Best place to go? Not Ingham

I see Ingham's in the news again. It's only been 80 years since the last time. 

Today it's because northern Queensland has been hit, yet again, by dreadful floods and, in amongst all the other misery they are causing, there's the inevitable Aussie problem of displaced wildlife. In this case, it's a croc in the middle of Ingham, a small town of fewer than 6,000 doughty banana-benders, causing some  excitement before its being caught - by harpoon, unexpectedly. It was only 2.5m, nowhere near the 5m+ that they regularly boast about up there, but big enough to be a nuisance, certainly.

I visited Ingham 10 years ago, on a Queensland famil, and was distinctly underwhelmed by the town, not helped by some hiccups in the itinerary. Its only other claim to fame is also a negative one: that it's the actual location and inspiration for the Slim Dusty song 'A Pub with No Beer'.

That was because, in 1943, a contingent of US soldiers had passed through and literally drunk every drop of beer, to the disgust next day of Irish farmer Dan Sheahan, who had ridden his horse for 20 miles into town, lured by the vision of a foaming pint. Admirably, fobbed off with a glass of warm white wine, he wrote a poem instead of getting angry, and in 1957 the song that resulted became Australia's most successful single.

The pub, in 2013 anyway, was still a brightly-lit, basic place full of leathery old boozers, its only nod to sophistication the wide-screen TVs on the walls. I did a review of it anyway, which you can read here. Earlier that year they'd done a 70th anniversary re-enactment of the draining of the town's beer, with an audience of thousands. The town itself had little else of note, and would have been hell for a hungry vegetarian. 

The most notable bit of that whole visit was when we went to a nearby cattle station for a farm tour. No-one there knew anything about it, so I just went to the toilet instead. When I flushed it, two small brown frogs were washed out from under the rim, and disappeared down the loo. Still feel bad about that.

Oh, and one other thing that I learned from the flood reports - there's apparently a town in Queensland called Yorkeys Knob. Not in the least surprised to read that.

Thank goodness for art

This weekend, I almost wished I was a rugby fan. An apparently exciting and successful World Cup game against Ireland would have cheered me up a bit after two national decision disappointments on Saturday, one each side of the Tasman.

Moving on from, sigh, our General Election, the failure of Australia's Voice referendum on giving Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders an official right to weigh in with opinion and advice on matters that affect them - no more than that, mind, no obligation involved to follow their recommendation - was dismaying, to say the least. You'd think that, after over 230 years of bossing them about and/or ignoring them, Australians generally might have come around to considering that it was time to concede a bit of token equality. After all, they had pre-dated the European settlers by just the 60,000 years, or thereabouts.

Some facts: Australia is a continent, as well as a country - huge and environmentally challenging. So the First Peoples developed as culturally diverse nations, with 300-plus distinct languages; and all of their energy went into simply surviving in that often harsh landscape - a triumph in itself. Captain Cook didn't recognise them as a native people in 1788 and declared Australia 'terra nullius' ie 'empty land' when he claimed it for Britain. The Aboriginal people were treated abysmally by the settlers and their successors - look up the Stolen Generations - and weren't even included in the population count till 1967. And it wasn't until 1984 that they were given the same voting rights and responsibilities as all other Australians. Though they comprise less than 4% of the general population, they make up 30% of prisoners. Alcoholism and unemployment are big problems, they suffer from diseases most of us think of as historical, and die 8 years earlier than non-Aboriginals.

NB I know that NZ's treatment of Māori has been/is far from ideal but, in comparison, well...

So, knowing all that, and with the Voice referendum coming up, it felt perfectly timed to go to the Auckland Art Gallery's exhibition of First Peoples Art a couple of weeks ago. And I was so glad I did.

[Sincere apologies to the artists, whose names I shamefully didn't record.]

Oestrogen rules!

I was going to revisit here a train trip I took from New Delhi to Agra, way back in 1980, prompted by the appallingly tragic triple train crash that's just happened in India. But of course that would be somewhat appalling too - insensitively trivialising and tone-deaf. So instead I'm going to write about war as a tourist attraction.

