All the Way Round (24 page)

It took until Cape Keerweer for my strength to return, it was a great relief that I recovered and my strength didn’t keep dropping out of me. Looking at a map, Cape Keerweer is a feature hardly worth a mention let alone the lofty title of ‘cape’, but in this area it’s relative to the surrounding coast and any variation on ‘flat and featureless’ is worth a title.

There were a few fishermen running around the coast in small boats, some of them travelling fair distances because the roads were still waterlogged, but most were just out camping and fishing. Many didn’t see me but most of those who did made an effort to give me a wide berth. The more remote I got, the more curious people usually became, so the obvious effort to avoid me made me curious. I started wondering why: Perhaps they had exceeded their fishing quota and didn’t want to talk to a stranger? Perhaps they were running drugs? Ultimately I decided the reason they avoided me was they didn’t want to waste time saving the life of an obviously deranged tourist whose idea of a pastime was to be a crocodile’s plaything on a very remote coast. Time was precious as there were fish to be caught.

There were a few exceptions, though. I would see perhaps five runabouts over five days and one would stop only if I was directly in its path. The day I got to Cape Keerweer was one of those days when I scored. A local rancher who was out fishing for the day stopped and handed me a lump of the most wondrous roast beef a human could possibly taste. After days of lentils and food I didn’t have to chew, that beef was one of the most memorable meals of the entire trip. That and the fact my bum had decided to turn off the tap meant the benefits of fresh meat would stay in me for more than a couple of hours. It really was a great piece of cow.

The water was murky throughout this section, and this meant the odd bang on the rudder from little sharks. I also saw a couple of dugongs and a few strange-looking dolphins which were hard for me to identify, so I won’t bother speculating. To complete the picture there were turtles and barramundi along with many other unidentified splashes. One of the more unusual of nature’s events was being in the path of a moth migration from the southwest. The moths were in their thousands and I was soon covered as some lucky ones had a rest, but there were plenty more in the water that were not so lucky. It may be considered a remote and featureless coast by humans but nature seemed to like it here.

I made Pormpuraaw (Edward River on some maps) on 2 May, five days after leaving Weipa. I pulled up among the locals fishing in the shallows of the beach. I was just a couple of kilometres short of the tourist campsite and had landed where the locals camp. It had been abused and looked like a war zone, but it had water and I couldn’t be bothered to move on, so I set up, cooked and was asleep by dark.

Next morning ‘Rob the Ranger’ came round and gave me a lift to the regular campsite. It was definitely a step up from the previous night’s site. It’s hard to imagine what can be done to trash a concrete shelter, but the same shelters were built in both camps and they were hard to recognise as the same design. Rob kindly let me use his office to update my web page, and gave me a quick tour of the town before a visit to the supermarket. I spent the afternoon cooking and resting.

I was sharing the camp with three fishermen from Queensland. They had been out fishing and had a good day, catching 40 barramundi but releasing most and only bringing back a couple to eat. There was a 7-foot-high fence behind their tent, which I didn’t pay much attention to at first, and as they were cleaning their fish a large croc rushed out of the undergrowth at one of the fishermen. Luckily the fence held and the croc bounced back, but that didn’t stop the inevitable outburst of the kind of language you wouldn’t hear in church, mixed with relieved laughter.

I then discovered that the fence was separating the campground from the local crocodile farm. The smell of the fish had stirred up one of the bigger breeding females who was known for her temper. It was about now I took a good hard look at the rather rickety fence and wondered how much longer it would be standing. I couldn’t worry too much about the crocs behind the fence though; it was the one on the opposite riverbank, which formed another boundary of the campground, that was more of a concern. So 20 metres from where I had pitched my tent was the fence of the local croc farm, and 200 metres away was a croc basking, fenceless, in the evening sun.

It turned out that the only real problem I had with the wildlife were the crows making off with three Mars Bars I’d just bought. Boy, was I upset with those crows.

