Week 35 – the old routine

No new exciting experiences this week, just a settling back into the standard pattern of Maisie-based activities, and acclimatizing to winter in June!

On Wednesday it was with some trepidation that I set off to my first exercise class in a month! It was a chilly morning – you could see your breath – but with a bright blue sky and a dazzling low sun. Fortunately a few of us hadn’t been in a while, so it wasn’t too embarrassing, and Maisie made sure I didn’t have to work too hard by crying and clinging to my legs the whole time (or sitting on my back while I attempted press-ups!). It was great to catch up with everyone’s news – Sam, recovered now from her big trip to the UK and Spain and back to work, Claire-Anne just returned from France, Sally having survived 2 weeks of a whole household of illness, and Jo, now 9 months pregnant (the baby was due today) and still exercising furiously – she’s amazing! Sam and I made the most of the glorious weather and had lunch outdoors at a little café in the Gasworks Art Park.

Back to swimming class on Thursday and we had a stand-in teacher today. Although he was oddly camp, he was very good with the babies, and explained the theory behind the various exercises, introducing a new one which encourages them to float on their backs (not something most babies are keen on). It was another crisp blue day, and I took Maisie down the pier to see the diggers at work, and to marvel at some hardy souls wading out into the sea. At Luna Park they were advertising Christmas in July!

Maisie was welcomed back to Friday storytime at the library by Catie, the young woman who now runs it, who sports a wonderful line in 1950s dresses! In the afternoon we had our regular playgroup session, standing round chatting in the cold while the children ran around in an unusually subdued manner.

The brilliant winter sunshine continued on Saturday, and we took an afternoon stroll along the busy palm-fringed beach promenade towards South Melbourne. There was lots of activity – sailing regattas out to sea, container ships chugging along the horizon, handball trials on the sand and best of all for Maisie, a phalanx of diggers and trucks working on the harbour re-landscaping.

We had been invited to Nate’s first birthday party, and Sam had mastered the party food catering – the adults were thrilled to have an excuse to eat all the cakes, biscuits, sweets and meat pies (an Aussie essential) as most of the children were too little for them! I caught up with Sam’s friend, Lizzie, who I knew briefly at the IOE and who is now working at Monash University (ours is far from a unique path!). Sally, Chris and Iggy were there too – Chris, who works for a local MP, just back from a morning door-knocking, getting people to register to vote (the Australian federal elections are to be held in September). It was dark when we left but the sky was lit by this week’s beautiful super moon (Maisie is obsessed with the moon)!

In the evening Neil and watched a recently released DVD, a documentary entitled ‘The Queen of Versailles’. It was a fascinating portrait of one obscenely rich family dealing with the sudden disappearance of their wealth following the stock market crash in 2008. The filmmaker started work earlier that year, intending simply to profile the family, who were in the process of having the largest (single-owner) house built in the US (‘inspired by’ the palaces of Versailles), but it rapidly turned into something much more complex and interesting. The film somehow resisted sensationalism and remained impartial, letting the people (not just the immediate family, but their whole household – nannies, drivers, housekeepers, relatives) and events speak eloquently for themselves.

The new local children’s centre (combining nursery, maternal health and playgroup services) held an opening gala on Sunday afternoon. We went along to have a look, even though we don’t have a chance in hell of ever getting Maisie in there sadly (competition is just too fierce)! It was impressive – lots of lovely colourful indoor/outdoor spaces and great equipment, which the crowds of middle class parents were cooing over. They’d laid on food and a great number of activities – stories, balloons, and a huge Dora the Explorer (which Maisie particularly loved). Leaving Neil as chaperone, I went into town to catch a film showing as part of the current Spanish film festival (it was on at the Kino cinema, one of my regular haunts, pictured below). It was a lovely, sad film from Argentine, called ‘Clandestine Childhood’. Set in 1979, it was about the 11-year-old son of political activists, struggling to make sense of a double life of secrets and death, whilst experiencing the joy and pain of first love.

A chilly winter fog on Monday morning temporarily grounded all the planes at Melbourne airport, and every conversation I overheard today was locals moaning about the weather (I quote ‘5 days in a row with temperatures hitting freezing, in June – it’s never been recorded before – so much for global warming!!!’). Maisie and I weren’t bothered, and had the park to ourselves. In the evening I went to the Brighton cinema to see a new Australian film called ‘Satellite Boy’, a gentle fable about a young aboriginal boy going on his modern-day walkabout. It was a simple tale but beautifully acted and filmed, showcasing the amazing desert landscapes of Western Australia. I still find it hard to believe that only 500 miles north of Melbourne you begin to hit desert.

