We’ve been going to Stone Island for a few years now and it’s still pretty much the same as it always has been. The biggest change has been the greenery, what was once a barely grassy plain now covered in little trees.
It’s got beautiful weather (warm in the day, only a little chilly at night), isolation (nobody on the island but us) and it’s a great place to unplug from the world. Power (still) comes from a generator, drinking water falls from the sky. The toilets flush from a saltwater tank and the fridge is gas powered.
This time I didn’t take my computer because it’s battery is dead and I haven’t got a new one yet so my normal routine of playing games during the day and charging at night while the generator runs just wouldn’t work. This was my first trip where I was equipped with a 3G-capable phone so I noticed that the island gets a healthy 3.5G signal. So much for my plans to really unplug this time.
Nevertheless the first few days were great. We settled into the familiar rhythm of island holidays (get up, breakfast, morning activity, nap, afternoon activity, dinner, sleep). I was able to keep up with news via google reader and with friends via facebook on my phone. Then on the third day things changed.
Isaac had a suspected ear infection so I was getting the boat so we could go over to the mainland and get it looked at. The last thing we wanted was for it to get out of hand and cause problems on the way back. The tide was low so I pulled the boat towards the jetty, climbed down the ladder and stepped onto the boat. Apparently (though I didn’t notice at the time) a gust of wind came up just then and blew the boat, all I knew is that as I stepped onto the boat it moved away. Unfortunately I had taken my foot away from the ladder before I really noticed this but had yet to transfer my weight onto the boat itself so when it moved away from the jetty, I started to move into a more horizontal position (you can probably guess where this is going already). I thought about moving my foot back to the ladder but it was too far away. I thought about grabbing the jetty’s big corner pole but that probably wouldn’t have done much good anyway without a foot hold. As I went even more horizontal I thought about grabbing the rope between the boat and the jetty but even if I had it just would have pulled the boat in again and then the rope would have dropped into the water. I remember thinking to myself, as I got progressively more horizontal, “that wasn’t a good idea”. Finally the moment had stretched out as far as it possibly could and reality came smashing back, rudely dropping me into what was now a considerable gap between boat and jetty. Yep, I went for a swim. I was within reach of the ladder so getting out wasn’t a problem but as I got to the top and started evaluating things a problem quickly solidified. I had my 2-week-old N97 Mini on me, in my belt holster and it had come for a swim with me. I emptied my pockets onto the jetty and ripped the battery out of the phone but the damage was well and truly done.
Of course I couldn’t worry too much about the phone just then so I quickly went and changed into some dry clothes while my dad jumped in the boat and went after my hat (which had gone sailing in the breeze). We got Isaac to the doctor and he confirmed the ear infection and gave us some antibiotics which thankfully cleared up the problem before we left (or at least, enough that he didn’t have a problem on the way back).
Now here’s what I noticed. The things I had on me were almost all completely fine. There were 2 things in my wallet (a receipt and my diver’s license) that were a little worse for wear but after spending the afternoon drying in the sun they were fine. My watch and keys (with remote entry button) were both fine. The only thing I was carrying that was not fine and the only thing I was carrying that had any significant monetary value was my phone. With no weather resisting seals of any kind in a modern phone they are extremely susceptible to damage by the elements and while a case of one kind of another can help in many cases dunking a phone in water is almost certainly going to cause it to fail, especially when that water is salty.
So yeah, my 2-week-old N97 Mini is dead. It gets worse though. In the old days when your phone died you took the SIM out, put it in some other phone and were good to go. Not any more because NOTHING that matters on a phone is stored on the SIM anymore. In fact, with the N97 Mini using internal memory instead of a memory card there’s nothing stored on removable storage which means if the phone stops working then you can’t just pick up a phone and put your stuff on it. Theoretically I could get a new phone and restore the stuff that’s on my computer but there were many things on that phone that aren’t on my computer simply because Nokia can’t or won’t allow me to backup the phone properly. Maybe I could have backed it up to a SD card and then restored that onto another phone… Anyway, in this case I didn’t have my computer so I was left without any contacts and without my calendar even though Bree let me use her 5800 for the rest of the week. That was an enlightening experience and I have come up with a rather damning comparison of the 5800 and the N97 Mini but that’s for another post.
