First Day at Keppel

Arrival at Great Keppel Island

(Saturday)

There is a saying that goes like this: “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”

That bird is an idiot.

Today we got up at 3 something in the morning, finished throwing stuff in suitcases, and were driven to the airport by an extremely generous Chris. He wins the award for Australian Big Brother of the Year.

We checked into Virgin Blue and breathed a sigh of relief when our suitcases weighed in just under the limit of 20 kilos. I told Caroline I knew what 40 pounds felt like—I by that size bag of dog food every 20 days!

During the Melbourne to Brisbane leg, we saw the sun rise:

We changed planes in Brisbane, with barely enough time to pee. We were washing our hands when they started paging us. I think it’s their fault for putting our departing gate at the other end of the terminal from the one we arrived through!

From the plane, I got some shots of the Gold Coast:

Rockhampton has the smallest airport I’ve ever seen. It caters to maybe 4 airlines and has maybe just as many gates. You can walk from one end to the other in two minutes, if you tried to avoid the massive swarm of crickets that apparently take refuge inside every night.

Now to get from Rockhampton to Great Keppel Island, one can either take the ferry over, which costs about $20 one way and takes 45 minutes, or you can charter a flight on a Light Plane *cough*cropduster*cough*, which costs $250 and takes about 30 minutes. Not a hard choice, right?

Let me share some Keppel back-story: about three days ago, literally, Keppel’s largest resort, responsible for probably 90 percent of the island’s accommodation, closed down for an estimated 3 years while it undergoes a renovation. This is a huge deal. So huge, word has spread that the entire island has closed down. Which of course it hasn’t, but you know. But because the island is suddenly ‘deserted’, the ferry is now only going to and from the island once per day. Which, naturally, is about the same time our plane touched down in Rockhampton, and I've yet to figure out how to be at two places at once. How convenient, eh?

So, Crop Duster is was. Caroline called Air Capricorn to let them know we were sitting in the airport, and about 15 minutes later, a respectable-looking guy dressed in a pilot’s uniform showed in a Jeep. He was very friendly and told us about his friend in Africa, though I forget what prompted that story. Five minutes later, we were approaching the Air Capricorn hangers, which were smaller than some barns I’ve seen. Hmm.

Inside the office, we paid and weighed the luggage again—and then ourselves. Note to self: In the future, if I’m required to weigh myself before boarding a plane, WALK.

My last shred of hope that I was over-reacting vanished when we followed the pilot/driver/cashier out to the tarmac. For sitting before us was this:

Okay, reframe—this will be an adventure! The danger element only makes it more exciting, right? We were shown how to climb in the plane (which was disturbingly similar to mounting a horse) and seated in the bucket seats approximately once inch behind the driver’s seat, our guy gave us a rather abbreviated safety talk which ultimately boiled down to: “If you see me jumping out, follow me.”

You think I’m kidding.

This is what it looks like to be a passenger in a Crop Duster:

And the take-off is best described via movie:

Words to describe the flight? Loud. Shaky. Caroline’s worst nightmare.

Half the flight was over mountain:

The other half was over ocean. And at last, Great Keppel comes into view:

And then we landed:

And that was the end of Air Capricorn. We watched the plane leave knowing we would not ever be doing that again.

Now we turned our attention to our surroundings. We had been dumped on the air strip, right next to the abandoned resort. Nobody was around. It was warm! There were flowers!

And some funny looking birds—Caroline identified as Curlews:

After about ten minutes, Geoff, our host for the next week, appeared in his truck. Very friendly guy, loaded our suitcases and told us to hop in the back and ‘Don’t worry, I don’t drive very fast.’

And suddenly, we were on a beach! A real beach, with real white sand and real ocean waves and real fish-scented air and real burning-hot sunlight! Lots and lots of beach!

Geoff owns and runs the Great Keppel Island Holiday Village. The accommodations are either tents (I still hate to call them ‘tents’, since they are large enough for two beds and have electricity) or houses. When we made our reservations, the houses were full so we booked a tent for the first three nights, then we would move into the largest house. Some of you can attest to the fact that I’m not really a camping sort of person, but I figured I could man-up for three days. And really, they are NICE tents.

So after dropping our suitcases inside the tent, we collapsed into the deck chairs on the deck and listened to the birds and the wind in the trees. And what was that sound in the distance? Crashing waves?

Ahhh.

We hadn’t been sitting there for two minutes when we had our first of many animal encounters. Behind us, rustling through the dead leaves, was this:

A Goanna, live and in person! He crawled right past our tent and towards the tent beside us, a lizard on a mission.

Which brings us to the subject of food. We had none. We didn’t think there would be anywhere to get any, because of the whole abandoned resort thing. But, we could make up a list and Geoff would fax it to a grocery store on the mainland, who in turn would put it on the ferry and we would get the order in a couple days. So we started a list, trying to create a spur-of-the-moment menu to get us through the next week. Which is harder than it sounds. So hard, we needed a break.

Lucky for us, there turned out to be three shops still operating: Island Pizza, Rainbow Hut, and Grandma (The Shell House). At Island Pizza, we ordered the world’s most complicated hot dog, if the half-hour it took to make it means anything. At least it was good.

The next order of business was finding sunglasses. The Rainbow Hut is a souvenir shop where I got not only sunglasses, but flip-flops and postcards and stamps. Now properly suited up, we headed to the beach.

We spent a good two hours in that beautiful blue-green water, swimming and body surfing and trying to swim the length of the beach but discovering it was actually longer than it looked. Or else we’re out of shape. But I can’t swim anyway, so there you go. There were a few other people there, maybe six. And here I thought the ‘It’s like your own private island,’ line was just to sell the place.

Back at the tent, we continued working on our grocery list until we gave up and grabbed some complimentary rice from the group kitchen. Added to some canned tuna and spaghetti sauce, we actually had a nice dinner—which we ran with to the beach when we realized the sun was setting. Dinner on the beach is not quite as nice as you’d think: The wind blew sand into our food, which we then gave to the gulls because they don’t care about that sort of thing. But after taking some nice pictures:

We then headed back to the tent where I suffered through the longest, scariest night of my life.

Remember those cute little Curlews from the air strip?

Caroline failed to tell me that by night, they transform into Australian Screaming Night Birds and proceed to run all over the island, crying out to one another like wolves in a pack as they stalk and kill whatever it is they eat.

Trust me, you wanna download this.

http://www3.environment.nsw.gov.au/npws.nsf/content/bush+stone-curlew+community+survey

Now imagine listening to that while you’re lying in a tent in the dark. Yeah.

Not to mention the Kookaboroughs:

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/images/audio/dacelo-novaeguineae.mp3

Then came the random rustling sounds, which I imagined were possums, since there was a sign in the kitchen warning against leaving food in your tents because it would attract them. So I listened to the rustling, which was hard to hear over the strong winds anyway, and imagined Australian Razor Toothed Rabid Possums attracted to the tent by the packets of herbs in my suitcase.

Then I started hearing the patter of animal feet inside the tent.

Then I started imagining a person coming into the tent.

Then Caroline woke up and went to the bathroom with me and I felt a little better, but still didn’t get much sleep that night.