Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 16, 2004
GLOOMY SIDE OF SEACHANGE
THE Queensland tourism cliche of "beautiful one day, perfect the next" is based on the assumption of never-ending sunny weather. Come the rain, the tour guides lose the plot entirely. The rain started early at Hervey Bay in slow, heavy plops and now, on the ferry to Fraser Island under lavender-coloured clouds, the skipper assures us the weather will clear by the time we get there. The sky turns battleship grey. Before we left Hervey Bay, a group of pensioners, in high pants and white shoes, had formed a queue outside the toilets to prepare themselves for the 45-minute trip and now, all aboard, they quickly find plenty to dislike. "Oh, it's too crowded inside, let's go out here on the deck ... oh, it's wet out here ... oh, now we won't get a seat inside ... oh, I knew we should have got here early ... oh, misery, misery..." Seeing my own future, I have one of those "someone just walked over my grave" shivers. "Don't worry, guys, it should clear to a lovely day," the island guide lies. Queensland guides are apparently forbidden to acknowledge rain even if they are soaking in it. I am never happy being kept in a confined space with other humans but since a personal tour of Fraser Island with my own ranger would cost $760, I am stuck with 32 others in a bus. Bad news everyone, the odourless garlic tablet I took this morning has turned out not to be odourless. A day spent inside a roaring 350 horsepower mechanical bull bouncing around slushy forest tracks, in agony from a bad back, is not the way to see Fraser Island to its best advantage ... at least the driver had a great time. Afterwards, urgently in need of sun, I head north to 1770 - yes, 1770 - a coastal village out of mobile phone range. Remnants of the '60s beach bums are still here, paunchy in their Hawaiian shirts, greying mullets and bad teeth, driving around in Kombis covered in swirling psychedelic reminders of the '67 Summer of Love. After a swim on the secluded beach where Saint James Cook landed on his 1770 world discovery tour, I walk back to the shack across rippled sands decorated with the filigreed dot paintings of burrowing crabs. Toasting the sunset in shorts and T=shirt, and going naked to bed under a mosquito net although a woman in the local shop said she was already wearing her winter pyjamas, I declare 1770 to be Seachange perfection. It won't last. Council surveyors are everywhere with measuring tapes and clipboards preparing the way for the developers, ready with plans for apartment blocks along the foreshore once the water and sewer are connected this winter. The first mansions have already gone up on the same headland above where Cookie landed, and a mobile phone tower has been completed this week and the locals are impatient for it to be turned on. Do spare me. Someone always blocks the view.
