ESCAPE TO THE TROPICAL SUN.

ESCAPE TO THE TROPICAL SUN.

So the Gold Coast as a busking venue was rendered completely unsustainable by a friendly hint I received from the cops and besides life was telling me it was time to do the big jump to the Northern tropics.  I had no idea how much of my gear I would have to discard to get there on a commercial airliner and the final weigh in at the domestic terminal saw me sporting my most compact travelling rig ever. The baggage staff at Surfers Paradise bus depot informed me that my pushbike and the trailer had to both be dismantled and stored in boxes which made it totally impractical to take them, thus they were discarded.  In case I should pass that way again I stashed them in some thick pampas grass on a sloping river bank covered by my best canvas tarps. There were hardly used mozzie nets and a brand new one man tent under the tarps as well as a portable DVD player and assorted other belongings.  Now in a fit state to travel on a grey hound bus I made it to the Brisbane domestic air terminal where I was required to off load even more of my gear such as a butane cooker, a CD player and a relatively new battery. If I didn’t let the stuff go I would have been charged one hundred and sixty dollars excess baggage and I worked out that it was cheaper in the long run to replace everything new when I got to Cairns.

                                                                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                                                   Disposable society madness.

My flight to Far North Queensland took off from Brisbane about nine o’clock in the evening which meant that I would be landing in a new city late in the night with no idea where I was going to lay my head.  With this in mind I decided the best thing to do would be to knock out as many zeds as I could on the plane and stay up fishing until daylight if need be. To ensure I would be ready to snore the flight away I smoked joint after joint of the weed jack had given me just to get rid of it and I ate some as well.  I left a bottl’o I found in transit with both arms full of refreshments.  By the time I was passing through the airport barriers I was sufficiently tanked up and stoned for the trip but I made a point of staying on my best behavior so I didn’t attract the attention of any security staff.  I was woken by the sensation of a rapid descent and then huddled along various tunnels and barriers until I was standing in the warm tropical night waiting for a shuttle to Cairns.  I jumped out at the backpacker district with all of the other travelers and finding a vacant corner in an alley behind their hostel I conked out until the light of the new day was penetrating my eyelids. When I took in the scale of my new surroundings over coffee I found my imaginings for what Cairns may have become were well short of the living reality. Back then the boat harbor was the same as you might find in any small coastal community and now it was like something out of a glossy magazine. Some of the original warves remain but they have mostly crumbled with time and been replaced by fashionable boardwalks, home to restaurants and nightclubs. The fleet of tourist boats that traverse back and forth from the Barrier Reef are large modern twin hulled people movers with names like ‘King of the Reef’ and they sit among any number of squillion dollar looking vessels.  The waterfront real estate has climbed skyward in the time since last I looked out over the vast mudflats of Cairns but not so much as in Surfers Paradise.

That came as something of a relief. Even so, much of the same ‘tacky’ tourism based commercialism is thriving at every turn and you can find yourself penniless broke in no-time if you rely on take away food as your main diet.  Having relinquished my bike and trailer to make the journey North I had to replace them so I could explore the territory with greater ease. The small wheeled shopping trolley I had been lugging around since I left Brisbane was barely adequate to carry my bedroll and busking gear so I just left it stashed among some bushes and walked or caught buses everywhere I went.  A stroke of good luck came on about my third day in Cairns when I found out from a public notice board where the local back yard bicycle repair man was. His name is Paul and he has a workshop just out of town with bikes and bike parts filling every square inch of his garden and driveway.  The bike I settled on set me back eighty bucks but Paul put in a fair bit of time helping me to fit a front carrier holding a milk crate and convert my small, hand held shopping trolley into the early beginnings of a bike trailer.  Once I was mobile and hauling my load at speed around town my makeshift trailer started to sag then the frame suddenly snapped scattering my stuff all over the pavement.  With reserve funds dwindling after I forked out for the plane trip I had to make a snap decision about how I could manifest a new bike trailer for the cheapest possible price I could find.  It was to come in the form of a sack trolley that was on sale for just twenty bucks at a Bunnings warehouse and a further twenty for some marine grade steel rod which formed a new axle for some golf buggy wheels I scored. The new trailer was far sturdier than the first and now that I had my rig sorted out I was ready to start doing shows. 

