Adventures in FNQ

Summer began early for H and I this year, as by September I was jack of everything and decided it was a good time to go north to do research for my third novel, The Sea Creatures.  This is set in a tropical Queensland town by the sea, although Queensland won’t be described as such in the work.  I didn’t want to go on my own and asked H if he would come too and, being good-natured, he agreed.

H & I found each other in Townsville airport, hopped into our hire car and ventured into the cane fields.  I had never seen cane before (in the novel it acts as a border to the town), and as the sun fell behind the ranges, they were drenched in golden light.  We went up into those ranges, and as we came down the ocean was on our right, filtering into the delta next to Hichinbrook Island.  In the dying light, the water reflected the pink and pale purple sky.

We drove into Cardwell, and hopped out to look at Hichinbrook and the water.  A young woman in a black floppy hat was throwing sticks to her dog.  The dog’s name was Atticus, she told us, then ordered him to shake hands, roll over, and speak with a bark.  Atticus was cute.

I’d been too busy to plan every detail of the trip the way I usually do, so we were winging it (quite against my nature).  H had at least booked accommodation for that night to keep my panic at bay, and we pulled into a very basic caravan park.

‘I wasn’t sure what your budget was,’ he said to me.

‘Ergh, I can probably afford a bit more than this,’ I replied.  I think we were both relieved.

That aside, the lady at reception was very nice, telling us about Cyclone Yasi, a huge print of which hung in the office, and in the kitchen we met a girl who swore at the oven in French.  As the light was nearly going, we walked along the shore.

‘What if the crocodiles come out of the water and eat us?’ I asked.

‘There aren’t any crocodiles, Jess.’

I remained unconvinced, and was much happier when we stepped back onto the road.

The next day we headed for Atherton, stopping first at Tully.  On the outskirts of the town, a sugar mill belched smoke over the adjacent school.  I liked the place, however, with its strip of Art Deco shops, a giant boot and wooden cassowary at one end, and the mountains at the other.  From there we detoured to Mission Beach, and the cane became claustrophobic, pressing against the road.

Mission Beach was touristy, but where there are tourists, there is usually passable coffee, so we parked at a café and ordered lattes, which passed muster for yours truly.  Behind a tangle of shady rainforest was the beach, white and flat, and then the water, turquoise and flat.  I was astonished, having only seen such views on postcards.

We travelled inland, up into bright green paddocks of tea bushes, passing various microwaves on posts that had been turned into mailboxes.  We stopped at Millaa Millaa falls, which were crowded with tourists, and the water was so cold I started hyperventilating.  However, it was nice to have a swim, and when I saw these falls in Danie Mellor’s exquisite exhibition at UQ Art Museum, I was glad that I had visited.

Next on the agenda was Mt Hypipamee National Park.  After a few wrong turns on account of the navigator (cough), we pulled up in the carpark.

‘Look, Jess, a cassowary!’ H said, pointing at a bird on the lawn.

‘That’s not a cassowary,’ I replied, ‘that’s a bush turkey.’

H looked disappointed.

The park wasn’t all that exciting.  Some French ladies heard us laughing at a joke and offered to take a picture of standing us before a tree.  The park’s feature, a crater, was filled with creamy green algae.  On the way back, we found a couple standing in the middle of the track.  They mentioned there was a cassowary up ahead, so we had better wait for it to move.

‘Are they aggressive?’ I asked.

‘Can be,’ they replied.  We chatted to them some more, and it transpired they were from WA and had moved to the area a few years before.  They then walked back up the track to find their friends. 

The cassowary decided to come our way, moving through the bush to the right of the track.  We crossed the path into the other side of the bush, but it kept moving forward, looking for food in the leaf litter.  Then it crossed the path and saw us behind a tree.  I started sweating.  The thing was as tall as I was, with feet the size of dinner plates.  It made eye contact with me, didn’t like what it saw, and made a dash for us.  I lost my marbles and ran onto the track.  When I turned, H was standing the cassowary down, his hand outstretched.  He hissed and shouted at it, and for a few tense seconds the cassowary glared at him, feathers ruffling, then it turned and walked away.

It takes quite a lot to impress me, but I was rather proud of my brother at that moment.  Then the adrenalin overload kicked in and I started shivering.

The bird traipsed back the way it had come.  More and more people arrived, including a tour group headed by an Indigenous man.  The crowd created a a bottleneck in the track.

‘What should we do?’ someone asked the Indigenous man.  

‘Don’t go into its territory and don’t turn your back.’

A tourist hurried to the front of the group to take a photo, then ran back and hid behind the Indigenous man.  A bloke without a shirt on, flanked by two sheilas, appeared and walked through the crowd.  No one said a word, which I thought highly entertaining, but he passed unharrassed.

Finally, the bird wandered off a way and sat down and we could all go our ways with relief.  As H & I reached the car, we saw the bush turkey again.  

