The Journey To Magnetic Island

It was time to leave Cairns and start heading South. By the way we were making our way to Sydney because that was where my flight was leaving from in about 11 days time. Our next destination was Townsville and then to an island called Magnetic Island. I can’t remember what my guidebook said about the island to make me want to go there but Yang didn’t seem to mind when I suggested it to him.

We were going to get from Cairns to Townsville by the Sunlander train. The journey takes eight hours and our train left at 8:30AM. For this long journey we needed snacks, so at midnight the night before me and Yang set out to find food for the morning. There wasn’t much open at that time, actually there was nothing except a 24-hour convenience store that we discovered. The great thing that happens when two guys travel together is that they are both happy to eat rubbish. Our food for the train turned out to be a packet of those yellow banana sweets, honey roasted peanuts and all this dumped together in a big packet of cornflakes that Yang had been eating for God knows how long.

The train was slow, really slow. It was so slow you felt like you could get off from the first carriage, stretch your legs, meet some of the locals and then get back on again at the last carriage. Here is a video of its slowness.

The view was mostly of sugar cane, farms and mountains

Sitting on the opposite seats to us was a four-year-old blonde girl and her father. The girl was at least 70% evil. When we first found our seats she was sitting in them till her dad got her to move back to him. Over the next eight hours she did not sleep at all, in fact she did not stop talking or even worse, signing. She seemed to be driven by an inexhaustible and unrelenting energy that she put into being expertly annoying. To be fair she didn’t have anything to do, not even a colouring book, so she was bored but oh God. Every twenty minutes her dad would tell her off by slapping her, which made her cry even louder and report accurately, “Everybody hates me. I don’t have any friends. You hate me too don’t you daddy?” At first I had sympathy for her, then for him and finally just for myself.

We eventually got off the train at Townsville. The next part of the plan was to walk from the station to the small ferry port. I had a map and we found the big main road that would take us there but we didn’t know if we should go left or right. Yang reached for the small golden bell he had dangling from his bag. I personally didn’t see how it was going to help. He turned the bell upside down and it turned to be a compass, which was much more useful.

So we walked, and walked and it was really hot. Then we realised we were pointlessly walking in the sunshine because the otherside of the road was much more in the shade. The next crossing over the road looked like it was a whole horizon away and anyway while I was looking for it Yang was already running over the road. He has a tendency to act like that, like writing, “Rubbish” in comments’ books and always trying to kill any strange insects that I point out.

We walked for a long time. Google maps had told me that it was just 15 minutes from the station to the ferry port. However, I realised that it must have meant 15 minutes if you are being carried by something with wheels and a tax disc.

The road turned into a shopping area and we stopped to rest near the mobile blood bank. Nothing interesting happened involving the mobile blood bank; it was just a point of reference. Oh actually it did have to reverse out, which took quite a lot of shouting. Be terrible if it crashed and spilled its load wouldn’t it. The driver would come out unharmed but completely covered in blood and stand shaking his head at the wreck. People would run over to him in panic, shrieking, “Are you alright!” The driver would look a little bemused and say, “Yeah, bit of a headache that’s all. Oh this!” indicating his blood drenched clothes, “No don’t worry, it’s not mine.”

So anyway. As we walked nearer to the little ferry terminal, which was a low grey building, I was reminded of the game Little Big Adventure (LBA). You see in LBA you have to walk to a little ferry terminal, which is sort of low and grey looking. In LBA though you don’t buy the ticket, that would be silly. Instead you have to help out a bipedal elephant whose distraught because he needs to arrange some boxes. You arrange the boxes for him and hey presto, he gives you a ferry ticket. We, however, bought our tickets from the counter marked, “Ferry Tickets” and then sat down.

Yang disappeared and then reappered with two cakes, quite a trick. One was chocolate and the other carrot. This was the first time he had ever eaten a carrot cake and he liked it. I told him that carrot cakes are the best vegetable based cake, in my opinion. Here is a pictures he took at that moment in time of someone else waiting for the ferry.