Today is the anniversary of D-Day, after all. And who hasn't done a tour of northern France and not been to the beaches, visited Dunkirk, been awed by the white crosses stretching away into the distance at the cemeteries, marvelled at still being able to see the remains of the Mulberry harbour at Arromanches? It's hugely sobering to see it all, stand on the edge of a bomb crater, read the info boards, and imagine the horror of it all - but it's also, be honest, fascinatingly interesting, dramatic and thus, yes, entertaining.

Wherever you (ie I) go in the world, there are wartime (and worse) 'attractions' - I honestly couldn't count the battlefields and war cemeteries I've visited, from Gallipoli to Gettysburg, Adelaide River to Bourail in New Caledonia. Plus Stalag Luft III and, even worse, Auschwitz and the Hanoi Hilton. These places have an irresistible appeal that's a weird combination of honest reverence and regret for all those lives lost and pain inflicted, and a creepy fascination for viewing the utter depths of cruelty that men (it's always men) are driven to by their overwhelming desire for power and territory.

And, though I suppose it's possible to travel the world and have holidays that don't include stuff like this, it's always there, pretty much wherever you go. The tourist industry isn't backward in pointing that out and, yes, exploiting it openly with focussed tours and suchlike. Their main customers are, of course, Baby Boomers, whose parents lived through WW2 - I wonder, once we've all shuffled off , whether younger generations will be quite so interested?

I'm guessing yes. After all, war has been a constant throughout human history, and is certainly front-and-centre right now, with the distinct possibility of others looming, despite the deservedly quite distracting threats of climate change. Do you ever wonder how different things might have been/might be if there were a bit less testosterone swirling through the people in charge around the world?

Counting sheep

 

We’re still ahead - and always will be, if you ask any Aussie, for whom the Kiwi/sheep thing is essential unsavoury-relationship joke material - but our ratio is dropping shockingly low. Not that long ago it was 22:1, but now we’re closing in on Iceland’s level. They are very proud of their 2:1 there, and never miss a chance to boast about it. (Australia, by contrast, considers their 3:1 ratio perfectly standard.)

To be honest, and going purely by the attitude of my guide Páll, Icelanders will boast about any feature of their country that’s the least bit distinctive. Good for them, I say. They certainly have plenty to be proud of - volcanoes, glaciers, waterfalls, doughty horses, ancient language, historical resilience, human rights, Björk and co, standard of living, even hotdogs - and I can’t imagine any visitor coming away unimpressed. But the sheep? They’re woolly and cute, and live free-range, with an annual round-up that’d be something to see; but there aren’t that many of them.

Our formerly vast sheep population is dwindling because dairy is more lucrative (though polluting ☹️) and, shockingly, the price of wool has dropped so low that just getting them shorn leaves farmers in the red. Crazy, when it’s such an eco-friendly product, with so many uses - which are expanding all the time, as producers are driven to be more and more creative. All power to them.

In the meantime, it’s a bit melancholy to think that classic NZ scenes like this - irresistible Insta-material for tourists - are becoming less common. 

Actually top of the world-wide list, by the way, though much lower-profile, are the Falkland Islands, with a whopping sheep population of 200:1. The mere fact that I scarcely noticed the sheep while I was there, instead being blown away by all the penguins and albatrosses (and literally by the wind), tells you all you need to know about the dominance there of the wildlife - including over the small population of humans, who cling gamely on, politics and rugged environment notwithstanding. Good thing counting their sexual partners helps them get to sleep at night.

Naturally superior

Jerked rudely awake at 3am last night this morning by an almighty double thunderclap, which was disappointingly not followed by the consolation of a lightning show, I lay for several wakeful hours afterwards reflecting on nature's unexpected gifts. These have been the unplanned and unplannable, totally chance weather and/or wildlife events that have happily elevated what was already a fun travel experience into something properly special.

This morning's no-show lightning, for example, reminded me of the best display I've ever seen, or will ever see, that happened late one afternoon on a cruise along Western Australia's Kimberley coast. It was epic: six hours of non-stop forks, squiggles and flashes, as we gazed up from the deck first with our pre-dinner drinks, then eating dinner at sunset, then wallowing in the jacuzzi in the dark. No rain, no thunder, no sense of danger - just awe and amazement, and some personal frustration at not being able to capture the perfect shot. But we had Jarrad Seng on board, so that was ok.

