Going Down

After our day at Coral Bay, we drove South for the first time since leaving Perth. Our next stop was Hamelin Pool, where we would stay for two nights. We arrived to find a caravan populated by gray nomads and flies. Gray nomads are old-timers who have left the polite life and settled into a new life exploring Australia. Our tour guides warned us that this particular flavor of Australian can often be cranky when woken up late at night by loud parties. Fortunately, the caravan park was relatively spaced out so we didn't have to worry too much about waking anyone.

Hamelin Pool has gained some attention because it is home to a colony of stramatolites. Stramatolites are one of the oldest forms of life on the planet. We're told that they helped produce up to 20% of the oxygen in the atmosphere today, making it for larger life forms to evolve. These new lifeforms then outperformed the stramatolites in the competition for resources and were thought to be extinct until someone found them in Hamelin Pool. Having read this in Bryson's In a Sunburned Country, I was actually mildly excited about seeing them, which is a rare way for me to feel about cyanobacteria.

I learned that while their history may be fascinating, the stramtolites themselves are not. They are black rocks on the ocean shore. They don't do tricks, they don't walk, they don't talk. Apparently, if the water is calm, they occasionally release small bubbles that are a result of the only action they do perform: respiration. What little novelty they possessed from being mentioned in a book I had read quickly diminished. I didn't think I'd ever say this, but having a fire-and-brimstone creationist along would have made it more fun. It would have afforded me the opportunity to make Hamelin Pool a bit more exciting by asking for a picture with "my ancestors."

Our first night at Hamelin Pool, we slept on the jetty that extends over the stramatolites. This allowed us to make all the noise we liked. Our shouts and songs wouldn't travel all the way to the caravan park and the stramatolites certainly wouldn't mind. I'm not sure what possessed us to do that, but it is most certainly my fondest memory of Hamelin Pool.

The next morning, we left early. Our destination was Monkey Mia, a small resort that is famous because it is visited by wild dolphins on a daily basis. We got there just in time to see the day's second feeding. The dolphins swam up within feet of the crowd, looking very comfortable with the whole process. A couple wildlife rangers appeared from their hut to moderate the process and keep the tourists from trying to shake hands with the dolphins. After a while, buckets with fish were brought out and people from the crowd got to feed the dolphins.

It really is a hell of a thing. To see a wild dolphin so close, or any dolphin for that matter, is something this land-locked child never dreamed he would do. Unfortunately, I wasn't selected to feed the dolphins, but that was hardly reason to despair in such an awesome circumstance.

The rest of the morning was spent relaxing on the beach. Monkey Mia has a wonderful white sand beach that is made even better by the fact that it empties significantly after the dolphins make their final appearance of the day. We swam, played beach volleyball, and even napped. It was a like a massage for the soul. By lunch time, I was thoroughly relaxed and looking forward to the afternoon excursion.

In the afternoon, we climbed onto a catamaran to sail around the bay. We relaxed and lounged, then made sure to keep a look out for huge manatee-like creatures. The boat had a crew of three: the skipper, his daughter, and one Kiwi. At some point, I mentioned that I could see how someone could give up the polite life to run a boat like this. The captain heard me and offered, "$3 million is all it would take, and you could have this boat." I was tempted, but a quick count showed that the loose coin in my pocket probably wouldn't add up to enough, so I politely turned down the offer.

Most of the people working in the spots we visited seemed to have benefited from being well outside the 9 to 5 norm. The Kiwi on the catamaran said that he was getting paid to do something he'd be doing anyway. Back at Coral Bay, we bumped into the ATV guide during her afternoon break. She didn't seem the least bit bothered that she had to return to work; she was taking a tour out to watch the sun set over the Indian Ocean. Both of our drivers admitted to loving their jobs. Seeing that kind of satisfaction is something that stuck with me, especially since I'll soon be done with college and forced to decide which part of the real world to enter.

Returning to civilization was certainly on my mind. I knew that after we left Monkey Mia, we had only one more night on our trip. Returning would mean that I would once again be forced to use a watch and a razor and know the day of the week. I looked forward to none of this.

But leave we had to, so the next day, it was back to the bus and back to reality. Somewhere during one of our long bus rides, day five, I think, I had found myself amazed by the group's high spirits. We had been on the road for hours in a bus with a broken air conditioner. Australian time was proving to have no relation to clock time; our guides' estimated times of arrival were regularly two or three hours off. We were all cooped up, sore from sitting all day, and hungry for dinner. And somehow, we were barreling down the road, singing the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" and Disney sing-alongs as a group.

Some damned fool romantic writing a novel about our trip might paint the moment like so:
Despite the conditions, they seemed in good spirits - laughing, singing. Perhaps the group had subconsciously accepted Heller's suggestion that "a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long," and the joy of long life was temporarily overtaking the agony of their wait. Perhaps they knew that they were on a journey they would tell their parents and grandchildren about, boring little ones and elders alike with details of the upholstery in the bus. No broken air conditioner or two hour wait could possibly merit concern in that mindset. Or perhaps they had resolved to mutiny if they weren't there in 20 minutes and didn't want the driver to know their plan.

My plan was to somehow use that moment to segue into a conclusion, but I can't. To say something that neatly wraps up the story seems impossible. I don't think I could ever capture in a few words, even in a few sentences, what the experience meant to me: the places I saw, the people I met, the moments my heart skipped a beat, the warm beers, the cold ocean, the sunshine and red dirt... all of it. I can't compress that into a few pithy words that end the story with a wink or a hug or whatever.

I guess I'll just have to hope that my grandchildren turn out to be patient listeners.