Denniblog

If we won’t go to the outback, the outback will come to us.

Rockhampton is the cattle capital of Australia. The town’s charming colonial centre is in stark contrast to the sprawling American-style suburbs and malls that surround it. For about twenty minutes, we drove past endless arrays of warehouses, megastores and motels before we crossed the Fitzroy river and into the historic city centre.

But one thing they have in common, whether modern or old, estate agents or tool shops, are the fibreglass bulls that adorn many buildings. And not just bulls, horses too:

Not to be outdone by the Americans, not only does country music sound from every bar (interspersed with cheesy Seventies and Eighties rock, just to let us know that we are still in Australia), but to my knowledge, Rockhampton also has the only pub with a bull riding arena on the premises. There wasn’t any bullriding on a Thursday night, but it does serve the best steaks in town.

This provided a propper contrast to our visit to the Aboriginal Dreamtime Cultural Centre earlier that day, where John got infected with the didgeridoo bug. But that’s another story.

After a night in the flea-bitten but stylish Criterion Hotel, we headed north to Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands.

Typical Meriam dwelling, Dreamtime Cultural Centre, Rockhampton
When missionaries first came to the Torres Strait, the people of the fourteen inhabited islands welcomed them because the Christian Ten Commandments are similar to their own traditional laws. But this was not enough. On the isle of Mer, known to English speakers as Murray Island, the missionaries forbade the people from speaking their local language. To ensure compliance—so the lady at the Dreamtime Cultural Centre Torres Strait Islander complex explained—they stole three artefacts which are central to the culture and rituals of her people. Among these was one of the two sacred drums of Mer. The second drum was hidden by the islanders just in time, but it cannot be played without the other. As far as I understand it has occassionally been played in church, but this has no ritual significance. Without its sister drum, the sole remaining sacred drum has been silent for generations. Its sound no longer reverberates during the initiation rituals through which boys enter adulthood.

The two other artefacts, which are so powerful that they ensured the silence of the people (and subsequent loss of part of their language), are a mask, which is back with the Meriam, and the effigy of a fertility goddess which is in a Brisbane museum, but due to be returned. However, the second sacred drum of Mer is gathering dust in a museum in London (probably the British Museum).

I have not been able to find out much about the history of the drums. During the presentation, we learned that the lost drum is the ‘sister’, the female aspect which complements the male drum. Legend talks about Malu and Bomai, two warriors and Zoga le (Holy Men) at the heart of a cult which invokes their powerful magic when the drums are played during ceremonies. There are repeated references to Wasikor, the drum still on the island, but nobody talks about the sister which may reside forgotten and of no relevance to the British people in London. It is not forgotten by the Meriam and it is of great cultural and historical relevance to them.

For generations, the drums have remained silent, the initiation rites suspended. It is time to return the final missing artefact. I’ll try to find out more about it.

Chief’s Mask, Green Turtle shell

Flickr is currently uploading photos at great speed. It looks like they have carried out a major overhaul and it means that I don’t have to go on a coffee break while uploading batches. Today, I’ve put up a whole lot of pictures, but they’re not yet titled or have descriptions. That will come later.

Alas, since I also use the long uploading times to write my blog entries, these may be somewhat shorter from now on in 😉

Since we’re headed for the Whitsundays this may get boring, but meanwhile here are some shots from Great Keppel island:

I’ve always thought of the deadly box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri)as rare, but they’re only rare outside the waters of tropical Australia—Moreton Bay, say, as opposed to Yeppoon, which is just on the Tropic of Capricorn.

I also thought that the poisonous jellies are seasonal—swarming only when they mate or whatever—but apparently it’s bad around here between November and April whereas a bit further north, it’s bad between May and October. In short, it’s always bad.

I remember the swarms of blue jellyfish we spotted from the ferry to Moreton Island: a dense mosaic of medusas floating just below the surface. In my vision, they transformed into deadly stingers, dragging three metre long tentacles behind them.

“So what,” John said. “We’ve got stung plenty in Bali.”

It’s true that the waters around Tulamben are thick with free-floating tentacles and strings of nematocysts discharged by the enormous anemones around there, but those only cause minor irritations. I read from the guide book: ” ‘When stung, douse immediately with vinegar to prevent the nematocysts from discharging and call an ambulance. Artificial respiration may be required.’—John, somehow I don’t think these things are merely irritants. They are about as venomous as a deadly snake!”

For those who are still bent on watersports, protective lycra suits are widely available, but they are skin tight, which is fine when you have a slender, toned body. I would look like a dugong in one of them, only less graceful. And I can’t exactly wear my shorts and T-shirt over the lycra suit without looking ridiculous. So, I quietly scrapped snorkeling from my list of planned activities.

