Tuesday 23^rd November

Yesterday – was it Monday??  Am I still in Island time?? – we left Townsville at dawn.  Sad to be leaving this nice little city, our friends and family.  But it was great, and yes it is time to move on; southern latitudes beckon.

We did about 65 nautical miles down the coast.  Not much wind, calm sea.  So we took turns lying on the couch.  Pete mostly read his book with occasional lapses into SnoozyWorld.  I listened to the first four of my new downloaded podcasts from Radio National.  Very interesting, they all were.  I heard the first few words and the last few words of each one… As soon as it would start getting interesting, I would completely lose consciousness and lie there, snuffling gently through my nose.  I would only wake as the talk about Aboriginal art, or solar power technology, or the French origin of English words was coming to a conclusion.  I would sit up briefly, turn the little ipod panel to the next podcast and…back to SnoozyWorld.  So tomorrow I can listen to them all again!

We anchored in Upstart Bay, which seems like a very pretty little shacky community.  The water didn’t look very inviting, but this is definitely not crocodile territory – too steep and rocky – and the stingers haven’t come this far south yet, so I went for a swim.  No hope of persuading Pete into the sea, he was very happily reading his book and sipping his anchoring beer.  The water temperature was just perfect, refreshing and revitalising.  But there was no visibility at all!  I swam in to shore and could only just see my fingertips.  Not so very interesting; I wanted to see clear blue water, coral, fish, giant clams.  Never mind; we will be in the Whitsundays in a day or so.  Pete’s son James is joining us for five days; he loves snorkeling and I am very much looking forward to swimming with him and hearing his enthusiastic chat as he powers along the reef.

23^rd November

Another early start – we left Upstart Bay, which Pete told me, after my swim, is also known as Shark Bay – at 5am and arrived in Woodwark Bay at 3.00, the perfect time to anchor.  Sea eagle in the sky, turtles in the water, all very lovely.

I went for a swim and had almost zero visibility.  I could have been holding hands with a turtle and neither of us would have known.  There was coral; I know this because I swam right into a bommie and hit my head.  The water was a lovely temperature but not being able to see is a bit daunting, so now I am on dry boat, with my computer and a cup of tea and a snoozing Pete.

Only 18 miles to Hamilton Island, where we will pick up James tomorrow.  I hope we have better visibility in the islands…poor Pete will be driven mad by the sound of James and me complaining…

Mission Beach Adventure

While we were waiting for Michael to return to Townsville from his mysterious army manouevres in Brisbane, we took the opportunity of hiring a car and driving up to Mission Beach, to visit Pete’s friends Peter Salmon and Maddie De Merxhausen.

Hiring a car was surprisingly difficult.  Either nobody answered the phone, or Computer Said No, as we made our way through the Yellow Pages for car rentals.  Eventually we got a car, from a small local company called AABA.  They picked us up at the marina and took us to Outer Woop-Woop near the airport to fill in the forms.  I thought we would be in the office for ever and EVER.  The manager was a wall of sound… He just didn’t stop talking.  He had many opinions, and told us all about his family history, how they escaped from the Communists in Poland, how he gave 4 years service to the Australian army, how some car rental companies try to rip off their customers…on and on it went.  I could feel my fillings start to throb and my attention start to wander, but, eventually, we got out with our sanity intact and a nice little yellow Getz to drive up the coast.

It is a long way – two and a half hours, by Queensland measurements – they don’t tell you how many kilometres here, just how many hours.  It is a very big state… We took a lot longer, because we stopped at Frosty Mango for an ice cream and loitered to look at cyclone damage here and there.  The devastation is still apparent, but this is Northern Queensland, the tropics, and everything grows back fast and green.  I saw a forlorn little fibro house on stilts on the side of the road.  At first I saw the sign attached said, HOUSE FOR RENT, but no…it said, HOUSE FOR REMOVAL.

Mission Beach, when we finally arrived there, is very lovely. But…once again, you can’t swim there, no matter how warm, sparkly, blue and inviting the sea might look.  It harbours all manner of dangerous beasties of the sea… So the water is just a scenic backdrop.