I had no idea how much money I would earn as I set up for my first performance at the transit mall entrance to woolies in Cairns.  The only shows I had done since Hus went were in Surfers and I pulled roughly half of what we used to make together, so in this new place I resolved myself to the fact I should be satisfied even if I only pulled enough for drinks after work. I was well into my first set when it became apparent that the public bench directly in front of me was the place the local blacks sit around getting pissed because the nearest surveillance camera is obscured by the fronds of a large palm. They were topping up coke bottles from a cask of red wine and getting more rowdy by the minute then all it took was a refusal to hand over a cigarette for it to turn it into a full blown punchup.  The blacks having trashed the bench area with spilled wine, blood and assorted garbage suddenly twigged that the cops would be on their way so they left as a group to find another drinking spot.  This type of scene was a re-occurring event that took place at most of my transit mall shows and the reason I kept performing there was because the blacks really cough up if they like you. Even if a full breed Murray is so pissed he can hardly stand up he will still dig deep and fling a handful of coins if you tickle his inebriated fancy. The Thursday Islanders are very generous as well especially if their kids like what they see and hear.  Before long I started averaging fifty to seventy or eighty bucks at the shows and the vast majority of my earnings came from our indigenous cousins. The blacks can be the most wonderful or most horrific people you could ever want to meet and the difference is largely determined by their choices as it relates to the booze. Many of those who have opted for a dry camp reality can be seen openly frowning upon those who sit pan handling for the next drink or begging in barbecue areas for any scrap because they are too hopeless drunk to provide themselves with a meal. It’s all about personal dignity in my view and those who have pickled their brains on the slops have none left to build on so they just crack open another goonie and drink it all up before it gets too hot in the stifling tropical sun. Hey Whitey … You got some schrapnels for me ?

On one of my scouting missions out of Cairns towards the airport I found a crab pot that looked like it had not been attended to for ages going by the look of the bleached bones that remained tied up inside it.  I pulled the crab pot out of the mud and untied the rope it was attached to then I strapped the pot to the bike trailer and took it back to my camp.  The pot needed a few repairs and once this was done it started snaring an average of three and four crabs a day.  More often than not the mud crabs I caught were undersized or female but in among this there were also the fully mature buck male muddies that retail for as much as one hundred bucks a kilo in the swankier eating houses around town.  The full sensation of being in the tropics happened for me every time I had to scramble down a new muddy embankment among the mangroves to lay the pot.  The knowledge that large crocodiles frequent the area is constantly reinforced by the multilingual signs erected everywhere you look and the commercialized images you see of crocs on everything from ice cream wrappers to beach hats.  Whenever I hunted my favorite crustation in their territory I would be scanning the immediate surrounds with meticulous precision looking for the first hint of any eyes and nostrils that might be coming my way. One day while fishing at a public boat ramp near the shipping port I was able to appreciate a croc in the wild that was a safe distance away across the river.  I was just wetting a line and dreaming of the big barramundi catch that was still yet to happen when I spotted something on a mudflat clearing that looked a little too grey in color to be a washed up log. Sure enough as I stayed focused on the object people in small boats started cruising by it slowly taking snapshots until it eventually got pissed off by the attention and slid into the water.

The closest I got to any sort of Barra action was on my second night in Cairns when I discovered that there were aboriginals night fishing with handlines on the floating ramp near the dinghy hire shop. A young Murray chap was cast netting as he and two young girls attended to their handlines. They had already brought in five large bream.  As we were chatting about what they had caught one of his larger handlines went spinning off into the water at top speed and the race was on to retrieve it with another line or lose it attached to what must have been a very big fish.  All theories about how large the fish was were confirmed when the handline was successfully retrieved and at the end of it a barramundi more than a meter long came twitching and fighting to the surface.  He managed to get it up to about waist height before it snapped his line and went crashing back into the drink.  He was really pissed off that he had lost the creature and I was truly glad I had seen it’s escape taking place in real life, right before my eyes.

