AUSTRALIA 1975. 7 Lindeman Island

Again, sorry about the awful colour of the pictures. Most of these photographs were given to me and they are mostly of people. Sadly I don't have much record of the scenery. Perhaps I took it for granted.

We staff lived in a row of cabins behind the hotel buildings with views straight across the top of them to the sea and the uninhabited island opposite.

 

The view from my cabin, with staff dining-room below and uninhabited island opposite.

Dinner-plate-sized toads lined the path up to the cabins and you had to tread round them like stepping-stones in reverse. There were also enormous black beetles that inhabited the kitchen and the staff shower room (at the end of the row of cabins). They liked to cling to your toes with their scratchy feelers.
 
A Norwegian arrived to stay at the hotel and wanted to buy the uninhabited island but was told he couldn’t because the whole area was protected. We staff had all been warned not to pick anything up and take it home. It was the first time I’d come across anything like that.
 
A small reef enclosed the hotel beach, making the water shallow and slightly murky. Not murky enough though to miss the stingrays flittering along the sand underneath. Not as many as at Plantation Beach however and it was OK to swim so long as you were very careful. Occasionally there was a hullabaloo when a shark managed to get through the reef and prowl.
 
Steve the boatman stepped on a stingray when pulling a boat in. Bob, the island electrician, another of Steve’s friends, kept him drunk for two days so that he could cope with the pain of the sting. I went to see them. Steve was sitting on a chair, his face bright red and swollen. He was wearing a big smile. I didn’t know if he was being brave for my benefit or if it was the alcohol. I worried about his hangover later. Bob had his hand on Steve’s shoulder.
 
 

Steve (left) and Bob in the bar

I had a new room-mate, Di. She was a housemaid, so worked different hours from me which was lucky because she spent most of her time off lying on her bunk, smoking. She read a lot too and lent me some new-thinking books, especially ones about Australia. I didn’t know it then but the country was in a ferment, enjoying the first Labour government for 23 years. It was an exciting place. I copied passages from the books into my shorthand notebook.
 
Di also had a cassette player and a Deep Purple tape. I had a tape of the Messiah, and I borrowed The Carpenters and Scarlatti. I slept in the top bunk and when resting would lie there listening to the cassettes in turn, realising that I’d never really heard music properly before. It was divine. I would scrub the wooden floor of the room singing along to the Carpenters.
 
    Why do stars fall down from the sky
    Every time you walk by?
    Just like me
    They long to be
    Close to you.
 
Yes, I was in love. With two people. Bob and George. Bob was usually to be found greasing things in the generator room or climbing poles to fix wires. He was prone to practical jokes like putting poor frogs in people's beds.

 

Bob up a pole

 
George worked as a barman. His parents were Russian and he was crazy. I called him a true free spirit. Jayne called him a waster. Often I would find him in the morning sleeping in the laundry room because he hadn’t made it back to bed. He joined us for meals outside, except that he sat in a tree next to the steps. Light bounced off him and dazzled me when I looked at him.
 

George (left)

 
One night I went back with him to his cabin. He was sweet and considerate and I woke up the next morning with a Beatles song in my head.
 
    There were bells all around
    But I never heard them ringing
    No I never heard them at all
    Till there was you.
 
I splashed around in the hotel pool with Jayne in the couple of hours we had off between breakfast and lunch.
    ‘I’m free!’ I declared to Jayne. ‘I’ve exorcised B.’ Jayne knew a little about my time in London. ‘Everything’s going to be wonderful from now onwards.’
    Jayne looked sceptical. I think she was finding it hard being monogamous when everyone else was having such fun.
    George stopped me frequently over the next few days to check that I was all right. My inexperience must have showed. One day he accompanied me to Plantation Beach.
    ‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ I said, flinging my arm out and introducing him to my special place. ‘Sometimes I run up and down screaming.’
    Which I did.
    George looked horrified. Who is this mad woman? He turned tail and hurried back up the beach and on to the hotel path.
    I watched his long legs churning up the slope and wrote in my notebook, ‘Sometimes she longed for someone to share it all with. A soul mate.’
 
 
To be continued