I arrive at the bus station with a bit over half an hour to spare and place my bags in the corner and wander into the office to see what brochures they have. I’m determined to criss-cross this crazy country as manage times as I can manage, and I have a brochure for the Indian-Pacific already, so I was interested in finding one for the Ghan. They seem to have run out though so I picked up one for the Kuranda line, thinking I could scan it in to compare how the reality of the trip matched up to the marketing photos. I sit down nearby to a family who are traveling with their two daughters. One had a Call of Duty: MW3 t-shirt on which made me want to facepalm and I thought “Oh, geek children, how sad”, though I’m hardly one to talk. As the bus pulls in, a guy a bit older than myself staggers up beside me with a small suitcase, swaying from side to side. He is clearly drunk as a skunk. We strike up a conversation anyway, even though I’m not too fond of talking to drunk people (though of course, very talkative with strangers when it’s ME who’s drunk) and he told me that he was on his way to Airlie Beach to see his daughter who works on Hamilton Island.
I was sort of impressed and told him he must be very proud to have a daughter who worked on the most prestigious island resort in Australia. Needless to say, he was. He saw her often enough but this was the first time he’d been up to Hamilton in a long time and he was excited about staying there in a bungalow for a couple of weeks and mentioned that there was lots of work in the Whitsundays at the moment and that it was a great place to be if you wanted a job. I loaded my suitcase into the bus’ small trailer and then stepped into the background while the guy struck up a conversation with a young African girl. He was quite flirty with her, but she took it in stride and showed off her pearly white teeth in a big broad smile when he said something that was supposed to be funny.
We boarded the little bus and headed off down the highway as the sun was just starting to disappear below the horizon, filling the sky with the most lustrous orange colour you’ve ever seen. I think from memory that a very oragne sky means that you can expect strong winds in the coming days which tends to mirror what the weather report had said the night before. I sighed and wished I could capture it, but of course you can’t capture a beautiful sunset from a moving bus, and there will always be more sunsets, but this one was particularly beautiful. The excitement and anticipation of the trip began to melt away from me and I felt sort of tired and a little bit weary already even though I’d just set out on my journey. The drunk guy sat not far behind me and had been snoring loudly since the bus took off.
When we arrived at Maryborough West station, I walked up to the empty part of the platform and breathed in the warm night air. The drunk guy had lost his ticket and was following an attendent around asking what he should do, and the guy went and searched the bus and found it for him. As he came back onto the platform, I grimaced slightly when I realised he was going to come and talk to me again, but thankfully he was quite a bit more sober by now and sheepishly admitted to me that he had drunk far too much wine before leaving home, despite his girlfriend’s insistence not to. I didn’t let on that it was quite obvious, and as I heard the train approach I briefly considered arranging to meet him in the club car later for a beer, but they only serve light beer on the trains and there’s no way I’m going to part with $5.50 for a low alcohol drink, so I dismissed the idea.
When the dirt-covered old Sunlander approached, I got a huge smile on my face as I realised it was a DIESEL locomotive ! It must be 25 years since I’ve been on the Sunlander so it hadn’t even occurred to me that it wouldn’t be one of the newer electric trains. It had these old, rounded, 70’s style carriages which looked very much different than the corrugated look of the newer electric trains and it had a bellowing, thundering whistle that it let off like a huge, proud but sad sigh as it pulled to a stop. It was a huge, long train like a great silver snake and I walked past more than one club and buffet car before I reached my carriage down near the end. The windows were big but sort of rounded and the club cars had the most beautiful little lounge chairs in them and the whole thing looked like something out of some old black and white movie. I was so glad that I had chosen to take the much slower diesel train than the newer and much faster electric tilt train.
I left my suitcase at the front of the carriage and returned to my seat at the back and settled in. Since there was noone beside me, I arranged all my bags on the seat beside me where I could reach everything I needed easily. The drunk guy from earlier was right about one thing; the seats on the Sunlander are quite a bit more luxurious than the seats on the newer, electric trains. They were just imperceptively bigger and had noticably more leg-room. They were higher as well, so you had more space to stretch your legs out under the seat without bothering the person in front of you. But the biggest difference was the cushioning. It was definitely much softer and more comfortable than the tilt train, which I traveled on quite regularly and I settled back into my seat with a sigh as the diesel locomotive far in front of us let out a two quick toots and started chugging forwards, pulling the many carriages behind it exorably forward up the queensland coast.
It was immediately noticable that we were on a diesel train because you didn’t get that constant whirring and scratching sound of the electrical wires above you and the slower pace meant that the carriages swayed from side to side more and it was noticably bumpier. But it was traveling in *style*. It just felt so much nicer and more relaxed. The only sound was the rattling of the carriages and the squeaking of the wheels as it bumped and shuddered its way up the coast. I was so engrossed in thinking about the train itself and writing that it seemed barely minutes had passed by before the announcer came on and informed us that we were approaching Bundaberg station. Even though it was only a fraction of my journey, I was amazed how the time had flown by so quickly without me noticing.
I sat and observed the other passengers. There was an amusing young couple wandering back from the dining cart with a bag of what looked like cups of soup or possibly coffee. The guy was a tall, thin bloke with a bushy goatee and a mostly shaved head with a wide mohawk that went almost all the way across. He looked very friendly and I was quite sure that he was either a landscaper or some other sort of outdoor laborer, though he could have worked in a factory or warehouse as well. His girlfriend was a shorter, blonde girl who didn’t look like she traveled the train much because she stumbled down the aisle with these sheepish but sort of determined grin on her face as she clutched desperately onto each aisle chair’s handle as if she was negotiating her way down the side of a boat during a turbulent sea. I like them both immediately and I knew they were the sort of people I would get along with, and I sort of wished they were in my carriage so I could invite them to club car and ask them where they were going and what they did.
The Call of Duty girl and her sister were directly in front of me, with their parents across the aisle, while behind their parents, opposite me, was a sleeping couple. She sort of looked like a backpacker, but when I got a glance of the huge, bald, goateed guy beside her I decided they were just Bundaberg tip-rats, which was proven when they got off at the next stop. When we stopped at Bundaberg a mother and her young daughter got on and proceeded to the end of the aisle, both peering at the numbers. They got to the end and looked at me and then back at the numbers and I looked up at where they were looking and realised that seat number 3 was across the aisle from where I was and apologised and said that I was in their seats because the sleeping couple had been in mine. I asked her if she wanted to trade with me, because I secretly wanted the seats I was already in since they were in front of the power outlet, but the mother shook her head and said she would prefer to sit by her daughter. I asked “Oh, don’t you have consecutive seats ?” and she said “Oh yes. I just don’t want to leave my daughter sitting alone”.
It wasn’t until the train attendant wandered past to finally check our tickets and politely let me know that someone else would be joining me in the seat beside me at the next stop that it dawned on me that she assumed I would have another passenger beside me and therefore two people would have to end up switching. Not that it would have been a big hassle but now I understood what she meant. I think she thought I was hoping she would sit next to me, but of course I really just wanted the power outlet and an empty seat beside me for my bags. She was a nice woman though and we talked briefly and she told me that they were from Townsville and were returning home. I thought she looked a little old to have such a young child, but it’s quite possible that she had older children who were not with her or had left home already. She definitely didn’t strike me as a single mother, but her meek nature made me imagine that her husband was a drover or a fisherman or something like that which kept him away from home and caused them to be traveling home alone.
I went to my suitcase and grabbed a book. I had four great books with me. I was in the middle of Keruoac’s “On the Road”, which was of course the perfect book to be reading while taking a long train ride into the unknown for absolutely no reason and had no doubt influenced my desire to just “hop a boxcar to nowhere” as Keruoac had loved to do. Other than that I had Albom’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and a copy of Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” which I had already read, but just felt like bringing anyway for the sake of having some extra classic literature with me. Besides, you never knew when you might have the sudden urge to assasinate someone famous and it would be fun to have a copy of Catcher on me just to make the conspiracy theorists yell “Ah ha !” The fourth book was in case I got bored with reading the classics and wanted something lighter. It was a Japanese manga called “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”, though I assure you, it is no less epic a tale and is based on a piece of literature probably older than all the others that I had with me.
The Sunlander’s cars may be beautiful but they were incredibly stifling, despite having basic airconditioning and I was feeling so hot that I wished it were possible to crack a window and let the warm Queensland air rush in. I idly took note of what everyone was reading. Call of Duty girl was reading some yellowed old novel that I couldn’t see the title of, while her little sister was reading John Grisham and her mother apparently read some technical book or teaching resource judging by the modern numbering of the pages on the side of the book. The woman across from me was reading a romance novel while her daughter drew in a colouring book and filled out simple crosswords. She seemed like a very caring mother who took a lot of time to help her daughter with the puzzles she was doing, which was in stark contrast to the tip-rat mothers at the front of the carriage who did nothing but swear at her unruly children and hit them to make them sit down when someone wanted to get past.
I imagined how the little girl with the broad-rimmed glasses would surely grow up to be intellectual and very intelligent with her mother’s guidance and it made me sort of happy. I chuckled over the way she had assumed I wanted her to leave her daughter across the aisle and sit with me despite being clearly at least ten years my senior, but the romance novel sort of explained it in a way and I couldn’t help but grin to myself in the semi-darkness as I watched her reading after the main carriage lights had been turned off.
I liked being at the back of the carriage because it allowed me the luxury of opening the port that I had smuggled aboard in my parents’ thermos and sipping it regularly. I felt very conscious about doing it nearby to the woman and her daughter because in my mind, anyone who sat close for long enough would realise it must be alcohol by the way I would take small sips regularly rather than long irregular gulps as I might have done if it was grape juice or something. But she was engrossed in her romance novel and didn’t seem to notice after the lights went out, although I can’t help but notice that before that, she had looked over and watched me with curiosity for some time. Sitting at the back of the carriage had another benefit in that of being close to the lavatory, but this also meant that many old-timers wandered past to use it, but I didn’t mind that because those sort of things don’t make any difference to my ability to sleep on a train, and I loved the way I could hear the sound of the wheels and the squeaky joints between the carriages when people opened the door. The train rushed on through the night as everyone read books by themelves and the little girl continued colouring in the near darkness.
I hoped that the person who was to sit beside me would miss the train or something because I hated sharing, and if they were a larger person it might be difficult to squeeze past them to go to the bathroom as I already took up quite a bit of space with my full sized keyboard balanced on top of my laptop, my mouse on the armrest and all my bags wedged under my seat and the one in front. I decided that when they boarded I might just put the keyboard away and watch a movie. An hour ago I would have been horrified at the thought of watching a movie on such a wonderful train ride, but I find it harder to concentrate on a book with someone sitting too close to me, whereas if I watched a movie I could easily just put in my earphones and relax and pretend they weren’t there. I ate one of the many sandwiches that I had packed and brought with me so as to save money and avoid the awful pre-packaged crap that they served on the train.
I wished I could afford to sit in the club car and drink, just to be sociable and chat to people, but it was closing soon anyway and I was trying to do this trip on a very tight budget. Before I left home, my neighbour dropped over with $50 for a computer I had fixed for a friend of his. I hate fixing computers and had he not just turned up with it in his arms I would have definitely said no, but I like to be friendly to him because we’re both musicians and I often listen to loud Korean pop music late at night which I’m sure he isn’t that fond of. I had insisted that I didn’t want any money for the job, because I knew the woman was incredibly difficult and would complain bitterly if anything wasn’t just the way it had been before, but he insisted that I had to take the money since I had spent so many days working on it. I wasn’t going to waste it on absurdly overpriced beer though. I could have given it to my mum, who I owe a bit of money to, but of course I’m a terrible, ungrateful arsehole who never pays his mother back all the money she lends me so I had ignored her frustrated emails she had sent me earlier today because I didn’t want her bringing me down on this journey.
So I had done something a little extravagent but worthwhile with it. On my Kuranda leg of the trip, I had decided to upgrade to “Gold Class” for one direction of the journey, because I was surely only going to do that trip once in my whole life, and it was supposed to be the most scenic, most beautiful railway journey in all of Australia and one of the most heavily photographed train trips in the world, and they promised that you would be served lovely snacks and wine and sit in the most luxurious, comfortable seats imaginable, and I just wanted to do it once, even if it was only in one direction. It would make for good photos and a good story and cost only $47. So despite not believing in fate or god or any of that nonsense, I decided that the $50 was a very fortuitous occurrence that was going to allow me a slightly more wonderous experience through the mountains than I would have otherwise had. Plus, I might be lucky enough to get the seat to myself that way and have more room to spread out and take photos and all that sort of thing. I was quite sure it would be money very well spent and I looked forward to it with unbridled anticipation.