This beats the shit out of watching it on the Saturday fishing show on telly. The big Barra catch didn’t happen for me the whole time I was in North Queensland but I did have some luck with a Mangrove Jack as I lay stretched out on my bed roll near the old warves.  I was suddenly woken by a spinning line in the humid tropical night but it was much too dark to see what I had landed once I had pulled it in. Thinking it may have been a catfish I threw it in a bucket still attached to the hand line and went back to sleep.  In the morning when I discovered it was a better than average sized Jack I cooked him up on my gas cooker and he made a fine breakfast indeed.  The lads always used to rave about the tasty flavor of Mangrove Jacks back in Brunswick Heads but in my view having now tasted it Silver Bream is a far superior eating fish and the one I still most often choose to target. … Yum.

One of the most welcomed aspects of the new and modernized Cairns I was exploring was the fact it can be easily viewed as a kind of ‘Buskers Heaven’.  There are quite literally street performers on every corner and the policy of the regional council is to issue permits free of charge to all who want them without an audition system like they have in many other places.  It’s as if the township is somehow the official ‘End of the Busking Trail’ for the East coast of Australia and that makes it a bit of a mecca for travelling minstrels and musicians like myself.  While I was staying there the annual Buskers festival was taking place but I didn’t bother signing up because experience has taught me it’s futile for an old folky to compete with cute young girls playing violins or sword juggling maniacs lighting their farts at the top of high, wobbling stilts.  The council’s planning committee whoever they are have latched onto the idea of selling the town as ‘The Music City’ to the tourists and there are full concert stages situated around the CBD and esplanade. These are regular host to everything from Aboriginal and Islander tribal dances and singalongs to primary school choirs and conventional rock bands. The Shire Council in the area has got it right at some levels like the emphasis they place on music and other cultural festivities for the visitors but at other levels they have got it terribly wrong.  The main fuck up by the powers be that I noticed was the over policing and surveilence of the pedestrian public which has gone to well beyond ‘overkill' proportions.  Quite literally everywhere you look there is another pole or ceiling mounted camera scrutinizing your every move and serving as a constant source of intimidation. I have spoken with a number of international travellers who agree that they feel they are constantly being watched by the authorities and it detracts from the enjoyment of their stay considerably.  In line with the Councils push for a secure metropolis it would appear that everyone from the mayor down wants to lay down the law to all who visit or reside in Cairns.  The worst offenders for trying to tell the public what to do are the dickheads who clean the toilets and empty the garbage bins on the Esplanade. 

They have somehow got it into their pea sized brains that they are the rightful custodians and keepers of all recreation areas near the waterfront and it manifests daily in the vocal instructions they impart to those using the park. I had one such garbage bin attendant approach me while I was cooking my lunch at one of the many barbecue areas near the lagoon.  In a most hostile tome he said “get all of your shit off the barbecue other people might want to use it”. I had a backpack sitting on the concrete barbecue stand from which I was about to extract some fresh shorts and a couple of other items like a baited handline and a small foam esky.  I asked the garden attendant where his badge was saying that he had the authority to order people around and he instantly fired up like a sky rocket on fire cracker night. Thus indicating that I had found myself a live one to play with. With both fists clenched at his side and temple veins about to burst his reply was, …”Oooh … Your’e a cheeky cunt aren’t you”. I said … “When I’m pissed off yes”. He then said “You watch out for me dickhead I knock off at two thirty and I ‘ll be looking for you”.  By this stage the fists had become unclenched by our neanderthal bin emptier and he was pointing at me in a threatening manner.  My quicker than usual reply was “You can’t be too interested in keeping your job” as I pointed at the pole mounted camera that was recording his every move. It suddenly dawned on this pathetic sniveling little throwback that his behavior was in fact being monitored and he withdrew towards the toilet block shouting “The cops will get rid of you”. Just before he got to the entrance of the lagoon police office he took a sharp left towards the carpark area and vanished out of sight. Typical.

