Slipway into Giangurra Dreamtime

Slipway into Giangurra Dream Time
Hi Lily…I think its September 27….i am bored with Sooty’s ramblings, but I will get back to them later…also I have to tell you about some other mysterious occurrences on the Camino… but I just have to be in the mood to do it ok….
Anyhoos I promised you that I would tell you about an episode from my northern adventure with rob warren mcwallace…it concerns ‘that episode’ whereupon rob and I spent a whole night sleeping on a crocodile infested beach….where we had inadvertently set up our tent…and how that situation came about….
We had travelled a long way from home….thousands of miles in fact….up to Cape Tribulation which was nice…there were issues after that…. concerning Rob and his mental state…an extremely  naughty adolescent boy type of dog…Charlie…some supposed lethal weaponry in the van…that I didn’t know was illegal in Queensland. It was a bow and arrow, which I had intended to give to Danton as a Xmas present ….he actually gave it back to me coz he said it was too small ( and then he took it back) anyhoos it ended up in the van with us (as did all the cleaning products from under the laundry sink which Rob had packed along with heaps of other useless things???  We had to buy a tent because there was not enough room in the van to actually sleep in it…creating nightmarish mobility situation???  and when Charlie pissed on our mattress in a caravan park…we had to drag everything out including the bow and arrow….shocking the other residents…who were mostly retirees.
We got kicked out of that caravan park and one or two others btw….Rob swore at the people in the camp site next to us…they were genuinely upset and had every right to be …as far as I could see they had done nothing to elicit this response…I was furious with him…we had an argument about it and other matters which caused further disturbance. Charlie was also making a huge nuisance of himself wherever we went…if we let him of his lead for even one second he would run off chasing bush turkeys, wanting to play with every single dog he met, even when they didn’t want to play with him…he would jump up on people and bark at them, nip at their heels, steal their stuff and chew it up ect ect….oh yes and he had a habit of doing poops….diarrhoea ones twice....outside shops. Once he had explosive diarrhoea outside a real estate agency in Townsville…how am I supposed to pick that up???.....so what do i do?....run away……another time he caused a horrible fight to break out between me and another camper who accused Charlie of spreading garbage everywhere….as it happens the garbage bin was full so people had been leaving their garbage next to it…I chose not to do that….this guy yells out…it’s people like you (Charlie, Rob and myself) who give camping grounds a bad name blah, blah…..by the way Charlie had barely started on the garbage before I nabbed him and tied him up.
Lily…I just about lost the plot…..Rob was going bezerko and swearing and yelling at other people or just the sky…. If I tied Charlie up he would bark and bark and whine…if I let him go he went bezerko…..we got kicked out of three caravan parks in 3 days….is it any wonder that I suffer from nervous collapse and that you maybe could die from it?
Ok  so driving down the highway….i am shouting at Rob this time…what we really need to do is find  a place where we can camp, where Charlie can be free to roam and where Rob can  rant and rave at the invisible people…without  it being a problem for anyone who happens to be in the vicinity….So driving on down the highway….we spot a road…marked by a handwritten sign saying Slipway….so we decided to investigate…we needed to find an isolated spot as it was no longer possible to camp with or even near any other folk…we were like the holiday campers from hell as far as they were concerned and the regards that they held us in were not very high at all.
This road let to a boat builders yard….the two guys working there told us about a place further on down another road where we could camp….so we went down that road and came to a dirt road marked by another hand written sign saying Slipway.
That road led to Giangurra and a beach….there were a few houses there and a carpark and a rest area with toilet block and running water….no one there…it was ideal…oh except the sign with a picture on it of a black Crocodile and the words DANGER and Achtung. We had started setting up the tent when Michael turned up and showed us how to do the post holes properly. He told us he was from Yarrabah and that this land was the traditional land…and owned by them, of his wife Nancy’s tribe. We asked if we could meet her and the rest of the clan, which we did. We introduced ourselves as refuges from the beginning and end of time and asked them for permission to camp on their land. We explained our predicament to them and they were kool about it. We all became good friends after that….we used to give Michael and the children money for helping us move our stuff and set up camp several times over the next 11 days. Michael also scored some Hoochy which I used to smoke with Cecil…an elder of the tribe and Nancy’s stepfather. It was like smoking the peace pipe….sitting on the beach…not too close and at low tide…. talking about the dream time and time travel, snakes in the sky, 2012 predictions, totem animals, music we loved and films we had seen. I told Cecil a story about an African man who had followed a lion all over Africa and that he looked like him…and he did…and Cecil remembered it.  A group of young guys who partied every night joined us…one boy…one of my maori ancestors tried to scare me with stories about how the maoris were cannibals ect…and I said…yeah well I probably…. used to be… maybe…was….a cannibal too…  in a distant life that I cannot remember or didn‘t know about. The guys all used to gather nearby  at night and play music extremely loudly until the early hours and shout and carry on and get drunk but they never once bothered us and we never bothered them….it was their land.
