THE WHITSUNDAY BLUES

When I attempt to re-live the month I spent in Australia, the rst thing that comes to mind is the tale of this guy in China who bought an unbelievably cheap branded harddisk with a huge memory capacity. Wary of imitations he made certain that the drive functioned by copying a lengthy movie on to the drive and getting no errors. He went back home pleased with himself. The following day he sat to watch the movie he had copied and got nothing (not even the consolatory rainbow screen and buzz of a constipated mosquito). He pried open the disk to check its innards. Thats when he discovered that the disk had in fact just a few bytes of memory along with a circuit that wrote and rewrote over the same portion repeatedly, effectively wiping out everything but the last few minutes of the movie. All this has, of course, nothing to do with Australia and everything to do with my own memory. With a head like a sieve the only way to record my impressions (in the absence of a Pensieve) is to resort to my pen. Having said that, I whole-heartedly agree with Bill Bryson when he remarks in his book... When you leave Australia, Australia ceases to be. The land of Oz is smack in the middle of nowhere, its reasonably well-off and tolerably well-behaved. As a result, it rarely comes up in conversation (according to google news trends the hot searches in the US at the moment are Lee Evans, Geisha, cherry pie, Ron Paul, Corey Haim, Brooke Hogan, Rose Mcgowan... seriously... just who Are these people ?!). Anyway... its a loss to the rest of the world because the land down under is an incredibly charming place. The month I spent there was coloured by crystal-clear skies, global cuisine, lively Melbourne, celebratory Sydney, ancient rainforest, majestically hazy Blue Mountains, sparkling blue seas of the Whitsundays and of course the very colourful and chilled-out people I met everywhere. My favourite phrase, which I heard all over the place, was No worries mate!. This applied to everything... Your dog just died... no worries mate!, Being chased by a crocodile... no worries mate!, Aliens just blew up the earth... no worries mate!. I liked that. While theres so much to write, Ill restrict this passage to the handful of days I spent near the Great Barrier Reef and perhaps later move on to the rest.

All aboard...
Flying in, peering at the sea framed by my tiny window was like seeing a world through bluetinted glasses... not exactly Avatar, but you get the idea. The seas of the Whitsundays have an aquamarine blue tint that I have yet to see anywhere else... imagine the bluest of blue, and then throttle it to make it bluer still. Into this world of blue the plane descended, lower and lower, till I thought the pilot was planning a Sullenberger (of the Hudson crash-

landing fame). Just as I was grasping under your seat for a oatation device a tiny airstrip came into view followed by a smooth landing. The airport on Hamilton Island is the most convenient way of visiting the seventy-four tiny islands collectively called the Whitsundays. Scattered off the eastern coast of Australia they lie on the Great Barrier Reef. Hamilton is the most developed of the lot and the only one with an airport. Most others have rightly been deemed as nature reserves and lay uninhabited. Our festively painted plane had landed at an airport that was informal and cheery. Passengers stepped off the plane to stroll down a zebra-crossing painted on the airstrip to a one-horse terminal. And before you could say What horse? you were already outside it looking back for your luggage in confusion. The airport having no baggage carousel had luggage motored to the entrance. A few ferry services had set up temporary stalls. People milling around were either tourists still adjusting to the sparkling views or airport employees wearing colourful outts and smiles, uncharitably happy to be the few who were actually getting paid to be there. I bought a ticket to Shute Harbour on the cheerily named FantaSea Ferry. It had been a long day. My alarm had awoken me at half-past four in Katoomba high up in the Blue Mountains. Then had followed a urry of trains, busses, taxis, still more trains and nally the ight out of Sydney. As I relaxed on the upper deck of the ferry, with the sea-spray on my face, the past few days of rain forest hikes weighed me down. The sea around me though was better than caffeine. Tiny little densely-jungled islets oated past as the powerful ferry skipped over the blue sea leaving a frothy white foam in its wake. In a very short while we reached the mainland and were shuttled across to the Shute Harbour Road. Shute Harbour adjoins a one-street tourist town lined with backpacker hostels, cafe-

