The Fitzroy Saga

                                                                                                   Part 1

It’s 1AM and the carton of Peroni in front of us is not far off from being finished. It’s that time of the night: should we just pass out drunk or go wild? A few days earlier my friend saw a picture of a very picturesque and remote beach on Fitzroy Island, off the coast of Cairns. Usually, it is only accessible by boat. Something we would have known if we had adhered to the standard procedure before every outdoor adventure: identifying potential problems and hazards and developing solutions on how to overcome them. Our drunken minds skipped this procedure all together and jumped straight to the conclusion: go wild – literally go wild.  We started packing our bags. Instead of packing small and light as is usual for a hiking and camping trip, we went for bulky and heavy. Our Peroni brains figured that we will just spearfish our own dinner when we get to the beach, so we wouldn’t have to carry the weight of any food to the beach. Instead, we chose to carry the weight of all our spearfishing gear such as wetsuits, fins, speargun and 10kg’s of dive weights – not our brightest moment even for the standard of this trip.

Once ready, we encountered the first problem of the trip; Cairns is a 4-hour drive away from Townsville, how do we get there? Neither of us had a car (and even if we did, we were way too drunk to drive) and buses weren’t running at that time of the night. Only one option left: hitch-hiking. To increase our chances of getting a lift, we made a sign out of cardboard reading the words “2 Cairns 4 beer”. Solid plan, we thought.

Problem number 2 followed soon after: the only real chance to find someone who’s driving up to Cairns is on the highway which is a 20-minute car ride out of town. So grabbing our skateboards, we started skating towards the highway. The spirits were high up until 2 minutes into our skate when I heard glass shattering from behind me. My friend had stacked it on his skateboard and broke a couple of the beer bottles he was carrying. I raised my concern as to whether it was such a good idea to skate 10kms on Penny boards equipped with heavy packs, a speargun in one hand and a six-pack (now a 4-pack) of beer in the other hand. However, there was no time for pessimism and soon after sculling one beer each, all doubts vanished.

With the newly acquired liquid confidence, we made fast progress until the skate came to an abrupt stop after just another two minutes. This time, I stacked it on my board, the screen of my phone shattering to pieces. Although a phone is a crucial safety device on hiking trips in remote locations, the only thought on my mind was ‘that was lucky, at least I didn’t break our last two bottles of beer’. We didn’t like our chances of getting to the highway in a timely manner considering that we had already stacked it twice, broken two beer bottles, and one phone after only five minutes. So, once we got to the main road, we put our thumbs out and tried to catch a lift towards the highway. However, the only cars that passed us at this time of the night were a bunch of police cars. We still tried our luck, not surprisingly, however, none of the police officers wanted to give a lift to two drunken idiots skating wobbly lines in the middle of the road. Nonetheless, lucky not to get arrested, we continued our journey. I stacked it once more and smashed my knee on a rock. With blood running down my leg, I pushed through the pain until we finally reached the highway after 1.5 hours of skating. We put our thumbs out, held up the sign and the last two beers that were warm and flat by now. Whilst many cars passed us, we did not have any luck.

After 30 minutes, I had a stroke of genius and noticed two fundamental flaws in our otherwise perfect plan. Firstly, whilst our inner spirits were still high, our outer appearance had deteriorated significantly after a sleepless night and a carton of Peroni. On top of that, the speargun in combination with blood running down my leg did not positively add to our appearance. Lastly, even if someone was willing to give us a lift, there was no stopping bay to pull over and stopping in the middle of the highway whilst still dark out would have taken someone at least as dumb as us. So, I figured the best chance to get a lift was direct confrontation – using our charm we will harass people at gas stations for a lift. We started walking along the highway, it was first light out by the time we got to the nearest one. Unfortunately, we did not have any luck at the first gas station. It was around 8am when we got to the second gas station. After an hour of pestering people unsuccessfully, our moral was at its lowest. We cracked open our last two Peroni, but unlike a few hours before, the Italian healing water did not do its job. The alcohol started to wear off and was replaced by physical and mental exhaustion. However, giving up was not an option at this point, so we dragged our fatigued bodies to the third and last gas station.

The parameters at this gas station seemed promising: many solo drivers with plenty of room in their cars were headed towards Cairns. We knew this gas station was our last chance, so we tried to improve our strategy. Firstly, we dusted the dirt and washed off the blood, simple yet effective. Secondly, we hid our belongings so that potential candidates wouldn’t get scared off by the bulkiness, heaviness and deathliness (speargun) of our gear. And finally, we offered to cover all fuel expenses. However, people came up with all kinds of excuses not to take us, some better than others. The one we heard the most was “I would take you guys but I don’t have enough room in my car”. This was interesting given that we could see the 3 spare seats and empty boots of their cars.

