The awersome Cape York

[teonanacatl]

I had planned a 2 week holiday to visit my father in cape york, I stayed for 2 months and only came back because of uni. It was an amazing place, like life should be I reckon. Words and pictures cant really explain it but here are some pictures

One thing I never got photos of was the blue meanies which grow along side the dirt roads in the horse shit!!! Really cool.

The pics are mostly of the animals and plants we encountered, most of the landscape shots are on a mates camera and Ill post them when I get them. Ive got larger pics if anyone wants them.

Unfortunatly I cant put captions on them.

Edited February 16, 2008 by teonanacatl

[gilligan]

Teo...

Let me guess, are you a biology/ecology major?

Those snakes are mint, especially the black headed python - i love them - we had a few in the kimberley's that i had to remove from the minesite i was working at, fairly passive creatures and didn't mind being handled from wild, what an experience.

How was the fishing? *jealous*

[mark80]

The fish are nice but those dreads....

Nah dude very very jealous.

[teonanacatl]

nah im a chemistry major love all science and nature though.

Fishing was great We caught alot more fish just no photos. Caught lots of mudcrabs on low tide, just havta pick them up. Monster black lipped oysters and a few crayfish. Yum yum. Fish included trevally, queenfish, coral trout and reef fish, cod, barracuda all from the beach, further around east coast of tip a mate was catching alot of mackeral. Lived off whiting (40cm was a common size), garfish and mullet caught in the cast net.

All those snakes were removed from the place we were staying, and the crocs also. Snakes are much calmer then your average mammal when you catch them

It would be good if I could put captions in......

12th pic is a native to aus Psychotria poliostemma.

The swamp in the pics was full of frogs at night, literally 1000's and about 10 different species.

[Vertmorpheus]

Just poppin this here teo, it was in response to someone asking about turtles in the cruelty thread, but seemed more sensible here. Lovely shots, its almost impossible to take a bad piccy up that way but the salt will get into your camera and eat it alive eventually, bummer.

Personal highlights up there include eating anything that moves but not fast enough to get away... being adopted by just about everyone... and that priceless attitude. Its beyond shell be right, its beyond leave us alone... its just people + landscape with a whole lot of the bullshit removed. You can wear a shirt. Or not. Shoes? Theyll just get full of sand, get the volley ocs and chuck em afterwards... lunch...lets go for a walk. It's this amazing lil system where you get massive sensory and social returns for the tiniest amount of energy outlayed, but noone gets ungrateful for it either, and everyone is a storyteller instead of sitting by yourself watching TV.

Picking up literally hundreds of dollars worth of insanely fresh seafood for no effort has to be done to be believed... I was really amazed to find out oysters are worth money around here, as up there its mainly something lil tackers chip off rocks for bait, haha.

Sometimes wed get a bit lateral and thats how we worked out the easiest way is a .22 with ratshot rounds, neatly removes the middle bit of the crab, spreads it around so other critters can chow down later on, and you just have to pick up the claws the size of your hand, what a pity

I always tell ppl the tale of coming from from school for lunch and asking "whats for lunch" then groaning mightily when it was bloody prawns and crayfish... AGAIN...

History up that way is amazing... Jardines to the Japanese, pearls to pirates and witchcraft to fairly strict catholicism... crazy arsed cannon emplacements and evil spirit woman that live in frangipanis when theyre not eating the brains of cheating men, haha. A fairly high proportion of Muslim and Bahai people too, and its not uncommon at all to meet a thoroughly Islander looking guy whos name is "Mohammed Bin Judah" that actually says hes an Anglican.

Still lots of myth and magic too, secret spirit houses and obscure curses and wearing a sharkstooth so you dont get eaten by sharks (which works... I have never in my life been eaten by a shark, its true), the surprise some ppl get when they work out that despite being a handy administrative grouping Aboriginal people and Islanders arent necessarily all that big on each other... and a lot of Islanders would happily be an independent nation tomorrow, as they mainly take care of themselves anyway the only reason the govt cares about em is to keep their military holdings up that way secure.

And eating mangos til you hate them, then eating more...

its harder living there than visiting there in some ways, and some fairly nasty things do go on up there too, buts all in all its a magnificent part of the world and I'm grateful it has so far resisted being turned into some touristy cheesy place, its still very authentic and very different from anywhere down this way.

Turtles... theyre protected, but not endangered in some local twist of the law and basically as long as youre a local you can take them, I think there are similar arrangements for whales in alaska and other sea creatures with the Maori people in NZ?

