Friday, 7 August 2015

Dredging the River of Memories……

My best advice for this dangerous pursuit is to watch out for the crocodiles on the river bank! Don’t let them snap you up! Sometimes, in dredging, you bring up the mud of your life, and sometimes you come unexpectedly upon some lost treasure of a memory. The secret is to dump that sludge and enjoy the treasure. Why crocodiles on the river bank? Well, my last great adventure was the trip to North Queensland, and the first far northern city I called in at was Cairns. I did some of the usual tourist things, and, as I had a few hours to fill in before flying on to Gove, I went on a “river” tour in a smallish ferry. To call this a river was a flight of imagination ….. it had been dredged out of a muddy mangrove swamp and was now home to a lot of Australian Naval vessels. On this particular morning, as we drove past the shores, there were lots of crocodiles there, sunning themselves on the banks. There weren’t many passengers on board, and I was sitting close to the skipper, who had a friend with him on this trip. A chance to catch up on the local gossip. The friend was telling the skipper of an “ hilarious” incident that had happened the week before to a group of Japanese tourists. The tour operator had landed them on a beach somewhere, and they all came running back, screaming that the beach was full of crocodiles! He, of course, thought they were exaggerating, but, when he went to check, found it was true. The entire contents of the crocodile farm nearby had escaped. Luckily, none of the tourists was eaten. I don’t think they would have thought it was very funny. Not to be outdone, the skipper then told his friend about another tour operator who had recently taken a small band of tourists up into Cape York, a very wild place. He said he had let the tourists sleep in their tent on the ground while he slept on the roof of the Land Rover. Was he scared of the roaming buffaloes and crocodiles, not to mention the snakes and spiders? No, of course not. Once again, the tourists all made it back safely to civilisation.

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