New Zealand’s Mt Ruapehu is not your average ski slope. One of three active volcanoes that form Tongariro National Park, this World Heritage Site was made famous in the Lord of the Rings trilogy as Mount Doom. But don’t let the moniker put you off. Grab your gear and make like Frodo for the summit. There are two ski areas: Whakapapa (pronounced “fukka puppa” – really) on the northwestern slopes, and Turoa on the southwestern side.
If snow is something you’ve only ever seen in movies, Whakapapa’s Happy Valley has gentle slopes for beginners. If you’re a seasoned snow baby, head to the top of Turoa on New Zealand’s highest lift, the Highnoon Press, and plummet down Australasia’s longest vertical descent (722 metres).
“You wanna have a look?” yells the pilot over his shoulder, his question barely audible over the screaming propellers of our Air Vanuatu Twin Otter. As I nod eagerly he veers around the smoke billowing from two craters below. Staring out of the small plane’s window I feel as though I’m looking down on a Spielberg movie set. There is no life below, just two gaping holes in the puckered earth, belching smoke menacingly as we buzz closer like a curious blowfly.
We are flying over Mount Marum and Mount Benbow, the two volcanoes on Vanuatu’s ‘black magic’ Ambrym Island. Relatively undiscovered by travellers, Ambrym has long played second fiddle to Mount Yasur’s nightly fireworks display on the more accessible and far more visited Tanna Island. The lure of Ambrym, however, is not just exclusivity but also the chance to stare directly into a bubbling lava lake. For unlike Yasur, Marum’s eruptions are few and far between.
Ambrym is not far geographically from Port Vila, the main tourist hub of Vanuatu, but the journey is a long one. Our plane is up and down onto runways that look less and less like runways the longer we travel. Locals jump on and off unloading supplies as the pilot stretches his legs. I stare down the grass strips amazed at how easy it seems to be to land on what looks like a small football field. The pilot explains later that the locals are tasked with maintaining the airports and generally they do a good job. The problem, he says, is when they let the grass grow too long and you can’t see the lights. “Near bloody impossible to land at night. But it doesn’t happen too often. Otherwise they get no supplies.”
We eventually land at Craig Cove Airport on Ambrym’s far eastern tip. From here we board a small banana boat (the main form of local transport), hugging the coast as we head north to Ranon, the starting point for the easiest ascent to the volcano’s rim. Like everything in these parts, the boat trip is relaxed. Our captain and his mate throw in a hand line each and regularly stop to pull in their catch. Six fish and three hours later we pull ashore at a hot spring. I choose the cool Coral Sea over the volcanic heated spring. An Ambrym Islander wanders from the jungle, covered head to toe in black volcanic sand and dives in beside me. I ask Maina, my guide, if the man has been exfoliating, and she laughs and explains that he has been burrowing for megapode eggs. These large chicken-like birds bury their eggs deep in the sand. It isn’t uncommon, Maina tells me, to see just the feet of a local digging deep for his bounty. Maina buys a large egg from the smooth-skinned local. It could make an omelette big enough for the four of us, I joke. “Easily,” she says, smiling back.
It has been a long day when we finally reach Ranon Beach Bungalows. Freddy, the owner, and his wife greet me with a hearty meal of vegetables and fresh fish. Dessert is a perfect sunset from the window of the dining bungalow. Their children play on a makeshift swing on the beach at the water’s edge. There are only two accommodation bungalows here, each offering water views from small balconies. It should be the end of a great day’s travel but Maina suggests we head to the local nakamal for some kava. “It will help you sleep,” she tells me with a cheeky smile.
The nakamal is a traditional meeting place in most Vanuatu communities and is where the men gather to make then drink the narcotic-like liquid. Stumbling through the pitch-black jungle we come upon a shelter at the bottom of Ranon village. I’m introduced to Edwin, who sits cross-legged crushing the kava root down into an ornate silver tube called a tambil. The pulp is then mixed with water and strained through what looks like an old sock. Rather ironic given that is what it tastes like. All the while the men chatter and laugh. The only light comes from the mobile phones of the surrounding women. It is a surreal scene.