Pete and Maddie’s house is absolutely beautiful.  Maddie designed it – she is an architect, and very talented if not very good at blowing her own trumpet.  Here is a woman who really needs an agent to promote her!  The garden is glorious, lush and green and full of beauty, in spite of the ravages of cyclones and wild pigs.  The house was finished quite recently, and her design proved its worth in the cyclone, which hit Mission Beach, as we all know, with unbelievable ferocity.  Pete and Maddie hunkered down in their laundry-wardrobe area, with Baggins The Dog, opened the doors to let the wind rush through the breezeway, and waited it out.  The house had a few minor bits of damage, with trees crashing down on the roof, but basically it remained serene and intact.  The garden on the other hand, was whipped into a frenzy.  Maddie had lots of before and after photos, so we could see what had happened.  To us it all looked just beautiful, but Maddie is still mourning the big trees which toppled over, the thick vegetation which sheltered their house from the world.

We slept on land for the first time since August; it felt very strange, not being in our little 2XS cocoon.  Our bedroom was beautiful, with louvered windows and a nice cool breeze.  Our bathroom was absolutely lovely, all open to the garden.  So lovely to stand in the shower with Maddie’s beautiful leafy jungle-like garden close at hand.

The entire house is a work of art, and it is indeed full of works of art, books, beautiful comfortable furniture, all very casual.  Maddie and Pete have obviously been collecting beautiful objets for many years – old Chinese doors, picture frames, things which please the eye.  We were very happy staying there.

They had been invited to dinner that night, and we were very fortunate to be included.  We drove down the hill and up the hill, not very far away, to neighbors, who live in Mission beach six months of the year and the other six months in Marbella (Spain.)  Very nice, hospitable people, Chris and Georgie.  Georgie is an irrepressibly cheerful woman, full of joie de vivre.  And a most wonderful and accomplished cook.  She took a shine to me because when I went to help her with serving up the entrees – delicious stuffed mushrooms – I knew the reference Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.  She said nobody else has ever known what she was talking about.  We sat outside near the pool, and Georgie (seemingly) effortlessly fed her ten guests an absolute feast.  The stuffed mushrooms were perfect, and the main curse was extraordinary – rice cooked with raisins, with an amazing chicken and watermelon curry topped with almonds and mint.  And dessert – which I didn’t think I wanted – was a chocolate mousse cake, too yummy for words.

I sat next to a very nice old codger called Richard.  He and his wife Janet have been married for 17years. Neither of them had been married before, and they were, I think, very surprised to find each other when she was 50 and he was 57.  I asked where they had met, and he said it was during race week in Melbourne, and he met her at the races, and the following day at the polo.  As you do…(I would have been very impressed with Janet, Richard and Georgie when I was a little girl, because I was inordinately fascinated by poshness.  Not much poshness came our way, in Waddamana or Mt Nelson, but when it did, I was wide-eyed with wonder.)

We were, ofcourse, the last to leave.  Janet had fallen asleep at the table and had been ordered off to bed by her concerned hostess.  (Janet and Richard were house guests).  Steve and Vicky (local real estate agents) had caught a taxi home.  And Pete and Pete were happy as could be to sit outside with another bottle of red wine.  Chris, our host, was a very nice man, also very wide awake, and I don’t think Georgie ever gets tired.  Maddie and I sat quite silently, watching the dogs, Baggins and Bella, frolicking on the lawn.  Maddie, a gentle soul, is always silent in company; I am less so, but I had run out of energy and very much feared I would fall asleep with my head in the ashtray.  (Yes, very surprising, at least three of the people present were heavy smokers.)

Eventually we went home.  Maddie and I went straight to bed while Pete and Pete stayed up very happily till somewhere around 3am.  They were bright-eyed and cheery in the morning and we spent a very happy morning in the cool and breezy house. I went out at one stage to hang out the washing and found, as I stepped outside, that it was actually almost unbearably hot out there in the world.  I gave a startled cry or two as the sun beat down fiercely on my unprotected head.  It must have been twenty degrees cooler inside the beautifully designed house.

Pete cooked us a beautiful lunch – steak and salad and as soon as we had eaten, it was time to GO GO GO out into the hot hot hot world.  Pete and Maddie were going north to Cairns, to pick up Pete’s son Ollie, and we were going back to Townsville.  With another stop for icecream at Frosty Mango…