The cargo ship to the Torres Strait Islands exactly matches my idea of a cargo ship, which I got from Tintin cartoons. The bridge has charts, a compass, and an engine order telegraph. My cabin is a bare little room with a porthole. The engine fills the room, and the rest of the ship, with a loud groaning and a rhythmic clanging. The ship is green and white, with weeping blotches of rust. The railings have been painted over and over; after rain, chips of the paint come off on your hands. There are two decks, and lawn chairs you just drag to wherever you want to sit. To get from one side of the upper deck to the other, you squeeze past two vents, one blasting hot air, the other the smell of frying onions.
There's a briefing on safety and the dinner dress code. There used not to be a dress code, and then there was an incident with an octogenarian and what the purser calls "budgie smugglers". Now, this garment is discouraged. And that's the dress code. Even then, it's more of a suggestion. She also describes a recent run-in with a norovirus, which is one of the drawbacks to accepting passengers. There may be an "is there an epidemiologist on board?" kind of emergency; I plan to sit quietly and hope someone else leaps up ("I'll need a research grant and a larger sample size!"). Finally, we mill around in life jackets for a while, she asks us to please not fall overboard, and the briefing concludes.
The ship was a dredger, built in Korea for short sailors -- I develop a stoop -- and then converted to cargo. A bunch of passenger berths were added, with the idea that they'd be handy for ferrying workers back and forth. They weren't. Instead, the ship became Australia's only passenger-carrying freighter. It runs regularly from Cairns to the Torres Strait Islands, carrying anything anyone wants to ship: Our cargo includes cars, trees, aircraft fuel, disoriented Canadian tourists, boats, and refrigerated goods. The trees are a mystery to all. If you want trees in North Queensland, you just stop actively fighting the jungle back for a while.
According to the captain, the islands are dependent now on this one tenuous supply link: This ship and one other bring in more or less all the islands' supplies, passing them on to a fleet of old barges for distribution. He says they don't produce a great deal on the islands, except for crayfish and "slugs" ("what we call beche-de-mer. The Chinese think they're an aphrodisiac. Whatever floats your boat.") The purser says that the islanders are lovely, but "not entrepreneurial".
Life on board is a bit slow. When it's hot and clear and boring, the temptation to step off into the ocean is strong. Maybe swim ashore and start a new society. It may not be the ideal group with which to start a new society -- the most promising new societies include pre-menopausal women and people who know how to make fire. Also, it's not clear whether my travel insurance covers founding a civilization on a malarial and crocodile-infested coast. There are enough insurance worries; the real reason for the trip is the Bloodsport-type underground martial arts tournament I'll be entering in Manila, and there's always a chance that could go wrong somehow. No one has ever defeated my "newborn fawn" kung fu style before, but it's also true that no one has had to -- my sensei was devoted to non-violence, and I promised him I'd always avoid fighting ("no, really," he said, "you'll get really hurt").
The main entertainment on board is watching the crew load and unload cargo. There are passengers who are incredibly interested in this. A barge pulls up alongside us on the second day, the crane is unlatched, and shipping containers and trees and containers of fuel are transferred. This goes on for hours, and some of the passengers are absolutely spellbound. They watch just as eagerly at Horn Island the next day when it's repeated. Whether it's somehow sexual in some way I'm too innocent to understand or is just high-functioning autism is impossible to say. When there's no unloading going on, we're invited to have a look at the bridge, where the captain, a breezy, ironic Australian, unfolds the history of the ship, describes how it's navigated, explains what a fine vessel it is, despite being annoying to pilot, and airs his views on the likely aphrodisiac qualities of beche-de-mer.
He unfolds a chart on top of the instrument panel and shows us where William Bligh slipped though the great barrier reef in his little ship after the mutiny on the Bounty. The great provoker of mutinies went on to become governor of Sydney, where he was deposed in the "rum rebellion". We're invited to come back to the bridge and annoy the captain whenever we like, but I'm happy with the traditional role of a passenger, i.e., being a container for viruses and stupid questions.
The sea is like green tea, or one of those very expensive cold-pressed green juices. The passage up is sheltered by the great barrier reef; it's a two-lane shipping highway, with a series of container ships from Asia passing the other way on their way down the coast. Only for a few hours are we out of the sight of land. Otherwise, a hilly jungle coast is always off in the distance. Coming in to Horn Island is a slalom course of channel markers, and then we bump up against the dock and the bewitching circus of cargo unloading begins again. I catch a ferry over to Thursday Island.
The ferry is both a ferry and a crayfish freighter. Before we can board, thirty or forty cardboard boxes labeled "Mud Crabs" have to be hauled off and wheeled away. The ferry captain wonders aloud why the crayfish industry can't buy its own boxes. Crayfish fishers on the ferry are involved in conversation by one of the freighter passengers, who is, apparently, a crayfish enthusiast. They discuss price movements on the crayfish market -- Chinese new year is important -- and methods of tranquilizing crayfish. Cold water and mangrove leaves are both good ways to go. The crayfish are alive in their boxes. They're fine, says a fisherman, but they get smaller. Of course, says the passenger. Their bodies eat themselves, don't they?
