It’s early morning here (Sunday) in Trinity Beach, a few miles north of Cairns. Yesterday we drove 400 miles from Airlie Beach to here - a bit of a marathon - 9 hours on two lane roads. North Queensland is surprising, wide expansive plains of either sugar cane farms or lightly forested scrub land punctuated by two-bit settlements with names like ‘Home Hills’.
If Home Hills community radio is anything to go on, then I suspect littering attracts a mandatory life sentence and offenders caught outside without a regulation four inch brim on their bush hats are lynched on the spot. I suspect someone voted for the Labour party in rural Queensland in 1958...but they have not been heard of since.
Although the coastal plain is essentially flat, punctuated with lots of dried up creeks with names like Pink Lily creek, Frenchman’s Creek (Daphne must be popular here) or more literal names like Scrubby Creek., there are big 6000 foot granite outcrops - often conical in shape (old volcanos) covered in dense forest. These appear in the distance as a smoky blue colour; up close as dense dark green enclaves of rain forest. It’s really quite beautiful.
Airley Beach is big on the backpacker trail, lots of studenty type bars and shops selling ‘resort wear’ (swimsuits and bikinis) and surfer/skater type clothes - I like the Ozzy term for wide patterned swim shorts allegedly used to surf in - they’re called ‘boardies’.
Our apartment there was on the hill above the town and was really a beautiful, stylish place with patio doors taking up one wall opening onto a big balcony overlooking the bay. At evening flocks of white cockatoos gathered on the trees nearby to squawk raucously a swoop and glide from tree to tree in the evening light. If you left some peanuts on the table they would join you on the balcony - but feeding wildlife is discouraged as they can become a nuisance and eating unnatural food makes them ill.
Later this afternoon we catch the plane to Brisbane and then on to Hong Kong. Exciting - but it’s sad to leave Australia and know that we’re into the final phase of the trip. It’s certainly given me much to think about. I’m not sure which of you the book belongs to, but I took the Faber anthology of Utopias with me as holiday reading. It has excerpts of Utopian writing from ancient Egypt, the Classical Era, China as well later writers from the Medieval period up until now - I’ve just got up to around 1820.
Broadly speaking the various Utopias either envisage some kind of shangrila, garden of eden type existence or highly ordered societies where people have been ‘improved’ by eradicating possessions, money and private property - but often through quite puritanical means which strictly limit individual freedom. Thinking about all of this at the same time as visiting Tokyo’s urban machine, then visting Queensland’s empty outback does give a broader perspective on the ideas in the book. I do think I have left Australia greener than I went in…especially given the backdrop of world financial systems having a bit of a wobble - how do we create more human scale structures which are progressive without wrecking the environment?
One thing's for sure, I don’t think Hong Kong will provide an answer - but I do like skyscrapers and I really like bright neon signs - and it is part of China - so, it should be fascinating.
It will be great to be able to see you soon - but be warned - we are likely to go on and on about the trip.…
Matthew, have you been abducted by aliens? We have not heard from you since Tokyo. If you have not been abducted, then do drop us an email to say hi; if you have been abducted, then maybe you can report on the nature of alien existence and I can add it as an epilogue to the Utopias anthology.
Love to you both,
Dad, Mum and Laura. xxxxxx
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