CHAPTER 56
The flight back was a quiet one for my family, partly through the effects of too much booze, but mostly in reaction to the revelations about Susie’s adopted father. I knew there was more to be told, but all I could think of was the contrast on that ‘Sharp End’ programme between that infantryman and Gerald himself.

The former had spoken with true venom, while Gerald had almost looked ashamed. That, I believe, was the message I took from it all: how the hell had he kept his sanity?

We got LC off to school on the Monday morning, Ish away to college, and Maz and I sleeowalked through some civil service training. I don’t think we were quite as efficient as we should have been, but I needed to perk myself up, with Ish’s birthday almost on us. That took some serious misdirection, as I tried to steer my flock the right way without revealing it all.

We finally boarded the flight to Uluru, Maz sighing happily but still asking questions I was doing my best to evade.

“We assume there’s a pool at the resort, darling, but why so insistent on us bringing our swimmers, not to mention our rock shoes?”

“Well, can you imagine an Aussie holiday without swimming? It’s going to be hot-hot-hot!”

LC was as excited as usual when we took off, staring down at the city; she may have become quite the seasoned jetsetter, but she still had a child’s excitement. That didn’t exactly last long, as the view quickly became an endless carpet of dry salt pans and red dirt. All three of them were dozing before long, and I had yet another moment of disorientation when the landing announcements started. The views of Uluru and the Olgas were spectacular, the sky was absolutely clear, and the runway bore a great big number ‘13’.

Down, and an oven-hot walk across the tarmac to the terminal building.

“Where do we get our bags, darling?”

“We don’t”

“Sorry?”

“Nor do we get a taxi, or a hire car. Time for a cold drink and a relax”

My wife’s eyes widened, her smile spreading.

“We’re going…?”

“On another flight, yes”

“To?”

“Wait and see”

She grinned.

“I can read departure boards, darling”

Ish added, “So can I, Dad”

I held my peace, much to their amusement, and treated LC to a miniatire of my own hat. Aussie is as Aussie does, Aussie as, ey?

When the time came for boarding, The grins were wider than ever, and my beloved wife pulled me into a serious snog just before we boarded, much to the amusement of the woman boarding us. I got some decent pics of The Rock as we turned, and then it was just the mind-numbing red dirt for what seemed like forever. Once again, I fell asleep. Ish blamed it on my advanced age.

We, or at least I, woke once again with the landing instructions, and it was raining outside. By ‘rain’, I mean a deluge of not merely Biblical but Old testament proportions. The sky, or what could be seen of it through the curtains of rain, was black as sin, and I thanked god that we disembarked via an airbridge rather than stairs down to the almost submerged tarmac.

Ish was chuckling as we walked from the plane.

“Share the joke, son?”

“Oh, Dad, it’s Mum, ey? She’d normally be stopping every five metres to look at some new bird, but in this weather, well! Anyway, not exactly beach-friendly, is it?”

“Cairns doesn’t really have a beach, son, except well outside the city. And they have issues”

“Yeah?”

“Stingers and salties. Box jellyfish and crocodiles”

“Oh!”

“Anyway, we do have a car at this airport, so keep an eye open for---there it is”

The car hire desk was signposted from baggage reclaim, only a short walk, and our apartment was a short drive, windscreen wipers wagging frantically in the downpour. The parking was in the open, so I left the rest in the car while I semi-drowned running to reception. Once I had all the forms signed and the keys in my hand, I turned to brave the rain once more, which had, quite simply, stopped as if a tap had been turned off.

Our little home away was on the fourth floor and had one large bed, plus a pair of bunks tucked around a corner. LC was very clear in her choice.

“Ishy has to go on the bottom, because he’s so heavy”

Coming along fine, that girl.

Once everything was stowed, we were out the door, swimmers in bags, to blue skies and a humidity that made the heat feel even more potent. I cast a longing eye at the pool as we left, but across a busy road and a sweep of mown grass I could see the ocean. We arrived at an area of clean sand, and Ish looked at me accusingly.

“No beaches, Dad?”

“See the edge of the water, son?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s the end of the sand. Mud from there on. Trust me”

“Chestnut manikin. Noisy friarbird…”

My wife was away. I spotted a public barbie area just up from us, and then delegated the lad to raid the nearby café for ices and cold drinks, which we savoured as we squeezed onto one of the waterfront benches. The tide was falling, moving away from the stretch of golden sand to reveal a steadily widening expanse of brown mud. Various wading birds started to arrive, and Maz went into overdrive in her naming, breaking off every now and again to hug me.

