Love...Under Different Skies

by Nick Spalding

  I look back at the spider, which shows no signs of distress at being insulted in such a manner. It must be used to this kind of treatment. “I’ll go get the mop.”

  I scamper back into the kitchen to retrieve the damp mop from a kitchen cupboard and return to the balcony holding it out in front of me. My intention is to whack our multicoloured friend with it until he either dies, or at least gets pissed off enough to move to another postal code.

  “Shoo!” I say effeminately, poking the mop at the spider.

  “Shoo!” I repeat, waggling the mop ever closer.

  All this manages to do is give the now irate arachnid something to jump onto and crawl down in order to launch his attack.

  “Yaaarrggghhh!” I screech, throwing the mop in the air.

  “Muuurrggghhh!” Laura then cries as the spider is catapulted from the mop handle onto the front of her dressing gown, just below her face. “Get it off, get it off, get it off!” she begs me.

  I do the only thing I can—I pick up the mop and smack her with it. This results in the spider being successfully dislodged—and Laura receiving a face full of damp mop that had last been used yesterday evening to clean up Poppy’s spilt chocolate milk.

  Our arachnid adversary decides that this whole situation is for the dogs, and scuttles over the side of the balcony and out of our lives as swiftly as it entered it. I spend the next five minutes apologising to my wife while trying to ignore the smell of sour milk emanating from her body. As the start to a day goes, this one has not been the most successful.

  The shower Laura took was much longer than normal—understandably so, I guess. She went off happily to the spa for the morning, leaving Poppy and me with Nemo, after which we went and ran around on the beach until we both felt sick. By the time I’d recovered from entertaining my hyperactive daughter, Laura had returned with a blissful look on her face.

  “Good, was it?” I ask her.

  “You have no idea, Jamie.”

  I’m sure I don’t. Spa treatments and men go together about as well as alcohol and working heavy machinery.

  “We’re going up high Mummy!” Poppy says happily to her mother over lunch. I’d shown Pops pictures of the Skyrail last night, and she’d been beside herself with excitement ever since.

  “Yes we are, Poppet,” Laura agrees. “Nice and high above the trees, where there are no spiders and dirty mops.” She shudders involuntarily.

  “Let’s go then,” I say, before Laura can berate me for throwing an angry gigantic arachnid at her.

  We drive the few miles to the Skyrail station, park, and make our way inside.

  I’m stunned to see that there are hardly any queues between us and getting to a cable car. For a Saturday morning the place doesn’t seem all that busy. Of course I’m used to tourist attractions in the UK, where you can’t move for Japanese tourists and Beefeaters 90 percent of the time. Up here in the remote tropics of Queensland, busy doesn’t quite mean the same as it does at the entrance to every tourist attraction in London on a Saturday morning in the height of summer.

  The cableway is a pretty serious feat of engineering. It takes you up the side of the mountains, skimming above the canopy of thick rainforest that covers the entire range. Once you’ve gone over the summit, you descend under the canopy to a waypoint before travelling all the way to the main station at the other end of the line in the rainforest village of Kuranda, which sits atop the mountain plateau—and does a roaring trade in didgeridoos, hats hung with corks, and overpriced sandwiches.

  Laura is all smiles and Poppy is virtually beside herself with excitement by the time the cable car door closes behind us. I’m slightly more apprehensive as it’s just occurred to me for the first time that I’m now trapped in a small glass-and-metal bubble suspended from a wire and about to travel several hundred feet up the side of a mountain.

  In my desire to create the most fun-filled day for Laura’s birthday that I could, I may have neglected to actually think about the nuts and bolts of this particular activity. It’s nuts and bolts that weigh most heavily on my mind as the small six-seat gondola starts to move up and out of the station towards the tree line. I’m really hoping that they are very strong nuts and bolts, built by efficient people in the Western world who have sanitary working conditions and a professional attitude about their jobs.