style restaurants, souvenir shops and adventure merchants, each claiming to offer the best and cheapest diving and cruising experiences in town. On one side of the road was the famed Airlie Beach Lagoon, a large C-shaped mouth holding a volume of calm, unrufed sea perfect for bathing. I walked over to the Explore Whitsundays ofce beside the beach to claim my boarding pass for the Solway Lass. Solway Lass was a hundred year old sailing vessel with a varied and colourful h i s t o r y. O r i g i n a l l y launched in Holland as a cargo vessel named Stina in 1902, it was later sold to the Germans who renamed it Adolf. It was captured by the British in World War One and used as a decoy merchant ship. Sold to a Scottish rm in the Solway Firth after the war, it was rechristened the Solway Lass. The Germans recaptured it in World War Two when it hit an ocean-mine and it ended up as a supply ship to Danish ports. Finally in 1983 it was bought in Fiji by a guy from Sydney who refurbished it as tourist sail-ship with guest cabins, bathrooms and most things including a kitchen sink. Back on the beach, the ship ofce was manned by two pretty blondes who cheerily informed me that most of my stuff would have to be discarded and only the barest minimum stuffed into a cloth bag they produced. I was content to dump it all in their ofce-closet, without any guarantees of safety, rather than deposit it in a secure paid-locker shop nearby.

This was just one of the many things that could have gone wrong with my trip. It so happened that the Peter Pan secure lockers were robbed when we were away while the unlocked closet in the ofce remained untouched. I guess the moral here is Anything that can go wrong, wont... or maybe Tis far better to be unprepared than sorry... or maybe its Vote for the Grasshopper. I dont know... you decide. So I spread out my things on the couch there while the girls behind the counter were lost in conversation. South of the equator, as was to be expected, ofce politics chiey concerned the singing quality of a colleague. Snatches of song lingered in the air punctuated by ...and thats how she sang, followed by another tune ending with ... and thats how it should have been sung. I packed while dusk stealthily stumbled outside.The setting sun gave the streets an unhurried air. Beach dudes lounged around in shades, straw-hats and party-coloured shirts while pretty girls in short skirts and heeled sandals strolled back to their hostels to slip into even shorter skirts and even higher heeled sandals for a night painting the town red. I wolfed down a sandwich at the nearby Subway and received a few curious glances along the way. It dawned on me that I hadnt seen anyone there with a darker skin tone than white... if you didnt count the various shades of sunburns all over town. As an expensive tourist town with most activities involving physical exertion, I guess its not surprising that it hasnt yet shown up on the conservative Indian tourist circuit. The tour bus picked us up at half past six for the nearby harbour. Inside I got a rst glimpse at the bunch I would be sequestered with for the next three days and nights. While booking the cruise I had been apprehensive that the group might end up as either a troop of wild partying teens or a collection of self-absorbed couples and fortunately I was mistaken. It was an assorted bunch from around the world... nationalities that now come to mind are German and English, which were the lions share, followed by Dutch, Canadian, American and an Austrian family.

We were greeted at the harbour by Mike, adorned with sunglasses in the dark. He was our host and bosun of the ship. Our actual skipper Gaz was invisible throughout the cruise as he had the unenviable task of standing all day at the helm clutching the large wooden steering wheel. It was remarkably quiet just a few minutes outside of town. We boarded our stately vessel in the dark and soon the venerable pirate ship (with a genuine skull-and-bones ag) oated out from in between the teeny-bopper sailboats scattered across the bay. We were nally off on our three-day sojourn of the islands. The ship had a forecastle with a galley and crew-quarters in the front, a clear open-air main deck with tables and stools and an enclosed closet-bar with a seating area and stairway leading down to the guest-cabins and bathrooms. Apart from the various sails above us, the ship also had a motor below for when the winds were not entirely favourable. Mike ran us through his checklist of responses to emergencies like sinking, men overboard or worst of all... running out of alcohol. He introduced us to the rest of the crew, which consisted of Jade and Jono who nominally were in charge of the deck and the bar respectively but practically involved in everything. And our hard-working chef Cam, a French-canadian who single-handedly whipped up all our meals while juggling our fussy dietary constraints. The ship sailed on boldly through a dark stiff breeze, cutting the black water around us in sparkling white spray as we motored out of the bay and towards the stars. As we left the glow of the town behind us, the stars literally lit up the sky. An occasional shooting star streaked across the rmament while cloudy wisps of the milky way snaked high overhead. Most of the passengers settled down in their cabins for an early night. I too was exhausted but the conversation on deck held me. Lucie and Mike (a different Mike this) had ew from London to the Far East and over the past three months had traced their way over the globe through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and god alone knows where else till they had nally found themselves in Australia. They had a lot of interesting stories to narrate. Lucie gave a very expressive, PG Wodehousian account of a kitten that she rescued from a mean tall conifer while repeatedly rediscovering gravity. That little nugget had been brought on by the even more engaging accounts of Dani, the pretty Canadian backpacker. She told tales of grizzlies attacking her Dad while camping with little children who refused to hide their bacon. Skilled at playing Lacrosse with human skulls she rescued kids screaming bloody murder from scary heights. In her spare time she got hosed down with re-extinguishers by jerks in random hostels across Australia. I was sleepy and may have gotten the facts a tad mixed up but you get the gist of it.

