Flying from Sydney to Cairns takes you over eastern Australia, which is a green quilt of farms. After an hour, red blotches of desert start to appear, but then the coastline cuts back west, and everything's green again. In Queensland, jungle and brush drained by sinuous green or brown rivers. Separating the jungle from the ocean is an endless ribbon of beaches.
The reason Cairns was hacked out of the jungle isn't really obvious. It's a colony of dive shop operators and t-shirt merchants. The streets are lined with pharmacies, coffee shops, hotels, and mutually supporting pairs of tattoo parlours and liquor stores. There's a sense that everyone is in a hurry to get back to the pool. Young men in sandals lounging outside their dive shops look at you appraisingly as you walk by, wondering whether the benefits of standing up to try to sell you a diving trip outweigh the costs.
The hotel was probably lovely in the 1960s. It's decayed a bit since, now about halfway between "family holiday resort" and somewhere you might come to wean yourself off heroin ("business, pleasure, or weaning yourself off heroin?" / "A bit of each, actually"). It has a combination microwave-convection oven and a combination VCR-DVD player. Old women in bathing caps and vintage swimsuits breaststroke across the pool. There's a faint smell of rot, and a feeling like you might be inside a 1970s sitcom. It's family-run. Running hotels is one of the many things huge, ruthless corporations do much better than families.
One of the few things to do in Cairns is to walk along the water. The docks at one end hold jetski rental places, tourist boats, and Paul Allen's megayacht. So, a second thing might be a chat with Paul Allen: "I don't care what anyone says, I think it's great that Windows replaced logical text menus with fields of vomit-coloured hieroglyphics. Also, people are way too down on Microsoft. What's market power for if you can't grossly abuse it? By the way, this is a super-tasteful megayacht."
There's a helicopter tour operation, which seems to be thriving. The helicopter tour does for being obnoxious what the Maxim gun did for warfare. One tourist can annoy thousands. For an extra fee, you can play Ride of the Valkyries from a loudspeaker, like in Apocalypse Now.
Efforts have been made to find some reason to put up plaques, but it's been hard going. There's a large display of the 'sister city' arrangements Cairns has with random towns around the world, with the feeble connections between them enthusiastically expounded ("both towns are on the ocean"; "the towns actually have nothing in common, so it, like, really makes you think").
On the stage in the bandshell, a backpacker couple on lawn chairs washes sand off each other's feet. The budget for public entertainments in Cairns needs to be raised as a matter of urgency. An English couple, she with faded green neck tattoos older than I am, he with a case of Corona on his shoulder, giggle and shove each other at the street corner.
Past a lagoon is the first of several warning signs about crocodiles. Cairns feels like a beach town, but you can't actually go to the beach, because you might get eaten. And, after all the warnings, the headlines would be embarrassing. If headlines are likely. It would probably be an item in the "Dining Out" section, or "Tourist's Next of Kin Fined for Feeding Wild Animals".
Kuranda
I took the train to Kuranda. This is a tourist train, but the track itself was built to supply starving gold-rush towns. It's one of those desperate 19th century tropical engineering projects: A cheery tale of malaria, dysentery, and horses drowning in mud. The first announcement on the train is to tell us that the cemetery to our right is where some of the workers are buried.
The platform was crowded with tour groups, and I was sure I would be stuffed in with the loudest of them, but I have an entire carriage to myself. Staff explain that tour groups are kept together. So, dozens of people are compressed into a spam-like cube in some cars, and then each sullen loner who bought his own ticket gets a car to himself. It's a very good system.
It's pouring, and the mosquitoes that killed the workers, though disarmed of malaria, still come in through the windows to do their best. The staff pause every time they walk by to joke with me about how busy my carriage is, and I say something ironic about it being a nice day. They agree, because if it weren't storming, it would be unbearably hot.
It's good that the Kuranda railway wasn't built to supply the current village of Kuranda. It would be awkward if men had shivered to death of fever and driven tunnels through rock to establish this colony of ice cream sellers and didgeridoo merchants and exhibitors of captive koalas. The village does a strange sideline in divination and quackery: As well as the usual things, there's an iridologist, which seems like a pretty specialized branch of arcane nonsense for such a small place. There's a wrecked airplane: Not because it has any connection with Kuranda, but because it was available and it's something people might want to gawk at. Barefoot local kids run back and forth. A merchant stops one and makes him turn out his pockets. It's a scene from 19th century London. Later, I pass a group of them playing pitching pennies.
The one worthwhile thing to do in Kuranda is to walk. Trails wind through the jungle and along the river. The one I follow ends suddenly, because a kind of bird zoo has built across it. A muddy detour leads off into the jungle, and then dumps you at the side of a busy highway. A little ways along the shoulder, it leads back off into the jungle. There's a small clearing covered in empty Victoria Bitter cans where a chorus of insects sings deafeningly. Past that, the little muddy track leads to the door of a dilapidated shack, and I start to wonder if it's possible that I'm on the wrong path, somehow.
On the way back, I have to fight off a tree that dangles long creepers covered in painful, velcro-like barbs. A complete bastard of a plant. As though a deranged deity, in stocking Australia with plants and animals, had stopped and thought, now, is that enough things that sting or bite, or should I do a few weird ones just to be safe?
The actual trails, when I go back, are wide and obvious. Fast little streams half a foot deep cross the paths in places; I try to jump the first one, and get soaked enough that the rest don't really matter. On the path or just off it I keep running across turkey-like birds with red heads, yellow throats, and a hilarious waddle of a run. It turns out (thanks, internet) that these are Australian brush-turkeys. There are no people around, which is my reward for being the only one dumb enough to hike around in the spouting rain. After a few hours in the mud, I get back on the tourist train looking like a man who lives in a hedge.
