Inspired and oppressed by greenery rolling past my Greyhound window, QLD palm trees, banana trees, billboards blowing in the wind. Lost along the middle-of-nowhere tropical highway. It’s the balmily bleak midwinter and sugar cane fields are tall enough, vast enough to eat a grown man alive.
I arrived in Cairns last night, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and beacon city of Tropical North Queensland, checked bags into hostel: 12 m2 for $45 a night, complete with lumpy mattress, metal bed frame, and all-hours shrieking of the antiquated plumbing from the adjacent bathroom, not to mention a free veggie burger and a beer with the purchase of one $5 beer from the oh-so-classy Rhino Bar (open till 5, reinforced tables and bars for dancing upon, ‘THE place to B after 3!’ Repairing early to my hostel room after just the two beers and veggie burger, I was unable to verify this pithy couplet).
The walk back along the waterfront Esplanade with its tangled strangler-fig trees and tiled saltwater lagoon was quite agreeable. The strangler figs are actually other large hardwood trees upon which birds have dispersed seeds of the Ficus. The seed then sends down intertwining tendrils that snake along the trunk and hang from the branches; when they reach the ground below, the tendrils harden and grow into thick roots that eventually choke and kill their host tree.
A warm breeze came off the tepid salt marsh at high tide. I basked in the exhilaration of the air against my skin, the palpable quality of life’s beauty in the tropics; I smelled the slight salt air, swiped sweat off my forehead with a smile. I’m not in Melbourne anymore!
As it turns out, there isn’t much in the way of natural aesthetic beauty in Cairns’ beach, such as it is. Mostly devoid of appeal in the evening, it’s unspectacular in the daytime. People sunbathe on the grassy banks of the man-made lagoon rather than the uneven, rocky, soggy sand that is all but completely submerged at high tide. To Mission Beach, then! I woke up this morning in time for an unassuming free breakfast of toast, cereal, and fresh, local tropical fruit: rockmelon (cantaloupe), honeydew, pineapple, papaya, paw paw (I’ve been unable to determine whether this silly-named fruit is at all different from papaya or just a different name for the same thing), pineapple, and coffee whose redeeming virtue was its slight drinkability. I packed my bags, bade farewell to my room, left bags in another one, and wandered in-land to Rusty’s Market for another tropical fruit experience before picking back up my personal effects and jumping on the bus for Mission Beach.
Shorts, t-shirts, wife-beaters, flip-flops in the coldest month of the year, 50¢ avocados, dollar cantaloupes and pineapples? I could get used to this. I could get used to the flow of the Heyerdahl gyre, bringing warm ocean currents and accompanying sea breezes from the equator to caress my skin and thaw the cold in my heart. I could get used to the humidity of the air, salt on my skin and in my hair. In all likelihood, though, I won’t. This paradise fiction will remain a lovely escapist dream, a modicum of respite from the real world of work, struggle, hardship, heating, and layering. In my heart of hearts, I know that this is the dry season in QLD, the season where tourists don’t get eaten by insects or crocodiles. Where they (we) can swim outside the stinger nets without fear of being maimed by lethal jellyfish. Pretty soon I’ll have to own up to the evanescence of my vacation and head back down to Victoria, my job, and the city.
But for now, I don’t have to think about any of that. It’s only day two (and the first whole day) of my trip, and I’m in an air-conditioned bus, sugar cane fields stretching to the east as far as the foot of the distant mountains, punctuated by banana trees with protective bags over their abundance like so many crude, silver loincloths. Somewhere beyond those mist-shrouded hills lies a thin strip of off-white, overhung by palms and mangrove trees, buttressing the South Pacific Ocean.
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