All names changed to protect privacy.
There’s an island off the east coast of Australia called Magnetic Island. It’s very beautiful, and tropical, and I made a lot of notes about it in my travel journal. Looking back at what I wrote, I’m reminded of what a funny little person I was when I visited there. I have a lot of odd recollections of that experience, weird little mental pictures that pop up when I hear the name.
Like meeting Frank. I was pretty sheltered for most of my life, and even by that point everything shocked me; I didn’t know what to do about people swearing. This one night I was sitting alone outside my hostel, eating a can of tuna and a kiwi. As it turns out, you can peel a kiwi with a can lid if the kiwi’s soft enough.
This older guy came over and talked to me and told me that the best place to see koalas on the island was this vacant lot he showed me on a map, and he told me that “that’s where the fuckers are hiding” and even in my journal where I quoted him I wouldn’t write the actual word out and wrote it down as “f----s.” He was right, anyway; that’s where those sons-of-biscuits were hiding, and I found five or six there if I recall. I wonder if that lot’s still vacant.
I ended up at a nude beach there, too. In reality, it was as part of a tour to discuss geological formations, and I guess there were some unusual formations on that beach, so the tour ended there. Furthermore, it was winter, so it wasn’t crowded; I think there were a couple people at one end of the beach but I wouldn’t be sure of the count as I wasn’t looking closely. The most interesting thing I did there was cut my hands on barnacles. I knew if I tried to climb the be-barnacled rock I was going to cut myself, and I did it anyway.
I was happy enough not to see any nudity, but I still can’t say anymore that I’ve never been to a nude beach. I’m hoping it never comes up in a job interview.
A night or two later, I formed a team for a trivia night at the hostel with Frank and Jenna, this other girl a little older than me who wanted to move there from America. There was a music section of the trivia game and I didn’t recognize “Hotel California.” I’d recognize it now. I didn’t learn that I liked rock music until a couple years after that, although oddly enough I still don’t like that song; now I’d recognize the first few seconds of it from the few seconds it takes me to switch the radio station.
We won the trivia contest. Frank and Jenna told me it was probably due to me, which I noted proudly in my journal, although in hindsight they were surely just being nice. Our prize was a pitcher of cider, but Frank wasn’t drinking, and neither was I, although I was legal, so Jenna had the whole thing to herself. I don’t think I’d ever had a real drink at that point. I’m no heavy drinker now, but if I could go back, I’d probably at least take my share of the prize pitcher. I wonder what Magnetic Island cider tastes like.
I’d also tell myself to be more friendly. I kept myself pretty closed off from the other members of my travel group for most of the trip, maybe because they were my age; I don’t know. There were four people in the group that I ended up becoming good friends with, but I didn’t become friends with them until just a week before we split up. Since we left, I’ve only ever seen one of them again, and that one only three times.
I don’t regret any time I spent with Frank and Jenna, but I’m pretty sure that those four were present at that trivia night; maybe if I’d been more willing to talk, I would have met them my fourth night in and we could have had more time together. I guess I was too busy thinking about what cutting things I was going to write in my journal about the drunk guy that hit on me and the drunk girl that was rude to the host. I wasn’t very used to being hit on, as you may surmise.
When the trivia night was over we moved to the smoking area where I was introduced to a friend of theirs they called Pirate Dan, who was very smart and used to be first mate on a ship and told me about jellyfish and the manner in which he thought civilization would come to an end. They told me I was clever, and mentioned yet another old friend that they described as being the only person they ever met who would wash his feet before getting into his dinghy. All three were living on boats at the time.
The hostel closed the bar at midnight and Dan said he was going to go have some champagne and play his guitar. In my journal that night, I wrote, “he said ‘see you later’ as we all parted but I know I won’t.” I probably won’t.
My psychology textbook in college talked about the psychosocial stages of life we all go through, and it defined the last stage as being one of Integrity vs. Despair. In that context, having integrity meant that you looked back on your life with a sense of satisfaction and peace about how well you had embraced what life brought you and whether you felt your life had been fully lived. I might be using the term wrong, but that’s the best I can explain it. Looking back on the island and the champagne and the stories and guitar, I always felt that Frank and Dan must have had it; I don’t know if that’s why they had it but it’s what made me think they had it.
The same occurs to me when I think about my arrival to Magnetic Island. When I took the ferry over from Townsville, it was kind of dark and windy and choppy, but I loved it; I love boats and I don’t get seasick.
On the ferry, there was an old lady sitting at the back with her friend, outside on the deck where we could look back toward the mainland. She was an islander, going home, and she was barefoot, chatting, beer in hand, as the waves rolled by. I wrote later that when I was seventy I also wanted to be “living on an island, sipping a beer and chatting with a friend while I ride the ferry home barefoot.”
I think about integrity when I think about that lady, and I wonder if she and Frank and Dan have met.
My favorite picture I’ve ever had of myself was taken on that island. My cap was backwards and I was covered up in rainbow lorikeets. The Louisville Zoo has those birds, and you can feed them if they’ll come over, but they won’t always do it because they’re living easy in the zoo and sometimes they aren’t hungry. At the hostel where I stayed, bird food was provided every day for those who wanted to attract a flock of wild ones. The wild flock was much bigger than the tame one I was used to and much more interested in the food and much more aggressive. One bit my ear hard enough to draw blood. I was still happy about it, though, and I got a picture with the lorikeets perched all over me.
But before I got home, my camera roll got corrupted somehow, so I don’t have that picture anymore, or any pictures of Magnetic Island at all. The mental pictures are it. For having lost all the photos, I’m grateful that I wrote so many things down.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but if there are no pictures, a thousand words will have to do. This story actually has more than a thousand words, about fourteen hundred, but maybe that means it’s worth more than a picture. A photo wouldn’t tell you what earlier me was thinking of the experience. In a way now, when I crack open my written recollections, my former self speaks, saying, “Picture this,” and I do.
Let me know if you've ever been to Magnetic Island, and if you've had the cider-- PB