We washed and dried our clothes until midnight last night. The clothes had got soaked through being taken on the boat to Hamilton Island. We are up at 5.45 am to finish drying the clothes.
Maureen phones Julie and the great news is that her mother is moving into sheltered housing near them both.
We think we have lost some of our clothes but we have been living out of the suitcases for so long everything is in chaos and mixed up.
I put laced-up leather shoes on today in an attempt to lessen the swelling of my feet. I reason if I get the shoes on first thing in the morning when my feet are at my best the shoes won’t allow any further swelling.
We stop at Miriamvale which is quite a small town for morning break.
We stop at Childers post office and buy lots of prepaid wildlife postcards. We find a great discount store, but have little time as we were last to get served in the cafe for lunch and then the girl forgot our order.
Geoffrey is very bad, I am worried as his breathing is deteriorating rapidly. They should have given him antibiotics at his last visit to the doctor, as well as the steroids. He finds it difficult to walk from the bus to the ferry and Brenda is more or less helping him step by step. I take one of her bags from her. The Americans look at us as if we are crazy. I want to explain to them that he is sick. Can’t they open their eyes and see.
I ask about fishing trips as we walk to the ferry for Fraser Island, but all trips are arranged from Harvey Bay. Three fishermen hear me talking and ask if I want to join them but they are going out for three days and they all look as if they need a wash, so I politely decline their offer.
The crossing out to Fraser Island is a bit rough although the weather looks great.
A coach picks us up and as we travel to Kingfisher Bay resort, we are warned about the dangers on Fraser Island.
We mustn’t bathe in the sea. It is full of sharks. We must use the swimming pools only. We must not feed the dingoes. They are to be treated as the wild animals they are. The coach driver tells us the story of the young girl who camped on 75 mile beach and fed a dingo with the scraps from her campfire meal. When she bent to wash her plate in the sea the dingo attacked her. She had 127 stitches in her bottom and her derrière made front page news and headlines on television.
Kingfisher Bay resort is mainly glass and wood with timber walkways between the tiers of bedrooms.
On arrival at the resort we are taken into a large room and again warned about the dangers of the wild animals. Humans are visitors on the island. It belongs to the wildlife and we are asked to respect the wildlife.
I change my shoes and my feet, although swollen, they are better than they have been since the start of the trip.
There are three swimming pools and a Jacuzzi. Brenda, Maureen and I eat together and whilst Maureen goes off to do more washing, Brenda and I go for a swim. It is now about 10pm and we swim by the lights of the restaurant overlooking the pool. The water and air temperature are very pleasant and we happily swim around the leaf-shaped pool until we notice a dingo sniffing around the adjacent Jacuzzi. We cast sideways glances at him as we have been warned he could attack if we stare directly at him. He does not look like any dingo we have seen in picture books or in zoos. He is larger than we supposed. Not as big as an Alsatian but bigger than a Labrador. He has a reddish coloured coat but he is thin and gangly like a sprouting teenage lad and we can see every rib on his cage. He walks confidently around the umbrellas and tables set on the boardwalk in front of the restaurant and then disappears into the shrubs and darkness.
Some Cockney kids join us in the pool and we make a quick exit as they dive bomb us from the ledge of the Jacuzzi.
Maureen blusters into our room shortly after I return.
”I couldn’t stay in that laundry room any longer,” she says. “There were a lot of strange noises coming from outside and I was scared in case it was a dingo.”
258 miles
The Forenaught Archive 