We have a couple of coconut shells of the dirty water mixture and I sit staring at the ground for what seems like an hour. My mouth is numb and control of my body is limited. My body is drunk, but my mind seems fine. Edwin insists I have another – so as not to offend I oblige. It is a mistake. The trip up from the beach bungalows was arduous enough and I am barely able to stand, much less navigate through the jungle to get back. Thanks to Maina’s somehow steady feet we make it. I fall asleep face down and fully clothed, only waking well after the sun has risen. Yes, Maina, it certainly does help you sleep.
With a stomach full of fresh fruit we jump on the back of a passing truck and head towards the start of the volcano trek. Passing through Ranon village we pick up our two guides, Isaiah and Timoty. The village is a network of huts, shacks and larger dwellings. We pass a school with one large bamboo building and a playground with swings made from bamboo and vines. The children run out of the classroom to wave. Their teacher chases them, wielding a large stick and yelling furiously. She looks up at us as the last student runs back in, smiles and winks.
Isaiah is a Morgan Freeman–type character, with wise eyes complementing his wide smile. He tells me he was one of the first to set paths to the volcano from the north to the south. He has been to the crater “many, many, many” times. As a young boy he and his friends would make their own tracks and see who could reach the top first. “Is it a tough trek?” I ask him. “Nothing like it used to be!” he laughs. Timoty is quiet, but he looks strong enough to push down a tree with his bare hands. Both of them carry machetes and if I’d run into them in the dark the previous night I would have been petrified.
It is a four-hour trek through the dense damp jungle to reach the ash plain. I trip up steep vine-covered paths and through banyan tree passageways. It is hot, humid and uncomfortable. Isaiah smiles constantly and Maina puts me to shame, especially when I see she is in a pair of thongs. Timoty chops ahead clearing a path. I’m sure I catch him smile when a bright yellow and black spider lands on my face and I scream. Eventually we make it to the ash plain. It resembles a bitumen road and crunches like honeycomb underfoot. The sun gains strength in the clearing, but there is a breeze now and Marum, with a halo of cloud around her gape, is visible in the distance. I feel like Frodo Baggins staring up at Mordor, but refrain from calling Timoty Gollum. Gollum never carried a machete.
“The last big one was 1913! And was big!” Isaiah tells me as we walk along the ash plain. “Ya, a missionary took a coconut from the spirit tree and the man blong majik was angry. He make Marum angry too.” Isaiah explains there are many things in the jungle here that can kill you. The magic men know what they are and how to use them – and they do. This is what has perpetuated the legend of black magic on Ambrym. “And what about making Marum angry?” I ask. “Don’t pick coconuts!” he laughs.
The path, if you can call it that, leading up to the rim of Mount Marum is like walking towards death. The closer we get the less life there is around us. Even the birds have disappeared. The hot, sticky jungle seems days away as we enter a forest of almost white wild cane, the last sign of life before there is only black ash. The view back from where we have come is extraordinary. The light-coloured cane forest darkens to a pale green as life takes over and continues to darken to the lush deep jungle spilling off the ash plain and down to the sea.
Nothing, however, can compare to staring over the rim for the first time and into the bubbling lava lake below. Even Timoty is beaming now and, at first sight, I let out a guttural yelp and yell to Maina to hurry up. It is like looking into the mouth of hell. All around us is black grey ash and smoke clashing with the bright orange gurgling lava that spits up and onto the surrounding walls, darkening as it cools in the air only to fall back into the inferno. It is beautiful, mesmerising and terrifying all at once. I sit with my legs over the edge holding on to the safety stick Isaiah has stuck into the ash. He talks of one day building a platform for people to stand more comfortably. “How many people have been up here in the last year?” I ask him. “Not sure. Not many. Maybe 20.” It astounds me.
We camp that night on the ash plain at the base of Marum where life is starting to grow. Isaiah cooks up tinned stew that we eat smeared on taro. The night sky behind us is crimson as the glow of the lava lights up the belching smoke. The view and a voracious appetite help the meal go down and I look at Timoty. He’s still grinning and I ask him if he ever gets tired of it. He shakes his head. “I like to see your face too!” he chuckles. “Everyone the same!” “Yes, Timoty,” I respond. “I’ll bet they are.”
Molten light bleeds across the ocean’s surface beneath a swollen sun. The world’s first sunset burns with the same fiery hues as the lava that only a century ago poured across this land and congealed in pools. Come nightfall, I float in a lagoon only metres from my bed and search the sky for shooting stars.