Rob came round later that afternoon to take me to the local pub. Pormpuraaw is a dry community so that meant the only alcohol available was at the pub. The police would regularly check vehicles and impose heavy fines on tourists or locals breaking the rules. This ensured the pub was very popular with everybody in town during its opening hours of 4.30 to 8.30 pm. It wasn’t hard to miss the pub but hard to identify it as the local ‘licensed establishment’. It looked more like Checkpoint Charlie. There were high steel fences topped with razor wire, double gates, serving hatches that had metal shutters ready to deploy, and bouncers on the gates and roaming the grounds. I thought that the security levels at the croc farm and the pub could be happily reversed at any other place around the country, but somehow it worked here.

Anyway, after being introduced by Rob, I was allowed to register and enter the pub. Then I got my score card. This had six boxes, each of which represented a beer. I could get one beer at a time, it would be opened for me, my score card stamped, and after I’d had my six there was no more. This was a great system; it destroyed any idea of being in a ‘round’ as you couldn’t buy drinks for others. It would have saved me a fortune when I was growing up if Mrs Thatcher had started it in England, although I think there would have been enough resistance to make the much-detested Poll Tax seem popular in comparison. This simple system did have its limits though. I got a few sideways looks as I asked for ‘A pink gin with a twist of lemon, a packet of cheese and onion crisps, and could I reserve a table for two for dinner? Please.’ I just took my beer and sat down.

I was there for a couple of hours and the conversation covered a few subjects which gave me an insight into local life. Although Kate and Wills had just been made a royal couple and Bin Laden had been shot, where the fishermen went to catch 40 barramundi was much more of a hot topic at the Pormpuraaw local. That’s the way it should be out there.

Next morning, 4 May, I set off from Pormpuraaw to Karumba, 300 kilometres further south.

I made my target of 50 kilometres a day with little variation in my days. The scenery was the same, a shallow beach broken by occasional stretches of mangroves. From the kayak I couldn’t see anything beyond the first few trees because past the beach the land barely rose above sea level. None of the trees or bushes looked established enough to enjoy a secure future as they waited for the next cyclone season to take its toll, and with no rocks, cliffs, stones or boulders there seemed to be no permanence to the landscape. As well as the view the weather was the same. I woke up at the same time, ate the same breakfast, got on the water at the same time, paddled the same distance in the same time and set up camp the same at the end of each day.

There were, however, events that convinced me I wasn’t just reliving the same day. On one occasion I saw the fins of a little shark swim by in the murky waters, followed by the strange sight of the fins of a couple of small sharks swimming in formation. It took a few moments to realise I was actually watching one big shark circling the kayak.

And then there was the beach covered in hermit crabs. They would investigate everywhere and everything they could get into. If you left any food on the ground, there would be a pile of them clambering over each other to get a taste. Their wanderings would take them up and over the tent. They were a little nervous and any noise would send them back into their shells. This meant they tucked their legs away so lost their grip on the tent. The evening’s entertainment was for me to lie still until the tent was covered in adventurous crabs then clap my hands and watch them all roll back down onto the sand.

One evening was even more exciting. I’d just stripped and lain down when I heard what turned out to be a huge bull. He’d smelt me on his beach and apparently I had set up camp between him and where he wanted to go. The stomping and snorting was magnified by the dark. I felt particularly vulnerable lying in my tent so grabbed essentials and made an escape plan should Mr Grumpy decide to run over my camp. But after seeing my puny form in the dark he just walked right past the tent without a sideways glance. I went back in the tent through necessity as I was being eaten alive by various bugs. Around 3 am I was woken by the same bull doing his best to creep through the bush on the other side of the tent, but it’s hard not to make noise when you weigh several tonnes and have four big feet.

Next morning I ferried my gear down to the water about 400 metres away and went back for the kayak. It was still pitch-black and my head torch picked up a couple of bright eyes among my pile of gear. A dingo was checking out my bags, but I had a few words for him that he seemed to understand and, as instructed, he ran off down the beach, leaving everything intact.

