Cape York Pt 3- Settlements

Pearl divers suit, inthe museum on Thursday Island

Not very many people live on Cape York. It is possible to drive all day and pass just a couple of isolated compounds. Where these included a roadhouse selling fuel and other necessities for travellers we often stopped for a break. As the Cape juts into the Torres Strait (the island-dotted sea that separates mainland Australia from Papua New Guinea), the local population is an intriguing mix of Torres Strait Islanders (a Melanesian culture), Aboriginal Australians and tough outback white Australians.

Unloading the barge at Seisia

We camped a few nights at Seisia which is the settlement around the wharf serving Bamaga, the largest of the little towns near the top of the Cape. Seisia was unmemorable except for the excitement of watching the weekly barge being unloaded with fuel (the communities' electricity is all diesel generated), food and other goods. It is desperately hot, with few trees to provide shade, and the tantalisingly clear azure sea is said to be full of crocodiles so swimming isn't an option. However, Seisia (named by combining the initials of the first six family to settle there mid-20th century) does have the advantage of being handy to such tourist attractions as the Tip and Thursday Island.

Looking west from the start of the headland track to the Tip. The boat belongs to a chap who had sailed solo up the east coast from Brisbane, recently survived a crocodile attack, and was desperately looking forward to getting to Seisia for chocolate, coke and jelly snakes.

The Tip may be an iconic spot, as the northern most point of mainland Australia, but it is refreshingly unmanaged, confusingly unsignposted and thus satisfyingly challenging to get to without actually being a difficult walk. Those of the party who could, all scrambled out over the rocky headland, from which you can look simultaneously at the Coral Sea and the Torres Strait. I have visited the equivalent spots at the tips of the the North and South of New Zealand, so I add this to my collection of photos of myself standing on godforsaken yet symbolic rocks.

Meliors at the Tip

The day after the Tip, Juliette, Johanna and I took the ferry to Thursday Island (TI). I enjoyed the tiny museum tucked into the underground rooms of the old garrison; TI was long considered of strategic importance being located on the narrow channel between Australia and Asia. The museum included indigenous artifacts (lovely carvings), pearl diving and beche de mer history and a huge old lighthouse lamp, bigger than me. We also visited the local cemetery which was divided by culture so that the austere Japanese pearl divers graves contrasted with the lavishly colourful indigenous graves across the lane.

Pearl divers' section of the cemetery

Other things to do on Thursday Island: visit two funky old churches, the classy arts centre (the only architecturally designed contemporary building I saw on the whole of Cape York, it was just like going home for lunch) and shopping! TI is the commercial hub for the Torres Strait and there was a whole street of shops to browse, several of them quite good. The sheer novelty of seeing books, clothes, cosmetics for sale was fun (until you see the inflated prices) but my favourite was the locally designed bead jewellery. Unfortunately that was the day I hit a cashflow crisis that was to constrain the whole second half of my trip (and due to bank error is still continuing to keep me broke) so I couldn't actually buy anything.

The lighthouse lamp on Thursday Island

Back on the mainland, Bamaga also had shopping: a supermarket and a small cramped novelty/dry goods/souvenir shop, both enclosed inside the kind of disturbing security cage that was a feature of every commercial building in every indigenous community we passed through. In Bamaga we stocked up on necessary supplies for the next stage of our camping trip, but we didn't really get into serious retail therapy until we hit Weipa (where the prices are more comparable to Cairns). My enthusiasm for wearing crocs (the only footwear I brought on the trip with me) infected three other members of the party and in Weipa they all got some too.

The only 'crocs' we saw in Weipa, and they were harmless

Aside from my brief but pleasant commercial transactions with various indigenous people on the trip I only had one extended encounter, with an Aboriginal lady in Weipa. She wandered into our tent in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep and since I am insomniac and was closest to the door I responded first. As I led her out of the tent and tried to keep her quiet, I realised that while she was very confused, she wasn't drunk. Later Kerry suggested that she was an ex-glue sniffer which made perfect sense, since she seemed too young for the dementia-type behaviour she was exhibiting.

She told me that she had driven up from Arakun (a couple of hours away) with some other people who went off to Napronam to drink. She didn't want to be around drinking people (a sentiment I can fully empathise with) so she was wandering around Weipa in the middle of the night, halfheartedly looking for an address where her sister might or might not be staying. What she really wanted, she said, was to come and sleep in our tent if we would just give her a blanket.

