TOD Tour, Day 76 - Airlie Beach Foreshore Ride

The foreshore walk at Airlie

After the excitement of yesterday and the after effects of sore muscles and sensory overload, we decided to stay an extra night at Airlie.

It was a deliberately laid back day.

After some writing in the morning, we rode the bikes along the foreshore walking track which extends from Cannonvale through to the new port of Airlie. It was a relaxed ride and afforded us some sensational views of the shallow waters of Pioneer Bay and their the aqua blue tone created by a sandy bottom so close to the surface. About half of the ride was along elevated board walks which have been constructed along the rocky faces of the coastline and have the beautiful scenes of the bay on one side and the ultra expensive crash pads of the rich and famous on the other. A vista which reveals the busy centre of Airlie Beach itself, opens up as you pass the Coral Sea Resort.

Sundowner stranded on Pigeon Reef

On such a sunny day, this place looks and feels like paradise but there are remnants of those times when nature paints the place otherwise. When cyclone Oswald tore a path through the Whitsundays in late January 2013, more than twenty boats were lost in what otherwise would have been safe anchorage in Paradise Bay. The three masted racing yacht Sundowner still lies stranded, half over on its port side on Pigeon Reef, a small reef right in the bay off Pigeon Island. The rusted hull of Venus-Portsmouth lies hard up against the outside of the wall which surrounds the Abel Point Marina, its deck house and upper portions demolished in pounding waves in front of an astonished crowd at a popular restaurant/bar above it.

We found a lock up space for the bikes at the Airlie Beach Lagoon, a man-made public swimming place which has been constructed to keep tourists out of the waters of Pioneer Bay. In the bay they will find marine stingers which can hospitalise a victim unless they are wearing a stinger suit and the patrons of the lagoon are definitely into wearing less, not more. This was beautiful people territory and placed right in town, less than 100m from beachwear boutiques, bars and chic food outlets, it is definitely the place to be seen. Its also a good place for families as it has been designed to suite all swimming abilities. Life guards are on duty in this perfectly manicured setting.

Sue went and looked for a new window whilst I sat with a coffee and a book trying not to attract too much attention.

Choosing a boat at Abel Point Marina

Our ride back included a stop at a cafe at the Abel Point Marina, where groups of golden brown bodies born after the mid 1980's were gathering for overnight cruises out through the calm waters of the Whitsunday Islands on expensive catamarans. Swimming, raving into the night and pickups is the intention. From the look of the few male hopefuls among the bevy of skin and occasional swimwear, the girls would have to get very drunk on a moonless night.

While there, we had another chance meeting with Chrissy and Ross, the young English couple whom we first met at Mt Morgan and then again at Cape Hillsborough. They were trying to decide on a cruise to the outer reefs, so naturally, we guided them toward the one we had enjoyed. It was the one highest on their shortlist anyway. This will likely be the last time we see them, as they are heading south after Airlie. Lovely couple.

A short swim back at our accommodation and then some housekeeping - balancing the books and finalising our planned return to Tamworth in a few weeks. Son Chris is opening in a new show - "Company" by Stephen Sondheim, with an all star cast - and we couldn't not be there for opening night. Flights and show tickets have been booked, the car and van will be safe in storage at Cairns and our other son, Sam, has offered us the use of a car while we are home for three days. All we have to do is decide on accommodation while we are there, but too many choices led us to the choice we are often making ... it can wait until another day!

Bed was a relief and sleep found quickly.

TOD Tour, Day 73 - Cape Hillsborough to Airlie Beach

Another early rise this morning to watch the kangaroos on the beach.

The event was ransacked by the over-eager photographers. Despite all appearing to have powerful digital SLR’s with long zoom lenses, they felt it necessary to be within touching distance. As a result, the seven or eight kangaroos who were present reacted to the tight circle of snappers, most of them with inbuilt and some with post flash units attached and popping regularly and left soon after the first sign of the sun. Meanwhile, some elderly folk and others who were just respectful of these wild animals, had their view blocked and any photos they might have liked to take full of human animals.

One of the invaders was even dressed in a yellow high-vis shirt! What small chance there was, that we wouldn’t already know he was a nong, was at least removed.

The irony came when the majority of the kangaroos hopped away and one, passing in the distance, transected the sun and my position and I scored the money shot anyway!

What did John Lennon say about instant karma?

We left the caravan park at about 9:00am and stopped again at the Old School Teahouse: this time for a few hours of tea and snacks and some blog and Facebook time.

A few other stops were planned but as I had laundry chores to do, we pressed on to Airlie Beach, where we will see out Anzac Day and tick a rather long vacant box on the bucket list, a cruise to the Great Barrier Reef and some snorkelling Nemo Inc.

