Nov 26

Nov 26 Cooktown: First Contact

The rain against the windshield is concussive. Frantic wipers fight a losing battle. I’m navigating purely by the tail lights of the car in front of me. Suddenly, they glow red and a caravan of seven trucks grinds and sloshes to a halt on the saturated dirt road.

The wet season doesn’t start for another two months. Somebody forgot to tell nature.

Looking out the car window, it’s clear why we’ve stopped. The road that leads to our campsite is gone.

The GPS just says ‘Thank you for playing’.

I’ve been in Australia for a month and a half now, working alongside my friend Chris on economic development projects for remote Indigenous communities. Last week, it was announced that a dozen corporate types from across Australia would be joining the company for a secondment and kicking off their time here with a camping trip. We managed to score an invitation.

Now, that camping trip is over. The road is impassable. Everyone is going home.

Everyone, that is, but us.

If we turn back now, we will have burnt 10 hours of driving and a few tanks of diesel for nothing. Chris and I have limited time in Australia. We’ve got to make every weekend count. It’s the Phineas and Ferb approach minus the pet platypus.

We’re determined to have an adventure. There’s just one problem – we’re in Cooktown.

Cooktown is the site of first contact between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of Australia. In 1770, renown explorer Captain James Cook was forced ashore after his ship, the Endeavour, collided with the Great Barrier Reef. In his brief time on land, he and his crew managed to seriously offend the locals, claim Australia’s east coast in the name of the Crown, and see a kangaroo.

Captain James Cook or every British character from the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

That was the peak. Two and a half centuries later, Cooktown is a hick backwater that persists on the hangover of one momentous historical encounter. Every street, park, and business is named after Cook or his boat. The only coffee shop in town also sells fried chicken and prepaid phone cards. The biggest source of excitement is the upcoming ‘Legal Assault 10’ which appears to feature pre-pubescent boy fights as the main event.

The truly impressive thing about this lineup is the farmer’s tan on that guy in the bottom middle.

So, though the outlook is bleak, Chris and I are determined to make the most of it. We are modern day Captain Cooks – stranded by the forces of nature, ignorant of the local culture and peoples, and more than willing to poke around.

We are ready for our first contact with Cooktown.

First Nazi

We’re driving the level of slow that, in a nice neighbourhood, would turn the heads of Neighbourhood Watch parents. The level of slow where the uniform grind of tires on unpaved road coagulates into distinct crackles and pops. The level of slow that means we are hopelessly lost.

In a town of 2 500 people. That’s a little embarrassing.

“Maybe we missed it?”

“I don’t know how we could have. It’s not like there’s another road.”

We’re looking for the start of a hike that will take us up Mount – wait for it – Cook, a modest peak on the town’s southern limit. In a place that primarily attracts day-drunk fishermen and plaque-hungry retirees, however, the hike up the mountain isn’t particularly well-signed.

We prowl along for another few minutes. The neighbourhood is becoming increasingly residential. I’m done with guessing.

“Let’s stop and ask for directions.”

“Who are we supposed to ask?”

“It’s a small town. People are friendly. Let’s just drive down the next driveway.”

The next driveway comes into view and – holy Nazi house.

With gargoyles, so you don’t accidentally mistake it for a friendly Nazi house.

My mind is simply unready for this scene. It’s not just the swastika gate with its swastika posts, it’s everything. The guy’s car has a Confederate flag decal on the inside of the windshield, swastika bumper stickers, and a little hand-painted swastika on the gas flap.

Somehow, you already knew he drove a pickup.

His garbage bin is out. It too is adorned with a giant swastika – black with a careful red outline – so in the event it gets scattered down the street during a windstorm the neighbours know who to return it to. It’s as if a white supremacist went to a personal branding seminar and really took it to heart.

This was a first for the session facilitator.

After the initial wave of disbelief, reason steps in. These are symbols of hate. The beliefs they represent have killed millions. We are idling in the driveway of a man who has taken them as his emblems. It’s time to go.

We drive off without any getting directions, but quite confident that ‘away’ is a safe choice.

First Spider

We’re walking through lush rainforest. The Nazi house is far behind us. We found the trail and are now halfway up the mountain.

The hike is beautiful. The air carries the invigorating scent of earth after rain. Periodically, grasshoppers leap from the path in front of us. Compared to grasshoppers back home, these are leviathans – at least three inches long with massive legs that propel them two metres into the air before they unfurl cellophane wings and buzz into the canopy.