I mulled over how to put this to John when I spotted a local paper on a table as we were walking past a coffeeshop:

LOCAL SURFERS IN SHARK ALERT

Yesterday (13th January), on this very beach—the main beach in Yeppoon—at least ten sharks and a dozen stingrays approached up to 10m from shore, in waist-deep water. At least six sharks were seen ‘surfing’ in a single wave. The beach was cleared immediately. Nobody was hurt.

After I had read this out, John looked out to sea where a few kids splashed in the shallow water between the two yellow and red lifesaver flags—behind the stinger net. “I think we should give the snorkeling a miss for now,” he said

The sun sizzled right through my factor 15 sunscreen—I may as well have basted myself in vegetable oil. Our first port of call in Yepoon was therefore the chemist, not just for sunscreen (which starts at factor 30 here, and is available in litre dispensers from supermarkets) but also hats, zinc cream (for John’s nose) and eyedrops (for John’s eyes). About an hour later, we had to return as John scratched a mosquito bite on his foot open and had to get some plaster. By then, both the pharmacist and the till girl were fussing over him.

I had imagined Yeppoon to be a tiny village, a sort of Australian version of Borth, but it turned out to be a sizeable town, especially yesterday night as the bus driver drove us around the central square twice in seach of a taxi. It being Sunday, there weren’t any. We couldn’t spot the B&B either, despite it being one of only two places recommended in the guide.

“I have no idea where Todd Avenue is.” The driver shrugged and asked us for the B&B’s phone number, typing it into his mobile. Our host agreed to come out to get us.

“I’m waiting here with you,” the driver said.

“But it’s no problem. Honestly. If he doesn’t turn up, we can always phone for a cab!”

“No, but I want to know where this place is for myself!”

So we waited, smoking, by the deserted shopping street. Having a smoke was probably the driver’s ultimate reason for waiting with us, but he walked ahead to greet the host when he arrived while we were still grappling with our bags. His curiosity is understandable as the Whileaway B&B is well known, despite its small size. It is a ‘Boutique B&B’ with 4½ stars and has housed several celebrities. We would stop over here for three nights, because the through train would not have arrived in Proserpine until 3:34 am, and John, as he keeps saying, “doesn’t travel that way”. Flashpacking, as we are now doing, is odd. I like staying in posh places, but we have yet to encounter any other backpackers close up.

But I digress.

The B&B is nowhere near the centre of Yeppoon. While our genial host chatted away, the car drove further and further into the dark suburbs, along a major highway. When we finally arrived, it was deathly quiet. Barely a house was illuminated. The city lights winked at us from the distance.

“Oh damn,” John wispered. “We’re stranded.”

“Shheeet—I told you the average age around here would be about sixty-five,” I hissed back.

We listened for a while to palm fronds rustling in the breeze. There was no other sound: no cars, no music, not even a barking dog. The tide was out, so the sea was too far away to hear any waves.

“We’ll check out tomorrow,” we chrorused.

But we didn’t. Things looked up considerably the following day when we discovered that there is a regular bus service during the day (except at weekends) and the highway didn’t looks so forbidding any more. In fact, the city centre was only ½hr’s stroll along the beach. And the B&B was georgeous. I’m talking crystal decanters of sherry and port, and sweets on our pillows. We were going nowhere.

Yeppoon by daylight turned out to be charming, but the local restaurants are expensive. However, there are plenty of picnic places along the seaside and people making use of them.

So, I suggested we do things properly and go for fish and chips. Good decision, because this is probably the best chippy in the world:

In an unassuming, Fifties-style caff, we discovered a seafood menu that covered the entire wall. Undecided, we opted for the seafood basket. For about fifteen dollars, it contained a bit of everything. Throw in an another five for a side salad and extra chilli sauce, and this is what you get:

Juicy scallops in a crispy, crumbly shell. Battered prawn patties with the tail still sticking out. Firm, fresh reef fish, crumbed and fried. Squid rings which are tender. A big whole prawn. Chips. All with chilli and seafood dips and a salad with greens and beetroot (which goes surprisingly well). And all perfectly fried in healthy, clean vegetable oil.

Australia is no great shakes in the food department, but this is one of the best lunches we’ve ever had.

The grey clouds lifted as the catamaran pulled up at the jetty of the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort. A rainbow-coloured paraglider painted a stark contrast against the blue sky. The beach fringing the green shore extended for miles, right up to the rusty skeletons of shipwrecks which were stranded at the end of the bay. They provide shelter for thousands of tropical fish to be marvelled at by snorkelers. But we would do that later. First, we entered the Marine Research and Education Centre.

When John pointed at the sign next to the reception desk, the clouds drew back in. A shadow would hang over this day, which should have been our best yet, and one of the highlights of the trip.