I couldn't help her, not having a blanket to share, or considering it appropriate to invite a stranger to sleep in our tent full of other people's children so I handed her off to the camp manager who obviously had been woken this way before and was immediately aggressive, inviting reciprocal aggression from the confused lady. I shamefully snuck off into the shadows while they shouted at each other. I'm not proud of that, I just couldn't think what else to do.

The history of European-Indigenous relations in Cape York includes some of the most horrific stories in Australian history (including, but not limited to, the Jardine brothers in the nineteenth century* and the wholesale removal of the Mapoon community at gunpoint to make way for Comalco's mines in1963. Yup, that's only 45 years ago, when my confused tent lady was probably a kid). There are some very positive initiatives occurring now to try and turn things around**, but it still looks to me as though most of the black people on the Cape are in general still much worse off than most of the white people.

There are apparently only two places on the east side of Australia where you can watch the sun set over the sea (or in this case the mangroves). Unfortunately some of the local ladies consider that the best way to enjoy the sunset on the beach is by driving quad bikes up and down with their children, directly through groups of sunset tourists trying to appreciate the peaceful beauty of the scene.

Weipa is the richest settlement on the Cape York, being a mining town. There is not much there if you are not a miner or a fisher. The best thing about Weipa for me was the birdlife which was the most abundant and diverse I have seen yet in Australia. The worst things were the mosquitoes, the humidity, the frustration of not being able to swim in the croc infested waters... But I also enjoyed our bus tour of the town and mine, wandering in the fire forest by the beach (more about this in my next post), watching the sunsets and visiting the library to research the history of a commercial spaceport once proposed for the town. But four days there was more than enough for me, I was keen to get back to camping on the rivers and being able to swim in clean fresh water instead of the dirty campground swimming pool full of active boy children.

Strip mining bauxite at Weipa (bauxite is what aluminium is made out of). To get a sense of the outrageous scale of these machines, note the driver standing outside her cab while her truck is being filled.

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*I couldn't find a link to the Jardine story that doesn't present them as plucky heroes defending themselves against a plague of hostile savages and I refuse to endorse that version of events.

** cf arts in the Torres Strait, employment in the mines

Cape York Pt 2 - Dry Rivers

The Dry season on Cape York really is dry, unlike the 'Dry' in Cape Trib in which the rain is just not quite constant. The Wet season on Cape York is just as wet though, and for several months every year all the roads are closed as the rivers that seam across the Cape turn into deep, raging torrents. Evidence of the contrast between Wet and Dry on Cape York can be found in every riverbed, most of which were completely dried up when we passed through a couple of weeks ago. We camped where the rivers were still running, which often meant driving several hours further than planned, just to get to water (without a crocodile warning sign).

Cormorants on Coen

In New Zealand, you would never dream of camping on a riverbed, as the danger of rain upstream causing your campsite to flood is everpresent. In Cape York, however, there is no rain in the Dry and so I enjoyed the novel sensation of camping on sandy river bottoms sheltered between high banks, made taller by the only big trees ever seen in that landscape. There were always warm, deep swimming holes, yes, but mostly the water meandered shallow and sluggish, always west to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Up the Coen, with bathing beauty

My favourite thing to do on these rivers is to strike out from the campsite alone, meandering up or down stream, exploring as far as I safely can, either rock hopping, walking the wide squooshy sandbars, wading through shallow dappled water, or scrambling up the banks. Everywhere I go, I'm surrounded by a rag tag horde of different kinds of flies. Every time I sit down it's on top of an ant highway. But there is nothing scary here, nothing dangerous. I stop often to cool off in swimming pools, write under shady trees, watch unfamiliar birds and take lots and lots of photos. I indulge my obsession with trying to capture images of light on water.

Eliot Falls (detail)

I fall in love with these rivers, each with its own particular character. Exploring upstream at the Wenlock, the whole width of the river is suddenly deep between steep banks. Carrying my camera I don't want to risk wading so I scramble up a fallen tree onto a platform of fissured lava. This moonscape is harshly hot, and I push my way through twiggy low thickets plagued with flies looking for a way back down to the water, which I can glimpse: cool, shady and inaccessible. I find a patch of shade over a small bowl of coarse white sand and sit for a while before abandoning my upstream adventure and finding a long, dull way back to the campsite.

