I Want To Be With My Sea

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I am bussing to a town called 1770 at midnight tonight, so killing time in my last day here at Airlie Beach. And staying out of the sun because I caught the most evil sunburn ever on my boat trip. The middle section of my back looks like a raw steak, which is a pleasant thought for all youse stuck home in the cold, I'm sure. Carrying my 3-stone backpack on it this morning was sure fun.

Just an unrelated piece of info - Airlie Beach seems to be obsessed with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They play the Chilis every where, in every bar, backpackers, net cafe, pub, shop, on the bloody street. The hostels hire rubbish guitarists to cover modern rock standards for a few hours every night; as I left Magnum's last night their was playing Incubus' 'Drive' in the most lame way possible, then later at another bar another lame-o guitarist was covering the same song, followed by green day' time of your life', and other bloody boring and easy songs that was over like, years ago. As I type this net cafe is playing 'By The Way'...again.... I have found Bebel Gilberto, The Bees and Bob Marley to be my personal Airlie/Whitsundays soundtrack. I love the chilis as much as the next, but you can hear too much. Bebel in particular was made to play sailing the Whitsundays..bit of bossa nova...

So the Whitsundays cruise was one of the top things I've done so far, definitely. I was on the Tallarook T3, which I later heard is one of the worst boats (read: insane partying, boozing skippers, fighting teenagers, madness at sea boat ; so not all bad) in Airlie. I'm glad I went because it stood up to the hype in that regard! but some parts of it like crew organisation and sobriety (yes, those in charge of our safety at sea were pissed up) were so bad they were good, all of which made things more fun. There were a lot less people on our boat than I thought there would be - it was 22 I think, which was a good thing. The boat was pretty small but managed to have a bunk bed for each of us below deck, and even four double beds for the couples. Our skipper, Philip, was this true blue Ozzie type with a bad mood but a good heart, I think, who kept referring to crew by their nationalities ("Team Germany" "Team Israel") and announced to us all when we boarded that everyone was only allowed to speak english because they are in australia and they should only speak the native language! I found that a bit racist! but obviously all nationalities on baord, swedes, dutch, german etc had perfect english, and there was a small contingent of actual english (most of which was from Essex or East London, I flew the flag for Sarf London) so we ended up forming a troop together.

So our boat left at 4pm ish and we sailed a couple hours through the most beautiful turqoise waters, into the wide open water, past distant uninhabited islands covered in trees growing out of the prehistoric rock, and we eventually dropped anchor in this bay which I wish I could remember the name of, Lobster Bay or something. Our cook, a french bloke called Manu, cooked us up the best dinner I have had since Chris took me to Le Trois Garcons (merci beaucoup encore chouxfleur! top night) and my folks took me to the Ancient Raj in Frimley before I left, a huge feast of steak and trimmings, and cups of tea!!! (I can't afford such luxurious dinners anymore) we eat on the small deck looking out to sea as the last of the sun disappeared and we were in darkness, with the sound of the sea which was very calm, and distant lights from other boats. I think the effect of the waves had me more than anyone else, because I found myself really really quiet on the boat (I think most people thought I was shy or just bloody boring), in a sort of sea trance, on sea prozac, because the plying of the boat was so so so SO relaxing, and the scenery was so entrancing in the day or the night, that I just wanted to be left alone to be with my sea, at one with the waves, etc etc. And after our steak dinner I was on another planet. It was great. But there was a teenage contingent to the boat who wanted to party hard and had brought a large stash of Goon (the slang term for the cheapest nastiest box wine - I brought some too but as usual felt little need to drink), so before long we were all playing drinking games (which descended into dares: "I dare you to snog that boy over there" etc etc - juvenile!). I cracked out the ipod for a few songs (Manu played Manu Chao most of the time which was excellent luck for me as I'm a massive MC fan) and then turned in when people moved to the front deck. At this point I noticed that the diving instructor, Chris, a German guy, had been acting more like one of the paying customers than a deck hand, happily downing other people's drinks, leading the drinking games, passing his iBook round with some really cheesy professional black and white photos of him posing in a suit to prove that he was once a 'consultant' in his former life blah blah blah, and getting a bit lairy... more of him later...

I chose the bunk with a little square porthole above the head so that I could see the stars, which was a good decision. Woken up a few hours later by the sound of someone snoring, I looked up and saw the Plough constellation, perfectly formed and unobscured because there wasn't a single cloud in the sky, right in the middle of my little window, as if it had planted itself there especially for my arrival at sea, blinking really brightly in the pitch black silent sky. Everyone else was asleep so I just lay there looking at it for ages until I fell asleep again. Amazing.

