Saturday, 21 December 2013
The Argumentative Reader might be inclined to question whether we really need these all the way back home slices of narrative, but they are, in fact, here for a purpose.
Firstly, as far as I’m concerned, a journey starts when you leave home and finishes when you return and writing one up that way delivers a sense of symmetry.
The departure marks a temporary end to your mundane, day to day existence while the return signals the resumption.
Second, there’s the actual purpose behind these narratives. That, really, has nothing to do with The Argumentative Reader and his/her ilk.
It’s all very well to gallivant around the countryside and catch all sorts of exciting and intriguing sights, but you need a way to remember them. The discipline involved in sitting down and doing the writing is an enjoyable part of the process.
There’ll be somewhere down the track when some vaguely-remembered happening comes up in conversation. Cassowaries, or unusual multi-national couples, perhaps, in a conversation that runs something like this:
That time we saw the cassowary in the yard.
Yes, that was on the way back from Japan. The Costello concert trip.
Not the coloured leaves trip?
No, that was the cassowary at Etty Bay. We bought pies in Mourilyan and needed somewhere to rest…
So the cassowary in the yard was Licuala Lodge.
That’s the one. With the attractive Swiss-Brazilian couple…
And, of course, there’s a third reason for including the back home leg in the narrative.
It gives you a chance to try a different tack when it comes to the actual write-up.
We weren’t quite sure whether it was time to head across for breakfast.
I was biding my time waiting for Someone and doing something with the iPad when I noticed a movement down there on my left.
Not much of a movement, just the sort of thing that catches your eye.
Turning my attention that way, I wasn’t entirely surprised to spot a cassowary picking its way across the driveway. They are, after all, one of the area’s distinctive forms of wildlife.
What did surprise me was the emergence of a dun-coloured chick. That wasn’t as remarkable as the apparent lack of concern on both parts when the gentleman who’d been cleaning the pool made his way back to the house.
I’d noted him heading that way a bit earlier, which was one of the reasons I wasn’t sure whether it was breakfast time.
A cassowary in the vicinity, of course, is of great interest to the photographic fraternity. I’d been careful to deliver a low volume advisory that Someone needed to come out on the verandah pretty quickly, and having the camera handy would be advantageous.
Both of us were ultra-careful not to spook either of them. I was just recalling advice about what to do if you’re confronted by a cassowary in the rainforest when, lo and behold, here comes pool cleaning bloke. His presence is greeted with apparent and almost total indifference.
Still, I gave it a good few minutes after the feathered denizens of the rainforest disappeared into the undergrowth before I made a rather careful move across the space on the way to breakfast.
We’d settled into the breakfast rations when the other couple staying on the premises lobbed at the table.
I’d have been inclined to favour Scandinavian or similarly Nordic if asked for a national identity, which would have been reasonably close to the money in one case.
He was Swiss, probably German-Swiss rather than French or Italian, but I’d never have picked Her as Brazilian.
Swedish with a good suntan, quite possibly, but not Brazilian.
The wry sense of humour got me as well.
Apparently, she’s not allowed to drive the hire car and expressed a degree of disdain for the sexist assumptions of Australian hire car companies.
Or maybe it was his fault, and he’d selfishly asserted a chauvinistic position when it came to driving long distances on the highway.
They were bound for Airlie Beach later that day, and from there had around a fortnight to get themselves down to Sydney.
Discussions about sights along the way had our host producing a self-prepared pamphlet about things to check in the area, including the Bikini Tree and the Big Gumboot in Tully.
I’d remarked on the fact that they’d be seeing plenty of nothing on their way between Rollingstone and Airlie and again between Sarina and Rockhampton.
That got us onto the subject of places to refuel. The matter suggested a certain degree of paranoia on the part of our blonde Brazilian. She seemed to have a dread of roads where petrol stations were few and far between based on some experience of driving across the Mato Grosso or somewhere similar.
We were away from Licuala Lodge before they were. An attempt to have us rejoin the highway at El Arish rather than Tully had us doing a U-turn to get back on the more appropriate route.
Having hit it, I thought the car ahead of us looked familiar (as in the one that had been parked next to ours five minutes before).
That, in turn, prompted speculation about whether they’d turn into Tully to check out the Gumboot that distracted me from keeping an eye out for Bikini Trees. As it turned out, the car did turn off at Tully, but since we didn’t do the same I’ve got no idea whether the Gumboot was on the agenda.
With breakfast under the belt, there was no need to stop in Cardwell, and by the time we were halfway between Euramo and Kennedy, we were driving through drizzle.
That raised the question of whether we’d stop at the lookout at the top of the Cardwell Range.
The on-again, off-again, will it be raining when we get there discussion took us through the town. It also took us much of the way to the final run-up to the crest of the recent reconstruction.
We went through a patch of almost sun, reached the turnoff without any spatters on the windscreen and pulled up to find it wasn’t raining.
At the moment.
But it was by the time we left five minutes later.
So we’ll be back because the photographs don’t do justice to what used to be a quite magnificent view.
It probably still is, but we need to be back on a sunny day to make sure.
Once we were through Ingham, the question of a route through Townsville raised its head.
Discussions about stocks of cat food at home took us past the spot where we had our accident back in August without The Driver noticing.
Seated on the passenger side, I did notice the turnoff where the police car was sitting. The cat food discussion meant I couldn’t remark on it at the time.
The question of cat food, of course, brought with it the question of which way through Townsville, and since we reckoned stocks would last for a while there was no need to stop in at The Domain.
That, in turn, gave us the all-clear to loop around the Ring Road, providing a swifter transition between the wilds of Deeragun and the residential developments opposite Lavarack Barracks.
We did, however, stop to refuel at Fairfield Waters and made the obligatory comfort stop at Home Hill.
The return to base an hour or so later brought a sniffy response from a pair of felines. They obviously felt they’d been neglected and subjected to unfair treatment as far as rations were concerned.
Feline memories, on the other hand, appear to be somewhat more ephemeral than human ones.
Perhaps it would help if they could write it down.