Blessed Trinity

Following our baseball sojourn, Ann and I walked to the beach, Trinity Beach that is. It was a hit.

We followed the bus route to get there, as we had passed by the beach side “bus station” on the way to Cairns Field.  The even more amazing birds of the tropics melodically teased us on from one block to the next as we made our way through a resort housing subdivision. The housing and ambience reminded me of Florida in the 1970’s.

The most noteworthy musical highlight of this walk however was a 70-ish age woman cruising by in a pink electric scooter, rocking out to a boom box blaring from between her feet on the scooter floorboard. Cheery waves were exchanged.

The “bus station” was a bench, with the all important toilet block across the bus turn around pavement. Australia by far has the best public toilets, both in frequency and cleanliness. (The one by the bus stop in Warrnambool has electric automatic opening doors, music plays when the door closes [“What the world needs now…”], and the toilet flushes automatically when you turn on the water to wash your hands. No wash, no flush.) Since we were in the tropics, the amenities were more relaxed and informal. Nonetheless, there was the metal syringe depository, something all public toilets have, even including the ones on the airplane to Cairns.

Trinity Beach is a locals hangout, about fifteen kilometers north of Cairns. Its greatest feature was that unlike the Cairns mudflats, it had a real beach, long and sandy and fringed with palm trees. There were first aid posts along the beach with bottles of vinegar and self help instructions on caring for jelly fish stings before emergency personnel arrived.

My first thought was that at home any such bottles of vinegar would be stolen.

My second more positive thought was that given all the kids swimming, that the jellyfish season was not yet underway. So, my shorts metamorphisized in to a bathing suit and into the Coral Sea for me.

Drying out afterwards was timeless. If Norman Rockwell did a family beach scene, this could be the place to paint. Palm trees with barbeques going along the street side greenway. Families, young couples, girls, boys, and girls and boys, were filling in and filling up the beach. It was a real pleasure to be part of the panorama.

The beach stretched along a coastline curve for about four kilometers. Ann and I were near one end, so we decided to walk that way to the next beginning. The beach ran out of sand at a rocky point, but there was a path to follow where the trees came down to meet the rocks. We rocked on up and over and around the bend, coming to an escarpment with Trinity Beach behind us to our left, and Cairns off in the distance to our right.

The rocks coming out of the jungle like hillside reminded me of an old lava flow. Is there a marine geologist in the house? The black rock with the tropical blue water on one side and green gracing it on the other was quite striking.

A mom and son were at the water’s edge fishing. Imagine their surprise, and our shared excitement, when a manhole cover sized sea turtle popped up literally only two feet away from their feet.

We wandered on back to the center of town. With almost an hour to go until the next return bus, it was time for calamari and chips (French fries that is) by the beach.

Our #111 bus ride was full of twenty somethings heading back to Cairns after a daze at the beach. We appeared to be the only tourist types, and definitely the only ones over thirty, but were quite at home as we rolled on with the communal warmth and comfortable fatigue of a day at the beach.