In a couple of days, I take a cargo barge to the Torres Strait Islands. I'm counting on this to bring some much-needed weirdness to the trip.
The reason Cairns was hacked out of the jungle isn't really obvious. It's a colony of dive shop operators and t-shirt merchants. The streets are lined with pharmacies, coffee shops, hotels, and mutually supporting pairs of tattoo parlours and liquor stores. There's a sense that everyone is in a hurry to get back to the pool. Young men in sandals lounging outside their dive shops look at you appraisingly as you walk by, wondering whether the benefits of standing up to try to sell you a diving trip outweigh the costs.
The hotel was probably lovely in the 1960s. It's decayed a bit since, now about halfway between "family holiday resort" and somewhere you might come to wean yourself off heroin ("business, pleasure, or weaning yourself off heroin?" / "A bit of each, actually"). It has a combination microwave-convection oven and a combination VCR-DVD player. Old women in bathing caps and vintage swimsuits breaststroke across the pool. There's a faint smell of rot, and a feeling like you might be inside a 1970s sitcom. It's family-run. Running hotels is one of the many things huge, ruthless corporations do much better than families.
One of the few things to do in Cairns is to walk along the water. The docks at one end hold jetski rental places, tourist boats, and Paul Allen's megayacht. So, a second thing might be a chat with Paul Allen: "I don't care what anyone says, I think it's great that Windows replaced logical text menus with fields of vomit-coloured hieroglyphics. Also, people are way too down on Microsoft. What's market power for if you can't grossly abuse it? By the way, this is a super-tasteful megayacht."
There's a helicopter tour operation, which seems to be thriving. The helicopter tour does for being obnoxious what the Maxim gun did for warfare. One tourist can annoy thousands. For an extra fee, you can play Ride of the Valkyries from a loudspeaker, like in Apocalypse Now.
Efforts have been made to find some reason to put up plaques, but it's been hard going. There's a large display of the 'sister city' arrangements Cairns has with random towns around the world, with the feeble connections between them enthusiastically expounded ("both towns are on the ocean"; "the towns actually have nothing in common, so it, like, really makes you think").
On the stage in the bandshell, a backpacker couple on lawn chairs washes sand off each other's feet. The budget for public entertainments in Cairns needs to be raised as a matter of urgency. An English couple, she with faded green neck tattoos older than I am, he with a case of Corona on his shoulder, giggle and shove each other at the street corner.
Past a lagoon is the first of several warning signs about crocodiles. Cairns feels like a beach town, but you can't actually go to the beach, because you might get eaten. And, after all the warnings, the headlines would be embarrassing. If headlines are likely. It would probably be an item in the "Dining Out" section, or "Tourist's Next of Kin Fined for Feeding Wild Animals".
Kuranda
I took the train to Kuranda. This is a tourist train, but the track itself was built to supply starving gold-rush towns. It's one of those desperate 19th century tropical engineering projects: A cheery tale of malaria, dysentery, and horses drowning in mud. The first announcement on the train is to tell us that the cemetery to our right is where some of the workers are buried.
The platform was crowded with tour groups, and I was sure I would be stuffed in with the loudest of them, but I have an entire carriage to myself. Staff explain that tour groups are kept together. So, dozens of people are compressed into a spam-like cube in some cars, and then each sullen loner who bought his own ticket gets a car to himself. It's a very good system.
It's pouring, and the mosquitoes that killed the workers, though disarmed of malaria, still come in through the windows to do their best. The staff pause every time they walk by to joke with me about how busy my carriage is, and I say something ironic about it being a nice day. They agree, because if it weren't storming, it would be unbearably hot.
It's good that the Kuranda railway wasn't built to supply the current village of Kuranda. It would be awkward if men had shivered to death of fever and driven tunnels through rock to establish this colony of ice cream sellers and didgeridoo merchants and exhibitors of captive koalas. The village does a strange sideline in divination and quackery: As well as the usual things, there's an iridologist, which seems like a pretty specialized branch of arcane nonsense for such a small place. There's a wrecked airplane: Not because it has any connection with Kuranda, but because it was available and it's something people might want to gawk at. Barefoot local kids run back and forth. A merchant stops one and makes him turn out his pockets. It's a scene from 19th century London. Later, I pass a group of them playing pitching pennies.
The one worthwhile thing to do in Kuranda is to walk. Trails wind through the jungle and along the river. The one I follow ends suddenly, because a kind of bird zoo has built across it. A muddy detour leads off into the jungle, and then dumps you at the side of a busy highway. A little ways along the shoulder, it leads back off into the jungle. There's a small clearing covered in empty Victoria Bitter cans where a chorus of insects sings deafeningly. Past that, the little muddy track leads to the door of a dilapidated shack, and I start to wonder if it's possible that I'm on the wrong path, somehow.
On the way back, I have to fight off a tree that dangles long creepers covered in painful, velcro-like barbs. A complete bastard of a plant. As though a deranged deity, in stocking Australia with plants and animals, had stopped and thought, now, is that enough things that sting or bite, or should I do a few weird ones just to be safe?
The actual trails, when I go back, are wide and obvious. Fast little streams half a foot deep cross the paths in places; I try to jump the first one, and get soaked enough that the rest don't really matter. On the path or just off it I keep running across turkey-like birds with red heads, yellow throats, and a hilarious waddle of a run. It turns out (thanks, internet) that these are Australian brush-turkeys. There are no people around, which is my reward for being the only one dumb enough to hike around in the spouting rain. After a few hours in the mud, I get back on the tourist train looking like a man who lives in a hedge.
In a couple of days, I take a cargo barge to the Torres Strait Islands. I'm counting on this to bring some much-needed weirdness to the trip.