‘Do you still think it looks like a cassowary?’ I asked, and we laughed.

That night we ate at the Barron Valley hotel in Atherton.  I was beside myself, because it was a beautiful Art Deco building with matching furniture and lofty bedrooms upstairs.  Aside from it being gorgeous, I needed such a place for one of my characters to stay in when he leaves his wife.  

Sadly, I couldn’t write Atherton’s wonderful Chinese temple made out of a tin shed into my book.  It was unfortunately closed, but H opened the gate at the adjacent dog park and we had a look that way.  The red of the painted eaves, and the rust on the tin against the blue sky, was stunning.

After caffeinating in Yungaburra, we discovered another lovely Art Deco pub, which was open and airy.  Yunguburra was a sweet and quiet town, and from there we drove to the crater lakes, Lake Barrine and Lake Eacham.  We swam in the latter, and the water was warm on top, but bitterly cold beneath.  There were also turtles floating about.

‘What if they bite me on the foot?’ I asked H.

‘They won’t bite you, Jess.’

We lunched on the lawn by the river, then checked out the Curtain Fig and Cathedral Fig trees, which were astonishing, and made us feel like we were in The Lord of the Rings.  This sort of tangled rainforest is also a feature of Danie Mellor’s gorgeous art.  The next stop after that was Jacques’ Coffee Plantation near Mareeba, graced by a mannequin in a dried-out trenchcoat at the cattle grid.  They did at least have good coffee and a nice garden to sit in among those flat, dry plains.

We checked out Mossman Gorge, which was a bit underwhelming, although I liked that it was a successful business run by Indigenous people.

As we walked through the rainforest, H overhead a conversation between a father and his small son, which he then relayed to me.

‘Daddy, where are we going next?’ the boy asked.

‘Palm Cove.’

‘Why, Daddy, what’s at Palm Cove?’

‘I don’t know, son, but you try saying “no” to your mother.’

I burst out laughing.  We ventured on, up to Cape Tribulation.  In the caravan park, the girl at reception recognised H (what a small world), who had gone to school with her fiancé. 

There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Cape Trib, except relax.  I’d been having visions of hotels with infinity pools but I realised that’s not the point of the place; it’s underdeveloped, and they want to keep it that way to look after their environment.  We read novels, lay on the sand, swam a bit (by that point we’d found out it wasn’t croc season), and watched a monitor lizard poke through someone’s belongings at their campsite.

H got up early the next morning to watch the sunrise, but sleep was more important for yours truly, so I passed on that option.  When he came back he announced, ‘Jess, something without opposable thumbs was desperate to get to the peanut butter last night.’

I went outside and found the peanut butter missing most of its blue lid.  It was pretty funny, but I hope the critter didn’t get a blue bellyache.

The snorkelling wasn’t until the afternoon, so we wandered around (coffee was pointless), then decided to visit the insect house, home to an entomologist.  However, it didn’t open till 10.  ‘Honestly, these people have no idea of commerce!’ H said, exasperated.  After he pretended to be a spider stuck to the gates, we read our books until someone drove up and let us in.

The insect house was full of beetles, butterflies and moths, some the length of my forearm, pinned inside glass cases, although there was a plant being eaten by live praying mantises (mantisii for plural??).  Some of these the lady at the desk put into boxes and put in the post for whoever had bought them.  

The snorkelling was cool.  It was a small group of no more than 20, run by Ocean Safari, who took us out on a boat to some small cays (islands of coral).  In the water, which was bitterly cold, we saw big turtles, blue starfish, clouds of tiny fish (forgotten their names) and a giant angelfish, which reminded me of the little angelfish I’d kept in London, and I followed it around for a bit.

The reef and rainforest were beautiful, and I was absolutely heartbroken by the decision a few days ago to dredge Abbott Point.  I had protested with Getup on a march around Brisbane, signed petitions, rang the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority who are supposed to be protecting the place (on their website they exhort people to use Responsible Reef Practices), and left a message on their Facebook page, but they caved to greed, never mind the fact that what has taken a millennia to build will be gone in virtually an instant.  A legal challenge is in the offing, thank God and if, like me, you still want to keep fighting, you can donate to the fund here.  

The Sea Creatures is about a number of issues, the most prominent of which, as in all my works, is the question of belonging.  However it also details the degradation of our environment.  I was raised in the country and taught to appreciate nature, and it depresses me that people don’t care about their surroundings, but rather than give up hope, I would like to think I can effect some change through my writing.

On Shakespeare and Australia

‘What country, friends, is this?’ asks Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, when she finds herself in Illyria after a shipwreck.  Her arrival heralds a opportunity to dress as a man, and sets in motion a trail of mistaken identities among the characters.

