More travels
Jul. 15th, 2004 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringMy wife’s sister, the one with the vineyard, married on New Years Eve 1989, which must have given them an unforgettable tenth anniversary party. The day and night before the wedding, in what was the first of many great ideas I have come to associate with this couple, was spent at a lodge high in the Gold Coast Hinterland, along with parents and siblings of bride and groom, along with their partners and children.
It was a fairly spartan affair, with a lot of bare wood, small private rooms but large and comfortable common areas. The idea was that both extended families would get to know each other through sharing time, meals, bushwalks and other activities together, and it was certainly a time and place and experience I remember with a great deal of affection.
The lodge itself is set on the eastern slope of the escarpment, with a jumble of green hills and ridges running down to the distant coastline marked by the long row of beachfront towers. Here we were surrounded by high rainforest in an overgrown wood cabin, where birds flitted out of the trees and made the mornings joyous with their songs, and down below was the tawdry, flashy Gold Coast, its skyscrapers made small and remote by distance. The contrast and the setting had inspired many a comment in the lodge’s Visitor’s Book, especially from the many Christian groups who used the lodge as a retreat.
The lodge’s name was “First Sunrise”, so called because it was high enough that the first rays of the rising sun struck here before Cape Byron received so much as a glimmer of daylight, and for all I know it is true, because dawn ib this place was a mystical moment, looking down from the mountains to the darkness of the Gold Coast and the endless ocean beyond.
I sit here writing these words in one of those dark towers, and I am reminded of the proper perspective for viewing the place. It is all too easy to be taken in by the neon and the hype, to be taken in by the spiel of the shonks and sharks, to be overwhelmed by the leisure lifestyle.
But in the end, the place is little more than glitter and flash in the grand scheme of things. A great place to spend a week, but it must surely be corrupting and decadent to live here on a permanent basis in one of these tall towers looking down on life. All too easy to forget that there are other eyes watching from even higher, eyes with a different perspective.
When you get down to it, the Gold Coast is an example of how NOT to develop a beach. The wide white sands stretch out, but they are rarely empty. The Nerang River looping behind has been tamed and developed within an inch of its life, with all the wetlands and backwaters turned into marinas and “canal developments” made up of shallow, lifeless canals dredged out into a maze of narrow roads flanked by large houses, the best to make use of every last millimetre of artificial waterfront.
Here and there are false towns, where a developer has managed to get hold of a large block of land, thrown up a shopping mall, laid out a road network and sold off the surrounding house blocks at a vast profit.
I realise that people have to live somewhere, but my heart cries out when I see these artificial towns full of people who don’t know their neighbours and contrast them with the dying communities of rural Australia, where there are shared histories going back for generations.
Having said that, let me now note that I am all too easily corrupted and led astray by these tall towers with their fabulous views. It is the contrast with my everyday life that seduces me away. At home I don’t get to sit on my balcony with a morning cuppa as I contemplate an infinity of ocean spreading out to a misty horizon in one direction, and crashing against the sand at my feet in the other. I don’t get to look down at people taking their morning walks with a sense of superiority based on height rather than any moral dimension. Nor am I able to laze my days away in idleness, which is the predominant occupation of far too many people on the Gold Coast, whether they be tourists taking a week here, or retirees spending their twilight years and the proceeds of the family home on a cramped apartment with a sprawling view.
Not that there has been much in the way of idleness for me. This is a bit of a working holiday, and I have spent the past two days at a charity bookfair, combing through the tens and hundreds of thousands of second-hand books that weigh down a great hall full of trestle tables at the local showgrounds. Hard on the feet to stand up for two days straight, taking no more than a few steps every few minutes, hard on the back and shoulders to be hunched over to examine the titles of the books, and hard on the eyes to be continually straining at an awkward distance.
But it is what I do, and out of those acres of books, I glean a few square metres that can be divided into two categories – those I can sell for a markup of a thousand percent or so, and those I can leave scattered around the countryside for others to find, the titles and themes making some sort of comment on the world. Here is a treatise on free black woman in a Southern town, an easy twenty American dollars up from the dollar fifty pencilled onto the fly by some bored volunteer more used to mass market fiction. And here is Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow; a tense literary crime drama with an automaton lady detective who reads the snow and ice of her native Greenland and Denmark with a casual ease, and I stuff it in the “five dollar a bag” special that marks the final hour of the sale to leave it outside the nearby “Snow World”, a refrigerated mini theme park that offers winter delights to parched summer tourists.
The Gold Coast is full of such odd places and weird juxtapositions. You may leave your apartment crammed full of microwaves and digital televisions to take a medieval banquet, or find a slice of canned wilderness amongst the highrise. Swim with wild dolphins at a dollar a stroke in a tank full of artificial seawater. Forsake your lofty tower for an early morning lift in a hot air balloon.