And…..one of the best things about Giangurra was how well Charlie fitted it. From the minute we arrived he was off his lead and free to roam…ok this was not without danger…but you can’t keep someone a prisoner for safety reasons…indeed one of the first things Michael said to us was …’don’t keep your dog on a lead’….if the crocodile should wander by they cannot escape. None of the dogs were on leads and from the moment on Charlie was in heaven. For most of the day he was off playing with the other dogs. In the evening he would return to our tent, flop down exhausted and sleep like a baby for the rest of the night. He became particularly close to a mother dog and her two puppies who hung out near the car park area….by this time we had moved camp three times and were staying close to Nancy and family in relatively safe part of the beach… a little way up a track.
What happened was this…after the first night in the ‘relative’ safety of the rest area next to the car park…Michael and Nancy suggested we move to an area further up the beach that was set back from it and higher than it and somewhat sheltered by shrubbery….but even here, the local people would keep their camp fires burning outside their tents every night just in case.
Which reminds me…that very first night…a raging fire broke out…the whole of the street behind the car park and beyond seemed to go up in flames…at first I wasn’t too freaked out by it but as it encroached ever more scarily on my own particular domain I did get a bit nervy…twice I ran to Nancy’s tent and woke them up, blabbing on about the fire…they didn’t seem to be concerned in the slightest….Nancy just said don’t worry, go to sleep….so I did….the next day you would never have guessed that a fire had ever been through there….no ashes, no burning embers …nothing…just a clear blue sky and a gentle breeze.
So the next day…after that first night….we moved our tent up the beach…through the lagoon and into another little section of the beach that was between the lagoon area and the waters edge. Quinton, a little boy of about 10, helped Rob set up the tent, while I unpacked the van….as it happens the only place where the ground was stable enough to stick the post holes into….in between shrubbery leading to the lagoon…. just happened to be smack bang in the middle of the mothers crocs route to the lagoon to visit her babies. By this time it was getting dark….i had sent the younger kids home while the tide as still low….about 100 metres down the beach. I was worried about Quinton, we needed his help, but I did not want him walking back along the beach at high tide or through the lagoon which was looking more and more dark and spooky with every passing moment….so we decided to stay on this beach but move out of the crocs direct path to the lagoon…I walked Quinton back and then returned and we hurriedly put up the tent near some shrubbery in a little corner of this beach.  I used our backpacks and food storage boxes, the chairs and table, the gas bottles and cooktop… to form a barricade around the tent and also dragged tree branches around it…plus I padded the inside of the tent as Charlie was prone to sleep tucked up in the corner and the smell of dog is like waiving a red flag to a bull when it comes to crocs….
After that night I began using a pisspot in the tent because twice I had to get up in the middle of the night to take a piss…it was pitch black and both times I felt the presence of the crocodile nearby watching.
Edward paid us a visit that night, he came staggering up the beach, wandering far to close the water in my view. He was drunk and he wanted money to buy a cask of Sunnyvale white wine…the beveridge of choice among most of the folk at Giangurra…he stayed and had a smoke with us and ‘borrowed’ some money and left. As he staggered back down the beach completely oblivious to the crocodile threat……which he would waive away as being of little concern every time I broached the subject with him….i thought he is the crocodile man…
Lily….the crocodile on this beach was Edwards totem animal! …that’s why it never attacked him…and he was an old man…well a little older than me but he looked ancient…a bit like an old croc actually….he had lived there all his life. Is that luck? Just the other day a puppy belonging to Charlie’s friend, the mother dog, and which apparently looked just like Charlie in every way right down to identical spots, had been munched. The little puppy got too close to the water and the crocodile just leapt out and swallowed him whole….that’s why there were only two puppies when we arrived. One of them had been eaten by the croc.
That evening I spoke to the mother croc…I said “I am friendly person who doesn’t mind crocs…after all.     And I absolutely promise you that I will not hurt your babies….if you don’t hurt me or Rob or my dog Charlie”.….i think she must have understood…..the next morning….there were numerous baby croc tracks all around the tent…but none of the mother croc.
