So, that's it; Chris has gone. We said all our farewells and bonnes voyages last night, and he was away in a taxi at about 4.30 this morning - none of us heard him go. Chris has had a certain restless energy about him, which has proven a useful impetus when the rest of us have been feeling less than enthusiastic, so the rest of our journey is obviously going to be rather different. If slightly more comfortable, with only 5 of us in the car...
We're up early; in Chris's memory, I have as good a fry-up as I can manage in a hurry at 6.30 - no mean feast, it should be stressed. Pete drops me off at the marina, and they're off to the Reef today, to do some snorkelling. All except Typhoid James, of course, who's decided to go find a doctor.
On the fishing boat, there's Jim the skipper, and 3 guys, Ted, Ron and Al, who've left their wives ashore for the day, and come out to have a bit of sport. They're all retired, and have flown up from Melbourne - only 90 bucks, which continues to amaze me. They're all thoroughly nice guys - even when they find out I'm a Pom - and we talk about sport, and Tony Blair, and the size of Prince Charles's ears. A little to my surprise, we head up-river, inland from the marina, rather than out to sea. Not that there's anything wrong with that, the Cairns river is extremely beautiful. We go fishing for prawns in the shallows by the mangroves; Jim throws out a circular net, weighted round its edge, with a line attached to the centre. When he pulls it in, the weights tickle the bottom, and send the prawns jumping up towards the centre of the net, rather than falling out of the open bottom. He hauls it aboard, a-twitch with prawns, and a young puffer fish, which lies in the bottom of the boat, with an air of both malevolence and pathos.They ask how many of us there are travelling, and I say there were 6, but one has just gone off to Tasmania, because he was depressed.
"Jesus!" Jim explodes. "If he ain't fucken depressed now, he very soon will be!", and we all have a chuckle.
Fishing is slow today, it's fair to say, but that's not what it's all about. I get an estuary cod - which looks nothing like any cod I've ever seen - and a spotted grunter bream. A couple of the others have a few little bream. But the main attraction is the banks of the estuary, the cool breeze, the sea eagle fishing, and the lack of people.
I'm back ashore about mid-day - though I think the others have signed up for the whole day trip. I walk back along the esplanade, in a fairly rambling and discursive fashion; sit in the shade a while, take my boots off, eat my lunch, that sort of thing. It takes probably half an hour to do the 3/4 of a mile or so from the Marina to the villa. Several times I catch sight of a guy some distance away; the same guy, and it's more than coincidence. He seems to be shadowing me, which is pretty weird. It's the one time in the whole trip I feel uneasy, and I'm glad to get back to the villa. James has been to the doctor today; 50 bucks for a checkup, a mega-dose of penicillin, and a week's worth more to take. I'd like to say he's showing signs of improvement, but he's still laid low. I nap half the afternoon away, and laze around reading the rest of it.
Later, we start planning our route south. We've got just about a week to get back to Sydney, in which we've got quite a few miles to pack in. In planning the whole trip, we'd thought of getting back a couple of days earlier and visiting the Blue Mountains - but the cold would mean we probably couldn't camp there, so we shelve the idea. Do we go way inland - maybe even as far as Mount Isa, and take the long leg south-east, via Barcaldine and Charleville? Too damn far, we'd need to drive like hoons, and we're not kitted out for it, so it would be a reasonable approximation of suicide - and we'd only need to lose a half day of travelling to stand no chance of making the flight home. Eventually, we weigh the other possibilities, and decide to go down the coast to Rockhampton, inland to Emerald, down the Carnarvon Developmental road to Roma, and back to the coast at Brisbane. It won't get us to the Red Centre, by any stretch of the imagination, but we'll see the other side of the Great Dividing Range, and a whole lot of different scenery.We have a plan.
Saturday 7th
We scarcely need mention that it's hot and sunny again.
James seems to have improved a little today - although he's still pretty crook; general consensus is that, of all the times and places to be ill on the trip, he picked about the best.
We head off to the Atherton Tablelands again; James wants a didge from the Opal Shop in Millaa Millaa, I fancy some more opal, and we also think to have a look around the mango winery, so off we go. The views are stunning, again, and I'm pleased not to be driving this time, so I get the chance to use the camera. We roll through Yungaburra and Malanda, and wind up at Millaa again; first stop the Opal Shop. Margaret, the owner, seems pleased to see us again - as she might, when we start building a little stash of things to pay for. It is, truly, one of the best shops in the whole trip, so we welcome the chance to splash out a bit.Appetites sharpened by the spending of dollars, it's time to visit the bakery and pie shop - open today, unlike our last visit, and we sit in the sun and eat our lunch.
Heading off again, we go up via Atherton to Mareeba. There's a profound difference between the lush south of the Tablelands, with pasture and dairy farming, and the arid north, where sugar cane and mangoes grow; almost as profound a change as the sudden overwhelming green-ness on driving in to Ingham.
The Golden Pride Winery is at Bilwon, just outside Mareeba, and (so the spiel goes) is based around the largest commercial mango plantation in Far North Queensland. The proprietor, it has to be said, respectfully, is a Cunning Devil. No sooner have we walked in than miraculously, glasses are in our hands, and we're on to the second or third variety of mango wine, before we can think to raise any (frankly, tenuous) objections. More pertinently, this is all before we can read the sign that says, while the wine-tasting is free, it costs 20 bucks if we elect to leave without buying anything. Well, as it happens, there's little chance of that happening, since the mango wine is well worth buying; in fact it's a point of regret not to have bought more.
Heading out, we pause for a photo-op with the termite mounds, before heading off to the Wetland Reserve, just the other side of Mareeba. Much of the tale of the Wetland Reserve is perhaps best told by its own website. It's a beautiful reserve, with a host of ideal photo-ops, and (as so often) we're a little sad that we don't have more time to devote to it. But we circumnavigate the lake, for an hour or so, and take a host of photographs.It's about this point that I see the one snake - with the exception of those in Cairns Zoo - of the entire trip. Or so I think. The others claim to have seen one at Mossman, but I miss it. Back in Blighty, I later come to find out it's not a snake at all, but Burton's Legless Lizard. But for the time being, I don't know that, so we revel in having encountered, and survived, a snake. From its colouring, it's undoubtedly an Eastern Brown, so we're lucky to escape with our lives.
With the Opal Shop, and the Wetlands Centre, today is a good day for highlights.
Back at the Villa Morocco, it's an evening of organising, rationalising, and dumping stuff we no longer need; tomorrow, we're on the road again...
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