From Magnetic island to Brisbane

I can’t think of an original way to start this description of the next day in Australia. Like most days it began with waking up, having a shower, getting dressed etc. This day though had the extra chore of packing and checking out of the hostel. We had breakfast before checking out, finally finished/threw away our strange cereal. Yang was fed up of the solid banana sweets amongst his cornflakes by then so gave them all to me. Our new roommate, the guy from the Neverlands offered us some of his bread since he had plenty. Or maybe it was out of sympathy due to what we were eating.

We checked out and headed down to the bus stop by the beach. There follows a series of bus driver pictures by Yang. It is a story of love.

One lonely bus driver.

Two bus drivers but with something in between them.

Two bus drivers finally united.

The bus driver on the left took us to the ferry terminal. At one junction there were three or four cars coming down the road so he had to wait before he could turn out. He said jokingly, “What? Traffic on Magnetic Island!”

On the ferry I was reminded of something that I had not heard for a long time, not since we used to take the ferry to France when I was a kid. It is also the kind of thing you never think about except when you are on a boat. I am of course talking about Muster Stations. Me and my sister thought they were funny years ago because muster sounds so much like mustard. Why would you need mustard if a boat was sinking? Is it because if you eat enough you get really hot and so can survive the cold waters of the sea? Would Jack from Titanic have survived if he had only had a pot of English mustard?

Back in Townsville we got information about buses to the airport because we had chosen to fly to Brisbane rather than take the train. You see, by train it takes 24 hours but by plane it takes just one hour and 45 minutes. They were both around the same price so it was an easy decision. We had some time to kill before we got the flight so we left our bags in a storage locker and went to find an Internet café.

I can’t remember the name of the place but it was really relaxed. Yang was looking through his wallet for his student card so we could get the student rate but the guy said, “Relax, I can tell your students, you don’t have to prove it.” The place felt much like his territory, we had to be as relaxed as him if we were going to do business. So not asking the usual questions, like how much it was, in case we got sent away for not being relaxed enough, we sat down at a computer. We had to book a place to stay in Brisbane - somewhere for that very night. There were two places available at around the same price, one offered a free airport pick up and a free breakfast as well though so we decided on that one. From our experience with the three person room we wanted to go large and stay in a 12 person dormitory, where there would be so many people you would not have to worry about awkwardness and being friendly.

Yang did some studying, we printed out our plane tickets, paid and then went to a free art gallery. Downstairs was a mixture of paintings, including one called, “The Line” which was a long line going along the wall. A woman sitting behind a desk asked me where I was from and then talked a bit about her daughter. She mentioned the exhibition upstairs and said, “It’s one of those.” I heard her talking about it to some other people who went up before us, she said, “If you clap then the spiders come down.”

The lift doors to the first floor opened to this.

It was a mixture of big spider toys amongst stuff hanging in red material that looked like drooping flesh. I had seen these spider things before in Bristol Airport, but never as art. There were loads of them and the woman was right, if you clap loud enough they scuttle down and then slowly climb back up their strings waving their legs and flashing their eyes.

The exhibition also had some interesting crutches.

There was Hairy Crutch.

Spikey Crutches for the recovering cowboy.

Some shoes, like this one called Soule Cutter.

These shoes with a trapped bird.

Whatever this was.

The exhibition was called Props For Barcelona Two Step.

On the way out the woman behind the desk asked me, “Did it blow your mind?”

“In a way,” I said.

We were hungry and poor so went to Woolworths and bought cheap snacks. We got Home Brand coke, Home Brand chocolate fruit and nuts and some crisps. We sat at one of the tables in the centre of Townsville and ate our nutritionless lunch. Lots of birds joined us too.

There was a really good sculpture on the street based on the idea of a human anthill.

The objects had been collected from various groups of people, ranging from school children to army personnel. The objects had been assembled into the anthill pattern, moulds were taken, something else complicated happened and finally it resulted in solid aluminium sculptures.

I guess the objects were all things that people didn’t want anymore and they included Shrek's head .

An old controller and video.

Even a Leaning Tower of Pizza.

Back at the ferry port we caught the bus to the airport. Our flight was with Virgin Blue and the woman behind the counter said the picture in my passport was, “Cool.” It is slightly side on and might not be accepted these days, but I am stuck with it for three more years. I have to make sure when I show it at Check In that I also look at the clerk slightly side on so that I look exactly the same as my picture, yet not so much that they think I have a problem with my neck.