After this bit of fun things settled down again and we managed to enjoy the rest of the holiday although I didn’t keep up with news or facebook anymore (not because the 5800 can’t do it but because I didn’t want to mess with Bree’s phone too much).
Some items of note.
The dogs got fat. Apparently they are catching and killing enough wildlife to grow fat despite being unable to actually run anymore. Maybe the greenery allows them to sneak around better. They used to run after us when to rode the quad bikes. Now they just watch as we ride away. If you go for a walk and coax them a bit they’ll walk with you but they can’t sustain anything faster than a walk.
Both Emily and Isaac can ride the quad bikes by themselves. We had 2 working bikes, a 250 and a 650 with the 250 being most suited to the kids because when you accidentally push its throttle in all the way it doesn’t immediately jump away from you like some demented bull. Emily is really good with nice smooth throttle control and (as long as she doesn’t start day dreaming) relatively good steering. Her main problem was actually paying attention to the steering instead of looking off at something in the distance. I even gave her a go of the 650 after verifying she wouldn’t send us sprawling by pushing the throttle in and she did ok on that but the 650′s throttle is stiffer so her thumb got tired more quickly. Isaac surprised me because he didn’t seem like he could manage it at first but it turned out he could. Obviously not as well as Emily but he could steer a little and control the throttle though he tended to be a little less smooth.
When we got there things were missing or broken. This isn’t too unusual though given the environment but my brother had been there the previous weekend and had managed to get the ute stuck in the dam. The week was productive though with the excavator restored to life and used to get the ute out. We had tried to dig the ute out earlier but it was a little too bogged for mere shovels to help.
Some big mower (more like a slasher) was also fixed and my dad spent the last 2 days mowing. I know… seems like a strange thing to do on holiday but apparently he finds it relaxing.
Perhaps it was just the group of people there but we didn’t seem to get up to as many diverse activities as we usually do. I guess we were all too busy relaxing.
Anyway, that’s all the things I can think of from the holiday but there’s one more story that happened on the way home.
We’ve taken to driving up a car (well, a Landcruiser) to reduce the luggage needed on the plane and so we’ve got a vehicle to get us from Proserpine (where the planes go) to Bowen, as well as something to get us around town if we need to go to the shops or something. Normally one person drives up and someone else drives back and Bree and I drove back this trip. Even though it was just the two of us in the car it was loaded to the gills with stuff and towing a trailer because we were picked up some charity donations for Hazel (I think step-grandmother is the appropriate designation) along the way. There’s a ministry doing work in Uganda and Hazel was organizing a shipping container to go over there. The stuff we picked up was for the container. That’s not the story though.
The story is that we were coming in to Bundaberg, our second night’s stopping place. We were about an hour out, along the road to 1770/Agnes Water. I saw a bird in the middle of the road that looked like a crow. We got closer and I realized it was quite a bit bigger than a crow. It opened its wings to fly away and I realized it was an eagle. Here’s where things went wrong. Normally when a bird on the road notices an oncoming card it flies off the road. I’m not sure if eagles normally do this but this one didn’t. Instead, it started flying away from us, along the road. There were just seconds from the “oh, it’s an eagle” point to the “crap, it didn’t fly away” point and maybe one more second before I thought, “we’re going to hit it”. 100 km per hour doesn’t give you a lot of time to react when you’re heading for an object that is nearly stationary. In this case I had no time to react. The only thing I actually did was to close my eyes before impact (involuntary flinch I guess). The impact itself was really loud and something flew into me. I half expected to open my eyes and find an eagle in my lap but it was the GPS. The window had shattered right in front of me but the laminate had held so it was still there. I got the car under control (or rather, checked to make sure it was still going in a straight line – I hadn’t moved after all) and tried to figure out what to do. The road was very quiet but I didn’t think stopping in the middle of the road was a good idea and there was nowhere to pull over. We had to go another km or so before we found somewhere to stop. We didn’t see the eagle on the road behind us at any point but given the state of the window I don’t expect it survived.