The next morning the skipper woke us at 6am by switching on the engine (the teenager had slept on the front deck and were comatose from goon, so he woke them up by banging a ladle and a pot around their little pissed up ears, which was kinda funny... one of their legs was hanging down into my porthole near my face as I woke up) and Manu made us a big breakfast which we all wolfed down in our jamies on the back deck, squinting with hangovers or from the ultra bright sun reflecting off the sea. We saw the sun rise over the islands and watched - and felt- the tides come in and out, with the skipper pointing out the big long line in the sea where waters were exchanging routes, commuting to or from work like then hordes from two underground lines meet in the station and have to find their way through each other. We stopped round the back of the famous Whitehaven beach and jumped into the little outboard dinghy to reach it from where we were anchored. We started on a small trail through the island to a lookout (spotting a Sand Monitor lizard immediately, crawling through the bushes, looking much like a thing from the Galapagos Islands) - luckily the skipper took us much earlier than other boats drop off there so we missed the crowds and the evil sand flies, though we met those later, the bastard flies), and after making our way on an easy trail through the tinder dry forest and rocks, we came to a lookout high up that gave us stunning panoramic views of the surorunding islands, and a genuinely picture postcard/national geographic magazine-esque view of a huge expanse of sand shallows, you know, the ones where the sand snakes way out into the sea and just looks like some far flung tropical secret - well I was there and it was awesome. Then we walked on down to the Whitehaven Beach itself. The skipper had told us to take any jewellery with us because the sand on this beach is silica, which they make glass from, so rub your jewellery in it and it is cleaned perfectly. But no one spent too much time doing that. This was one part of the sea that was safe from stingers so we wasted no time wading in, after a few minutes gawping at the silica sand and enjoying the feeling of it on our feet, it's like talcum powder, and the same colour practically. The beach was really just ours for a good 40 minutes before more peeps came down so our little breakaway english group got in there (second bikini alert! I'm fine with it now). The water was 100% crystal clear, like bathwater, and only got thigh-high even if you went way out. One of our group, John, spotted a group of two-foot long reef sharks (they are not dangerous) and when we waded to bsee them, they got frightened and swam away, nut eventually we got to see them so I have now swum with sharks, in shark-infested waters. We also saw a couple of big stingrays/manta rays waft past us, and shoals of small silvery fish came to see what all the fuss was about. We had a great time just paddling and admiring how clever we all were to have reached the fabulous Whitsundays, then we trundled back to the other side and returned to the boat and sailed another couple of hours (sat sunning ourselves on from deck in our bikinis, legs hanging off into the spray, downing ice cold Coke and spotting dolphins. But I was still being pretty quiet because I was enjoying myself so much I didn't feel like making much conversation, though I was in a really good mood, but just too relaxed and taken with the sea to bother with pleasantries, though everyone was very nice. I hoped they didn't think me rude but I just couldn't be arsed and how many times am I going to be sailing the Whitsundays in my life!

I was in the last group to dive so me and some others had a few hours to snorkel and were dropped off at another tiny, deserted sand cove to take a peek at the reef action there. This time I was much more confident and got right up close to the reef. But I decided that it damages the reef to be there even if you try not to do so; some of my buddies were touching the reef with their hands when I had been expressly told on my last trip out not to do that, and to be careful not to kick bits off accidentally with your fins (flippers), as one tiny centimetre takes like a decade to grow back. They hadn't heard of this and had been happily investigating the reef by touching everything. As much fun as I had seeing it and swimming round, I really began to feel that I was taking advantage of something far more important than me, and that I might be fucking it up, so I decided that no one should be allowed to visit any part of the reef more than once. But the Ozzies charge between $60-100 in 'reef tax' person per visit, allegedly to subsidise 'monitoring the effects of visitors to the reef'... except no one is fooled by that paper thin premise to rinse people for some more cash to build more casinos. So with all that cash coming in, that mandate holds no water. It's hard not to damage the reef, the current is strong and you are told to let is pull you over the corals to observe without touching, but the coral came so close to the surface that a few times I bumped into it. As well as freaking out because I felt like I was about to be sucked into the coral somehow, waking up the nocturnal sharks sleeping underneath, I really didn't want to feel I'd damaged it. Then I decided to opt out of scuba diving again because I thought between the strong current, the low visiblilty in this part of the reef and the possiblity of doing more damage, I could live without it.

Anyway after a bit of reef action I went back on my own to the little cove (the sea was stony so I had to walk there backwards in my fins to protect my feet - as walking forwards is impossible in fins- and stinger suit, so I looked like a proper twat). But there were these huge bastard March Flies that have huge stinging barbs and the more you swat them away, the angrier they get and the closer they come. So your reporter spent half an hour trying to kick away blood sucking evil suicide flies in her stinger suit and fins, swatting them and burying them alive in the sand. Then the englsh crew joined me and we were all doing it, while pissing ourselves laughing. I think the quote of the day comes from Sally who I think said we "made her do a little wee" from laughing...

