Yesterday, the QM 2 made her maiden visit to the Whitsunday Islands - a very good choice. We had to anchor quite a ways off shore and ride tenders into the port - about 25 minutes. The tenders are the 137-passenger lifeboats normally blocking the view of most of the passengers on deck 8. The sides are left open, with 2 ropes across them to keep us from falling out but if you sit too close to the openings, you will probably emerge wet.
Volunteers met us and drove up into Airlie Beach, the closest town to the dock. It could be anywhere in Southern California: tanned, healthy-looking people, lots of smiles (genuine), quite good buskers including a girl of about 12 with a voice of someone 4 times her age, belting out Australian country music, a large, open-air market, sponsored by the local Lions Club, selling touristy things but also fresh fruit and vegetables, cooked chickens, bakery goods and something resembling a small child on a spit. I hope it was a pig but did not want to look closely.
Before you ask, no, I did not go to the Great Barrier Reef. I have concerns about even eco-tourism when I know that sun block, body lotion, hair gel, boat vibrations, oil, gasoline can all damage coral. Add global warming and it's a disaster. No need for me to compound it. Thirty years ago I would have.
Then, today, I learned that the trip to the GBR was 5 hours (round trip) over very choppy waters and half of the 130 or so passengers were violently ill. So, all in all, my day at Airlie Beach was the right choice.
A message for Mandy at the Beach Shack: the trousers are perfect, I have no idea what to do with the wrap and I used the purse tonight. Thank you and please consider applying for a job. You would be perfect!
Unfortunately, today, with the temperature about 30 degrees C (very hot on any scale) and humidity about 250%, I chose to take the tender again and go into Cairns. This time the tender going over was a catamaran which hopped waves beautifully.
Cairns is, sorry Tourist Board, absolutely uninteresting. We traveled in on the Captain Cook highway - sorry James, you really deserve better than empty stores and shops and loutish teenagers looking threatening.
And, I saw the Aborigines I had missed elsewhere - in the park, stumbling down the street or sleeping under archways, all drunk at 10 am.
As my cousin Carole undoubtedly remembers, when I was a child, I knew every wino and drunk in southeast Washington, by name. And, without exception, they told me never to drink alcohol. Even in their wildest moments - Gerry and Tall Man fighting over the last swig of muscatel they had stolen from Henry G when he passed out - they told me never to drink. It was the devil and had ruined their lives. And, I listened and have been grateful to them ever since.
So, I would think and actually do think that when you grow up seeing the hurt and harm which alcohol causes, you avoid it, not embrace it. I know the sociological arguments about loss of culture leading to substance abuse but where are self-determination, self-control, personal responsibility and pride in that argument? I do not have the answer so don't ask.
No cane toads in sight - the bus driver said they do not come into town but the way he said it, it sounded like they found the town sinful. In truth, there are not enough hiding places and it's too dry in town. But they are around and spreading at an alarming rate.
All of the above makes we wonder if I really want to go into Darwin but I have to find a post office as the letters I wrote at the beginning of the month have to be weighed.
Oh, at the South Pacific ball 2 nights ago, I wore my ball gown with tiers which overlap and look a bit like scales (fish scales) and had orchids tucked behind both ears. I was the most South Pacific thing there!
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