This phrase dropped into my head when I read recently about the blockade at the Leard State Forest.  I blinked and wondered: what version of Australia have we morphed into?

Leard State Forest is an extensive patch of bush between Boggabri and Narrabri.  Currently, 5% of the area is mined for coal, but there are plans to clear half of the forest, which would devastate the habitat for at least 26 threatened species, drop the water table, destroy important spiritual and cultural sites of the Gomeroi, the traditional owners, and disrupt the community in which I was raised.

I grew up on a property on the other side of this forest.  Initially, the farm was owned by Ivy Voss of Hughenden, who married FG White.  My grandmother lived there with Ivy and two of her husband’s sisters during WWII, until my grandfather was discharged.  FG was also cousin to Patrick White’s father, and his novel Voss was named after Ivy (but that’s another story).  

My grandparents (pictured) had three sons, and the sons fell in love and brought their wives back to the property, which was roughly 5000 acres in size (it was added to as the years went on).  Each family had three kids so, with my grandparents, there were 17 of us altogether, and my cousins became like brothers and sisters.  On the small bus to school in Boggabri, there were nine Whites aboard, and frequently I would turn my hearing aid off because they were making so much noise and I wanted to concentrate on my book.  Often, too, I’d look up from the page and stare out the bus windows, daydreaming about getting off and walking through the dry farms and the bush.

The forest began on the other side of the youngest aunt and uncle’s house.  As a teen who was obsessed with running and staying thin, I once stayed with them while my parents must have been off travelling, and in the afternoons I would run along the dirt road that abutted the tangled bush.  The tall trees rustled, shaking sunlight from their leaves.  On family picnics we would sometimes climb to the top of Goonbri Mountain, from where we could look down upon the forest.  As a boy my father had climbed this mountain with his parents and brothers, and on Coronation Day they went up for a picnic, a picture of the new queen in a frame under my grandmother’s arm.  Goonbri Mountain is now threatened with Mountain-Top Removal coal mining.

We left the farm when I was 15, because Dad got job as an art teacher and we moved into town.  I went back once or twice for Christmas, and later the land was sold to someone who then sold part of it to the mines.  Now I refuse to go at all, because the mines have been carving up the country and I don’t want my childhood memories – which are the rootstock for my writing, and particularly for my novel Entitlement – to be replaced by a landscape that has been destroyed.

My childhood in the country was not only fodder for my writing, but it was also responsible for turning me into an environmentalist.  I ran and I ran through those paddocks and the bush beyond them, and I came to know intimately what it was like to feel the sun beating onto the back of your neck, the way heat would gather up the smell of eucalyptus, and the thick, almost cloying smell of gum blossoms in flower. Through my parents and my aunts and uncles I learnt the necessity of taking care of the soil through levee banks; conserving rainwater; keeping the creeks clean; raking sheep poo and old straw over the gardens around our homes to nourish them – all activities that took care of the land so that it could keep on giving.  Inherent in their behaviour was not just a need to produce good crops and livestock for market, but a sense of conservation, so that they could leave something for us.  From them, I learnt how it’s important to conserve our world for future generations.

This is what is missing in most of the political dialogues – if they can be called that – between our leaders and Australians.  Are these people not mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles too, and don’t they care about their legacies for their children?  Coal is not sustainable – anyone, as my mother used to say, with half a glass eye can see that.  Instead, politicians bow to greed and to short-term solutions, and wonder why no one trusts them.  

The mines in the area are expected to produce 30-50 million tonnes of coal every year, which represents about a fifth of Australia’s current total annual greenhouse emissions.  To create and use this coal will only contribute to climate change, which means more extreme weather events, more expensive food, and more people displaced.

What kind of Australia is this?  

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a romp.  There’s heartbreak, but there’s also much hilarity about mistaken identity, and of course a happy ending when all is revealed.  In Australia, it seems that we keep on making mistakes, but we can’t recover who we are.  We think we’re the land of the fair go, but politicians’ cruelty to refugees (from both Liberal and Labor) belies this.  We’re proud of our beautiful beaches and bush, but we’re content to let corporations destroy them for money that concentrates in the hands of a few.  We say sorry to Indigenous people, but aren’t prepared to follow that up with meaningful, transformative action.

To me, the more I read on the news and watch our politicians, the more it seems we’re heading for Shakespearean tragedy, with none of the poetry on the way.  Although there might at least be some irony present when I say, ‘Happy Australia Day.’

If you’d like to take action against the mines, there is a blockade this weekend, which is part of an ongoing protest organised by Front Line Action on Coal.  You can also follow #leardblockade on Twitter if you aren’t able to get there in person.  Another thing you can do is to call Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment (in an Orwellian sense, of course, as he has allowed dredging of the Great Barrier Reef).  His phone number is 03 5979 3188.  Or you can email him here.   Also, use social media, and write to the newspaper - don’t forget the power of words!