On the plane and in my seat pocket was a paper bag. The top of the bag said, “Please use this bag if you are affected by motion sickness.” Underneath this line it continued, “Digital photos from 17 cents! Free Internet Viewing. Free Sharing for Family & Friends. Just send your jpg images on memory card, CD or DVD in this strong coated bag. You’ll receive back photos by mail in 7 – 10 days!” Advertising gets everywhere these days, even sickbags. But the two purposes of this bag are so completely different that it’s just asking for trouble surely. Imagine if you got on the plane and filled out all the details, put in your memory card and then sat back looking forward to receiving your prints. Then during the flight you felt ill and in a moment of forgetfulness ended up vomiting all over your memory card. Your photos would be ruined and even if they weren’t then fishing out the memory card would be quite unpleasant. Conversely I wonder if due to elaborate clerical mistakes the company ever receives just bags of vomit.

We got to Brisbane and after baggage collection made our way to the train for the city centre. I called the hostel to ask them for the free pick up. The first time I called the phone rang but then cut out as if someone had answered but then become chronically shy. The second time a woman answered who sounded a bit drunk. I couldn’t really work out what she was saying and she had a little difficulty understanding me too. She said something about cars blocking in cars and that they couldn’t pick us up. I was a bit annoyed by that since the website promised a pickup and we were quite tired, it was about 7pm. She said taxis would be about 15 dollars but she wasn’t sure. I asked her about walking and she said, “Well you could try.”

That wasn’t very encouraging. My Lonely Planet book had a map of Brisbane which detailed both the station and where the hostel was, but I am sceptical about maps in guidebooks. I find they tend to be too large in scale (or do I mean small), with not enough road names and if there was a park inhabited by a man eating giant they would just draw two trees, write “park” and leave you to discover the rest yourself.

At the train station Yang took my guidebook and looked at the map in the station to get our bearings. We walked down some stairs and stepped out into Brisbane, and this.

After the electric lights of the plane, airport and train the dark sky and warm air was really refreshing. After the smallness of Townsville and Magnetic island seeing a city again was almost a shock.

We talked as we walked and saw the city slowly passing by. The lights of a huge bridge appeared and disappeared from view as we walked between large buildings. We saw churches, parks and interesting looking buildings far from the modernity of Cairns. The walk to the hostel was pleasant to say the least.

We found the road in the hostel’s address and at the appropriate number there was a huge metal door. A bell was screwed to the wall but it didn’t work so we called the reception again to say we were outside. We could hear some people talking from within and Yang said, “They sound Korean” but he wasn’t sure. We both expected the hostel to be full of Europeans, my sister said the whole of the East coast was full of, “Drunk British People” and I was slightly dreading sharing a room with ten of them. Yang had said again that he would probably be the, "only Asian."

We heard several locks being rattled about and then the door opened. The receptionist was not drunk, she was Asian and had a bit of a lisp which gave a strange tone to her English. As she led us through the hostel to the office we saw that the previous voices did indeed belong to a group of Koreans. Walking through the rest of the building there were more and more of Yang's countrymen. There were Koreans sitting in the lounge, cooking in the kitchen, walking down the stairs, smoking in the carpark etc. Everyone we saw was Korean. I found it hard not to laugh at how wrong we both were, and how it was me who was going to be the one standing out.

There was a problem. They had overbooked the large dormitories and there was only space in a four-person room for that night. Since the four-person rooms cost more she wanted to charge us extra for this. We complained since this was not our fault and we didn’t get the airport pickup either. She said, “Ok” and we got our cheaper rate – another success for polite complaining. Yang said to her, “Excuse me, are you Korean,” in a slightly, “Let’s drop this silly speaking English act.” She looked at him with the kind of weariness like she had been asked this question a hundred times before, “I can see you want to speak Korean don’t you, but no I’m not Korean.”

She gave us our key and we climbed the stairs, walked passed more Koreans standing about and arrived at the door to our room. While I was feeling amused at how, like in Japan, I was again in a group of people where I was the outsider, Yang was instead looking a bit nervous. We knew that there were two people already in the room and chances are they would be Korean so I waited for Yang to knock and go in first but he didn’t want to. I knocked and then entered. About six Korean people sitting on the beds looked up at us in shock. I didn’t know what to say, “Hello, we’re staying here. There are two people staying in here already right?” Without saying anything and looking sort of embarrassed they all left the room in a swarm. Suddenly alone we were completely confused about which two people were actually our new roommates.

Whoever they were, they had chosen the bottom bunks so Yang and I took the top ones. We unpacked, looking for space inside the dusty wardrobe. There was a TV, a set of lockers and strangely a DVD player under the bed. A girl knocked and came into the room. She nervously greeted us in English and I gave her a chocolate raisin – not as a reward. Yang spoke to her in Korean and within thirty seconds she was laughing and smiling. I liked her immediately; her name was Mea – though I am not sure how it should be spelt.