  Poppy giggles with pleasure as we get higher and higher, passing through the trees and into the open air. My knuckles tighten on the seat, and I do that thing everyone does when they’re nervous—I grin like a maniac and go stiffer than a day-old corpse.

  “You okay, Jamie?” Laura asks me as we rattle over the first pylon and start to ascend on an even sharper incline.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I lie through gritted teeth. “How about you?”

  “It’s lovely. Just look at the view.”

  This is something I’m happy to do as gazing at the horizon means I’m not looking down at the ever-increasing space between us and Mother Earth. Poppy has no such qualms, has her nose pressed right up against the gondola’s glass wall, and is peering down into the canopy below us.

  “Look Mummy!” she squeals and points a finger. “Look at the birds!”

  “Shall we see how many we can count?” Laura suggests to Poppy’s absolute delight.

  I’d be delighted right now if this excursion were soon coming to an end, but I have well over an hour of this shit to put up with before we reach Kuranda. There are stops along the way, thank God, but it’s still over sixty minutes of watching the green world slide by beneath us as the gondola clatters and rattles its way over the pylons set at regular intervals towards our destination. And, of course, we’ve still got to come back.

  As the minutes drag by, I start to fantasise about things I’d rather be doing than sitting here a couple of hundred feet in the air, rocking back and forth in the warm tropical winds. Having elective bowel surgery, for instance. Or inserting my head into a cow. Masturbating with sandpaper. Listening to a Christian rock album. Cleaning corpses in a morgue. Watching an entire season of Downton Abbey in one day…

  Actually, forget that last one. Now I’m just being silly.

  Regardless of what I’d rather be doing, the cold hard fact of the matter is that no matter how much I wish it were not so, I am still trapped in the bubble with my wife and daughter on an inexorable climb into the clear, blue November skies.

  “Daddy, come and look at the trees!” Poppy demands.

  “I think Daddy would rather just look out of the window at the view, sweetheart,” Laura tells her, picking up on my obvious distress.

  Poppy’s eyes go wide. “Are you scared, Daddy?” She clambers over to me, climbs into my lap, and gives me a huge hug. “Don’t be scared, Daddy.” She says this with such genuine compassion that I nearly burst into tears. My daughter’s warm and comforting presence makes the ordeal about a thousand times more bearable. It even gets to the point where I’m able to look down into the trees with her to spot birds without wanting to retch violently and claw my own eyes out.

  While I’ve relaxed a bit and am less terrified for my mortal soul, I’m still extremely glad when we reach the first way station and take a ten-minute break from the journey.

  “Are you sure you want to carry on?” Laura asks me as I sit down on a convenient—and blessedly solid—bench just outside the station entrance.

  “Yeah. I’ll be fine. As long as you’re having a good time, baby.”

  “I am. Pops is too.” Laura looks over at where our daughter is attempting to have a conversation with a passing lizard. “But if you’re not happy, we’ll go back.”

  “No, no. I’m more or less used to it now.” I offer her a lopsided smile. “It can’t get any worse, can it?”

  NEVER SAY THIS.

  Never, ever say this in any situation ever. It will guarantee that things will indeed get worse.
Far, far worse. I discover just how wrong I am on the second leg of our journey when we hit the Barron Gorge section.

  Let’s examine that word gorge, shall we? It automatically implies size, doesn’t it? You’ve never heard anything small described as a gorge, have you? It’s a big, round word with a very strong vowel sound, giving you a clear indication that it’s being used to describe an object of considerable volume and depth. Such is most definitely the case here.

  I’ve just about got used to sailing above the tree line, so it comes as a dreadful shock when the trees suddenly disappear from view beneath us and we’re propelled out over a drop of such magnitude you could probably fit the Empire State Building in there with headroom left over for Mount Rushmore and the Sears Tower. The river that runs through Barron Gorge cuts its way right through the mountain range, creating a spectacular waterfall that roars over a billion years’ worth of geology before plunging hundreds of feet to the basin below. I have no idea who Barron was, but if he were in front of me right now, I think I’d pull his ears off.