That morning walking back up the beach to Nancy and Michaels area…one on Nancy’s friends looked at us incredulously when she found out where we had spent the night…she was shocked…she was looking at Rob and me as if we were completely bananas. I had not met her before but I had seen her…she had kept her distance…but now she was suggesting we move our tent up main tribes camping area…I am not being flippant when I say that I was touched by her concern.
Oh Lily…. I don’t know how I am going to explain this to you…the situation just gets worse...I am only telling you this because  you may have to experience it yourself one day ……soon    and then you might blame me because it was such an amazing    bungle ..  …      =.l/?
Sigh…..we set the tent up between two lovely trees….i was thinking….i could put the hammock up between these trees and live here forever…it was such a lovely afternoon and the sun was setting…it  was so beautiful…sigh…the waters covering the mudflats now…so pretty….!     Guess What Lily….the water came right up to the tent…ok I am exaggerating… by high tide there was approximately one foot of space between our tent opening and the waters edge.
That night Jimbo and his woman set up camp near us….they had collected heaps of coconut husks and had a good fire going….that afternoon I had gone around collecting firewood and coconuts husks but not near enough to keep a fire going all night so I asked them if they could spare some and they did….so we did at least have a fire going….and a good one by the time the tide had come up completely….
Jimbo and I had been sharing surreptitious glances all afternoon…not of a romantic kind as such, rather one of …I know you are having problems with your man and vice versa….rather I knew also that relations between him and his woman, a Maori lass were very strained….that  evening he had  introduced himself to us primarily to express concern about our border security situation…he had suggested two more fires …one on either side of the tent…or that we sleep in the van…..now….we …we got out of the tent real quick I can tell you….it was a horrible night…the mattress was damp and smelly …the bed clothes were damp and horrible….rob chain smoked all night and I got asthmas…Charlie kept on wanting to go outside …that or  he was chewing on my shoes or something…I lost so much stuff to charlies chewings…very depressing….there was a bit of yelling going on between rob and me at Giangurra but it didn’t phase any of the locals at all….if anything they were bemused and amused by it all…in any case it was not as if they were without their random flare ups.
Earlier that afternoon, Rob appeared to be in a daze…he kept on wandering too close to the water’s edge and I forever had to yell out to him to get away from the water…I was trying to organise the tent and becoming more and more exasperated by the minute. It was as bit like being the mother of two hopelessly out of control, danger mouse, space cadet, children with this enormous, ferocious, carnivorous, prehistoric, predatory, coldblooded monster on the loose.   I was sick of it.  Charlie was also out there gallivanting with the mother dog and her babies. I said to Rob that night in the van…yes we had to sleep in the van that night…on the mattress Charlie had pissed on… I said….i  know I can’t complain…is this not the place we have been searching for and here we are in …..paradise s ss
“Look Benny”… I said….”.i am sick of having to deal with this crocodile situation”...i finally said to him….”you might not care about being munched on by a crocodile…do you seriously not care about me having to deal with all the blood and gore should that eventuate….think about my sensibilities …er sensitivities for once!”
How can I describe it?…..‘this constant, nightmarish, crocodile menace” …. I wanted to go somewhere where I could just relax and not have to deal with it… rob felt the same way…..however the next day we moved the tent again  and this time it was ok….and that’s where we stayed for the next 8 days or nights….
That morning after the two nights in a row crocodile situation…my unrestful and morose state was disturbed by a major screaming fit on the part of Jimbo’s woman…she was incensed that he had asked her to go and get the crab pots in…. He was flummoxed I could tell….she left in her car, in a fury, leaving him stranded at Giangurra…Jimbo didn’t live at Giangurra, he lived in Cairns… Jimbo knew everyone at Giangurra and was somewhat related to them but his woman had never been there. This was her first  visit. He told me that he loved her very much and had stayed up all night keeping the fire going out of concern for her and that he had not slept all night. I got the impression he was genuinely bewildered by her reaction and very hurt….
We gave Jimbo a lift back into Cairns and he let us use his shower and his washing machine and we just hung out at his place that afternoon….then we went to McDonalds to find his woman…and find her we did….and get this she turned on us for helping Jimbo to find us….i just couldn’t believe that she was so angry…Jimbo was really upset about it.

The next few days were idyllic and quite unusual….as it turned out…..