My Mission in Mission Beach
It is my first ride on the Greyhound and the driver sticks a tag on my bags which says: Mission. So I'm on a Mission out here, it is just a two hour drive out to this place that is supposed to have a beautiful beach. The landscape doesn't change much as we go along and something dawns me: this will be the same landscape for long...We arrive and something else dawns me: there are "lost" places in this country, towns built in landscape that doesn't see to end. Where early-settlers must have decided to because they found something good, something worthwhile for staying. My theory is that here it must have been the beach.
As I am not the beach beach person, I will stay 3 nights. The hostel buses already wait for us, and I get to stay in my second hostel which is Scotty's, recommended by Brian and his fiancee, the Irish couple that I was with on Uncle Brian's tour
Cherrie (Darling)
This time I decided for a bit more luxurious option: a female dormitory of 4 with a private bathroom. What a peaceful place I have found! I go into the room and a woman jumps out of the bathroom: Cherrie. I don't understand what she is saying, but in general I have difficulty understanding locals, and obviously also Kiwis! Cherrie (pronounced rather "Jerry" and this way reminds me less of the French "Darling") is an 50 year old lady, recently divorced. She has two children, a daughter and a sun. Her daughter recently moved up to Mission Beach, she is a reporter, and whilst I am staying there, she got a big story about an Albino on the front page of the Cairns New Post which went around the world. Cherrie is afraid of all the wild creatures out there, and she laughs at me when she hears me screaming when I got 'attacked' by one of these big beatles outside our porch that sticks to my knee. She has a big torch (I thought it belongs to the room, picked it up and said "Wow, they are equipped!"), to lighten the way up when she comes home at night from her daugther's house. Cherrie is painting, she brought up all ther painting gear and shows me some of the painting that she has done at Mission Beach. She does these kind of naive paintings of wildlife, I like it, and she has done one painting of her daughter's boyfriend with his guitar.
I got into a really peaceful place at Scotty's and I take advantage of it doing some couching at the porch. A cat is giving me good company as I continue to plan the next stops of my trip. We are just interrupted by some beatle falling of the roof, but the cat resolves the problem. Haven't seen in my life any beatles as big as those! And the fly!
Cherrie and me get to bed at the same time and we start talking. She tells me about her divorce, and about the last relationships she had. She basically escaped to Australia from her last relationship, her daughter told her to stay with her. As Cherrie put it, it was an abusive relationship, the man was very extreme in his emotions, up and down all the time. She got married when she was 18, had her children, and as she put it: there was no other option in your life, that was what you were supposed to do. Now she is thinking of going to university and then do social work. Her daughter told her not to, and just to work something to enjoy her life, so she is a bit unsure about it. She is sharing some deep thoughts with me, and I appreciate her openness and honesty. She tells that she is now just learning how to behave when to date men, she never really learned that. Cherrie tells me: You never change another person, you can only change yourself. I always felt that this is true, but the second part of the sentence particularly strikes me, not sure why it comes so strong towards me, but I must be thinking in the difficult situations I had in the past and how I resolved them.
My own Rainforest
After a day of cycling (how could you think of renting a bike and cycle in the morning? Never do that, it kills you in the sun out there!) and beaching (I was lucky to have the company of a talkative French young lady), I ddecided to spend another day at Scotty's and go out to Dunk Island. The water taxi is more than worth the money, it is a fairly small boat with two strong engines and a funny elderly captain who enjoys taking out all the young ladies to the island. It's a great ride, the top of the boat is high up and I'd love to spend the day riding that boat up and back the island. But my mission is another one: the walk up the highest mountain on the island (271m) inside the rainforest. But first I need to collect some (some..kilos!) of shells and coral pieces that I find on the beach..I can't help it! When I see shells, I am forgetting the world around me and start to collect! And how happy I am to find the smallest and tiniest in the world. I find some new ones, that I've never seen before and so jumps my collector's heart. However after an hour it's time to do the walk. I have secured myself three times that there are no deadly animals on the island, no crocodiles, no deadly snakes, and I start my walk alone by myself.
