Sat 1st: Heron Island to Brissie
For once I was lateish up. I felt all snorkelled out, and had given all my wetsuit hire stuff back to the marine centre anyhow, so the point was just to have a slow calm breakfast and pack up at my own rate - my rucksack contents had sort of exploded despite the best efforts of the room cleaner who came in every day to mop the floor of sandy footprints and fold everything up, but it was also quite nice to repack everything from scratch again, a bit like spring cleaning, only for rucksacks.
The deal was that close to check-out time, you tagged your bag and left it outside your room, and then it rematerialised some hours later on Gladstone jetty at the end of your boat trip back. This I did, and was met by my neighbour/ex-snorkel buddy doing the same. It turns out he was also leaving today and very glum. He was going on to Sydney, then LA, then Montana where aparently it'll just be the start of the skiing season. He reckoned the LA stopover might just be enough to help him aclimatise, but it was going to be tough.
I went to reception to complete my check out and found out that the moniless existence had indeed resulted in the racking up of a vast room bill (though not as terrifying as some people's, especially the families who had been here a week). Needless to say, once I had paid my bills and handed back my metaphorical key, suddenly a second class citizen, 'Oh are you charging to your room madam? Oh. No. Paying *cash*, I see'. It disheartened me sufficiently to not want to buy anthing else on the island, and I survived on free drinking water, the buffet lunch which I was owed as part of my room fee, and blagging myself on a free bird spotting lecture to pass the time until the launch was due to leave.
The boat was late of course. I realised this when I went down to the jetty at the alloted 2pm rendevous and there was no boat at the jetty, and no boat to be seen in a full 180 degree scan of the horizon either. So unless it was sneaking up from the back of the island (which seemed unlikely) it was at least 40mins away.
I marched back to reception to see what was going on. Apparently a latecoming Qantas flight had held up the incoming launch by about an hour. This meant that their previous claim that the launch met flights out of Gladdie from 16:20 onwards was now a lie, many would miss their flights, and my own 17:15 flight looked in jeapordy too. The mob (and there was at least 60 of us) threatened to grow riotous for a while until reception grovelled to Qantas and got them to hold up some connecting flights for us. As the Brisbane flight I was catching was the same one I caught before that did Mackay/Rockie/Gladdie first, I was confident they could hold that up and only upset about 3 passengers, but some people were flying on to Sydney and Perth and it looked like Qantas were going to delay those flights too. Presumably the entire intricate web of scheduled flights subsequently crumbled around all of this - and all for a tinpot launch from a tiny island in the middle of nowhere - impressed!
Sure enough, the boat was about an hour late - it was a medium sized seacat thing and it wasn't there to be scenic, only to shuttle people to and from the island. Because of this, most of us either slept or read during the 2 hour journey, and were only jerked awake by the captain announcing on the tannoy that we were now entering Gladstone harbour.
Gladstone was, just as I thought, not the sort of place you'd want to visit as a tourist. When going out in the chopper he'd flown us over a vast vast coal burning power station surrounded by acres of coal heaps, and next door to it a huge line of moored tankers that shipped the coal from elsewhere. There was also a large aluminum smelt and yet more huge ships shifting things to and from. When we came back in on the boat the huge long breakwater was dotted with large tankers and vehicles for moving stuff and okay, the finally end marina where we moored was reasonable pretty but...I think I did right avoiding overnighting there.
Once we had disembarked there was a mad dash for the airport. About 30 of us had flights to catch, and the 16:20 Brisbane lot (including Montana man and his missus) were being put on the later flight, my flight, which had been sitting on the tarmac waiting for us for 20 minutes. We all scrambled to get our luggage on the coach that was transferring us (and it was a real free for all with people rugby tackling one another out of the way and standing on fallen bodies etc). Then we had a similar scrum trying to get checked in, though Gladdie airport didn't bother about silly little things like passport checks or security screenings so we shouldn't have worried. Mind you, me and my Montana friends were only going as far as Brissie. Some of the Sydney/Perth people were looking very anxious though - I was sitting next to one and he spent the whole flight either with his head in his hands, or rocking everso slightly backwards and forwards with his arms folded. He drank a lot of wine too. He reminded me of how I might of been when I thought my Cairns/Townsville connection was going wrong though he was very rude to push past me when they opened the front doors and shove everyone out of the way to get out. I guess he got his flight though cos they were paging someone by name from out flight when we got into the building.
Brisbane airport. Loud, noisy, full of stressed people all trying to get some place to the detriment of everyone else - not a place for the old or frail. I said goodbye to Montana guy and his missus (who had now been sitting next to me since the launch set off some hours ago) and took his card should I ever be in Montana and in need of a place to stay. After that, we parted and it was time for me to find my hotel.
...The taxi driver to the hotel turned out to work in IT for his day job and did taxis at night cos he 'had no life', bless him. Aussie born, he was surprised that Aus wasn't taking immigrant IT workers anymore and reckoned that was about to turn around again. I doubted he'd ever left the city and visited rural Oz though so perhaps his viewpoint was a little skewed. Still can't see what use a sugar cane farmer would have with a product manager...
We were both very surprised to see what hotel I was staying at - it was a big posh one in the city centre and here was I a greasy dirty backpacker with the dust of many deserts and beaches on my boots. I mean there was even a guy on the front step to take my luggage from the taxi (though you could tell he thought I didn't belong and did the service as sniffily as he could). I checked in behind a lass in a wedding dress and a guy in a suit, trying not to bring the tone down too much. Reception just thought it was great though and loved my tales of swags and campervans. They figured, just like the taxi driver, that if it was my last night in oz, why not live it in style? And I did with a huge room service meal, bottle of wine, and pay per view movie - all chiefly to distract me from the fact that the dream really was over now, and stop me from getting depressed.
For the first time in a very long time, I managed to stay up until midnight...I'm-a comin' home.
