Intermission

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We returned to Broome to find it a town transformed. Temperatures had risen considerably over the last month to what were now intolerable levels, and as a result the entire tourist population had decamped back down south to cooler climes, leaving only a smattering of somewhat relieved locals, who were now left with not much to do.

We ourselves were also at something of a loose end. We’d left our travel plans deliberately vague, just a list of hotspots we wanted to check out. We’d now ticked off all these boxes, and found ourselves in the particularly hot spot of Broome in November with no plans at all.

A couple of timely e-mails pointed us in a new direction. The first one informed us that Debbie’s Australian Citizenship had finally been approved. One last hoop to be jumped through, attending a citizenship ceremony in our home town, so we’d need to be back in Cairns at some stage soon. Then came an invite to my cousin Emily’s wedding in Delhi in February. We could attend, stay on exploring the subcontinent for a while, and fly back to the UK for summer; it all seemed to fit nicely.

The only question was what to do between now and February.

One option was to take the long way back to Cairns via Melbourne and Sydney, but we’d already covered 20000kms over Oz and were tiring of all that driving. We’d also chosen to do so at the exact time when oil-prices hit their record highs, and had thus literally burned through rather more of our cash-reserves than expected. A couple of months work might just top up the piggy-bank. Still, picking up something at such short notice seemed a bit of a long-shot.

Amazingly, a couple of phone calls later and we’d both got our old jobs back, mine due to a timely vacancy, and Deb by having made herself so indispensable that they made a position for her. Girly swot!

So all that remained between us and the 9 to 5 was 6000kms of burning hot bitumen.

Off we set on our merry path home, following the white lines, each one past one closer to home. Luckily this wasn’t the only entertainment, the boiling sun’s rays heating the plains and setting off an impressive series of whirlwinds which would creep their way along the horizon, or every so often threaten to engulf you. Following their path with your eyes proved even more hypnotic than white-line watching, the trance only broken as they switched from benign orange to ominous black on crossing burnt out areas. Wherever they roamed the big wedge-tail eagles would follow, scanning for victims panicked in the wake. Every so often one would alight on the road for a nice dessert of roadkill, and seemed not the least daunted by our 3 tonne bulk rumbling at them, fixing us with an eagle-eyed gaze that rather suggested you’d better go round, mister, I ain’t no chicken!

Keen to cover as much ground as possible that opening day, we broke our golden rule and drove through into the night, a heart-stopping game of dodgems for both us and the roos. Eventually we saw sense and pulled over, emerging from the car into a moth-filled oven, as if the moon had suddenly learnt a new trick from its big brother, scorching our plans for a good night’s sleep.

The next day proved to be more of the same. Somehow familiarity seemed to stretch things out even more, as we revisited hamlets that were surely further apart than ever. The only highlight of day 2 was stumbling across a pub serving Mango Beer, Matso’s having branched out from their Broome base. Mercifully by evening we’d passed from Western Australia into the Territory, where the humidity seemed a little less severe, and had a beautiful night’s camp near Timber Creek.

Had kidney stones not intervened, we’d planned to be in Timber Creek a good month earlier, just in time for the Great Toad Muster. This improbable event is one of the last titanic struggles of man versus beast, as a handful of plucky volunteers desperately hold a thin blue line against ever advancing waves of cane toads.

The toads were introduced to Oz back in the thirties at Gordonvale, very close to our hometown of Cairns, by a bunch of farmers desperate to stop beetles eating all their sugar cane. Unfortunately the toads almost completely ignored the beetles as they found so much other good stuff to eat, promptly marching off from the fields in all directions in an orgy of bingeing and sex. To compound the problem the toads themselves are highly poisonous, but totally lack warning colours to dissuade potential predators. As a result Australia is well on its way to being a country inhabited solely by humans, cane toads and cane beetles, the warty hoppers having spread over half the nation in a single human lifetime.

So far Western Australia has been spared due to the large expanse of desert separating it from the rest of the country. The wetlands of Timber Creek are the toads’ only path through, so every year at the end of The Dry, when the toads are confined to the few remaining pools, a collection of otherwise normal individuals choose to spend 3 weeks of their annual vacation scooping ugly amphibians into plastic bags. Amazingly so far this seems to be working, but gives an ominous foretaste of what life may be like once the first genetically modified critters we’re so wisely creating escape from the labs and farms. I for one don’t fancy spending my holidays chasing 9ft chickens across the landscape, though I know a more than a few people who’d happily fish for man-eating carp all year long.

