Turtles, Jellyfish and the Hostel Cult - Mackay, Rockie & Great Keppel Island

Thursday October 25 - I woke, packed and boarded a greyhound to Mackay. It was a stinking hot day and I felt the sweat start to trickle down my back as I trudged with all my gear to the bus. I Chatted with Vancoover Stu as I waited. Entertainment was the boxing film Cinderella Man and the sound was up really high - trying to sleep amidst sounds of fist on flesh was not easy. Man, I hate boxing.

Said farewell to Stu and wished him a safe home. He was a really gentle, caring guy. Strange, but I don't think I've ever met an unsavory Canadian - they all seem to be intelligent, well-educated and worldly wise. The time difference to Vancoover is an incredible 17 hours, and the flight time is similar, thus he would arrive home in Canada at almost exactly the same time that he left Australia. In my books that means that anything that happens on the plane doesn't really happen at all - I urged Stu to use his time wisely.

Arriving at my hostel in Mackay, first impressions were good. I have a stand alone single bed with a sprung matress! There's a huge well equipped kitchen with large wooden tables, and a rooftop deck with chairs and barbeque. I strolled around town, and found Mackay to be really warm and friendly. Its an authentic Australian town, where real Aussie people live and work and shop and eat and go out. It was refreshing after the film-set artificiality of Cairns and Airlie.

Back at the hostel, I made spag balls and chilled with my roomates, Felix from Munich with the perfect Aussie accent and Nick the jetlagged from Tuscany. I challenged Nick to a chess-based battle of wits and smashed him up! There's life in the old dog yet. I chatted for a while with Felix, who it turns out is a really sound guy.

I think I'm going to like this town, with its laid back cafe atmosphere and homely vibe. Its more sophisticated than anywhere else I've been so far in Queensland. The locals are friendly, and genuine, not like the disaffected, backpacker-weary inhabitants of Cairns, Airlie and even Townsville.

On Fri 26th I rose after a good sleep to a hot and steamy day and set out to explore Mackay. I visited the Art Gallery, "Artspace Mackay" and found the exhibits to be touching and thought provoking, especially some of the works by young female artists at local colleges and even still at high school. Pieces on the lost innocence of children, the pressures of teenage life and the unravelling of self through adulthood.

I caught a bus out to the sprawling marina, which was choc a block with luxurious yachts and cruisers. There wasn't too much to see, the place lined with bourgeois apartments and stylish cafes. There was a perfectly nice beach, but then I've kinda been spoilt on beaches recently! I had some lunch and read my book. Mackay isn't really geared up for tourism, but I like it, perhaps partly for that very reason. Its a busy little town filled with busy little people - there are expereiences here, history, lives, a degree of permanency. There's only a smattering of backpackers and other tourists, indeed the lady at the tourist information centre (a tiny office offering leaflets on Mackay's attractions - notably Townsville and Cairns) said I was the first Scottish person she'd seen in four months of working there!

I took a walk along the riverside boardwalk and watched a couple of birds fighting viciously over a small lizard - yum! I can't seem to decide whether to head on to Rockhampton tomorrow, or stay and go an a "jungle tour' to Eungulla national park. It seems quite expensive for a day tour, but I don't want to miss out. I curse my indecisiveness.

Arriving back at the hostel, I find Felix, Nick and the introverted, contemplating Aamen watching a dvd. I join them, and then we have dinner and chat over a few beers. Nick laughs at the way I cook pasta, and I laugh at the fact he bought ginger beer without realising it was sans alcohol. "It says beer" he cries in broken English! I begun to feel a little sorry for him, as he really couldn't understand much that we were saying. It will be tough for him initially I think. He's a kind-hearted guy from Porto Azzurro, near Livorno in Tuscany. For him Mackay is big and he looks a little like one of the guys from System of a Down, apparantly. He shows us a picture of himself with long hair and its still pretty long now - dark, thick and wavy, typically Italian.