The ferry arrived and we climbed aboard. It was 5:25PM and the sun was beginning to set in a nice early evening light sort of way. Here are some pictures.

This is Yang and our bag of snacks.

Yang took about twenty pictures of me over the space of a minute. He deleted all but this one, which captures the exact moment that I thought I was going to drop my camera.

This was a cloud over Magnetic island.

When we arrived at Nelly Bay Ferry Terminal the cyclone warning sign was set to, “No Immediate Danger,” which was reassuring.

Since Magnetic Island is pretty small the website for the hostel we were staying in advised us just to say the name of the hostel to the bus driver, and he would be able to drop us off right outside. We bought the bus ticket from the place in between the two signs saying, “Bus tickets” which were pointing in opposite directions to each other. The bus ride took maybe twenty minutes and gave good views of the mixture of houses, trees and nothingness that lines the one main road of Magnetic Island.

Our hostel was called, “The Traveller’s Hideaway” and we chose it because it was the only one available – a big selling point. When we booked it the most recent review on the website popped up.

“STAY AWAY! Yuk FEMALE staff watch PORN(!!) with guests in the tv room and the whole place is dead and old. Miles from anything and decent beaches and shops.”

Well, we thought, at least there’s a TV.

When the bus stopped and the driver shouted the name of the hostel we climbed off and up the steps into the office. There was no one behind the counter but there was a sign telling us to call a number on the phone provided. I called it and a man said he would be there in a moment. We waited on the terrace outside for a few minutes and a woman in a bikini came up and said, “Hello” to us. She walked into the office and we carried on sitting outside. She popped her head back out again and said, “You want to check in?”

There was a problem with our reservation. It was explained to me the next day that the problem arose because I had booked the room as Nicholas but on checking in I wrote my name as Nick - well I was tired. The woman kept looking between the book and the computer and then phoned the man I had spoken to. A small argument took place and then she hung up and smiled at me saying, “It’s fine,” unconvincingly.

Our room was a three person one but there was no else there at the time. It had a sink, beds, air-conditioning and was relatively clean. The hostel had three showers per sex, not clean but not too bad. Well anyway, after a quick look around we went out to find some food.

“I’m the only Asian,” Yang said slightly sadly. It did seem to be the case, the bus ride had shown us that the vast majority of people seemed to be non Asian. The Internet had said there was a supermarket in Picnic Bay, which was where our hostel was, which closed at 7pm and it was about 6:30PM when we started looking for it. On the Esplanade was a row of restaurants and bars and then a small opening into a covered area between two buildings. Here was a sign proudly baring the name of the supermarket but which was hanging over a door with only darkness behind its window. There didn’t seem to be anything supermarket like near the sign so we decided that perhaps the sign wanted us to walk in its direction. We did, and came out at the back of the row of restaurants. We climbed over a small wall, walked passed the bins and came out again at the front of the restaurants with no supermarket in sight.

“We should ask someone,” suggested Yang. There were two women sitting drinking outside the nearest bar. I asked one of them if she knew where the supermarket was. It went like this.

ME “Excuse me, do you know where the supermarket is?”

A “Umm, no sorry.”

B “Yes you do, that guy told us. It closed down.”

ME and A: “Oh.”

A “You’re staying in the Traveller’s Hideaway aren’t you?”

ME “Uhh, yes.”

A “Well the place next door sells milk and pasta sauce, things like that.”

ME “Oh ok, thank you.”

You know you’re on a small island when people know where you live less than an hour after you actually moved in.

Near the supermarket sign was a Chinese restaurant. “Ha, you’re not the only Asian,” I said. To test this theory we ventured inside and had a meal. “Where are you from?” asked the Chinese lady serving us to Yang.

“Korea,” he said.

“Ahh,” she said. It wasn’t a great display of same continent familiarity.

The restaurant also sold milk, so we picked up a bottle of it for breakfast. Back at the hostel we stayed up late watching Black Books on Yang’s laptop, he has become obsessed with the show and often quotes it. Actually he learnt the word “rubbish” from episode 3 when Bernard says, “Listen to the rubbish in this book,” about the wine book he is reading. “Don’t drink Burgundy in a boat.”