After a few hours of reef madness we got taken back to the boat, had out 3-minute showers (the boat preserves water by allowing just 3 mins in the shower! so we were all dirty stopouts the whole time, as it takes me 5 minutes just to wash my hair let alone the rest of me; it was enough to rinse the salt off my skin). We had yet another hearty dinner of beef (with cloves of garlic pushed into it, and grilled.... magnifique) and vegetables, which might sounds like nothing to you guys but for me that's a feast of epic proportions, and more tea!!!! then we chilled out on deck and even the teenagers couldn't face a night on thr goon, we were all so tired from a day of seafaring, trekking, snorkelling, diving and being at one with nature. The group split into two - adults out front and teenagers out back - and us grown up types admired the huge sky with all its weirdly symmetrical constellations (I like to think i was counting galaxies... it looked that way). As we were chatting it transpired I had slept through (yes as usual, I sleep through all the controversies, with my narcoleptic issues even though I was right underneath it all and had my porthole window open) a fight on deck the previous night between the dive instructor and Lambert, one of the German teenager boys who was somewhat taller than the D.I, that broke out because they were basically both pissed up and lairy. On the side of the boat where the gangway is so tiny you could easily fall into the sea! Apparently it was broken up by the skipper and when we all left the boat, we were told to wait for the management who wanted a word with us about it! We later learned that they paid for Lambert and his mates to stay on in Airlie so htey could investigate, and the D.I Chris obviously got the sack. But he deserved it to be fair - he didn't bother to muck in with the other two deck hands, he just drank our goon, showed off, slacked off, did a really shit dive and a dangerous one from what my mates on the boat tell me, tried to shag the easier looking girls on the boat, then got in a fight when he failed (Manu got lucky with this chick on board who swanned around like the queen of sheba, jumping the shower queue, gannetting the food (yeah more than me!!!!!!!), flirting with the deck hands in a very gratuitous way, showing her arse, giving withering 'you're nothing' looks to everyone else, stealing the last double bed by throwing the stuff from the girl who had been given it off the bed and onto the floor, and replacing it with her own stuff without asking (!), and when I took 60 seconds to change out of my bathers in our room (her bed was opposite mine so I closed out door for like 10 seconds), she stood outside and shouted to me: "take your time, sister".... sorry darling, I didn't realise you were just hiring out your personal boat to us lowly prol!! sheesh. And she shagged Manu on the top of the skipper's cabin above us all so we could have easily tuned in... thats not very regal of her)

Anyway....the last morning we were up at 7 I think, after the second night of the best sleep I had in ages form the motion of the boat. We got our breakfast and sailed some more, to another cove with even more turquoise waters. We went to see some Aboriginal paintings in a cave and then went back to the boat, threw ourselves into the sea, had more lunch, then sailed back to Airlie for 2pm.

It was all hilarious for me so I got my money's worth, and I'm glad I'm part of the Tallarook experience. Apparently Tallarook is infamous here for that sort of business. No one told me when I was booking! The experience of sailing some of the most beautiful sea and islands on the planet, seeing how clear the water is, looking into the endless, endless black sky and counting galaxies, and sleeping on the waves, was amazing and lovely.

After that me and the English crew, and our friends from the Low Countries Ilsa, Winde and Sam joined us for drinks as we were told our boat could get free drinks at this place Reef O's and that they;s bus us there. So we hooked up after a shower and a sleep, got wasted on cheap beer and sangria, danced on the tables and rounded it all off with a reet laff. Some peeps were surprised to see me dancing on the tables (well the Twins and Chris know better!) after I was so quiet on the boat, but it was the first chance I had to dance since I came away, so it had been saved up.

Next thing: 1770 for a day, then onto Hervey bay, then 3 nights camping on Fraser Island and a 4x4 sand safari, back to Hervey for one night, then I don't know, maybe Noosa or directly to Brisbane.

Can I give a shout out to Jac Goode if she is reading.... email me x

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Photos

My Head Is In The Sun
Sunset in the Whitsundays, from the boat

Baby I'm Board
Breaks at the beach, Agnes Water next to 1770

Comments

[David Parker]

I remember hearing the red hot chili peppers when i was trying (and failing) to climb a mountain in bulgaria. but worse, it reminded me of when i was at the black sea at balchik and every third restaurant catering to krauts had a singer with an old man on casio backing her up. i heard such smash hits as "hit me baby (one more time)", "crazy", and "venus". something about that beachy feelin', i spose.

[Onehorsetown Loaferville]

hey parker
oi oi saveloy - hows college life? happy new year x