Australia: Coraf Reef - Do Fish Like Roast Beef?

Sure, I adored the kiddy pool at Sunset Park when I was a child but soon I outgrew the 1ft wading pool and come age 10, I spent (from what I can recall) to be a long summer taking swimming lessons at the Tualatin Recreation Center. My mother had to bribe me by promising a new doll if I finished the lessons. Not too thrilled to be donning a swimsuit at age 10 (bit squishy was I) nor to be dunking my head in and out of water, backstroking and learning to hold my breath longer and longer underwater. On the final day of our lessons we had our swim test. Family was allowed to sit in the bleachers and watch their child’s progress. We were to start at the 5ft range and swim straight across the pool to the other side. I managed to swim to the other side of the pool, pop my head up to smile and wave at Mom sitting on the bleachers only to sink right down fast as I had mistakenly rerouted myself to the 10ft range of the pool and had no footing!

I just hate swimming. In high school in order to pass graduation we were required to take a swim test, with the boys and in bathing suits (gahhrrkk! I had legs of a lumberjack and a rack? Please). I managed to get out of this one only because my girlfriend went to church with the woman who volunteered at the high school and was in charge of documenting passes and failures. Without ever having to step in to a one piece I passed and graduated from high school (that’s using your smarts).

Looking back, I wish I had failed. To this day I really don’t know how to swim. I can wiggle my legs, flap my arms and backstroke, otherwise, I’m horrible. For some reason over the years I developed this psychological fear of the ocean. You can set me sail off on a ship, ferry or catamaran, no problem, but I’ll never wade further than my knees in the ocean. It’s not the sharks or fear of drowning it’s the fear of depth, the deep, knowing that there is a vast depth below that I can’t see, touch, understand or mostly, control.

Up until age 30 I had never even imagined to attempt the wonders of snorkeling. I had a few wonderful missed opportunities to in Mexico and Thailand. A couple months after 9/11 I turned 30. I was unemployed, living in a friend’s attic in the East Bay, commuting for over an hour to the Peninsula for a temp-to-possible hire job working as the personal assistant for an overly arrogant Silicon Valley venture capitalist and his overly privileged stay at home wife. He claimed his ancestor was Thomas Paine. He even had an original copy of Thomas Paine’s revolutionary book Common Sense on his office bookshelf. Ironically enough, for a man whose late ancestor wrote the book that spurred such great democracies, he had little common sense himself. During my trial run to be crowned The Paine’s next hand maiden, I was designated the one to deliver Mr. Paine’s tea to him promptly at 8:50am every morning. “Oh lovely jubbly!” I thought to myself. There a skill I can use to beef up my resume! I was instructed by his senior assistant that he preferred Earl Grey, one tablespoon of low fat milk, absolutely no sugar (or sugar substitute of any kind). She poured the boiling water in to the tea cup, unwrapped the tea bag abnd dunked it in the cup. The most important note of all was that Mr. Paine’s teabag must be dunked 12 times and then immediately discarded. Not 5, nor 15, but exactly 12 times. Is that common sense or OCD?

It paid enormously however, the most I’ve ever made in my life and at that time the money was hard to resist, though I paid for it. I worked for elitist, old school, old money men who felt entitled in every way. The secretarial pool looked more like a casting call for Hustler magazine (which I completely stood out and not in that cover girl kind of way). One man who worked at the firm down the hall even mentioned to me whilst we were waiting for the elevator “Oh you work there? That place looks like a strip club with the kind of women that walk in and out of there.” Hmmm, compliment taken dear sir.

In a matter of a couple months it was clear I was not making the cut and I was told that the possibility of a permanent hire was not going to work out (damn! My dunking skills stink!). I packed my belongings, walked out the door, got in the car and drudged through the evening traffic across the backed up San Mateo bridge. U2’s A Beautiful Day came on the radio and I blasted it and started laughing.

You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere…
It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Beautiful day

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
Don't need it now
Was a beautiful day

I kept laughing driving a bit haphazardly (but in a carefree fun way) and yelled out to myself “I’m going to Australia!” Screw this I thought. The post 9-11 mood was bringing everyone down, the economy sucks, the jobs stink, I just turned 30, it’s pissing rain and I’m living in an attic with my belongings in storage. I am getting as far away from all this crap as soon as possible and the Southern Hemisphere sounds really God damn good right now! In a matter of a few weeks I secured a temporary work visa, a cheap ticket to Sydney and all my summer clothes out of storage. On New Years Eve of 2001 I was crossing time zones to the land down under. Oz.

I settled myself in Sydney in a hood across the bay to the North called Cremorne. I spent weekends sightseeing, walking across the Harbor Bridge to home every night after work and the only pests I had to deal with were the relentless ‘mossies’ (Oz slang for mosquitoes) and the god damn ‘cockies’ (again, slang for cockroaches) that crawled up the bathroom drains or scurried across the kitchen floor while I’d be making a midnight snack. My workload was light and I spent most my work days getting paid to sit there and plan a few weeks holiday around Bali, Australia and New Zealand before I was to head home in April for my sister’s wedding. No European like jaunts strolling around museums, sipping cappuccinos and admiring the architecture this time around. What I had ultimately hoped to have achieved during these travels down under was to challenge myself to the unknown and for me the unknown was the outdoors.