Week 34 – crocodile tears

On Tuesday Becky had a day’s supply teacher work and Sarah was minded by a friend so Maisie and I had a quiet day to ourselves. The afternoon was grey but warm so we walked down to the lagoon where all the backpackers were hanging out, and Maisie had the toddler pool all to herself – at its deepest it reached her waist, and she loved it – for the first 20 minutes she had to hold tightly on to my hand but after that she was wading and splashing through, dunking herself in the water and strenuously pulling herself up the concrete walls for over an hour.

On Wednesday Becky gave me a morning off Maisie, and I went off on a crocodile safari! There’s a healthy population of Estuarine crocodiles in the local rivers and wetlands (the larger type of two breeds of crocodile native to Australia). The tour company’s little bus drove us inland, past the small sugar town of Proserpine, to an extensive area of floodplains, saltpans and mangroves spreading around the Proserpine river estuary. As the track got bumpier and wetter the dripping green woodlands came alive with wallabies bounding away, and swirls of black, white and yellow butterflies. We stopped at a little campsite area where they’d arranged a little display of fierce-looking crocodile heads for us to handle. It certainly didn’t alleviate my nerves about the possibility that I was about to come very close to these terrifying creatures! One of the guides, Steve (who had a very impressive knowledge of the local flora and fauna), loaded us all onto a rickety, metal flat-bottomed boat, and we were suddenly in another world – a narrow channel of soupy brown water with high stinking slimy mud walls peppered with knobbly roots and holes, and the vivid mid-green tangle of mangroves rising above us, some of them precariously perched, about to topple in as the mud erodes on one side and builds up on the other.

Within 30 seconds we’d spotted our first crocodile, nestled in the mud just by the water, barely indistinguishable from it in colour, but for the skin’s amazing wrinkles, protusions and spikes. This was the first of many we saw, of all sizes. There were the massive 5 metre males – Steve would point them out on the bank in the distance, but on noting us they’d generally, with a flick of their tail, slide rapidly down into the water, their eyes and back visible on the surface for a few seconds before they dived, and you had no idea where or how close they might be (they can stay submerged for hours!).

The females – 3 or 4 metres in length, were generally more docile. Steve would drive the boat right up to their basking spot and they wouldn’t move a muscle although their eyes were boring into you! Sometimes they would rest with their jaws open (they may do this to help regulate their body temperature), the white-pink inner mouth flesh and terrifyingly uneven jagged white teeth on display. Other mothers were hanging out with their young – gaggles of tiny crocodiles only a foot or so long, which can dart about, unlike the weighty adults. This is apparently unusual behavior, as most mothers only raise their young for a month before they are left to fend for themselves (and only 1% of crocs reach adulthood).

We cruised the murky waters for a couple of hours or so, eyeballing a great number of crocodiles, and the occasional brilliant bird, including a great egret (spotlessly white – apparently their under feathers disintegrate into powder, like talc, which keep the upper plumage perfectly clean), the beautiful blue/grey striated heron, and two types of jewel-bright kingfisher – sacred and azure. We also spotted swarms of tiny fiddler crabs – distinctive with their one large orange/white pincer. Steve kept up a fascinating commentary throughout – about the mangrove habitat, the wonderfully strange biology of the crocodile (they’ve been around since the Triassic period!), and quirky stories about the local adult crocs, all of which they’ve given individual names (he could name every one we saw). We even learnt that one of the guys who was the inspiration for the character of James Bond hailed from nearby Proserpine (his name was Sidney Cotton)!

We returned to the camp base for a barbecue lunch, which featured lots of meat, and a delicious local speciality, barramundi fish. Brush turkeys bustled around our feet searching for scraps, and a local black kite swooped down to snatch a morsel of sausage. After lunch, we were taken on an open-sided cart dragged by a tractor out into the flood plain. Another guide talked us through the eco-system of the wetland forests, saltpans, plains and waterholes, describing the astonishing range of uses of the local trees including the melaleuca (tea) tree, the hibiscus and the foam-bark, most of which were discovered by the aboriginals. Their method of testing whether something could be eaten was by roasting and boiling it for as many times as it took before it stopped being poisonous. A couple of famous Australian white explorers, Burke and Wills, died having eaten a local root (nardoo fern) that they hadn’t roasted and boiled enough times.