Below deck, I was bunked up in a tiny little cabin with Mike, Lucie and Jenn an American with a lets-see-which-way-my-feet-take-me-today way of looking at the world. She had been in Australia for almost a year, I think, with everything she owned packed into her car. These guys were all genuine globe-trotters, the kind of backpackers you read about who ride Arabian camels in the morning, get lost in jungles of Indonesia at noon and huddle in igloos with eskimos at night. Rather than attempt to describe Jenn, Ill let her words do the talking as she describes her twin... We look quite different actually, she explains, ... while my sister has the legs, I got the boobs... she got the lips, I got the eyes. Shed get the dates while Id kick the boys in the shins and play football with them. It came to mind that my cabin-mates would all have made pretty good roving pirates a few centuries back.

Conversation droned on in the cabin while I dozed off. It wasnt as restful a sleep as I would have preferred. It might have been the gentle rocking of the boat but more likely it was just a case of being overly tired with so much lined up for the next day.

Whitehaven beach
The next morning I awoke early but lay in my bunk staring at the skylight till Jade stormed down to the hallway and yelled in her broken voice Laast caall for breakfaast... waake upp ! It was a beautiful morning on deck. Breakfast was slices of toast, cereals and coffee. The sky was clear, the sun smiled and the stage was set for a perfect day on the pristine Whitehaven beach. The Lass soon set sail for this forested hillock with a shingly beach in the middle of the sparkling blue sea. We had crossed many such little islands that seemed lost and blinded by the bright blue of the sea and sky. Most felt so invitingly forbidden that it was nice to nally step off ship and motor down to one of them... the largest of them in fact, the Whitsunday Island. Jono led us up the hill along an Ngaro trail through the woods. Ngaro were the original settlers of the Whitsundays. Long before the Europeans arrived. Aboriginal culture as a whole is quite remarkable... it is the longest continuous culture in the world with fossils dating back to more than sixty thousand years ago. In that Age, nowhere else in the world had people mastered the navigation sufcient for whole tribes to make a perilous passage over open seas, of the kind required to cross over from Indonesia. They also possessed the survival skills necessary to populate such a harsh and varied landscape with dense rainforest along the coast and a parched desert in its interior. Their belief in the way the world was created by supernatural beings in the beginning of time translates in English roughly to dreamtime. Tales of dreamtime were taught to children after they underwent spiritual rituals surprisingly akin to the Vipassana meditation taught by Gautam Buddha many millennia later in India. Like the natives of North America, their culture bonded intimately with the natural world and its loss has left the world a much poorer place. It was a short walk up from the shingled beach to a lookout from where was visible the pristine stretch of the Whitehaven beach. Sparkling white in the morning sun, this beach has silica of such purity in its sand that it was used by NASA to make the lens of the Hubble space telescope. It seems tting that the amazingly vivid deep space photos

captured by the Hubble were ltered through the sands of this picture-postcard scene of brilliant blue and white. The water was cool and tempting while the sun on my back felt pleasantly warm. I had forgotten my swimtrunks in the cabin, but I waded in nevertheless. The water was liquid glass. Each minute ripple of the gentle translucent waves glinted in the late morning sun. It was a long and refreshing swim. At noon we collected at the base of the hill and returned to our vessel. I fell in step with the three German girls who had been backpacking across Australia for the past so many months. Almost everyone on the boat, I realised, had been on the road for many months... and I thoroughly envied the lot. Over lunch I got into conversation with a German couple, Eric and Stef, and they literally took the cake. They had been driving through Australia for more than fteen months and still had a lot of ground to cover before heading over to NewZealand. The rst question that usually comes to mind is how do you afford it... but that is a secondary consideration. Traveling incessantly, even when done in stages, for years together takes a very different mindset from what many of us have. As for costs, they live with a minimal of expenditures... cooking food rather than restaurants, campers in parking lots instead of hostels, scouring for coupons, freebies and discounts... traveling on a shoestring albeit a very very long shoestring.

