Down Under

by Bryson, Bill

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  He leaned towards me and said as you might to a dementia sufferer: ‘It’s your car.’

  ‘But I asked for a four-wheel drive.’

  He sifted through his paperwork and carefully extracted a fax from the travel agent, which he passed to me. It showed a request for a large, standard, high-polluting car with automatic transmission – an American car, in other words, or the nearest local equivalent. I sighed and handed back the paper. ‘Well, do you have a four-wheel drive I can take instead?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope, sorry. We only do town cars.’

  ‘But we were going to drive up towards Cape York.’

  ‘Oh, you won’t get up there in the wet. Not even in a four-wheel drive. Not at this time of year. They had a hundred centimetres of rain at Cape Tribulation last week.’ I had no very clear idea what a hundred centimetres was, but it was evident from his tone that it was considerable. ‘You won’t get beyond Daintree in anything less than a helicopter.’

  I sighed again.

  ‘The road to Townsville’s been cut off for three days,’ he added with yet more pride.

  I looked at him again. Townsville is south of Cairns – in the opposite direction from Cape York. It appeared we were boxed in. ‘So where can we go?’ I asked.

  He spread his hands in cheerful irony. ‘Anywhere you like in greater Cairns.’

  Allan looked at me in the happily brainless way of someone who doesn’t realize disaster is afoot, irritating me further. I sighed and hefted my bags. ‘Well, can you point us the way to the Palm Cove Hotel?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly. You go back out past the airport to the Cook Highway and take the road north. It’s about twenty kilometres up the coast.’

  ‘Twenty kilometres?’ I sputtered. ‘I asked for a hotel in Cairns.’

  He scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Well, it’s sure not in Cairns.’

  ‘But the road is open?’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘You mean it might flood?’

  ‘Always a possibility.’

  ‘And if it floods we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere?’

  He looked at me with a touch of pity. ‘Mister, you’re already in the middle of nowhere.’ The point was inarguable. Cairns was 1,100 miles from Brisbane, its own state capital, and there was nothing in the other directions but ocean, jungle and desert. ‘But Palm Cove’s real nice,’ he added. ‘You’ll like it.’

  And he was right. Palm Cove was lovely – really quite astonishingly so. It was a purpose-built village inserted with some care into a stretch of tropical luxuriance beside a curving bay. On one side of a beachside road stood low-rise hotels and apartments, a few cottages and a scattering of bars, restaurants and shops, all discreetly obscured by palms, spreading fronds and flowering vines, and on the other was a palm-lined walk overlooking a smooth, golden beach and the sea.

  Our hotel was, in everything but name, setting and price, a motel, but it was friendly and overlooked the sea. We claimed our rooms, then went for a walk along the beach. A few other people were strolling over the sand, but no one was in the water and for a very good reason. It was the height of the season for box jellyfish, also known in Queensland as marine stingers, or just stingers. By whatever name they go, these little bubbles of woe are not to be trifled with. From October to May, when the jellyfish come inshore to breed, they render the beaches of the tropics useless to humans. It is quite an extraordinary thought when you are standing there looking at it. Before us stood a sweep of bay as serene and inviting as you would find anywhere, and yet there was no environment on earth more likely to offer instant death.

  ‘So you’re telling me,’ said Allan, for whom all this was new, ‘that if I waded into the water now I would die?’

  ‘In the most wretched and abject agony known to man,’ I replied.

  ‘Jesus,’ he muttered.

  ‘And don’t pick up any of the seashells,’ I added, stopping him from leaning over to pick up a seashell. I explained to him about coneshells – the venomous creatures that lurk inside some of the handsomest shells, waiting for a human hand to sink their vile pincers into.

  ‘Seashells will kill you?’ he said. ‘They’ve got lethal seashells here?’

  ‘There are more things that will kill you up here than anywhere else in Australia, and that’s saying a lot, believe me.’