The best glimpse of ‘Old world Cairns’ I got to experience during my stay was a charming place called ‘The Digger Street Art Collective’ which was home to the most fringe inspired and underground talent I saw the whole time I was there. It was like time warping back to the old Epicenter days in Byron Bay when first I entered the central computer area of the main house.  There were four stilted weatherboard houses occupied by the artists in the community and they were separated by the tall, leafy remnants of a rainforest.  In the computer room I put on my best “Hey groovy young dudes I’m a groovy old dude” type of voice as I inquired if anyone knew anything about putting a web site together.  In an almost synchronized and rehearsed motion dreadlock adorned heads began to turn from computer screens to me and all were wearing a common, knowing smile.  Then as if I was some kind of school teacher and they my students all hands went promptly into the air.  The first of them to speak was a young English traveler called Callum who told me that everyone was busy on projects at the moment but he would make time for me at a cost of four hundred dollars.  All he needed to get started was one hundred and seventy bucks to register the new site and the rest he said I could pay off as I made money busking. He had seen my act and said he liked what he saw and heard.  We smoked a few pipes of some Port Douglas heads I had scored then we got down to the business of transferring my album material and other works from memory sticks into his system.  Callum was noticeably impressed by the amount of work I had completed and stored on the flash drives and he said that I had saved heaps of money by not leaving it for someone like him to do.  Things like the typing out of song lyrics as they would appear in an album format are time consuming and he said most pro’s don’t want to know about it.  After about a week of web site designing workshops with our faces glued to the computer screen I had a home page that conveyed most of what I wanted to present on line.  Not all of the photos that were included were my final best choice but I didn’t want to push the relationship because I had scored a real bargain web site from Callum.  www.tripppomaticproductions.com is the name I finally settled on for the site and before Callum jumped on a plane back to England he showed me how to use the article manager program that allows me to edit the various components of the site.  With his departure Callum the web site designer became my first cyber collaborator and this allowed the reality to hit home for me that the web really has made the world a smaller place. By the time I left Cairns every one of the other site designers had moved on as well and they had been replaced by other travelers in that exotic, transitory artistic stop over.

The township of Kuranda in the hinterland was always a good place to score pot back in the late seventies and then when I was in the area again in the mid eighties.  I had run out of the weed I scored at Digger street some days earlier so I decided to jump on a local bus and go to Kuranda for a couple of shows. I traveled out of Cairns with just my bed roll and the busking amp in a wheelie suitcase but it started to rain as the bus climbed high into the mountains and it didn’t stop the whole time I was there.  I managed to get a bit of fishing done in the Barren River without getting drenched but other than that the trip was a dismal affair.  I didn’t manage to score but the worst aspect of the journey was the fact my valuables bag got ripped off while I was stretched out under the rear porch of a souvenir shop on the main street.  Blacks. My wallet containing all my cards was gone and the high definition camera was now missing in action as well. It’s a real good job I had been transferring the footage from out of the memory cards or I would have no tangible record of my travels and most importantly no record of Husky having ever existed.

All things considered Cairns in my books still qualifies as what I would call a groovy and happening place.  I met more kindred souls in the time I was in the area than I did anywhere else since I left Sydney.  At the most unexpected moments the buskers I had been connecting with would find themselves in the same location be it the Esplanade Lagoon, the garden shelter of a back packer hostel or the front bar of the Railway Hotel.  Daytime jam sessions were often extended into the night to become parties with fire throwing, dancing girls and unending merriment for all.  At one such gathering on the only stretch of sandy beach in Cairns the word went around that the group would be performing that evening at a newly opened boardwalk cafe called the Mecca Bar.   The owner of the place had extended an invitation for us to play for his guests with an offer of free drinks and food for all performers and a fifty dollar fee for each.  The opening was a hoot and our clan of musical gypsies kept the drink trays and the food coming till the early hours. In hindsight I was fortunate to have sat out a chilly southern winter in the mildest part of the tropical year but alas life was soon to inform me that it was time to get out of town. The Head Ranger in Cairns is an obese pig of a man who would look quite at home were he wallowing and snuffling in the mud of some remote rainforest with all the other swine and sows. He swaggered over to where I was performing one afternoon in the transit mall and interupted my song to inform me that he had been instructed to revoke my busking permit. I asked him politely what the reason was and he said there had been a number of complaints. After bending down at great effort and taking my permit out of the case he told me that I could question the reasons for the permit being revoked at the council office near the lagoon. 