It was in northern Australia too that I saw an immense cloud of fruit bats flying overhead at sunset, as I sat beside the artificial esplanade lagoon in Cairns, enjoying the sight of big silver fish sculptures against the coloured sky. They came in their thousands, from their roosts somewhere inland, streaming out over the town centre towards a headland across the bay where the mangoes were ripe. Apparently it's a nightly occurrence, but for me it was an unexpected and very memorable gift. Which I wish I had a photo of.

Again, in Australia (I have been there a lot for work), I was on a cattle drive through the Outback when, in the middle of the night, a dust storm swept through the camp. The walls of my tent billowed and shook, my ears popped, but I stayed hunkered down in my swag, tired enough from a day's riding after the cattle to get straight back to sleep. It was only when I emerged in the morning that I saw how lucky I'd been - several tents had been blown over, everything was covered in a film of fine red dust, and our cluster of tents was now cupped in the protective curve of the drive's big trucks, gallantly moved by staff during the storm to block the wind.

For travel writers, it's a gift when things go wrong on a famil, though they usually don't because we're being hosted by professionals. But nature doesn't respect that - so when I did the iconic 3-day Milford Track down in Fiordland, and it rained and rained on day 1, the guide was very apologetic. I didn't mind, even though at one point the track was flooded thigh-high with freezing water that we had to wade through. It was great material - and besides, the downpour stopped just before we had to be helicoptered onwards, and thereafter the weather was brilliantly sunny.

Running aground on an uncharted rock in a bay on a Rakiura Stewart Island cruise was a diversion, too. Yes, the scenery was gorgeous, our hike up to a viewpoint went ahead anyway, and the detour afterwards back to Oban for hull checks just gave us a different, and equally enjoyable, itinerary - but feeling the sudden shudder and stop, having to wait for the tide to float the ship off, and seeing scuba divers arrive to inspect underwater? Priceless.

Then, back in Australia again, I was thrilled on a lovely stroll through the bush on Lindeman Island, in the Whitsunday group, to find the path covered in hundreds of cute little brown froglets. Honestly, they were everywhere, and so sweet that I couldn’t bear to risk treading on one, so I minced and tiptoed along like a giant heron, taking great care not to cause any harm. It was years later that I learned they were in fact baby cane toads, a poisonous introduced pest that is as huge a problem right across Australia now as possums are here, and that I should in fact have trampled on as many as I could.

Then there was the stowaway Cook Islands lizard that I discovered with horror, back home, had sneaked into my suitcase; the rhino that charged the van where I was sitting fully exposed alongside the open door in the back; the bear in Yosemite that suddenly appeared on the track eyeing me up speculatively. 

And finally, there was the glorious gift of Drake Lake - our two days of smooth glossy seas as we crossed the most rambunctious bit of ocean on the planet, on our return from Antarctica to Ushuaia. That was nature at her most generous and beneficent, and I will always be deeply grateful for the best trip I've ever been on not being ruined on the last bit.

UPDATE: As a bonus double connection today, when I went to browse Insta, what do I find but the latest post from super-photographer Daniel Kordan -

And that sailing ship, the barque Europa, that he was clinging on to, as it took five days to make the crossing? I saw it while I was in Antarctica -

Going to the tip - or rather, coming down from it

 

Still thinking (see the last post) about my Cape York trip in 2006, it was really most notable for its ruggedness. Though other operators offer something similar, the company I did it with, Wilderness Challenge, doesn't seem to be in business any more, and I hope it's just because of the difficult times, and isn't a victim of TripAdvisor sniping.

Because, though the experience with WC was definitely rough and rugged in parts, it felt appropriate for the environment. I mean, we had several breakdowns in their beaten-up old OKA 4WD - two fan-belt failures, another with the aircon, then the steering and finally a suspension problem. That meant some sweaty, oily repairs by driver/guide Ossi while we paddled in cooling rivers. Said suspension was so primitive that he promised us at the beginning that anyone with back problems would be cured by the end, after a week of jolting along corrugated dirt roads - and so it was.

But everything else was great. Ossi, despite being a Finn, was a great interpreter of everything we saw; we stayed in a variety of comfortable and unique accommodation; the food was excellent; and the experience overall was terrific.

