Hard at work
By little Paulie, aged 23 1/4
The view from the lighthouse tower. I think this was the less attractive side of the island
Off on an adventure
It was a bit of a mad rush getting everything together for this trip. I was for once packed in plenty of time, into my nice comfortable Macpac travel pack, bought about a week earlier when it became clear that none of the selection of bags I had were really going to be up to the task. (Coincidentally, the salescritter who sold me the pack was part of our group, which got me mates rates). But! (there's always a "but") I had to spend the week before departure in Victoria for work, so there was a bit of fun and games trying to pack for two trips at once; it was all compounded by the realisation that I couldn't pack two weeks' worth of clothes since I didn't own two weeks worth of clothes, never mind three.
(Actually, I don't know why I bothered, since of course I just went feral, changed my shirt only when chunks of salt actually started falling off, and came back with a whole bunch of unworn clothes. Lessons for next time...)
The Victorian work thing was dull but not nearly as horrible as I imagined, I got back at 9 or 10 on Friday night, and with a 5am pickup looming got down to some serious baking. One of the rules of the trip was that each person, with a partner, had to cook for the whole group one night; the other nights you got cooked for. Of course, I thought I'd be clever and bake some bikkies to take up. I wasn't feeling so clever by the time I'd finished, especially since the recipe (Basel Läckerli, a famous Swiss speciality) involves heaps of silly ingredients and quite a lot of preparation. Still, I was awake enough to throw my bags and myself in the car at sparrows' fart the next day and head off on an adventure.
The drive up
Australia, in case you don't already know, is big. I thought I knew this to begin with, but there's nothing like two days' solid driving to really hammer the message home. It's also extremely flat, and for the most part extremely dry. Despite that, the scenery on the inland road we followed was actually kind of attractive, and it's a great way to see the country. The big country. At one point we passed a sign advertising the nearest McDonald's; whereas anywhere else in the world they'd say "turn left 15km", this one said "Dubbo 170mins".
When we stopped in the middle of the plains, as we did from time to time, I also discovered Australia has a lot more sky than anywhere else I've been. I don't know what they do with it all.
I was in a car with Norm, our esteemed trip organiser and
all-around good guy, and Dave Pitchford, one of the three Daves on the
trip, who'd scavenged a CD burner from somewhere and made his own
driving-to-Queensland compilations for the trip. Alas, Norm's car
stereo always reset itself when the motor was started, even if the
power was never actually switched off in the interim. This wouldn't
have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that Dave had somehow
managed to create CDs with one long 70-minute track instead of twenty
shorter tracks, and for the fact that Norm's CD player had no
fast-forward button. After hearing the same three minutes of music
five times, we went mad and killed Dave had to give
up on the CDs entirely.
Norm had a book-on-tape for us to listen to instead. It was a pulp detective novel with cover art so appalling that he'd had to slide it across the library counter upside down. (It didn't work; the librarian turned it over anyway and Norm fled in embarrassment.) Turns out we should have judged it by its cover; it would have saved a lot of pain.
Somehow we made it in one piece to the absurdly-named town of 1770, in scenic Queensland.
The island
|
Hard at work |
 A sign that's now etched into my brain: the three steps to recycling-toilet enlightenment |
So! After two days' driving, half a day's loading, and a mercifully short trip out (one person was sick; for once it wasn't me. I was very proud), we were finally on the island.
Question: how did twenty-five people manage to live under canvas with no running water for two weeks? Answer: very nicely indeed, thank you. The club's been running these trips for ten or fifteen years now, so it's down to a fine art and everything's very comfortable. We had a large marquee for a kitchen; we made a big table out of bits of abandonded boardwalk; we filled the "freezer" (a large cilly bin) with dry ice; and it was cold beer and toasted cheese sandwiches all around.
I'd borrowed Josh's hammock for the occasion, and found a perfect spot on the beach looking out to sea and directly facing sunset. That's the view from my hammock at left. I saw quite a lot of that. The weather was that good most of the time, too; in the two weeks we were there, it showered twice, for all of half an hour total.
Sunsets were actually quite a Big Deal for most of us on the trip, and were largely responsible for the number of G&Ts we consumed between us. I'd have liked to have seen a sunrise too, but that would have involved crawling out of my tent and walking to the far side of the island first thing in the morning so needless to say it never happened. I only saw one sunrise on the whole trip, and that was on the morning of the last day, when we were halfway back to Canberra.
The tower
On the far end of the island was a lighthouse tower. It didn't seem very big, but ships kept bumping into the island so as long as they don't any more it must be doing its job. Some humourless official had put a barrier halfway up the first ladder and padlocked it shut, but fortunately it turned out to be a very easy climb up the side of the tower (it's just a big scaffoldy thing), past the barrier, and back inside and up the rest of the way. Nice views, too; I would have loved to get up there to see a sunset (or even a sunrise), but I didn't think of that until a week after I arrived back in Canberra. Oh well.
(The panorama above was taken from halfway up the tower. Just off the left hand edge is the lagoon where the day tourists were dropped off every morning; our campsite is about 90 degrees past the right-hand edge.