We hauled up the top-sails with Jade brandishing a cat onine tails to ensure discipline in the ranks and then shut the engines. The silence was immediate.This is the way men were meant to sail. No drone of engines, no mechanical vibrations underfoot, just billowing sails ying with the wind. With a long swim, heavy lunch and a drowsy s u n , conditions were ideal f o r lounging on deck. I retired, instead, to the perfect spot just off the deck... a net that hung from the prow. It hung low, forming a rough hammock, right above the churning spray that ew up as our boat sliced up the sea. T h e breeze was stiff and the knots on the net rough but the hammock, I thought, was perfect. Gazing down at the translucent shimmering blue while keeping an eye out for whales and dolphins, it was one of those moments where nothing much happens and yet gets painted on the inside of the skull with indelible ink. The wind was too sharp and chilled for a nap, and yet I lazed on the net for hours. We moored for the night in a sheltered bay off Hook Island, called Baird point. A rope dangling from the yard high above us served as a rope-swing for the adventurous few to leap off into the sea. With a morning spent in the cool sea and a noon in the brisk wind, I declined and settled instead in front-row seats for the sunset.

The sun here sets rapidly, a golden globe that dips below the horizon almost as soon as it gets there. The glow however spread out across the cloudless sky above and the calm ocean below and very gently cooled into night.

After dinner we settled in the enclosed part of the deck and the drinks began to roll. We started with card games but soon moved on to the more entertaining drinking game that Kathrin came up with... Lets get fucked up!. Mike introduced his own game involving a tiny shot glass and need for much exibility. As Ive always believed, yoga has its uses. The crew werent permitted to join us for as Mike put it, You dont want to wake up in Fiji now do you ?. As a matter of fact, I dont think any of us would have minded that any too much. Back in our cabin, conversation turned to the various scams that Mike and Lucie had come across in their travels through the Far East. An interesting one was of crossing the Thai-Cambodia border, wherein their tuk-tuk took them to an ersatz border less than ve minutes away from the genuine article with a fake but ofcial looking border crossing and a visa ofce charging exorbitant fees. This was, apparently, such a rampant scam that it found pride of place in the Lonely Planet as well. It took me a while to fall asleep again... what with the noisy creaking of the ancient wood of the cabin in the choppy sea outside and the wine and spirits inside.

I can y!
The next morning we awoke to a bright sunny day with few uffy clouds oating around disoriented in the immense blue all around us. After breakfast we sailed on for the Blue Pearl Bay off Hayman Island for a spot of snorkeling on the reef. The Great Barrier Reef is a prolic marine habitat with more than fteen hundred species of sh and two thousand plant species living off the corals and surrounding islands. Lets pause here to consider... What is the largest structure on earth made by living organisms, that is so large as to be visible even from space ? The answer is Not the great wall of China, it is these remarkable reefs built by tiny humble corals working away at it with their noses to the seaoor, so to speak, for thousands of years. The Great Barrier Reef stretches across more than three hundred thousand square kilometers off the eastern coast of Australia. The snorkeling here was Simply Awesome! It was like oating in the photographic negative of a surreal world that throbbed and swayed in a grand synchronised choreography while schools of rainbow coloured shes itted past without a care in the world. Pale rabbitshes wearing uorescent yellow webs clung to forests of corals while zebra-striped frenchfry-sized little sh nibbled on their scales. Schools of vividly patterned angelshes fanned their bright yellow ns to bustle around self-importantly, scarcely condescending to swerve away from outstretched ngers. A large earth-brown dour-looking character skulked among the scarlet anemones that waved cheerily with the currents down below. Delicate pale bristles swayed in unison and algae in primitive reds, green and inkblue painted the mounds of nely webbed corals. The corals, building blocks of the reef, are sessile animals... so in a very real sense even the ocean-oor here was vibrantly alive. The best thing about snorkeling was that when you got tired you could simply oat with the current and take it all in passively. The only sound you heard down there was your own rhythmic breathing. It was hypnotic.