Felix is sociable, sharp-witted and lazy. In fact, this is by far the most comatosed dorm I have so far inhabited - Felix, sleepy from working 16 hour days on the Whitsundays, lies dormant for most of the day, fully clothed, while Nick the jetlagged is similarly inert, and Aamen is quiet and energy-efficient. I feel myself influenced by their sleepy ways, but I don't mind too much, appreciating the rest after my Airlie exploits, and acquiesce into a state of new-found lethargy. I know however that it wont last long, for I am too driven (towards what I do not know, but always toward something) to rest for long. We watch Zoolander and laugh uproariously.

I like Mackay because at pedestrian crossings cars stop for you, and because the people are friendly and real. On a completely unrelated note, why is the advertising in Australia, like so many other aspects of its culture, so Americanised? The television adverts appear designed to amuse the idiotic and simple, with basic, crude themes and bright colours. Restaurants and cafes of dubious construction claim to offer the "best steaks in Queensland", or the "juciest pies in Australia", or he "creamiest mash potatoes down under". You can't find a mediocre, overpriced meal anywhere.

I went to bed after the film and found it hard to sleep initially. With my earplugs in everything is muffled - you don't hear the small sounds that act as placemarkers, connecting your inner thoughts to your external surroundings. The hum of the air conditioner, the tip tap of tipsy toes on the staircase below (or above?), the creaking of bedsprings effected by slumberous twistings and turnings. You are suddenly alone with your thoughts, your anchor lost, alone with yourself, terrified.

On Saturday 27th October Jungle Johno's tour was cancelled due to lack of numbers and so my decision was made. I chilled out with Felix and Nick for a while in town, before heading to the library and reading Catch 22. I meet the Helsinki Doctor-Lawyer couple from Gekko's in the Garden - they are friendly and intelligent, two of the best qualities, and they are on the bus too, which is fun.

I'm feeling impressionable today and the two films I see on the Greyhound affect me. Braveheart has me in a patriotic daze, and I fantasise about returning to Scotland and leading the charge for independence. The second picture is "Instinct", about an anthropologist who lives with apes in the jungle for 2 years, living the life of man 10,000 years ago. It's a telling critique of modern civilisation, of our inability to live in harmony with the earth (we must give up our illusions, our dominion) and it strikes a note.

So now I leave behind the Whitsunday coast, travelling miles South on a famously uninteresting stretch of Bruce Highway to the Capricorn coast, and Rockhampton. Its interesting to me, and I never fail to be astonished by where I am. There are greens and browns, and flat prairie-like fields. The trees stand stright and tall, top heavy with leaves. The journey is over 5 hours long, one of the further of my time in Australia, but I am content here with the films and my thoughts.

Coming into Rocky the sun is setting, casting a dusky orange glow over the town. A full moon illuminates the cityscape and the sight is truly beautiful. My hostel is quite far from the town centre, good because it should be quiet, bad in terms of the walking. But hey, I love walking. I've come a long way since my childhood, when the only way my parents could get me to climb the hill from school to our house was to invent stories about rocketships and lampost fuel stations. The hostel manager, an amiable philipino-aussie chap with spikey hair and a cowboy hat, drops me off in town and I have a $10 steak and a pint in O'Dowds - after all, this is the "beef capital" of Australia. I walk around the town, which is deserted apart from a few hives of activity centred around the bars or "hotels". The town has a distinct country and western feel, with wooden saloon-style bars and country music shops. To the North of the centre, and especially over the Fitzroy River, you could actually be in the states. Wide 6-lane roads cut through endless blocks of drive-through fast food outlets and garages. The locals drive four wheel drives and thirsty pickups, and these share the roads with big Mack trucks which smell of manure. American-style capitalism is at play here too, commercial enterprises trading under brash, ridiculous names like "Fridge World" and "Lino Universe".