I strode down the main street of Rockhampton in my pyjamas yesterday. Not too many people around to notice, anyway - a few people preparing to open up their shops, a few finishing up their night activities, a few like me out for a pre-breakfast constitutional My normal sleeping attire is shorts and T-shirt, and I reckoned that this was just fine for a power-walk into the city centre to hunt up a newspaper to read with my corn flakes.
My hostel is located on the north shore of the Fitzroy River, a wide brown stream occasionally infested by a misguided crocodile, and I kept my eyes peeled for suspicious ripples in the water as I stepped out across the bridge. No such luck, I'm afraid - a fish or two and some waterfowl amongst the moored yachts.
(As I wrote those last words, sitting here in my Gold Coast unit, I happened to look out the window and became aware of a great grey head sticking out of the water just beyond the breakers. I leapt to my feet, called for the kids, and we watched in fascination as a humpback whale and her calf swam past us, occasionally lifting a flipper out of the waves, and at one time drenching the occupants of a fishing boat with their spouts. They eventually disappeared in the molten silver of the rising sun's reflection, leaving me gasping in their wake. In my wildest dreams I never expected to see a mighty whale swimming amongst the surfers - I had been looking far out to sea, hoping for a glimpse of a distant spout.)
I turned off the bridge and down onto Quay Street, Rockhampton's riverside avenue full of grand old buildings from the mining days. The river bank itself has a paved walk amongst bench seats and garden beds, and the far side of the street is a gallery of glorious examples of colonial and Victorian architecture, all awnings and shady verandas against the summer sun. Even the warehouses have an elegance far removed from the slab-sided industrial parks of the modern day.
Perhaps the old Customs House, now the headquarters of the local tourist board, is the pick of the bunch. Three stories of golden sandstone, a huge copper dome over all, rhythmic arches harmonising the galleries overlooking the river. A little further along, a hotel stands on a corner, two levels of wide verandas with intricate cast-iron lacework turning it into a decorated cake of a building.
In the two centuries past the riches of the hinterland flowed through Rockhampton. Mount Morgan's mines and cattle stations the size of counties headed the list, but up this river, and along the rail lines north and south (the main line still runs along the middle of one of Rockhampton's ridiculously wide streets) passed goods worth millions - tens, hundreds of millions of guineas.
Most of it has long gone nowadays, but tourism takes up some of the slack, and I must admit that Rocky's relaxed lifestyle mirrors the languid flow of the Fitzroy.
It was a fairly spartan affair, with a lot of bare wood, small private rooms but large and comfortable common areas. The idea was that both extended families would get to know each other through sharing time, meals, bushwalks and other activities together, and it was certainly a time and place and experience I remember with a great deal of affection.
The lodge itself is set on the eastern slope of the escarpment, with a jumble of green hills and ridges running down to the distant coastline marked by the long row of beachfront towers. Here we were surrounded by high rainforest in an overgrown wood cabin, where birds flitted out of the trees and made the mornings joyous with their songs, and down below was the tawdry, flashy Gold Coast, its skyscrapers made small and remote by distance. The contrast and the setting had inspired many a comment in the lodge’s Visitor’s Book, especially from the many Christian groups who used the lodge as a retreat.
The lodge’s name was “First Sunrise”, so called because it was high enough that the first rays of the rising sun struck here before Cape Byron received so much as a glimmer of daylight, and for all I know it is true, because dawn ib this place was a mystical moment, looking down from the mountains to the darkness of the Gold Coast and the endless ocean beyond.
I sit here writing these words in one of those dark towers, and I am reminded of the proper perspective for viewing the place. It is all too easy to be taken in by the neon and the hype, to be taken in by the spiel of the shonks and sharks, to be overwhelmed by the leisure lifestyle.
But in the end, the place is little more than glitter and flash in the grand scheme of things. A great place to spend a week, but it must surely be corrupting and decadent to live here on a permanent basis in one of these tall towers looking down on life. All too easy to forget that there are other eyes watching from even higher, eyes with a different perspective.
When you get down to it, the Gold Coast is an example of how NOT to develop a beach. The wide white sands stretch out, but they are rarely empty. The Nerang River looping behind has been tamed and developed within an inch of its life, with all the wetlands and backwaters turned into marinas and “canal developments” made up of shallow, lifeless canals dredged out into a maze of narrow roads flanked by large houses, the best to make use of every last millimetre of artificial waterfront.
Here and there are false towns, where a developer has managed to get hold of a large block of land, thrown up a shopping mall, laid out a road network and sold off the surrounding house blocks at a vast profit.
I realise that people have to live somewhere, but my heart cries out when I see these artificial towns full of people who don’t know their neighbours and contrast them with the dying communities of rural Australia, where there are shared histories going back for generations.
