|
 Taking a power shower at Barramundie Gorge. |
The gorge's smooth vertical walls offered few footholds or handholds to rest while swimming, and my initial attempts to climb out of the gorge onto a narrow ledge was in vain - I kept falling back into the water. Eventually I did get out and we hiked around through the forest and up to the top of the falls. There were several high-walled rock pools here, quite narrow but very deep. Several other tourists were jumping and diving into the pools and seemed to be having a great time, so I quickly changed into my swimming gear again and joined them. There was one completely enclosed rock pool which was about four metres in diameter with vertical inner walls of approximately the same height. Once a person jumped into it, there was no way to get out except by diving underwater to find an short passage in the rock from where the swimmer could reach an adjacent pool. I contented myself with jumping repeatedly from a high rock ledge into one of the deep and dark plunge pools. I was just building up the courage to try the enclosed pool and underwater exit when it was time to go. All too soon as usual.
We returned to camp where the hungover Dutchman's family were waiting in good spirits. Denise and I had our suspicions that a domestic dispute rather than a poorly husband had been the cause of (or at least contributed to) their staying behind, for there had been shouts late the previous night. The noise may have been due to the drunken Dutchman tripping on a tent support, but whatever the cause, it was forgotten now. We packed up our gear and headed north along the Kakadu Highway to Jabiru. Jabiru is a planned town originally built to serve the employees of the area's uranium mines. 15% of the world's uranium is mined in Kakadu. Only one of the three mines in the Park was operating when we visited so the town was quiet and half-empty. Lacking people to make a mess, the scattered town has won the Northern Territory Tidy Town's competition on several occasions.
 Jabiru Lake: A great place to have (or be had) for lunch. |
Another drive after lunch took us through the part of Kakadu which is still actively mined. A complex agreement between Kakadu's Aboriginal native owners, the National Park Service, and the powerful mining companies allows this to continue. For a brief stretch of the highway we were on the mine company's property and not in Kakadu at all. We passed the hippy-like protest camp of a group opposing the construction of Jabiluka, a new uranium mine being developed in the area. I remembered the billboard campaign in the train stations of faraway Sydney protesting against Jabiluka. The huge posters had shown a broad and radioactive green river flowing through a darkened countryside with the caption "Kakadu by Night." At least production rates had decreased - since the Cold War ended the demand for uranium has fallen off sharply - good news for everybody, not just those in and around the National Park.
We stopped at Ubirr, one of many Aboriginal art sites in Kakadu and Arnhemland, but one of the few that is open to the public. The intense heat was draining, but by staying in the shade and drinking heavily from my water bottle, I kept up with Justine while she guided us along a trail joining the best examples of the site's rock painting. She told us stories based on the paintings and gave us an overview of their moral significance to the Aboriginal people. We were not privy to the full meanings of the paintings, and Justine was as much in the dark as us regarding deeper interpretations of the art, for such information was reserved for initiated Aboriginal tribe members. From the limited information Justine did provide, I was able to get a glimpse of the meanings and history of the art. One rock painting was of Mabuyu, a fisherman.
 Rock painting of the mythical figure Mabuyu at Ubirr. |
After hiking to the summit of a bluff and gazing over the grassy plains below, we circled back to the bus. It was mid-afternoon when Justine climbed into the driver's seat once again and we began the drive back to Darwin. We had a long way to go, since Ubirr was on the eastern edge of Kakadu, alongside the border with Arnhemland.