Diving
 The Daffodil and Pufferfish, plus some divers I can't identify |
Allegedly, this was the point of the exercise, 'though as I see it it was really just a bonus.
We took both the club's boats to the island, towing them behind one of the charter boats. They're little 4.3 and 5.3m rigid-hulled inflatables, and they make fantastic dive boats (that's them in the photo at right). At Lady Musgrave Island, it's possible to just strap on your gear, walk down the beach into the water, and have a great dive, but with the boats it was possible to get to some really good sites which otherwise would have been a helluva swim.
There was a resident sea snake at one of the most frequently dived spots. Sea snakes are many times more venemous than any land snake, and given that Australia has some exceptionally deadly land snakes that's saying something. I haven't run the experiment, but I'm told that if a sea snake does bite you you've got a few minutes to live, tops.
Fortunately, there's one flaw in sea snake design; their fangs are right at the back of their jaws, not at the front where any sensible creature would have them. This means they can't open their jaws wide enough to bite people, except maybe earlobes or the skin between your fingers. And they're not agressive at any rate, so as long as you don't try to put one in your ear they're no real threat. Still, diving with sea snakes added that extra something. And while not agressive, they are curious and will often follow divers around, which is a little spooky.
Other than snakes, what else? Incredible fish, of course: anenome fish (one of which attacked its reflection in my mask, which was cute), brightly coloured wrasse of various kinds, humphead maori wrasse, red emperors, sweetlips, batfish, parrotfish, blah blah blah. Mantas: just off the island was an area which some claim to have the highest concentration of mantas in the southern hemisphere. Morays: including the cutest little baby moray. Eels. Rays. Turtles. Coral like you wouldn't believe. Anenmoes ditto. Sharks. And all in beautiful clear warm water, generally with very little current, swell, or chop. I'm still feeling utterly spoiled.
A cast of hundreds! I can't claim credit for the photos below, alas; my $18 disposable cameras weren't quite up to the task.
 Red Emperor |
 Some kind of sweetlip |
 Turns out anenomes are purple underneath |
 Mantas! We saw mantas! |
 Lionfish |
 Some kind of bigeye |
 The cutest little baby moray |
 Eeek! |
Gnomes and bubbly
On my last full day on the island I celebrated my 50th dive in style, by taking a bottle of bubbly (actually $2 spumante, but who's fussy?) and drinking it underwater. For extra bonus points, we took a garden gnome too -- Suzi and Haydn have a gnome called "Wodonga", made of about 50/50 cheap clay and superglue, which has been climbing, tramping, and who knows what else, and which they wanted to take diving. Since I had an underwater camera handy, and since it was an equally silly idea, we combined the two. It turned into an excellent, relaxed and very fun dive; we had to stay shallow for the sake of my cheapo disposable camera, so we were able to stay down for a long time, take lots of pictures, and have a good go at the bubbly.
(For future reference, here's how to drink champagne underwater: (a) take the foil off on land; (b) get underwater; (c) shake it up lots and pop the cork -- or, in our case, undo the screw top (sigh); (d) hold it upside down and drink. You'll need to exhale into the bottle from time to time, or you'll be pulling a vacuum, and that's hard work; (e) pass it on to the next person by holding it upside down with a finger jammed up the neck of the bottle. After a while it starts to taste like salt water, but by this method the five of us were able to get two or three good drinks each before it got too bad. Warning: it will seem flat. It's not. You'll be reminded of that on the way back up. There's actually a section in a popular dive medicine book on gastro-intestinal barotrauma.)
Operation turtle rescue
Lady Musgrave Island is a turtle nesting spot, and once a year little baby turtles hatch and make their way down the beach. Apparently only one in a thousand will make it to breeding age, which are incredibly long odds, but while we were there a nestload started hatching in the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night, and that didn't exactly help. Divers to the rescue!
Lobbing chunks of coral at the seagulls (who had already eaten several turtles apiece, I think; they were just being greedy) may have increased the odds of survival as much as twofold, which means of the twenty or so we chaperoned 0.04 may make it back to the island to breed in a hundred years' time or so. But boy, are baby turtles cute: they look just like, well, grown-up turtles, except they fit comfortably in the palm of your hand (they feel warm and sort of soft-crinkly, rather like a snake) and are basically automata -- they just aim for the sea and wave their little flippers, and never mind if they're on the sand, stuck behind a rock, or being carried around by big warm-blooded bipedal things. I suspect they were paddling furiously even as the seagulls were carrying them off.
Time, gentlemen
We had chartered two boats to take us and all our clobber to and from the island. All the heavy gear (compressors, tanks, fuel, ...) and a few punters went on the Coral Sea, which normally runs fishing charters, and the light gear and the rest of us went on the Spirit of 1770, a high-speed catamaran which runs day trips to the island.