I had slipped my laptop behind the lady’s seat next to me to charge, but as we approach Gladstone I realise that someone was probably going to get on. I got up to switch devices on the charger and the train attendant asks “Oh, are you getting off here ?” and I say “No, but I was told someone is getting on”. She half shakes her head and says “Actually that person hasn’t paid yet, so there is a 50-50 chance they won’t be joining us”. I was pleased and hopeful that they wouldn’t. The little girl across the aisle has been laying awake looking at me and sucking her thumb in this cheeky sort of way. I keep glancing over at her and she gives me this massive grin. We don’t actually say anything for ages, but we do this weird miming thing like you would do when speaking to someone who only speaks a foreign language. Except it starts off really simplistically in the form of grins and gasps and then moves on to more complicated sentences. Within a short while though she is reading the words written on the rubbish bag and keeps looking to me for help when she gets stuck. Without even reading the rubbish bag I can guess what it says, so when she gets stuck on words like “convenience” and “appreciate” I help her out. It makes me laugh so hard to realise that I am teaching some kid I don’t even know how to read.
It’s hilarious and I realise that by responding to her I am just stirring her up and keeping her awake but everyone else on the train is asleep and I swear she looks EXACTLY like Suki only a few years older and I can’t help but grin when she is looking at me and trying to get my attention and she knows it. As people start to get on at Gladstone she counts each person who walks past. There is a massive amount of people getting on at Gladstone for some reason, even though it’s well after 11pm and she counts each and everyone and looks at me and holds up fingers until she gets past ten and then to my hilarity she whispers loudly at me and insists that I start holding up fingers to count the extra people that she can’t count on her fingers. I’m nearly rolling in the aisles laughing at her by this time, because she’s just so adorbale and funny and keeps doing this weird thing where she holds her head down and just swishes her pony-tail vigorously from side to side like a horse.
I know I’m just causing her to stay awake and I probably should ignore her and let her calm down but it’s sorta difficult. Kids are just so hilarious, and compared to the little brats at the front of the carriage, this one is just a little angel and she’s just making me laugh so much that I can’t bear to stop her. Eventually she complains that she has to go to the toilet and and I point at the room behind us, but she says “I have to tell Nanny” and I say “Oh. Of course”, and aded “Wake Nanny then”, realising with amusement that this lovely old lady is not her mother but her GRANDmother and probably at least TWENTY years my senior.
She shakes her head and says “No. Then she will wake up for a long time and be annoyed and then there will be no fun”. I chuckle to myself and figure that she must be able to wait, so I just say nothing. More people come backwards and forwards and we get far too into counting them, to the point that I am holding up four fingers to count 40 people while she counts the single digits. She tells me she has a brother called James and two sisters called Tabitha and Sabrina. I can’t hold back this time and I finally laugh out loud and then quickly cover my mouth just like she has been doing to hold back laughter. OMG, her sisters are named after witches. She tells me her name is Latika, which seems curious to me because it’s mostly an African-American name.
Eventually her nanna yawns and stretches and seems awake and I say “I think your granddaughter needs to go to the bathroom. She didn’t want to wake you”. She smiles and says “I know. I was listening”. Latika looks shooked and says “We thought Nanny was asleep but she was awake !” I laugh and say “Nanny always knows what’s going on”. Latika goes to the bathroom, insisting that I count her as one of the passersby, bringing us to 42 and then 43 when she returns. I talk to her nan for a bit which is amusing and I of course tell her that I thought she must be Latika’s mum rather than her grandmother, but she pretends not to notice the compliment. She explains that Latika is actually a witch’s name too, although not one from as well known a program in which Tabitha and Sabrina feature. She says that her daughter and her husband made a pact in which the mother got to name all the girls and the father got to name all the boys and that Latika has a new little brother on the way and that his name is going to be Michaelangeo.
I tell her that my daugther has an unusual name too and that it’s Suki and suddenly Latika screws up her face and points and says “That’s Chinese !” and I laugh out loud again and say “Actually it’s Japanese. But how did you know that ?” and she says “I just know” and her nan says “She’s a very smart girl. It’s troublesome, believe me” and I just grin. She asks where Suki’s name comes from and I say that it comes from a song. Latika immediately pipes up and demands to know what song it’s from and what it means. I say “It’s from a song called ‘Daisuki da yo’ and it means ‘I will love you forever’, and her name means ‘love'” and Latika’s nan just smiles and says “That’s very nice”. There’s something odd in the way she says this that indicates to me that she maybe knows what Suki means and I sheepishly add “Well, Suki doesn’t literally mean love, but it’s basically the same thing” and she just nods and I wonder idly if she speaks any Japanese but don’t actually ask her.
Her nan tells me that the reason Latika is so smart is because she goes to a private school with only 34 people in the entire school. They don’t have any grade four students, so several years are combined and Latika shares lessons with kids who would be at grade 2, 3 and 4 level and her nan of course tells me that Latika is one of the ones at grade 4 level for many subjects, but of course, she is her grandmother so of course she would say that. Who doesn’t want their grandchild to be learning two years above their level ? I tell her nan that I went to a mixed grade private school too in Tully though not quite as small as Latika’s and she seems very pleased by this. I guess she thinks I seem like a nice guy if I’ve gone to a small private school in Far North Queensland. I idly wonder what Latika’s mother is like and assume she must be pretty smart to have such a bright kid.
By this time, Latika and my conversation has gone on for at least two hours and her nan and my conversation for about an hour, and Latika is getting far too excited and we are both shushing her and telling her to calm down. I know it’s not my place to calm her down, but since she’s talking to me, I feel I should at least make some attempt to stop her getting too excited. Not because the whole train is asleep. Just because she’s 6 years old and it’s after midnight and she should be asleep. Her nan tells me that it’s very unusual for Latika to speak to strangers, especially men and I chuckle and say “Well, everyone says I look like a big teddy bear so maybe that’s it”. Her nan has been sleeping on Latika’s gigantic Easter bunny plushie that she got a few days ago. Latika whispers “Is your hair purple ?” and I grin and say “Yes” and she goes “I thought so ! Nan’s is too” but by this point, tiredness is setting in and she finally lays down under the seat her nan is sitting on and falls asleep sucking her thumb.
I’m both disappointed and relieved that she’s finally gone to sleep. I wonder if her nan really was awake for the whole conversation or if she was just pretending to be. I suspect she was just awake for the last part, or mostly just dozing. Either way the whole thing was very funny and it sure beat sitting here watching a movie. The guy who was supposed to get on at Gladstone never turned up thankfully so I have the neighbouring seat all to myself. I know that earlier when I was watching Jpop videos, Latika was as unobtrusively as she could craning to see, and even went so far as to get her glasses off the seat in front so that she could see better. I casually turned my tablet around a tiny bit without being obvious but I didn’t want to encourage her too much. I’m glad she didn’t get too carried away and try and sit next to me or something because it would have been awkward. Fortunately her nan didn’t mind me talking to her and realised that I wasn’t annoying her by Latika talking to me so she was pretty casual about it and just shushed her from time to time so that she would calm down and not get out of control and start laughing too loud or whatever six year olds do.
Well, I reckon I have a pretty good insight into what Suki is going to be like when she’s six. She’s going to be shy, but curious, adventurous but cautious, sharp as a pin, and have a great sense of humour as well. I mean, I’m sure lots of six year olds appear to have a sense of humour, but Latika’s was at least reserved enough that she wasn’t annoying and deafeningly loud about it and had the sense to cover her own mouth when she laughed too hard. After the two of them went to sleep I sat staring out the window for a long time wondering what Suki did today. Tomorrow is the last day of school holidays, and for a moment I imagine she will be back at school until I remind myself that despite her size, Suki is only three years old and has two more years before she goes to school. I try not to get too carried away thinking about it, but I have this feeling that I’m going to end up dreaming about Suki tonight. I’m on this lovely diesel locomotive headed into the far north with this lovely grandmother and her grandchild across from me, and I’ve been lucky enough to have the pre-booked seat beside me not occupied and I am feeling pretty happy.
I sort of made some steps to get contact with Suki earlier today. It’s a long story and I don’t want to go into it during this wonderful tale of adventure, but let’s just say I was laying in bed last night thinking a lot and I decided it was time to do something. I don’t think I’m going to be very tired, but I decide to try and go to sleep for a little bit anyway just to see if I can. I’ll probably be back typing within an hour, but we’ll see what happens. I tuck my laptop in the seat in front of me so that I don’t have to get my bag down and gently pull my big tablet computer out from underneath Latika’s feet where it’s been charging. I have to have the cover open while it’s charging and Latika’s had her feet on it, but it’s not like a six year old’s feet are going to do any more damage to it than my big, adult-sized fingers are, so I’m not at all concerned that she’s been sleeping on it. I’ve had a lot of people screw up my hardware in worse ways and I hardly think Latika is going to break it.
I haven’t had anything to hug in my sleep lately and I wish I had my Domo-kun pillow to lean on while I sleep. I do have Hello Kitty though. The one I bought in Singapore with the “I Love Japan” motif on it in support of the Japanese Earthquake of March 2011. I’ve been taking it with me on all my travels since Singapore so it’s cute to think that that particular toy has also done enough miles to cicumnavigate the world, just as I have within the last year. She’s a real globe-trotter and I just think it’s neat that I have her with me as a good luck charm, despite how horribly paranoid I am about losing her. I decide to get her down and at least tuck her into the seat pocket in front of me while I try and sleep. It’s almost 1am now anyway and my typing is loud so it’s probably best I try and doze a bit.
When I awaken at around 6am we are sitting at a station. Everyone is just starting to wake up. I wonder if it could be Mackay. I turn on my phone and check Google Maps and of course it is Mackay. I hate Mackay, for reasons that I won’t go into. But it’s still been many years since I’ve seen it. As we pull away, the buffet car opens for breakfast and I listen to them announce tasty things like bacon and eggs and fruit salad and such, but it’s $15 for a hot breakfast which is far too much for my liking so I pull a still cold chicken and jarlsberg sandwich out of my bag and nom on that instead while Latika and her nan head up for breakfast. I sit looking out the window and eating my sandwich. I am thrilled to see nothing but canefields as far as the eye can see. Ahhh, I can’t tell you what it means to see canefields like this again. It reminds me so much of Innisfail, undoubtedly my favoutie town in Australia and I wish I had the luxury of stopping there and going to the old library. I almost feel like I should be able to walk in again after 22 years and say “Hey, where’s your Apple IIe ? I want to play Carmen Sandiego !” and then get all upset when they say “Uhh, that machine was retired about two decades ago. We have a PC now, and no more educational games, sorry”.
The canefields are great. Just to look outside the train’s windows and see nothing but sugar cane warms my heart and I decide to listen to something that’s as Queensland as it gets; Graeme Conner’s “A Little further North”. I have just enough phone signal left to download it before we disappear into the tall cane and I will lose reception. I’m feeling good. I look for accommodation in Cairns. I looked yesterday and there was some backpacker place with dorm beds for $13, but it’s not there on the list today so I guess it could have been booked out. I ring another place that has very nice sounding airconditioned cabins with a queen bed for only $38 which sounds just fantastic. They won’t take a booking without payment, which I can’t do since I lost my credit card in Bangkok, but the woman checks and assures me that there are plenty available and that I shouldn’t have any problems getting one when I pull into Cairns tonight.
The sun is coming through the window very brightly and I am torn between wanting to close the blinds to remove the annoying glare, and wanting to see the countryside pass by. I decide to leave them open, but then I notice Latika’s nan squiting at her book, so I get up and close them. It’s mostly scrubland outside by this point anyway. I continue listening to Graeme Conners classics like “Let the Canefields Burn” and “Cyclone Season” and watch as all the new people who got on in Proserpine wander back and forth down the aisle. After a good 5 hours sleep last night I feel surprisingly refreshed and not at all uncomfortable despite sleeping in various awkward positions through the night. I pad up to the club car in my socks, and ignore the signs insisting that footwear must be worn inside the serving carts, and buy a bottle of cold water because mine has run out. If only I’d packed as much water as I packed wine !