Our digs are fantastic. We don’t usually like resort parks but the price was right and the staff really friendly. Our site is shielded on the north side by palms which means we didn’t need to erect the canopy for shade and with sunshine all the go for the next three days, we’ll have no need for coverage from rain.

Thanks to Sam – my avid researcher – while Sue shopped, I went on the hunt for a shock resistant, waterproof camera and managed to score a very good deal. For those in the camera know, the age old debate between Canon and Nikon has always been a spirited one. I shoot with two Canon cameras but the comparisons in the waterproof models leave the Nikon as the superior machine. In fact, Canon comes in a distant fourth behind a Ricoh (no 1 but too expensive), the Nikon and then a Panasonic. As a result, we now have a Nikon AW-120 in the stable for those times when the going gets rough and tumble.

I also bought a new beach hat as the old one disappeared about a week ago.

After shopping, we took a spin along the main drag in Airlie – bars, cafes, shops for cooler people than me and tourist dives. Lots of good looking sorts with perfect tans and blonde hair and that was just the blokes.

An early night tonight, as we’ll be attending the local Dawn Service and then returning home to watch the ABC coverage from Gallipoli, Villers Bretonneau and then Lone Pine, where we might even catch a glimpse of my great uncle’s name on the wall behind the speeches.

Great Uncle Albert Langston was killed on or about the 8^th August, 1915, in the Battle for Lone Pine. He was listed as missing in action, presumed killed for eighteen months until a field court in Northern France identified a fellow soldiers who recollected seeing him fall. This fellow said in his evidence, “Albert was a good bloke.” Always fills me up when I read it. His grave is unknown. A few years ago, his great grandson, my boy Sam, found his name on the roll of the dead at Lone Pine.

Another great uncle, Jim Smith, my Mum’s uncle, lost a trigger finger at Gallipoli and was repatriated home to Australia.

It was Albert’s death that drove his brother, my grandfather Arthur, to join the AIF. He was shot and badly wounded at Villers Bretonneau, three weeks before the fourth ANZAC Day in 1918. Machine guns opened him up from his left hip to his right nipple but he survived 8 hours on that farmers field just south of the town, was retrieved in a cease fire, whip-stitched and eventually sent to England for surgery and somehow survived to return home with ghosts chasing him for the next twenty odd years.

My Dad had always wanted to return to that field in order to understand his dad. To pay homage to him, I guess, but he never did. In 2012, I had the chance to do so for him and I stood there, a committed pacifist, conflicted by family pride and the horror of what had happened there. It gave rise to “Poppy’s Paddock”, a poem from my last collection and I’ll include it here as my homage to him, to my dad and to all those incredibly brave men and women who fought, survived and somehow returned to “real” life afterwards, haunted by vapours and hard memories and the agonised calls of mates who didn’t come home.

Poppy’s Paddock

Arthur George Langston - my Pop

Standing among the sugar beet

as soft rain confuses autumn sunshine

I can hear them screaming

in this French farmer’s field

on the rolling Santerre plain.

Maschinengewehr rattle away,

cranking death or worse,

bullets traced on a starless canvas

finding flesh and bone to rent.

Slow turns take it all in:

maps and diaries and body tallies

no longer point and click accounts

or pages turned for reference.

I can smell the earth.

It sticks to my boot tread,

wedges beneath finger nails,

pancakes on my knee

as I crouch to touch it,

to make the connection

between this place

and home.

He’s lying out there in the dark

in a land for no man

full of fallen men,

this dying half kilometre of red dirt

to Monument Farm.

He is only stories to me,

told by my mother,

of my father’s father

and an old scanned photograph,

larrikin grin,

baggy suit,

fedora pushed back,

eyes sparkling trouble, even in sepia.

A farmer waves recognition,

one grandson to another,

steering his harvester through sugar beet,

working soil bought with obscene riches.

Standing in the fresh tilled field,

I’m close enough

to cross the gap of time,

to gather the experience

in small parcels,

standing in the crossfire.

Long terrible minutes of tears

tear their own damage

as I cry in loud sounds

and confusion.

I see him finally,

opened from one hip

to the other nipple,

lying for six hours in the mud,

refusing to die,

his mates changed by the experience

into corpses

or walking carcases,

the emotion hollowed from them,

replaced by steel

tempering their survival,

only to rust at home.

No telegrams for their families,

just a slow vacancy

of lunacy and grog.

I’m trapped in a conflict,

pacifist disgust confirmed,

family pride overflowing.

Nothing to offer

but tears I can’t stop.

I found the grandfather I never knew,

lay his medals among the sods

to be soaked in his reality,

bridged a connection to his son,

walked on the bones of conundrum.

The field of screaming ghosts remains,

just south of Villers-Bretonneau.

