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.
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.
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.
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