I forgot they had a cold water fountain on the train. When I’m overseas I don’t mind buying water, but it just seems so pointless in Australia when we go to such expense to make sure our water supply is potable and I just have huge issues with the idea of paying even $3 for such a tiny bottle of water. I know that in Australia we price things according to what people can afford rather than what they’re actually worth, but I think that drinking water should be an exception to that rule. In fact, dammit, I think that on a 27 hour train up the coast, the water should be government subsidised and cost no more than 50 cents a bottle even if the stupid CocaCola company wants to charge absurd prices for something that is almost certainly tap water anyway. It’s unbearably hot on the train and my stubble is itching my neck because it’s so unpleasant. I’ll have to go into the bathroom and shave soon I think. I might even go and have a beer soon, just because of the heat mind you, not because I want one. I guess that’s one benefit of taking the electric tilt train – better airconditioning. God it’s not even 9am yet either. I am so thankful I don’t live up this end of Australia anymore. Even Kuala Lumpur, right on the equator isn’t this unpleasantly hot.
I have a shave and chat to Latika’s nan a little bit about the Sunlander. The Sunlander is one of the last long-haul diesel locomotives in Queensland and has been running since 1953 but is due to be retired in 2014 to be replaced by a new electric train, meaning that it probably only has about 300 more trips left in the old girl. It’ll be sad to see such an iconic Australian train retired, but I think that extra 40% time saving on the trip is worth it to most people, Latika’s mum included, she says. 61 years seems like a long time for a train to be running, but I bet that with regular service they could easily run for 161. It’s interesting to note that the Sunlander is the 38th longest train journey in the world and the 3rd longest in Australia. I knew it was a long line, but I’m amazed that it ranks in the top 40 longest in the world. Turns out I’m not traveling quite as far as I originally thought, as I had only looked at the road distance up the A7 inland road, and the train line is much more direct and I’ll probably only be covering around 3,000 km in this whole trip but it’s still a long way.
A guy at the front of the carriage plucks at an electric guitar quietly as we approach Townsville and everyone gets their bags ready since most of the train seems to be departing there, I watch as an old timer accosts another couple of old gentleman and natters their ear off about a French centenarian that he met recently, and the other guy gently puts his hand on the old guy’s shoulder and says “I’m sorry mate, I don’t have time to listen right now. We’ve got to get off”. The old bloke concedes, but then ends up following them up the carriage talking to them anyway. I guess that telling stories is what old people are best at right ? I wonder what sort of crazy stories I’ll be harranguing strangers with when I’m 80 years old.
Latika’s nan says goodbye and Latika gives me a big smile and waves with one hand while sucking her thumb with the other as she clutches onto her giant blue bunny rabbit. I have this incredible urge to scold her and tell her not to suck her thumb, but I keep quiet. Besides, it’s not like it hurts anyone. It’s hardly the worst habit in the world. I’m sad to see them go but also eager to steal their seat, hehe. Not that I’m short of battery power because I’ve had my devices plugged in under Latika’s seat all day anyway, but I just like to have power within my grasp, so to speak. Unfortunately, another group gets on, and while there’s plenty of spare seats available, they are assigned to my area and one girl in particular is in Latika’s old seat, so I am forced to scramble back across the aisle again with all my bags. The girl is a dwarf by the looks and she’s had to undergo some sort of major leg surgery because she has massive surgical scars all the way up her legs where you can tell she’s been cut open to have some sort of metal braces or something put in.
There’s something very odd about another small group, or rather, their parents outside. There is a girl with two young children sitting in a seat in front of the “little” woman. They’re clearly not her own, as she’s too young and I initially assume they might be her younger siblings except that she gets them to wave to their dad outside and he’s clearly a mixed blood aborigine, with a much heavier aboriginal heritage by the looks. The young girl is clearly as white as they come, but the two children have the tinest hint of aboriginal in them, since both have nearly black hair and huge brown pupils. I wonder why they’re traveling with this white-bread anglo girl. I would assume that their families were neighbours or friends, but the way the girl lets the little boy sleep on top of her lap seems to indicate a much closer relationship than just neighbours or family friends and I ponder what their story could be. As the train takes off the aboriginal father runs alongside all the way to the end of the platform, keeping pace with the train and making the children laugh and wave and call out “Daddy ! Daddy !” while a half-blood woman who may or may not be their mother walks along in the background with a smile and I ponder the situation. The most likely explanation I can come up with is that the kids have a white mother who left, and the father remarried to another aboriginal woman and that the white girl is one of the young kids’ relatives and still lives nearby in the area. But who knows, that’s just a plausible guess.
There’s a lot of indigenous families on the train now. In fact, with the exception of the first class carriage, there’s now far more aborigines on the train than there are white Australians. The native boys are horribly unruly, screaming and swinging through the carriage like monkeys, barely touching the ground, but the girls are more well behaved and one comes down the train to get her brother who has taken way too long going to the toilet because it was occupied. To my amusement she even speaks to him briefly in their native tongue. Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard an aboriginal person speak in their native language. It makes me realise I really am back in the top end of Australia where this sort of thing is much more common. The girl goes in after the boy emerges from the bathroom and he just stands hovering beside me, leaning right over and watching me type. I find it horribly distracting and I try to ignore him but I can’t so I just sit staring out the window but he keeps looking anyway until his sister finally comes out of the toilet and gives him a shove and tells him to hurry up. She takes a long look at my laptop screen as well. Aborigines like to look at things. They don’t have the sort of upbringing in which it’s cosidered impolite to stare, and stare they will, especially at a purple haired writer sitting typing on a laptop covered in chinese dragons.
This part of the journey is very slow. Cairns isn’t that far from Townsville, but the train slinks sort of guiltily through a very suburban area where people’s back fences jut right up against the train line – something that just wouldn’t be allowed in more built up areas down south. But Townsville, despite its size is not an overly wealthy city and its really only the farmers that keep it alive since it lacks Cairns’ tourism. I chuckle thinking about what Latika’s mum said when I told her I was on my way to Cairns. She said “Oh Cairns. Yes. Nice place to visit. Sure wouldn’t want to live there though”, which is funny because it’s exactly what a Cairns resident would say about Townsville. The Cairns-Townsville rivaly is one of the strongest in Australia and probably equals or exceeds that of the Sydney-Melbourne put-downs, only on a smaller scale. Everyone who lives in one town feels threatened by the other and is constantly putting it down.
I think they get that a bit up here when two towns or cities are nearby to each other and of similar sizes or demographics. It’s like everyone is silently afraid that the other city will grow in popularity and outshine them and then everyone will move away from their city and leave it a ghost town, so they spend all day rubbishing the other city. When I lived in Tully, we had a strong rivaly with Innisfail because both cities like to lay claim to the “Golden Gumboot” award for the town with the highest annual rainfall in Australia. Tully was nearly always the winner, but every now and again Innisfail would chime in and say they’d beaten Tully, but it was once revealed that the weatherman had been urinating in the water gauge to skew the results, much to the amusement of Tully residents and the chagrin of Innisfailians. I bet they still talk about that. It’s probably such a well known story that it’s become an urban legend and Innisfail can never successfully lay claim to the Golden Gumboot without getting called cheaters by Tullyites.
We pass no more canefields and all I really see are run down old houses with rusty tin rooves among the ghost gums. I know we will see more as we approach Tully and Innisfail though. I think again how I wish I had the luxury of stopping in Innisfail to see what’s become of the old place in the last 22 years. I remember there used to be a small temple there that we passed as kids and they had these two concrete balls on top of each other named “Josh Balls” which my dad thought was hilarious because that’s what he used to call my little brother, or just “JB” for short. When we passed Gladstone late last night I wondered to myself whether there was anything there I’d remember. That’s where I was born, but I haven’t really lived there since I was a baby, although we visited sometimes as my grandparents lived on a tiny island just off the coast of Gladstone for many years. I know my family have lots of friends there but we don’t really visit. All I really know about Gladstone is that it was a well known boom town briefly due to having a large aluminium smelter and a huge pier that was immortalised in a classic Aussie folk song by the band Redgum, but that it sort of fell on bad times and most of the work dried up. I don’t think it’s considered a very desirable place to live anymore, and I remember the last time I visited there for work the place was a ghost town even on a Saturday afternoon and the only people you saw were the ones ducking quickly from one pub to another with their blue cattle dogs trailing wearily behind them in the dusty heat.
I glance out the window and see more canefields popping up and realise we must be getting back into cane territory and I check my GPS and see that we’re almost at Ingham. I am very, very fond of the Perth region in Western Australia, but I must say, when it comes to beautiful, relaxing country lifestyle, you just can’t beat this part of North Queensland from Ingham to Cairns. This is my favourite part of Australia. It’s right beside the ocean, yet most of the people who live here are battered Akubra-wearing farmers who sit on property minding their cane and looking at the sky and talking about when the rains will come while drinking rum or even home-made whiskey. When we lived in Innisfail it was on our yacht, moored in the Johnson River in the centre of Innisfail. I used to go ashore, promising my parents I would be back on the wharf at a certain time of day, but invariably I would get caught up at the library playing Carmen Sandiego or reading Asterix comics and I would walk home buying a cup of chips and a coke for a mere dollar and stand on the pier waving my arms, knowing that my mum would be poking her head up to the windows regularly wondering where I was and see me and come pick me up in the dinghy.
I remember a couple of times we motored up the river in the dinghy to look for bananas, because other than sugar cane, the area around Innisfail is the largest banana producer in Australia and many of the banana fields run right up to the river, so we would cruise up the river in our dinghy looking for a crop that was dangerously close to the river and then pick a couple of trees that looked like they were about to drop their delicious fruits into the Johnson River at any moment and we’d hack them down and take them back to the boat to hang them up before they disappeared into the river forever. I remember one time up there I took my new Swiss army knife that I’d gotten for my birthday that year and insisted on hacking one of the bunches of bananas down myself with the harshly grooved raspy tool bit and then my dad caught it and we threw it in a sack and took it home. Unfortunately the tool must have slipped out of my pocket on the way home because my pockets were too small and I had to sit right on the prow of the boat to balance it out since there was only one big seat at the back on which my parents both sat.
I have a terrible reputation for losing things like that. My parents don’t trust me with *anything* important, even now because every now and again I will forget something. I never told them, but when I was in Longreach, I had one of Josh’s old Akubras. I loved that Akubra so much and I used to wear it everywhere in Brisbane, even when it clashed bizarrely with everything else I wore and made look like some odd patchwork of cliches like metal-head, country bumpkin, and punk all at the same time. Well, on my trip out to Longreach, I left it in the field beside me when I slept and when I was packing up in the morning I somehow left it behind. I was so mad at myself when I realised it was missing and I actually cried on the way home. To lose my brother’s Akubra was just a tragedy, but to be honest, I would rather have worn it and had it really mean something and made me think of him and still lost it than just hung it on the wall as some sort of sad ornament as they have done with his big, black ten-gallon hat. One day I guess that hat will be mine and I’ll be very careful with it and maybe wear it just on his birthday.
I realise as we come up towards Ingham station that Josh was with us the last time I was in this part of Australia, but I am determind not to cry. I fail, but listening to emotional Otsuka Ai songs like Planetarium doesn’t help so I decide to change the playlist to something more up-beat and put on L’Arc~en~Ciel’s “Blurry Eyes”, which never fails to make me happy, especially the live versions which are just so insanely full of energy, and the bass guitarist just runs at full pelt from one end of the stage to the other until he falls down exhausted and I smile to myself. I look out the window to see even the lawnkeeper at the bowls club wearing an Akubra and wish that I could afford a new one, but of course a good kangaroo-skin Akubra is quite expensive, so I haven’t been able to bring myself to part with a good $80-250 or so for one. I will soon. What is an Australian who grew up in the far north of Queensland without an Akubra ? I need to show my heritage. I remember meeting this dinkum country Queensland Aussie in my friend’s bar in Saigon once, on my birthday, and he had his Akubra on the whole time and I commented about it and he said “I don’t like to take this here hat off mate, lest I might lose it, so I just keep it mah my head. That way no matter how drunk aye get, the hat is always on my head and I won’t forget it”. I agreed that was a good policy and one I should have followed with Josh’s Akubra.