On Sunday I woke to a stifling hot dorm room, and cursed the idiot who turned off the air con. I walk across Fitzroy Bridge into town, the sun already beating down on top of me at 9.30am. Rocky is a hot hot town - inland and without the benefit of a cooling sea breeze, the heat settles and radiates from everything, and everyone. I stroll around the markets on East Street, where most of the stalls sell tat or homebaking, or homebaked tat. I buy some muffins for breakfast and hastily scoff them.

I arrive at the Art Gallery and hang around waiting for them to open. Inside, there are several exhibitions and some great works on display. I like art galleries - they are chilled, relaxing places where there are no time limits and you are actually encouraged to hang around! I saw some of the works up for the Queenland regional art awards, and immersed myself in the 'surface and depth' exhibition, which looked in detail at the composition and techniques involved in painting. I couldn't stay long however, as I had arranged to meet the YHA bus in town at the Oxford hotel. This I did, and the kind manager drove a group of us to the botanical gardens and zoo.

Zoos are really grotesque things I realise. Numerous species of animals (some rare), plucked from their natural habitats and slammed up in restrictive cages for snap happy tourists to gawk at and shout at and otherwise humiliate. Nothing but the same four walls, day after day, everyday. I felt guilty as I walked around, and put on a frown so as not look like like I was enjoying myself. They had animals I would love to see in the wild - baboons, fresh water crocs and cassowaries.

I walk in the botanic gardens, which are huge and impressive. Walking down towards the lagoon which formed a natural perimeter to the gardens, I stumble onto a landscape which would be more at home in the English westcountry than in Australia. Tall, green grasses and trees line a river which cuts through the landscape, flowing fast and clear over smooth rocks and fertile earth.

Our Aussie-philipino driver takes us to the supermarket, where we load up on provisions. Stepping out from the air-conditioned shop into the afternoon air, I still can't quite believe how warm it is. I had thought by heading South I would avoid the maddening tropical heat, but here, in inland Rocky, its even worse! I sweat buckets without moving an inch.

Back at the hostel, I relax with a beer and Catch 22. I'm really speeding through it now - it's an awesome read. A hungover girl in dark shades sits down opposite me. She turns out to be Laura from Brighton, a psychiatric nurse. We get some beers and chat for hours - about mental illness, being assaulted by patients, uni, hostels, travelling, Australia and its odious beginnings, and Iraq. I always seem to gravitate towards older people (who seem to think I'm older than I am) and the convsersation often ends up entangled in subaltern politcal thought. Do I guide it there subconsciously? Laura has her head screwed on and is great craic, a dry sense of humour appropriate in the arid climate.

At one point, Laura went to the toilet and saw a brown snake slithering into one of the shower cubicles. She ran and got me, and I creeped around the corner to see this 4 foot long, thin brown yellow-bellied slimer! Jeez! I told reception, who came running immediately with a rake, and cries of "gee" and "cool". The brown snake is the second most toxic land snake in the world, and the adrenaline was flowing. I ran to get my camera, but before I could get back to the scene of the action I knew it was too late. I heard the scrape of metal on concrete. I arrived to see one of the staff taking the snake away by the tail, dead but still wriggling. Still quite an experience. Also, there was a girl in the shower next door to the snake the whole time, who didn't have a clue what was going on!

I have dinner, put my washing on and go to bed, early. I finish reading Catch 22 by torchlight. I sleep okay, although I wake a few times, sweating in the strangling heat. The air con is off again.

Monday Oct 29 - I decided to go to Great Keppel Island, and so I caught the 9.40 shuttle which met the 11.30 ferry which arrived about 12.15. I found some accommdation at the Great Keppel Holiday Village. I was greated by the super-friendly Geoff, and the casual, relaxed atmosphere struck me immediately. At $33 a night its by a way the most expensive place I've stayed so far, but snorkel hire is included, for which most places charge around $15.

I swap my Catch-22 for The Beach with an Israeli girl. I don't think its really a fair swap, but at least I have some fresh reading material. The accommodation is pretty cool - it runs off generator power and has its own supply of filtered rainwater. I have a twin room to myself, but without aircon the wooden cabin is an oven in the midday sun. I shudder.