 Into the dust: roadtrains and unsealed roads prove a choking combination. |
Kakadu's pub in Darwin was the venue for a cheap dinner when we got back to the city, although we had to rush from our hostel into the city as the special deal arranged with the tour company wasn't valid all night. Denise and I postponed much-anticipated showers and hit the pub. A table had been reserved for us and some of our fellow travellers turned up soon afterwards, but the gaiety and camaraderie we had experienced in Alice Springs on the final night of our Wayward tour was sorely lacking here. Our Kakadu tour group had never really bonded. Why? Perhaps it was the range in age of our companions, or the posse of Dutch tourists who conglomerated at the rear of the bus. The mom, pop and two silent sons kept to themselves throughout, and I almost felt guilty approaching them in case I would force them to realise that their tidy family holiday was being shared by a dozen strangers. The two Australian lads were fun, and the American girl was amiable enough, but the young Swiss couple had eyes for each other only and couldn't speak enough English to talk to anyone else anyway. Justine was friendly, but surrounded herself in a professional wall through which no tourists could pass. And that is what I think we were to her - just a bunch of tourists, another busload to be carted around from attraction to attraction in order to pay her bills. She had seen all of the sights before and they no longer held any wonder for her. Luckily I did enough wondering for both of us, and maybe even enough for a couple of the Dutch people too.
Groote en Route, Tourist Trap
Thursday, July 30; Darwin - Cairns, Queensland
Denise and I were in separate 4-bed dorms in Elke's hostel. Because of booking restrictions, we were taking different flights to Cairns, hers at 5:45am with Quantas and mine at 6am with Ansett. We had one reliable alarm clock between us and three roommates each. We couldn't get into each other's dorms without a key, and although our flight times were only fifteen minutes apart, check-in requirements meant that Denise had to catch a 4:05am bus to the airport, while I could sleep in and take the next bus at 4:35am. I could have taken the earlier bus too, but at the time an extra half-hour of sleep was too tempting to resist. We agreed that she would take the reliable alarm clock. I would try to wake up at the same time as her using the dodgy alarm on my watch, whereupon I would get the reliable clock from her when she tapped lightly on my door, reset it, and return to bed. Such a routine may sound like overkill, but having slept through my watch alarm and missing a flight before, I didn't want to take a chance.
It didn't go quite to plan. I woke up all right, but lay waiting for her knock for what seemed like an eternity. Her bus was due to leave in less than ten minutes and I could hear no signs of life other than my roommates' breathing. Perhaps Denise had slept through the alarm. Shit. I would have to wake her. I clambered down from the top bunk and felt my way through the dark maze of backpacks to the door. It was still warm as I stepped outside onto a garden path in a pair of boxer shorts. It was warmer than the air-conditioned dormitory, and quieter too. I could hear mosquitoes whining around the floodlight and crickets chirping as my door swung ... shit, don't close - I don't have the key - lunge back for the door - just caught it. I wedged a shoe between the door and the jamb and made my way along the path to the next dorm where Denise was staying. Tap tap on the door. No response. Tap tap again. Nothing. The mosquitoes were losing interest in the floodlight and gaining interest in my exposed flesh. There was no sounds from the room except the humming of air conditioner, and no light was visible underneath the door. Fuck. She has slept in and is going to miss her flight. Knock a little harder, I'm going to have to wake up her roommates. One of them will probably answer the door, drowsy and irritable, and I will have to explain why I am anxiously standing outside in the garden at 4am in my boxer shorts. I was pondering my next move and being served up for dessert to some more mosquitoes when Denise came around the corner from the washroom, completely oblivious to the fact that she should have come to my room and given me the alarm clock fifteen minutes beforehand. It may sound petty, but there and then, fifteen minutes was an eternity. Denise regarded me with a puzzled expression, as if she couldn't figure out what I was doing there. Relieved but annoyed and too tired to explain, I took the clock and climbed back into bed for an unsatisfactory 15 minute snooze.