  I told him about the cassowary, the flightless, man-sized bird that lives in the rainforests, with a razor claw on each foot with which it can slice you open in a deft and appallingly expansive manner; and the green tree snakes that dangle from branches and so blend into the foliage that you don’t see them until they are clamped on to a facial extremity. I mentioned also the small but fearsomely poisonous blue-ringed octopus, whose caress is instant death; and the elegant but irritable numb ray, which moves through the water like a flying carpet discharging 220 volts of electricity into anything that troubles its progress; and the loathsome, sluggish stonefish, so called because it is indistinguishable from a rock, but with the difference that it has twelve spikes on its back that are sharp enough to pierce the sole of a sneaker, injecting the hapless sufferer with a myotoxin bearing a molecular weight of 150,000.

  ‘And what does that mean exactly?’

  ‘Pain beyond description followed shortly by muscular paralysis, respiratory depression, cardiac palpitations and a severe disinclination to boogie. You might similarly be discommoded by firefish, which are easier to spot but no less hurtful. There’s even a jellyfish called the snottie.’

  ‘You’re making all this up,’ he said, but without conviction.

  ‘Oh, but I’m not.’

  Then I told him about the dreaded saltwater crocodile, which lurks in tropical lagoons, estuaries and even bays such as this one, leaping from the waters from time to time to snatch and devour unsuspecting passers-by. Just up the coast from where we now strolled, a woman named Beryl Wruck had been taken not so long before in a startling manner. ‘Shall I tell you about it?’ I offered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, one day,’ I went on, knowing that really he wanted to hear, ‘a group of locals at Daintree got together for a festive pre-Christmas barbie when some of them decided to go for a cooling dip in the Daintree River. The river was known to be the home of crocodiles, but none had ever attacked anybody locally. So several of the party scampered down to the water’s edge, stripped to their underwear and splashed in. Ms Wruck apparently thought better of leaping in, so she merely stepped a foot or so into the water. As she stood there watching the happy frolicking, she idly leaned over and trailed a hand through the water. Just at that instant the water split in a flash of movement and poor Ms Wruck was gone, never to be seen again. “There was no sound, no scream,” reported one witness. “It was so quick that if you had blinked an eye you’d have missed the whole thing.” That is what a crocodile attack is like, you see – swift, unexpected, extremely irreversible.’

  ‘And you’re telling me there are crocodiles here in this water?’ Allan said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know whether there are or not. But it’s why I’m letting you walk on the inside.’

  Just then from the restive skies there came a single startling crack of thunder. Abruptly the wind kicked up, sending the palm trees dancing, and a few fat splats of rain fell. Then the skies opened in a warm but soaking downpour. We hied back to our hotel where we took refuge under the veranda of the beachfront bar, ineffectually wrung out our steaming shirts and watched the rain beat down with a tumultuous fury. There was nothing so dainty as raindrops in this. It was just a cubic mass of falling water, filling the world with a fearful pounding din. I had thought that growing up in the American Midwest I was familiar with lively weather, but I am happy to concede that where the elements are concerned Australia plays in a league of its own. I had never seen anything like it.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ Allan was saying. ‘We can’t go to Cooktown because we can’t get through.
We can’t swim because the ocean’s full of deadly jellyfish. And the road to Cairns might be cut off at any moment.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  He blew out thoughtfully. ‘Might as well have a few beers then.’ He went off to get some. I took a seat at a small table on the veranda and watched the rain pour down.

  One of the bar employees came and stood in the doorway. ‘Worst wet in thirty years,’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘What’s the forecast?’

  ‘Same.’

  I nodded bleakly. ‘We were supposed to be going out to the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got no worries there. They don’t cancel the reef tours unless it’s a hurricane.’

  ‘People go out to the reef in this kind of weather?’

  He nodded. The water in the bay was sloshing around like a bath into which a fat man has just jumped.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How much did you pay for your tickets?’

  I had no idea – everything had been booked as part of a package – but I had the tickets with me and pulled them out of my wallet. ‘A hundred and forty-five dollars each,’ I squeaked in miserly disbelief.

