The restorative power of having little to do

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The 30-year-old fuel stove is choofing malcontentedly, and we put in a half-hearted attempt to improve its efficiency enough to get a dinner out of it. The result is in proportion to the effort we put in and, as the stove coughs itself to a stop, we decide the most holidaying way to deal with the problem is to forgo a hot meal for another glass of wine and the pleasures of cheeses and crackers on the beach to watch the post-sunset colour fade from the horizon.

It's our welcoming message from Lady Musgrave Island: that what may seem to be a problem may turn out to be a pleasure if we change our perspective.

We are half way through a two-week respite from the stresses of work, and have arrived on the island, part of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, after several days of slouching around the quiet, picturesque village of 1770.

1770 straddles a small headland on Bustard Bay, whose waters are filtered by mangroves and flush into the Coral Sea. It's 120-odd kilometres north of Bundaberg on the Queensland coast, not far south of the Tropic of Capricorn. The town is named for the year in which Lieutenant James Cook made his second landing on the east coast of what is now known as Australia (the first being Botany Bay, where Sydney now stands). The first time Claire came to 1770 was in the late 1980s, in a replica of another colonial-era ship, William Bligh's Bounty. With other volunteer crew wearing makeshift 18th century sailors' costumes, we carried a 5 litre keg of rum to fuel a rowing-boat race to shore, where we talked to the local school children who had been brought down to the beach for a history lesson. It was all in fun, but they probably got more than their teachers had bargained for. Dave had been here only a few years previously, on a holiday with his family, when he had arrived by the much less romantic mode of four-cyclinder petro-chemical-fuelled car.

The village didn't seem to have changed all that much. It dozed in the winter sunshine, its people quietly making a living from fishing and tourism.

There's not a lot for a holidaymaker to do, which suited us just fine. Even so, it took a few days of concentration to remember how to let ourselves unfold with the day. We lolloed on the daybed under the windows in our bamboo-matted room on the hill slope above the inlet, reading, and watching boats and picnickers come and go, tides flow and ebb, the colours of the day changing. 1770 is one of the few places on the eastern coast of the Australian mainland where you can, by dint of geography, see the sun set over the ocean. We didn't know about this phenomenon until our first evening there, when we watched with amusement as the holiday-makers, like so many crabs, emerged from their caravans and hidey-holes with fold-up chairs and scrabbled down to the sand to set up in clumpy lines to watch the sunset. Laughing at ourselves, we joined them, watching the sunset, watching the watchers. And watching the local boys who overestimated their abilities and bogged a jet ski on a sand bank in an ebbing tide. Local dinghies returned to port as night dropped down. An amphibious vessel lumbered over sand bars and through the inlet waters, also returning to base. We wandered back to the little restaurant below our room for a bite to eat, not hungry yet but not wanting to miss the early kitchen hours and have to cook for ourselves.

And so the days and nights turned slowly on each other.

Of the activities put on by local tour operators, a favourite is a day-trip to Lady Musgrave Island. We were going there too, but to camp for several days. Campers have to take everything they need, including drinking water, there being no facilities on the island. Although there is camping for up to 40 people, we are delighted to discover we are sharing the island with only about 15 others.

Lady Musgrave Island is a 14 hectare coral cay, the southern-most island in the Capricornia Cays National Park part of the southern Great Barrier Reef. The island has emerged out of one end of a 1,200 hectare reef, which encloses a large lagoon. The operator of the day-trip has a private pontoon in the lagoon, which also harbours passing yachts, several of which came and went over the few days we were there.

The most notable vegetation on the island is the pisonia (Pisonia grandis), which grows in tangles of warped trunks and branches over much of the island. The canopy of large, bright leaves casts a yellowish-green light under the trees, ideal for otherworldly walks that fire the imagination. Along the back of the beach grow she-oaks (Casuarina species), pandanus or screw pines ( Pandanus tectorius) and sandpaper figs ( Ficus opposita ).

From our campsite on the beach we can see the Fairfax Islands, which Dave proposes, rashly, to swim to one day. He can't raise the energy though, and then dreams of having a kayak here. Instead, every day we go snorkelling over reefs and bommies. Several green turtles mosey around, although there are few here at this time of year. (The island is closed to campers from late January to the end of March, when the turtles are laying eggs and the young hatching, to give the turtles a chance against the sheer overwhelmingness of human curiousity and interference.) Loggerhead turtles come here, too, though we saw none during our visit.

We spend another magic hour or so outside the lagoon, following a manta ray that seems as curious about us as we are about it. It glides ahead of us and a couple of metres below us, keeping our pace, and we follow it through coral canyons that eventually give out to sand dappled by the sunlight. Everywhere there are fish in party outfits. And black trepang (bêche-de-mer), satiny against the sand. And on low-tides walks on the reef near our campsite, more trepang, crabs, little fishes, and the most amazingly whimsical nudibranches.

The days on Lady Musgrave Island pass by too quickly for a couple of people doing not much more than watching the wildlife and the changing light, browsing for shells washed up on the beach, eating, snorkelling and reading. And chasing the buff-banded rails (Gallirallus philippensis) away from our food. They seem to be inexhaustible, and we end up storing the food in the tent. (Note to self: next time, store everything edible in lidded boxes.) The vegetation also protects numbers of bright little silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis). At this time of year, most of the other birds that frequent the island are elsewhere on their migratory itineraries. Among the resident shorebirds (that is, those that don't migrate) are some pairs of sooty oystercatchers, which the Australian Marine Conservation Society reports are under threat from all sorts of human interference, even seemingly innocent activities such as running along beaches, boating and letting dogs run free on beaches. Alarmingly, it reports that recent University of New South Wales researchers have discovered that resident shorebird populations have crashed by more than 80 per cent in the past 25 years. Migratory shorebirds aren't in a much happier position: their numbers have dropped by almost 75 per cent. There aren't any dogs on Lady Musgrave, but there certainly are a lot of people, both campers and day-trippers.

It is not just the birds that are struggling because of human growth and development, and climate change. The Australian Marine Conservation Society says that shark populations, too, are collapsing. Even on the Great Barrier Reef, a national park in which native species are protected, sharks are taken—mostly for only their fins, for the increasing popularity of shark fin soup. And we wonder how much our own activities contribute to the loss of sharks and birds.

Phew! Heavy-duty thoughts. Perhaps it will be more palatable over a glass of wine? What do you say? We could bring it down to the beach, and watch the little reef shark one last time. Every evening it has come looping through the waters in front of the campsites in search of an easy feed of fish offal. First it is a silhouette against the captured sunset orange of the water, slowly dimming to the mere suggestion of movement as the colours fade and evening star appears. Cheers!

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Photos

And another
With a scrub fire on the horizon

Another perspective
Sunset from our room in 1770

Customs, island style
A persistent buff-banded rail looks for food to confiscate, Lady Musgrave Island

Oh, no, not more beautiful sunsets
Fairfax Islands on the horizon