Wenlock River, downstream from the Lockhart Road ford.

The next day I head downstream, wading through stretches of knee-deep muddy brown water before coming to a long dry band of sand (hot, golden, barren) separated by a wall of rocks from the remaining water flow (dark, sinister, fecund). I think I recognise tracks of a wallaby as well as a pig, a dog, a man. There are many birds: kites, egrets, emerald green pigeons. The gum trees lining this nearly-dry river are tall and green with smooth white trunks, and I imagine in the Wet, their tops appear on the surface of the deep river like low bushes.*

Eliot Falls

As well as the unofficial campsites, we also spend a couple of glorious days at a Jardine River National Park camping ground next to Eliot Falls and Twin Falls. The campground is busy for the school holidays, with dozens of people in every swimming hole. In my compulsive search for solitude I find myself at the top of Eliot Falls, where the water flows shallow, wide and flat before abruptly dropping into a fish hook shape cut in the rock floor. Wading across the top of the falls to the opposite bank from the formed tracks, I find little shady shelves where I can sit, feet dangling over the cliff edge, wrapped in the dense white noise of falling water which insulates me from everything but the heat.

A mini waterfall viewed through a natural hole in the rock, downstream from Twin Falls.

When I am ready to rejoin the world of human company, there are lots of places to swim. At Twin Falls the double-decker swimming holes are separated by massaging waterfalls, and when not full of tour bus tourists, it is spacious and peaceful. Upstream at the Saucepan, the water falls over a wide low lip just the right height to sit and let it pound tense shoulders into submission. There is also a water chute, a very deep hole for diving and shallow holes like bathtubs (and the water is bath warm).

Coen River, upstream from the Bend

Returning to the Coen after 10 days further north in unbelievable heat, it was a novelty to feel a momentary chill when emerging from the warm water after a dip at dusk the first night. Next day, I set off upstream towards the top of the river valley which in the Wet must be white water but now is a dynamic sandstone chaos of hot rock, smooth beneath my bare feet. I love the way the Coen shows its bones in the Dry season. Centuries of flow have carved curves and cracks into the boulders as low water burbles fast and narrow between.

Coen River, looking downstream towards the campsite

Striding across crevasses, scrambling up tipsy walls, I find myself again in the stretch and pleasure of exploring alone. This kind of adventure requires my full attention, and anchors me in the present moment. At the head of the valley I sit and look back down the river I have traversed. It is our last day of camping and this viewing platform becomes a site to evaluate the whole trip.

For me, in Cape York in the Dry, the strongest element in the landscape was the water, despite its rarity. Simultaneously holding light and dark, movement and depth, clarity and murky sludge, it was perceivably being sucked up into the arid air. Swimming in fresh water was the greatest pleasure I found there and my long rambling river walks were a sanctuary. Just as the rivers are life to this barren Dry land they were delicious oasis of delight everywhere we camped.

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* Unfortunately, when we returned to the Wenlock 10 days later, the river was even lower and murkier and worse, the campsite had been so comprehensively trashed that we decided to keep driving for two more hours down to Coen, even though we would have to set up camp in the dusk. In the intervening school holidays, the river bank had been used for a toilet without digging a hole, dirty toilet paper was blown across the whole site, and as well as an abandoned full rubbish sack, there was plenty of loose litter. We took the rubbish sack and some empty bottles away with us, but weren't willing to risk staying by water potentially contaminated by human waste.

Cape York Pt 1- The Road Trip

A classic Cape York photo- though this is unusual for being Kerry's 2WD fording a creek on Old Telegraph Road!

Cape York is one of the very inaccessible regions of Australia, as most of the roads are 4WD only during the Dry and closed completely during the Wet. Unlike Cape Tribulation which I call home at the moment, Cape York is, literally, off the beaten track of international tourist destinations. When I started mentioning to friends that I'd been invited to join a family camping trip to the northern-most point of the Australian continent, I realised that hardly anyone has been there, including some of the most well-travelled people I know.

Sign at Musgrave Station about halfway up the Cape

I've got about a 1000 photographs, 40 journal pages, and half a dozen sketches from our 19 day, 2000km, eight campsite, two vehicle, nine person trip so I'm going to be posting about Cape York for a while. This first post is to set the scene with an overview of the travel conditions and introduction of our camp/ers. I will be posting in more detail about the rivers, the settlements and the forests of Cape York. For now, imagine a huge, unpopulated, hot, dry, dusty landscape.

