CHAPTER XX
THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
We had already made acquaintance with the “Montoro” when she was unlading in Sydney Harbour, her final port of call, and we now spent on board three of the pleasantest weeks of our journey. There is a great sense of peace and cleanliness on a ship after long dusty travels. The “Montoro” was a small boat, less than 6000 tons, but remarkably well-appointed and arranged, our airy bedstead cabin was positively spacious, with the luxury of a large wardrobe and a full length looking-glass in its door. The staff were Chinese, efficient, ubiquitous, noiseless, and their gentle soft-voiced ways were particularly restful after the rough and ready Australian servant. On board we found awaiting us letters from home, the last we were to get for two long months, for our Java mail, delayed by the war, followed us to England. Presently we were slipping down to the sea between the low banks of the green river, with a light breeze. Venus was rising and the moon, and the shore lights began to glimmer.
Our first day out was choppy and rough, but a heavy shower smoothed out the sea like oil, and the next day saw us inside the Barrier Reef, in the Coral Sea that stretches away to the extreme north coast. Captain Cook had made the same voyage that we were making in the summer of 1770 in a boat of 368 tons, and we thought our boat small! He noted and named every headland and bay along “this dangerous coast, where the sea in all parts conceals shoals that suddenly project from the shore, and rocks that rise abruptly like a pyramid from the bottom, for more than 1300 miles.” Even now, when every inch of the course has been charted, the voyage is dangerous for the same reason, the low flat islands are nearly indiscernible at night. The mountainous coast is almost uninhabited, except by natives, unfriendly now as then; and is almost entirely unlighted, as hitherto the Government has not been able to incur the expense of erecting and maintaining lighthouses, except in the neighbourhood of the few existing townships. No ship’s library on this course should be without a copy of “Captain Cook’s Voyages,” or, at any rate, no traveller should fail to provide himself with one, as the record of this early navigator in these seas adds immensely to the interest of the journey to-day.
The voyage within the Barrier Reef will always be one of the most beautiful in the world. Once inside the Coral Sea, to awake in the morning and go on deck is to dream an exquisite dream. Here is halcyon weather, the heat of the sun tempered by light airs off the water, and seas of an indescribable translucent turquoise green rippling past among innumerable islands. One after another they appear in the distance, shadowy and vague as clouds; slowly they take shape like brown uncut opals; a nearer view discloses sandy coves, grassy slopes, pine trees and forest. They grew more and more numerous, and, as the day closed in beneath plum-coloured clouds, the soft light lay gently and hazily upon them, till the sun sank in a sky of vivid orange. The charm of this wonderful passage never palls, for its variety is endless. Sometimes the austere, dark mountainous shore is visible, with columns of smoke upon it, native fires as Captain Cook saw them two hundred years ago, for they are still used as signals.
The sea is rich in all kinds of life for those who care to look for it, and we were fortunate in having on board an accomplished naturalist, who, in shirt-sleeves for coolness, and a large-brimmed hat, looking like a sort of drawing-room pirate, sat all day in the bows searching the clear blue water with a pair of field-glasses, and shouting to all, who were interested, to come and see what he had found. It was he who taught us how and where to look for, and what to call, the unfamiliar birds and sea beasts that we saw.
On the June days two hundred years ago on which Captain Cook cautiously essayed his dangerous journey in a rickety boat on uncharted seas, he often named the islands and headlands after days of the week or month. So it happens that one of the loveliest points on the voyage is known as “Whit-Sunday Passage,” because it was on that day that Captain Cook navigated it.
TOWNSVILLE.
Our fourth day out we reached Townsville early in the morning. Its absurd name is said to be due to the fact that the inhabitants wished to commemorate the benefactions of a fellow-citizen called Town, and did not know how to achieve their end less tautologically. We woke early to find ourselves in a beautiful land-locked bay, called Cleveland Bay by Captain Cook, who recorded that “the east point I named Cape Cleveland, and the west, which had the appearance of an island, Magnetical Isle, as we perceived that the compass did not traverse well when we were near it.” “They are both high, and so is the mainland within them, the whole forming a surface the most rugged, rocky, and barren of any we had seen upon the coast.” He also notes that they saw “several large smokes upon the main.” To-day a picturesque little township lies under a sharply escarped granite hill, with stately, misty coastal ranges in the background. Probably Captain Cook, like ourselves, saw the beautiful yellow “white-headed eagles” flying across the harbour. We took some time getting in because the pilot ran on to a mud-bank, for the bay is very shallow. At last we came alongside a wharf, and at once went on shore and started on the long walk to the town. It was very, very hot on shore, and clouds of grey dust met us all along the road from the landing-stage. We hoped to reach the church on the hill, at all events before the Sunday service was quite over.
Townsville is a picturesque little place, a mining port growing continually in importance; and in that transitional stage, when rough wooden corrugated iron buildings are giving place to brick. There were some very showy hotels calculated to attract the miner with his pockets full of money, when he comes to town to taste the sweets of such civilisation as it affords, to spend all he has gained, and to live riotously as long as it lasts. This at least is the popular conception of the habits of miners, which was continually impressed upon us. We were never able to verify these statements, because though we occasionally conversed with miners, they looked anything but dare-devils and spendthrifts, and it seemed scarcely delicate to ask them if it was true that they periodically repaired to the nearest town to paint it red as long as their money lasted. As for the shops on either side of the broad, dusty, empty streets over which the heat brooded, they seemed to consist principally of lettering. Every minute shanty had above it vast boards proclaiming in letters as large as itself the name of its owner and the superiority of its stock, whether bicycles or tents, both essential articles of merchandise in an outlying Australian town. The more ambitious shops had placards inside. One enterprising draper called on the passer-by to observe the rebuilding of his “palatial premises,” while another drew attention to “Dame Fashion’s latest caprices.”