The only significant drop in catch levels and species variety we saw in a few years in the straits was when the navy demo teams took out something we all called the Dolphin... this concrete remnant stump that was just below the average water level, nav hazard etc... so they blasted it... smallest charges possible and over the next week noone caught a thing of not but the beaches were just swamped in drift after drift of slightly offput looking sea creatures of all shapes n sizes, most quite dead and some reduced to their basic components

Its a lil tricky to understand in "our" usual society of break the law and bad things happen... laws up there are approached much less strictly, so whilst species limits exist, in practice, you fish til you ahve a feed for you and your neighbours then you go home. Gun laws are the same but everyone is pretty cool about boatloads of schoolkids going to pop bambis with rifles for a couple days. Dugongs have to be taken and used in traditonal ways, but they arent really enforced that strictly... do anything over the top and the locals will drop yo like a hot rock anyway, so its a self correcting system. The attitude of the locals to the sea is almost impossible to really grasp til yousee it... its everything to them. Kids spend their spare time drawing the baot they want when they grow up, or drawing dugongs with their calves, the rhythms to the songs are all navigation timers, bla bla... its so central its beyond "important". So whilst they have an almost totemic love for many of the creatures in it, they also dont get precious about periodically nailing one with a harpoon nearly two men in length with roofing nails on one end and then carving it up for tea... but they dont go about it the way we nip down to the IGA for some more bread, its very much an event and a proving of self for the young men, etc. That and any kid that can walk is more or less capable of wandering down to the beach and hunting up a feed of something... fishing there is like watching tv here, haha.

That and sometimes the coral spores etc tend to "herd" the larger animals ie turtle n dugong to clearer areas away from the islands themselves, and the superfreighters that pass thru the deep water channel sometimes bottom out and you get huge amounts of this shitty brown stuff flaoting around that is basically rotten sea grass clippings... critters dont like that either, and a fair bit of it is made of "fire grass" which is like sea grass crossed with razor wire... millions of minute stinger hairs, really mess with cray divers etc.

Turtles up there are rarely taken at anything other than quite mature sizes, non breeding, and as teo said plenty of locals especually kids raise the eggs in eskies n stuff then release them... they have a few stories about how the bub ones cry til they get back in the sea, etc. They also dont get whacked just for snacks too often, though it does happen, that void is mainly filled with greasy takeaway, heaps of fresh fruit and the odd drink (or three, haha)... more common for tombstone openings, baptisms etc. They arent precious about eating them but they dont regard them in quite the same as people down our way think of say a pack of pork chops or some sausages... theyre quite conscious of the creature being an offering and a symbol... as well as tasting great on fresh crusty bread rolls with heaps of suicidally spicey satay sauce.

whacky place... i was lucky to spend a bit of primary school up there... absolute culture shock moving straight from there to the snooty heart of northwest Brisbane haha... from TI sandals to Nikes,

I have a couple of TI cookbooks Teo, nothing but kup mari and chicken namus, and a million ways with real coconut cream, youd love it. Theyd only be more expressive of that part of the world if they replaced every other word witha meaningful eyebrow gesture And accusing you of having been pissing haha.

Great energy... even when things are going a little nastily or whatever it has this tremendous honesty and natural placement, and laid back up there would be considered catatonic here.

"whichway?"

VM

Edited February 16, 2008 by Vertmorpheus

[gilligan]

never would've picked it I did chem but liked rocks too much, so went via extractive metallurgy instead...

re fishing - JEALOUS!!! Wish i could get some muddies off the low tides... and all those fish from the beach - nice pics, cool reef shark too... all i can muster is a loud, resounding "WANKER!!!"

be pretty amazing being able to live in that sort of environment, looks like a pretty special place. Very calming. Well, until some kickarse cyclone comes through

[Vertmorpheus]

In the wet season it would rain at about 3pm every afternoon on TI, very civilised, not like here when it rains whenever you are driving on a highway haha.

I can remember one afternoon there were shoals of silver trevally hanging around the main wharf on TI, driven in by sharks in the channel between there and Horn (no airport on TI, you fly to Horn then ferry it across), massive things about 2 feet long just leaping onto hook after hook til it seemed like half the island had a couple... they were literally having a go at barehooks sometimes. It's mainly whitefish around the island, some even sashimi it with just some soy n chilli and tamarind and tuck in, or they make a thing called namous thats known in Peru as cheviche where you sliver the fish cross grain, then marinate overnight in a mix of chilli, white vinegar, lime juice etc... very acidic and tasty and it pickles or cooks the fish overnight, you eat it cold as salad or a very quick warming in a pan with some soy and its delicious... sharp and spicey but fresh and cool, AND no washing up.

That and you can jig for squid at night off the engineers wharf, can't do that in the lake at any of those Delphin nightmares

VM

[XipeTotec]

looks like an amazing place....