Grass fire, one of many 'controlled burns' we saw, as the graziers prepare for the Wet

There are patches of seal along the main road, where the worst bits have been fixed up, but mostly the drive is straight and flat along endless miles of dusty track slicing between charred (and sometimes still smoking) dry open forest dotted with spectacular termite mounds. The termite mounds come in a facinating array of shapes and sizes and change colour with the soil, ranging from bright orangey-red to creamy white to dark brown to this particularly tall mustard-coloured community.

Me (I'm 5ft) in front of a termite mound at Bramwell Junction

I spent the trip as a passenger with Kerry, who in his career has surveyed lots of the very roads we were driving on. Not only was he a fount of interesting and useful information, but he really knows how to drive in difficult conditions (Anne was also a talented and heroic 4WD bush basher, but I never got to ride with her). Kerry successfully took the 2WD through places that were supposed to be only 4WD access. Nonetheless, by the time we limped back to Cairns, the 2WD ute was held together with wire (including the battery) and the canopy of the 4WD was tied on with red rope after it broke off (shearing the shock absorbers).

Just as we finished unloading everything out of the broken canopy, a kind truckie stopped and shared his expertise and strength to (literally) tie it back on. His temporary repair held all the way home.

It's been an unusually dry year, and many of the rivers that would be expected to still be running were completely dry. Most of the rest have crocodiles. It's a harsh country, but we did manage to find a few campsites where green trees cling to the edges of wide deep river beds seamed with a trickle of warm water and inland enough to be croc-free.

Setting up camp at Twin Falls

My fleeting, low-tech, camping experiences in New Zealand and the US did little to prepare me for the Eaton Family Holiday. We set up a slightly different configuration at every spot, but our campsite included two gazebos (where most of us slept), up to three dome tents, an ensuite tent with chemical toilet, two picnic tables, about ten folding chairs, three kitchen benches, a shade cloth, an electric fridge with generator to power it, electric lights, DVD player and laptop (since the gennie was running anyway), camp stretchers and air mattresses, gas stoves and last but not least, the kitchen sink, in its own little stand. Setting up and packing down was usually quite stressful, and the cauldron for any difficult group dynamics to play out.

We made it to the Tip, the northern most point of continental Australia

Our party included four young people (aged 9, 13, 15 and 17) including Johanna the German exchange student who'd been in Australia one week before embarking on this particular adventure! The adults included two of the most open-hearted people I know: Kerry and Anne, who organised the whole trip with fearsome efficiency; their close friend, Jill, not long out of a five month hospital stay following a car crash; and the newcomers, Juliette and I, who felt like the 'single girls' as we didn't have our own children with us.

I had a marvelous time, especially exploring the rivers and forests, but also playing charades after dinner, attempting to make bread in a camp oven, swimming with the girls, walking with the children, and endlessly staring out the window at the imperceptibly changing landscape as we drove hour after hour up and then down the Cape. More stories and pictures of the wonders I saw, coming up soon!

Lace Monitor (goanna)

There are a few lace monitors that hang around the house here. One even came into the kitchen recently and went through the rubbish bin, leaving a great mess scattered across the floor!


I found this one sunbathing one day. Isn't he handsome? The big ones are as long as I am tall (155cm), but this one is only about a metre long.

Beach Textures V

Last one... looking at light.

Beach Textures I

I'm away for three weeks, camping in Cape York, one of the most inaccessible and isolated parts of Australia (which is saying something!). I don't expect I'll have much, if any. internet access. I may suffer withdrawals, but I'm sure it will do me good. You dear reader, however, don't have to suffer without regular updates to Bibliphilia. Thanks to the wonders of Blogger-technology here are some posts I prepared earlier.


Since arriving in Cape Tribulation, one of the unexpected pleasures of this place has been falling in love with the beach. I've always been more of a forest person than a beach bunny, but now that I am getting my forest needs met so thoroughly I'm appreciating the wide open spaces of the beach more. I like the way the beach is always changing and I am facinated by the fine grained detail of those changes. For several months I've been making pictures for a photo essay called Beach Textures. Check back for installments every few days over the next three weeks.

Remember, even though the posts will keep coming, I won't be answering emails, moderating comments or checking my Etsy shop.