We saw many birds – three different types of ibis (glossy, straw-necked and white), egrets of various sizes, a couple of frogmouths (a type of nightjar) snuggling up in a gum tree, swamp-hens, territorial lapwings, jacanas, and lots of hawks circling overhead. We were told about the snakes (luckily we didn’t see any), and the crocs which occasionally make it up onto the floodplain and catch a wallaby or two during the wet season.

Back in the campsite it was time for more food – traditional Aussie billy tea and damper, prepared over the fire. The billy originated as a French can of preserved beef (boeuf bouille), the damper simple flour and water cooked over hot ashes – but ours was a more sophisticated version including egg, milk and raisins! It was very tasty, fluffy and a bit char-grilled on the bottom. The guides had caught us a mudcrab (many locals fish for them, risking close encounters with crocs), a fast-moving green/brown crab that lives, as you’d guess, in the creek mud, and apparently tastes even better than lobster. Our specimen wasn’t cooked, but returned to its home in the mud.

Thursday dawned clear and bright, the coastal hills crowned with a band of grey mist (a typical winter morning, but not one we’d experienced in the last 2 weeks). We were all up early for a day’s sailing on the Derwent Hunter, an elegant 90ft schooner. The girls were very excited and wanted to clamber up and over and into everything – it was pretty hard work stopping them leaping over the side. The skipper invited them into the wheelhouse, and they both had a go at steering – something Sarah took very seriously! Maisie was more fascinated by the bins and the box of snorkeling equipment.

Our first stop was at Langford Spit, a sand bank that only appears at low tide, and it is where Becky and Shannan got married (in Australia you can get married absolutely anywhere).

While Becky minded the girls, Maisie wading straight into the sea, fearless as ever, I had another go at snorkeling – a less scary experience when swimming from the shore, but there weren’t such exciting things to see, as although the coral was abundant it was very sandy, and consequentially, a bit grey. There were some lovely fish though, in particular a large shoal with yellow, black and silver horizontal stripes. A little further out turtles were spotted but I was too slow to swim over in time.

The boat took us on to another idyllic spot, a tiny beach-fringed island. We strolled over to the far side and had the sand to ourselves, enjoying the gentle shade of the tea trees and the birds and butterflies, and watching sea planes land at the next island which houses an exclusive hidden resort.

Back on the boat a light buffet lunch was served and Maisie wolfed it down – chicken, ham, pineapple – food she will never normally eat. On the long afternoon sail back to Airlie Beach, Maisie and Sarah were befriended by a lovely, very self-assured 3 year old girl – it was amazing to see the difference a year makes (or maybe she was just very grown-up) – something to look forward to definitely!

The crew gave some long, interesting talks on the history of the boat, the Whitsunday islands and the local fish, but sadly it just wasn’t possible to listen to them and wrangle Maisie at the same time – so although it was beautiful on the boat, foaming though the stunning azure waters, it was quite a relief when we returned to port late in the afternoon.

The girls had had enough by this late point in the day and were very unwieldy. I had to pack up our bags for our return journey and Maisie’s low-level wails built up into a screaming fit on the changing mat, at which point she suddenly passed out (5.30pm!). I put her straight to bed and she didn’t wake till 7am the next morning!

Friday was another perfect warm sunny morning, but sadly Maisie and I had to head home to Melbourne. Our journey involved a variety of transport – car, ferry, plane, bus and tram! We met some very friendly, helpful people and Maisie was happy as she was plied with sweet food (by strangers, but I let her accept it as a special treat!). At the airport I was just working out how to check in when an airline lady came up saying my name, and took me straight to the head of the queue. On the plane we sat next to a lovely Melbourne guy who had 4 grown-up kids, so didn’t mind Maisie’s incessant climbing and wriggling about, and he bought us coffee and muffins.

Fortunately the sun was out in Melbourne (after 48 hours of solid rain), so the edge was taken off the cold! Neil met us off the airport bus and Maisie was very excited to travel in a tram again. It was nice to be back in St Kilda, but surprising to see it looking so wintery, with all the leaves off the trees.

A fraught Saturday afternoon trip to Ikea brought us back to regular life with a bump. But luckily this was followed by a fun night out in St Kilda with a couple of the mums from Playgroup, Lou and Jules. They’ve both lived in Melbourne since they were teenagers, so they know all the places to go and the local characters and gossip. After a drink at one of the buzzing Acland Street bars, we went to a new Mexican restaurant – a bit high concept with booming music (to attract a crowd younger than us I guess!), but with a friendly atmosphere and delicious spicy food (I was particularly impressed by a side of coleslaw!). We talked travel and partying, and not babies too much of the time.