I need to be honest with you: the way up I was pretty scarred. Most of all to run into a spider net, and have a spider sitting on my nose. It seemed that I was the first person doing the walk in the morning. Actually I did run into some not yet finished spider net that suddenly appeared in front of my eyes! Wow, I got scared, but no spider around...I get to see some beautiful butterflies, brightest blue and orange, big, never seen before in my life! Some animals cross my way: type of a hen, a bit bigger, with black feathers and a red neck. They are digging the earth searching for food. As they hear me approaching they run away. But it leaves me with this feeling of having seens something extraordinary. At a certain point I get overtaken by a couple, that speed up the hill. I try to hold their speed, but I cannot. I tell myself that it is due to my backpack being that heavy (all the photo equipment and water and fruits and 1l of suntan lotion and bikini and towls...I need to be prepared for every case). Suddenly I get out of the rainforest to a little terrace with a stunning view of the island's beaches. The couple is already there, telling me that they have done this walk already three times, mmmhhh so there is hope for me! I get again attacked by an unknown insect, he doesn't care about me insect repellent, but my defenses are successfull (throwing around the arms wildly) and he gets off me.
After that battle, the way back is just the best: the couple is probably already down eating lunch as I start my way down. I can enjoy it much more as I've already discovered and understood that there are no real dangers in here. I often stop to simply hear the sound of the forest, and realize that it is truly like on one of these relaxation CD's, only that it is real! It really moves me, it is a beautiful sound: a mix of birds, leaves falling, cracking, a smell of humid earth that makes me think that this is a living system in constant move: growing and at the same time recycling. I am happy as I reach the beach again and deeply relaxed.
News
As I get back into the hostel, Cherrie awaits me with some news that she spits out: she has decided today to fly back for Christmas to New Zealand. She tells me that she is tired of the crawling animals, and that it has been enough time for her here and that she is ready to go back. She has decided to start studying and she feels that it is the right thing to do. I am happy for her, she has cleared up her clouds and seems eager to head back home. She urges me to come visiting New Zealand, which I give and will give some thoughts. So good-bye to Cherrie, I give her my email address and ask her to write me as I really want to know how her life continues.
Surprise
As I sit again on the couch on the porch, there is another surprise waiting for me: I see Getrud with a guy sitting around chatting. I haven't told you about Getrud yet, so I need to now. I met Getrud during the Tropic Days in Cairns. I heard about her at the reception, Phil was talking about her, telling me that there was this elderly lady, Austrian, travelling by herself not speaking a word of English! I got curious about her, finding that very very courageous. As I met her, she instantly impressed me with her beautiful open smile and look and we started to chat. She tells me her story, which is this: her five children had given her as a birthday present this trip to Australia and New Zealand, and she tells me her sons were convinced that she would be going on the trip, whereas her daughters were a bit unsure. She still wonders and doesn't realize that she is in Australia, so far away from home. We decide to do a guided tour together, as I tell her that I am really interested in the Aborigines, and she as well. Unfortunately the tour was booked and the guy then on holidays, so it didn't work out. The day that I left Cairns, we had breakfast together, and that's when she got very emotional and telling me about her husband and that he died three years ago. Her children actually gave her the trip as a present so that she would leave behind the grooming and think about something different. She cried and told me that she spent 16 years taking care of her husband like in intensive care as he had a brain stroke. I get really touched by this, for her, for her story, and I think closed her into my heart.
So when I saw her on the porch at Scotty's, I was really happy to have found her back, somehow we hadn't talked about which way we both would be going. We had dinner together, and once we get back we have a long chat on the porch. A thunderstorm is coming down, it heavily rains but it is a beautiful setting and we are safe on the porch (besides the falling beatles). At a certain point there is a guy with a backpack walking by, and it turns out to be Owen! Anouther encounter from the Tropic Days in Cairns, an English guy that was working there for accomodation.
Owen's deep thoughts
Getrud is going to bed, and I sit there with Owen watching some guys and girls in the pool playing volleyball. Our chat starts as an innocent chat, but suddenly takes a surprise turn as Owen starts to talk about himself. I am surprised, he gets into kind of a blue mood, and about his social inadaptness. I think that it is so strange about which people you meet and what they tell you at a certain stage. Cherrie, Getrud, and now him. What do they have to tell me and what is in it for me? I remember a conversation at Elba back in October this year, when we discussed about sharing experiences and that we are at different stages in our life, one more ahead than the other and that we can help each other sharing our experiences. That's how I felt with Owen, I exactly knew what he was talking about, I had been like this in the past and even feel it myself sometimes, that I would like to mingle up with certain people that I feel apart from. But life always teaches me some different: that mingling up with persons like Getrud or Cherrie or Owen gives me much more than mingling up with girls and boys in the pool. I tell Owen that, hoping that it would cheer up his mind, but also that if he thinks that he truly does want to stay with these people, he should simply take the risk and jump into it! He said something wise which was good for me to hear as well: sometimes he believes that these people do good, they are not thinking too much! Thank you, Owen, for reminding me about this.
No comments:
Post a Comment