Having said that, let me now note that I am all too easily corrupted and led astray by these tall towers with their fabulous views. It is the contrast with my everyday life that seduces me away. At home I don’t get to sit on my balcony with a morning cuppa as I contemplate an infinity of ocean spreading out to a misty horizon in one direction, and crashing against the sand at my feet in the other. I don’t get to look down at people taking their morning walks with a sense of superiority based on height rather than any moral dimension. Nor am I able to laze my days away in idleness, which is the predominant occupation of far too many people on the Gold Coast, whether they be tourists taking a week here, or retirees spending their twilight years and the proceeds of the family home on a cramped apartment with a sprawling view.
Not that there has been much in the way of idleness for me. This is a bit of a working holiday, and I have spent the past two days at a charity bookfair, combing through the tens and hundreds of thousands of second-hand books that weigh down a great hall full of trestle tables at the local showgrounds. Hard on the feet to stand up for two days straight, taking no more than a few steps every few minutes, hard on the back and shoulders to be hunched over to examine the titles of the books, and hard on the eyes to be continually straining at an awkward distance.
But it is what I do, and out of those acres of books, I glean a few square metres that can be divided into two categories – those I can sell for a markup of a thousand percent or so, and those I can leave scattered around the countryside for others to find, the titles and themes making some sort of comment on the world. Here is a treatise on free black woman in a Southern town, an easy twenty American dollars up from the dollar fifty pencilled onto the fly by some bored volunteer more used to mass market fiction. And here is Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow; a tense literary crime drama with an automaton lady detective who reads the snow and ice of her native Greenland and Denmark with a casual ease, and I stuff it in the “five dollar a bag” special that marks the final hour of the sale to leave it outside the nearby “Snow World”, a refrigerated mini theme park that offers winter delights to parched summer tourists.
The Gold Coast is full of such odd places and weird juxtapositions. You may leave your apartment crammed full of microwaves and digital televisions to take a medieval banquet, or find a slice of canned wilderness amongst the highrise. Swim with wild dolphins at a dollar a stroke in a tank full of artificial seawater. Forsake your lofty tower for an early morning lift in a hot air balloon.
I strode down the main street of Rockhampton in my pyjamas yesterday. Not too many people around to notice, anyway - a few people preparing to open up their shops, a few finishing up their night activities, a few like me out for a pre-breakfast constitutional My normal sleeping attire is shorts and T-shirt, and I reckoned that this was just fine for a power-walk into the city centre to hunt up a newspaper to read with my corn flakes.
My hostel is located on the north shore of the Fitzroy River, a wide brown stream occasionally infested by a misguided crocodile, and I kept my eyes peeled for suspicious ripples in the water as I stepped out across the bridge. No such luck, I'm afraid - a fish or two and some waterfowl amongst the moored yachts.
(As I wrote those last words, sitting here in my Gold Coast unit, I happened to look out the window and became aware of a great grey head sticking out of the water just beyond the breakers. I leapt to my feet, called for the kids, and we watched in fascination as a humpback whale and her calf swam past us, occasionally lifting a flipper out of the waves, and at one time drenching the occupants of a fishing boat with their spouts. They eventually disappeared in the molten silver of the rising sun's reflection, leaving me gasping in their wake. In my wildest dreams I never expected to see a mighty whale swimming amongst the surfers - I had been looking far out to sea, hoping for a glimpse of a distant spout.)
I turned off the bridge and down onto Quay Street, Rockhampton's riverside avenue full of grand old buildings from the mining days. The river bank itself has a paved walk amongst bench seats and garden beds, and the far side of the street is a gallery of glorious examples of colonial and Victorian architecture, all awnings and shady verandas against the summer sun. Even the warehouses have an elegance far removed from the slab-sided industrial parks of the modern day.
Perhaps the old Customs House, now the headquarters of the local tourist board, is the pick of the bunch. Three stories of golden sandstone, a huge copper dome over all, rhythmic arches harmonising the galleries overlooking the river. A little further along, a hotel stands on a corner, two levels of wide verandas with intricate cast-iron lacework turning it into a decorated cake of a building.
In the two centuries past the riches of the hinterland flowed through Rockhampton. Mount Morgan's mines and cattle stations the size of counties headed the list, but up this river, and along the rail lines north and south (the main line still runs along the middle of one of Rockhampton's ridiculously wide streets) passed goods worth millions - tens, hundreds of millions of guineas.
Most of it has long gone nowadays, but tourism takes up some of the slack, and I must admit that Rocky's relaxed lifestyle mirrors the languid flow of the Fitzroy.
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Date: 2004-07-15 07:20 am (UTC)I've only been on one whale-watch cruise, out of Rye, New Hampshire - we saw some fin whales, sometimes fairly close, but mostly just a spout and a glimpse of hide. But on the way back a big school of dolphins decided to escort us, and they were leaping all around the boat, often within arm's reach of the rails; everybody on board was grinning like idiots the whole time...