Sunday started with our regular breakfast date at Leroys cafe, but then there were more chores to be done in town. Late in the afternoon I escaped to enjoy the end of a refugee music festival in Fitzroy. It was on a much smaller scale than many of the events we’ve been to, with only a few stalls and tiny stages, but what was notable about it was how multi-cultural it was – it felt much more like a London than a Melbourne crowd. The headline act was an entertaining Ethio-jazz band with various guest singers, one who is apparently a pretty big star in her home country. There was also the usual earnest spoken word, and Samoan and Egyptian hip-hop. There was a lady doing henna tattoos, so I treated myself to one for old time’s sake!

In Federation Square as part of a mid-winter festival, they’ve installed a large light installation that comes alive at dusk. The lights are triggered by sound, and every night for a month, a different local choir sings at the foot of them and they flicker on and cycle through a rainbow of colours. The singing wasn’t great but the lights were pretty! I went on to see a new documentary at ACMI, entitled ‘The Human Scale’. It was framed around the ideas of architect Jan Gehl, who is a leader of the movement to radically change the focus of city planning, from one based on getting the most cars in and around a city (the primary model for the last 100 years), to one that is designed to maximize the experience of the people who live and work there, enabling them to get around on foot or by bicycle. Town planners, mayors, architects and activists from various international cities presented a number of case studies illustrating his theories and concerns. Most frightening was the rapid development of the Asian mega-cities (Chongqing was used as an example), completely car-based, with people living in extreme isolation in huge anonymous towers on the city outskirts and forced to drive everywhere. A very different project was the redevelopment of ruined Christchurch in New Zealand. All the local residents were consulted as to how they would like the city rebuilt, and a set of basic planning rules was put together as a result (lower level buildings, more public space, better pedestrian/bike routes etc.) – although whether they will be observed once the private developers get involved is another matter.

Week 33 – rainforests, resorts and rainbows

Tuesday was a rather less high octane day after the full-on start to our Queensland holiday. We drove a little way south along the coast to Shute Harbour, where the road ends. With Maisie strapped into a backpack on Neil’s back, we walked through the glowing greenery of the coastal forest to an impressive coral beach – no pebbles, just lumps of chalky coral, each one of them exquisitely patterned, which clinked like fragments of porcelain as we strode across them.

It was a quiet spot (a sign on the beach warned of crocodiles but luckily they weren’t in evidence!) and we enjoyed a lazy hour there while Maisie got increasingly confident running across the coral shingle (and I tried not to be too paranoid that she’d fall and cut herself to shreds!). A further little winding path took us up to a viewpoint with another wonderful panorama over the green-gold tree-tops to the knobbly islands and turquoise bays.

On Wednesday morning I took a stroll to the end of Becky and Shannon’s road. The houses soon peter out (those that are there are mysteriously hidden away down long winding tracks) and the trees close in until they rise like a great wall in front of you. I found a muddy track leading into the woodlands, and enjoyed gusts of butterflies and got covered in burrs.

In the late afternoon Becky, Sarah (a veteran sailor at 23 months old!) and I joined Shannan and his 2-man crew on their sailing boat for the weekly sailing race which takes place in Airlie Beach bay. The lighting was dramatic, the sun sinking fast and a haze of pink, copper grey clouds swirling around, with the occasional squall of rain and fragments of multiple rainbows fleetingly appearing and disappearing. The racing is thrilling – the boats get very close to each other, and the tacking is often fast and furious – we were constantly scrambling from one side to the other as the sail narrowly missed us, hanging our heads and feet over the side to weight the boat in the optimum way.

In the rare moments when we were level, the crew snatched a drink of rum and ginger beer and a quick cigar! The final stretch, as the gloom of night crept in, was the most intense, as the gusting winds sent the boats all over the place. We had to tack every minute or so to maintain our course, and it was very hard to know what was going on. We passed the post close on the heels of another boat, but once the handicaps had been taken account of, we won our class (which is the only result Shannan’s happy with, so that was a relief!). Motoring back into the jetty, our engine suddenly cut out just by the rocky breakwater, but thankfully, another yacht was just behind us and was able to tow us in. One of the guys crewing asked me if I’d done much sailing, so it appears that I wasn’t too bad a novice!