“That’s five life ticks already, darling, and we’ve only just arrived!”

“Well, we have to think of the kids. They need some entertaining as well, you know. Only fair”

“You have plans?”

“Oh yes”

“These plans… might they involve birds?”

“Birdish. And fish”

“Ah. My non-bucket list?”

“Wait and see”

“You carry on like that, and you will get a slap, Rhodes!”

I tugged her to her feet, and we continued the stroll towards the city centre, passing a couple more public barbie sites as the strip of sand vanished and the mud flats became more and more evident.

“City beach is just ahead, folks”

Maz stared at the sweep of brown slime, before giving me a serious Paddington.

“Really?”

“Really. And---there it is!”

It’s a typically Aussie affair, an artificial swimming pool made to resemble a lagoon, with a real sand beach as well as awnings out over the water to allow shaded swimming, and they had a block of changing rooms. Sod a little hotel pool.

It was also a chance to assess LC’s swimming ability, without the dangers of waves and unstable shorelines. For the first time, we had her in the water without her flotation vest, and she was doing fine, it seemed.

That was our afternoon, spent in the ‘lagoon’, even though my wife spent half of it out of the water and peering at the mud. I didn’t actually care; I was happy. We grabbed a slice of cake and a drink at a nearby café, the tiniest of pigeons, no bigger than a sparrow, hopping round our feet, and then started the walk back up the Esplanade to our hotel, where I had another surprise awaiting them.

“Right! In, dump swimmers, grab rock shoes!”

That one really puzzled them, until I led them up the road, past some trees and up to the bouldering site I had spotted months before when plotting the trip. Ish actually shouted with delight, Maz laughed happily and LC simply ran at and up the wall like one of the local house geckos.

“Hey, mate, that your girl? She needs to be careful here”

“Problems with the site?”

“Not that, mate. How old is she”

“Seven. She’s only climbing at about grade sixteen at the moment, though”

“Er…”

Same old same old.

The bouldering was followed by showers, clean clothes and a walk to a nearby pub that offered ’croc and roo’ platters, as well as having a local IPA on tap, and all in all, it was a superb start to my son’s birthday celebration. The next few days would be busy.

We’d picked up a mix of breakfast stuff on our way back from the ‘town beach’, so we were well set up for a day’s bumbling. I’d arranged for transfers, so the car stayed put as we did the first of our ‘Big Ticket’ Cairns visits, a cable car ride over a rainforest mountain, with a couple of stops to look at dense foliage from the inside and a dry waterfall. That took us to a village that just screamed ‘tourist trap’ at me, so I led the way from the cable car terminal to the riverbank.

“Maz?”

“Yes, darling?”

“I made an executive judgement, that we can still adjust”

“You mean you made a guess?”

“Exactly. This is a boat trip to spot wildlife. There is an option to add a place called Birdworld to the tour”

She looked round at the hordes of tourists and ranks of souvenir shops.

“Just guessing from the name, but are we talking about a zoo type of place”

“Yes”

“You know me well, then, love. What’s to see on this boat ride?”

“Birds, reptiles…”

I lost count of the birds she spotted, with occasional help from our guide, who knew his stuff, but all of us oohed at the terrapins/turtles/tortoises/things with big shells, as well as the two basking freshwater crocs. Our guide was very clear.

“Freshies aren’t like salties, which are nasty as. If you’re in the town, look out for the ‘no shit, Sherlock’ signs. Er, sorry; forgot about the littl’un”

Ish asked, and the mab grinned.

“My name for them, son. Lots of creeks in Cairns, and salties come well inland. The signs say ‘Warning: crocodiles inhabit this area. Attacks may cause injury or death’. NSS, ey?”

He gave us some very clear instructions about safety at the water’s edge, then shook his head.

“I mean, sometimes it’s the tourists that have more sense than the locals. When we get an awkward salty, we don’t shoot it; endangered, ey? We trap it and move it as far away as we can. If you see a steel cage out in the water, that’ll be a salty trap. Bait it with old meat. Had one set up in Port Douglas a while ago, blokes swam out and climbed inside to take selfies. Bloody Darwin without needing to go to the NT, ey?”

Maz shuddered, and I decided that it wasn’t quite the time to explain that Port Douglas was the following day’s destination.