On January 4th, Lipotes vexillifer, the Yangtze river dolphin, became the first species of cetacean to be declared officially extinct.

It feels like the loss of an old friend. I thought about the scientist in Wuhan with whom Boris and I briefly exchanged letters in 1985. About thirty years of intense conservation effort ending in dismal failure because there was no room for the dolphin in the busy and intensely polluted river, and attempts to construct a functional reserve remained fruitless. How do you protect a species about which you know next to nothing?

I’m upset. John is too, because we both remember Venezuela.

We picked listlessly at our huge BBQ platters and then I walked along the beach to snorkle, experiencing a wreck dive without the need to submerge myself. The fish took my mind off things for a while, but when I nearly collided with a group of about a dozen other snokelers, I decided to head back.

Walking over the blazing sand, I wondered who else mourned a little known Chinese dolphin.

Still, it was a good day. As it got dark, we gathered at the jetty. I swept the horizon with my binoculars, willing to be the first to spot a distant fin, only for the dolphins to appear as if from nowhere, right next to the beach.

But that’s another story.

I may be off blogging for a few days as we head north, becoming stranded in a tiny seaside backwater on the way.

There was something strange about the street I was walking down. Strange—yet oddly familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on it. The only thing that was for certain was that we weren’t in Britain any more.

Maybe the familiarity was due to the English signs anywhere. But then, this wasn’t like the US, either. My mind still foggy after the flight, I stopped puzzling about it and retired to the hotel. It wasn’t until dinner that it came to me: Australia reminded me of Gibraltar! Admittedly, it’s a long time since I visited there, but it had the same pavement restaurants, the same weather, and the queen’s head on all the coins giving it the atmosphere of being an expat enclave. A whole continent like Gibraltar? Absurd.

I knew that I wasn’t in Gibraltar when the bus dropped me at the Lone Pine Animal Sanctuary the following afternoon. Actually, I had known that since we explored Brisbane’s shiny centre that morning. John returned to the hotel to nurse his blocked sinuses and I took the opportunity for a little detour.

The animal sanctuary was in the middle of a eucalypt forest and I was assailed with the whining of cicadas and chattering of birds as soon as the doors opened. Still, this could be Spain.

A tiny lizard peeked from a crack in the bark, turning its jewel eye up at me as I bent over a tree trunk to look for my wallet. Another, much larger lizard lazily got out of the way close to the entrance. It could still be Spain.

I had arrived just in time for the wild lorikeet feeding. Yes, wild lorikeets. After a bit of coaxing, they fell from the trees like rainbow confetti. Only much more colourful. These were Rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus), landing by the dozen, only to take off again in the blink of an eye as something spooked the flock. There must have been hundreds of them.

When they settled down, a few of us slowly approached the food bowls which had been glued to stalks and stuck into holes in a plank. Very carefully, a young guy with an expensice camera around his neck lifted up a bowl with six or seven birds perching on it like a living bouquet. He turned around and held it out to a baby which shrieked for joy. He completely forgot to take any pictures. But then, neither did I. I had contrived to forget my camera after removing it from the bag yesterday night (the neighbourhood around the Snooze Inn is a bit on the rough side). So, I might as well go and pick up a bowl too.

Remarkably, the four birds perching on it remained unfazed. The only female interrupted her greedy gobling briefly to look up at me, head cocked almost horizontally. I lifted the bowl a bit higher and got a birds-eye view of their feeding, scooping up bits of gruel and pumping starchy water with rapid flicks of they round tongues. I had to turn the tail-ends away from me to avoid being squirted with white cascades even while the birds were feeding. The three males only ceased lapping up the watery cereal for occasional brief squabbles and flew off quickly when sated, one landing on my head. Tiny claws scrateched my scalp for a moment, then he was off again, flying high into the trees.

And just for something completely different, the lorikeet feeding was followed by a sheepdog show in the neighbouring enclosure. A look at the blue sky reassured me that this wasn’t Scotland. And the thick-whooled Marino sheep looks nothing like the Scottish Blackface. Under those coats, it would appear that they should drop dead of heatstroke, but the shepherd assured me that the fine, hollow fibre whool actually acts as insulation against the heat, as well as cold.

To wrap things up: there are few things more weird than seeing a herd of kangaroos hopping across your path for the first time. Except, perhaps, seeing a real-life koala.

I have to take John along next time.