Southern Sons calling from the tilled rise

across the Hangard Road,

their voices low and tired,

groaning since that 4th Anzac.

I placated them with tales of Pop,

news from four generations

after their rough run

to Monument Farm.

I cried with their remnant memories,

scattered among sugar beets,

shook with disbelief

we could be so cold and cruel

over a point of view.

I offered gratitude inadequate,

spoke the Lords Prayer,

left them there,

another callous re-enactment.

My face washed clean

I’ll keep the deeper stains

as ammunition against hawks

with swooping points of view.

Townsville to Kinka Beach

Starts don't come much earlier than today with the alarm tolling at 4:15am in order that I could have Sue at the airport for check in at 5:00am.

We went through the usual airport things including the obligatory security check. Top points to the Townsville security officers who accepted my absent mindedness in still having my knife on my belt when I presented. A lovely lady there took my offered knife and kept it in a safe place until my return. We had very little time to wait, as Sue, wheelchair bound, was first loaded on the plane and there was no time for emotional farewells, a short peck having to suffice for us both until the weekend. Sue, managing her pain and preoccupied didn't look back or perform and final wistful wave and I was left standing among strangers who just stared and waited as though there should be a postscript to the parting. I turned, fighting the first pangs which would stab me all day, collected my knife and headed for the hills ... literally, Castle Hill, a Townsville landmark which lies between the centre of town and the well healed shoreline.

Like most mornings, in a scene reminiscent of Uluru, the steep road which ascends Castle Hill is a hive of activity as people of all ages and readiness for heart attack, walk, run or stagger to the top of this 286 metre high pink granite monolith. The derivation of its name is no surprise as it looks for all the world the type of landform which would have been fortified in medieval times. As to the fixation with "conquering" the climb I am loath to offer the excuse "because it is there" as it holds no logic because the flat and go on forever Ingham Rd is there too and presumably also needs conquering but I saw no sweat jockeys there.

As I am nursing a damaged knee and for reasons of not being a complete idiot, I was content to weave in and out of people in various stages of apoplexy as I showed them how the ascent is done ... in my Forester. Some even bothered to give me dirty looks.

As I reached the summit, the sun was managing its first greeting on a cliff face of Mt Stuart, behind Townsville and beginning to light the surface of the Ross River. I was able to watch the take off of Sue's plane. I waved and blew kisses but Sue just seemed to ignore me, too intent on the imminent serving of breakfast and the movie full of tall guys that was just starting ... or perhaps the pain.

After stepping over several folks making resolutions and Labradors who wished for blind owners, I must admit that the sight of a guy pedalling his adapted road bike into the car park at the top of Castle Hill with one leg and the other, a titanium stick strapped to the side of the bike made me glad I gave up smoking and pleased I take the little pills to stop me being that determined. I got to wondering if he had back pedal brakes for the return trip.

The plan was that I was to break camp, leave the trailer with Jim & Judy Parsons for the day and follow my wife's instructions and go sightseeing. I did something very close to that plan. I packed up the car and trailer and hit the road.

The first stop was Airlie Beach, which appears to be for the beautiful people and the ugly rich. It certainly is beautiful with that postcard turquoise blue water, white sand, coconut trees lining the beaches and every shade of green imaginable, include those passing through who were subject to envy. There is even an inlet which runs into the town where you can feed the fish and watch the string rays.

I somehow managed to snag a park where no trailer parks existed, right at the beach and ate lunch and wrote some poetry, sharing a park bench with a friendly lass who claimed to be a major in literature and thought I was brilliant. A young couple nearby seemed to be undergoing some form of training for sucba diving, as they locked mouths for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time without requiring breath ... either that or the braces on their teeth were locked together, which might explain the way their heads were turning vigorously from side to side. I took lots of photos of the place to show Sue. Think Byron, think Cable Beach and then think prettier and you have the picture.

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving, as I was keen to get a long leg out of the way on the first day. The highlight was driving behind Skooby Doo ... which only reminded me of my girl again.

Sunset at Emu Park

I stopped occasionally for fuel or photos and eventually arrived at Kinka Beach about 6:30pm. I came back here because it was a place Sue loved. I had a rather nice pasta at the pub at Emu Park and was ready to head back to the digs when I spied a big, fat, red moon just peeking over Great Keppel Island so I drove up to the Singing Ship and soaked it all in and attempted to capture it with the cameras. This scene made sure I finished the day where I started it, missing Sue.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

Meanwhile Sue was back in Tamworth by mid afternoon, looked after mid journey by Sarah at Sydney airport and once she was home by a friend - Robyn Crosby - and then tonight by Chris and Sam. She's surrounded by people who will look after her.

I worked on some poems and snuggled into my empty bed.