  I’m not even able to summon a scream when we fly out over the gorge. My body has frozen solid.

  “Wow!” Poppy cries and presses herself up against the window again.

  Laura starts snapping away with her camera with equal excitement.

  I try very hard not to shit my pants.

  The human body is a wonderful thing. When presented with a horrifying situation such as this, it takes steps to thoroughly occupy your mind, thus getting you through the torment without losing your marbles completely. Such is my desire to prevent a repeat of Fajita Night that by the time I’ve wrestled my bowels back under my complete control we’ve passed through the gorge and come out the other side into the relative safety of the rainforest canopy again.

  I don’t go so far as kissing the ground when we alight at the Skyrail station in Kuranda, but I do pat the nearest gum tree as I emerge from the bubble into the sun on very shaky legs.

  Laura gives me a hug. “Well done, sweetheart. You were very brave.”

  “I don’t think you could call it brave, baby. Any time a three-year-old is absolutely fine with something and you’re terrified of it, brave isn’t even in the same post code.”

  “Well never mind, we’re here now. Let’s look around for an hour before we go back.”

  I groan. I’d temporarily forgotten that you have to go back down on the sodding thing again. I don’t think my sanity or my underpants can take another trip over Barron Gorge today.

  In the next hour, Laura buys a series of tacky souvenirs for the folks back home, including two didgeridoos, several fridge magnets, four tea towels, and a key fob made from kangaroo testicles. Poppy gets her hands on a stuffed koala bear that she may not let go of again until she hits twenty-one. I spend the entire time sourcing local taxi firms.

  There’s no way I’m getting back on that cable car, even if it means spending an extortionate amount of money on a cab. There are perfectly serviceable roads between me and the base of the mountain, so I see no reason to risk brown trousers again on this excursion.

  I kiss both wife and child before waving to them as I watch the hateful green bubble rise into the trees again. Never in my life have I been so glad to be separated from my family.

  While the taxi journey doesn’t have the horror of severe vertigo, it does feature a lengthy conversation with my friendly Aborigine taxi driver about the state of his bathroom. I usually hate getting into small talk with cab drivers but am more than happy to listen to Terry’s U-bend woes as he drives me back to sea level. Anything beats having your arsehole pucker more times than a trumpet player’s lips during a jazz solo.

  Back at the main station Poppy sees me waiting by the exit, squeals with her customary level of happiness, and runs over with the koala bear still clamped firmly in her grasp. “We spent most of the ride down coming up with a name for it,” Laura says as I gather our daughter into my arms.

  “And what did you decide?” I ask Poppy.

  “Pumbaa,” she replies.

  “Isn’t Pumbaa a warthog?”

  “Not this Pumbaa. This Pumbaa is a koala bear.”

  Having been put in my place, we make our way to the car and drive back to Palm Cove and the dinner I’ve arranged on the beach for my wife’s birthday. All that fearing for my life at a great height has made me ravenous, so I’m looking forward to a relaxed evening in the company of my two favourite women.

  So far today I’ve been scared by a spider and terrified by a cable car, but the day is rapidly coming to an end. So it can’t get any worse, can it?

  The setup on the beach is fantastic. It bloody well should be—it cost me enough. Under a collection of neat, straight palm trees that stand just in front of the hotel and at the edge of the beach is a square glass table covered by an expensive cloth and three comfy chairs.

  “Thank you very much,” Laura says as the waiter holds out her chair to let her sit down. “This is incredible, Jamie,” she says to me with an enchanted expression on her face.

  I have to agree. I’ve done alright here, folks, and no mistake. If the food is anywhere near as good as the view, it’s likely to be the best meal we’ve ever had.

  I’m feeling decidedly pleased with myself as the waiter returns with the menus. My organisational skills are usually blunter than a cheap set of steak knives, so the fact that I’ve managed to pull all this off in one day is an achievement of no small proportions on my part.