We borrowed Becky’s car on Thursday to drive inland to the Eungella national park. Once we’d passed the end of the Airlie Beach straggle, we were into sugar cane country, the canes high and ripe with fountains of pale mauve flowers. They will be harvested soon (the wooden church was advertising the ‘cane harvest blessing’), the chopped cane ferried on the special cane train to the various local refineries (the little local settlements, scatterings of traditional queenslander houses built on high stilts, cluster round these large old-fashioned smoke-billowing factories). The other local industry is beef farming. The cows are slim with humped necks, like those in India, and flocks of white egrets mob them, perching  on their backs.

As we approached the park, the rolling grassy hills rose higher and the foliage grew denser. We drove up a forested valley, through several deep, fast-flowing fords (a bit hairy in our low-slung car) to the start of a walk to a waterfall. The rain began in earnest just as we arrived, but this seemed appropriate for a trip to the rainforest! And it was everything you could hope for – dark and dense, ridiculously verdant and green, the towering lush-leaved trees twisted and coated with ferns and vines and creepers and mosses. There wasn’t any visible wildlife – but unseen birds popped, buzzed and shrieked in the canopy. When we got to the waterfall, Maisie thought it was the funniest thing, and giggled away for about 5 minutes! It was an impressive white cascade over reddish brown rocks falling to a murky green-grey pool, beautifully framed by the greenery. On our return to the car, several incredibly tame kookaburras were begging for food (luckily I got my photo without food payment!). They are different here than in Victoria, paler, with a blue flash on the wing.

We drove onwards to the head of the valley and up a steep winding road to a high plateau (we were in the cloud at this point so couldn’t see the apparently breath-taking view all the way to the sea!). We stopped at a place where wild duck-billed platypus can be viewed on a good day. A little platform overlooks a wide brown stretch of the river, busy with freshwater turtles and a variety of fish (including an eel at least 1.5 metres in length). The platypus aren’t so keen to show themselves. I waited half an hour or so, enjoying the busy cluckings of a brush turkey, and the electric blue darting of a kingfisher, and was just about to leave when I spotted a neat little brown creature, perfectly curved at each end (the beak and the tail are almost the same size and shape), popping up from under the water. It floated for a few seconds, eyes just above the surface, before neatly diving forward and down into the murky brown depths, then re-emerging a minute or so later just a short distance away. It was lovely to watch – I don’t think I ever imagined I would see a platypus in its natural habitat! Sadly we had to keep Maisie away as with all her noise she would have scared it off.

Friday was a damp morning, shrouded in cloud, so with some trepidation we packed up our stuff and set off for the ferry to Hamilton Island for a one-night mini-break at the island’s resort. The sea was choppy and our catamaran was buffeted about – it was the first time I had felt a bit queasy on a boat this week! Maisie had no problem, she loved all the bumps. We were met off the boat by a resort rep and driven two minutes in a mini-bus to our hotel, a slightly shabby tower with cool external glass lifts speeding up and down (the first thing we did was go up to the top floor!).

Inside the spaces were large and functional, but the lack of luxury was made up for by the wonderful view from the room (and the sunshine that suddenly appeared to show it off) – definitely one of my top hotel views ever I think – looking out across palm trees and a glowing blue bay to the receding layers of hilly, tree-covered islands beyond. Maisie was intrigued by the swimming pool and all the activity directly below, and later, by the screeching cockatoos that came to perch on the balcony rail.

We went out for an explore – like any resort it felt like a theme park loaded with imported palms, the clusters of hotels, pools, restaurants, gyms and attractions wrapped around with heavily landscaped gardens dripping with exotic blooms. Everyone whizzes around on golf buggies, as it’s clearly too much effort to walk the extremely short distances!  We stopped at the marina, full of spotless motor-yachts, and lined with expensive beach clothes shops (billowing sequined kaftans and micro bikinis) and smart restaurants, and the obligatory ‘art gallery’ full of eye-poppingly bright renditions of coral and fish and boats and island sunsets.

The local cockatoos and lorikeets were used to tourists dropping them tidbits so perched brazenly on the tables – it was wonderful to get such a close-up view, although a bit unnerving! A grove of trees housed thousands of bats, big black balls festooning the upper branches. The stench of them was pretty pungent.

In the afternoon, we all escaped the artificiality to go on a hike through the unspoilt forest (where no golf buggy could reach). A few steps up the steep rocky trail took us into another world – through a grove of butterflies (I managed to photograph the beautiful blue tiger butterfly), and into woodlands of grass trees, native firs, cabbage trees, tea trees etc. Occasionally the cloud dropped low and a fine mist of rain swept across us.