I watch the white girl with the two kids. She mustn’t be short of a buck because she has bought them all shitloads of food. They have big expensive bottles of Ice Break, orange juice, and she’s bought lots of delicious snacks at the meal cart like sausage rolls for the kids and pre-cooked meals for herself and such. Not that that’s a big deal because if I wasn’t traveling so cheaply I’d be doing that too, but it just seems surprising for a North Queensland country girl who’s traveling with a couple of half-blood aboriginal kids. As she leans forward I notice a very large and elborate tribal tattoo on her lower back. A “hag tag” we rudely call them in Australia, when a girl gets a large tattoo like that. I smile to myself and figures that explains it. She may be as white as any red-haired Irish girl, but she mixes with the blacks.
Don’t get me wrong and think that means I look down on her or them. Black people are the native Australians and deserve our respect, but I’m not going to pretend that they’re the same as us. They are very different people and no matter how much they try and fit in, they are just a little bit more wild and native and I think that’s just great. It’s actually very nice to be among them, even the white girls who live with them. If she wasn’t busy with her charges and there was a nearby seat I would love to go and chat to her and find out her story, but there’s not, so I content myself with just sitting and watching from a distance. We finally arrive at Ingham station and I realise why the last fifth of this trip takes at least half of the time of the whole journey, because the train just crawls through towns at the pace of a snail laying down its wet, slimy trail behind it.
I finally get a good look at the little boy’s sister. She’s odd. She’s as whitely pale as he is and I simply cannot comprehend how either of them could come from a mixed-blood family. I mean… she has FRECKLES for god’s sake, despite having dark hair and brown eyes. She clutches some sort of monkey teddy and shares a seat with her brother and stares outside and I almost wonder if they were *adopted* by their black parents, as unrealistic as that sounds. The older girl digs into a huge bag of treats and pulls out chocolate bars and candy and hands them around to keep the kids happy. Whoever she is, she’s a good relative or sibling. She has reddish-brown hair and green eyes though, so I suspect she is a relative and not a sibling though. I remember earlier when the train conductor came around and checked their tickets and the little boy held up a little plastic dinosaur and yelled “RAAAA !” at him and he feigned surprise and said “Oh no ! You’re not allowed to bring pets aboard the train !” and the little kid giggled and said “It’s a dinosaur, not a pet !” and the conductor said “Well he looks like he’s pretty tame, so I think we’ll let you keep him this time”.
I have to make a call to check in with a client about a networking problem and I wax technical for a couple of minutes to one of the staff members because the boss is away in a remote country town, and when I get off the phone I find both of the suspectedly aboriginal kids staring at me with huge wide eyes. I can’t help but laugh and I smile at them both and the little boy goes into a fit of giggles which just won’t stop and the little girl just stares at me for ages with these huge brown eyes. I must admit they are both the most gorgeous children, and if I wasn’t deep into Far North Queensland I would say that surely they are of half-Mexican or Spanish origin, because they have such pale skin and the hugest eyes you’ve ever seen and they really are both very pretty kids. Their travel companion with the tribal tattoo just sits there reading some trashy Australian womens magazine.
The little indigenous girl from before who scolded her brother walks past and stops and just stares at them for what must have been twenty seconds, probably wondering the same things I’ve been wondering, but in the mind of an 8 year old child. It’s pretty clear at this point that the white girl is related to them because they are quite willing to bawl in front of her and she is quite okay with smacking them and scolding them very sternly, so it’s very obvious they are not mere neighbours. It doesn’t seem likely that I will have much chance to talk to her about the situation so I resolve to look out the window where the scrub has fallen away to the beginnings of a far more lush, North Queensland wildnerness, on the verge of approaching rainforest. Another indigenous girl walks past laughing with a half-blood girl and I chuckle to myself and realise that this sort of thing really shouldn’t surprise me that much.
It’s just that as a child in this area, I don’t really remember their being so many half-bloods. It was always the blacks and the whites, but things seem to have changed over the years and the distinction between black and white has softened considerably, and up here mixed race children seem to be the norm rather than the exception and I sort of think it’s cool in a way. I’ve always been sort of bothered the way most full-blood aborigines don’t want to mix in society or are very obviously different, but in an odd way, we’ve almost bred the problem out by just mixing the races to the point where half the people up here can claim to have an aboriginal heritage and are just normal Australian trash like anyone else.
The disabled girl wakes up. I refuse to call her a dwarf because it just seems horribly impolite and even though she doesn’t seem to be particularly incapacitated I prefer to refer to her as disabled due to her surgical work rather than just a term of being diminutive in stature. She’s been sleeping with her fringe and hair totally covering her face for the last hour as though she were hiding from the world. Maybe she is. She’s not unattractive though. Her nose is a little large and she has the obvious scars on her legs, but she is otherwise a normal adult in her early 20’s. I wonder idly if she has a boyfriend and is happy. She sorta seems to be hiding though and not very pleased with her life. She’s dressed okay, and her hair is quite pretty and her face isn’t un-cute and she has big, well… assets. But it occurs to me that if she was really self-conscious, she would be wearing jeans or at least a long skirt, yet she’s not, so I realise that I’m reading far too much into her attitude and that she’s most likely not embarrassed about her scars, or at least doesn’t care to hide them and that most likely she’s just tired. I wonder where her friend in front of me has gone, because she’s disappeared for a couple of hours now. I presume she’s moved to another seat because that’s far too long to have been just hanging out in the club car.
I decided to go and visit the club car, and well… it paid off. I met the sort of person that I couldn’t possibly have expected but who absolutely blew my mind and made the entire trip worth doing. He was a guy who didn’t really seem that much older than myself by the way he talked, but looking at the grey in his beard I suppose he must have been 10 years older. Initially I saw him munging out on a meat pie with his son and I asked if he’d mind if I took a photo as a representative shot of two Aussies eating a pie on a train into North Queensland. He initial response was “No thanks. I’d prefer that you didn’t” and I said “No worries mate”. But then we started talking and I asked where he was from (Cairns) and he asked where I was from (Hervey Bay I guess) and we got to talking. Turns out he was actually the guy I heard earlier picking away on his guitar, although it wasn’t electric, it was acoustic and he was just playing it really quietly. He really liked to play for people it seemed and we had only been talking a few minutes before he said “You want to come hear a song I wrote ?” and I of course said “Sure. I’d love to”.
We wandered back to our carriage and he pulled his guitar out of his case and we wandered back up the carriage. But we didn’t cross into the first class cart or the dining cart. We just stopped in the small space between the carriages where you’re not supposed to stop and he sat down on the floor and said “This will do” and he started playing. It was a beautiful, simple song and I don’t really remember what it was about, but it was nice and had decent lyrics though nothing overly remarkable. We were sitting in between carriages, swaying as the train rocked from side to side. He had a couple of kids come up and hang around briefly who looking almost like they were native, but sort of Asian and I wasn’t completely sure, but they just stopped for a moment and carried on down the carriage. One fellow stopped for ages and listened. The guy I’d met, who later identified himself as Darren, said “Do you want to hear another song ?” and transfixed I said “Absolutely”. He noted “This one has a bit of a story behind it”.
He went on to explain how he had picked up a Filipino wife some 17 years ago and brought her home to Australia and she didn’t speak that great English. They spent some time in very cheap housing up the top end and he ran into a bit of trouble. The owner gave him a bit of shit for having a foreign wife and demanded he leave because the locals didn’t like them. He refused and ended up in the local jail for “causing trouble”. He got harrassed heavily for his beliefs and treated very unfairly by the police who charged him with resisting arrest simply because he said they had no right to evict him just on the basis of the nationality of his wife. He appealed to the CMC and other such bodies and was resoundedly unsuccessful and made to feel even worse. The more he complained, the more they told him to fuck off and stop causing trouble, even though he had wanted nothing more than to live peacefully with his new wife in Northern Australia.
He sang a song about it, and while I don’t remember the lyrics specifically, it was beautiful. It didn’t on the surface seem to be about anything in particular, and that’s why it was so awesome. It was just a great song and I loved it and I was glad he had told me the back story behind it. We sat in there and talked for a bit and then he passed the guitar to me and said “You play something”, and I did. I played some original thing without lyrics and he liked it and asked “What’s that called ?” and I said “It doesn’t really have a name, it’s just an original song” and he nodded. I played a little bit more and then I asked if he wanted to retire to the club car for a beer.
Darren agreed, and he put his guitar away and we went and sat at the bar. He didn’t introduce me, but it was clear the couple of young kids nearby with the slightly darker than normal skin were his, but they were incredibly well behaved and I thought it was amazing the way they wandered in and out and listened a bit without ever interrupting or saying anything. They seemed very polite and well raised. We got into all sorts of long discussions. I just mentioned Josh at one point and he enquired about him and I had to reluctantly admit that he had passed away, but wasn’t really that keen to bring it up, but he gently prodded it out of me and seemed curious without being pushy. We were getting pretty close to Cairns and we both agreed it was time to go and get ready to disembark but before we did he insisted upon getting my phone number and asked when I was free. I told him that I was going up to Kuranda Saturday but that I would be free Sunday and Monday and he asked if I would like to come and have dinner with his wife and kids on Sunday night. I told him that would be absolutely wonderful and he assured me that he would give me a call on Sunday afternoon to confirm and that he would love to have me over and chat about stuff and play a little guitar or whatever and introduce me to his lovely wife.
I went back to my carriage and sat down. The disabled girl (I dunno, I should probably feel even worse calling her that, shouldn’t I ?) was sitting in the seat in front of me and chatting with the other girl who I had learned was studying to be a nurse. She kept looking back at me and giving me this sly sort of smile and I wondered if she liked me. It seems I blew that though because I was feeling good and I wanted to listen to some music and I put on some Chisel and The Animals for a bit without earphones and she gave me this sorta disapproving look once and then ignored me. Oh. My music isn’t cool apparently. The little boy was so excitable and I played with him a bit. He had some plastic toys and he was putting his little cheetah on the chair back in front of me and yelling “RAaAaAA !” lots. I played along and lacking any other toy, I pulled Hello Kitty out and meowed back at him and he Rrraaa’d lots and pretend that his cheetah was eating Hello Kitty and stuff. It was funny, but his sister dragged him off as we pulled into the station, but he had left two of his toys behind including the cheetah and I looked at them in concern and wondered what to do. Fortunately the girl came running back onto the train to claim them.
I got off at Cairns station feeling a little bit bewildered, with all my bags around my shoulders and my suitcase dragging behind me. I looked up the place that I was intending to stay again on my tablet and then checked out the distance and pondered whether I should just get a taxi, because it was quite a long way away. As I was deciding, Darren’s older kid ran past carrying a bag and gave me a big smile and a wave. We hadn’t even spoken, but he waved anyway because I’d been talking to his dad. I definitely liked his kids. They just seemed to incredibly polite and considerate. Darren appeared for a moment and said “So, Sunday good Dave ? You have your accommodation and stuff sorted ?” and I nodded and said “Yeah mate, looking forward to it. I’m just sussing it now and I’ll get a taxi in a minute” and he gave me thumbs up and got into a waiting car with his kids and took off.
I didn’t get a taxi though. I was just feeling sort of energetic and excited about being in Cairns and I wanted to see things a bit and decided to walk a little, even if I didn’t make it all the way and had to call a taxi. I took off down the street with my suitcase in tow, stopping briefly at McDonalds for a quick bite. I found an abandoned shopping trolley outside and decide to chuck my bags into it and push it to my destination. I felt like a total tip-rat doing it and a few people who passed me sorta gave me an amused look. I pushed it all the way to my destination which must have taken me close to two hours in the end because I misjudged the directions a bit and walked in the wrong direction a couple of times. When I found the van park, I pushed it across a very large 6 lane motorway and I met three aboriginal guys in the middle of the traffic island as I stuggled to pull it up onto the island and one said “You right there brudda ? L’ss give you a hand mate” and two of them helped me lift it ont the traffic island. I thanked them and they said “Cheers bro. No problems mate” and continued on across the road.
I walked into the van park and the guy at reception remembered me talking to him on the phone and commented that it had been a tough night as some woman had backed into a fire hydrant and they’d had no water anywhere in the park for four hours. I paid him for four nights at the incredibly reasonably price of only $38 a night and he showed me on the map where to find my little private bungalow and directed me where to locate the toilets, showers, game and TV facilities and the big pool in the centre of the place with the water slide. I really have to give this place a credit because I was very impressed. Not only did it have everything mentioned above, but the cabins were beautiful and new and well equipped with lovely wooden-framed queen beds, airconditioning and ceiling fans, large LCD tvs with Austar satellite TV, movies and DVD players in all rooms, a full kitchen with cooking facilities and large fridge which even included milk for the tea and coffee provided.
