Reef Encounters of the Worst Kind

Written in 2018 and previously unpublished, this was the essay where the writing bug first bit me.

On our 2018 trip to Australia, we took a ferry to Green Island to see a bit of the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, it was pretty much a complete bust as the weather turned awful soon after we departed Cairns.

Sean got seasick on the trip out to the island but, thanks to a steady application of Dramamine and Zofran by Dr. Mike, he survived the trip more or less intact. Wish I could say the same for the rest of the people at our table.

I felt like Snow White on a boat full of sick dwarves. I made a mental note to request seats in the non-barfing section next time around. I’m relatively quite resistant to motion sickness, but watching a boatload of people hurling nonstop into seasickness bags is not my idea of quality time.

To add insult to injury, the vast majority of the passengers on this trip were holiday-makers who evidently felt the need to bring an entire forty-course lunch buffet on board. The combined unholy stew of garlic, curry, and puke produced a miasma that could have stripped paint—or summoned demons.

Once we arrived at Green Island, we were told that both our submarine ride and the glass-bottom boat tour of the reef were canceled due to the weather. We were allowed off the boat to tour the park, but after about twenty minutes wandering around in the rain, we decided to call it a day and head back.

We spent the rest of the allotted three hours at the island holed up in the lounge area inside the catamaran that had brought us over, watching the rain pour down outside the windows as it heaved up and down at the dock.

* * *

It was with a profound sense of relief that we finally pushed away from the dock and began our return voyage to Cairns. I thought that the nightmare was finally over, but alas, no. We were instead treated to the conversation of an American couple and their two young adult children sitting next to us.

The parents had decided to use the hour and a half return trip as a life-counseling session for their wayward and sullen twenty-something son Eric. He apparently had dreams of making it big as a professional soccer player in Australia.

For Pete’s sake, he never answers his mom’s texts and something about accountability and responsibilities—and just how many close friends does he have, anyway?

“Five!” was Eric’s immediate answer, rapping his knuckles smartly on the table for emphasis as he said so—but then he could only name three, which was proof positive for his mother that he was on the veritable autobahn to perdition—especially since he’s not found a church to attend since coming to Australia—or something.

Somewhere in all of this the observation was made that Eric didn’t seem all that excited by the fact the rest of the family had flown all night from the United States to visit him.

“20 hours and 51 minutes… just on the plane!” his sister astutely observed.

I am to be commended for resisting the urge to blurt out: “No kidding! Do you people hear yourselves? I’ve only known you all for ten minutes and I‘m ready to jump overboard and swim back to Cairns by myself!“

She then went on to opine that she thought “attachment issues” were involved, though it was unclear from her remarks who had the issues or to what sort of attachment she was referring.

She evidently fancied herself some sort of family go-between and had this maddening habit of constantly interjecting: “I think what Mom/Dad/Eric is trying to say is... ”—and then down the conversational rabbit hole she would disappear, leaving everyone else at the table no doubt wondering just how far up her own fundament she could wander before running out of breathable oxygen.

Meanwhile, Eric’s dad kept squawking about “respect” like some kind of new-age therapy parrot without ever indicating who exactly was failing to show respect—or what exactly had been done to merit said respect.

I began to think he wasn’t involved in the conversation at all and merely had that old Aretha Franklin song stuck on one of those annoying ear-worm tape loops that we all get in our brains sometimes:

“Respect... just a little bit... respect... just a little bit… ”

It was frankly hard for me to tell. To say that he spoke in a monotone would be to engage in felonious understatement.

Sean, bless his heart, was shielded from this ongoing family drama by the fact he was sitting to my right at the end of the bench seat, scrolling obliviously on his iPhone—swiping his finger up the screen like a maître d’ at Le Bernardin checking table reservations.

This left me in the middle, sandwiched between him and Eric. It is one thing to try to appear inconspicuous in public and to act as if you are congenitally deaf. It is quite another to attempt to do so for a solid hour and a half on a heaving boat speeding across the choppy waters of the Coral Sea.

In order to take my mind off of things, I began to imagine myself interjecting various comments into the dialogue taking place to my left. I had to be careful, lest the look on my face give me away. There’s a reason I have never been anybody’s idea of a good poker player.

I briefly considered leaning over and wrapping my arms around Eric while telling his parents in a loud voice that we didn’t care what they thought—Eric and I were in love and we were keeping the baby no matter how grueling his professional soccer career might be.

I‘d then storm off leaving Sean to secretly film the aftermath on his phone for a YouTube video that would, no doubt, end up rivaling “Baby Shark” for total views.

* * *

After spending the entire return voyage trying desperately not to listen to this bizarre public soap opera, I knew enough about this family that I thought I might require some kind of therapy—or an invitation to their next Thanksgiving dinner.

By the time the ferry bumped against the dock in Cairns, I felt like I’d survived some kind of sociological experiment at sea. The rain had stopped, the sky was the color of old pewter, and the faint smell of diesel mixed with the tang of salt air felt almost cleansing.

Sean looked up from his phone, stretched, and said cheerfully, “That wasn’t so bad.”

I stared at him in disbelief, certain we hadn’t been on the same boat. He’d somehow managed to scroll through an entire family implosion without registering a single syllable of it—his serenity an almost supernatural feat of selective attention.

We shuffled down the gangway together, the humid air wrapping around us like a damp towel. Behind us, the American family was still mid-discussion, dragging their drama toward the terminal. I pondered inviting them to join us for dinner—strictly for research purposes—but decided my sanity was already hanging by a thread.

Sean slipped his arm through mine as we headed back toward the hotel. “You hungry?” he asked.

“Famished,” I said. “Just… not for human interaction.”

And thus concluded our Great Barrier Reef adventure—proof that not all hazards in Australian waters involve sharks.