Officespace

The Mareeba Wetlands Reserve is a stunningly peaceful place. The visitor centre, where I live, is at the end of ten kilometres of dirt road. The nearest town is Mareeba and with one main street it's only consolation to cosmopolitan life is a Coles and a KFC. The annual Mareeba Rodeo however is apparently impressive and features high on the Australian rodeo circuit (and that's the first I'd heard of the Australian rodeo circuit too).

Tim and Lisa, the resident wardens, live in a small room in the back of the visitor centre. We all share a common living room, which has mains power supply, hot water and even a little television with a bent antenna to keep us in touch with the outside world (though it's difficult to keep track of which muslim country we're bombing). The volunteer accommodation however, is a five minute walk away, down a small bush track. There's no power or hot water for us but it's comfortable enough and I'm instantly at home.

I'm the only volunteer for the first two weeks and each night after dinner I wander off to my tent with my lamp barely outshining the thousands of scattered stars. kangaroos, wallabies and quolls are common enough in the reserve and in my first few nights these scare the shit out of me as they come leaping out of the nearby bushes as I pass. I'm soon well adjusted however, and the night-noises of grazing roos and hooting owls only helps to lull me to sleep.

Most of the visitors to the wetlands are bird-nerds. They wear khaki and carry their own binoculars. They have field guides describing birds in the minutest of details and they brandish these about like bibles. Many tick off the birds they see in their guides. Tim and Lisa are trained biologists and they can tell a green-pygmy goose from a wondering whistling duck from two hundred meters away.

I know nothing about birds when arrive (though I did manage to pick out a pelican) but Tim and Lisa give me a brief rundown. Before long I can bullshit my way through most of the waterbirds at least. This gets easier once I realise that bird-nerds want to tell you facts they know rather than be told anything; a couple of vague, open questions, some nodding and they will walk away thinking you're a bird expert.

Surprisingly the wetlands are man-made. The original plan was to use them as an irrigation system for lower farming lands. After putting in two of the eight walls, the government then realised that the land they'd targeted for farming was too saline and would be barren within twenty years of farming (brilliant planning!). They abandoned the idea but the two lagoons began to attract waterbirds that had not been seen in the area for years, since natural wetlands had long been drained for farming.

The locals, particularly a couple by the names of Gwyneth and Tim (a different Tim to the warden) who now run the management commitee, saw the potential the place had as a nature reserve. They annoyed the government enough and finally got their way. The lagoons were finished and the wetlands were turned into a wildlife sanctuary and handed over to a not-for-profit, community-run conservancy. This all happened only in the last ten years, so the reserve is still very new and raw. The surrounding land was heavily grazed for the last hundred years and non-native weeds are rampant There's a lot of work to be done and most of the projects are only just getting started.

With little government funding, the reserve uses tourism to survive. The wardens take turns doing guided boat tours around the lagoon, pointing out birds. Each night we also run a twilight safari. Small groups are taken out in a mini-van through the heart of the reserve to the largest lagoon. There we cook them a billy tea and point out more birds. After that we take them back to the deck to enjoy the spectacular sunset with a glass of wine and fancy cheese. It’s definitely a more pleasant working environment than the ones I typically have.

Outed

I have a dirty little secret… I like to work. It's something that few people really understand but give me a good, solid job to do and then let me at it and I'm as happy as some people will be at a football match or a music festival. It doesn't really matter what the work is, so long as it has a solid outcome and I'm allowed to really get into it. Perhaps it's some disorder I have but I just can't help it.

I imagine this statement may seem somewhat inconsistent with my professional history since I have been jobless for the bulk of my 'career'. If you look a little closer however, these two facts are not so irreconcilable. In fact, it's because I like to work that I can't bring myself to stay in a job, especially one in IT, for more than a few months at a time.

Let me explain. You see, I'm pretty good at IT and because I'm an expensive contractor I usually get put onto a job when the shit has not only hit the fan but has gotten into the air-conditioning as well. Generally middle-managers are eager not to be seen too close to a project as doomed as the ones I'm put on. That goes against every instinct that helped make them middle-management in the first place.

As a result I can usually bypass all those management 'best-practices' and politics and just get in there and do my job. For me, this is often a period of bliss, where reason reigns supreme and creativity flows freely. You can almost taste the productivity and progress. Don't get me wrong, it's still a strain and I still need a break at the end of it all. It leaves me exhausted but satisfied, in the same way that a tough match does for an athlete or a solid performance does for an actor.