There was a subtle change in the water as I progressed further into the gulf. It got muddy and the shore was more often guarded by mangroves that twisted their roots around each other in a timeless knot. The agony of the writhing wood among the mud provided a barrier both psychological and physical. There was no hope of a campsite as low tide revealed deep mud peppered with the upward-growing suckers that allow the mangroves to breathe when submerged. High tide covers the roots with salt water and I conjured up menacing images of crocs and snakes, goblins and serpents, more than enough to spur me on to a better camping spot!

I tried to get to the beach one evening but it gradually got too shallow to paddle. Because I was only 20 metres from the sand, I jumped out of my kayak to pull it the rest of the way. Bad move. I went up to my thighs in black sticky mud. I couldn’t walk, crawl or swim back or forward. I ended up lying on my kayak and, hand over hand, pulled myself back out to deeper water. I was covered, and the mud put up a great fight before being cleaned off over the next couple of days.

On 9 May as I approached Karumba the wind started blowing from the south, which was a bit of a wake-up call as to how much harder things could have been if it had blown over the past few days. Because of the wind, a flotilla of small fishing boats, all chockers with tourists, had bunched up in whatever shelter they could behind the mangroves. After seeing nobody for a few days it was a bit of a shock; I noticed crowds of ten or more people. They weren’t interested in me, though; there were fish to be caught, and it’s serious business out there.

I found the campsite and quickly made myself at home and started my usual list of chores. The caravan park was full of big caravans and the big cars needed to pull them. This was the first wave of ‘grey nomads’ to make it to Karumba since it had started raining six months ago and the roads had been closed. My little tent and kayak didn’t fit in.

Karumba was a small town and I soon found a group of cyclists who had been on a supported trip from Adelaide to Karumba (gulf to gulf) and had finished the same day as I arrived, which was a good effort. However, the next day I spoke to a 60-year-old man camped next to me who had just done the same trip on his bicycle, unsupported. Now that was a great effort.

However they get there, everybody who makes it to Karumba ends up at the Sunset Pub. There is a garden out the back with a view over the Gulf of Carpentaria where you can watch the sun set over the ocean with beer in hand. It is obligatory to take copious amounts of photos of this daily event with every possible combination of all the members of your party. After seeing the sunset every day for the past few weeks, I didn’t have an overwhelming desire to pull out my camera, but watching others pose made for a great show each evening. I guess I was desensitised by having just come from the west coast of Cape York and travelling hundreds of kilometres, where each evening I was rewarded with a desert sun setting over the ocean. But most of the visitors at Karumba had just spent weeks or months travelling up the east coast of Australia and to see the sun set over the ocean was a significant milestone.

The weather turned on me and strong winds kept me at Karumba for a couple of days. That wasn’t too much of a hardship. I spent the time cleaning my corroded tent poles and maintaining and fixing other stuff. Then I learnt that, due to the wet season, one of the food parcels I’d sent from Cairns had not yet arrived at the little town of King Ash Bay because the roads were still closed. This was a worry as I couldn’t get past the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands without a resupply. I really didn’t want to paddle up the McArthur River to King Ash Bay in search of supplies, as it would be very croccy and the flow would be strong just after the rains. Keith Hallett, a fisherman from King Ash Bay, had agreed to take my food parcel out to the Sir Edward Pellew Islands with a fishing tour he was running, but this was subject to the food parcel and his clients being able to get to town on time. There was not much I could do about it, so I sat back to watch the sunset show for one last time.

I started from Karumba on 12 May and was glad to be heading west at last; I was feeling as though the end was in sight. That’s not to say I wasn’t still enjoying the journey but I was under a bit of pressure as far as time went. The first 45 kilometres were all mangroves with no hope of landing the kayak for the night, but then I spotted a small beach at Spring Creek. As I edged closer I dreaded finding a croc sunning himself on the only stretch of sand, because it would mean another 50-kilometre paddle past more mangroves to find the next beach. All was well, though, and I landed without incident at high tide which meant no long portage to camp. A bonus at the end of another good day.