyes, and watching the whales that jumped playfully out of the water repeatedly, like hyper-active teenagers, breaching over half of their bodies each time they jumped!
The wind was much more pronounced when we woke up on the reef - the night had been turbulent -
but I spent the night in my much more pleasant outdoor spot which, while hard, was at least snore free. There was quite a pleasant atmosphere on board by this time, like a dinner party where everyone is going from person to person, swapping stories, playing cards, laughing. I got particularly friendly with Marie and Serge, Murphy and Sandra, the twins from Melbourne, Calvin and Alan, Caitlin and Caro, the Vancouverites who work in what they claim to be the worst Urban decay area in North America - right there in Vancouver (who would have guessed it) and Iris and the giant Scandinavian, as well as Marion, Richie and Harry from the Crew.
As we head off from the reef, the weather has evolved. There is now a six foot swell created by the 15 to 25 knot winds, to go along with the crystal clear blue sky. All the twenty something males have rushed to the front of the boat, getting all macho happy as the boat rises and plunges, giant waves crashing over the whole boat, to initial chorus roars of excitement and pleasure. The giant Swede and I are wearing sensible rain coats off to the
side, hanging on for dear life, loving the ride, but avoiding the testosterone proving ground of once again semi-naked chaps slithering around the deck like fools. I turned to my giant Viking buddy and said - ‘I’ll give them twenty minutes!’ I was wrong. Fifteen minutes later, there was only one of them left, an English chap I called, ‘LFC’. Ten minutes later, he too was gone, shivering and puking in the back of the boat with the others, while me and the giant Swede, in our sensible raincoats, ride out the whole journey like a giant funfair ride! The whales come so close to us on this part of the ride you can see their eyes - but my camera is below decks!
By time we get into a stable bay after this incredible ride, there awaits an evening of drinking, of learning once again that poker is not my game after getting fleeced of one-ply paper currency by the twins from Melbourne, of final slide shows, of stories and laughter, of sleeping on a hard surface one more night, of breakfast and returning for closing applauses and farewells back at Airlie Beach, another lovely Greyhound ride back
up to Townsville in another delicious weather day to find that the engine has blown up on the second boat I’m supposed to be going with tomorrow, so I guess that’s it for the reef.
I get to spend more time with my brother, so that’s good.
On Monday afternoon, I’m flying to Darwin and the next section of the trip. Antony and I are going to Charters Towers tomorrow, a town on the edge of the outback which grew up around a now disused gold mine.
Better go get my refund for the second boat ride before the place closes!
See you on the flypaper!!
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Nice!
Sounds like a lovely trip, all in all. Glad to hear you were a warrior on the ride.....cheers for the old guy! We're still sweating like pigs in these parts.....humidity is back again, after the briefest respite. Your plants are alive, though I must admit, a bit brown around the edges - I'm trying, really! Still no signs of painters - maybe they'll start when the heat abates. (my own painting has come to a standstill until it cools down some). Good news for Gia - she got a 5 (out of 5) on her AP English placement exam. Hopefully that'll count for one college English class out of the way :) Anyway, looking forward to the next installment of Adventures in Oz - stay well, stay safe xoxo:)