Post #118 Monday 28 October 2019 – more on the Whitsundays
Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Monday 28 October 2019
Following on from my earlier post about adventures in the Whitsundays, I wanted to add another image. These are the Norfolk Island pines, with their very distinctive geometry, everywhere on the Whitsunday islands. This is the ridge of the cove at Refuge Bay where we anchored overnight.
I managed to find an internet link which gives the back story to how the pines came to be here. I had some ancient recollection they were not native. https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A7952664
So it was Captain Cook who brought the seeds of the pines to northern Australia wishfully supposing they might provide timber suitable for masts.
I have always found it hard to be on the water in the Pacific and not think of Captain Cook, Joseph Banks and all the great naturalists. For quite a while one of my favourite non fiction books was a book called “Darwin’s Armada” by Iain McCalman. It’s an account of the great sailing voyages of Darwin’s peers. It’s absolutely compelling reading (if that’s your kind of thing). It’s ages since I read it but one of the passages that still stays with me vividly is an account of how the Pacific peoples must have experienced navigating, with only the simplest instruments and no charts – what resources, skills and understanding of the sea they must have had.
But then I am very partial to all things Charles Darwin (and his milieu). The Voyage of the Beagle is so engaging. Here is a favourite passage in which Darwin describes interactions with wild llamas.
xx MG
I have been busy down in the country building (as always) and exploring. This is a snap taken down by the creek near my place. It was a lovely spring day and I wore my luminous pink gumboots to protect me from the swamp and any snakes. I don’t know if any of you have read Slaughterhouse-Five – or have seen the old movie – but the hero of the story makes a striking entrance emerging from an underground shelter after the bombing of Dresden in virtual rags and an incongruous pair of silver boots (scavenged from somewhere). My glow in the dark pink gumboots always make me think of that scene – they are so dazzling.
Lots of tourists enjoying themselves! Even more of them I think, because it’s school holidays. I am regularly asked to take photos for visitors, not everyone has a selfie stick.