Eventually it was time to sleep. From bed to bus to train to foot to boat to bus to bed.

My spellchecker says that last sentence should be fragmented. Go fragment yourself, I say.

Skyrail

Take a rainforest and construct a cable car system to go from the easily accessible by car bottom of the mountain to the middle of nowhere top of the mountain and you have yourself a major tourist attraction. In Cairns such an attraction goes by the name of Skyrail.

After catching a coach transfer at 7:30AM from just outside Yang’s guesthouse we got to the Skyrail terminal at the foot of the mountain we were about to ecologically ascend. Once we had our tickets we browsed the Skyrail shop which had a nice selection of dead spiders and lizard T-shirts with glow in the dark tongues.

The cable cars look like this.

As the car climbed up the mountain the view got better and better.

Yang was unimpressed though. He said that it looked like a calendar and he started pointing out all the different months around us. I knew what he was saying; it's like when you look at people’s holiday snaps of a country you have never been to they often just look like you would expect them too. What with all the images and videos around today sometimes you can feel like you have seen it all before. However, being there is very different to just looking at a picture, you have to pay more for one. I asked him not to look at any calendars of the UK.

We had a stow away.

At the first station, if that is the word, we got off and walked around the boardwalk that goes around some trees and back again.

I have no idea why Yang took this picture.

But then he probably had no idea why I took this one.

I took this picture of him, but he didn’t like it because of armpit hair.

Refusing to delete it, he demanded compensation. So he took this picture of me.

There was a caterpillar wriggling on the thread of a broken spider’s web. We spent a while taking pictures of it.

As we were doing this a large group of Japanese tourists following a guide came our way. The guide said, “Ohh” and pointed out the caterpillar we were photographing. A queue of people started to build up behind us so we decided to leave. Only days later did it actually occur to me that the caterpillar probably quite wanted to be rescued. Unluckily for it the combination of itself and the almost invisible spider’s web floating in the air was much too aesthetic for anyone to think about morals. All it wanted was for someone to pick it up, not for its image to be digitally captured forever in multi mega pixel digital JPGs. Having said that, here’s another picture.

Another cable car took us to the next station, passing this river as it did so.

That was nothing compared to the waterfall that followed.

The next station had a viewing platform right over the waterfall. It also had this strangely placed sign.

The final cable car led to the town of Kuranda. I am not sure what this place was like before the cable car came but it now certainly has a touristy feel. I mean look at this map, it looks just like a theme park.

There were shops selling over-priced koala bride and groom effigies (£15 each) along with all manner of kangaroo things, boomerangs, pencils, pens, posters, artwork, magnets etc etc. There was also an abundance of cake and snack shops, all charging the kind of prices that people only pay when they know they can’t escape. Having said that it was here that Yang ate his first pasty. It was some kind of meat and meat pasty that he started off enthusiastically eating but he gradually got slower until he gave up and threw it away.

We had some time to kill before we went on the next bit of our trip, Rainforestation, a whole menagerie of things rainforesty. Walking around a bit we found a bat sanctuary for injured fruit bats. It was a very small place that you go into and immediately find yourself standing with a whole load of other people in awkward silence staring at some bats. There was a guide making conversation with some people but the problem was it was a charity thing. You feel bad for leaving too soon because its charity and protection, but then you don’t really want to get involved in a long convesation because you are not really that interested. It’s a hard situation. I had a question though, because there was a weird sound and I couldn’t work out which bat was making it.

“No that’s a rooster. It’s over there somewhere,” said the guard pointing into the trees. Ahh that explains it I thought.

Rainforestion began with a guided tour around a zoo. It was a small zoo but the guide was brilliant. To give an example of her briliance, when we got to the kangaroos she said, “These are kangaroos,” and carried on walking. Everything she said sounded as if she had said it a thousand times before; she was knowledgeable and interesting but her delivery made it all sound extremely dull and like she hated her job. She also kept saying things like, “This is the blue tongued lizard. You can probably tell why it’s got that name, it’s because it has a long fleshy blue tongue.” “This is the wallaby, but you can’t see it now because it’s asleep.”