I have to admit, there’s not many places in all of Australia you can get such beautiful and well appointed accommodation for such a reasonable price and they have literally several hundred bungalows and van and camp sites, so if you are in Cairns and you want a cheap place to stay with great facilities, I thoroughly reccommend the Cairns Sunland Leisure Park. It’s not far from the centre of town, and close to a Coles Express, a 24 hour McDonalds and Dominos pizza etc. Honestly, you couldn’t pick a better place to stay and everything was absolutely in perfect condition. The couch and bed were wonderful and the airconditioner more than powerful enough. Considering I looked at beds in a 10-share dorm room starting at $26, this beautiful private bungalow with aircon and satelite TV and all the mod cons for just $38 was absolutely the height of luxury and I’m so glad I didn’t resort to staying in some shitty, awful 10-share piece of crap with a dozen smelly backpackers just for the sake of saving $10 a night or so. I plugged in all my stuff to charge and left the TV running the music channel quietly and retired to bed for a well earned rest in a comfortable bed.
I had set my alarm for half past six in the morning to ensure I had time to get ready and walk to the train station, but for some reason I woke at only a bit after 3 am and I guess I wasn’t thinking straight because I thought that was when I was supposed to wake up and I got up and went to the amenities block and had a shower and dressed and then came back to my room and checked the time and did the math and realised that not only did I have nearly 5 hours util my train left but that I’d only really caught a couple of hours sleep. I sighed and reset my alarm and laid back down to try and sleep a little longer. It took me a while to doze off but I eventually did and was scared halfway out of my skin when my alarm went off loudly at around 7am. I got up, checked I had everything I wanted to take with me, and headed off down Pease street toward the center of town.
It was a miserable gloomy day and there were tiny spits of rain which eventually turned into a downpour and I tried desperately to shelter inffectually under a poinciana, or “dollar tree” after it’s scientific name. I decided this was a disaster due to the tiny leaves these trees have and that I had two choices; catch a taxi into town and experience a dismail rainy trip with poor photo opportunities, or catch a taxi back to my cabin and change my booking for another day. I decided to do the latter, but when I rang the taxi company they couldn’t find my location and I realised that the street name must have changed when it rounded the bend. I sighed and hung up to check my location on Google Maps. After doing so I thought I’d check the weather and decide what day would be better, but sadly the weather report said that showers would be increasing all week and there was a 95% of heavy rain for the rest of the week. I leaned against the damp trunk of tree in sheer disappointment, thinking that if I couldn’t get up to Kuranda and take decent photos then the whole trip had been a waste. I wouldn’t even be able to get down to the waterfront to take photos there due to the crappy weather.
The rain let up though and I figured that since I’d already booked my tickets and the weather wasn’t going to get any better that I may as well just go anyway. I continued walking into town and I was thankful that I’d allowed lots of time to get there, because I had to stop a couple of times to shelter under closed shop awnings as the rain intermittently poured down more heavily, but I got to the station in time, albeit pretty wet. I cross the platform at Cairns Central Station via the overpass and made my way down to the Kuranda line. The early train was just getting ready to leave. I went into the office and collected my tickets and they gave me a little “Gold Class” sticker to put on my shirt, but it wouldn’t stick, so I got out my press card and hung it around my neck and stuck the sticker to that.
A big group of Koreans arrived in a tour group and I watched them with a big smile on my face. I was just pleased that so many people had come all the way from South Korea to do this train trip. One little boy who was with his parents was staring at me as they walked past and I smiled and waved and said “Annyoung Hasaeo !” His mother’s eyes went wide and she covered her mouth in surprise and said to her husband something which I can only assume was “Oh my god. That guy there speaks Korean !” Apparently that reaction is common from what Simon and Martina say on their show about Korea – that people are so shocked when a foreigner greets them in Korean that rather than return the greeting they just express shock and exclaim right in front of you what a surprise it is that a foreigner speaks their language. Of course I only know about three phrases in Korean, so I don’t really but they didn’t know that and it left me with this big grin on my face as I watched everyone else wander by.
The second train arrived shortly after and I boarded my Gold Class carriage with an Irish couple. We were the only people in the carriage and I wondered if the journey wasn’t really that popular, but then a staff member came along and the Irish people asked if they could switch seats because they didn’t want to be facing backwards, and the attendant told us that in fact our carriage would carry 31 people today and all seats would be full, but that if one of the other carriages were less full they could switch to another carriage if they wanted. At that moment, hundreds of Japanese filed through the station office with a number of tour guides directing them and I watched them all and hoped they would be getting into my carriage, but as I expected, being in a tour group they had opted not to go Gold Class and were duly distributed through the regular carriages, which were all named after valuable metals and gemstones. I was in the “Sapphire” carriage.
It wasn’t long before the train let out two long toots and released the brakes with a loud hiss and the train lurched forward suddenly and we all swayed in our seats as the two huge diesel locomotives that pulled us picked up the slack between the carriages and we headed off. They played a recorded story about the line as we travelled, though it was very quiet and hard to hear over the noise of the train, not that the train was overly loud, but the speakers were very quiet. The attendant told us that food and drink services would start after we reached Freshwater Station which was where the majority of the guests would be getting on board since that’s where the tour busses all dropped them off. True to her word, a couple of minutes later we pulled into a very cute little wooden station covered in ferns and palms and other tropical plants and lots of people boarded our carriage.
We did end up with three Japanese couples; two older and one younger. The rest of the guests near me were mostly British from what I overheard, and possibly a couple of Scots. I wasn’t sure about the ones up the other end of the carriage. We started off again and immediately several staff came around and listed our drink options which including beer, Jacobs Creek wines, soft drinks and tea or coffee. I asked for a red wine and received a nice big plastic goblet full of a very decent shiraz as another staff member wandered around offering everyone spinach and ricotta pastries. I nibbled my pastry and sipped my shiraz and looked out the window feeling very content and most pleased that I’d paid the extra $47 for the upgrade rather than just blow it at the pub or something pointless like that which I could have done any time.
Immediately after the pastries, trays of delictable ham and melted cheese crossaints were brought around by one attendant while two others wandered around topping up everyone’s wine. I overheard the British family opposite me comment on how fantastic the service was and the Irish man agreed wholeheartedly, nodding his head enthusiastically with his mouth full of pastry. I was lucky in that one of the families had a small child and since they were on the side of the aisle with only single seats, one of them would have had to sit on their own facing away from the rest, so the father chose to put their child on his lap which left one extra seat, so I was relieved to switch to the spare seat so that I could face the direction of travel.
I was sort of disappointed to be on the left hand side of the train though, because that meant that mostly I just had a view of the mountain, but I did run over the other side and squeeze between the British family once to get a photo of the train as we rounded horseshoe bend which is a very tight 180 degree turn. Fortunately though, being on the left was best to get photos of the magnificent waterfall. The seating in Gold Class was wonderful and I had a nice, comfy lounge chair just for me, and all the snacks were served on little trays with serviettes on them. The people on the right of the train had small shelves for their drinks, but we had nothing on the left, which seemed rather poor because I had to put my drink on the floor and I was worried someone would knock it over as they rushed to the left side to see the waterfall.
As it turned out, it was lucky I HAD chosen to come on a rainy day because it actually made it far more scenic because all the mountain-tops were shrouded in mist and it made everything so incredibly picturesque, so I would actually reccommend that people do go up on an overcast or rainy day as it’s both more beautiful and has a more rainforesty feel to it, and also that way it’s not as hot. The train isn’t airconditioned, because the windows all open so that people can get better photos, but if it’s raining heavily and you have to close them, then it can get a little bit stuffy inside.
When we got to the largest gorge with the second big waterfall (there were dozens of smaller ones) the train stopped and we all piled out to look at it in awe and take photos. Fortunatley this one was further away and we could get better photos because the earlier one was right beside the train and it was impossible to get it all in frame at once. While I was walking along, a youngish Japanese woman bumped into me by accident and said “Sorry” and I smiled and said “Daijobou. Arigatou” She nodded and took a couple more steps before it dawned on her that I’d just spoken in Japanese and she did a double take and looked back at me with this quizzical look. One of the young Japanese tour guides was standing nearby and watched this exchange and asked “You speak Japanese ?” I grinned and said “Hai. Watashi wa hanase chisana Nihongo” and made a small motion with my fingers to indicate that I only spoke a little. “Sugoi !” she exclaimed. I asked “Watashi wa David. Anata ga namae desu ka ?” to ask her name and she replied “Ahhh. Watashi wa Hitomi” and I nodded and said “Genki desu ka Hitomi-san ?” and she smiled and said “Hai ! Genki desu !” to confirm that she was well and I added “Hajimimashite” and shook her hand. Then she asked another question that I didn’t understand and I frowned a little and said “Gomennasai. Wakarimasen. Egaiwa desu ka ?”, asking her to repeat it in English because I didn’t understand.
She asked “How did you learn Japanese ? Have you lived in Japan ?” and I shook my head and said “Eie. Chisana benkyo. Musume… namae Nihongo” in my best attempt to put together an intelligible sentence explaining that I had only studied a bit but that my daughter had a Japanese name, rolling up my sleeve to show her Suki’s tattoo. She exclaimed “Sugoi !” again and I knew what the next question that was going to come out of her mouth would be and I preempted it and said in English “No, my wife is Australian as well. We just gave her a Japanese name because we like Japan and listen to lots of Japanese music. We are both big Morning Musume fans”. I deliberately chose the present tense so that she wouldn’t ask awkward questions if I had said “was” rather than “is”. She just nodded and said “Ah so”. At that point the train blew its whistle and I smiled and said “Ja ne” and jumped back aboard the train and she waved at me with a pleasant smile. She was goddamn cute too I don’t mind telling you. Really, goddamn, cute.
The funny thing is, I did basically the same thing when we got to Kuranda. There were Japanese people literally everywhere and even the pubs and stores often had signs in Japanese because it was clear that the majority of their visitors were from Japan. At one point I got stuck in the middle of a tour group of young Japanese people and I couldn’t get past because they were listening to their guide. I politely excused myself by saying “sumimasen” and then “arigatou gozaimasu” when they parted to let me past. They all saw my Japanese Domo-kun backpack in which I carried all my camera gear and one pointed and cried out “Domo !” and I turned back and grinned and said “Hai ! Suki Domo-kun !” and a few of the girls giggled and a couple of the boys chuckled. I just loved the idea that various of these tourist groups would all return to Japan and tell everyone that it was quite common for these Akubra-wearing, bearded Aussies to speak Japanese, so I loved taking every opportunity to mess with their minds and let them think that some of us spoke Japanese, even though I myself only speak the most basic conversational Japanese greetings and a variety of basic vocabulary.
I did screw up once though. I walked into the most local looking pub for a bite to eat and this cute Asian couple saw me take Domo off my back and the guy motioned to his wife and they both turned to look at me with this amused look on their face. I smiled and said “konichiwa” since it was afternoon by that time, but they didn’t reply and I quickly realised why when they began talking to each other in Mandarin and I mentally facepalmed and realised they were Chinese, which should have been bloody obvious by looking at the guy’s face, but I was just so used to the place being full of Japanese people that I spoke without thinking. I wished I could have apologised for my error, but the only phrases I know in Mandarin are “hello”, “thank you” and “I love you”, but not “sorry”, so I couldn’t say anything to them and I just looked down at my beer feeling a little silly and ignorant. I guess being a smartarse doesn’t always pay *chuckle*.
There was a pair of very beautiful young Japanese girls nearby at another table reading a tourist guide and the one facing my direction had a beautiful big frangipani flower in her hair. I can assure you she was very pretty and reminded me very much of a Morning Musume member who’s name I can’t recall , but I had nothing to talk to them about and they weren’t sitting close enough to me to warrant saying hello without it being weird and since my Japanese is pretty rudimentary and I knew that the conversation wouldn’t go much past basic greetings and would just prove that I was a show-off and not a fluent speaker, so I just shut up and watched them wistfully as I waited for my food to arrive. Other than the tour groups they were the first Japanese girls I had seen who were clearly single and I felt a little depressed and wished I could speak better Nihongo so that I could find myself a pretty Japanese girl one day.