My upsetting morning continued when I got to the airport, where my reluctance to have my photographic films pass through the x-ray machine led the tight-lipped security lady to take me aside and open every film canister that I had. I nearly yelled at her when she started playing with the lid of a canister containing an exposed light-sensitive roll, but stifled my protests to a curt yelp when I realised that my discomfort only augmented her power trip. She teased me a little more by tossing the canister up and down in her palm before calling an assistant to take it into an adjacent darkroom and make sure that it wasn't a bomb or a stash of drugs. The only way he could do that was to maul the film inside with his fingers, something else about which I was less than overjoyed. I suppose that I did look a bit suspect though. I was still half asleep, unwashed and unshaven, and when I met Denise briefly near the boarding gates,
 My Carpentarian Puddle-Jumper: hopefully more capable than I so early in the morning. |
My flight stopped off at Groote Eylandt, or Groot Island for those with dodgy Dutch. The small island is in the Gulf of Carpentaria off the coast of Arnhemland. The airport terminal was only slightly larger than a bus shelter. We were allowed off the plane for about 20 minutes while the check-in desk attendant/baggage handler sorted out the handful of souls who were trying to leave the island. Seeing no duty free, I sat on a bench in the aforementioned shelter and tried to read faded and discoloured local information panels trapped behind sheets of dew-smeared perspex.
 Groote Eylandt airport: Not much chance of duty-free. |
I reboarded the plane and slept the rest of the way to Cairns. The flight was a turning point in our trip, not just geographically, but symbolically as well. In Darwin we had been as far from Sydney as we were going to get, and now we were on our way back. I wasn't sure if I was ready to turn around yet. I felt that I was only getting warmed up. Yet suddenly I would be back on the east coast, treading on one end of highway one, the same stretch of asphalt that threaded through Sydney a few thousand kilometres to the south. No more outback. No more red dust. No more desert. From here on we would be on the tourist trail - cuddly koala toys, resorts, hotels, souvenirs, ice cream. And nowhere were the vices of tourism more prevalent than in Cairns, Queensland. As a base from which to explore the Great Barrier Reef, Cairns exploded from a quiet fishing, logging and mining town into a bustling resort within the last few decades. The town is hyped up as an ideal package holiday destination, but it is the surrounding attractions that sustain the town, for there is little to attract visitors in Cairns itself. There isn't even a beach in the town - the tide receding from the esplanade wall uncovers an ugly mud flat upon which only seagulls tread. Humans have to travel to the suburbs north of the town to find a proper beach. The tidy grid of streets in the centre of town hosts malls, fast food joints, souvenir shops, photo processing outlets, restaurants, holiday apartment blocks, niteclubs, and more travel agencies than I would have thought possible. These agencies will sell you a ticket to see anything, do anything - bungy jumping, crocodile farming, hot-air ballooning, jet-boating. Cairns is the check-in counter for your holiday trips and recreation, and after a long day of guided tours and once-off activities around the town, you can return in the evening to spend even more money in the restaurants, bars and late-night markets. Culturally, Cairns is vacant. The population of the town is made up of tourists and those who serve the tourists. Although this can't help local community spirit, it does have its good points, for it means that the town is always on holiday, it is always the weekend, and there is always somebody partying somewhere.
Partying was the last thing on my mind when I groggily stepped off the plane and rejoined Denise. We were picked up by a minibus from our hostel and driven the few kilometres into town. Our hostel was called Castaways. The image generated by the name, that of passionate lovers stranded on a desert island in the South Pacific fell somewhat short when we pulled from a busy thoroughfare into the courtyard of a converted motel, surrounded not by endless stretches of clear blue ocean, but by high walls and similar built-up accommodations. However, the hostel was bright, clean and comfortable and the staff were friendly, so I forgave the optimistic misnomer. The soft bed and starched sheets embraced a weary Denise and I until mid-afternoon.
After we woke up, we ambled into the centre of Cairns and wandered about. Within a few minutes we had seen much of the town's characterless facades and were pretty sure that the areas we hadn't seen were a disappointing repeat of those we had. Searching for something less artificial, we walked to the seafront and gazed out past the mud flats to the water. It too, fell short of my expectations. Instead of the dreamy aquamarine blue water I had seen in pictures of the nearby Barrier Reef, I was confronted by a dull and unremarkable grey/blue vista which spread to the horizon.
In the evening, we went to a pub called the Woolshed. Our hostel had given us free dinner vouchers for the place, and a Woolshed shuttle had even picked us up from our hostel. Its all part of the royal treatment of backpackers in North Queensland and Australia in general - the cheapest hostels with the most useful fringe benefits. Staying in our hostel in Cairns was probably less expensive than even a budget rent in Sydney.