After a short stint of this unhindered progress however, the project (not coincidentally) starts to go well. It's at this point that middle-management usually begin to hover like vultures looking for scraps. 'Process control' is reinstated. Meetings, paperwork and politics flourish. Money is wasted, time is annihilated and creativity is weeded out and destroyed. Activity, which is more readily measured than productivity, becomes the focus.

I'm left hamstrung. Every which way I turn I'm blocked from doing actual, real work. Frustration begins to build and then apathy settles in. It's at this point I bail and then end up on these little adventures that you're now reading about. You may have noticed that in all of them I end up working. You see, that's my release: a chance to do some real work. As well as that it's meaningful, worthwhile work that does some good. The best bit is they don't even pay me, they're not even expecting me to do anything useful, which usually means that I'm free to do things my way and I can work as hard as I like!

I am then, not at all disappointed that moments after my arrival at the Mareeba Wetlands I find myself with a mop in hand mopping bird shit off the huge deck of the visitor centre. I spend the rest of the day serving tea and coffee and washing dishes. It's a fair taste of things to come. Although primarily a nature reserve, the wetlands depend on tourist dollars to keep in operation. It's peak tourist season in Northern Australia at the moment and it's during these few months that the reserve makes enough money to cover itself for the rest of the year.

I'm the only volunteer when I arrive. The two wardens, Tim and Lisa who are more or less my age, live on site and we share the work between the three of us. I take to it with a gusto that leaves them a little stunned. As well as the cleaning there's also track maintenance (i.e. shovelling dirt into ditches) and land care (i.e. pulling out and poisoning weeds). I get into it all with no complaints. Each job is well defined and there's a clear, measurable end-point. At night I fall asleep exhausted and at dawn I awake fresh for a new, action filled day.

Of course, even for me, there is a limit to how much satisfaction I can get out of cleaning toilets. The work may be free and unhindered but the end result, tourism, is not as fulfilling as I would like it to be. There's no reason why I can't work hard and have that go to a good cause as well.

My efforts do not go unnoticed however, and by just the end of the first week I'm 'promoted' to Assistant Warden (with my own name badge!). The pay is exactly the same (i.e. nothing) but the role is slightly different. With my help on the tourism side of things, Tim and Lisa are now able to spend a little more time working on the real conservation work. There's a bunch of interesting projects that have been sitting on the shelf that are now getting started and a couple more volunteers are on their way.

I've not comitted to anything (anyone I've ever dated will tell you that's not going to happen) but I am going to stay around a little longer than my initial two weeks to see how things go. As Assistant Warden I now get my pick of what I want to work on. Best of all, they're still going to let me mop the floors in the morning.

Back to Work

Cairns is the kind of place you go to in order to get somewhere else. The sole reason for it being such a popular tourist destination is its proximity to more interesting places. Apparently this is enough however; it's a town based on tourism with the infrastructure to match and it's crawling with backpackers of all shapes and sizes.

It's Rob's last weekend away and he decides he's had enough of being a backpacker. We check ourselves into the luxury of the Rydges Hotel. We sleep in real beds with clean sheets and soft pillows. The ensuite has soft white towels, fast flowing hot water and those quaint little soap and shampoo bottles. I find the whole experience a little unsettling.

We spend a few uneventful nights in the crowded bars of Cairns, and then Rob heads home and back to work. By this stage, I'm definitely ready to leave the bars and the cities behind and to get back to my tranquil life in the car, sleeping under the stars with just the bush around me. This brief side-trip in backpacker-living was fun but it's time to get back to the real business of this odyssey: to get up close and personal with the natural beauty of this rugged land.

It's been over a month since I set off and I decide it’s about time for my first stint of conservation work. A quick email has me signed up as a volunteer at the Mareeba Wetlands, an hour out of Cairns. It's primarily a bird sanctuary and at first glance, volunteer work looks slightly unexciting.

Appearances can be misleading however. In my experience you can never tell where a current is going to take you just by looking at it. The only way to find out is to push your boat out into the stream and see where you end up. It's a good idea to keep your eyes open and be prepared to paddle though, just in case there's a waterfall up ahead.

