Wednesday 1st May
We are, happily,
safe in sound in a very nice marina in Cairns.
Cyclone Zane is whistling away, creating minor havoc, further north. So we will stay in these environs until Zane
has worked itself out of energy and has dissipated.
Our trip
from Mourilyan Harbour was pleasant and uneventful, although we did pick up quite
a lot of speed at one stage… Pete was on the couch with his book while I was at
the helm, looking at the screen which told me, a bit alarmingly, that we were going at 11.5
knots and that the winds were increasing towards 30 knots. So we slowed everything down as much as possible
and proceeded at a more sedate 8 knots, our preferred rate.
As we left
I took a photo of one of the rusty boats, and Pete had a quick chat to the Tasmanian
chaps on the other two boats – they are from Smithton, and from Ulverstone, and
were also heading towards Cairns this morning.
Cairns, so
far, seems like a very nice little tropical town. It is situated on a big wide mud flat, and
the water in the bay, fittingly named Brown Bay, looks like this:
But the town
is bright and cheery, with a beautiful boardwalk, and a fake beach pool arrangement
which looks just lovely.
Libby and Noel, our ex-Tasmanian friends
now living near Cardwell, have spent quite a few years working in remote
Aboriginal communities, Libby as a nurse, Noel as McGyver-ish fixer of
everything. (And if you want a solution
to the many MANY problems in remote Aboriginal communities – Libby is very
swift to say, sanitation and hygiene. First and foremost.)
I have a photo of Libby with me, at our
lovely lunch in Mission Beach. I am
including it so you can see the new bright blue dress, which I bought specially
for Pete’s birthday (so kind of me!!) at a lovely little shop in the main drag,
where the people were pathetically pleased to see a customer, even though I got
this dress for cost price – times are tough, in these once-busy tourist
areas. I liked this dress very much;
this shade of blue is one of the most wonderful colours in the world, isn’t
it? And I must have sat in something
yucky…because it has spent a good few hours on the rails of 2XS, being
hyper-rinsed in the heavy rain, having been scrubbed within an inch of its life
in a big bucket of warm soapy water…
Possibly, over the next month or so,
poor Pete will be driven mad…by me, asking at every anchorage, Do you think I
can swim here? There wouldn’t be
crocodiles, would there? He sighs
deeply, every single time…and patiently explains about mangrove swamps etc
etc. I told Katy, when we were having a
phone chat, and she said, “Mum, he should just chuck you overboard! Snappety-snap,
as Zoe would say!”
When we were having Friday night drinks
at the local pub, in Mission Beach, Chris and Faye regaled us with tales of
not-so-great service. My favourite
episode was when Chris ordered Cajun prawns.
They came out so excruciatingly hot (to his taste) that he couldn’t eat
them. He called the waitress, and very
politely said just that. She looked at
him stonily and said, “Well you’re a big girl aren’t you!” And that was that! No replacement, no refund!
No comments:
Post a Comment