Deception Island 🤡

I'd been working from home and had just completed drafting my QM audit programme for the year when my mobile rang.  It was the Regional Manager for Far North Queensland (FNQ).

"Any chance you can fit in an audit trip to Deception Island before next week, Ken?"

I'd forgotten we had a temporary construction office located on this isolated spot, a short seaplane ride out of Cairns, and had completely left if off the programme, but I could fit it in if I left the next morning.  I'd be back in Brizzie late the day after, then I'd go about business as usual. But first I had to get to the office to clear my slate, and the car was in for service. So what to do but borrow the neighbour’s wheels for a few hours?

And so, there I was, the next day, standing with my short case in hand (it was my 'brief case'), at the transfer desk at Cairns domestic airport, believing I had only a few minutes left before boarding the specially chartered seaplane flight to my offshore destination.  I hadn't eaten since last night, having slept in, and the food on the flight from Brisbane to Cairns didn't tempt me.  It was a little ‘plane’. Furthermore, I hadn't brought anything in my hand luggage, which only contained a few papers and a torch ... I always travel ‘light’.

"Sorry, Mr Boddie, but your flight's been cancelled. Engine problems and there's only the one seaplane that can fly to Deception Island this week.  Can you wait until tomorrow morning? We can look after you in the club lounge?"

I couldn't afford to hang around Cairns or my programme would be shot and, what's more, from my earlier experiences with Deception Air's hospitality (hospital being the operative word), I didn't want to risk contracting a 'terminal' illness.  Desperation must have shown in my face.  I wasn't going to leave without a flight.

"How about the catamarans that run out to the outer reef?” I asked hopefully. "Any chance I can hitch a ride out with the tourists to the dive platform at Blue Dolphin, then have one of the GBRMPA guides take me the additional 2km to Deception in a tinny?

And so, after a bit of haggling and a short taxi ride downtown to the Reef Fleet Terminal, I was on my way with a hundred odd overseas and domestic visitors to the fixed mooring platform on the outer reef. 

That's when things got a little rough, as I was taken the last couple of kilometres on my own by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s Blue Dolphin guide in a Zodiac, an inflatable rubber dinghy powered by a large outboard motor. 

I was soon drenched from the spray as we rode across (and frequently through) the waves in what was now open sea, but I could see the familiar structure of Pressure Pier looming on the horizon, located off the three parallel promontories of Ellipsis Point. As we approached the elevated timber piled structure where the weekly car ferry docked, the Zodiac veered away. My heart sank as we headed towards Point Less and the sandy mangrove shoals beyond.  

"What's up?" I immediately asked.

"Got to take her up on Sonova Beach," the GBRMPA guide retorted. “I've been told to avoid ‘Pier Pressure’ at all costs."

"You'll unfortunately have sand on your own two feet from here on in," he added  

"Son-ov-a Beach!" I muttered to myself, when eventually on dry land, "Which way's north again?"

Half an hour later, still drenched from head to toe, but now with a liberal amount of mangrove mud and beach sand, from the landing, chafing away at the crown jewels inside my undies, I gingerly waddled up to the island's only taxi rank. It was hard to find in the long row of parallel parked vehicles, which decorated the dingy old main street of Deception Island's only town of any real size.  

I could tell that Frank the cabbie was pleased to see me. He'd had a brief dalliance with Uber on the mainland, prior to returning to Deception with his sad old Toyota Prada, just a few days previously, to breath life back into the island's only taxi company.

"Do you want to take your brief case on your lap?" he suggested, "You see, I've got a few creepy crawly problems in the boot." 

As he closed the rear door to the Prada, I could feel his excitement at having a customer, and, sure enough, could also see his ‘ex-uber-ants’.

We headed off parallel to the shoreline, now past clumps of mangroves and mud swamp.

"You don't want to wander off down there," Frank cautioned. "Bloody dangerous!"

Sure enough, I'd never seen so many coloured rubber shoes floating about in the mud before, but, after all, we were in FNQ and 'Croc' territory.

The site office was located quite a few kilometres inland and so we drove on, crossing over the not so mighty local Nile River and then across one of its tributaries, the Juvenile.

After a while the road slowly ascended upwards and over the pass through the Comedy Mountains, so called because they're hill-areas.

The island seemed to have lost much of its tree cover, having being hit by a cyclone only a few months previously. I could, however, see the odd (very odd) solitary palm tree still standing in-between clumps of leafless debris, obviously now the 'palm after the storm'. 

The eucalypts were mostly still intact, but the local 'boss' trees had also taken a hammering.  

These rare evergreen 'boss' trees (so rare you won't see them anywhere else) were named by some displaced former US 'musos' now leading an alternative lifestyle here on Deception.  These yankee rock and rollers reportedly couldn’t resist naming these conifers once they’d identified the species and its latin name, 'spruce springsteenus'.

By the time we reached the site office it was late afternoon and the guys had left for the day.  

They operated a small earthworks-testing site office and lab here, testing the compaction of embankment fill for several tens of kilometres of road widening construction.  The work day was generally timed to avoid the tropical heat of mid-day with very early starts, a long  break for lunch and a correspondingly early knock-off time.  The bright tropical sun was notorious for damaging exposed skin, and the heat was even more oppressive after the wearing course of twin-coat bituminous chipseal had been laid across the pavement.  As a consequence, most of our techs were Scots, as they were the only ones who had a well developed ‘tar-tan’.

I asked Frank to drop me off at the rather small but adequate 'Dr No Lodge', the entrance to which was a short distance down the road from the site office and lab.  This rustic and basic but comfortable, former shooting lodge, now rented by my company for staff and visitors, was named after the famous James Bond movie, some of which was shot on location on Deception, and the Ian Fleming character, Dr No.  

"I'll drop you off at the gate, but I'm not driving in off the road!" exclaimed Frank the cabby. "After all, it's 'tiger country' up there in those trees, and a ‘little No Lodge’ is a dangerous thing!"

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So there it is for now! I'm stuck in the middle of Deception Island.  How am I to survive the night and perform my audit, and how and when will I return to the mainland, if ever?

But, even more importantly, how much more ‘pun’-ishment can you guys take and will I be able to publish this post in a timely manner on 1 April?

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http://ken-boddie.squarespace.com

The author of the above, Ken Boddie, besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.