The Woolshed was full of economical backpackers and the food wasn't bad - for an extra couple of dollars you could upgrade your dinner to something a little less bland than the free plates, which many people seemed to do. The most broke backpackers were obvious as hungry-looking individuals and groups scoffing down the small free portions at tables devoid of beer pitchers - these were truly travellers on budgets. Denise and I got talking to a British guy of about our own age called Paul. He was a secondary level schoolteacher taking a well deserved summer holiday. From the stories he told us, it sounded like he needed it. We heard about a kid in his class who had tried to stab his parents. How does a schoolteacher discipline a student like that? The most far-reaching punishment that the school can dole out is be to send the kid home, but such action is hopeless long-term solution. The kid's parent's probably wouldn't be too happy to see him home either, although not for the usual reasons. "Oh shit darling, look! Here comes Junior! Oh no! Hide the kitchen knives! Run! Head for the hills!" Paul wasn't really sure if his job would still be there when he got back to England, but he didn't sound like he cared. He had other little horror stories too, but as the night progressed and my glass continued to fill and empty, they all merged and dissolved into one vague Lord of the Flies-like image savage kids hunting their teacher to exile.
Remote Resort, Rampant Rainforest, Friendly Fruitbat
Friday, July 31; Cairns - Cape Tribulation
For the next three
days, Denise and I were headed to Cape Tribulation, a remote
location on the coast a few hours north of Cairns where the dense
tropical rainforest sweeps down to the beach and meets the Great
Barrier Reef. Remote it may be, but deserted it is not. Slap
bang in the middle of the forest is a large and legendary backpacker
hostel called PK's. The place is advertised as a "jungle
resort." Every backpacker worth his faded shorts goes to
PK's, and although I wasn't convinced that the whole place wasn't
part of some government-funded scheme to herd poor and noisy
kids off the main tourist trails, I couldn't resist going to
see what all the fuss was about. Captain Cook named the nearby
headland Cape Tribulation after he tore out the bottom of one
of his ships on a reef while sailing there a couple of hundred
years ago. Friends of ours who had visited the place had preferred
the name "Cape Ripulation" because of the high prices
charged to captive backpackers for meals and amenities at the
solitary resort. Neither name encouraged much optimism.
We were collected by Baywatch-wannabe Anton in a Jungle Tours shirt and a Jungle Tours minibus at 8am. Along with a dozen other backpackers, we headed north out of the town towards the rainforest and the wilderness. We passed though Port Douglas (Cairns for the rich and conservative) and Mossman before crossing the Daintree river by ferry and entering Cape Tribulation National Park.
 Harvested sugar cane being transported by narrow-gauge train north of Cairns. |
We arrived at PK's at around midday after a bumpy ride down a twisty road though deep rainforest. We were only one of several buses pulling into the resort, and dozens of backpackers spilled onto the forecourt in front of the main wooden building. Behind that main structure, which contained the
 I thought Groote Eylandt airport was small until I went to Cape Tribulation. |
However far from home you may be, you are never so far away that you can be sure that your actions will never be reported to your mother. This is especially true if you are Irish, and Denise and I were given a timely reminder of this fact when we randomly bumped into John, Suzanne and Michael who we had last seen on the bus from Katherine. They were in great humour and had enjoyed PK's immensely, but were leaving within the hour on the buses in which we had arrived. We exchanged stories and tips and shared what little gossip we had concerning our other friends in Sydney and at various locations across the country. When they got up to leave we bid each other a casual farewell, making no plans to meet again, but not discounting the possibility of stumbling across them further down the coast.