We scaled the islands highest peak (the lucky babies carried all the way in rucksacks!), and enjoyed a spectacular panorama across the archipelago (Shannan named them all for me – he has navigated them all), including a view up the silvery sanded Whitehaven estuary (see last week’s photo!). We took a return route along the beach, which was vast at low tide, craggy old coral reefs and ridges of gritty golden sand.

The sun was gradually swallowed up by layers of cloud, the light dipped and the rain swept in, and suddenly it was evening. We had booked a table at a pan-Asian restaurant, opening right on the sea, but they’d had to close it off with polythene covers to keep out the rain, so there was only the invisible roar of the tide (and the occasional glimpse of the white crest of a black wave lapping below). And there was no chance of romance or glamour anyway, as we were stuck with two wriggly girls, who we had to pray wouldn’t get too bored and annoyed stuck in their high chairs. I ordered a cocktail anyway – chilli-infused rum and fresh mango (very nice!), and tried soft-shell crab for the first time (deep-fried and crunchy, delicious). Maisie did okay, thanks to Becky’s bag of toys, and the free ice-cream which she absolutely adored (it was her first – I’m a strict mum). Sarah didn’t last as well, so we didn’t all end up sitting at table for much of the time.

On Saturday Neil was up at 6am to use the hotel gym, and we all caught the sun soon after it rose, sending beams of golden light through bands of raincloud that brought showers sweeping rapidly across the bay. Neil only had a week’s escape from work, so he had to head off to the airport after breakfast (handily only 5 minutes golf buggy ride from the hotel). Shannan helped distract Maisie by taking us out on a golf buggy for a spin. He gave us a comprehensive guided tour of the island, with a fascinating commentary full of information and scandal. We took in the desalination plant, the buggy repair workshops, the staff houses, the luxury private villas, the island school and the pretty wooden wedding chapel.

We peered through the railings of the air strip and watched Neil’s plane take off. Shannan explained how the island’s owner has established his own punitive tax system, which includes a 10 per cent tax payable to him on all house sales both from buyers and sellers (with prices from $1 million upwards, he does well out of this). Understandably a lot of the private houses are currently empty!

In the late morning we had a final stroll round the lush gardens, the pool recliners full of scantily clad holidayers sipping cocktails and the beach hectic with the more adventurous types sampling the day’s watersports, the sea glowing aquamarine through the swaying palms. Then we had to head back to the ferry for a (thankfully) less bumpy ride in the afternoon sun back to Airlie Beach.

A busy start to Sunday as Becky was helping co-ordinate a large morning party for all the June 2011 babies in Airlie Beach. They’d hired a local sports hall, a cavernous warehouse of a place full of plastic toys, and everyone had to bring a tray of food. Abby, one of Becky’s friends, had made mountains of little cakes iced in green and red which were prettily arranged in the shape of a number 2. Maisie wasn’t too phased by all the strange kids running around, as long as she had a little bike to scoot around on or a lawnmower to push.

In the afternoon Becky and I took Maisie and Sarah out for a stroll round one of Airlie Beach’s newer coastal developments (although it is apparently all in receivership). There’s the obligatory smart marina, shops and restaurants, roads laid out and empty plots advertising fabulous investment opportunities. There’s a brand new beach, with a couple of high spec new second houses overlooking it – one with a gorgeous glass-walled infinity pool like a moat around it. They overlook a large (rather picturesque!) wrecked fishing vessel, brought in by a recent storm and abandoned (the coast is littered with wrecks here – it is too expensive to recover them). We were in the sun but showers were drifting over the hills, and we were treated to a perfect rainbow, almost close enough to touch, sparkling with rain droplets.

On Monday afternoon Maisie and I took a stroll along Airlie Beach’s boardwalk, which gives an interesting snapshot of the town, from the fledgling botanical garden, past smart new developments and marinas, the little ferry terminal, empty scrubby plots and a number of wrecked boats, resort hotels, and the nicely landscaped public lagoon and attractive manmade sandy beaches all fringed with non-native palms. A cruise ship was moored far out to sea, and many of the passengers were hanging around, all identifiable by the lanyards that they were required to wear round their necks!