An Interlude

You're an odd bunch, you strange few who read this blog. Often I get complaints and suggestions on how to spice up my stories and make them more appealing to the masses. Sometimes I suspect people see my blog as some kind of reality TV series, where characters are positioned for the most entertaining plot. Perhaps one day I'll be voted off my own blog, the monotone voice of Big Brother coming in over my car radio, evicting me onto the nearest sidewalk.

Complaints vary greatly. Some feel my posts are too long, others think there should be more of them. Most people want more slapstick, especially if it involves me hurting myself or embarrassing myself in public. Often I'm ordered to cut out the boring details about religious sites, cultural landmarks and natural reserves while others want those inappropriate stories about Dutch lesbians censored, and less of those dysentery stories too.

There is one complaint I get quite frequently however. The guys who read my blog always want to know how much 'action' I'm getting; the girls want more 'romance' in my stories. In the telling of my travelling tales, I do sometimes find myself venturing into areas that would usually be described as somewhat personal (those familiar with my Tibetan toilet incidents may feel I went a little too far at times). When it comes to those more intimate occasions with the opposite sex however, these precious few stories are mine alone.

As such, I would ordinarily not mention what happened at Magnetic Island. However, since the close quarters of backpacker accommodation allows for few secrets and since Rob was travelling with me at the time, I have little choice. I won't go into details (though I've no doubt Rob will) but suffice to say a rather attractive and extremely aggressive Irish girl locked me in her sights and brought me down.

If the truth be told this doesn't happen as often as most suspect. As disappointing as I'm sure this information is for you all, I'm unexcitingly old-school when it comes to relationships. I generally don't sign up for the typical short-term, travelling romance so popular among the backpacking crowd.

Maybe it was the backpacker mode I was in, maybe it was something to do with Magnetic Island (so named because Cook's compass went weird when he sailed passed) or maybe it even had something to do with the news that my last, serious girlfriend just got engaged. Whatever the reason I was more open to the prospect of a travelling 'romance' (i.e. a bit of 'action', for you guys) than I usually would be.

There's little more to tell than that (or little more that I'm willing to tell anyway). As with all holiday flings it ended with transport to different destinations. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways in that amicable way that backpackers do. She flew off to Alice Springs, Rob and I drove on to Cairns.

Gone Fishing

Rob and I are still nursing Airlie Beach hangovers when we arrive in Townsville. We meet up with Luke, an old school mate of ours. He's a marine biologist who studied at the local university up here and is now working on an experimental high-tech barramundi breeding and export project in Townsville.

We crash at Luke's house. Rob takes the airbed in the spare room and I set up camp in the back of my car in the driveway. After the boat and hostel beds, it feels good to be back in the comfort of my car with my trusty doona.

Luke's girlfriend, Sanscha, makes us a cracking lasagne for dinner and we head down to one of the bars with Luke for a few beers. The Townsville waterfront has the same clean but artificial feel to it as Brisbane's South Bank, with well-lit walkways and neatly-cut parks. It's attractive and lively enough but both Rob and I are hurting too much to get excited. Luke, who's been living here for a few years now, has cabin fever with the place and all three of us are happy to call it a night after only a few beers.

We had planned to head across to Magnetic Island by ferry the next morning. Luke however, has to work. The breeding stock of barramundi at his work died recently (which probably should raise concerns about their approach, but I wasn't asking questions) and Luke needs to head out to a local breeding dam to restock. This sounds like more fun than the standard tourist routine so Rob and I decide to tag along.

At the barramundi farm we cast lines into the muddy dam. I've not been fishing since I was a kid and then only rarely used rods (most of my fishing was off the side of a rusty, tin dinghy, with tangled fishing wire wrapped around a battered piece of cork). After several casts resulting in the line whipping back towards me and hooking various body parts, I finally work out how to unlock the reel. I get my hook into the water, albeit at a slightly skewed angle and not overly far from shore.

It's a pure breeding dam we're fishing in so in theory we should have no trouble catching anything. Unfortunately our arrival is badly timed; the dam was harvested by net only a week earlier and only a few of the more wily fish are left. A few hours of fishing results in the capture of only one juvenile barra, too small to keep.

We give up with the rods. The dam owner was due to harvest the remaining fish by net soon anyway and he decides that today will do. We help drag a huge net from one end of the dam to the other, effectively dredging the bottom and corralling any hapless fish in the way. It seems a cruel and unglorified way to fish but there's no arguing its effectiveness.