I’ve been lured here by the promise of unearthing a Polynesian paradise and of fa’a Samoa, the laid-back way of island life that survives, somehow, despite the threats of magma from within, cyclones from above and tsunamis from below. Setting sail from Upolu, Samoa’s main island, I wind up on the less explored (but no less gleaming) jewel, the island of Savai’i. Despite being just 20 kilometres north-west of Upolu, only a fraction of tourists who visit the nation make the journey across the Apolima Strait. Fewer still stay overnight.
A quarter of the nation’s population is shacked up on the condensed ash and cinders this active volcano has disgorged over the past five million years, but beyond the port there is no main town. Manicured villages dot the coastline between a hot mess of lava fields, cliffs and verdant jungle. “Three years ago, there would be one car on the road – that would be peak hour,” says Chichi, our guide. Now, we’re stuck in a traffic jam with two cars in front and a Land Rover behind on the one paved road around the island.
Departing bitumen, we pause to gather a man before lurching down a trail toward the sea. Our hitchhiker disembarks, basket in arm, and strides to where the waves slam against rock. He slips a coconut from his bag and with an expert arm tosses it into a crevice. Nothing happens. Then, with a roar, the blowhole spits it out as if it’s a cherry pip, soaking us with salty spittle.
Back on the road we pass a group of girls wading in the shallows, their rainbow umbrellas transforming the lagoon into a shocking blue cocktail. An equivalent coast in Europe would be littered with basting bodies and water bottles sucked dry, but here beaches are either bare or home to a handful of fales, houses without walls but topped by tin or grass roofs and blessed with unbeatable views.
The island’s residents seem to share one vibrant palette of paint that slathers schools and meeting spaces with bougainvillea pinks, pineapple yellows and every colour in between. These open structures reflect the personality of the locals. “Your walls are to keep people out,” says a woman I meet, named Samoa. “Back in Australia you have to ask people for permission to go into their place. Here you don’t have to.” Arrive at a family’s fale and request refuge and you’ll be welcomed into their home. But don’t let the lack of walls fool you – propping up each roof is an ironclad social structure honouring the village chief, tradition and the Church.
Chichi cuts the engine beside the shell of a chapel, sucked clean by surging seas. Waves from a cyclone in 1990 swallowed the village, but not the villagers, who swam to a local school. Across the road two muscled men smear a fresh lick of paint on a concrete shrine for Mary. Travelling sinners needn’t fear – redemption is just around the corner. The nearest church is never more than a few hundred metres away. Missionaries imported their religion to these islands in the 1830s and although 99 per cent of citizens declare themselves Christian, traditional customs remain embedded in the culture.
Further around the island I gaze over Cape Mulinu’u, the western-most point of Samoa. The ocean here once swallowed the sun along with the souls of Samoan ancestors as they passed into Pulotu (the spirit world). But these lava fields are no longer the last place on earth to see the sun set, since the nation danced the siva across the International Date Line at the end of 2011 in the hopes of bolstering trade with their Kiwi bros. Look at a map and the line zigzags around this patch of the Pacific.
Late at night rain pounds the roof of my fale and sneaks inside. There are no walls, after all. I wake damp and rocking a halo of frizz around my head. Rising before the sun, I hike to a nearby village, passing children in pinafores wandering to school. Life is busiest in the morning before the air becomes syrupy, carrying the aroma of bananas and breadfruit. At all other hours it runs on island time, which is to say there’s very little running and lots of men snoozing in wooden fales while women sell fruit and snapper dangling from sticks. Honouring the easygoing lifestyle, I spend my days on Savai’i exploring waterfalls, indulging in nature’s tireless masseuse in the form of cascades, and swimming with turtles with a passion for papaya.
Despite the languid pace I relish my return each night to the private lagoon at Stevensons at Manase, my home base on the island. The water and air feel so similar in temperature that it’s hard to tell where one becomes the other, until I drift over cool fresh water bubbling into the ocean. Some villages construct walls around these springs to create bathing pools, but fortunately they’re not obliged to share their clean water with this sunscreen-slicked traveller. Although my beach hut looks like a traditional fale from the front, latched to the back is a bathroom complete with a toilet, shower and fridge.
