Flying to crab island

I woke too early at 0500. It was meant to be a lazy sleep-in with a 1300 departure. I bused to the airport. Check-in opened shortly after I arrived. I was issued with a standby pass at first but the agent immediately assigned me a seat manually.

After a brunch upstairs, I organised my transfer from Christmas airport to the township by phone. There is no taxi service there. I went through the formalities to get airside and rested. There was no reason for me to feel tired but somehow I was.

On my flight were many mercenary-looking people. They’re the people working on the Border Force ships that patrol the waters for refugees and illegal fishing. I’ve been told the job is contracted to a private company rather undertaken by the government agency itself. Many looked cast from the same overbulked mould. Some kept whiled the time away inflight reading war magazines (not comics) and books. That’s taking their jobs seriously and it takes all kinds to make up this world.

We arrived without any circling. It was a worry to hear people talk about their diversions due to weather; eg. to Jakarta to refuel and then straight back to Perth where they started, or to Port Hedland.

Arrival formalities were non-existent apart from collecting one’s declaration. Lisa was outside the terminal waiting for me, another plus a Japanese group. The short drive downhill to the Mango Tree gave me my first glimpse of the red crabs.

I dropped my stuff and decided to go for a wander before the supermarket shut (not that I needed anything). I met Andrea from Germany outside the hotel and chatted briefly before I continued my way to the supermarket. Many items were unpriced. Some low value items were double or triple the mainland price but since they’re low value the wouldn’t hurt much. Wine was cheap. It was fresh fruit and veges that was the killer; whatever available is exorbitant. A miserable airflown lettuce was more than AUD8.

I was tempted by wine but had left my wallet behind in the room. So I headed back before coming back out again for dinner at the Chinese restaurant run by some people from Penang. I ordered a broccoli and ginger beef stirfry which turned out huge and delicioius for AUD25 (reasonable considering the remote location). Meals at the pub are around AUD35-40.

Andrea turned up and we shared the table and chatted at length. She had been here for two weeks and was getting scratchy. She had an ear infection and couldn’t dive. She couldn’t drive either. Sights on the island had been over-glorified she thought; I had had that feeling reading the brochures compared to Wikitravel (brochures name and glorify each beach whereas Wiki says there are hardly any).