Python

I went with friend to the monthly markets at Lync Haven just south of Cape Trib. It's a motel with bistro and a small wildlife park. I got to pet an adorably kangaroo, my first close encounter with these iconic and amazing Australian animals. Later, Scott brought one of their two captive pythons inside and let a small group of us get to know her.
Stroking a healthy python is a wonderful sensation. The sinuous power of her body was tangible. Her scaly skin was silky smooth and room temperature to touch. I couldn't get enough of her, and for the first time I understand the attraction of keeping a pet snake.

Nautical Fortieth

Cape Tribulation is famous for its costume parties. I went to my first one last weekend dressed as a coral reef. My two favourite costumes were Kat's shark and Freya's jellyfish, but Rob's pirate and Pat's captain were runners up!

Coral reef Meliors and Pirate Rob -before we left home and the fake beard and moustache fell off. Note my apparently one-legged stance in support of the pirate theme...

Shark Kat stayed in savage character all night. Note the bloody bits of baby hanging off her front.

Coral Meliors meets Jellyfish Freya

Captain Pat takes a glass of bubbles with "Any one for deck tennis on the QEII?" Antoinette.

Mermaid Mel, Sailor Sally, Navigational Lights Deano, Seaweed Sarah, and (best pun of the night) Brittany Spear-Fishing Claire.

Coral-licious Costume

So... this is what I did with my crocheted coral. I'm pretty proud of this frock!

Staghorn coral straps holding up the shelf reef

The white dress is an op shop find. The coral on the bodice is all my own. It's a little mind-boggling that six weeks of spending most of my spare time crocheting only resulted in barely enough coral to cover my not-very-substantial bosom. Though it looks a whole lot bigger covered in coral!

Sea urchin and clam

I wore the dress to a nautical-themed costume party where it was quite a hit. My chest hasn't had so much attention paid to it since Louise stopped breastfeeding 20 years ago! It seems hard for most people to resist touching the coral but I can't feel a thing through all the padding. And it was very warm to wear!

Spanish dancer nudibranch, daisy coral, brain coral, blue sea star

Nudibranch, blue sea star, vase coral, brain coral, anenome, etc

Froggy goes a-courting

Surprise! It's raining hard here in Cape Tribulation. Even though its supposed to be the Dry Season, Cooper Creek is passable only to 4WD. The people aren't loving it as much as you'd think, but the froggies, they are having a big party! The croaking is so loud that Sarah could hear them in Hamilton, New Zealand (while we were trying to have a phonecall over the rain pounding on the iron roof, the frogs croaking and the insects singing).

On my way to turn off the generator before bed, I heard a particularly piercing croak from nearby, and soon found this tiny fellow making a noise much bigger than you'd expect from something not much larger than my thumb. I think he found corner between the glass of the tabletop and the jar of flowers an excellent amplifier.

See how his body puffs up all big between croaks and then all the air goes into his neck sac and his body gets tiny again! Sort of like the effect I can achieve with my belly with/without chocolate over the timespan of a few months. And he can do it with his breath every few seconds. Amazing!


(This is the first time I've used the flash on my camera. Shooting in the dark I couldn't see him at all to focus, so I'm quite thrilled with my accidental inclusion of his reflection above.)

The Reef So Far

I've been crocheting up a coral storm, enjoying exploring form and colour. This is the complete crocheted coral reef so far. It's not very big. Crocheting coral takes a long time, and there's not much to show for it, sizewise.



As I crochet, I try to imagine what I will do with all this coral I'm making. Something to sell in my Etsy shop would be good. I play around with making one or two pieces into jewellery or packing lots into a glass jar like an aquarium. Unfortunately the glass jar, while kind of cool in real life, looks terrible in photographs, and Etsy is all about the pictures.

The trouble with marketing crocheted coral is that (a) I can't imagine very many people wanting to wear a big bright blob of crochet on their person and (b) it looks best en masse, not in piddly little doses.

At the moment I'm thinking that a single entry to the World of Wearable Arts might be a more appropriate forum for this upwelling of creativity than trying to flog bits and pieces on Etsy. I'm going to test my wearable art theory out at a nautical themed costume party (watch out for photos soon). But if you, dear reader, can imagine yourself or anyone you know wanting to buy some crochet coral, please let me know how you'd like it. I'm open to suggestions.