Parents Day 12

Tuesday November 3

Cairns! Surely this was the real Australia: a warm, windy jungle of buzzing insects, singing birds, and vivaciously flowering trees. By ten o’clock Tuesday morning, we were packed into our “resort” at Holloway’s Beach, twenty minutes north of the city centre. Mom had asked the man at the front desk, hopefully, whether there was an ocean view from our room. He hedged. “Well, you can see the ocean from the balcony,” he said, vaguely, without meeting our eyes. And sure enough, you COULD see the ocean from the balcony, if you extended a mirror on a five-foot elbow-shaped pole and tilted it to reflect around the corner of the building. Still, the courtyard below our window was quite a jungle in itself, tall palm trees and thick flowering bushes nearly hiding the swimming pool, surrounded by lawn chairs. Actually the thick foliage made us all a little nervous, at night. Walking through the courtyard in the dark, we sort of shied away from the thick leaves, which might easily conceal a snake or crocodile. The resort was, in other words, heavenly. It was so hot at night that I slept sheetless, the balcony door propped open for a bit of air, listening to the faint chatter and splash of our neighbors in the pool.

Having packed in, Mom and I ran outside to check out the beach, but all we saw was some gray, rough water crashing onto a narrow strip of sand. Mom was sad. “Isn’t this the Coral Sea?” she demanded. Dad said yes, it sure was. He had a glazed look, thinking of all the sunken American and Australian and Japanese ships and planes out there, waiting for him. We went for breakfast at the resort’s little restaurant, facing out onto the beach. I ordered a banana smoothie, which was huge and delicious, and crumpets, which were just like english muffins and pretty boring. Mom and dad had scones with coconut-orange butter. The wind knocked over our plastic cups.

Around noon we took the bus in to Cairns, like the more touristy strips of Florida, but at the same time less commercial, much smaller, and still with that faint Australian sense that you could walk around a corner at any minute and be in the Outback eye to eye with something deadly. Mom got very excited and seized the touristing opportunity. We spent hours on a few small cross streets examining sunscreen, flip-flops, sarongs, shot glasses, beach towels, posters, beach bags, and t-shirts, all adorned with koalas, wombats, kangaroos or just a big map of Australia. We finally collapsed sunburned at one of the hundreds of pubs, and had drinks til 5 o’clock rolled around, earning the dubious right to be the first customers in an Indian restaurant. After a so-so dinner, we continued back to our resort, picking up a few groceries in the corner store, thirty seconds’ walk from our front door. Early bed.