"Good news and bad news", announced Norm on one of the last evenings. Actually, I don't think he mentioned good news. The bad news was that he'd just spoken (via the magic of the sea phone) to the captain of the Coral Sea, and discovered that when we'd arranged for a Monday pickup he'd somehow got the idea we meant Tuesday. The fact that we'd arranged it all through the Spirit folk, who'd proven themselves incompetent several times already, made this all unsurprising. Anyway, no problem; some people would go on the Spirit on the Monday -- some people had flights to catch or other commitments -- and some would stay on the island another night and go on the Coral Sea on Tuesday. Since I get seasick, and didn't relish the thought of going on the slow boat, I opted to go back on the Spirit and overnight in 1770 waiting for the others. This turned out to be a Big Mistake.
Monday evening rolled around, and eighteen or so happy divers arrived back on solid land to be met by Carolyn ("fucking Carolyn fuck fuck", we were later to dub her) from the Spirit office. Seems the Coral Sea folk were worried about the weather, and weren't going out that night after all. Not going out that night of course meant not being ready for loading the next morning, as we'd been told. That's ok, these things happen, butttt... had she thought to get hold of the people on the island to tell them this?
"Do the people on the island know this?"
"No, but they'll find out tomorrow morning when the boat's not
there."
Oh. I see.
Those who had to go places went places, leaving three of us with the unappealing prospect of spending a full twenty four hours in 1770. 1770 is such a small town it only got a name in the mid-80s. Not became-famous "got a name", but got-a-map-entry "got a name". You can guess how happy we all were about the way things were working out.
The town of 1770, take two
We'd only arranged accomodation for one night (which was all we'd need, right?), so the first order of business the next morning was finding a place to stay. Staying in the same place was right out -- way too expensive and not terribly good in the first place -- so it was time to drive along the main road and look for good camping spots. The cunning blighters had put "no camping" signs up all the way along the road, except for the council-run campground, so we reluctantly admitted ourselves and got a teeny spot right next to the path to the beach and in between thirty squalling children. Whoopee.
What do you do in small-town Queensland? (a) See the town! Well, that didn't take long. A museum (crap). A library, open two afternoons a week. A coffee shop with strangely good coffee. Fin.
What do you do in small-town Queensland? (b) Write postcards! Postcards were easy to come by, at least, so we set about furiously scribbling. The problems came when we tried to find $1 stamps to send them overseas. Try shops in 1770: no luck. Try the newsagent in the next-door town of Agnes Water: no luck, but try the Australia Post agent. Of course! Try the Australia Post agent in Agnes Water: spend five minutes waiting for the staff to figure out how to sell stamps (really!), then find out they don't have $1 stamps after all. Obviously noone sends things overseas from this part of the world, and I think I can see why.
What do you do in small-town Queensland? (c) Go to the pub! Last drinks at 8:30, closed at 9:00. 'nuff said.
Between the pub and the council campground where we stayed the second night was a sign on the side of the road which said, and I am not making this up, "NO SHOOTING". Would the locals otherwise let off rounds through people's tents? Scary stuff.
We were woken far too early on the morning of day two in 1770 by thirty squalling children and by men dragging their boats past our tents to the beach. We couldn't check out soon enough.
First order of business: find somewhere else to stay. Imagine our happiness when we found a place back along the road that was cheaper; quieter; nicer; boat- and child-free; and even had cheaper coin-operated laundry machinery. And sold $1 stamps. (If you're imagining happiness, you're wrong; that was an example of the literary technique of "irony".)
That done, day two was more of the same. We were getting close to being regulars in the pub. We went on more walks. I finished the last of my books. We all went slightly mad and started sniping at each other. But we did at least confirm, via the wonders of the sea phone, that (a) the Coral Sea would in fact be at the island on Wednesday morning, and (b) that the remaining campers still had plenty of food, water, and marijuana, so everything was fine. In fact, they were off doing some diving. They'd seen some mantas. We decided we hated them.
Wednesday! Boat day! Hello Carolyn, what time is the Coral Sea getting in? 3:00... or 8:00. That's ok, we know that means 8:00 and that you're too lazy to check, but at least we know that they'll be here at 8:00.
Time passes. Christoph finally writes the last of his twelve postcards.
Hello Carolyn, it's 3:00, is the boat here? No, of course we don't expect you to know, and besides we just looked ourselves and the answer's "no". We'll come back at 8:00. What do you mean, "or 8:30"?
Time passes. We discover we ran out of conversation half a day ago and start listening to tapes on the car's stereo instead.
Hello Carolyn, it's 8:00, is the boat here? No, don't bother, we know: 8:30 or 9:00.
Time passes. Hope starts fading away. By 8:30 we know not to expect them, and now Carolyn's gone home so we can't even abuse her. The guy who works on the wharf selling petrol and spare parts recognises us, though, asks if we're waiting for the Coral Sea, and when we nod yes tells us it's due in at 10:00. Later we were to learn that that'd been the case all along, and Carolyn not only had no clue but had no desire to find out. Hmpf.
At 10:30 the Coral Sea arrives, we grin big grins (so do they -- they'd been on a boat all day), unload the heavy gear, eat the remaining food, and go back to the campsite for a fourth and final night in 1770 before heading home.
Home again, home again, jiggety jog
Actually I don't remember much about the drive back, except that despite leaving 1770 at different times we all wound up in the same small country town at the same time late on the first afternoon. I think I must have dozed all the way back.
