Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water / The Journal of a Tour Through the British Empire and America

by Ethel Gwendoline Vincent

Wednesday, December 3rd.—Everybody felt languid and unsettled on the first morning. I managed some writing, however, in the course of the day. We passed the group of Bunker Islands, near one of which there was a wreck, and by 4 p.m. we were inside the great Barrier Reef.

These detached masses of coral form a gigantic Wall, stretching along the coast of Queensland for 1300 miles, varying in depth from 600 to 1000 feet.

It has been ascertained and deduced from the depth of the soundings that originally the Barrier Reef formed part of the coast of Australia. Under the level of the lowest tide, but exposed to the force of the wave, these coral polyps and reef-building zoophytes extract by their tentacles the corpuscules in the surrounding water necessary for their existence, and separate one by one the atoms of lime, either in the form of sulphate, chloride, or carbonate, held in solution in the ocean. With these they hold up their beautiful submerged ocean gardens of trees, and flowers, and plants, or structures with domes and towers, forming a world within the world of ocean life. The lifelong struggle between the living mass of coral and the breakers of the ocean for ever continues; "myriads and myriads engaged from age to age" in repairing the damage to the outer wall by the action of the ocean. Each zoophyte possesses tentacle, mouth, and stomach, but here their individuality ceases, and a calcareous tissue forms the means of living communication and nutrition to the whole community, and it is this interior stalk by which they are united, of a bright red colour, which forms the pink coral. Various swarms of fish or mollusci, chief among the latter being the Holuthuriæ, or bêche-de-mer, are formidable enemies to the polyps.

As we sat on deck at dusk there was a beautiful effect from the chain lightning, which was supposed to be either the reflection of a storm elsewhere or the phosphorescence of the sky, the same as that we were looking at on the water over the side of the ship. We passed the revolving lighthouse on Cape Capricorn, just opposite which we were crossing the line of the Tropic of Capricorn. We had a grand scene here, for the sea was wild and stormy from the break in the Barrier Reef, and there were banks of black cloud lying on the horizon, with the frowning brow of Capricorn coming out into the sea, lighted by the bright spark from the alternating beacon of the lighthouse.

We hung out a limelight from the bridge as a signal for them to telegraph our approach to Rockhampton, and then describing a very wide circle round an unseen reef, and going some nine miles up the Fitzroy River, we anchored there at 10 p.m.

Rockhampton lies forty-eight miles further up, but the river is unnavigable for large ships, and the passengers come down in a tender, and the cargo in lighters.

A terrible night we passed from 3 a.m., when the lighters came alongside, and the steam-winch worked over our heads; and worse was it when morning came, and the heat of the sun beat down on the far-extending mangrove swamps. The last bale of wool was stowed away in the stern hold after breakfast, and order was restored to our deck, but several hundreds still remained for the hold forward. Vainly the captain offered the lightermen two bottles of "grog" to go on working during the dinner hour; they were proof against the bribe, and it was late in the afternoon before we weighed anchor and went out to sea again, in a storm of thunder and lightning. The evening was intensely close and oppressive, for with the decks and double awning dripping from the deluge of rain, we were all obliged to crowd into the deck-house. We began to dread the heat of the Torres' Straits route, of which we had been previously warned.

Friday, December 5th.—As I awoke at 7 a.m. I found we were going half-speed, and almost immediately afterwards we stopped and swung round to our anchor in the Pioneer River, some miles below Port Mackay. How annoying it was waiting there till twelve for one passenger, because the tide was too low for the tender to come down! During the afternoon we were passing a succession of pretty little islands, called the Blacksmith, Goldsmith, Silversmith, Tinsmith, Bellows, Anvil, Forge, &c., all the names connected with the trade, and later on a mountain called Mount "Merkara," from the Merkara having once sent help and provisions to some lost surveyors.