AUSTRALIA 1975. 8 The Great Barrier Reef

I enjoyed my waitressing. It was informal and democratic. There was no division between staff and guests as there would have been in the UK. We weren't a sub-species. If anything, we were the lucky ones. We lived on the island. The guests deferred to us.

    We had no boss. We simply organised ourselves, with the waitresses who’d been there longer teaching those who were newer.

    Lunch was a barbecue and to start with – until Bob lent me some green flip-flops (‘thongs’ in Australian and ‘jandals’ in New Zealandish) - I worked in bare feet.
    We washed and dried the cutlery by hand and sometimes Jayne and I would dance round the kitchen, waving the tea towels like veils. Even Jon, the miserable chef, would laugh.

    From the dining-room in the evenings I could watch the flying foxes swarming in to roost in the trees. After supper while I cleaned up I could hear Alan at the organ or the band which came over from Mackay once a week tuning up. We danced to the music and cooled off in the pool while the guests looked on.

When I first arrived we wore our own clothes for work but, as the place smartened up and a new dining-room was opened, uniforms were made in a tropically patterned material, with shirts for the men and dresses for the women – short blue ones in the day and long red ones at night.

We waitresses in our new evening dresses. I'm in the middle at the back. Jayne is far right.

 

The barmen in their new shirts. George is on the left with his hand on Helen's shoulder.

 
This was a relief as I only had one summer dress. One day Jane and I hitched a lift in the plane and went to Mackay to buy some clothes. Doobie came with us and tried to squeeze out of a small round ventilation hole in the window. Jane grabbed her rear end just in time.
    Alan borrowed a boat and Jayne, Alan, Doobie and I zoomed over to the uninhabited island. Doobie stood in the prow, her long hair flying in the wind. She looked like a film star and she knew it.

Jayne and Doobie

 As we explored the island Jane said sniffily, ‘If this was Greece there’d be a nice taverna round the corner.’
    I was impressed. Jayne had travelled all over before landing up in Australia and had reached unexplored places like Greece which was not visited by tourists because of ‘The Colonels’ and their military dictatorship.
    The tide went out and we had to wade half a mile pulling the boat across sharp coral. I cut one of my feet, it became infected and I had to bathe it every night for a week in salt water. We were pioneers. We looked after ourselves.
 
At last it was my turn to see the Barrier Reef itself. We travelled by night, with staff sleeping on the deck and guests down below. I didn’t sleep much. It was too beautiful. The next day we were offloaded on to a plateau covered with water a few inches deep. Again, we had strict instructions not to touch anything, not only because it was protected but also because everything was poisonous, if not deadly.
    I wandered around in borrowed plimsolls, not knowing quite what to do. I looked over the edge of the plateau and the reef fell away to bottomless blue. I thought I saw a shark cruising way down and stepped back hurriedly.
    Some people may have been snorkelling, but I don’t remember it.
 
Jayne and I wrote and distributed a satirical newsletter which we called ‘Lindeman Stinks’. Bob thought it was funny but gentle Scottish Lach (pronounced ‘Lock’) who ran the island was upset. I was upset that he was upset. Didn’t he realise that ribbing was the way Australians showed affection? The more they liked you, the more they teased you.   
    There was a song doing the rounds. George was the ringleader.
 
    My sister Belinda
    She pissed out the winda . . .
 
Luckily, I can’t remember any more. I was pleased to be famous.
    I was teased for using words over two syllables which of course I often did without realising. Everything was abbreviated in Australian – cozzie (bathing costume), mozzie (mosquito), smoko (work break), arvo (afternoon). It took me a while to understand the language.

A rather sad member of staff (the person who lent me the cassette of Scarlatti), a gay barman who didn’t last long on the island, said that I was ‘bubbling over with happiness’. I was. I walked into the laundry room one day with my sweaty sheets and as I bunged them into a machine I thought, it doesn’t matter what I’m doing. Every moment is alive.

 
For some reason Helen and I decided one night to climb to the top of the island.
 

Helen, en route to the top of the island. I think she's down to her underwear.

 
We arrived as dawn was breaking. Green cone-shaped islands, with steam gently rising from them, dotted the ocean all around. It was like the birth of the planet.

To be continued . . .