During the afternoon we followed a path down through the forest towards the beach. On the way we passed along a raised walkway through a dense copse of grotesque and writhing leafless trees that were growing in what looked like a dried-up mudflat. Surrounded by thick greenery and abundant life, the copse looked out of place, and even creepy. Once across the walkway however, the forest suddenly gave way to a long, broad beach, unspoiled and deserted except for a handful of other strolling backpackers. The breaking waves crept up the golden sand, and to the south it was easy to see the surf breaking over the coral reef a short distance from shore. Coconut trees lined the top of the beach and numerous hairy husks were scattered across the sand. From the beach we could see all of the mountains rising up inland. They weren't terribly high, but they were covered in a dense blanket of rainforest. It was quite breathtaking. It was also easy to see Cape Tribulation itself, jutting out to sea at the northern end of the beach. Besides naming that headland, Captain Cook's frustrating foray into the uncharted waters off North Queensland led to him negatively christening several other landmarks. He really must have been having a bad time of it. He called the mountain top overlooking the cape "Mount Sorrow," and a nearby headland "Cape Disappointment". There are other physical features in the area named in the same vein. I think that Captain Cook was a little polite in his anger though. I bet he would have loved to have vented his frustration and disappointment with names that we slightly more colourful, emotional, and meaningful. If Cook had been honest with himself a couple of hundred years ago, we would have been staying at "Cape Where's That Fucking Water Coming From?", walking on "OhShit There's A Bloody Massive Hole In The Boat" beach, and gazing up at "Mount Somebody Had Better Get A Shaggin' Bucket And Start Bailing." Every year, millions of tourists would come to dive and explore the underwater life at the "Stupid Fuckin' Heap O'Coral" reef. I'm sure such names would have done wonders for helping the rainforest and reef attain the World Heritage Status they now enjoy.
Across the road from PK's was a rainforest research visitor centre. We wandered in and were set upon by a talkative bearded ecologist who was manning the centre along with a black fruit bat called Alexis. The academic's dull botanic commentary was no match for the captivating bat. Alexis was orphaned when her mother was electrocuted by a power line (ouch!); the baby bat was subsequently kept too long in captivity to be self-sufficient in the wild so she hangs
 Alexis the fruit bat. |
Adjacent to the visitor's centre was a takeaway. Little more than an open-fronted shack by the side of the road, this establishment served as the alternative dining option for those who didn't opt for the pricey barbeque dinner at PK's jungle pub. The takeaway employees were indistinguishable from the backpackers in front of the counter, and I almost asked the girl who served me how close she was to saving the bus fare for the trip back to civilisation. Fearing spittle on my chips however, I refrained. But I was still curious about the takeaway employees, whose environment and routine must have been so monotonous - I expected that after a few days PK's would have driven me insane with boredom or paralytic with drunkenness or both. Denise and I combined our purchased chips with some self-prepared plastic-tasting pasta and sauce from a packet and topped them off with tins of rice pudding and fruit for dessert. We were both so full we had to lie down. There wasn't much else to do. There was a guided night walk in the forest which advertised the possibility of seeing countless creatures of the night, but retained a small print disclaimer guaranteeing nothing. A ticket price of $25 was outside our budget and our ideas of value for money. Good decision - a French guy we had been talking to outside the takeaway went on the walk, leaving his chips behind in his hurry to catch the bus, but he saw nothing except trees and torch beams. We took advantage of happy hour at the pub, but quit when the hour ended and prices soared to not-so-happy levels. Getting drunk wasn't a good idea anyway, for we were booked to go scuba-diving on the Great Barrier (Stupid Fuckin' Heap O'Coral) Reef early the following morning.
After it had gotten dark, Denise and I walked down to the beach again. Once out on the sand, the forest closed behind us and it was nearly impossible to tell where the path back to PK's began in the dim starlight. Pleasant though it was, we didn't want to stay on the beach all night, so we didn't walk too far from the concealed break in the foliage. The beach was almost empty - a few dark souls passed us as we walked along the sand, but the night was quiet and the thick humid air muffled our conversation. My torch batteries grew tired, causing the yellowing bulb to fade and flicker weakly. Returning to PK's through the creepy copse was even more unsettling in the dark. Not yet ready to give up on activity for the evening, I explored the laundry facilities and watched the tumble dryer spinning until a timer shut it off for the night. For a moment I considered watching clothes dry on the washing line. Scary thought.
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