Fish throw themselves into the net, and in their desperate thrashing to escape end up only tangling themselves further into it. As they come ashore, flapping in the mud, we jump on them and pull them loose (except Rob, who mans the water bucket, unwilling to get his hands fishy). Luke selects his breeding fish and the dam owner fills a few ice buckets with the remainder. Although not quite the perfect tale, I can now say I've fished barramundi.

The Backpackers

I cross paths with only a handful of backpackers on my journey up the east coast and my evenings are generally spent parked amongst a troop of Grey Nomads in campers. That is until I hit Airlie Beach. Now this is a town built for (and possibly by) backpackers and they are here in force. With only one main street, Airlie's not a big town but every inch of that street is jammed packed with cheap food joints, hostels, internet cafes and tour agents.

Rob meets me in Airlie. He's got a week off work and has decided to join me for the trip between Airlie and Cairns. The car's not going to sleep the two us (not in any way that either of us would be happy with anyway) so we make use of the cheap hostels. In fact for this week, and this week only, the two of us become true backpackers again. We stay in dodgy dorms; we drink at cheesy backpacker bars; we go on backpacker tours; and we do our best to hit on backpacker women.

The last proves somewhat difficult at first, since it turns out the Airlie backpacker crowd is a young one. Most of the travellers are barely twenty years old and with Rob's 30th only a few weeks away and mine not far over the horizon we're not even in the same generation as these young punks.

Still we decide to make the most of a difficult situation and do what any guy would do in our shoes: we lie. By the end of the week we've established ourselves as 26 year olds who have just graduated from uni (we failed a few courses, which is why it took us so long).

We sign up on a cruise ship to take us around the Whitsunday Islands and out to the Barrier Reef. We spend three nights on the boat, a 65-foot catamaran, with nineteen other guests on board. Our first night is spent anchored just off the reef and after breakfast we try our hands at a little SCUBA diving.

I've dived once before, in Thailand. It was a pleasant enough experience but I never really saw what all the fuss was about. I'd always assumed my apathy towards diving was due to an uninteresting location in Thailand. The Barrier Reef however, is one of the seven natural wonders of the world and based on Finding Nemo, there's enough psychedelic colours and patterns down there to put a Brazilian rave to shame.

Though I risk eternal scorn from diving enthusiasts across the globe I'm forced to admit that my dives on the Barrier Reef have only cemented my apathy. The corals are, on the whole, quite plain and mostly an uninspiring grey colour. A few soft blues and pinks are revealed from time to time but rarely with any contrast or enthusiasm.

The sensation of breathing underwater and floating weightlessly through space does have some appeal but for me this is short lived. Numerous schools of sufficiently colourful fish swim by, but fish would have to be the least entertaining animal on the planet. Hideously ugly, devoid of any semblance of intelligence and with the sole talent of being able to swim fast – for such company I could have stayed in Sydney and joined Glover's Surf Life Saving crew.

After two uneventful dives I swap my SCUBA tank for snorkel gear and find this less constrained approach to be more rewarding. A couple of sea turtles drift by, tranquil as ever, paying me little notice. Occasionally I catch the distant song of whales on their migration north, a hauntingly beautiful, underwater tune.

Each night we watch the sun slide below the horizon, staining the sky with orange and red. As the sun disappears the stars appear and fill the night sky. We lie out on the deck watching shooting stars flare and then die. One night we hear a splash nearby and the spotlight reveals three whales surfacing only a short distance away. We watch as they spout for air, their slick, black bodies silhouetted by the spotlight before they dive once more into the depths of the black ocean.

We end our trip with a relaxing stop at Whitehaven beach. This beach lives up to the postcard. The water is a soft turquoise and the sand is like flour, in both texture and colour. As we wade through the shallows around the mouth of the small inlet, sting-rays and small sharks dart away beneath our feet.

After the cruise there’s a drinking session in one of the many bars with the crew and the other passengers. After our customary afternoon nap, Rob and I decide to go along. It's like Schoolies all over again. Two twenty-year-old guys from Alaska, excited about being able to legally buy drinks, buy round after round of nasty shot, the like I've not tasted since my school days.

Dawn the next day has me wishing for my simple life back with the Grey Nomads. Rob and I leave town as planned but we get only as far as Bowen before our hangovers get the better of us. We pull up near a park and fall asleep under a tree using the pillows from the car. It's a tougher life than most realise, being a backpacker.