Welcome to Cape Fear. Also Cape Hliarious Strategic Removal of Letters on Signs.
I’ve been thinking this morning about H’s and my honeymoon. I think it’s the intense heat and humidity here today that reminded me of it, because it felt rather like this back in April 2009, when we took off for ten days in Far North Queensland. Back in the Olden Days, the honeymoon would might have been a frightening prospect for an innocent young bride. It would have been her first opportunity, theoretically, to know her husband ahem ahem.
Having already lived together for a couple of years, H and I already (look away parents and grandparents) knew each other. So in order to inject the traditional element of fear and trepidation into our post-wedding journey, we took a trip where we I faced, daily, almost every single thing I am terrified of. Looking back, this seems rather unfair. I don’t recall H doing loads of scary things on the honeymoon, just me. Although he had just helped organise and participate in a wedding on a rather frightening scale, so maybe he was all scaried out.
My scary list looks like this:
1. The Deep Ocean
2. Sharks
3. Crocodiles
4. Snakes
I also have a list of things I’m not mad about. That list includes birds landing on me, fruitbats hanging off my bare skin, going on boats and driving through canefields at night. All in all, Far North Queensland was the ideal place for me to get very scared.
So here are some snaps from the honeymoon.
Oh that? Yeah, that's a shark. In the Deep Ocean. Where I snorkelled moments before. Even uploading this photo frightens me.
He wanted me dead. The feeling was mutual.
Deadly snake in a tree in the main street of Port Douglas. Ye Gods.
There are something like thirty crocodiles living in this pond. They spend their lives alternating between pretending to be logs and biting each others' arms off.
Fortunately, there were enough lovely things to offset the ones that made me glad I had brown underpants in my trousseau.
There were jigsaw puzzles and ham and pineapple pizzas; champagne, serious abuse of the first Nespresso machine we’d ever encountered, an infinity pool overlooking a rainforest and many other good things besides.
Our private pool. It was ok.
FNQ is a place where a name like Kev Sackley is no impediment to success.
The real Batman.
You have to eat ice-cream very, very quickly in this weather. Quickly and often.
The Queensland Martini: 1 part Bundaberg rum and coke in a can.
For me, getting married was scary and exciting. Our honeymoon was the same, and I can’t think of anyone with whom I would rather be eaten by a shark, mauled by a crocodile, flayed by a fruit bat, murdered by a lunatic Queenslander in a canefield, drowned in the Deep Ocean when the snorkel boat leaves without us or poisoned to death by a cane toad.
H is a great and good man, but not so good that if I saw a crocodile coming along the beach at Palm Cove, which apparently does happen, I would have any hesitation about asking him to help me shove this bloke in front of it to buy us some time.
Croc fodder.