The window was really bad. We weren’t sure if it was safe to continue driving because it was almost dusk. Our first thought was to call RACQ but when we got out the phone it turned out we were in a dead zone. Just then though, we saw an RACQ car coming down the road (talk about timing) so we flagged it down. The guy had a look and said we should be right to drive into town and get it fixed there (certainly easier than trying to get someone from town out to us) so that’s what we did. Since the window was worst right in front of me I leaned over to look through the center of the window where it was mostly clear and that’s how we drove into Bundaberg. I did drive a bit slower just to be sure.
We called up O’Brien glass and they said we could pay a call out fee to get the job done that night or wait for the local shop to open in the morning. We opted for the latter so that we could get some sleep. When the local shop called in the morning they said their first opening was 1pm. The glass replacement procedure itself takes 2.5 hours which would have ruined any chance of us getting home that day but luckily they called back 5 minutes later because someone had cancelled their appointment so we got it in at 8am. The place we stayed at (Best Western City Motor Inn) were really nice and let us leave the trailer in their carpark till lunch which meant we didn’t have to deal with it or get the O’Brien people to deal with it.
With some time to kill we decided to go to the distillery which had tours. If you’ve never been to the Bundaberg distillery, it’s the place they make Bundaberg Rum and it’s quite an interesting tour. It’s not cheap to get in though, at $25 a head but that includes 2 proper drinks (not merely tastes as I had expected). Something odd about the tour is the safety aspect. You have to remove everything from your pockets and all devices with a battery. They’ve had 2 fires and each time the entire site was destroyed as a result so I guess they’re not taking any chances with anything that could cause a fire. The site has literally millions of dollars worth of maturing rum in hundreds of giant wooden vats and so security is tight. Right next door is the mill that supplies the distillery and since sugar harvesting season had begun it was in full swing. The smell coming out of it was something else. Kind of like freshly mown grass mixed with the most intense sweet smell you’ve ever experienced. It was quite overwhelming and then on the tour you get even more overwhelming smells (like the huge molasses pit or the smell of a room full of maturing rum that’s 78% alcohol by volume).
The other thing to do there is the shop. You actually have to pay to get into the shop (the tour includes this). I suspect it’s to prevent the shop from becoming just another bottle shop. Instead it feels more like a souvenir shop that just happens to sell alcohol. I’m not so sure there prices were exactly competitive with a bottle shop anyway (but then I don’t drink so what would I know). They have an exclusive item, a rum liqueur with coffee and chocolate flavour.
Oh yeah… you get 2 proper drinks for each adult on the tour. For us that meant 4 drinks but we only got 3. The first was a regular Bundaberg Rum on the rocks because I’ve never had it before. It was less tasty than I expected given its colour. I can’t really describe it because I don’t have anything to compare it to (well… I can say it didn’t taste anything like the Guiness I tasted on the island, which didn’t taste how I thought it would either). Now since I didn’t even expect to get proper drinks and since I don’t actually drink I only had a bit of it and then (gasp) threw the rest into the garden. Our second drink was the liqueur on the rocks (they suggested trying it this way first). It’s only 20% alcohol (the regular rum is 37%) so it’s not quite as strong on the alcohol and the extra ingredients give it a nice, big but smooth flavour that’s quite sweet. Again, I threw maybe half of this into the garden. Next up was the liqueur with cream. I guess that’s somewhat like a Baileys but I haven’t had that so I can’t be sure. It too was sweet but smoother. Apparently you can mix it with milk instead of cream to reduce the sweetness a bit. You know what… partially drinking three drinks in a row probably qualifies this as the most alcohol I’ve consumed at one time. Probably more than 1 standard drink but probably less than 2. That’s a new record for me :)
We actually got ourselves a bottle of the liqueur. I’m not sure when we’ll drink it or even if we’ll get through it before it goes off but we did have a glass with desert when we got back and it was nice. We were at my dad’s house using these small glasses that seem to be made for desert spirits. We probably need to get something like this for our house now.
The only other noteworthy thing that happened on the way back was that I noticed the Gateway now has 3 lanes of traffic jam instead of the previous 2.
So that was our island holiday for 2010. The 2 days I cleverly booked off after we got back has allowed us to get back to normality at home before I have to go and face work and do something about that phone.
