Saturday, 30 April 2005

My last day and night on T.I.! How much T.I. had changed from when I had first arrived here in 1977! Instead of the old motor vehicles which creaked and gurgled their way around the island in my days in 1977, there were now fleets of shiny, late-model cars streaming round the five-kilometre ring road constructed and maintained by the Queensland Department of Main Roads. They still cruised past buildings, mostly shops, which were shrines to the inventions of plywood fibro and corrugated iron and gave the appearance of having been built between drinks, more in response to the materials on hand than to any particular finished product in mind. However, there were also several new shops, supermarkets, motels and hotels and offices in the main street, and video stores, drive-through liquor barns and fast-food outlets ("ISLAND CHICKEN", T.I.'s challenge to KFC).

In recent months alone, $3 million had been spent on the new "Gab Titui" Cultural Centre, another $3 million on a new Courthouse, and $3.4 million on extensive CDMA mobile phone coverage. A brandnew air-conditioned Mercedes bus travelled around the island all day long, picking up any passenger who cared to flag it down. I had jumped on board and paid my $4 for a round-trip to a fat youth with a cashbox and greasy dreadlocks who, sprawled across two seats, listened to Reggae music. My two shiny gold-coins were the first and last that dropped into his empty cashbox even though several more people joined us at the suburbs of Tamwoy, Aplin and Rosehill. The "Wantok" system was alive and well!

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal more about this quest than our travels. During my one week on the island I had discovered an unexpected continuity between the melancholic self I had been at home and the person I had been on the island as, not surprisingly, I had brought myself with me on this trip. In a few days I would be at home again - and I didn't seem to mind it all that much! Pascal, in his "Pensées", stated that "The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." Well, perhaps I now ought to go home and stay quietly at "Riverbend".