Here are some pictures.

After that it was time for a trip around part of the rainforest in an old World War II amphibious vehicle, or “Duck” as they called it. It was big and slow but could carry about 20 people or so. At the start of the journey the guide/driver stopped the duck to talk about this termite’s nest.

At the same time it looked like God was reaching out to one of the passengers.

This guide was much more enthusiastic and pointed out all manner of interesting things. Like these big leaves.

Red bananas. Then we drove into a lake and saw some lizards.

Along the way there was also the pencil tree, “This is the pencil tree. You can probably tell why its got that name, it’s because the leaves look like pencils.” Then the paper tree, “This is the paper tree. You can probably tell why its got that name, it’s because the bark looks like paper.” Yes, the rainforest can supply all your stationary needs.

After that there was a performance by an Aboriginal dance group. The performance took place on a stage that looked like it was under a big leaf.

The stage itself was at the head of a big snake.

Which was also a no smoking area.

The performance was good but it had that terrible touristy feeling that it was going to turn into them saying, “Ok we need volunteers.” That was exactly what happened. The three volunteers were a really reluctant woman, an enthusiastic Australian guy and a fun Japanese guy. The fun Japanese guy was wearing a great mock Puma T-shirt, I managed to get a picture of it on the way out. Kuma means bear in Japanese.

After the performance there was free time before the coach took us back to Kuranda. People could learn to throw the boomerang, or wander around looking at the animals again. Me and Yang found this bird.

Which was ironically sitting under the sign pointing to the amphibious vehicles.

We were taking pictures of the bird when it said something. “Did it just say hello?” we asked each other. In an effort to get the bird to say it again we started making conversation with it.

Eventually it did say, “Hello” again and Yang got a video of it but sadly I don’t yet have a copy. Here, however, is a picture of Yang taking the video.

Inevitably a queue to this particular attraction started building up behind us.

There were also some rare fruits.

Then it was time to leave, and that was Skyrail.

The next day

The next day I asked Yang if he could remember our last conversation, when I had scared him by coming back in from the bathroom and waking him up. He said he couldn’t remember but that he always speaks Japanese when he gets scared. I hope I don’t develop that habit.

After a few hours of him studying and me browsing through my guidebook for where our next destination should be we left the house and caught the bus to Cairns. Yang had never seen the lagoon at the edge of Cairns, or the big swimming area and beach kind of thing. The name for all this together is the Esplanade, and that is where we went.

We walked along near the lagoon for a while and played Guess The Nationality with the people passing by. Cairns is full of Japanese people, which also added to my feeling of culture shock: everything was in English but it was not England because there were palm trees, it wasn’t Japan either but there were loads of Japanese people. My Lonely Planet guidebook mentioned a nearby modern art gallery with the beautiful description, “Admission Free.” So we went there.

Downstairs in the gallery was a display of impressive Aboriginal art, each picture with its own price tag. Upstairs were a few more displays, including a great video of ants congregating on a plate. The ants were all busily collecting sugar but all together they made up the shape of Australia. The artist had carefully drawn Australia on a plate using sugar and then left it in a garden with a camera filming the plate from above. Since the ants always started from the outside and worked inwards Australia got smaller and smaller as the video progressed. I wondered if you could do the same thing with humans picking up money.

On leaving the gallery Yang happened found the comments book and said, “What’s this?” On learning its purpose he filled in his name, country and then as a comment he wrote one of his favourite English words. It was on the second “i” in the word “Rubbish” that I complained, “You can’t write that!” He finished his comment however and asked me if it was spelt right, it unfortunately was. “Let’s go,” he said.

After the gallery we went to the library until Yang realised he had lost his phone. We called it from a payphone and it turned out to be inextricably in my bag. Later on we found an Internet café to and booked a trip for the next day on a thing called Skyrail, a cable car into the rainforest. The Internet café was called Global Gossip and this franchise turned out to be a big part of our trip. The guy in the Cairns branch was very friendly, he gave me a membership card which could be used as a phone card too and said the Internet was just 1 dollar an hour. Bargain.

