Keeping My Whits About Me

South Molle Island

Well the sun’s setting, it looks like this:

Not bad huh.

Yesterday morning I took a cheap little boat over here to this island, the whole of which is a national park, with a couple of tiny campsites, this being the better one (that was just luck). Actually I lie. A small strip of land over the other side of the island used to house a large fancy resort, and it’s privately owned by a Chinese company, who bought it in 2016. The very next year it was hammered by Cyclone Debbie and now lies in ruins, a snake Nirvana. So now there’s no settlements whatsoever here. All the islands around here were traditionally peopled by the Ngabo people, who used to get around in large outrigger ironbark canoes, and hunt small whales, dugongs and sea turtles. Yum.

It’s been amazing, I’ve had the whole campsite to myself, and that means I’ve pretty much had the whole massive island to myself. It’s been magnificent, and actually transformative, in a really deep way. That changed a short time ago however, because a bunch of eight post-middle-aged hikers from Sydney have just arrived. They’re absolutely lovely, but the vibe is now somewhat different, as you can imagine. I can hear their conversations now, one of them is about an article someone read in the Women’s Weekly about how being a celiac can affect your bones, another about gluten being in licorice, something about colonoscopies, you get the drift. I’m writing away about them and they think I’m engrossed in something really deep and meaningful, haha.

Today I spent the day hiking around the whole magnificent island. When I say I spent the day, I mean the Oleś-day, which commences after a sleep-in, a few stretches, some guitar playing, a leisurely breakfast, some more guitar playing, and faffing about for ages doing nothing in particular. The island is truly stunning. Parts of it were logged for timber in the 1880s, and there was a large farm here, and they also introduced goats to sustain shipwrecked sailors, of all things. Now those cleared parts are regenerating, starting with amazing tracts of grass trees, reeds, grasses and low forest. The great thing about the fact that some of it was once cleared is that there are amazing views all over the place. The rest of the island is tropical rainforest. And it’s quite a big island, it took me a couple of hours to hike one way through the middle to the northern beach. There’s loads of corally beaches, beautiful Whitsunday pines towering above the forest, soaring eagles, and, the best thing at all, there’s just about no human animals around.

I met a really interesting German-Australian ecologist today, hiking along with three of her friends, they came over on a boat for a few hours. She now lives in Brisvegas, and had loads to tell me about the ecology of this place, it was so interesting. Her name was Inge, she told me she was named after the Germanic God Ing, a God of fertility and virility. I told her she’d better watch out then and take precautions haha, she made a point of telling me she’d already decided she wasn’t gonna have children. Good for her. Such a big decision for one so young. She also had super nice teeth, I must report, which is super important. I learnt so much from Inge, I could go into an ecological rant right now, but I won’t, just know that I now know all about whales, turtles, and seabirds, and you can ask me any question you want. Otherwise don’t ask me and just Google it, it’s probably safer.

I’ve been away from Mullum for nearly a week now, and actually the few weeks before I left were really big for me, full of amazing experiences and connections, the most transformative ones being of the South American plant, music and Goddess varieties. So leaving Mullum was actually harder this time, I felt like new things were beginning there, but I was nipping them in the bud, hell bent on getting out and seeing the world, sticking to my plans. After purging my sadness on this island with guitar playing and writing songs, those feelings have now passed, for the time being at least, and I’m super glad I’m here. I’m so grateful for my amazing friends and family, you guys, I love you all with a passion - some with more passion than others (eg. Frankie-as-a-woman). So it’s sad to physically pause those beautiful relationships for awhile, and of course leaving the adult-kids is hard. But that’s the way of the vagabond. I’ll be back for a few weeks in October anyway, so I don’t know what the hell I’m going on about.

Btw, a vagabond is not a brand of chastity belt. A vagabond is just a wanderer, someone without a home, a job, and any firm roots. That’s me in three. (I’ve been trying on #3 lately though, which is new, haha). The only thing I seem to want to do at the moment is to travel, hike, play guitar, write, cycle, jam, and be an absolutely beautiful burst of warm energy to everyone I meet. Seems to me like all of those are ok things to be doing.

The Conway Circuit (formerly the Whitsunday Great Walk)

Before coming here I hiked the 3-day Conway Circuit, in the rainforest above Airlie Beach. It was beautiful. It rained on and off, the forest was thick, graced with lots of giant ancestor trees, snakes, birds, critters, butterflies.

There was a section of forest where there were lots of large black wild pigs, which are pretty scary looking when you’re on your own and they’re staring you down, growling and snorting, looking like they’re gonna charge you and then literally pig out on Polish sausage. So, instinctively I just let out a deep roar, which sent them scurrying off, hoofs pounding into the turf, unaware that I’d be absolutely no match for them. They’re so dumb. It’s so handy being a human sometimes (not wanting to be pigheaded about it of course).

On the second night a bunch of about ten teenage hikers turned up, from a school in Townsville, along with their 30-something year old male teacher and another older woman, maybe a parent. We chatted for awhile. They were super friendly and chatty, and well versed in hiking life, they seemed totally at ease in the bush. So good to see. They were doing part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award programme, which is a youth development programme that focuses on helping kids reach their full potential, through learning physical skills, being engaged in service and voluntary work, and other sound things like that.