It was 11am by the time we had to admit that our adventure might have to come to an end here. We agreed on asking one last person, if we got another ‘no’, we would head back to Townsville and call it a day. As we were looking for the best suited candidate to ask, usually people with big Utes, a small car rolled up to the gas station. It was dirty, rusty and missing half of its bumper – the kind of car that makes you question the legitimacy of RWC’s. A middle-aged man that went by the name of ‘Stormy’ as we would later learn, stepped out of the car. He was barefoot and looked just as much of a dirtbag as us. He was different than anyone else we had asked before, so we decided to approach him. Without hesitation, he agreed to take us all the way to Cairns. When we admitted that we had a few bulky items to bring, he responded “no worries, I’ve got plenty of room in my car”. When we opened the car doors, Stormy’s gear was spilling out of the backseats. Unlike us, he remained unconcerned and forcefully started shoving our gear into his car leaving just enough space for us to sit. As promised, we paid for the fuel and started the 3 ½ hour car ride up to Cairns. We couldn’t believe our luck. During the car ride, I contemplated on the fact that the only person who could have rightfully said ‘I don’t have enough room in my car’ decided to give us a lift.

                                                                                                Part 2

After not enough sleep to make sensible decisions, we caught an early morning ferry from Cairns to Fitzroy Island. We knew nothing about the island except the Google Maps location of the serene beach we would call home for the night. Once we got to the island, we quickly realised that human settlement is constricted to the eastern shore, while the beach we were headed for, called ‘Hidden Beach’, is located on the north-eastern coast. Not surprisingly, there was no paved and signed track to a place called ‘Hidden Beach’ which is something we could have known earlier by applying common sense even for a fraction of a second. Luckily for us, the ‘Fitzroy Lighthouse Loop Walk’ brought us close to our desired destination, though it stopped on the edge of a steep cliff. From the lighthouse, we could see the ‘Hidden Beach’ 130 meters below our feet.

Just the thought of climbing down the cliff gave me goosebumps. However, the thought of having gone through all the struggle just to turn back around when the beach was literally within eyesight was even worse. We left the beaten path and equipped with our bulky gear, started fighting our way through dense shrub. After 45 minutes of being scratched up by spiky bushes, we left the forest behind us and walked up to the edge of a near vertical sandstone cliff. For about 30 minutes, we inspected the cliff trying to come up with a route for a safe descent.  Unfortunately, the only ‘safe’ descent would have been abseiling with rope and harness. Our best option was a route that we classified as only ‘moderately life-threatening’ rather than ‘guaranteed deadly’ like all other options. We were to scramble down the right-hand side of the cliff for around 5 meters and then traverse on a moderate slope of the cliff face. Because of our bulky gear and ‘inadequate footwear’ (i.e. flip-flops) we decided to bum-slide across to the other side. Inch by inch we shimmied across whilst praying that the sandstone wouldn’t crumble underneath us. After minutes of intense focus and fear, we made it to the other side. On the one hand we were overcome with a sense of relief and euphoria but on the other hand, we were shocked by our recklessness and foolishness. From here, we continued descending along the side of the cliff through thick forest. Although we kept getting scratched up, this time we were grateful for the roots and trunks as they provided support for descending safely on steep terrain.

It was early afternoon by the time we got to the beach that had caused us to embark on such a crazy adventure. The main bay of the beach was made up of coral rubble which would have been wildly uncomfortable to sleep on. For this reason, we decided to set up base in a smaller, secluded patch of sand on the right-hand side. I took a few minutes to appreciate the beauty and remoteness of this place. After the last 36 hours we desperately needed some rest and recovery, however, since we only had a few hours of daylight left, we felt time pressured to hop in the water and spear some dinner. The coral cover, diversity, and health of the fringing reef was stunning. Yet, fish life was scarce. On top of that, the poor visibility and strong currents that were channelled through the passage between Hidden Beach and Little Fitzroy Island, made spearfishing conditions suboptimal. We spent hours in the water trying to catch a fish and were finally forced to give up by the incoming dark. We had burnt through the last of our energy reserves and knew we’d go to sleep not only hungry but also thirsty as we had only 1 litre of water left between us. Exhaustion turned into frustration when we realized that the huge effort it took to carry all our spearfishing gear had not been rewarded with a fish on a campfire as planned.