All too soon, the water seemed freezing and I was shivering in my wet suit. By the time I clambered on to the rocky little beach on Hayman Island I was chattering. I was one of the last to get out of the water and I still hadnt had my ll. The beach itself was just a large pile of pebbles which on closer inspection turned out to be corals or shells in all stages of metamorphosis. Some were rocks that resembled fan-shaped shells while others were minutely ingrained starched pebbles perforated with delicate tubes, like a miniature asteroid inhabited by a civilization of Lilliputians. I would have probably heaved a tonne of these gems back with me if the Aussie airports did not, very sensibly and unfortunately, ne passengers smuggling corals out of the country. Back on deck I toweled off and settled down with a mug of steaming hot chocolate next to ten-year old Michael. With his family out diving, he was left behind forlorn and tearyeyed waiting for them to return. He spoke only a broken English while I spoke no German at all, but he did calm down some. In the boat with the scuba-divers was a couple from a Scandinavian country, I forget which, who had a harrowing experience. The womans oxygen regulator was faulty and did not warn her when the tank became empty. The spare one with her partner had so many dials and doodads to ddle with that they couldnt gure it out in the growing panic. She shot straight up and had a narrow escape. This being Australia however, it was brushed aside... unlike the US where lawyers would have instantly descended like a pack of vultures to raise a hue-and-cry. A gem I picked up about this unpredictable continent was that in the sixties Australia lost its Prime Minister when he went out for a morning swim and disappeared. Now pause here to consider this... the Prime Minister of a large developed country one ne day just vanishes into a calm sea! An Ozzie I discussed this later said that the remarkable thing

in this story was not that he drowned; people did that all year round in a sea crammed with lethal stingers and jellysh, vicious sharks and ckle rip tides. What was noteworthy was the matter-of-fact manner in which this piece of news was received... no conspiracy theories, no media circus... nothing. There was another election and life went on as it always did. To commemorate their missing leader they christened a swimming pool after him! If that doesnt speak of a distinctive Aussie humour I dont know what does. That afternoon we unfurled our sails and set off in search of migrating humpbacked whales. More than thirty species of whales and dolphins have been recorded on the reefs, many of which migrate up from the frigid seas of Antarctica in search of warmer waters in the winter. I was considering an afternoon nap in my cabin away from the ever-present sea-breeze when a shout soon went up Whale!. Initially it was a burst of spray far in the distance followed by a massive tail slapping the waves as the leatherbacks dived in deeper. But soon it was apparent that the whales were far from camera-shy. At least three of them surfaced just aft of the ship, rolling and casually showing off their massive dull-black glistening skins and casually blowing off steam. We all crowded near the helm with cameras ickering in excitement. The whales remained unustered and and followed us at a stately pace. Having had our ll of blubber we left the whales to their gambols, turned on the motors and headed back for the islands. We anchored in a bay off Black Island and prepared for another round of snorkeling. I gave the rope swing a try and it was fun speeding off the rails, skimming the water and then ying off at the apex of the arc to splash in the cool waters. At my second attempt however, I found the current too strong to swim back to the ship-ladder. Though the ship was anchored, there was a strong current pulling me away. Tired after a morning of swimming I just couldnt reach it. It was kind of ridiculous, struggling just beside the ship with little Michael looking on in concern from the deck. I nally gave up on the ladder and hung from a rope attached to the dinghy tied to the ship. Jade and Mike got alarmed and trailed a safety ring with a rope. I rested a bit and swam back to the ladder

