It was around the mid-eighties when we made the decision to holiday in Cairns, a regional city in the far north of Queensland.
It was about three days into our stay that we decided to book a diurnal, return journey, aboard a small aeroplane, to Lizard Island. It included transportation to and from the city’s airport. Tiki felt sorry for the couple who were obviously struggling to keep their business viable and, therefore, paid the woman in advance, despite her having stated that there would be time for that upon our return.
Having told Tiki that she and her husband had recently separated and that he, therefore, might not be in a friendly mood, the lady had asked for our shoe sizes, in order that the right sized flippers would accompany us. However, when it came time to don mine to swim out to the reef and observe the truly impressive coral and colourful fish, only my left flipper would fit and even then this had been preceded by quite a struggle.
Nevertheless, I really did not give much thought to the fact that my right foot remained bare, especially as our time in the water was consumed by our observations. However, as we neared the shore’s shallow waters I decided to walk to the beach. My first step managed to find the softest seagrass imaginable, however, my second was immediately inflicted by the most intense pain imaginable and when I lifted my right foot there was an orange barb of some four inches in length protruding from the bottom of its big toe.
Once I realised that the venom was not about to swiftly terminate my life, my instinctive reaction was to immediately extract the barb. However, even this did little to alleviate the agony, although this was almost briefly replaced by the incredulity and sheer disbelief that I experienced when we learned that our host and pilot did not possess a first-aid kit of any kind.
Our belated lunch came and went and then, mercifully, it was time to board our flight to return to Cairns. A woman in our small group had fallen over and grazed her knee. However, she still had empathy for me as the poison injected had already caused my foot to swell and the reddening of the skin was in the process of extending up my leg, almost to the knee. She kindly offered to dab my toe with perfume and although this made no discernible difference to the pain, I felt obliged to state that it had.
Just when we believed that the situation could not worsen, the pilot announced that an emergency had arisen with the aircraft and that he would have to land at the isolated Cow Bay Airfield. We endured a wait of perhaps twenty minutes while our pilot engaged in an animated conversation with the only person there, a gentleman in a four-wheel drive. Finally, an agreement was reached between the pair, that he could borrow the vehicle, and we and our belongings were transferred from the plane to it..
Our host explained that if he could not get us to the Daintree River in time to board the last ferry, at five o’clock, he would have to pay for our night’s accommodation. Obviously, such a scenario would have been a financial incumbrance to the business and, as time was very much on the wing, he drove like a man possessed, with little thought to those of us in his care.
The week that followed meant that I was on a course of antibiotics. The fact that my right foot remained swollen resulted in me hobbling about Cairns and its environs, with a shoe on one foot and a thong on the other.