I mean, we stood at the tip of the continent. We travelled along empty red-dirt roads, we splashed through fords and crossed a river on a car-ferry. We walked along a boardwalk out into the gloriously peaceful Red Lily Lake, full of lotus flowers. We learned some fascinatingly colourful history, especially about the Jardine brothers' epic 10-month cattle drive south from Rockhampton (42 horses reduced to 12, 250 cattle down to 50 by the end). We saw fabulous clusters of tall termite mounds, a 1.75m deadly taipan, the rusty and dramatic wreck of a DC3, crashed in 1945, and followed the famous Overhead Telegraph road.

We saw beautiful beaches, passed through lush forest and over grassy plains, and had a satisfying swim at the picturesque Fruit Bat Falls ("where there's rocks, there's no crocs"). There in November, the end of the Dry, start of the Wet, we were still startled to see, above a river 5m lower than usual, a sign in a tree reading "14.5m we were here in a boat". There was a frog in my shower that night, and silent lightning outside.

We saw a Santa Gertruda cattle ranch, a Comalco bauxite mine and a photo at the camp ground of a croc eating a caught shark on the beach. We got fussy about spotting roadkill, sneering at one day's tally of just two snakes and a feral pig - though the eagle eating it was a pretty special sight. Most alarming was seeing a massive road train tanking along a dirt road towards us.

We noted that, despite converting to metric last century, Aussies still measure their crocs and sharks in feet, because the number's bigger. "We moved a 12 footer away yesterday," we were told at Lotus Bird Lodge, where we stayed in cabins reassuringly perched on stilts (because of flooding). We walked around the billabong there spotting, despite Dibdib, our Great Dane escort, many species of birds, as well as half a snake on the path (always better than a whole one). There was another frog in my shower that night.

Approaching Cooktown on the coast, we enjoyed the novelty of tar seal on the road, though we all regretted the loss of remoteness. I made the private discovery, after fossicking for windfalls along the town's footpaths, that you can eat too many mangoes. At the museum, we learned about the hideous history of blackbirding, and the very special nature of the Daintree rainforest.

And finally, after passing tea plantations and sugar cane fields, we arrived back in Cairns, where huge swarms of fruit bats flew that evening over the big man-made lagoon on the esplanade, towards a distant peninsula. The lagoon has been provided for public use, the sea being out of bounds because of crocs. Which we never actually saw. Not one.

So anyway, it's Thursday

 

The only remarkable thing about this report is that the photo of the unfortunate - and prophetically nicknamed - Stumpy shows him proudly holding a fish that is not, for once, a barramundi. Honestly, you'd think barramundi are the only fish they have in Australia - in the sea, in rivers, on the menu. But that's by the by. What this story really reminded me of was my Cape York trip way back in 2006, before this blog began.

It was exciting to be invited because, like most people, including Australians, I'd never been to this bit of Oz before. It turned out to be a proper expedition. It started in Cairns with a flight to Horn Island, one of the Torres Strait islands, from where we chugged on a ferry to Thursday Island, naturally - this is Australia - known as TI, the smallest in the group. It was unimaginatively named by Capt. Bligh for the day he sailed past it, but some have called it Thirsty Island because it had no reliable water source. During WW2, the soldiers garrisoned there were allowed only a pint of water each a day. Ten degrees from the equator!

It's a quiet place, mostly because everyone is driven indoors for the air con. It's had a lively past, though. There's a fort built in 1892 on top of a hill, with big guns installed to repel a Russian invasion (which never came). A test shot landed in the schoolyard of a neighbouring island - at lunchtime. In the cemetery are 700 graves of Japanese pearl-divers, who actually dived for the shell rather than the 1:1000 chance of a pearl. It was the main industry in northern Australia for about 60 years until the invention of plastic for buttons. TI also claims the world's smallest cathedral, a cute wooden building with excellent stained-glass windows memorialising even more tragic events. Most notable was the sinking in 1890 of the RMS Quetta, which hit an uncharted rock and sank in five minutes, drowning almost half of the 292 people on board, mostly British migrants.