I ordered a 500g rump steak which was sort of expensive, but they were out of the soup which was the only cheap item on the menu. The food was terribly expensive, as was the beer at $7.50 a pint just for the cheapest local beer and I had to conserve money as I’d already bought a very nice leather hat at one of the many souvenir stores that had them outside. It was only a cheaper Jacaru brand and it was only cow leather, not the much more expensive kangaroo leather, but of course there was no way I could afford $160-250 for a genuine Akubra, so I settled for a cheap black cow leather one that still looked very nice and was only $40 on special. I felt good about buying it because I’d only been talking yesterday about how much I regretted losing Josh’s hat, so it was nice to be able to replace it and after I bought it I caught a lok at myself in a shop window and I think I looked pretty fucking cool in my black leather hat and dark sunglasses and beard. Not fully country-bumpkin, because I have a sort of Abe Lincoln sort of beard, but I still looked cool and reserved and distinctly Australian. I was quite happy with the look and I glanced at myself in the pub’s bathroom mirror and struck a few poses and decided to lay on the Aussie accent as thick as I could for amusement’s sake to further the Aussie stereotype for the tourists. Much to my amusement, the American party with the dwarf girl that I had sat near on the Sunlander even turned up at the table next to me and I chuckled at the fascinating coincidence and nodded to them, because she apparently recognised me, but we didn’t speak because I must admit that I only had eyes for the Korean and Japanese girls.
Despite feeling a little lonely and spending most of the day at Kuranda just wandering up and back the main street wishing I had a pretty Asian girlfriend, I was very pleased with the experience of Kuranda. The trip up was even more breathtaking than I had anticipated and the Gold Class upgrade was more than worth every cent as I surely could not have even purchased the complimentary snacks and several glasses of wine they provided for that price, and they also gave us a very nice brass commemorative Kuranda Railway stick pin and a beautiful big postcard of the train going past the waterfall and a free Kuranda pen to fill it out with and said they would post it anywhere in the world for free. While I was eating I debated whether to send it to my parents since my dad had been good enough to lend me money to book my tickets at short notice since I didn’t have my credit card, or whether to send it to a friend. Since I lived with my parents anyway and they would see my photos, I decided to send it to my friend Peta in Western Australia because we’d spoken the other day and she seemed envious of how many cool things I got to see, and since she wasn’t from Queensland she would probably never see the Kuranda line in person, so I wrote a brief message on the back of the postcard as I finished my steak.
The afternoon was drawing to an end and my train was due to leave in an hour, so I wandered down to the river near the station and walked along the muddy footpath in the light drizzle, trying my best to shield my lens from the rain so that I didn’t have to keep cleaning it. The river was very high and impressive and engorged with brown water running down from further up in the mountains and I took a few nice photos of the riverbank, but the rain started up a little bit heavier and I was forced to retreat back to the station and wait for the train to leave. I boarded when they invited us to, since my feet were tired and blistered and they hurt from walking so much in shoes that I haven’t worn for years. The regular class carriages were surprisingly nice, and had very wide, leather-covered bench seats just down one side, to allow people to get up and go to the other side of the train for photographs. There was only two other families in my carriage because I had chosen to get the later train back down the mountain, while all the tour groups took the earlier one. There was an old Asian couple up the front and an American family who had two young children who kept squeeling unbearably loud and crying and screaming at the top of their lungs, much to the annoyance of the rest of us.
I was pleased that the carriage was nearly empty, unlike the very full Gold Class one on the way up, because I could stretch out at my leisure and switch sits from time to time to get the best photos depending on whether I wanted to shoot something in front of us or behind us, and since the seats were on the left hand side, it meant I got a great view of the valley side this time, and when we passed the waterfall again I didn’t even bother to get up and photograph it because I’d already seen it, and instead I chose to shoot lots of photos of inside the cabin of all the other people standing up and looking out at it which I think will make for great photos and show what a beautiful train it was. When we went around many of the bends I was able to lean out the window a bit and photograph the train itself as it wound its way slowly down the mountain and I was curious why the Gold Class carriages were taller than the rest of the train.
Thankfully this was explained to us by the onboard announcements that I hadn’t caught in the other carriage, which informed us that the larger carriages were actually refurbished ones from the the old wooden Sunshine Express train from the 1930’s which was later replaced by the Sunlander and will in turn be replaced by the nameless new tilt train and I was very pleased to think that the old Sunshine Express hadn’t disappeared forever into some railway graveyard and some of its carriages were still running to this day on the Kuranda line, albeit with a reduced gauge size as required for the narrow railway up the mountain, which also explained why the Kuranda line had its own special line at Cairns station, because I had found that curious. The other carriages were newer and made specifically to match the old Sunshine Express carriages, albeit a tiny bit smaller, but the head locomotive was the same one that was used on the Kuranda line more than a century ago and had been painted by the local aboringal people in indigenous designs that depicted the giant snake from their Dreamtime stories that they believed had carved out the valleys through the mountains.
When we got back to Freshwater Station, everyone else left the carriage and I was the only person sitting in it, which felt pretty eerie and quite sad and lonely, but it was also sort of nice to be trundling along this old train line back into Cairns city in and empty carriage. An attendant wandered past a couple of times and smiled at me and I gave her my postcard so that she could mail it and she thanked me and promised to deliver it back to the Gold Class carriage who would post it for me. I felt tired and more than a little sad. Going somewhere on a train is always exciting and feels romantic and adventurous, but returning somewhere on one always feels wistful and somewhat depressing as you get close to your return destination.
It was raining so heavily by that time that I had to finally close the last window beside me to prevent the rain coming in and I hated the fact that I would have to catch an expensive taxi back to my cabin park, but my feet were so sore that I was glad to have an excuse to need a taxi anyway because I think the walk would have just about killed me after the long day. I think the more time you spend grinning and being happy on a holiday, the more you feel depressed when you get home, and when I finally did get out of the taxi and back into my cabin I flopped down on the bed and felt miserable. I know I shouldn’t, but I’d just had this weird feeling about this journey even before I left and I’d taken steps to say goodbye to everyone before I left because I just had this odd feeling that I wasn’t coming back or something. I know that’s stupid, but I just had this awful trepidation about the trip that I couldn’t really explain. I think maybe it was because I’d wanted to do the Kuranda line for around 25 years and I hadn’t been north past Bundaberg in about a decade, so there was bound to be something sad about “coming home” to North Queensland.
The more I thought about it, the more miserable and depressed I felt. I had noone to talk to on IRC because I’d fought with a friend there and abandoned the channel I’ve basically lived in more than 5 years and laying in my cabin alone I just felt like I wanted to die. Traveling is wonderful, and I love how other people are envious of my adventurous spirit and the stories I tell, but there’s times when you’re stuck in some van park on your own, far from your home that you just wonder why you’re even doing it, and I guess I’m just running away from my life in a way. It’s not like I have any responsibilities or anything since I don’t even get to see Suki. It’s just that most people my age are either married with kids or else at least have steady jobs and live some sort of boring suburban life where even if they’re single, they come home from work and sit on Facebook chatting all night. I hate all that mundane stuff and all I really want to do is do freelance work and write stories and travel and meet random people without maintaining any long-term friendships which are difficult and cause me pain in the long run because I tend to befriend unreliable, callous people who mostly fuck me over eventually. Feeling awful, I push my laptop and tablet to the side of the bed and turn up the aircon and crawl under the covers and fight bad unwanted and unncessary tears and go to sleep despite the early hour.
Fortunately I’m feeling a bit better when I wake up nice and early and I head over to the amenities block to have a shower and shave. When I get back I’m pleased to see that Darren has called while I was in the shower. I had pretty much convinced myself that his promise to have me over for dinner was just a passing gesture to a stranger on the train and that when he got back home to his wife he would have no desire to have some strange random guy he’d met over to his house, but I called him back and he was very polite and asked if I was still free this afternoon. I told him I didn’t have much to do because I had no plans in Cairns and the weather made hanging around the waterfront and taking photos sort of pointless. He asked if I had swimming togs and I said that I had shorts, and he said he would come and pick me up at 3pm and we’d all go swimming and then go back to his place for dinner.
Yatta ! To be honest I wonder what we’ll talk about because Darren is very quiet and reserved and a pretty devout Christian, and I’ll have to be incredibly careful not to swear around his kids because they’ve clearly been raised very well, but I’m just so thankful that I’ve not only met some interesting people on this trip but that one of them has been so kind as to open his house to me and invite me over for dinner. It’s not like we’d be lifelong friends if we spent time together, but he’s an incredibly kind, sensitive sort of person and I’m just thrilled that he wants me to come meet his family, and if conversation gets stilted we can always just play guitar a bit, though I think we can surely talk about traveling a bit, because his wife is from the Philippines and I imagine he must have met her over there because he told me she didn’t speak much English when she first came to Australia, so I expect we may have lots of interesting conversations about Asian culture and stuff.
Since it’s getting on towards 1:30 in the afternoon and I haven’t been able to cook due to the crappy electric cook-top in my cabin being dodgy and shorting out the power every time I use it, I decide to talk a walk up to McDonalds. I would prefer not to be eating takeaway but I’ve had to eat pizza and McDonalds two nights in a row now due to the lack of a working cook-top, despite having bought stupidly overpriced food from the park’s convenience store. The owner promised to bring me a new cook-top today, but he hasn’t yet, which is a little annoying, but I’m not that concerned because I’m having dinner at Darren’s house tonight anyway, but I certainly hope he brings me one tomorrow. There are BBQ facilities all over the park, which I look forward to using on my remaining days here after I find a cheap supermarket, but I’ve bought a bunch of packet noodle and pastas which I can’t cook on a BBQ and I would hate for them to go to waste.
Anyway, I’ll just have takeaway food one more time and worry about the cook-top tomorrow. I wonder how long this story has gotten and do a wordcount and can’t help but laugh out loud as I realise that it’s already well in excess of 17,000 words, or over 60 pages. Oh dear. Lucky I’m not writing for a magazine or something because they’d take one look at this story and say “What the fuck is this ? A novel ?” But I don’t care. I like writing long stories. I don’t WANT to edit out the “boring bits”, because to me, it’s those insignificant little details that are the ones that will quickly fade from my memory, and they’re the sort of things that I want to read years later and smile over and think “Oh, I forgot about that”. If you don’t like it or don’t want to read it, or you do and think it’s boring then I don’t give a shit. Even if I linked you to it, it doesn’t mean I specifically asked you to read it, and you’re not doing me any favours by doing so. I just write. Noone has to read it if they don’t want to. Maybe I’ll take the most interesting parts and submit them to some publication later, or maybe I won’t. It really doesn’t matter to me. I sigh and turn off the aircon and head out to get something cheap for lunch.
I wander up to the pizza store thinking that a large pizza on a $6.95 discount voucher will probably be more economical than McDonalds, but I’ve already eaten pizza two days in a row and I hate eating unhealthy takeaway shit, so I wander on to the supermarket to see if I can find anythign nice to fry up on the BBQ here. The supermarket is just an IGA, and they’re not the cheapest chain in Australia, and being in a remote North Queensland town they’re even worse, but they had very cheap leg ham, so I grabbed a few slices of that and since their cheese is quite expensive and I don’t want to waste a whole block, I get some Jarlsberg sliced for me, because if I’m going to eat cheese on a sandwich I would at least prefer it to be mouthwateringly delicious cheese, so I grab that and also I get a seasoned chicken schnitzel and some sausages that are on special. Satisfied that this is surely enough food to last me through Monday and that I can easily cook it on the park’s BBQs I head back home. On the way I pass a Japanese takeaway place. I wonder idly if they have udon, and when I look in, it’s proudly advertised on the sign that they do udon in four different ways. Drooling at the opportunity for a great meal of udon, I walk in and cough up $9.50 and order up a bowl to take home, but you know… a good udon is worth that compared to some shitty pizza knocked up by some pimply teenager in ten seconds.
I read the newspaper while I wait, even though it’s almost a week out of date and I would have preferred to read about North Korea’s failed missile rather than all the fearmongering that went on beforehand, but beggars can’t be choosers and I don’t feel like buying a newspaper that I may not have time to read fully. Darren rings me up and asks if I mind if he comes a bit earlier than planned and I say sure and that I’ll be home in about fifteen minutes, hoping it gives me time to eat my udon before he arrives. I walk back to my cabin and quickly pack a spare set of nice clothes because Darren suggested on the phone that we go out to a blues club afterwards where he intends to play a couple of songs for the open mic night. I pack one of my tablets even though I am pretty sure I won’t need it since I know Darren is pretty dead against computers, and one of the songs he sang for me on the train was one he wrote called “Don’t give me a computer, just give me a vege garden” and he’s that far out of the internet age that he genuinely doesn’t even know what Facebook is used for, but I figure there’s a chance he may want to see photos or something so I pack it anyway.