[teonanacatl]

haha you got it vert

Everyone is too worried about surviving to care about some laws. Up there if you stay with somone and they say they would like some crabs, you dont give them one or two, but a whole esky full.

The aditudes of the locals towards litter didnt impress me though, if you eat or drink something in the car then the can or wrapping goes out the window. We could tell when locals had driven the track cos new cans were there.

I do disagree that the straits would like to be independant of aus. When I was on TI I asked about work, was curious how much work was around cos there is a major population on there for such a small island. Anyway I was told Id get work in 30mins if I wanted it. The locals get a payment from the government to maintain the area they live in which requires they do a certain number of hours work, most dont want to work and so dont after they have done their time. The same applies around bamaga. IF they were independant they wouldnt get this.

On TI if your indigenous and earn nothing you get free beach front accomodation, if you earn over a certian amount you get a cheap place just back from the beach, if your non indigenous you havta pay $500+ a week for a crap accomodation well back from the water. There is no insentive to work.

[teonanacatl]

yeah we made namous with the queenfish. We used lemon juice instead of viniger though.

[hebrew]

great photos teo good to see ya enjoying the life man, and what a place to enjoy it ay.

man i wanna go up there real bad, been thinking about going up to arurkun and doing some work or some other community up there on the cape.

we will see in the next few years maybe?

thanks for sharing those pics i wanna see more man

[teonanacatl]

I got more pics I might pop some more up later. When I get the pics from my mates Ill pop more up also.

Certianly teaching jobs available hebs

[hebrew]

yeah thats what i been thinkgin man, especially in remote communities there are incentives as well to get teachers to do those jobs we will see ay

[incognito]

u had crocs, in the place u where staying?

[teonanacatl]

yeah man ;)

Your not allowed to catch and handle snakes and crocs and other aussie wildlife unless they are in a place of human habitation and at risk of causing injuries. So you are allowed to remove them. Oddly enough you arnt allowed to move the snakes off the road, but your allowed to run them over. Just stupid rules we have in aus.

So yeah all animals in photos were onsite and so we had to remove them, if you get me

[TheFriendlyPlanter]

Wow cool shots, reminds me of when I was fishing in the gulf. Plenty of sharks up that way, and crocs.

Nice Cape York Lilly (ginger) they sell those at Bunnings.

[TheFriendlyPlanter]

Nice Melaleuca, looks like a bottlebrush with those big red flowers!

[incognito]

hang on teo lemme get this straught ...there were CROCS living IN the house u were staying????

im thionking if little buggers get in there, surely a big one could saunter in as well?>???

thats hardcore man, i dunno if i could live in a place that has crocs and snakes that need removing..even ifthey r pythons would scare the tripe out of u whilst u are sleeping!! the whole 'crocs in the house' hasdone my head in man.

looks lush though mate, and ibet thefishing wasfantastical u bastid, feel sorry for u having to eat all those mudcrabs!!

u know u must take me next time!!

r U coming fishing with pass and i in december?

[teonanacatl]

mate im heading back up there in nov but maybe i can make a trip south first, im keen to catch some cod thats for sure.

The bigger crocs were only 4m, they are all very skitish up there and take off before you get close.

The cape york lillies are amazing, and the melaleuca certianly added colour to the landscape.

Lots of drosera, white pink and purple flowered and also lots of pitcher plants.

We hooked alot of things that we couldnt stop, even on 50lb braid, so I think big sharks. One day actually I hooked somthing and out of the water like 100m out jumped this 2m shark, not a big shark but amazing to see it clear the water like that.

[Vertmorpheus]

Ah ok I know what youre getting at... ok getting above the locals that are happy enough to stay permanently upfucked on Malibu and PNG gold, a lot of the "thinkers" and community reps want independence principally BECAUSE they basically get nothing but free cash from the mainland. Likewise theres plenty of free thinkers around the mainland, of all shades n persuasions, that get a lil less anarchic when it comes time to hand in the fortnightly... whereas people that are willing to do hard work on their own terms are usually at the forefront of deciding the govt offers little to them that they couldnt either do without, or build themselves.