The grasshoppers are a warning. One I miss entirely.

Science-fiction writers have a clever tactic of using prey to foreshadow predators. Introducing an herbivore that is large and heavily armoured makes a powerful Darwinian implication – somewhere out there is a monster ravenous enough to justify the evolution of an elephant with shell.

I don’t consider the grasshoppers’ counterpart until it’s too late.

Something is tugging at my hair. Not forcefully, but with a uniform gentleness – the feeling of a hat being removed in perpetuity. I pause, perplexed.

Chris starts yelling. A panicked, urgent staccato.

“Backup! Backup! Backup!”

There’s a whisper of thread on the back of my neck. Confusion gives way to terror.

Spider.

Before coming to Australia, this was the menace that received the most fanfare. Friends sent videos of arachnids that resembled furry, disembodied Shaq hands and told cautionary tales of nests in shoes. I braced myself for the worst but, after weeks without any incident, happily concluded that the threat was overstated.

Now, with my face in a spiderweb that spans the 2-metre path clearing, I can’t help but feel my conclusion was premature.

My entire adrenal system has come online. I backpedal furiously. I can hear myself shouting a few octaves higher than I thought possible.

“Is it on me?!? Is it on me?!?”

“You’re clear. You’re all good. But, wow! You’ve gotta look at this thing.”

I look at the thing.

This is the anatomical archetype of revulsion. Mandibles groping the air for flesh to exploit. Spindly legs reaching with the unnatural smoothness of hydraulics. Twitching abdomen the size of a fat thumb. Back patterning that looks just enough like a skull.

A future internet search will classify this spider an immature female golden orb weaver. Golden orb weaver because of the yellow-tinted webbing it produces. Immature female because of the shrill scream it causes 23-year-old men to emit upon direct exposure.

Congratulations, Australian spiders. You justify the hype.

We complete the rest of the hike waving sticks in front of us to ensure the path is clear, looking like crazed wizard-wannabes, and wondering if we were also premature in writing off the threat of snakes.

First Sign of Fall

It’s the next morning and we’re on the road in search of Trevathan Falls, a local swimming hole and waterfall. Chris spots our heading. Nailed to a tree, it’s a weather-beaten piece of plywood with the spray-painted word “FALLS” and a crude arrow.

I pop the car into four-wheel drive and take the turnoff, rumbling over roots and rocks. Chris and I sit in silence for a while, taking in the beauty of the Australian bush and riding the elation that comes with traversing a road less travelled.

Then, in the blink of an eye, our surroundings transform. The forest thins. Green foliage gives way to orange. Tall grasses are replaced by a blanket of dry leaves.

It’s Chris who finally voices what we’re both thinking.

“It looks like autumn.”

The season where you can stop being diligent about shaving your legs.

The significance of this demands context. Having left Canada for equatorial climes in early July, it’s been half a year of perpetual summer. Suddenly driving into a seasonally calibrated calendar feels like coming home. Tension I didn’t know I held drains from my face as my body relaxes into the world it grew up in.

Opening the car windows to complete the immersion, I’m not disappointed. The air is dry. There’s a slight breeze. On it wafts the gentle smell of an autumn campfire.

Wait. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Why is there a campfire?

I slow the car and give our surroundings a closer look. I notice something I’d missed before. All the trunks are half-black.

No, Tree Trunk – where are you REALLY from?

I’m hit with a moment of gut sinking realization. It’s all wrong. This isn’t fall. This is fallout.

We’re driving through the desiccated aftermath of a bushfire. Two days ago, this entire forest was in flames. Roaring, crackling, smoking.

Bushfires are a normal part of ecological cycles in Australia. That’s the problem – being teased by the normal you know only to have it mutate into the normal you don’t. The juxtaposition only serves to make this world more alien. Australia faked fall and we fell for it. I feel violated.

The rest of the drive has a vaguely post-apocalyptic unease. The ground around us continues to smoke. Skeletal cows wander across fields of ash, lifting their heads to stare mutely as we pass. Even the intermittent signage for the waterfall gets creepy.

A sure-fire way to make people feel unsafe.

Ultimately, we arrive at our destination. After parking in a small clearing, we hike 50 metres up a small creek to find sanctuary. The forest is lush. A rope swing dangles invitingly over cold, clear water. Trevathan itself is spectacular.