Swilling a cocktail at Stevensons’ bar I notice a carving of an eel suckling a woman’s toe. Given the religious conservatism that obliges women to dress modestly and frowns upon tourists swimming on Sunday, her breasts seem exceptionally nude.
“Coconuts were invented in Samoa, like everything else in the world,” declares Chichi by way of explanation, before sharing the pre-missionary tale of a beautiful girl named Sina and the eel that loved and stalked her. Once slaughtered by the village chief the eel transformed into a coconut tree. His eyes and mouth form the three marks seen on a de-husked nut, but only the gob is soft enough to open. “I don’t like kissing the eel,” says Chichi, “so I just put a straw in it.” I’m not sure if it’s the eel’s love or the dash of vodka in the mix, but my fresh coconut is among the best I’ve ever consumed.
Back on the road we pass a group of girls wading in the shallows, their rainbow umbrellas transforming the lagoon into a shocking blue cocktail.
In Apia, the capital of Samoa, life strolls at a slightly faster pace. When we arrive the annual Teuila Festival – the largest event on the calendar – is in full swing. During the day women sway on a stage erected in the middle of town and, at night, men slick with oil dance to pulsing drums.
Across from the stage two pigs lie on their backs with bellies full of mango leaves. A man hammers hot rocks into the neck of the nearest in a billow of porky smoke. Sweat drips from the tips of his ula (pandanas-leaf necklace) as he shovels a mound of stones into the belly of the swine. Climb to high ground on a Sunday and you’ll gaze upon a cloud of smoke blanketing Upolu. Beneath the haze men are at work gutting pigs, skinning taro and folding origami bundles of palusami (coconut cream cooked in young taro leaves) to pile onto the umu (hot rock oven), which bakes while they sing at church.
Arranging banana leaves over a pile of lobsters, a cook tells me that skill on the umu not only feeds a family, but is also key to acquiring one. If a woman doesn’t fancy the taste of your pork, she’ll trek to the next town in a search of the perfect crackling. It’s a dating technique I’d happily introduce back home.
Pulsing music lures me to a fale where locals go to get inked. A young woman flicks through shots on her camera as a tattoo artist chisels a malu (traditional women’s tattoo) across her thigh with a tool crafted from the tooth of a hog. “Our faces are too beautiful to tattoo so we tattoo our butts instead,” says Chichi as he describes the painful process endured for the men’s pe’a, which leaves little of the haunch and lower torso un-inked. The lava-lava (cloth skirts) worn by many men reveal a generous portion but the most intricate part, as Chichi refers to it, is left to the imagination.
Outside the festival there’s little to do in the city besides visiting fish stalls and the market, where sellers peddle Polynesian trinkets and a food court trades almost exclusively in delicious fried chicken. The remainder of Upolu harbours a wild playground for surfing, snorkelling and whale watching. Electric-blue fish the size of my index finger glide with me through the turquoise To Sua Ocean Trench. A team from Sa’Moana Resort shares a secret rock pool glimmering in a Jurassic landscape. Once in the pool the tide sucks me into a cave, claiming a few layers of my skin and ego, before spewing me out through a lava tube. Those with more grace emerge unscathed.
Nearing the end of my stay an apocalyptic scene greets me beyond my bungalow at Sa’Moana Resort. Rain tramples the normally tranquil beach and the wind screams like a child throwing a fit. After seemingly endless days of blue sky I finally meet the other side of Samoa. The deluge has banished the smoke from the Sunday umu and, sometime during the night, families have wrapped their fales into tarpaulin parcels. Just nine months ago Cyclone Evan, the worst tropical storm in more than 20 years, tossed cars in to trees and thrashed the island and its residents. The beach itself became a weapon. “It looked like we’d massacred something,” says Daniel, who owns the resort.
For the first time I notice concrete skeletons among the creepers as we explore the coast. These houses sit abandoned following the 2009 tsunami. A boy I meet says he survived by climbing the near-vertical mountain that looms behind us, clinging on tight while a wall of sea smashed into the hill below. Since then villagers have made escape trails into the hills and are re-learning survival techniques that died with their great-grandparents. The streets are deserted, but as we stop for petrol, a hymn glides through my window. On a television screen churchgoers line pews in their Sunday finest, voices raised to their Lord.
