Sticky Heat and Bare Feet

I lived in Far North Queensland for about three years during my childhood. My Mum, brother and I lived in an area called Lake Placid about 20kms inland from Cairns Esplanade. We moved there about a year after my parents separated and it felt like a fresh start in many ways, there were no memories there, only new ones to create. Our home was at the bottom of a Mountain of tropical rainforest, cane fields as far as the eye could see, the Lake riding distance on our bikes and past the corner store with the DIY lolly bags. My brother and I would play hide and seek in the fields, the sugar cane reaching far over our heads, running through barefoot with the neighbourhood kids. We weren’t allowed to play in the cane fields, with the very real fear of deadly snakes but would arrive most evenings with cuts all over our feet and legs and cross our hearts that we weren’t playing in there this time. We would ride our bikes to the Lake engulfed by Mountains and fed by the Barron River. The Lake had freshwater crocodiles living in there - sometimes we saw them - but none of the locals were ever bothered by them so neither were we. We would get spooked sometimes if we swam out too far and would turn around and swim as fast as we could back to rock edge, pulling ourselves up laughing and screaming. There were river rapids further along and we would hold onto the rocks for as long as we could until the water would pull us away. Behind our house was a place we called ‘The Red Lands’, red dirt and bush, home made dirt bike jumps and burnt out cars. We were forbidden to go there so of course we explored there with our neighbours often. I can still remember so vividly the fear pulsing through my body and strangling my throat the day we were in the Red Lands and my brother decided to climb through the burnt out car and cut himself quite badly. I thought I had killed him. Another time we saw a wild bore and had to run, fast.

We caught the bus to school each day and because many of the children at our primary school came to school without shoes, they did not enforce the rule. We found this delightful because we hated shoes - we still hate shoes - and although Mum would make us wear them in the morning we would take them off as soon as we got on the bus. When the bus dropped us home in the afternoons the heat would melt the tar on the roads each day, sticky black tar stuck to the bottom of our feet, hopping and jumping into shapes of shade to avoid the inevitable burn. The heat; the thick, suffocating heat, is something I still miss. Even now, when we get a northerly wind and the warm air hits my skin, it feels like my childhood joy has travelled all the way down to find me again. The heat was so relentless we would often lay on the floor tiles still wet from the pool, the ceiling fan on high and threatening to spin right off, just to cool down.

When it was wet season the sky would open up and it felt like the rain would never stop. Everywhere would flood, the gorge near our home would turn into a raging waterfall, the power of the water would take my breath away, the spray soaking through our clothes. And then it would be gone just as quickly as it arrived, the heat swallowing it back up.

Our street was like a drain for the mountain behind us and the rain would turn our street into a river. One day my brother was across the road playing and the rain came in so fast and so heavy and the water was moving so fast I couldn’t get to him. I was screaming from the other side for him not to cross and to wait - I think my Mum ran out to help or maybe a neighbour - but the only thing I can remember is the fear that I couldn’t get to him.

My mother was a swim coach and we were part of the local swimming club at Smithfield but it felt more like a family. We had swimming events on almost every weekend during the season, Friday night club night and trained everyday. The pool water was so hot, we would have to have a cold shower after each set, hoping in and out multiple times per session to cool down. There were toads EVERYWHERE. The toads would come out in the evening, hundreds of them hopping in swarms, often jumping into the pool. We would sometimes run into them and have to chuck them out. My Mum had an adult swim squad that she ran in the evenings and when my brother would get bored he would sometimes throw the toads at the ladies swimming and run away squealing with joy.

We were given a pirated copy of Jurassic Park on VCR and we watched it over and over again. Hundreds of times. Waiting for the clunky wizz of rewind to click over so we could watch it again. There are lines and sound effects from that movie that are so deeply ingrained into my psyche they have become a part of me.

We visited The Great Barrier Reef and it was the best day of my young life. I spent almost five hours underwater, diving down to watch the most vibrant coloured fish and strange ocean life, trying to get the giant clams to close when I put my hand close to them, picking up sea cucumbers and squeezing them - trying to stay down there as long as possible. My Mum and I swam around holding hands and I remember never feeling happier than in that moment.

We returned to the Gold Coast when I was eleven and it felt like someone grabbed scissors and roughly cut through the threads that tied me to childlike wonder - leaving it all behind in the cane fields and rope swings and fresh water lakes, the sticky heat and bare feet. It felt jarring and cold, the beginning and the end. There were many social rules I did not understand and frantically tried to catch up on but I felt like I was always behind, I just wasn’t sure what it was. I had over 50 warts all over both hands by then and although it was never something I was concerned with in Cairns, I was incredibly insecure about them based on the reactions of my new peers. I wore a jumper to school everyday for the first year, pulling the sleeves down and over my hands. I had them frozen, burnt, cut off, cut up banana peel daily and covered them in bandaids. I became more and more distressed by them, my first real experience with the beast that is body image issues. My brother who was 8 at the time, was so fed up with watching me cry most nights that he made a special potion in the blender - banana peel, paw paw ointment, honey and other ingredients from our kitchen none of us can remember. I put the thick paste all over them and covered it with bandaids and within two weeks they all disappeared.

I watched the latest Jurassic Park last night at the movies with my family for my 41st birthday. My husband, our four children, My Mum and her partner. My brother was supposed to be there but he couldn’t make it. Jurassic Park is part of my children’s story too, we have watched all of them many times; our comfort show. I sat next to our youngest son - the one that is a lot like my brother - and listened to him talk me through the scenes that he recognised were re-created from previous movies and I felt like a time traveller and a seer and that it was the beginning and the end.