I grab my bag and my bowl of takeaway udon curry and head out to the front gate hoping to eat it while I wait for him, but it turns out he lives only a few blocks away so he’s already there waiting with his youngest son, who I haven’t met yet, so I chuck my food onto the floor of his four wheel drive and jump in the passenger seat after saying hello to his son Steven and their dog Benji. We drive on up to the foothills of the mountains that I visited yesterday on the Kuranda train and we get out and hike up this very steep trail in the light rain while bitching about everything that pisses us off about Australia that’s different overseas. It’s good to have a sympathetic ear, because Darren lived for more than five years in the Philippines and tells me that his wife and kids have also visited Brunei and the island part of Malaysia on holiday, so we spend ages talking about Asia and he teaches me a couple of words of Filipino because obviously he’s pretty fluent after spending so many years there.
I find it very difficult to talk and hike rapidly up this steep mountain because when I’m talking I don’t breathe properly, so eventually I fall silent and let him talk while I concentrate on not falling arse over tit on the slippery rocks. It’s not an easy hike I can tell you, as the path is not so much a path as it is a steep and well used trail over the slippery, mossy rocks and Darren is keeping a pretty fast pace, while I’m wearing a pair of leather shoes and I’m a bit afraid of missing my step and knocking myself out on the rocks but eventually we reach the water hole and Steven runs into the rock pool while Darren and I climb up a bit higher where there’s a spot you can jump off into the pool below. It’s only a small pool, but Darren has obviously done this many times before so he takes a quick jump out past the sloping rock wall and into the water. But he’s not that far from the rock wall and I’ve never done it, so I decline because I’m not sure I can jump far enough to clear the rocky outcrop and I’d prefer not to hit my head and die on this trip so I walk back down the path and enter the water as Steven did.
Oh my fucking god is it FREEZING. Darren assures me that normally the water is crystal clear, but due to all the rains recently it’s turned pretty greenish and murky but he fails to mention how bloody cold it is and by the time I’m up to my waist I’m pretty sure I’m wearing my balls as earrings, but I jump forward and immerse myself to get it over with, after which I’m fine and water is so refreshing that I emerge from the water grinning and shaking my head around and whooping. Steven climbs up onto a smaller rock nearby with a rough swing attached and swings out over the water and lets go, plunging in with a yell. We swim around for a bit talking more and trying to coax Benji into the water, but eventually Steven has to get out and drag the poor little scottish terrier into the freezing water with us. The rain is getting a bit heavier by this time and Darren checks to make sure I’m not too cold, but the rain is of course lovely tropical rain and actually does much more to warm me up than anything else so he wanders up the top to jump off again while I do a little breaststroke back and forward across the otherwise deserted rock pool, enjoying the refreshing coolness and delicious taste of fresh mountain rainwater on my lips before he suggests we head off back home for dinner. To be honest, I would have been happy to stay in that pool all afternoon but I know he has plans and his wife is waiting at home.
On the way back to his car, the rain really starts pouring down and I roll my hat up around my phone to keep it dry since I didn’t have the presence of mind to take it out of my pocket and leave it in the car. I am sorta paranoid about dropping it, so I keep checking that I have it and my cabin keys while navigating the slippery rocks down to the road where the car is. Darren passes out towels for the car seats and we pile in with the dog and head back to his place which I realise is very close to where I’m staying. We get there and I head into the bathroom to change into jeans and a collared shirt since we’re going out later and I figure I’d better look decent. When I come out he introduces me to his eldest son Charlie, who I saw briefly on the train and then his Filipino wife Amy comes out. I take advantage of Darren’s earlier Filipino lesson and greet her in her own language and she smiles and tells me it’s very nice to meet me. Filipino girls aren’t my favourite Asian girls in appearance but it’s quite clear that Amy is quite an attractive Filipino and she has long, pretty hair and a nice smile.
Amy invites me to sit down and I remember the red wine I’ve brought with me and I bring it out and offer it to her, because after all, I’ve been invited to dinner, and noone turns up to dinner empty-handed do they ? She is very pleased and pours a glass for the three adults and then heads out to take care of the BBQ’ing duties while Darren has a shower and gets changed. I sorta think it’s amusing to see a Filipino woman BBQ’ing sausages and lamb chops since in most homes in Australia, tending the BBQ is strictly a man’s job and my dad rarely ever lets my mum touch the BBQ at home. Amy brings out rice and the the most delicious looking potato salad and a green salad with lovely big chunks of cheese (just the way I like a salad to be – full of cheese) and olives and other delicious items. She’s clearly gone to a lot of trouble and I get the impression they don’t have a lot of visitors because Darren is a pretty quiet sort of guy and I know he suffers from a little depression and paranoia about other people, as is not uncommon in musical types of people and I know he’s on a pension because of it, although Amy works as a housekeeper at a big resort hotel just walking distance down the road, but she admits she only has one good friend who visits and to my fascination is a Papua New Guinean woman, and Darren mentions that I grew up in PNG and Amy is quite amazed and asks me a bit about it.
Darren says grace and when he finishes, everyone else says “Amen”, and since I’m not religious anymore I add “itadakimasu !” with a grin and Darren asks what it means and I explain that it’s a Japanese tradition of saying that we are thankful for the food and Amy says it’s nice, and then we start eating while chatting on all sorts of topics about the various countries we’ve all visited and what the people are like there and Amy is very interested in hearing about Vietnam and asks me all sorts of questions about the currency there and what it costs to live and that sort of thing and then we talk a bit about languages and we go around the table and everyone counts to ten in various different languages just for fun. Amy counts in Filipino, and I count in Italian, Vietnamese and Japanese and then Darren counts in German and French. I think it’s great that we can all do that. It’s not like a huge big deal, but it’s nice to know that just around that table, we can count in more than half a dozen different languages. Neither Darren nor Amy finished high school and despite spending many years at university I never graduated from anything, yet I get the feeling that around this table is more worldly wisdom than you find in most university classrooms, since collectively we’ve all lived in 8 different countries for at least some period of time (not including time I spent traveling with my parents), and after dinner Darren shows me a book he’s written on Filipino culture which quite impresses me even though he hasn’t had it published properly yet.
Dinner was just fantastic and Amy’s potato salad especially was very good and I suspect maybe she hasn’t made it before because just like a cliche out of The Castle, Darren asks here “What’s this honey ?” and she explains that it’s seasoned potatoes with cream and after dinner I compliment her on how good it was and she thanks me and says the wine was delicious and thanks me for bringing it. It’s just the nicest little experience. Everyone is so polite and kind. Noone ever swears any more harshly than saying the word “shit” when it’s really necessary and I can’t even recall the last time I was at dinner when someone said grace and I’m really thankful to be in polite company for a change after some of the uncouth druggos, deadshits and alcoholics I normally hang around with and I wish that they didn’t live so far away because it seems we all have a lot more in common than I expected. Amy mentions that they visited Hervey Bay on holiday a few years ago and she thought it was very beautiful and relaxing compared to Cairns.
Amy goes and gets ready and I’m pleased to learn that she’s coming out with us, because I thought maybe she would just stay home with the kids, but she leaves Charlie in home to keep an eye on Steven and the three of us pile into the car with Amy dressed very prettily in a fashionable little jacket with her hair tied back quite elegantly. Darren only has on a collared polo shirt with some stripes on it that she’s put out for him that she obtained from a charity store and she compliments him on how he looks very smart “like some rich guy” and I smile to myself in the back seat because she obviously likes to make him feel like he’s important because he’s a pretty insecure guy and it’s sweet the way she does it subtly enough that he says “Really ? You think so ?” and I wish I had a devoted wife like that who gave me sweet compliments when I needed to hear them even after 18 years of marriage and I am quite jealous of the simple but happy little life they have their in a small besser brick house in the suburbs of Cairns with two lovely, well behaved children.
The main streets of Cairns are quite packed for a rainy Sunday night and it takes us a while to find a park, but we locate one just around the corner from the bar we’re going to and Darren leads the way into a cute little place called “12 Bar Blue” where he clearly knows everyone and he introduces me to tonnes of people in his quiet softly spoken voice and everyone is very friendly and shakes my hand and asks where I’m from and tells me it’s great to meet me and I try to remember all their names as best I can.
The night’s house band is on first, but I later learn from the guitarist Gordo that they have never played together before last night, though they all play in other local bands separately. Gordo is a tall bald dude on lead guitar and he’s one of those crazy good guitarists that just pisses you off because he’s just that damn good that he sounds exactly like the artist he’s covering. Chris is an older, grey haired guy with small round glasses and he just looks right at home on bass guitar, and the drummer’s name escapes me for the moment, though he’s clearly very good as well.
Darren is the first to put his name on the blackboard because he says that since he’s not very good, they like to get him up first because he’s only very amateur and mostly sings folky, accoustic sort of stuff, so they like to keep him early in the night before everyone gets a bunch of booze into them and wants to dance and stuff. He’s prepared The Seekers’ “Georgie Girl” and Dylan’s “Blowin in the Wind” which he played to me at his house and asked me my opinion. I said that his cover of Georgie Girl was nice, but I admit that it’s a very old song and I tend to think it’s not the best song for a blues club, but he’s keen to do it anyway and he sings it nicely, albeit in quite a high key, but he has a higher voice than me so I guess he has to sing in a high key.
As the temporary house band are discussing their set list between songs I overhear Gordo mention “Folsom Prison Blues” and I comment to Darren “Oh, some Johnny Cash would be great” and he nods. He gets up to perform and does an amusing little intro in which he announces that he’s on early because he’s going to sing some old folk songs and tells everyone to consider it “a rest stop for your ears” which gets a good chuckle from everyone. He plays Georgie girl in a key that noone is expecting because he’s using a capo and Chris and Gordo both fumble around for ages trying to figure out how to match the key he’s playing in before Chris finally manages to work something out and jumps in properly and eventually Gordo works it out too by watching Chris, but in my opinion his lead guitar is a little overpowering for what’s supposed to be an accoustic song and he tries too hard to turn it into some sort of blues epic and play all the way through rather than turning his guitar down and just adding a background melody. Also, when Darren stops playing rhythm to pick out the little lead section in the middle, they keep right on playing over top of him when the guitar and bass should have stopped and allowed him to do his thing, but to be fair they had never heard Darren play it and didn’t know he was going to do that.
After that, Darren changes his mind about doing Dylan and steals the band’s thunder by saying “Right. Folsom Prison Blues” and starts playing and they quickly jump in to catch him and I smirk because I know it’s Gordo’s new song that he’s just learned and Darren has stolen it just because I said I was looking forward to hearing it, and to be honest, he does it really, really well, so I’m quite glad that he chose to do that song rather than the covered-to-death Dylan classic and Amy and I lead the crowd in a big round of applause when he finishes. Darren comes back to the table looking pretty self conscious after the drummer makes some comment to him about how he needs more practice playing with a band, but frankly I think that while his timing was pretty bad during Georgie Girl, his version of Folsom Prison Blues was very good and they should have made more effort to follow his lead rather than showing off their own skills since the point of the night was supposed to be to showcase the amateur talent rather than for the professional musos to show off and jam, and I tell Darren that he did really well and that he just needed to warn them what key he was playing in so they didn’t all stumble over Georgie Girl, and of course Amy is full of praise like a good wife should be.
Darren has bought the first round of beers and we sit there listening to the house band do a couple of songs while we wait for other people to wander in and write their names on the board. A couple of guys put their names down for later in the evening and Darren says “You should put your name down” and I blush and say “Nah man. I can’t sing and this is an up-beat blues bar. Noone wants to hear a song without lyrics and I only do original songs so it’d be hard for people to follow me” and he just nods and says “Ok, fair enough”. Some other people wander in and Darren introduces me to all of them. There’s one guy, Ian who he tells me is a dentist in the daytime and who sings and plays guitar at night, then there’s a girl whose name I think was Miranda whose face is half paralysed but who he assures me is a great singer anyway. He introduces me to Steve who he insists is a mind blowing blues harp player and he’s dead right too because his next song just blows me away with his amazing distorted harp sound that remind me of something straight out of the movie Dueling Banjos. Then there’s Jono who is an old bloke who is apparently a Cairns icon who has owned several local nightclubs and bars before the anti-smoking laws pissed him off too much and he retired from that scene and just sings in bars now.
