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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FOUNTAINE
by Susan Richardson
Early
in 1914, Margaret Fountaine, a spirited British traveller, stepped off
a train in Australia's tropical North Queensland and decided that there
in Kuranda she would stay. Then aged fifty-three, she had been a world-wanderer
from her early twenties, throwing off the shackles of her Victorian
upbringing and collecting butterflies and lovers with equal passion.
Her diaries breathlessly describe seductions in Sicily, bicycle rides
in pursuit of butterflies from Beirut to Budapest. At last, accompanied
by her Syrian fiancé Khalil Neimy, fifteen years her junior,
Fountaine arrived in Australia and relinquished the nomadic existence
she'd always enjoyed. Instead, they bought and cleared a plot of land
together, built a house and tried to set up a farm.
Fountaine's decision was, in part, financially motivated: she sought
to make enough money to pay for further overseas adventures. By living
in Australia too, Khalil would acquire British citizenship, making their
forthcoming marriage slightly more socially acceptable. Neither of these
reasons seemed sufficient, however, to explain Fountaine's sudden desire
to settle down. More than ninety-five years after she stepped out of
that North Queensland train, I decided to follow in Fountaine's footsteps,
seeking to discover what might have persuaded her to stay.
The railway line on which she travelled from Cairns to Kuranda has,
I discovered, become a major tourist attraction, something she would
never have anticipated. She would, however, recognise, the old railway
carriages, which have been restored to their original early twentieth
century style. The train chuffed along to the accompaniment of a commentary
about the history of the line, lots of facts and figures ("we'll
be passing through fifteen tunnels and turning ninety three curves"),
as well as advance warnings of "spectacular photo opportunities".
From the low level sugar cane to precipitous ravines and waterfalls,
the route through the Barron Valley Gorge rightly deserves its reputation
as one of the most scenic in the world. Throughout the journey, visitors
rushed from one side of the carriage to the other, jostling and lungeing
out of windows, camcorders at the ready.
Kuranda was a tiny settlement in Fountaine's day: now it has grown to
the size of a small town, full of souvenir shops and a vast open-air
market. A short walk from the railway station - immaculate and brimming
with potted ferns - brought me to the main street. Here, I found a host
of restaurants with whimsical names like 'The Strangled Mango"
alongside cafes with 'tropical' or 'rainforest' in the title, sometimes
both.
My fellow train travellers made straight for the shops selling Aboriginal
Artefacts: boomerangs bearing the label "flight tested - they WILL
come back" accompanied by a set of throwing instructions in Japanese.
I, meanwhile, paused in front of a noticeboard advertising Events In
and Around Kuranda. A Jungle Camp for Men was scheduled for the following
weekend. Among the self-help sessions offered was Flirting For Beginners.
Neil, from London, whom I met at a fruit stall in the market, had already
made it to the Advanced Stage. "Hi," he said with a leer,
as he delved in his pocket to pay for a pineapple. "D'you want
to see some Cook Islands currency?"
"Er..."
"I was there a month ago. See?" He gestured at the front of
his t-shirt. Neil - the World Tour '01-'02, it said and listed all the
places he'd visited, as if he were a pop group.
I selected a fruit called a sapote from the exotic array in front of
me, because a sign described it as 'nature's chocolate pudding.' Then
I read that it should only be eaten when black and rotting and wished
I hadn't bothered.
Neil followed me and my rotten fruit like a frantic fly. We reached
the newest, most commercial section of the market, full of stalls selling
crystals and aromatherapy oils. The stalls were grouped around a "rainforest
pool" over which a continuous stream of tourists was bungy jumping.
I watched a young Japanese woman with her ankles strapped together teetering
on the edge of a platform way above us. The crowd counted down from
ten to one, but she failed to throw herself off it.
"I've done six bungy jumps," said Neil. "One in France,
two in New Zealand and three in Australia."
The Japanese woman listened to the crowd counting down again.
"I've got the video of each one," said Neil. "They're
awesome."