We flew so far that east became west again and winter turned into summer. At noon, the sun is in the northern sky. As if I didn’t have enough to make my head spin…

Now we’re in Brisbane, at the Snooze Inn, but more about that later. Currently, my brain feels like jelly and the ground is moving ever so slightly—such a long flight has the same effect as drinking about ten pints. More about that later too, if and when we feel up to sampling the nightlife. In this neighbourhood, the ‘nightlife’ appears to go on all day, which is even more disconcerting. But the hotel is very quiet and the room very clean and inviting. So, as soon as the wash cycle finishes, I shall, well, snooze 🙂

A year ago on this day, I arrived in Maumere, Flores. I wanted to write up my travels to (and including) the Komodo National Park, because it was a beautiful trip through stunning scenery and filled with interesting encounters. However, there are two problems: I can’t read my photocopied scribbles very well (most of the writing was done on ricketty buses!) and Tadley-web is down. Again.

I may not get back online until we fly off to Australia, since these things can take days to resolve while the ISP and BT pass the bug to each other (when they’re both finally done with blaming the customer—which can take an entire afternoon of automated phone calls!) Since we are no longer the only ones on Brookside Walk with a broadband connection, I could just wait for the neighbours to deal with the hassles, like I did last time. The problem is that they think the same and so it becomes a war of attrition. Which is fine, because we’re off on holiday 🙂

—In short, don’t expect to hear from me until then!

But Maumere makes me wonder. It is a small town, about the size of Tadley, at the tip of the island of Flores. This makes it about as remote as the Outer Hebrides, with the important difference that TV reception works better in Maumere. A ship calls perhaps once a week, but otherwise you’ll have to take a bemo or minibus to the next town to get anywhere. Yet, on this day last year, I stood in an internet café that was hidden in a site-street, and there were rows upon rows of gleaming computers, all with fast internet connections.

Tadley is the village opposite Britain’s Atomic Weapons Establishment. There is another, smaller nuke base nearby (as well as a helicopter base) and Greenham Common is just down the road. The village is half-way between Reading and Basingstoke and half an hour’s drive from Heathrow, but if you want to go anywhere, you have to take a bus to Reading or Basingstoke first. TV reception here is shaky (no Channel Five), DAB radio is fraught with interference, mobile phone coverage varies and every time I connect to the web, I have to cross my fingers.

Yesterday, as on so many occasions, I was unceremoniously thrown offline, and I haven’t been able to get back since.

I’ll see you again in Australia!

Following a trip to Luton this morning, John has now been reunited with his passport, which one of his mates took on a little detour to the Netherlands after picking it up from the windowsill. All EU passports look alike, and he had some of his stuff on the windowsill next to it, so these things happen. But his passport now lives in the moneybelt, along with mine and other important travel documents—as it should have done from the beginning.

Windowsill? Tchch…

Anyway, it means that we are no go to fly to Australia on the ninth, and with only a few days left, I am starting to make holiday preparations. Snorkels, masks and fins are present and correct, but seeing that we’ll be moving around, I’ll only take the mask and leightweight aquaboots (some of the nasties in the shallows sting). Flip-flops?—Check. Summer shirts, shorts etc?—Check. Suncream?—Airport. Sunglasses?

Flippin’ heck!

John has a pair of prescription sunglasses, but not me. It would be great to finally have sunglasses which I can see through, rather than just pose in. Every time I buy new specs, I get another pair for free or at a heavy discount, but they are only ever plain old glasses, never sunglasses.

It would have been so cool to have them for the Australia trip. However, they are extremely expensive, so I was delighted when I came across some online companies who sell no-frills versions for existing prescriptions, without insisting on another (premature) eye test or an eye test carried out by their own ophthalmologists (as if the others weren’t professional enough), or else piling on hidden surcharges for a bog-standard frame and lenses.

I ordered a pair straight away, but 3 weeks on, I’m still waiting. The glasses won’t arrive by the time we leave. Well, I should have thought of that earlier—what did I expect from a discount online retailer, over the Christmas period? I checked my email, but there wasn’t any notification that they had been despatched. That would be, because I have given them a spamgourmet address. So, should I query with them and reveal my real email address? What’s the point? Even if they’d send them straight away, the glasses wouldn’t get here on time.

Grrr.

Then it hit me: the cock-up isn’t their fault. At around the same time that I ordered the glasses, I also ordered a book from a small publisher (using my real email address) and when I checked with them, they said they had despatched the order the same week. —To Scotland.

Years ago, I signed up with PayPal in the vague hope of selling some travel articles online and thought no more of it, until I registered with Ebay after we moved to Tadley. Paypal would not accept payments through my bank account until I personally confirmed my address with them and they phoned me at home. From then on in, everything I have ever ordered through Ebay has always arrived in Tadley.

But Paypal never changed the address with which I registered (and promptly forgot about), and for some arcane reason, they think I still would like my non-Ebay purchases to be sent to Scotland, even though we now live 500 miles away.

Thanks, Paypal.

And yeah, I’ll go to the optician’s next time.