North-Queensland winter provides hot & dry conditions during the day, however, night temperatures can drop down to below 10 Degrees Celcius. After spending hours in the water having depleted our energy reserves, the cooling temperature in combination with a large wind chill-factor that night made us shiver heavily. There was no time to get lost in frustration. Collecting some driftwood, we set up a campfire – without checking the tideline. The heat and calming affect our campfire provided was addictive and we spent hours sitting by the fire, warming our bodies and calming our minds. With our attention being drawn to the fire in front of us, we had completely ignored our surroundings for hours. A raindrop on my face abruptly pulled me out of this peaceful trance-like state. In the distance, we saw large and dark clouds dominating the night sky and within seconds, we realized that the tide was coming in and wouldn’t be long before taking out our campfire. The wind and rainfall increased by the minute and showed clear signs of heading directly for us. We switched into survival mode and knew setting up the tent for rain shelter was the priority. With no wind or rain shelter, wind gusts of up to 40 knots turned the tent into a parachute the second we pulled it out of it’s bag. The rainclouds stole the light of the night-sky and the batteries of our head-torches and my friend’s phone were dead. The only light source we had, came from the screen of a GoPro camera – in other words, it was pitch black.

I had set up this tent many times before but the conditions that night made this simple task nearly impossible. Without a tent we realised that the fire was our only source of heat and we had to focus our efforts on keeping it alive. Due to its size, it was largely unaffected by the rainfall – for now. However, because of the incoming tide, waves washing up onshore now reached the edge of our fire. Without a tent or fire, the heavy rain, night temperatures and wind chill made hypothermia, even in Queensland winter, a real possibility. We switched into panic mode. Frantically, my friend started blowing at the fire fuelling it with oxygen, whilst I was running up and down the beach collecting big rocks and coral rubble to build a barrier that would protect our fire from the waves. We didn’t know how far the tide would come up on the beach, we remained hopeful that it would start to go down at any time. Every now and then, a big wave would break through the rock barrier and almost take out the fire. We didn’t talk about how scared we were, we didn’t have to, we could see it in each other’s eyes. For 2 hours we tried everything to keep this fire alive.

Although it felt like we were in a battle with nature, I remember the moment I turned around and recognised the beauty in the harmonious interplay of all 4 elements right in front of my eyes – the fire was completely surrounded by water, with the rock-wall protecting it from the waves and wind – it felt like time stood still for one second.

The next second, a big wave completely took out our fire. I dropped the rocks I was carrying and ran over to assess the damage – except for a few embers there was nothing left. Because of the rain, all remaining driftwood and grass was too wet to start another fire. We collected the embers and unsuccessfully tried to start another fire by burning semi-dry clothes, which, at this point, was only our underwear – an act of desperation. The idea of going back to the ferry terminal to seek shelter was tempting, however this included ascending the cliff in pouring rain without any light. In my opinion, a death wish.

There was only one thing left to do: put on every single layer of clothing, cuddle up and hope for the best. We walked over to the main beach and lied down as far up on the beach as possible, hoping that the high tide would not reach us. Side by side, we shivered heavily for many hours until finally falling asleep just shortly before sunrise. Seeing the sun appear on the horizon and realizing that we had avoided hypothermia was a relief that is hard to put in words. As rays of sunshine split the sky, the events of the night before seemed distant, almost imaginary. For me, the events of the last twelve hours had been a demonstration of how gentle and beautiful, yet powerful and unforgiving nature can be.

The night had left its marks on us – my friend developed a cough from inhaling smoke while blowing at the fire and I complained about pain in the soles of my feet from running on coral rubble for hours. The fire pit was completely washed away, and our belongings had been drowned in salt water during high tide – a not-so-friendly reminder to always check the high tide line before setting up camp. We packed up our belongings and started our climb back up the cliff. It was a long and strenuous hike. Our packs were twice as heavy as before since all our belongings were soaking wet, our energy levels were completely drained and the roots we climbed on were wet and slippery from the previous night’s rain. We managed to avoid the traverse across the cliff face which would have been even more dangerous because of the wet sandstone – the trade-off was being scraped by very dense shrub. Reaching the lighthouse, we encountered tourists taking photos of the view, all of whom regarded us peculiarly. In fairness, we were dirty, sweaty, bloody and sunburnt all at once. Even though it was only one (very long) night it felt like we had been cast away for weeks and just found our way back to civilisation. 

However, their estranged looks went without notice as we had only one thing in mind: food and water, located only an hour walk away at the Fitzroy Island General Store. Upon arrival we completely raided the store, spending $80 on food and drinks that we inhaled like animals – food had never tasted so good before.  After the feast was over, we got on the ferry back to Cairns. Seeing Fitzroy Island slowly disappearing in the distance, we looked at each other, smiled and yelled from the top of our lungs: ‘THAT WAS FUCKING EPIC!!!’.

by Yannis Karrer