I’m now zooting along on the Qantas from Cairns to Singapore, via Darwin -the return of what I did the other night. Fortunately this one is on time. In Darwin, one of the world’s least inspiring cities, in case you were wondering – a sweaty place at the best of times and it never seems actually to HAVE a best of times, they made us all get off. A sort of hangover from the olden days of planes when refueling was regarded really as being close to playing with fire – thus the time wasting exodus from the plane and reboarding again later. You do not want to incinerate your paying pax should something go wrong. Instead we get the opportunity to go SHOPPING and the chance to pick up our last boomerang or other ethnic offering. Was amused by watching one elderly, I should think Nordic, couple, doing vigorous exercises to prevent blood clots. He looked younger than her by a chunk and was egging her on something terrible, so that I should think she was more at risk of a heart attack there and then. Finally they did power walking around the Japanese tourists, just to get in the way.
We had managed to bring our plane into Cairns a few days before, without too much fuss, though of course the foot and mouth business in the UK has made the Australians even more paranoid than ever about what comes in to the country. They have always been very protectionist of their agriculture (and rightly so) but now they are positively on a mission and there is a zeal in their eyes. They wanted to know exactly where I had been for the last few months, so I gave them a much sanitized version or I would probably be still under investigation or put into a large plastic bag for the duration. What they didn’t know was, in this case, a much better idea. Goodness knows what happens if you say that on live on a farm in Devon – the floor probably opens and you plunge down into a vat of some delousing fluid.
The scenery in North Queensland is just fabulous and the drive from Cairns north to Port Douglas, where our posh hotel is, is a knockout. First through acres of sugar cane (not the place to go walkabout though, as I heard nasty stories of the migrant cane cutters of old, who were much done in from diseases caused by rat’s urine …) – anyway, the road then follows the coast, with hidden, mini beaches, fringed with a few palms and the hugeness of the Pacific to your right – it is really beautiful.
The hotel people seemed to be happy to see me back (I was there to scout it out last year) and my room was full of goodies of both the liquid and solid variety, so I wanted for nothing. Our local agent turned up too – very much the ” No Worries, mate” Australian and we went over the program and made sure we were all talking the same language – even though Seattle has everything under control with them, you still need to go back to square one and clarify absolutely everything, cos at our end of the market, we cannot afford any misunderstandings. It’s amazing how easy it can be to just ‘presume’ that we are all talking the same language and then find out the hard way that we were not !! That is what our punters pay the big bucks for, but unfortunately what I am NOT paid the big bucks for !!! – though I do have some of my more regular customers willing to lobby TC on my behalf and say that I beyond rubies, (though just who this Ruby is, I’m never quite sure…). Sounds like a good name for a bar – see you at Beyond Rubies.
Take a break here …. Lots more to come.
timothyvalentinestravels 