instead. When I consider the situation, I never felt even a trace of fear just a sense of the ridiculous. It would have been downright silly to drown just beside a boat while even being watched by a sympathetic little boy from the deck. The snorkeling near Black Island was also spectacular. The shes were fewer in number but the corals and sea-anemones were amazing. It was a whole forest down there with brightly painted living underwater hills and valleys. Some of the mounds on the ocean oor looked like massive submerged brains with deep furrows and folds swarming with clusters of tiny shes ickering over them like thoughts. As the tide was low, gliding the coral landscape felt like ying low through hills. We had been instructed not to touch the corals (as it kills these delicate creatures). In spite of my best efforts I managed to lightly cut my feet on the spiky corals as the current pulled me towards the beach. I nally gave up on nding a way to the beach while avoiding the corals and signaled for the motor-dinghy to return and pick me up. Most others had not even bothered to get in the cold water so Eric and I must have presented a peculiar sight. Shivering and chattering while peeling off our wet suits with bleeding feet but wide grins. Hot showers never felt better... and I followed them up with cups of steaming hot chocolate and tea. Dinner that night was festive with cake, ice-cream and toasts to an English couple from a small town near Manchester who were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. Cam had broiled a sh for me and special vegetarian dish for the few who didnt eat meat. I later learned that she had learned how to cook only after arriving in Australia, probably as another backpacker living out her dream.

That night all seemed exhausted but still wishing to make the most of the last night out on the sea. Jade suggested a silly and fun game involving a mandarin orange, a baton and much scurrying around the deck. Conversation ranged over the different trafc rules and conditions in the various countries we were from. Coming from a place where cows were mobile trafc islands and trafc rules were essentially trafc suggestions, it was fascinating to eavesdrop on matters of a very alien nature... skidding on icy roads in Holland, ramming into moose on freeways in Canada, halting of trains in London because of too many leaves on the tracks and, of course, the famed efciency of the Germans. With many teachers in the group, conversation shifted to eccentricities in our profession as we shifted indoors. Most were struggling to stay awake, and we shortly retired for the night. That night I was dead to the world.

Pirates Bay
The next morning I woke up early at dawn, and went up on deck to catch the sunrise. Our boat was anchored in the Macona Inlet away from larger swells of the ocean. The sun crept up from behind a hill just off the port side (which Im proud to say, I know now to be the left side of the boat). As a result, I did not see the sun pop out of the sea but I was glad nevertheless to stroll the deserted deck with the sky gradually blushing warmer. Breakfast was the usual fare of toast and cereals. A spread popular in Australia is a concentrated yeast-extract going by the name of Vegemite. Views on it are sharply divided and those who dont spit it out right away our devoutly fond of it. The Austrian behind me in the queue saw me scraping it on my toast and blurted out that that in itself qualied me for an Australian citizenship. Very salty and mildly spiced, mixed in with a thick spread of butter it tasted just ne I thought. We motored off to the South Molle Island. In a wide bay off the island we settled in our dinghy to step off on the wharf of a rundown resort. This ancient resort built in the thirties still has a ne golf-course and well-maintained trails that take you up the the hill to a scenic lookout. The walk up through the light woods took the better part of an hour all through which I kept my eyes peeled to catch sight of Koalas. I did see a few tiny black spiders that I was careful not to investigate too closely but sadly no Koala. Koalas are plump uffy little teddy bears that cling to branches and move in a slow motion with perennially dazed expressions, stoned on their diet of Eucalyptus leaves. They had a long blissful run of the wilds till the Europeans arrived in boatloads.

Of all the species that they introduced the number one predator of these gentle junkies is, not surprisingly, feral cats. I can just see my pet cat Sippu bright-eyed and alert, stealthily stalking these dozing clumps of fur that could at most languorously wave hooked little feet in protest.

The view from the top of the hill was spectacular... a wide crescent of blue with our pirate ship moored off the coast as shadows of clouds smoothly gliding over the waters.

We headed back down for lunch. It was lunchtime for the sh as well who gathered hungrily near the wharf to be fed. With no one from the resort to feed them they remained hungry while we had a spread waiting for us back on our Lass. The afternoon sun shone on the port side and all were huddled in the little patch of sun sheltered from the brisk breeze, enveloped in their books and sunscreen lotions. All too soon we could see the coast again. Drawn out hot showers and beds that did not sway beckoned... but it was with regret that I stepped off our home for the past three days. We reconvened at a pub later that night to exchange emails and say goodbyes... but like Australia as a whole, these vividly coloured memories have already begun to bleach with time... till they now seem like a mid-summer nights dream. I hope I dont wake up any time soon.