Week 32 – swapping trams for the tropics…

On Tuesday afternoon Maisie and I headed into town to visit the Old Treasury, a grand, stone pillared, C19th building situated next to the state parliament complex. It houses a local history museum, and currently a couple of rooms are devoted to tram memorabilia. Melbourne has the largest tram network in the world! The first trams started operating in 1885 and were originally either horse-drawn or run on cables (miles of cables were shipped over from the UK), and were electrified in the early 1900s. In the 1980s a number of leading Aussie artists were commissioned to paint 8 trams (including the band ‘Mental as Anything’). One artist said it took him 3 solid weeks to complete his painting, and excitingly, they’ve just announced that they are repeating the project for 2014! Half of the museum is down in the old gold vaults (these were built towards the end of the gold rush, so never served their intended purpose), where there were various unsuccessful AV experiences, and some impressive casts of the largest gold nuggets round in Victoria (see picture!).

As the afternoon light turned golden, we strolled through Fitzroy gardens, visiting the beautiful art deco greenhouse which always has an immaculate display – this time of dense shiny-leaved greenery, with a few splashes of red poinsettias and variegated purply-pink leaves.

On a damp Thursday Maisie and I discovered another little local gallery, inside the grand St Kilda town hall, which was showing work by local artists themed round World Environment Day. Most of the works were made of recycled or found materials, and they were very attractive – Maisie enjoyed a beach scene collage on light box made of strips of plastic bags, a quirky (and beautifully constructed) metal automaton with a snapping fish-head and wire wool monster and little china heads popping in and out, and an elegant chainmail dress made of rusted bottle tops and folded drinks cans. Outside the gallery a few yarn-bombers had been at work (the picture was taken on a different day!).

In the evening we watched the film ‘What Maisie Knew’. It’s a loose adaptation of a Henry James novel about an acrimonious divorce seen through the eyes of the young girl stuck in the middle. The acting was okay (Steve Coogan played the distracted, self-obsessed dad), but there was no nuance to the characters – they were either utterly awful (the parents) or cloyingly lovely (the step-parents). Perhaps that was to do with it being viewed from the little girls’ perspective, but it just didn’t quite work.

On Saturday morning, bleary-eyed, after a night of endlessly circling booming thunderstorms, we awoke at 4am to start our journey north to tropical Airlie Beach. We’d booked a limo (a great relief in the continuing downpour) to take us to the airport so that eased us into the day. Maisie was the most alert of all of us, fascinated by all the airport activity (she insisted on putting her comforter through the scanner), then ceaselessly wriggling on the plane. We arrived at 10am on Hamilton Island, one of the 70 or so Whitsunday Islands that cluster between the Queensland Coast and the Great Barrier Reef. It felt rather surreal to suddenly be plunged into a sunny tourist resort, the other disheveled arrivers being herded into golf buggies by jolly staff in colourful outfits. We caught a little ferry and spent a wind-buffeted hour cruising through the azure waves and past the cascading tree-clad cliffs of the untouched islands to the mainland coast and the little town of Airlie Beach, where Neil’s sister and her family live.

Airlie Beach is a cluster of bright angular modern developments built up into the wooded slopes that plunge down to the sea. Becky, Shannan and Sarah live in a bungalow in a brand new suburb tucked into a little valley, the lush forest pressing right up against their back fence. It’s a beautiful spot, ringing with exotic bird calls and with a wonderful panorama of the Milky Way and shooting stars at night.

Sarah and Maisie were thrilled to see each other, and were immediately careering around the house together on little tricycles. In the afternoon we took them for a stroll along the Airlie Beach – a manmade strip of sand lined with non-native palms, with a little landscaped lagoon for swimming in – which is much prettier than it sounds! The town attracts backpackers and big city escapees (and more recently, workers from the inland mines) so it’s a bit rough around the edges, but in a pleasant, low-key way.

On Sunday we spent a beautiful day on Becky and Shannan’s boat. A warm sun made everything glow – the turquoise seas, the white sails, the lush green of the coastal forest, the white grey of the lumpy granite cliffs of the islands.  The morning’s sailing was calm, and we smoothly cruised round the coast to a picturesque cove with a sandy, treelined beach all to ourselves. Turtles popped their heads up from the water as we approached the shore.

The girls busied themselves with sand-related activities and I explored the beach, which was littered with fragments of calcified coral and pastel-coloured shells, busy little sea-snails and scampering crabs, and fringed with green – creepers snaking across the sand and strange large-leafed, flowering trees, fluttering with bright butterflies and moths (the most beautiful was a Ulysses butterfly – like an intricate blue stained glass window).