Yang asked me in Japanese if I knew where the bathrooms were. I didn’t, but he didn’t seem to want to look for them on his own so we both started exploring. There were two bathrooms on each floor, and only two showers between the maybe 40 people who were living there. The bathrooms were old and rotten. The water around the shower collected in a big puddle on the floor, there was a hole for it to drain through but because someone didn’t understand the laws of gravity it had been given no reason to flow through it.

Back in our room our other roommate appeared. He was called Dongjun and he was also friendly. The four of us talked for a while and then me and Yang decided to venture out into the night for some food, yes like possums.

It was 9pm and everything seemed to be closed. We walked down the streets we had walked up a few hours before. Eventually we found a 7/11 and bought some sandwiches. We ate on a park bench and talked about our roommates, we both felt like it might be better to stay in that room rather than go to the bigger dormitory. I had assumed they were a couple, but Yang told me that was wrong – they had met on the plane from Korea and decided to stick together

That day was Saturday the 29^th of March and it had been one year since I left the UK and arrived in Japan. I felt a bit nostalgic, it had been a strange year. “You know it is one year today that I met you for the first time,” I remarked to Yang. He said, “So?”

Back at the hostel Mea and Dongjun were in our room. I went to find the receptionist to ask her whether it would be possible to stay in that room for the rest of our stay, but she wasn’t there. When I got back a Korean girl ran ahead of me and through the door. She sat down on Mea’s bed looking slightly manic. She introduced herself as Rachel, because she looks like Rachel from friends. It was true, her face was quite similar. Not long after Rachel another Korean girl came in, called Jay. I went to have a shower and when I returned there was yet another new person in our room, a Korean guy who introduced himself as Jason.

The seven of us sat and talked about all manner of things, including the room next door whose occupants often had loud sex. Mea said that when it happens she runs to tell Rachel who always wants to listen.

At about 1AM everyone returned to their own rooms and we went to sleep, except for Yang who stayed up with his laptop to study.

It had been a strange strange evening but in an entirely good way.

Magnetic Island

It was the morning of Friday the 28^th of March and we were on Magnetic Island waking up to the bright sunshine. We still had not finished the snacks we brought from Cairns – cornflakes with banana sweets and honey roasted peanuts. With the milk we got from the Chinese restaurant we sat down to our intriguing breakfast.

Did you know that banana sweets go really hard when they are in milk? They get all crunchy. I saw a documentary once about people in one pole or the other using bananas as hammers. They hold the banana in the open air for about 30 seconds and it turns completely black. Once black it is insanely hard and they can use it to hit things into the ice. Don’t ask me how they get the bananas in the first place, that’s not important. The point is that banana sweets in milk are a bit like real bananas in extremely cold temperatures, solid.

I met the manager of the hostel that morning and he explained what the problem had been before, with my different names. He gave me a map of Magnetic Island and suggested some things to do. My guidebook mentioned the Forts Walk and he mentioned it too, with the description, “see the koalas.” I asked him how to get there and he gave the typical small island reply, “Just tell the bus driver.”

Me and Yang left the hostel and headed down to the Esplanade where the bus stop was. In the light of day it was really beautiful with a long narrow jetty heading right into the blue sea.

See.

I walked down to the end of the jetty. While Yang walked along the beach.

At the end of the jetty was a sink.

And a ladder, which made the sea look like some amazing swimming pool.

Life imitates art doesn’t it? Which is why Magnetic Island reminded me of the game The Secret of Monkey Island. For example, look at this beach.

And now look at this picture from the game.

Do they not look a bit similar?

And look at this hill on Magnetic Island with its prominent rock.

In the game there is a place much like this where you use a catapult to sink your boat/knock down the banana tree. You can see it at the top of the picture here.

On with reality. We had a bus to catch and since Picnic Bay was where the bus started from the bus driver was sitting in his bus for a while before he opened the door. When he did we got on and had this conversation:

Me: “Hello”

Him: “Morning”

Me: “We’d like to go on the forts walk”

Him: “Well, I’d like to go to Vegas. So why are you telling me?”

Me: “Oh right. Does this bus go to Vegas?”

Him: “No, but it does go to the Forts Walk. That’ll be four dollars each.”

Twenty minutes later we got off the bus and began walking up the trail that led up a steep hill. It was pretty hot but there were enough trees to give shade. Australian people kept walking down the hill and saying, “How are you?” in passing. I had no idea what to say in reply, are you supposed to answer their question in the brief second you have while you pass each other like some kind of drive by interview. In confusion I ended up doing a Japanese bow combined with a Western nod.