The crocs probably couldn't believe their luck. Estuarine, or salt-water crocodiles - aka salties - rule the waters here, and there are graphic warning notices right across northern Australia wherever people are likely to be tempted for a dip. Wandering around TI's little town, I ended up on the beach and watched with interest as a couple of burly workmen stripped to their grunds and took a tentative splash in the shallows. Later, when we started our week-long tour down from the tip of Cape York back to Cairns, our laid-back guide got very insistent on beach strolls - "Please, please, please stay away from the water!"

But people, even old hands like Stumpy, get careless all the time, and the crocs are always there, waiting.

Up right out back

 All hail the internet! It was way back in 2014 when I did this trip to Kakadu in the Northern Territory, but it was easy to check up on the facts before I submitted this story in response to a request for Australian material. It was a bit of a shame then that, having written and sent in six assorted stories, the bubble with our neighbour burst again, and they had to be filed away. But at least I was paid, in advance! Which is rare, very rare... Now though, finally, the borders are open again, and this story has finally seen the light of day.

So I look forward to seeing the others, about Ningaloo, and the Bibbulmun, and Rottnest, Broome and the Stuart Highway, in the coming weeks. I do enjoy remembering those colourful trips and, as ever, hope that the stories will prompt Kiwis to break away from their boring Melbourne-Sydney-Gold Coast mindset, and explore other bits of Australia, especially the amazing Outback.

It's kind of a shame that 'The Tourist' on HBO Max isn't as gripping as it should be, given its Outback setting, and its cast; because it might otherwise intrigue some viewers enough to make them want to get a taste of that location. Never mind, though: season 2 of Tim Minchin's 'Upright' is about to be filmed. Season 1 was about a journey across the Nullabor Plain heading to Perth, and it was glorious - not even just for the scenery, either. It's a funny, sad and original story and, of course, has excellent music, notably for me 'Carry You', sung over the final credits by Missy Higgins. 

The song starts with a mention of fish and chips on Perth's Cottesloe beach, where I went to do a story about their annual sculpture exhibition. I really enjoyed it, and not just because I got, for the first and only time ever, a per diem - what a thrill! But the exhibition was great too, and it was the perfect place to stage it, along that gorgeous beach.

Connections? Well, Cottesloe’s sculpture exhibition is on again right now; plus Sculpture on the Gulf is currently running here on Waiheke, which I've written about, of course. And I did go to see Tim Minchin last year, performing at the Civic, a theatre I've also written about, of course. Upright S2 is going to be filmed in Queensland, but I have faith that Tim will break away from the boring bits and take us viewers into less familiar, but far more spectacular, locations. Can't wait.

Dunedin rocks. Sort of...

I know it's a privilege, but it also feels quite odd, to be writing a *cough* column about the Organ Pipes just outside Dunedin, which I haven't actually visited, and referencing in it Iceland's Reynisfjara and Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway, both of which I have.

I could also add Bishop and Clerk on Maria Island, Tasmania, and the Gawler Ranges in South Australia. All of them are spectacular and fascinating: weathered hexagonal columns of rock (basalt or dolerite), either upright or horizontal or both, but always fitted together with marvellous precision. 

Though of course, they're not at all - fitted together, that is. They're actually formed by a mass of molten lava cooling at precisely the right speed and in the perfect conditions for the rock to crack into that particular pattern. It's still a marvel, though, that something as raw and violent and unpredictable as an eruption can result in something so satisfyingly neat and geometrical. 

I'm a sucker for them every time. They can be found all over the world, and I would love to see more of them, one day. Probably, though, I should start with Dunedin.

A to G here now

In an almost last-ditch attempt to save October, blog-wise, I am shamelessly going to copy the format of a story published recently written by a travel-mate. It's an A-Z of what Brett's currently missing, and I only read as far as C before I got both envious (he's gone to so many places I haven't) (though, also, a bit, vice versa) and inspired to do my own travel alphabet. I stopped reading then (I'll finish it later) to keep from being unduly influenced. Here's the first section:

A: I nearly went with Brett's choice, of airports. He contrasted big and small, and I could compare Dubai's vast distances with, say, dinky Atiu in the Cook Islands. But even more memorable are Airstrips like the one in Zambia, which we had to buzz before landing to scare away a bull elephant. That was exciting - and a very suitable introduction to Royal Zambezi Lodge, which we had to wait patiently to get to until a handful of eles chose to move on from the road they were blocking. I've bounced along quite a few grassy landing strips, and they've always led to fun, and often actual adventure.