As we depart for the airport, water sloshes into the van. The road has become a river of unknown depth and I can’t help but feel Samoa is trying to hold me (a willing) hostage. The storm dissipates as we round the coast and we arrive just in time for check-in. Come take-off, the sky is sapphire blue and I learn that, despite being only 25 kilometres away, not a drop of rain has fallen on this side of the island.
The design has barely changed in a millennium, but when it works as well as this one, why would you bother? We’re perched in a sailau, a type of wind-powered wooden canoe, about 12 metres long, constructed from timber gathered from nearby Panaeati Island. The crew stands to one side on the bamboo outrigger – at least they do when they’re not swinging out over the water on the boom to change direction or bailing water from the bilge.
Sailaus are not tourist crafts; rather, they’re the main form of transport for locals to get around in this part of the world. They are the truck, car, school bus and telegraph for these island communities, racing along at speeds of 12 to 15 knots, delivering people, goods and news to wherever it is they need to be. They’re unique because they’re shallow enough to skim over reefs and land on islands inaccessible to Western-style yachts.
We’re sailing in the Conflict Islands, the most far-flung atoll in Papua New Guinea’s southeast Milne Bay Province. They’re part of the Louisiades group of about 600 islands. With only about 160 of them inhabited, this is one of the world’s final frontiers.
Twenty-one pristine islands, encircling a central lagoon formed from the rim of a sunken extinct volcano, make up the Conflicts. In the past there was 24 of them, but the others have since disappeared underwater. These days, the whole lot is owned by Australian-born entrepreneur turned eco-warrior Ian Gowrie-Smith.
The islands are deserted, except for a tiny resort on the 64-hectare Panasesa Island. Here, you’ll find six beach bungalows, created by craftsmen from nearby islands with rosewood for the floors and carved timber columns, in an idyllic setting that includes little else other than a dive shack, clubhouse with dining area and bar, and a couple of vegetable gardens. Previously this tiny patch of paradise was off limits to the public – a private hideaway for Gowrie-Smith and his close friends and family when they could make the long journey. Even now, when the resort is at capacity, the island’s population peaks at 12.
A reef 300 metres off shore fringes Panasesa Island, creating a spectacular iridescent blue lagoon. There’s just one way in for arriving boats – a small break in the coral wall that must be navigated with care. The colours are spectacular and, even from the boat, the life beneath the water is clearly visible. Parrot fish are busy, scraping the algae from coral that, eventually, becomes the finer-than-caster-sugar sand forming the white island beaches.
Back during World War II, US troops cut a swathe through Panasesa’s coconut palms to create a grass strip capable of landing small planes. These days, coconut shells line each side of the runway, which ends at the ‘international’ terminal: a small thatched hut with a sign.
A sand path leads from the accommodation to the far side of the island. It’s possible, on reaching the beach, to wade into the water and snorkel to the fringing reef. Here, the coral wall drops 40 metres into the deep, its vertical mass alive with fish and coral.
And while the marine life is spectacular, it’s not confined to the ocean’s depths. One night I watch as, just metres from the bungalows, a hawksbill turtle makes the slow journey up the sand to lay her eggs. In about two months, with a little luck on their side, the hatchlings will make the treacherous trip back to the ocean.
In the morning, we head across to Itamarina, an even smaller island almost five kilometres from Panasesa, for more snorkelling and a beach picnic. The boatmen who ferry us there on their sailau are not from the Conflicts. Instead they have sailed from nearby Brooker Island to pick us up. Juda, it turns out, paid for his sailau with pigs. They’re also a common currency when it is time for a man to pay for a wife.
Located in the centre of the atoll, Itamarina is the crown jewel sparkling in the lagoon. Sitting on the sand, it would be easy to pretend you’d been marooned on a desert isle, but the rations – brought across from the resort in a metal dinghy – are more substantial than those that could be scavenged by the average castaway. We sit beneath a thatched shelter and eat fresh seafood, salads and pork barbecued on a spit before returning to the warm azure water to swim.
The following day the dive boat manoeuvre between coral bommies rising from a sea of blue and green. On board is a floating think tank of marine biologists, island historians and underwater photographers, who’ve come to explore the area and document their findings. We are heading to the waters surrounding the largest island in the group, Irai. It is long and flat, with an amazing seven kilometres of spectacular, blinding-white beachfront. Once again, it is completely uninhabited and utterly unspoiled. The diving, we’ve been promised, is outstanding, particularly off the northwest and southwest tips.