The scheme you are thinking of CDEP... the Community Development Employment Program.. it was the first "work for the dole" in Australian welfare history and it was intitiated by community elders in the top end who basically said all these young fellas just on the dole doing fuck all.... it was originally a voluntary thing and offered limited form of recognition of prior learning for tasks done, etc... gives ppl a sense of purpose anyway. Now its somewhat mandatory in certain regions (basically anywhere that there literally wouldnt be enough business to support every adult as a worker), flat out necessity in others, and an odd undeclared form of it is being found among older people that lose jobs prior to but not far from retirement age... basically centrelink accept theyre almost unemployable and so allow them to "fill the blanks" as it were with community work, etc, even in quite central and urbanised areas and capital cities among very "eurotypical" people... but its not a "legal" thing, just some helpful dodge clink has sorted forsome people on a one to one. Then theres work for the dole as it applies to the rest of the nation, which was just an exploded version of CDEP programs anyway. Not all the locals on TI are associated with CDEP, many of the older people in particular are on veterans affairs payments now for wartime service during ww2, disability for diabetic complications, sight problems, usual indig community issues. Some just get by, and many do actually work... you dont tend to spot em during the day though, when theres so many ppl hanging out and wandering around aimlessly.

The problem comes that yeah, youre meant to go to CDEP to paint some walls or clean up yards or whatever... but your cousin/brother/uncle is the "boss cocky" and so he can sign you off even if youre not there... moreso if you buy him a carton out of your next fortnights dole money to make it worth his while, or are actually off babysitting his nieces friends kid, or werent actually cutting grass that arvo but you were fiddling with his boat... its been converted into something of a LETS system in some ways, bit of a waste of time in others... but some people do derive a great sense of pride from it and its a great example to bring up when people started whining about "blacks n free money" that it was "blacks" ourselves that said no, this is just rotting us, we're thinkin you should have to do SOMETHING valid for society to get money from it, long term. Theres lots of stories of some kid running amok til he was put on CDEP then worked out hes actually pretty handy with a chainsaw or something, moved to cairns, got on with the council , now doing a lot better than hanging out on your porch getting shitfaced all the time. Obbviously those that just want to get smashed all the time and hang out dont really mind associating with the federal gov as people with some kind of motivation.

They certainly have taken the aussie art of dodgy dealings to inspirational heights up there... "legal" is basically "anything that wont get the cops angry right this instant".. the local paper up there used to be about a dozen a4 pages double pritned and some weeks itd have a 2 or 3 pages crime report with maybe a sidebar sized paragraph devoted to each... lot of domestic violence and property issues, petty drug charges, assaults... and thats just the ppl silly enough to get caught, the local govt people are the same as anywhere else, only moreso ;).

You certainly dont just get a universal unearned wage for keeping your footpath clean, or not, but what youre talking about does go on and its sad... on the other hand theres families upt here that were piss poor and 10 years later had the island plumbing needs all stitched up, half a dozen staff and rising and everyone doing ok... like all small towns (they had about 3000 from memory when we were up there) you have the problem that most of the get up n go, gets and n goes as soon as its finished its studies, many of the bright ones bugger off to Cairns or Townsville or Brissie, so you get the issue that a lot of the local power is wielded by people with deeply vested interests in what goes on around town.

Housing can be seen like that in many other areas too... I hear plenty of uptights going on about "housing commission" people in say Brisbane and how they get great places dirt cheap or free really well positioned and heres me paying x hundred a week and all the rest of it... its not just an up there thing by any means. You can live for free or nearly free in many parts of Australia if are happy to live in a crime scene waiting to happen... Likewise, I know for a fact you can rent a cheapie crapshack closer by the beach (down the front on the flats between the federal hotel and the hospital end, etc) for less than 500 there...moreso if you know the owners etc, but lets face it fews ex mainland white folks want to live in something that looks like Bob Marleys birthplace, when they could take one of the big old timber places with all the verandahs and louvers up on Nob Hill, with views all the way to the tip of the Cape on a clear glassy morning, etc. Somewhere they can defend themselves from the roving hoardes of wu tang kiddies (hint...get a big, black dog, Shibisakis up there used to breed a lot of Belgian Shephards... security AND superstition is a great mix) That and "back from the beach" is all relative, you can say you live "at the coast" in SEQ but still be half an hours drive from any real beaches... on TI its a half hour, 45 min kinda walk from most spots to kickarse beaches where you can swim anywhere and theres no surf, haha. Bit like saying that you ahve to pay a lot for passable housing in Port Moresby... you sure do, as the alternative can seem a little... involved... to outsiders.

There is a hassle though as many of the nicer more "whitebread" houses are owned by the govt already, a big strip of em running almost the whole length of chster street (nob hill) up behind the catholic school... as people would move up for govt jobs and then say "nah were going home, I'm not living in THIS!"... so they had to buy a lot of them up a while ago.

Still... community subsidied beachfront living does sound pretty cruisy to any of us playing the rental refugee game around capital cities... the same crapshack on a tiny block in Brissie would be going for 450 a week, no pets, no kids, double bond and when you showed up to check it out, thered be 44 other ppl looking at it too

VM