By the time we rocked up the first rains had already come, allowing any straggling toads to hop off once more in all directions, and the battle had been suspended for another year. Timber Creek holds little other excitement itself, so we motored on and camped about an hour east in a lovely spot by the river. Here we were dismayed to find the biggest cane toad I’d ever seen, who looked likely to be able to hop right round Australia in only a couple of weeks. Undeterred we sprang into action, and before long, and after only an admirably small amount of dancing and screaming on our part, we’d done our bit and had him imprisoned in a plastic bag.

Unfortunately we then found ourselves completely unsure as what to do with him from there.

Had he been caught in the muster itself he would have been dispatched with a quick blast of CO2, but regrettably noxious gases weren’t something I’d thought to pack.

Being slightly squeamish, we hadn’t the heart to run him over, so I decided to give him a sporting chance. Back home big toads seem happy enough to sit out the Dry in the confines of our storage cupboard, being particularly at home inside my old backpack . If this one could last the trip back to Gordonvale we’d release him just like his forefathers, and leave it to our grandkids to sort out in another 70 years. His efforts to free himself from his plastic confines in the meantime saw him christened ‘Russell’.

The other highlight of the night was our very first sugar-glider. These guys resemble a cross between a squirrel and a skunk, and cap off this unlikely combination by also being able to fly. They’re fortunately too big to be eaten by cane toads, but way too small to down one themselves, so have been spared a slimy death. Nevertheless they’re a relative rarity, and being nocturnal and almost entirely silent are not often glimpsed.

Debbie was the first to spot our new friend, swearing something small and furry had just whizzed by her ear and disappeared into the nearest tree.

‘Bat’ I declared, personally suspecting it was more likely a touch of the heebie-jeebies after our toad adventures coupled with a bit too much of the vino, as bats are normally even noisier than our Russell.

A few minutes later, though, there he was again, a tiny rectangular kite sailing through the corner of my vision and alighting soundlessly on the nearby trunk, where plainly he, or more likely she, had some kind of a nest.

In an instant we had her cornered in a cross-beam of torch-lights and what a cutie she was, great round eyes and wet twitching nose sniffing us out. If only Russell had thought to be this cuddly instead of warty and noxious he’d be revered as a national treasure and liberated from his plastic prison to be kept as a pet, or set free across the land to roam as he pleased, despite his penchant for murder and mayhem. Then again we already have such a beast in Oz, and, now I come to think of it, almost everywhere else in the world. It’s called a cat.

There were few other highpoints of our week long drive. One was the tacky-but-still-cool tourist pub at Daly Waters, a one building town that’s so remote it manages a mention on many world globes, alongside places like, say, London or Tokyo. Then again it’s also the only pub I know with its own airport.

Another was the unexpectedly delightful town of Cloncurry, by day a hot windswept hellhole, and by night, well, still a hot windswept hellhole, but one chockfull of taverns where the locals treat strangers like long-lost friends.

Cairns eventually welcomed us home with an almighty thunderstorm, reminding us what an extraordinarily green and damp place it can be after our last few months of dusty orange desiccation. Handily we’d arrived just in time for the Christmas parties to kick off, allowing us to catch up with friends with ease, 2 months flying by in a blur of alcohol-fuelled bonhomie. Before we knew it Debbie was an Official Aussie, tickets had been bought, and we were packing for the next leg of our big adventure.

Big thanks to Paul and Charlene for putting us up (and putting up with us!) when they probably had better things to do, not to mention providing some fantastic dinners, and all the Cairns and Port gang for such a warm welcome home and memorable Christmas, and for politely downing the last of my Brazilian caiparinhas without complaint.

Alas I have to report that Russell never made it to Gordonvale’s green and pleasant fields, a quick sniff confirming he’d long since reached Toad Heaven, his plastic coffin later ditched in an Esplanade bin near the Cairns War memorial, one last victim of this year’s battle.

One last thought: make sure you go easy on those African Spices, Paul, at least at breakfast time!


Cheers,


A.

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Photos

Green Tree Frog in our backyard
If only Russell had looked this good he'd still be with us now!