Soon enough I was off to Cairns in the Northeast of Australia. This is where the coral reef is located, the world’s longest reef (1,240 miles roughly) stretching from the Tropic of Capricorn to southern New Guinea. Its home to 1500 species of tropical fish and 400 finds of hard and soft coral. It is also visible from outer space. I know all this now but for some reason (getting all caught up on travel planning) back then I had skipped over the major fact that the reef lies about 50 miles off the shoreline.

A large group of us were picked up in the early morning from different hostels and headed to the boat that was to take us out to the reef. We were a mix of snorkelers, mostly divers and one novice; me. The Cairns shoreline kept diminishing in sight as we motored farther and farther out on the ocean. Growing nervous I asked one of our guides (young, bronzed, strapping like mate!) “Hey…I’m just curious, um, how far out are we going?”

In a rough and knarly Aussie accent he replied “Ahhh, ehhh, abowt theeerty fahhheeve kullomeeeeters…ehhh, that’s abowt… feeefty mawls.”

I turned my head around and murmured many explixitives to myself. “So, once we actually get there, what’s the deal then?”

“Ahhh, ya geet yer geeear awn an’ sweeem awn owwt theeere,” my guide said.

Despite the plentiful dose of Dramamine taken earlier that morning my stomach was dropping further and further. Before we reached the reef we were served an array of sandwiches and fruit. Having finished up the meal people started assembling their gear: putting on wetsuits, tanks, stripping down to swimsuits, picking out fins and snorkels. I just sat there. I’ll let my lunch settle before I get all ready…umm, yeah.

Motoring closer to the reef area the guides entertained the crowd about ‘Wally’, a fond nickname to the Napoleon wrasse. The Napoleon wrasse is the largest reef fish in the world made even more imposing by a prominent hump on their forehead, Mick Jagger like lips and small buggery eyeballs that make him look cross-eyed. We were further entertained by the fact that ‘Wally’just loves to play, likes games, super friendly and all ‘Wally’ really, really wants is friends to play with! So, don’t be frightened if you see this huge-ass fish on your 20 meter swim from the boat to the reef…it’s just ‘Wally’ and he just wants to play!

We finally hit our spot and dropped anchor. I allowed everyone the honor of diving off the stepladder of the boat in to the ocean. Ten minutes went by and I sat there on the benches of the boat. I was assembled and all ready to go, fins, snorkel, lifejacket. The guides were busy cleaning up lunch and didn’t notice me until one approached me and said “So, ya gonna jump een?”

“Yeah. Sure! I am just… contemplating… everything before I do. You know, I’m going to ease myself into it.”

“All rawght.” He replied.

I moved myself down to the stepladder and sat there for another 20 minutes, contemplating. There were a lot fish and there was fat-ass Wally. The crew was still cleaning up lunch by throwing left-over’s over board. Tons of fish started swimming towards the boat in pursuit of the food. I yelled up to the crew “Hey, these fish here, swarming about, they aren’t going to nip and bite at me are they?”

They stopped their cleaning and turned towards me where one smart alec yelled out “Naaawww, theeey shouldn’t bother ya! Naught unless we strap some roast beef awn ya!” they all busted a gut out.

I laughed at myself to. Sitting there on the stepladder already knee deep in the ocean I talked myself in to it. I told myself how many thousands of miles I had flown to Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is a World Heritage Site that can even be spotted from outer space, how this is a once in a chance opportunity, that this was part of my outdoors challenge and would I prefer to be back in an office running to the kitchen to dunk a bag of Earl Grey tea in to a cup 12 times?

So I leaped in! Paddled towards the reef (wherever that was) and got used to the awkwardness of snorkeling. Just a few drips of salt water to cough out of my throat but carried on. Like I did with much gung ho in my childhood swim classes I quickly paddled out to the reef (Wally was an incentive to move quickly!).

Once I did, it was magic. Head fully under water there was nothing but calming silence, the relaxing sound of me breathing through the snorkel pipes, just the right warmth and the gentle lilt of the waves to loft me through. I saw such beautiful fish: reel, clown, angel, yellow, blue, zebra, butterfly and the pastel colored reefs that swayed along with the gentle lullaby sway of the ocean waves. I popped my head up occasionally to make sure the boat was still in sight and to look out for the signal from our guides to swim back in. Far too soon, it was time to head back and Flipper here swam back to the boat with more finesse than I had originally swum out with.

I launched myself up the stepladder and awkwardly flapped about trying to find a place to take my non-human fins off.

“So, haw was eeet?!” The guides exclaimed.

“It was incredible! I actually did it!” and I checked snorkeling off my must do in my lifetime list.

So, do fish eat roast beef? No, but the sharks would adore some I’m sure. However, that’s another psychosis for another time. For that one afternoon in the Coral Sea, I was beyond proud for, well, ‘dunking’ myself in to the ocean (just once, not 12 times) and doing it!

Photo: Coral Reef, Cairns, Australia