They asked me where I was from, I said “oh, you’ve probably never heard of it, Mullumbimby.” No one had heard of it. I said it’s near Byron Bay, and a couple of them said they’d heard of Byron, and another said “oh yeah the cookies.” I instinctively said “yeah, we get all sorts of cookies in Byron.” No one laughed at all. After dropping that lead balloon I immediately looked at the teacher, his expression was a cross between incredulity and disgust, he looked as if he’d just stepped in dogshit, and I was the dog. I knew right then and there they were from a Christian school, I found out later I was right. They were really wholesome, friendly kids. The teacher came round later, I chatted to him, he was lovely guy, and at least he knew what varieties of cookies existed in the world, unlike his students. Kudos to him.

Airlie Beach

I’ve needed to spend a few nights on and off in Airlie Beach, for logistical reasons, otherwise, no offence, I really wouldn’t come near this town with a six foot pole. Hey, wait a minute, I am a six foot Pole. This town, I’m sad to say, reminds me a little of Kuta in Bali, but without the amazing culture, delicious food, and warm spiritual vibe of much of that place. If you haven’t been to Kuta, its dark side is that it’s often full of Australian yobbos on holidays, footy teams, English and Aussie backpackers, party-ready young men, all of whom seem to have two main objectives while they’re there - to pour as much cheap beer into their gullets as they can - and to fuck anything that moves. Yeah, it’s pretty terrible in many of the larger bars there, drunk men harass the conservative young local women with suggestive and lewd remarks, make arseholes of themselves, and make life miserable for the locals, who only put up with it because they need the cash.

Unfortunately Airlie Beach has a bit of that vibe going on. The young women who work in the cafes and bars here seem completely jaded, on guard, over it, and sick to death of tourists. There are bars everywhere, big ones, and they’re full, they pump out music late into the night, and yeah, people get shitfaced.

Of course, Airlie’s way more than that. It’s the main hopping off point for all the Whitsunday Islands, so it hosts every type of tourist under the tropical sun - international and Australian backpackers, families with kids, retirees, and high-end resorters, who have resorted to living in luxury apartments, eating in restaurants, and taking their massively expensive yachts out from the Airlie marina to eat lobster and drink champagne and gallivant around the beautiful islands, poor sods. And then the town hosts people like me, Inge and her friends, and my lovely adventurous septuagenerian camping buddies, who come here for the amazing national parks, to camp, navel gaze, and marvel at the splendour of the natural world. But people like us are in the vast minority here.

So the town is bursting at the seams with “development” - besides all the bars there’s cafes and restaurants all over the place, eateries, tour stands and shops, spruikers trying to get you to part with your money, and shops shops shops. Big tour buses and minibuses ply their way through the town in all directions. Massive cruise ships moor here regularly for a day or two, and their two to three thousand passengers all hit the town at once, to eat, take some snaps, and buy trinkets that they’ll never display, and Chinese toys for their grandkids. A local guy, Tim, told me the other day that he’d just called his older dad to tell him to stay home for the day. It was cruise ship day.

I’m staying at Nomad’s, a massive campground, caravan park and backpackers right in the heart of town, because it’s central, and it’s cheap to park my car here while I go national park hopping. I don’t fancy leaving my car, with my new (second hand) touring bike inside, parked on the street for days at a time. It’d probably get spewed on.

The first night here I met Kale, a 20 year old from Penola, South Australia. He’s sweet, quietly spoken, polite, and he was so stoned that his sentences were, on average, approximately two words long, with quite a long gap in between sentences. Despite this impediment we managed to have quite a nice jam together, provided I remembered to call out the chord changes. If I didn’t, Kale would get stuck on the same chord, his glazed eyes fixated on his fretboard, trapped in some cosmic realm that made him unable to do anything new. Too much Mary Juan and a young brain aren’t the ideal recipe for happiness and exquisite jamming. Our music was also overpowered by huge roars from many of the massive bars nearby - State of Origin rugby happened to be on the big screen - Qld vs NSW - and the drinkers were out in greater force than they normally are, which is saying something. It was a shame I had a headache from a couple of long days of driving - I would’ve made it into one of the bars, to immerse myself in a true Aussie cultural experience. Instead I had to listen to the cheering and the swearing at the ref from a distance. Qld won, by the way.

I’m happy to report though that the exquisite jamming did actually come a few nights later, compliments of a handsome young Israeli backpacker, Eli, and a wiry old Māori guy called Tommy - both of whom have played as professional musicians at some point in their lives. I’d already met Tommy earlier in the afternoon, we had a little play together, and he was already swigging from a bottle of wine in a paper bag. It was 2 o’clock. As the evening progressed the joints and bottles went round and round and round, everyone partaking but me (besides a few swigs), the music got better and better, and reached a long major peak, before descending, slowly but surely, into musical stupor. Three Danish women joined us for a couple of hours, singing enthusiastically to their own requests of Stevie Wonder, the Beatles and Amy Winehouse. It reminded me of a former life of mine. As the reality-enhancers (blockers) kept coming around Tommy’s singing voice eventually started sounding like a dog that had barked too much at the neighbour’s cat, then Eli’s chords began to go missing-in-inaction, the Danish women gracefully left, and I was left holding the baby, which I promptly put to bed. I gotta say, it was so good for awhile, great to connect with all those guys, they were super nice, shame about the excess of intoxicants (again). That’s Airlie Beach for ya. Check out the shower cubicle at Nomads (male of course):

In Our Next Episode

Ok, so my next stop is Trinity Beach, near Cairns, to stay with my niece Jacqui and her young family. Lucky me. Family! A bed! Then I plan to head to the Daintree, then take a big left turn, towards the Gulf of Carpentaria, and then on to Katherine Gorge and the WA coast. Seeya there vicarious travellers ❤️