Cairns

The first thing me and Yang did was go to Woolworths. If you are from the UK then maybe you can imagine my surprise at seeing a shop with that name in Australia. The logo looks pretty similar to our own Woolworths but the Australian one is a large supermarket instead of… whatever the British Woolworths has become. I was feeling a bit of culture shock, seeing everything in English, looking like the UK indoors but with palm trees and impossibly bright sunshine outside. I was very happy to see reduced Easter Eggs on offer though, since in Japan there is just no such thing as a chocolate egg.

We caught the bus to where Yang lives, and then walked to his guesthouse. Much like where I live in Japan, it is a place for foreign and native people to stay for a few months. There is a shared kitchen, lounge, TV, Internet, toilets and showers. Yang lives in a two-person room but since there was no one else there at the time I could become that second person.

This is his room.

There is only one floor so from his room you can step right into the garden, and all of the ants can make the opposite journey. The place was clean, more or less, but a home only occupied by humans seems a bit impossible in Australia. There were lines of ants busily making their way up and down the wall and every so often a scared gecko would run from the floor to the ceiling with no regard for gravity.

I met a few of the other tenants; mostly Australian and English but there were a few Japanese people too. Yang speaks Korean and Japanese fluently, but he is in Australia to improve his English. Two of the Japanese tenants have the same name and Yang distinguishes them as Masa One and Masa Two. Masa One deserves his first position; he is a very friendly Japanese pharmacist who was really helpful when it came to Yang’s wisdom tooth pain. Masa Two keeps himself to himself, as do the other Japanese tenants who perhaps prefer their rooms to the rest of Australia.

He showed me around the house, introduced me to a few people and then I promptly fell asleep on my bed. I woke up to see a woman standing over me but I think I just ignored her. Not long after that someone was saying hello to me and I realised it was the female manager of the place, who was expecting some money to. Once on my feet she took my money and introduced me to her young daughter who was standing in the corridor, “Nick is from England,” she said. The girl, probably about ten years old, just walked away. “She’s not impressed,” I said.

Yang is now doing a Cyber University course in Japanese, English and Korean. This means that he has to do about eight lessons a week, each of which can take an hour or longer. Since the Internet in his home is so slow he has to pre-download all the videos and audio before he can actually do the lessons. This turned out to be a bit of a problem for our holiday as finding cheap Internet in some places was near enough impossible. While I was sleeping, he studied and then we went shopping.

We went to a even bigger Woolworths near this large swordfish.

I was very happy. For once I understood what was going on, this supermarket was just like Asda, it had Cadburys, it had big cucumbers and it had frozen pizzas. These three items were not my dinner plan, just things that aren’t really available in Japan. With this in mind I suggested we could have a pizza for dinner, Yang agreed but said he didn’t know if the oven in his guesthouse worked.

It did. That evening we ate cheap frozen pizza with some extra mushrooms and cheese sprinkled on top. Sitting on our beds with his small table between us we talked about old times and new. He had only been in Australia for less than a month and was feeling a bit lonely. The people in his guesthouse are friendly but some also have a hint of scariness. Yang was missing the people back in Japan, the people I had seen the day before yesterday, so I told them how they all were: “Fine.”

When it was time to sleep he asked if he could turn on the radio. I foolishly said yes and then he slept while I was stuck with Bon Jovi. The beds had two mattresses on top of each other, which might sound good but I carried on sinking into the middle and whenever I turned the top mattress would slide off the bottom one causing a mini earthquake. At some point I crept to the toilet and then crept back again. However, I woke Yang up. First I heard him say, “Hmm.” in a slightly alarmed way. Then he said, “Niku?” which is the pronunciation of my name in Japanese. I said yes, and he sighed and said, “Bikurishita” which meant he was surprised. I asked him in Japanese if we could turn off the radio, he said “Hai” and turned it off. With Annie Lennox silenced I drifted to sleep.