I buy a hat and my first pair of thongs, and flashing my toes I head to Fisherman's beach. The white sand is deserted, the sea a clear blue - I realise I'm on another beautiful island. I lie for a while, reading, before scrabling across the rocks to shelving bay, a sheltered cove which I share with only two other people. White sand meets solid grey rock - the place has a tactile, homely feel. I go snorkelling. The guidebook had warned me not to expect too much, and initially I see only green-brown coral and grey fish. But just then, I saw something BIG out of the corner of my eye! It was a turtle and I was extatic. I followed it around for a good ten minutes in a daze of excitement. It was a wonderful creature, with a smooth battle-scarred shell and large, flat, paddle like flippers. I tried to swim down and touch it, but it wouldn't let me, flapping quickly away swifty to safety. I was reminded of Rabbie's "To a mouse". I really would be laith.

I also saw some menacing stingrays, and some gigantic fish. I can't believe that after all my dives I see all of these animals when snorkelling, by myself, on a deserted beach. It was a mystical experience, enhanced by the adrenalin pumping through my veins - I was a little scared. Snorkelling by yourselt is creepy - isolated and alone, with no-one to anser a call for help. It's just you and the inhabitants of this other world - big buck-toothed, scaly aliens. The current was pretty strong here too - I would have been in trouble if I weren't such a strong, thorpe-like swimmer!

I walked further, scaling rocks and boulders round to Monkey bay, where little boats bobbed on the mill-pond water and there was no one to be seen at all. There were exposed deep red, homely rocks, which contrasted with the white sand and added a warm, dependable feeling to the landscape. I felt connected to this land like never before in Australia, the hard rocks and barren landscape made me feel at home.

I took at track up to an aboriginal shellfish midden site, and then down onto Long beach, where I could see out to Middle Island and Hump Island. I hike a rugged track back to Fisherman's beach, and as I walk back towards my accommodation, the sun is setting over my shoulder, basking the place in a pink-red glow. The tide is fully out now, and the dusky light dances around the puddles of saltwater left on the beach. A few children still play in the surf.

Back at the village, I have dinner and a couple of beers before watching a sick Tarantino film - Planet Terror - in the Israeli couple's tent with the three Israelis. It freaks me out a bit, and as I walk back to my cabin through the barely-lit village I try not to bump into any zombie-trees. The generator goes off half an hour early, at 10.30, and all turns black as I sit outside the kitchen, writing this. Okay, now I'm really scared. I stumble around for a few minutes, unable to find either my room or the toilets, where I knew there was a battery powered light. I was terrified of walking into someone else's room.

My mind started to run away from me. The sign in the kitchen - "work for your accommodation", the fact that I was the only one in my room, that the only people I'd met were people working here, that everyone was trying to convince me to work here, to stay here. I finally found the light in the gent's toilet, washed up and headed directly to bed. I had wanted to find somewhere off the beaten track, where few backpackers go - it looked like I'd found the place! Somewhere where there is one tap for drinking water, where there is no power after 11pm, where you are nursed to sleep by the calls of crazy birds, the scuttle of insects and the din of fighting possums. This is a wild place...

I have a pretty bad night's rest - waking to find my pillow ringing with sweat. I am restless on the cratered matress, and dream that I am having a fist fight with a huge jellyfish. I wake physically punching the air.

On Tuesday October 30 I woke early, sorted my stuff and headed off an a hike to the lighthouse at Bald's point. As I expressed my itentions to the group at reception, they replied with warnings, such as "you know it's an all-day thing, don't you?" and "you've packed enoughwater, right?". I brushed these aside casually, thinking myself a sensible, capable walker!