Shannan pointed out a small dark blob bobbing in the bay, telling us it was a wallaby. None of us believed him as we doubted they could swim, but sure enough, as it got closer, you could make out the pointy ears and when it finally reached the shallow waters it bounded through the waves, skittered up the rocks and into the forest! Later I spotted a long-limbed orange dingo loping down the far end of the beach, which may have been what spooked the wallaby.

It was hard to leave such an idyllic spot, and the girls certainly didn’t want to! The wind whipped up as we turned back, and the boat suddenly tipped to a 45 degree angle (the angle it is at its happiest at apparently!), so we were all sitting hooked over the edge of the higher side, occasionally having to duck down and swap sides as the boat tacked. Poor Neil was stuck below decks with Maisie who’d passed out with exhaustion by this stage. The sun was sinking and the light golden, as we wove our way through a little glowing flotilla of local racing boats and windsurfers back into the marina.

On Monday Becky kindly looked after Maisie for the day, so Neil and I went off to join the 20-something backpackers on a thrill-ride RIB (rigid inflatable boat) trip! With bad dance music blaring out (fortunately almost drowned out by the engine noise), we were bounced and splashed through the (fairly sizable) waves to see some of the top Whitsunday sights. We started with some snorkeling. The boat moored up in a little cove, we all donned wetsuits and snorkel masks, jumped into the sea and peered down and paddled until the white castles of the coral were visible near the surface of the water. It was my first time snorkeling, and frankly, I was pretty terrified (of running out of energy, of touching anything in the sea!) but fortunately Neil was very patient with me. The corals suddenly loomed up beneath us and they were dazzling – just like a nature programme – an amazing variety of colours and textures with tiny jewel-coloured fish darting through, and some larger UV-glowing spotty and stripy specimens pottering about. We didn’t see any turtles, but one the size of a coffee table lifted its head from the waves as we zoomed past it in the boat a little later on.

Next stop (via some breath-taking sheer forested cliffs with great granite extrusions), was Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, one of National Geographic’s top five word beaches, renowned for its unique bright white sands, which are almost blindingly bright in the sunshine. The sand is pretty much pure silica (and as such, always remains the same temperature), and it squeaks between your toes as you walk.  It’s so fine it is more like talcum powder than sand, and it’ll hold any shape without slipping (it’s been used to make spaceships).  Shannan told us later that not long ago the whole beach was washed away by a typhoon, but it regenerated within 6 months, as it is all produced by the grinding of two tectonic plates, and sent here by the sea currents.

Although the beach is pretty remote and inaccessible, it is visited by vast numbers of tourists every day, conveyed here by boat, helicopter and plane. But it’s a vast expanse of sand, so it could happily absorb everyone. And once we’d ventured a few feet into the dappled undergrowth, we had the place to ourselves. We followed a little path up to a rocky viewpoint, startling a couple of impressively large brown and white-spotted monitor lizards on the way, who sashayed off in a leisurely manner.

The view was great – an unspoilt vista of tree-covered islands, rocky bays, white crested waves on a turquoise sea and a blue sky peppered with strands of cloud. The trees were all new to me – low grass trees like green fireworks, some huge floppy pale lime-green leaves, and wonderful flowering trees with white baubles, golden trumpets and pineapple sized lumpy seed-pods.  In one low palm we spotted an elegant slender-limbed black spider, and we glimpsed the back end of a bush turkey skidding away through the bushes.

After a relaxed couple of hours, the boat whisked us to the far end of the beach, where the low choppy tide almost prevented it entering the narrow estuary channel – but after a couple of attempts we made it, and suddenly, from being tossed in the deep sea waves, we were between two very close sand banks. We hopped off into the white sand which was piled with mounds of tiny bobbles, all generated by the tiny blue soldier crabs that were darting across it – you had to watch your feet to avoid stepping on them. There were shallow dips in the sand where stingrays had been resting a little earlier before the tide had receded. And a sea eagle was resting on the sand staring out towards the sea.

The roots of the mangroves were odd little teepees rising out of the sand. It was a stunning spot, just magical. We walked up through the low woodland to another rocky outcrop looking out across, apparently, the third most photographed view in Australia (after the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Uluru!). And it was easy to see why…

We walked back down to a rocky cove, carpeted with calcified lumps of coral, and set off on the bumpy, wet RIB journey home which they ended with a couple of doughnuts (fast circular spins)! With the blaring music, the engine noise and the huge wash, you could see why all the sailors of Airlie Beach are so incensed by this particular new boating company…