  He smiled. ‘There you go.’

  He went back in. A moment later Allan reappeared with the beers, looking unusually dejected. ‘There is a jellyfish called the snottie,’ he said in wonder. ‘The barman told me.’

  I gave him an apologetic smile. ‘Told you.’

  He stared for some minutes at the rain. On the table someone had left a copy of the local paper, the Port Douglas and Mossman Gazette. Allan started to move it to get at the ashtray, then something caught his eye. He read for a minute, with increasing absorption, then passed the paper to me, tapping the article he wished me to see. It was a small story at the bottom of the front page noting that the dengue fever epidemic in Port Douglas had slowed at last. The article said that since the epidemic had started 485 cases had been reported in the area. Although the pace was slowing, this was not grounds for complacency, a spokeswoman for the Tropical Public Health Unit warned.

  ‘It’s at the bottom of the page!’ he said, his eyes just a trifle wild.

  ‘That’s where we’re going tomorrow,’ I noted with idle interest.

  ‘Do you have any idea what a dengue epidemic would be like in Britain? People would be nailing boards over their windows. Ferries would have people hanging off the sides trying to get out of the country. The police would have to shoot people in the streets to restore order. Here they get 485 cases in a single community and it’s two bloody inches on the bottom of the page! Where have you brought me, Bryson? What kind of country is this?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a wonderful country, Allan.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  We split up to shower and change, then reconvened in the bar for an aperitif before dinner. As the rain showed no sign of easing, we decided to dine at the hotel. At dinner, Allan ordered red snapper.

  ‘You’ve not heard of ciguatera then?’ I said casually.

  ‘Of course I haven’t bloody heard of it,’ he replied through clenched teeth. ‘What now?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Of course it must be something or you wouldn’t have mentioned it. What is it? Am I sitting in it? Is it on my head? What?’

  ‘No, it’s a kind of toxin endemic to tropical waters. It accumulates in certain fish.’

  ‘Like red snapper, for instance?’

  ‘Well, especially red snapper, actually.’

  He considered this with a kind of slow, catatonic nod. I think jet lag was kicking in. It can do terrible things to one’s equilibrium.

  ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,’ I added reassuringly. ‘I mean, if there was an outbreak snapper wouldn’t be on the menu, would it? Unless of course.’ I stopped there.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, unless you were to be the first case. It has to start with somebody, after all. But, hey, what are the chances of that? One in a hundred? One in twenty?’

  ‘I want you to stop this right now.’

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed at once. ‘I’m sorry. Do you want to change your order?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The symptoms include, but are not limited to, vomiting, severe muscle weakness, loss of motor control, paraesthesia of the lips, general lassitude, myalgia and paradoxical sensory disturbances – that is, feeling hot surfaces as cold and vice versa. Death occurs in about twelve per cent of cases.’

  ‘I’m telling you to stop it right now.’ The waitress came with our drinks. ‘This snapper,’ Allan said with forced casualness. ‘It’s all right, is it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. It’s beaut.’

  ‘I mean, it hasn’t got – what is it, Bryson?’

  ‘Ciguatera.’

  She gave us a befuddled look. ‘No, it comes with chips and salad.’

  We exchanged glances.

  ‘Would I be right in assuming you’re not from around here?’ I asked.

  Her puzzlement deepened. ‘No, I’m from Tassie. Why?’

  ‘Just wondered.’ I whispered to Allan: ‘She’s from Tasmania.’

  He leaned to me and whispered back: ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘Their snapper are OK.’

  ‘Is it possible to change my order, love?’

  She stared at him heavily for a moment, the way young people do when they realize they are being asked to take twenty steps they hadn’t budgeted for, and with a martyred air went off to find out. A minute later she reported back that permission had been granted to change his order.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Allan with sudden enthusiasm, perusing the menu anew. He considered the many alternative options. ‘Do you do baked snottie?’ he asked distantly.

  She stared at him.