There's a briefing on safety and the dinner dress code. There used not to be a dress code, and then there was an incident with an octogenarian and what the purser calls "budgie smugglers". Now, this garment is discouraged. And that's the dress code. Even then, it's more of a suggestion. She also describes a recent run-in with a norovirus, which is one of the drawbacks to accepting passengers. There may be an "is there an epidemiologist on board?" kind of emergency; I plan to sit quietly and hope someone else leaps up ("I'll need a research grant and a larger sample size!"). Finally, we mill around in life jackets for a while, she asks us to please not fall overboard, and the briefing concludes.
The ship was a dredger, built in Korea for short sailors -- I develop a stoop -- and then converted to cargo. A bunch of passenger berths were added, with the idea that they'd be handy for ferrying workers back and forth. They weren't. Instead, the ship became Australia's only passenger-carrying freighter. It runs regularly from Cairns to the Torres Strait Islands, carrying anything anyone wants to ship: Our cargo includes cars, trees, aircraft fuel, disoriented Canadian tourists, boats, and refrigerated goods. The trees are a mystery to all. If you want trees in North Queensland, you just stop actively fighting the jungle back for a while.
According to the captain, the islands are dependent now on this one tenuous supply link: This ship and one other bring in more or less all the islands' supplies, passing them on to a fleet of old barges for distribution. He says they don't produce a great deal on the islands, except for crayfish and "slugs" ("what we call beche-de-mer. The Chinese think they're an aphrodisiac. Whatever floats your boat.") The purser says that the islanders are lovely, but "not entrepreneurial".
Life on board is a bit slow. When it's hot and clear and boring, the temptation to step off into the ocean is strong. Maybe swim ashore and start a new society. It may not be the ideal group with which to start a new society -- the most promising new societies include pre-menopausal women and people who know how to make fire. Also, it's not clear whether my travel insurance covers founding a civilization on a malarial and crocodile-infested coast. There are enough insurance worries; the real reason for the trip is the Bloodsport-type underground martial arts tournament I'll be entering in Manila, and there's always a chance that could go wrong somehow. No one has ever defeated my "newborn fawn" kung fu style before, but it's also true that no one has had to -- my sensei was devoted to non-violence, and I promised him I'd always avoid fighting ("no, really," he said, "you'll get really hurt").
The main entertainment on board is watching the crew load and unload cargo. There are passengers who are incredibly interested in this. A barge pulls up alongside us on the second day, the crane is unlatched, and shipping containers and trees and containers of fuel are transferred. This goes on for hours, and some of the passengers are absolutely spellbound. They watch just as eagerly at Horn Island the next day when it's repeated. Whether it's somehow sexual in some way I'm too innocent to understand or is just high-functioning autism is impossible to say. When there's no unloading going on, we're invited to have a look at the bridge, where the captain, a breezy, ironic Australian, unfolds the history of the ship, describes how it's navigated, explains what a fine vessel it is, despite being annoying to pilot, and airs his views on the likely aphrodisiac qualities of beche-de-mer.
He unfolds a chart on top of the instrument panel and shows us where William Bligh slipped though the great barrier reef in his little ship after the mutiny on the Bounty. The great provoker of mutinies went on to become governor of Sydney, where he was deposed in the "rum rebellion". We're invited to come back to the bridge and annoy the captain whenever we like, but I'm happy with the traditional role of a passenger, i.e., being a container for viruses and stupid questions.
The sea is like green tea, or one of those very expensive cold-pressed green juices. The passage up is sheltered by the great barrier reef; it's a two-lane shipping highway, with a series of container ships from Asia passing the other way on their way down the coast. Only for a few hours are we out of the sight of land. Otherwise, a hilly jungle coast is always off in the distance. Coming in to Horn Island is a slalom course of channel markers, and then we bump up against the dock and the bewitching circus of cargo unloading begins again. I catch a ferry over to Thursday Island.
The ferry is both a ferry and a crayfish freighter. Before we can board, thirty or forty cardboard boxes labeled "Mud Crabs" have to be hauled off and wheeled away. The ferry captain wonders aloud why the crayfish industry can't buy its own boxes. Crayfish fishers on the ferry are involved in conversation by one of the freighter passengers, who is, apparently, a crayfish enthusiast. They discuss price movements on the crayfish market -- Chinese new year is important -- and methods of tranquilizing crayfish. Cold water and mangrove leaves are both good ways to go. The crayfish are alive in their boxes. They're fine, says a fisherman, but they get smaller. Of course, says the passenger. Their bodies eat themselves, don't they?
