Thursday, 5 May 2005

We arrived back in Cairns at midnight and were allowed off the ship after breakfast. As I walked Cairns' Esplanade, I ran into the Federal Hotel's replacement cook who had arrived just one day before I left the island. What had happened? "Thursday Island wasn't for me!" he admitted. Well, quite clearly not if he hadn't even managed to stay for a week!

My room at the BELLVIEW was quite literally a bedroom. Just room for an old iron bedstead, bedside table, and a chair. Any additional space was there simply to accommodate the opening of the door. It was all charm and eerie history - the charm lay in the fact that a leg often fell off the chair as I wanted to sit on it and the eerie past was contained in the centimetres of dust on the bedside table. They did change the sheets every day but only from one room to another. A towel was not included in the price but could be "rented" for $1. The TV lounge had a sign on the wall which read "KEEP FEET OFF WALL" and the shared bathroom facilities so small you couldn't brush your teeth sideways. Anyway, they were so unclean that I chose to walk the one block to Cairns' beautiful City Library which offered very clean public toilets.