  ‘Just joking!’ he said, seeming much chirpier. ‘I’ll have the sirloin and chips,’ he announced. ‘Medium rare, please.’ He turned to me. ‘No horrid diseases I should know about with regard to beef? Queensland beef palsy or anything like that?’

  ‘You should be fine with steak.’

  ‘Steak it is then.’ He handed her the menu. ‘And easy on the ciguatera,’ he called after her. ‘And keep the beers coming,’ he added further.

  We had a lovely meal, and afterwards retired once more to the bar where, through the foolish wonders of alcohol, we managed to acquire nearly all the symptoms that we had so recently been at pains to avoid.

  In the morning, the rain had stopped but the skies were dark and dirty and the sea full of chop. Just looking at it made me feel faintly ill. I am not enamoured of the ocean or anything within it, and the prospect of bouncing out to a rain-shrouded reef to see the sort of darting fish I could view in comfort at any public aquarium, or indeed dental waiting room, was not enticing. According to the morning paper, a 2.3-metre swell was expected. I asked Allan, who once owned a sailing boat and a captain’s cap and thus fancies himself an accomplished mariner, how big this was and he lifted his eyebrows in the manner of one impressed. ‘Oh, that’s big,’ he said. This led him to tell me many happy anecdotes of being pitched about in terrifying seas, some of them involving boats not tied to a dock. As we sat there, one of the members of the staff breezed past.

  ‘Cyclone coming!’ she said perkily.

  ‘Today?’ I asked in what was becoming a customary bleat.

  ‘Maybe!’

  Our reef tour included pick-up at our hotel and transfer by coach to the boat at Port Douglas, twenty miles up the coast. The bus drew up at eight fifty, on time to the minute. As we climbed aboard, the driver was giving a rundown on marine stingers, with vivid descriptions of people who had failed to their cost to heed the warning signs. He assured us, however, there were no jellyfish on the reef. Unaccountably, he failed to mention reef sharks, boxfish, scorpionfish, stinging corals, sea snakes or the infamous grouper, a 900-pound monster that occasionally, through a combination of testiness and stupidity, chomps off a swimmer’s arm or leg, then remembers
that it doesn’t like the taste of human flesh and spits it out.

  I can’t tell you how pleased I was when we arrived at Port Douglas to find that the boat was huge – as big as an English Channel ferry or very nearly – and sleekly new. I was also pleased, for their sake and mine, that none of the crew seemed to be manifesting any of the more obvious signs of dengue fever. As we lined up with other arriving coach passengers I learned from a crew member that the ship held 450 and that 310 people were booked today. He also told me that the trip to the reef took ninety minutes and that the seas should be relatively benign. It was thirty-eight nautical miles to Agincourt Reef, where we would moor. This was, I noted with more than passing interest, the place where the American couple had gone missing.

  When we got aboard they announced the free distribution of seasickness tablets to anyone who wanted. I was the first to the table.

  ‘This is awfully thoughtful of you,’ I said as I swilled down a handful.

  ‘Well, it’s better’n having people spewing up all over the shop,’ said the girl brightly, and it was hard to argue with that.

  The trip to the reef was smooth, as promised. What’s more the sun came out, albeit weakly, turning the water from a leaden grey to an approximation of cobalt. While Allan went off to the sun deck to see if there were any women with large breasts to look at, I settled down with my notes.

  Depending on which sources you consult, the Great Barrier Reef covers 280,000 square kilometres or 344,000 or something in between; stretches 1,200 miles from top to bottom, or 1,600; is bigger than Kansas or Italy or the United Kingdom. Nobody can agree really on where the Barrier Reef begins and ends, though everyone agrees it’s awfully big. Even by the shortest measure, it is equivalent in length to the west coast of the United States. And it is of course an immensely vital habitat – the oceanic equivalent of the Amazon rainforest. The Great Barrier Reef contains at least 1,500 species offish, 400 types of coral and 4,000 varieties of molluscs, but those are essentially just guesses. No one has ever attempted a comprehensive survey. Too big a job.