Travel with Indigo

On November 1, following the end of Indy week, we departed the GC through the Southport inlet. Elisa, our new stewardess, and Scotty, a temporary engineer, both Aussies, were on board along with the rest of the crew and yours truly. Winds projected at fifteen knots instead reached a blustery forty and were, along with the attendant seas, coming at us directly on the starboard beam. The near shore shallows caused the waves to stack up sharply, and the outgoing tide was flowing into the wind at a quartering angle. The result of all this was a steep and confused sea.

Just to make things interesting, the port stabilizer decided to quit so we began to roll quite severely. After just a few minutes Elisa and Scotty were sprawled across the back deck, faces ashen with seasick misery. Without a functioning engineer, our intrepid captain, flashlight in hand, crawled around in the deepest recesses of the bilge, found loose wires on the stabilizer controls, and made the repair. The roll angle at once became more comfortable, and Indigo settled in for the cruise to Great Kepple Island at the southern end of the Whitsunday chain.

As we made our seaward approach to Kepple, we could see, strewn across the ocean surface for many miles in all directions, a mocha brown, fetid sludge. This, according to Scotty, is the result of a periodic coral spawn. Undeterred we pressed on and anchored in a bight just off a long white sand beach.  The island was surprisingly arid its low scrub thin and desiccated. The crew launched our tender, loaded it up with our by now well used beach party gear, including coolers of iced down beer and a jug of some island rum concoction, and off we went to a fine afternoon. We saw turtles, rays and a variety of fish in the shallows off our beach but thankfully none of those deadly jellyfish. Scotty assured us we were not yet in the territory roamed by saltwater crocs, though I wondered if the crocs were aware of their presumed geographic limits.

Next day we made our way to Hamilton Island, supply depot for the Whitsundays, and docked in its marina sited in the midst of a small village of bars, restaurants and tourist shops.  Just over a small rise is a garish monument to early ‘80s architecture, a fifteen floor concrete hotel dominating the otherwise one- and two-story residential development set in among the eucalyptus. None of it is especially tasteful or even memorable and much of it brings to mind military housing.

This chain of islands was formed eons ago when the sea flooded a mountain range leaving just the tops protruding above the surface. Today they’re covered over mostly in evergreen forests, their foreshores barren volcanic rock broken here and there by beaches. They are reminiscent of the islands in the Inside Passage of British Columbia and not at all tropical as I had expected.

Pete and JoJo, the owners of Lauxes on the Gold Coast, joined us for a few days. Together we visited what is supposed to be the exclusive resort of Hayman Island, but it too was marred by clunky hotel buildings that brought to mind those of Miami Beach in the ‘70s. Just a week ago, a newspaper article reported that three saltwater crocs had been spotted in the vicinity, which meant that nobody cared much for swimming.

Next day we coasted along the well-known Whitehaven beach a strand of sparkling white sand several miles long and unspoiled by any sign of human habitation.  The captain anchored Indigo offshore of a small hideaway beach just around a headland from Whitehaven and set in a national park. Once again we took ashore all of our accustomed beach gear and set up in the shade of some palms with the beach all to ourselves, at least until a boat full of day trippers descended on the place.

They didn’t stay long but while there exhibited questionable taste in beach fashion. To protect against death by jellyfish, you can buy a nylon mesh suit that covers the entire body save only the face, feet and hands. With these prominent gaps in its coverage I didn’t find the garment particularly reassuring. But the suit’s most regrettable deficiency is that it comes in a wide variety of startling primary colors. So many of our day tripper visitors had donned the things, it looked as if the place was being raided by amphibious giant Gummy Bears.

While seated in the palm shade, guzzling cold beer and noshing on pork rinds, listening to some snappy beach tunes on the portable iPod speakers, we heard a heavy-footed rustling in the underbrush just next to our camp. Now if we were anywhere else in the world this noise would not prompt even a moment’s thought. This being Australia, though, we instinctively went on high alert and a good thing too. Just behind us, not ten feet away, was a matched pair of four-foot, wicked looking lizards, black with yellow spots, forked tongues stabbing the air in search of, we guessed, stray pork rinds. These hideous escapees from Jurassic Park, called goannas, while not lethal to humans nevertheless can be seriously hurtful. They have the odd habit that when you try to run from them they will chase you down, scamper up your back, over the top of your head, and down your front all with long, sharp claws. The recommended tactic is first not to run from and thus provoke the devils, but should they attack you’re supposed to lie down and they are supposed to simply run over you. We decided instead just to hide the pork rinds in the beer cooler so they couldn’t smell our treasure, and sure enough they returned to the bush leaving us free of claw scars.

After dropping off Pete and JoJo, we continued on our way cruising over blessedly flat waters protected from ocean swells by the Great Barrier Reef. Along the way we were joined by ten of the largest bottle nosed dolphin I’ve ever seen, each at least fifteen feet long and wide through the girth. They frolicked in Indigo’s bow wave, leaping, twisting in mid-air, darting here and there for half an hour or more. At times six would cluster together just in front of the bulbous bow, and a few of these would twist around playfully turning their eyes upward looking almost bemused at us hanging over the bow bulwarks awestruck. It was quite an impressive display.

I noticed that when the dolphins were in the bow wave they stopped propelling themselves seeming to glide along as if going downhill. Captain John explained that a vessel pushing its hull through water also pushes in front of it a pressure wave that carries with it whatever happens to be within its influence. It was in Indigo’s pressure wave that the dolphins actually hitched a ride so to speak.