B: Bircher muesli, which I first tasted in 1977 on the Indian Pacific train in Australia, at the start of my big OE. It's been a very minor, but personally satisfying thread that's run through all my travels since, turning up on breakfast buffets in hotels and lodges all over the place, a literal taste of familiarity. It's also a suitable symbol for my travel experiences generally because it's always different and, though it's very occasionally, to be brutally honest, not quite as good as I hoped it would have been, I never regret choosing it. 

C: Cameras have been an essential part of my travel equipment from the start. I've never been more than amateur, which has been very obvious on the trips I've shared with professionals but - economics being what they are - newspapers and magazines these days will not/cannot pay for their superior images, so we writers just have to do our best. That meant hauling around a cumbersome body and lenses, making sure batteries were charged each day and memory cards had room, and tedious downloading each night. It was certainly a thrill to get (more by luck than skill) a good shot, and to see it on a magazine cover - but I'm ok with swapping that for the sheer convenience of using my iPhone instead these days (and not having to helplessly watch my Olympus fly out of my bag as it tumbled downhill on Skye, to crash fatally onto some rocks). 

D: Diving - that's proper diving, not including snorkelling, during which some people are able to dive, but not me, purely because of my natural buoyancy (and not vast quantities of subcutaneous fat). No, I mean scuba, which I did on the Great Barrier Reef after a surface-skimming (ha) introduction on the boat trip out there from Cairns. We put on all the proper gear and were escorted down under, super-conscious the whole time of every single breath, but still enjoying the novelty of being so far below the water, watching fish swimming all around us. The other time I did something similar was in Moorea, Tahiti where, instead of strapping into tanks and a mouthpiece, we took turns at wearing an unwieldy-looking diving helmet that actually worked very well. I walked about in slo-mo on the bottom of the lagoon, able to wear my glasses and thus see perfectly all the fish - which included reef sharks and stingrays, plus prettier ones - flitting around me. It was fun.

E: Excitement is, by definition, something exceptional, out of the ordinary. And it’s often a selling-point for holiday destinations and activities - a crazy thrill to get you screaming, and boasting about for ever after. I’ve done my share - the cliff swing, ziplines in the dark, a polar plunge, crawling through caves, skimming over river shallows in jet boats, hot-air ballooning, walking up close to a rhino in the wild… All good fun. But, to be honest, the most reliably exciting thing about being a travel writer is simply checking my emails. Multiple times daily, addicted by the fact that, in amongst all the spam and boring stuff, it’s entirely possible that there will be an unsolicited invitation to an all-expenses-paid trip to somewhere I’d never thought of going, but am instantly eager to visit. Glorious!

F: Flying which most people consider a necessary evil, and is especially unavoidable if you live way down the bottom of the planet (or nearly at the top - there's no actual rule that north has to be up, you know). But I do like the thrill of boarding a plane at the start of a trip, especially if I get to turn left or, even better, take a different airbridge to go upstairs. Even when crammed into economy, though, and even when heading back home, I still love getting into my zone, comfy noise-cancellers on, plugged into the entertainment, with nothing to do but watch TV, eat and sleep for hours and hours. (I have fortunately, it must be said, never had An Event happen during a flight.)

G: Has to be Galapagos, where I've been lucky enough to go twice. Of course it's the birds and animals draped, uncaring, everywhere that make the biggest impression - you literally have to step over iguanas and around seals - and it was a real thrill to see bait balls of fish swooping and dividing beneath me as I snorkelled (the nearest, so far, I've got to my dream of a murmuration of starlings). Sitting in a small boat looking down at the silvery belly of a huge humpback lolling beneath us was amazing, too - but actually my strongest memory of that first trip was of what came soon after that. Back on the ship, I was sharing the excitement of the whale-watch with Brett and a previous editor of the paper that ran Brett's A-Z story, who had been in the boat with me. I blurted out how, when the captain delivered the early morning message about the whale, and the chance to go see it, I leaped out of bed, flung on literally just a fleece and shorts, and headed straight to the Zodiac. The identical look on both their faces when I said that was as hilarious as it was unexpected. Still makes me smile.