This is the fall we were looking for all along.

First Remote Community

Picture a jolly, old British man. Once a pilot for her majesty’s Royal Air Force, this man now lives as an expat retiree in the remote Australian tropics. Now, imagine him sitting outside the variety store he owns on a cheap plastic seat that, by virtue of his demeanor, feels as if it should rightly be an old wooden rocker.

The man in your mind is Harold.

We’ve driven two hours from Trevathan Falls to reach Laura. Boasting a population of 151, Laura is the most remote indigenous community on Cape York that you can reach without leaving pavement. So far, Chris and I have done all our economic development work from behind laptops. We’re excited to see a community first-hand. In need of food and gas, our first stop is Harold’s shop. While Chris resupplies, I make conversation with Harold.

“How did you come to live in Laura?”

“The Prime Minister sent me!”

Harold’s eyes gleam and he smiles a mischievous smile.

“Really?”

“Indeed! He was elected. I couldn’t stand the bastard. That sent me here!”

Harold laughs a booming laugh, taken by the brilliance of his joke, then rises from his seat.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to feed my birds!”

The number one hobby of people looking to develop a God complex.

Chris emerges with our food and two others follow him out. They are one of those elderly couples who have taken inverse and equally unattractive paths to aging. The only thing they have in common is a frown.

The woman is sickly thin with the sinewy neck of a defeathered chicken. She’s dragging on a cigarette as if preparing for a global carbon monoxide shortage. Her husband appears to have taken all the fat missing from his wife’s body and implanted it directly above his liver.

They introduce themselves as friends of Harold and we get talking. Eventually, the conversation turns to the businesses in town.

“Well, Harold’s got the general store. Then there’s the hotel, the campground, the pub, and the Indigenous rock art centre.”

“How many of those are owned by Indigenous people?”

Cigarette winces. Belly chortles. After a good long laugh, he answers, making a show of each syllable.

“Zee-roe.”

“Even the Indigenous rock art centre?”

Cigarette and Belly look at one another in bemusement. Harold has returned from his bird feeding. Even he is shaking his head.

“Son, Indigenous people don’t think about tomorrow. They think about right now. Right now, I want I drink. Right now, I have money. I’ll spend money on a drink right now.”

Cigarette exhales a lungful of smoke and summarizes.

“Those people don’t run businesses anywhere except into the ground.”

We talk for a while longer and, by the end, I’m upset.

Everything they said has a basis in truth. Indigenous Australian culture has been decimated by displacement and corrupted by intergeneration poverty and welfare dependence. The result is anything but pretty. What’s upsetting is that when Belly sees this he feels superior, Cigarette feels disgusted, and Harold feels resigned. These worldviews all have something in common – they are easy.

It’s easy to write others off as inherently inferior or beyond help because it requires neither imagination nor effort. Taking the view that things can get better is hard because it requires both – imagination to visualize a better future and the road to it and effort to walk that road until the vision is realized.

Before leaving town, I put my own worldview to the test. We drive around to look at some of the houses. They are all variations on the theme of neglected bungalow – facades in a state of disrepair, lawns strewn carelessly with items, cars on cinderblocks rusting in the rain.

Odds of a second season for ‘House Hunters: Cape York’ are looking pretty slim.

For all my moral preaching, half of me sees this and is utterly discouraged. Generating prosperity would be hard enough in any town of 151 people, let alone one with overcrowded homes, alcohol abuse, and an engrained dependence on welfare.

The best I can do is focus on the other half of me. The half that believes in leaving this world better than I found it. The half that sees how rough things are and takes it as justification to intervene.

If I can work to ensure that half dictates my actions, I’m in good shape. Because that half looks around Laura and thinks:

I’ve got a damn good reason to show up to work on Monday.

Home Again

Intentional adventures are wonderful, but there’s a certain magic that comes with adventures that are unplanned.

Adventures that demand improvisation. That shock and surprise like a giant PVC pipe swastika.

We came into this weekend with optimism in the face of low expectations. Now, we’re zipping down the highway, Cooktown and surrounds long receded into the distance, armed with a new perspective on spiders, bushfires, and human potential. I wouldn’t have believed it before. Now, there’s no doubt in my mind:

Cooktown was worth the endeavour.