Dunk Island
“There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.”
— Alfred Hitchcock
The trip to Dunk Island was the most seasick I have ever been. The waves were crashing around us, and the one-hour trip seemed to last about four. I tried focusing on the horizon, but to no avail. I was so sick that the only thing preventing me from puking my guts out was watching four young Aussie kids — probably between four and eight years old — sitting there without getting sick. If they could handle it, so could I. There are very few pictures of the boat ride because I was far too busy trying not to heave croc chunks.
Oh yeah, there was also an Italian guy named Marco from Tuscany on board. We would cross paths again later during my Fraser Island expedition, where we got to talk about surviving this particular voyage. Upon arriving at Dunk Island, one of the tour guides took one look at me and announced that I needed a ginger beer. At that point I was willing to try anything, so I took his advice and headed into the big grass hut.
Guess what? He was right. By the time I’d finished about half of the ginger beer, my stomach was feeling remarkably normal again. Bundaberg Ginger Beer became my beverage of choice for much of the rest of the journey — partly because I associated it with recovering from that miserable boat ride, but mostly because it tasted damn good. Thus, the big photograph of the bottle.
There was one other thing about Dunk Island that stuck with me. The music in the hut was cranked up, and playing through the speakers were the soothing, eerie sounds of Portishead. Music has a strange way of permanently attaching itself to places and memories. Even now, hearing certain Portishead songs can take me straight back to that hut on Dunk Island, drinking ginger beer and being extremely happy that the ground underneath me had finally stopped moving. COOL!!
