1st June - Horn Island - Flinders Group art and cave

Saturday 1^st June

We have just come back from a small exploration of Horn Island, where we are anchored, just off the Wongai Hotel.

This all looks very grand; it isn’t.  There is a small bar, lots of TV screens with incomprehensible things happening – horse racing stats, is my guess, with a scattering of people gazing, engrossed.  Thee is also a very small room with about six pokies, with one large cheery man playing, and NOT winning - we asked him and he bellowed with laughter.  There is a restaurant but I am not sure if we are totally tempted to abandon ship and our lovely new fresh veggies to chance it.  The best thing was the signs on the toilet doors – Wonguys, and Sissies…

We sat at an outdoor table and had a (very expensive) drink.  Michael rang and was very pleased to hear we had got this far.  Not sure where he is; he is very secretive, as indeed he should be – the army has trained him well.  He has seen the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, on his way to wherever, and he was suitably impressed.  But I think he would have swapped it for the sighting of a crocodile in the wild… He was very taken with the idea, and I could tell his eyes were widening when I told him about the leaping croc further up the Escape River, which took the flag off a peacefully visiting yacht.  “Tell Pete NOT to pee off the back of the boat!” he said, emphatically.

Thursday Island and Horn Island do not feel like part of Australia at all.  They could be anywhere in the world; anywhere hot, inhabited by cheery people in bright clothes.  We enjoyed out walk and visited all of the major landmarks:

·      The entertainment centre, very big and modern, where we had JUST missed a craft and sport exhibition.  Some very friendly ladies at the door welcomed us in to look at the beautiful murals, and to use the facilities – I took the opportunity to tip another large amount of cold water over my head; I find this really helps me cope with the hot hot hot weather…I drink gallons of water, as well as tipping it over my head, and I have at least one cold shower every day.  Pete, on the other hand, is impervious to it all.  He works away, head in a cupboard,* getting a teensy it tomato-like, but never utters a word of complaint.  Neither does he ever feel the need for a drink of water, let alone a gallon.

·      Two small but well-stocked food shops.  All extremely neat and well organised.  Our only issue is that we can’t take any fresh fruit and veg back to the mainland from these Torres Strait islands.  Quarantine are apparently VERY vigilant and will confiscate every single piece.  (This is spite of the fact that all of the fresh fruit and veg came from the mainland in the first place…ah, bureaucracy…)

·      The museum – apparently this is very nice and very interesting.  But…it was closed.

I haven’t put up any photos of the beautiful cave,

and the Aboriginal art, on the island in the Flinders Group.  So beautiful, well worth seeing:

* Pete has been struggling away trying to fix our fridge problem, which all stems from a major problem with some corroded copper pipes.  This could have all been VERY disastrous – the copper pipes are of course gas pipes – if it were not for Pete’s speedy remedial action.  Over the past few days he has been bum up, head down, in various small enclosed spaces, extracting the pipe, and then inserting the new one which he got on Thursday Island.  For HOURS!!