The greatest thing you can find on a walk on a hot day is a tap/faucet attached to a reservoir. That is exactly what we found randomly around a corner.

It even had graffiti.

Yang kept stopping me so that he could creep up on a butterfly to try and get a good picture. Butterflies are surprisingly savvy though and know just when to fly away, but he did manage to get this picture.

Here are some other pictures.

At some point there was an old building that used to store ammunition for the small fort at the top of the hill.

There were two dark rooms that I nervously pocked my head into. The only light came from a small round hole in the roof. I could see some things fluttering around and heard strange noises. I had the idea of using my camera flash in the room to see if an infinite number of bats would fly out, like in films, but I decided against it.

The trail led around the other side of the hill and to a great view of the sea where a small yacht was a sailing.

The downside of the view was the lack of shade. We stopped to rest.

The last bit of the walk was steps leading up to the fort, now visible above us. Yang saw the steps and complained about being tired. I was going to argue that he shouldn’t be tired since I wasn’t that tired and he had been in the Korean military for two years and does kickboxing, whereas my hobby is staying horizontal for as long as I can. Before I could speak though he was running athletically up the steps and disappeared from sight. I followed slowly feeling like I was his father.

Around the bend I found him sitting on a big rock. Then he swung from one rock to another using a branch Tarzan style.

Up the rest of the steps was the end of the walk. It was a bare concrete building in several layers. Inside each layer was a room with a narrow window looking out to the sea.

Ladders on the outside allowed you to climb to the roof and a 360 degree view of the surrounding hills and beaches.

There was a different way down to the way up and it took us to an open area where Yang asked me to take pictures of him.

Adventure picture.

Skydiving accident picture.

We walked back down the hill and the trail rejoined the original path to back to the start. We did not see a single koala though, probably because we were too early. I remember we talked about the future and it was oddly depressing. There’s nothing like walking with a friend on holiday in the blazing sunshine on a beautiful island to make most realistic future prospects seem somewhat bleak. Especially when they concern exams or planning lessons.

We caught the bus back to our hostel. At the Nelly Bay Ferry Terminal a load of school kids got on, they had just come from a high school in Townsville I guess. They were loud and making fun of some absent friend because he straightens his hair and so must be gay. I looked at Yang, Yang looked at me. Yang straightens his hair too but he says that lots of Korean guys do it. Different cultures different prejudices.

Back at the hostel we went swimming in a special area just off the beach. It was special because it had a, “Stinger net” to keep out the jellyfish. Yang cannot swim so that was quite amusing.

We ate pizza and chips that night in a restaurant. The waitress was really super friendly but her boss kept coming over to ask us if we were, “All right for beer.” It seems like having just one bottle each is a strange practice in Australia. There was a sad looking dog outside and Yang went out to give it a chip. When he came back he told me, “It didn’t want it.”

A guy from the Neverlands moved in that evening. It was sort of awkward at first, three is a bad number for a room because inevitably two people already know each other and then the other person feels unwelcome. After that hostel we decided that bigger rooms, like with eight people, would be better because then there are too many people to worry about awkwardness.

Yang fell asleep, or pretended to, at about 11pm and the guy came back into the room. We talked for a bit and he told me how he was studying in Australia but was travelling around on his own for a while. Like us he was going to move out the next day. Our conversation was interrupted by a large cockroach, which ran from under his bed towards his bag. He sprang after it but it disappeared under his bag.

He started unpacking his things to check the cockroach wasn’t hiding amongst them somewhere. It wasn’t in his bag so he looked all around the room, under beds, behind the shelves etc. I felt like I should help so I poked around our bags too. We started talking again, keeping our eyes open for it. He said that he didn’t feel happy sleeping while it was in the room so was determined to get rid of it.

I felt more like going to sleep so I said goodnight and lay down. Not long after I turned over and saw the cockroach running up the wall. Our new roommate had his back turned and my ability to shout something informative was secondary to my ability to jump off the bed and hit the cockroach with my shoe. It fell to the floor and I hit it again. Slightly startled my roommate looked at the corpse and said, “It’s definitely dead.” With a degree of professionalism he used some newspaper to scoop up the body and took it outside leaving the door open. I was worried that a stream of new cockroaches, ants, mosquitoes, possums and snakes would flood in through the open door. He came back in alone and we all slept in peace while the more subtle cockroaches probably danced and sang on our clothes, listened to the stories of the great wise old cockroach of room 301 and then feasted merrily on cornflakes, honey roasted peanuts and banana sweets.