  The food on offer does indeed look wonderful, with a selection of dishes that all sound mouthwatering. I spot one particular main course and look up at the waiter. “Crocodile steaks?”

  “Yeah. They’re great. Taste fantastic. Made from crocs locally sourced.”

  I knew this area had wild crocodiles, but I didn’t know the residents caught and ate them too.

  “Eewww!” Poppy exclaims. “You can’t eat a croccy.”

  “Pops is right, Jamie. You can’t eat a crocodile.”

  This of course makes my mind up for me. “Oh no?” I look back at my waiter friend. “I’ll have the crocodile please, mate.”

  “Jamie!”

  “Daddy!”

  I do love to wind up my womenfolk sometimes.

  Laura elects to keep it simple with braised beef, and Pops chooses the chicken nuggets from the children’s menu. We really are going to have to modify that girl’s diet at some point.

  The food arrives, and my crocodile steak is everything the waiter promised me it would be. It’s delicious—kind of a cross between chicken and fish taste-wise. It shouldn’t work judging from that description, but, by golly, it does anyway.

  The belch that erupts from my stomach at the meal’s conclusion is testament to how much I enjoyed it. Poppy giggles. I waggle my eyebrows at her.

  “Snappy tasted really nice, Pops.”

  “You named your meal?” Laura asks with a roll of her eyes over her last bite of beef.

  “Yeah. Snappy tasted wonderful, so I only thought it fair to give it a name as a tribute.”

  “Can I have a stuffed crocodile called Snappy?” my daughter asks.

  “Of course you can, gorgeous.”

  All three of us barely have room for dessert, but we force the chocolate ice cream sundaes down us with remarkable fortitude. Laura and I can do little else other than sit back and puff our cheeks out when the plates are taken away, but Poppy—who has the typical constitution of someone rapidly approaching the age of four—is up and building sandcastles down in the surf before the after-dinner drinks arrive.

  “Shall we go for a walk as the sun goes down then, sweetheart?” I suggest to Laura.

  “That’d be lovely.” She takes my hand. “Today has been wonderful, Jamie. Thank you so much.”

  “My pleasure.”

  I couldn’t be smugger right now if I’d had lessons from Si
mon Cowell.

  We give it another twenty minutes, during which I savour my third seven-dollar cocktail. It’s called a Sin City and is a coffee lover’s idea of heaven, a perfect mix of strong liquor and equally strong java. It’s got quite the kick as well, so I’m feeling a distinctly pleasurable buzz by the time we stand up and amble down to where Poppy is still playing near the shoreline.

  “C’mon Pops. We’re going for a walk up the beach.”

  “Oh Daddy, I’m building castles!”

  “Yes, I know, we watched you, but there might be even better sand up there along the beach.”

  Poppy gives me another one of her most disbelieving looks. Nevertheless she’s quite happy to clamber up onto my shoulders as we begin to walk along Palm Cove beach. If we had a mind we could hike a good four kilometres along the crescent shore all the way to Kewarra Beach in the south, but this is more a light bit of exercise to walk off the thousand calories we’ve just consumed than an expedition, so I doubt we’ll make it much farther than the creek that divides Palm Cove from Clifton Beach about half a mile away away.

  My smugness reaches a hitherto uncharted altitude as we stroll along, given that the timing couldn’t be better. The sun is going down in a glorious shade of orange and red that blazes its way across the azure sky, and the warm sea is gently lapping at our feet.

  Seriously, this is what they mean when they talk about a picture-postcard moment. I’m so full of myself I’m amazed there’s any room for the meal I’ve just eaten.

  “Daddy, look at the wa’er!”

  “Water, Poppy, not wa’er.”

  My daughter climbs down from her perch on my shoulders and runs over to where the creek flows out over the sand and into the ocean. There are many of these creeks all the way along northern Queensland, running down from the mountains to the west. They tend to be slow moving and lined with mangrove trees for the most part, unless it’s the rainy season, when they can become proper rivers that carve out large, impassable runnels in the sand as they empty out into the sea.