He stood some distance off watching me as I packed up my stuff and he was laughing his stupid head off with one of the garbage attendants as I rode towards the council office.  Once inside the council office I asked the receptionist if I could speak with whoever it was that issued permits to street performers.  A short while later a young male who looked about thirty presented at the counter and ask how he could be of service. I told him that my busking permit had been confiscated by the Ranger and asked him to explain the reason why.  Noticeably puffed up on his authority the little squirt went on to inform me that there had been a number of complaints starting with the fact that I maintained poor personal hygiene. Initially I was stopped dead in my tracks by his statement but then anger and personal humiliation kicked in and I increased my vocal volume as I went to my own defense. Other council officers started coming out of their offices into the reception area as I described my daily showering and clothes washing routines.  Then I went on to explain that my fishing gear sits in a bucket which is situated in a milk crate at the front of my pushbike.  I said if there was any public complaint about unpleasant aromas it was more likely the bait I use than anything else. Junior was quick to jump in with “Oh! There were other complaints as well”.  By now totally pissed off with the situation and not giving a flying fuck about who was listening in I leaned across the counter and said in my most intimidating tone “Like what little man?”.  Obviously feeling threatened he took a step back then ran off a list starting with my manner of dress and concluding with the lyrical content of my material and the manner in which it is presented. This was the point at which I knew the story about public complaints was a fabrication and I was the target of an internal conspiracy initiated by the very people standing on the opposite side of the counter. I showed great restraint in not uttering a single swear word as I informed them that my mode of dress is indicative of clothes worn by the counter-culture the world over and the songs I perform on the streets promote environmental sustainability and solution. My parting statement before I turned my back on that pack of bistro loitering wankers was … “Let’s see what the local media thinks about all this shall we”.

All of the local news broadcasters said that it was too late in the day to make the six o’clock news but at the office of channel seven they said they would film my planned ‘illegal busking show’ and run the story the following day.  This just so happened to coincide with the last official day of the Cairns Buskers Festival and the reporters thought my story would make a fitting end to the coverage they had put together thus far.  The eventual news broadcast gave a balanced view of the story that could not help to work in my favor.  Passers by were interviewed to find out what they thought about my permit being taken away and all agreed it was too harsh an action on the part of the Shire Council. The lady Mayor was interviewed in defense of the council’s actions and she initiated her address with the words …”Firstly I would like to say this is not a personal hygiene issue”. All things said and done the Cairns regional Council handed me my next adventure on a silver platter as I go into the world armed with only my songs and a new ‘Steve cam’ in search of Australia’s ‘Most Busker Friendly Town”.  South to Adelaide the town of my birth seems like a fitting next move as it is renowned as the original festival state.  I wonder how a travelling street performer fairs in ‘The City of Churches’ these days, it’s been more than two decades since I was there.

In spite of the low points I experienced the Cairns scene was the best possible therapy I could have wished for as it relates to overcoming the loss of Husky and getting back into the flow of life in the real world.  The fellow travelers I connected with and the special moments we shared served as a priceless distraction from the morbid thoughts I had been entertaining prior to Husky death. An interesting detail arose while I was in the critical early moments of trying to get over his departure from this world.  It was the simple realization that I was unlucky on one hand to have lost him but on the other extremely lucky to have had him in the first place.  It’s a bit like the old Aboriginal woman meant when she once told me not to cry for what I didn’t have but to celebrate the things I did.  I had experienced unforgettable boating and road adventures with true wonder dogs not once but twice. First with Rufus and then with his great nephew Husky boy. In their company I lived through things that many only dream about, in the company of majestic creatures who were kings of the canine world. This is the final entry to this part of my journal so Bon voyage all, tight lines, spit in the eye of death and I might see you on the third stone from the sun.