Above us, the Japanese tourist covered her eyes with her hands and dived
head-first off the platform into air. Her screams were drowned out by
applause from the crowd as she rebounded.
"I've done it twice with my ankles tied together, twice with one
ankle tied to my wrist..." Neil paused and leaned closer. "And
once, I even did it naked."
I didn't want to dwell on the mental image that this conjured up so
I focused very hard on the Japanese tourist gradually bobbing to stillness.
At last her feet touched solid ground again and her ankles were untied.
She wobbled a bit as she stood up, then recovered enough to wave at
the crowd. In Margaret Fountaine's day, I reflected, Kuranda offered
only the much tamer pursuits of hiking and horse-riding.
"Some people say bungy jumping gives you brain damage," said
Neil. "But I don't believe them."
At which point he decided he was going to fork out a hundred dollars
for jump number seven and hurtled off to join the queue.
I went on wending my way through the market and eventually plucked up
the courage to sample my sapote. Beneath the rotten black skin, it was
sweet and thick like treacle. Delicious, in fact.
By chance, I ended up outside The Honey Shop, where about fifty different
flavours of honey were available for taste and purchase. Having awakened
my craving for all things sweet, I went inside. The woman behind the
counter had long hennaed hair and was half-way through a book called
"Vibrational Healing". She put it down and smiled at me as
I sampled some Leatherwood honey.
"Hi," she said.
"Hello."
"Don't I know you from somewhere?"
"I don't think so."
"You look very familiar," she went on. "Where are you
from?"
"Wales."
"Wow! I've always wanted to go to Wales."
I moved on to a honey that was paler in colour and not so piquant. "Are
you from Kuranda?" I asked her.
"No. Sydney. I came up here to do a month-long silent retreat last
October and decided I don't ever want to leave. Unless I can go to Wales,
of course. I'd kill to go to Wales."
I opted for a pot of the Leatherwood and told her so, but she was in
no hurry to serve me.
"You've got great vibes," she said. "Are you sure we
haven't met before?"
"I'd remember you if we had," I said firmly and nudged my
tub of honey towards her.
She went on staring at me with her head on one side. "We have met
before, you know," she said at last.
"Where?"
"Wales."
"I thought you said you've never been."
"I was there in a past life."
I handed her the honey and a lurid pink five dollar bill. She took about
three hours to count out my change and gift-wrap the honey.
"Bye now," she said, as she handed it to me. "Take it
slow."
I exited the shop at a rapid pace and, though tempted to dive straight
into a tropical rainforest bar, decided to visit one of Kuranda's wildlife
centres instead. Appropriately enough, there is a Butterfly Sanctuary
- the largest in Australia - which houses more than 2,000 tropical varieties.
Among these is the distinctive bright blue Ulysses butterfly, about
which Margaret Fountaine wrote so rapturously in her diary and which
has since become one of Queensland's emblems.
On emerging from the Sanctuary, I saw that a fleet of tour buses had
arrived, so I opted to escape from the town centre along one of the
jungle trails in the dense rainforest surrounds. Here, at last, was
the Kuranda Margaret Fountaine would have known: in a rainforest which
has been evolving continuously for millions of years, little will have
changed in ninety-five. Like me, Fountaine would have walked among giant
palms, shielded by a tent of leaves, seeing the sunlight sporadically
seeping through. Like her, I heard cockatoos and kookaburras, spotted
tiny tree frogs and lizards. I walked along the Barron River, where
she wandered with Khalil, and gradually began to understand her commitment
to the tropical North.
Although her three years in Kuranda were blighted by ill-luck - a plague
of scrub ticks destroyed the animals on her farm and her relationship
with Khalil had its problems - Margaret Fountaine retained a love for
hiking and horse-riding there. In 1917, she left Kuranda to resume her
old travelling lifestyle: the house that she and Khalil had built was
destroyed in a cyclone three years later. No other place was ever again
to claim her for so long.
By Susan
Richardson
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