I set out towards fisherman's bay, collected a map and set off on my way. Immediately, I realised this experience would be different from my rainforest hike up Mount Sorrow, and my walks around Kuranda. The ground below me was at times a grey clay-like sand, at others red rocky dirt. The path was at first flat, as it wound through scraggy green gorse-like bushes, dried fallen trees and charred undergrowth. The forrest was sparse and patchy, but yet it was clear that life teemed everywhere. The path started to undulate, short steep hills were followed by downhills, and with the sun on my back it was quite tiring. I was also alarmed by the number of spider webs strung across the path, often at head height. Great networks of silk, often perfectly invisible to the eye until the very last moment, when a swift duck would save me from entanglement. At one web, the monster was in residence - a giant black spider with orange and black legs. I had no idea whether it was dangerous, but given that most things here seem able to kill you, I wasn't about to hang around and find out.

I passed an old shearing shed with canoes stored inside, and a rustic homestead complete with outside latrine. As I walked things scampered away into the bushes, rustling dried leaves and kindling as they scampered away, terrified. At one point I heard the unmistakable slithering of a snake, and I froze. I was interested to know what type of snake it was, but not interested enough to look! Directly after, I took a right up a very steep, Rocky path which led to the lighthouse. The sign said 4.2km (one-way) and I realised I was poorly prepared. I had packed too much stuff as usual - towel, swimmers, snorkel gear, books. I thought of 8.2km in the hot sun carrying all this useless gear, and shuddered. To make waters worse, I really hadn't packed enough water! I had 1.5litres when I really should have had 3, and I was dehydrated when I set out!

I pressed on, rationing the water and scurrying over the rocky terrain. I gained height quickly, and was soon looking down over the golden beaches and red rock cliffs below. Wreck beach was particularly beautiful. As I climbed, the terrain became even more arid, and cacti started to sprout from the dusty powder earth. Cacti! I began to feel even more thirsty. There were many false dawns, as I walked to the implausibly distant lighthouse. "It can't be far now" I would mutter, reaching the crest of an incline, but it was, another fresh ascent appearing ahead. Bushes and trees closed in on the path, and between these were knitted even more spider webs. I ducked, dived and dodged, but despite my best efforts, I often felt their sticky fine lines attach themselves to my head, neck and arms. I would see spiders, more like the giant one before, and other ominous looking specimens. I was terrified of catching a web and having one fall onto me. Once, I walked slap bang into a giant web, which duly attached itself to my torso, strangling my chest and arms. I stopped dead - "was it on me?". I clawed off the web in panic, checked everywhere, twice, and hurried on.

When I at last reached the final stretch of path leading down to the lighthouse at Bald's point I realised that it had been worth the effort, if not the dehydration! On both sides I saw wonderful beaches fringed by impressive rocks, which the turquoise seas duly crashed into, foaming white with healthy exuberance. I paused at a Cairn to add my own stone to the tribute - my own part of the land. I walked on to the lighthouse - a modern, compact lamp with a servicing hellipad. I sat on the hellipad and ate the cooked sausages I had brought, with a measly mouthful of water -my reserves were getting dangerously low.

I set off back along the track, stumbling over rocks and ducking under spider webs. I downed my last mouthful of water when my mouth became unbearably dry and my lips started to stick together. I started fantacising about beer and traditional lemonade. Minutes crawled by like hours, and I put my mp3 player on to pass the time. The further I went, the less I thought about beer and the more about water and fruit smoothies. I knew I was in a bad way!

Back at the beach, I downed a 1.5 litre bottle of ice cold water and a can of fanta. It was an amazing feeling. I slipped into the pool, and paddled some slow laps in the cool, refreshing water. The walk had been brilliant, with beautiful views over a rocky island paradise, but my preparation had not. I had walked 16k in the burning heat, up and down punishing hills, with only 1.5 litres of water. I hadn't seen a soul all day.

I caught the ferry back to Yeppon at 4.15, and the bus to Rocky. Back at the YHA, I stayed in the same room, although I selected a different bunk - the one nearest the air conditioner. The room was going to be a fridge tonight! I got some cheap pizza from Eagle Boys, chatted to Laura and went to bed. Tomorrow, it was 1770.