After Steve is so amazing on the mouth harp I start to ponder whether maybe I could knock out a quick blues number and just let Steve lead on the harp in lieu of vocals but they’re all so good that I’m reluctant to say anything. After Steve finishes, Ian the dentist steps up and leads them in a couple of very good songs that while they are excellent, are original songs that I haven’t heard, and then this curly haired guy in a leather jacket called Rod jumps in on another song that doesn’t have any lyrics to play an even more mind-blowing harmonica than Steve did earlier I lean across to Darren and say “You know. Maybe I could do a song without lyrics if Rod or Steve wanted to lead for me on blues harp and Gordo could fill in with lead guitar and stuff” and Darren goes “Yeah. Go on. Put your name on there” and in the spirit of my adventurous holiday to Cairns I don’t even think about it and I jump up and write my name on the board in 8th spot before I have time to debate with myself whether it’s a good idea or not.
I grab a round of drinks for everyone and since they have $3 shots of C.S. Cowboy’s I grab two shots of those for myself in order to warm myself up to the idea of performing in front of an increasingly large crowd. Unfortunately, the following acts are just so damn good that I start freaking out and start sweating profusely and my stomach gets quite knotted, but I’m determind not to just back out. Jono gets up to do House of the Rising Sun, and holy SHIT is it good. Rod accompanies him on the harmonica and I am just sitting there dumbfounded because I know that I’m on the board right after Jono and there’s just NO WAY on earth I could follow one of the most amazing performances of House of the Rising Sun that I’ve ever heard in my life and I am ready to just run out of the club in order to avoid having to follow such a class act. Even a small group of aborigines are standing outside jiving madly on the street throughout the song and I notice the police walk past and check out how drunk they are to see if they need to be removed from the footpath.
Darren had mentioned earlier that Rod can tapdance amazingly, and when he lays a big wooden board on the floor, I am sort of relieved, and think maybe this song will be a little less amazing, but clearly I shouldn’t have betted against Rod’s phenomonal tapdancing talent, because he announces that he’s going to be going to America for a performing arts contest this year and then procedes to just blow everyone’s mind to the point that people walking past start just streaming into the bar to hear him. The band strikes up some song and Rod plays two different harmonicas for a bit and then jumps on the board and starts tapdancing and then dances all the way around the goddamn bar, and then introduces each member of the band in turn and cues them all to do a solo, which they all oblige him in, during which he dances his way out of the bar into the street and Gordo leans out the door puzzled to wonder if he’s even coming back, but as they all finish their solos, Rod appears in the doorway and puts his microphone down on the bricks outside the bar and then does an even more incredible tapdance outside on the footpath, causing everyone to holler and cheer.
My heart sinks and I say to Darren “Oh man, I can’t follow an act like that. That was bloody INCREDIBLE” and Darren says “He’s good isn’t he ?” and I just nod dumbly. Thankfully Gordo then says “Ok, we’re going to all take a break and we’ll be back soon with goodness knows what else. Apparently Dave is up next though I don’t know what he does”. I’m so relieved that they are taking a break between songs and putting some recorded music on that I don’t even have time to think about Gordo’s rather dismissive comment about “goodness knows what” coming up next, since clearly he’s familiar with everyone else who’s performing tonight except me. Darren asks me if I want to go outside and warm up and at first I say “No” but then I decide that it’s probably a good idea because I might be able to talk to the band and let them know what I’m going to play.
I wander out with Darren’s beautiful Fender electric acoustic that Amy bought him (like a good wife should alway do for her musician boyfriend !) and tune up and Chris approaches and asks “You’re Dave ?” and I nod and he asks what I’m doing and I say “Well, it’s basically a 12 bar blues in E major, but it’s not really 12 bars in length and after B major I use a chord that isn’t strictly a real chord as far as I know”. Chris nods and says “Do you want to just follow us ?” and I shake my head and say “No, I don’t know if I’ll be able to. I figure that Gordo is just going to play a little lead melody and I’ve just asked Rod to accompany me on harmonica so you’re the only person who needs to really follow me, so I’ll just make sure you can see my chord changes so you can follow me on bass” and Chris says “Ok, no worries” and I briefly knock out the song I’m going to play and Chris says “Sounds alright”.
I head in and grab a stool since I haven’t brought a belt for my jeans and I don’t really want my pants to fall down while playing, not to mention the fact that I’m nervous as hell and I play a little lead quietly to some song that’s playing on the intermission CD which I personally think is really good and some girl sitting nearby with her boyfriend is watching me closely and gives me a nod of appreciation which makes me feel a little more confident. The rest of the band files in, but the drummer has been replaced by some young guy called Josh and I hope that he’s good and has no problem with my timing, though I don’t really have too many problems with timing and I’m happy to fuck up a chord change or two rather than be more particular and throw off the timing of the song like Darren sort of did when he made a mistake. Rod gives me a nod from the corner beside Darren where he’s sitting to indicate that he’ll jump in when required and I take a deep breath.
“Hey everyone who just joined us. My name’s Dave and I’m just visiting here and I met Darren on the Sunlander train on the way up and he told me this was a good place to come and make a fool out of myself”. Deciding to add a little local humour I continue by saying “I don’t sing, so I’m just going to do a little blues rhythm and I’m hoping that Gordo and Rod are going to blow you out with their melody and make sure that this song doesn’t come out sounding as boring as wet week in Tully” which thankfully gets a laugh and a cheer out of someone down the back and makes me glad I was able to throw in a local North Queensland reference to lighten things up.
At that moment, Gordo directs the drummer to start and what timing to play in and then starts playing himself and I wonder for a second if they are expecting me to jump in. It seems they are, and it’s fortunate that the drummer has the timing almost spot on, so I just jump in at the right moment and start knocking out a basic E-A-B blues progression. Unfortunately however, my guitar is down too low and Gordo’s is up way too high and he’s just playing some blues riff as though he’s leading, rather than just filling in with some melody like I was expecting him to, which pisses me right the fuck off and I can’t help but think he’s a typical fucking show off lead guitarist who has to steal the whole goddamn show.
Worse though is that he is paying NO attention to me and appears to assume I am playing a straight 12-bar, which I’m not. Thankfully, Darren sneaks up and turns up the volume on my guitar so that people can actually hear me and I notice that Chris is following my changes carefully, but the problem is that instead of just filling in with lead melody during the appropriate spots, Gordo is just playing the whole way through at loud volume, and when I jump into my neat little B-A based jazzy riff in the middle in which I jump from string to string which is supposed to be the highlight of the song, he fails to pay any attention and keeps playing in a different key, so I just abandon that idea and go back to the simpler E-A-B progression and try my best to just match what Gordo is doing.
Much to my relief though, Josh matches my pace perfectly, Chris tries his best to follow me, and as expected, Rod just goes OFF exactly how I wanted him to and I give him a big nod and a grin as he leaps to his feet and jumps in front of stage to play a crazy harp melody which fits in really well and forces Gordo to back off a little. All in all, it turns out pretty well though. Admittedly, my guitar was really drowned out by Rod’s stupid electric rhythm, but Josh and Chris and Josh pulled it all together and made it work and of course Rod was the true star, and I’m pretty sure everyone applauded, though I was so eager to get off stage and hand Darren’s lovely Fender back to him that I barely noticed, and Amy gave me a pat on the back and said “Very nice David. Good song”.
I just let out a huge long breath that I must have been holding in for most of the song and said “Oh, I DEFINITELY need a beer now” and got up to get one, but Darren quickly jumped in front and said “I’ll get it for you mate” and paid for it for me since I’d bought both of them drinks while he’d only had to buy me one. I accepted and sat down and drank it pretty quickly while Miranda came on stage to sing a nice vocal number and I was pleased to see that Gordon fucked it up quite badly and she sorta gave him a backward glance as if to say “Excuse me, this is my fucking song, will you try to not dominate if you’re not going to play properly ?” which put a smile on my face and Gordo did indeed back off and let her sing until everyone caught up to her, but her vocals were turned down too low and the drummer didn’t want to stop and adjust the levels on the mixing board above him.
When Darren asked if I wanted to head off I nodded because I knew we’d been there longer than he’d intended and I was aware that Amy doesn’t normally accompany him because he had to introduce her to everyone, so it was a special occasion for her to come out with him, but she seemed to quite enjoy herself and I had a feeling that given the opportunity, she would have been happy to have a few more drinks than he did, but beers weren’t particularly cheap and Darren had to drive so she didn’t drink any more than he did, but her comment earlier in the night about the wine I brought being very nice made me think that she would probably be happy to drink a bit more than Darren if it didn’t seem inappropriate for a polite wife to out-drink her husband because I know that Darren isn’t much of a drinker, and on the way home he was pretty excited and she had to constantly caution him to keep his eyes on the road instead of turning back to talk to to me, which caused him to veer off centre a couple of times and Amy to cry out in alarm and insist he pay attention to the road.
They dropped me back to my holiday park and Amy said “Maybe we’ll see you again if we’re in Hervey Bay on holiday” and I told them that I’m positive my family would love to have them visit because musicians and nice people are always welcome at my place and I had a feeling that my dad would quite like Darren and they would love to share stories about artifacts that they’d collected, because Darren had been very proud of his native Filipino dart gun that was hanging on his wall and my mum gets along with everyone so I’m sure she would have made Amy feel right at home. I feel bad because I know in my heart that it’s unlikely they will ever do so because neither of them use the internet, and just ringing someone out of the blue in a far away town and asking if they can come visit seems like more of an imposition than this lovely polite couple would want to put on someone. Darren promised to pick me up and take me to the train station on Tuesday morning in between dropping the kids off to school and Amy to work. I knew it was quite a task for him to run so many people around to their various destinations but I was massively grateful as it would save me enough money on taxi fare that I could afford to get a meal for dinner on the way home.
I waved as they drove away and trudged back to my cabin in the rain thinking what an amazing day it had been. Swimming in a lovely, deserted rock pool, having a delicious dinner and discussing Asia and showing off a few different languages that we all knew, and then going out to a great little blues bar and both Darren and I getting up to perform. It’s the sort of day that you could never plan in a million years, and to have it happen with a bunch of complete strangers in a city I hadn’t even visited in two and a half decades was just priceless. And to think that it only happened because I decided to get up and visit the club car on the train despite saying that I didn’t want to do so due to the price of the beer and then ask Darren if I could take his photo, causing us to strike up a conversation. Had I not gotten up and visited that club car, I would not have ever met Darren, Amy, Charlie, Steven and their dog Benji (who incidentally was named after Darren’s favourite rugby league star, not the famous dog of the same name), not to mention such amazing characters as Jono and Rod or played with Gordo, Chris and Josh.
I tell you what, that $5.50 light beer that I bought in the club car two days earlier sure turned out to be worth every goddamn cent, that’s all I can say. Sometimes a beer isn’t just a beer. It’s an opportunity to meet someone interesting who then leads you to meet more and more interesting people and despite my fear that Darren’s promise to invite me to dinner wouldn’t be fulfilled, it was, and I think that Darren and Amy got as much out of it as I did. Darren talks to a lot of people at the club, but there were a couple of times when I got the impression that they were just familiar with him being there rather than such great friends, and Amy openly admitted to only having one friend in Cairns, so I really hope I left as good an impression on them as they left on me.
Sometimes, things like that just happen, but you’ve got to take steps to put yourself in the right position to let them happen. Just turning up in the club car wouldn’t have been enough. It was me who initiated the conversation with Darren by asking if I could take a photo of him and Charlie eating meat pies together and then asking him where he was from that caused him to open up to me and accept me and then play guitar with me and later cause him to invite me to dinner which then evolved into hiking and swimming and performing at a blues club together. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I have gained so much from this little trip to Cairns. Originally I just thought it would be an enjoyable trip up the coast and a good chance to take some lovely photos of North Queensland, but the people I’ve met made it worth a million times more than the cost of the trip. Latika and her grandmother, Darren and Amy and their kids and all Darren’s friends. All from a spontaneous decision to just drop everything and head off on a lengthy journey at a moment’s notice for no reason other than it seemed like a good idea. Spontaneous travel – it works bitches and I retire to bed happy and ready for the return journey on the beautiful Sunlander.
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