Milne Bay Province has 1126 dive sites in total and is the most bio-diverse marine region in the world – twice as many species are found here as on the Great Barrier Reef. But even among such stellar company, these reefs are considered standouts. So varied is the marine life in this corner of the archipelago, the Conflicts and its surrounds are being considered for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
One night I watch as, just metres from the bungalows, a hawksbill turtle makes the slow journey up the sand to lay her eggs.
Our destination on this fine morning is a dive site known as Beluga. More than a thousand species of fish have been recorded here – including a rare clownfish only seen in a couple of other spots in the world – but the site also boasts swim-throughs in the shallows at five to 10 metres and a vertiginous 50-metre wall.
Alex, the resort’s dive instructor who hails from Germany via Bondi, leads us through this remarkable environment. As we descend into a silent world, I’m surprised at the incredible visibility.
Going down the wall is like passing a vertical garden with blooms of every colour. Ribbon corals unfurl and sea grasses and ferns wave in the current. Soft sponges appear in the shades of the rainbow – purple, red, green, yellow and orange. Peer into the massive farms of coral, formed over hundreds of years, and you’ll spy scores of tiny fish. Brilliant sapphire-blue pygmy angelfish with orange highlights and banded clownfish weave past, as if teasing us. I extend a hand and they speed away.
Minute school fish swim past in a silver trail like confetti at a wedding. Eels poke their noses out from the coral then swiftly pull back in again. Even the smallest of sea creatures – waving nudibranchs (shell-free mollusks) and tiny snails – are blessed with dazzling colours and intricate patterns.
On the seabed, there are sea cucumbers – like fat slugs, they squirt if threatened – cuttlefish and all kinds of soft corals and sponges. Giant clams hide between the rocks and Christmas tree worms, with their blue, yellow and green spirals, magically retreat as we come close. Monumental vase corals tower over the landscape.
Alex points out one curious-looking species then waves a finger in front of her mask indicating not to touch it. It is the infamous puffer fish (in some Japanese restaurants it’s sold as fugu, considered one of the most dangerous foods in the world) that inflates like a balloon when touched or startled.
At a depth of 25 metres, the seabed suddenly drops away and there is no sight of the sandy bottom. We have reached the hypnotic ‘blue zone’. Out there, where there is ever-darkening cobalt and seemingly very little else, swim the big fish. Tuna, giant mackerel, grouper and massive Napoleon wrasse, with their hump heads and fleshy lips, glide past us and out into the mysterious depths.
Too soon, Alex signals it’s time to surface. “What makes the diving so exciting here in the Conflicts,” she says when we gather back on the boat, “is the diversity of dives and the fact there are still so many undiscovered sites.”
Central to Gowrie-Smith’s future plans is the preservation of both the islands and the surrounding reefs and ocean. In the past, local fishermen harvested all the sea cucumbers and turtle eggs they could lay their hands on to sell as delicacies to Asian traders. There’s also the threat created by commercial long-line fishing, where the incidental catch of seabirds, turtles, sharks, unwanted species and juvenile animals can have a devastating effect on the ecosystem. Instead, Gowrie-Smith is determined to create a tourism industry involving small, responsible operators dedicated to preserving this tiny patch of paradise and providing the islanders with a much-needed livelihood. After all, it’s a rare opportunity to save one of the finest underwater worlds left on the planet.
All I can see are shades of blue – navy, sapphire, teal, aquamarine, cyan – swirling in a free-form masterpiece above and below the horizon. Then I jump. As the bubbles disperse, a new world reveals itself.
Orange and black clown fish dart in and out of enormous turquoise anemones. Crimson, yellow and green fish, whose patterns are reminiscent of those on Versace fabric, weave between elaborate coral pinnacles. A pair of Moorish idols, with their elongated dorsal fins, slowly surveys the reef wall, like a couple of nosy neighbours. A ghost ray ripples past.
I descend – five, 10, 15 metres – into the cobalt depths. A solid school of silver giant trevally zips past me like a bullet train. All types of coral, including huge lime plates and wafting golden elephant ears, catch my eye. A white-tipped reef shark zigzags below. A large but delicate mauve gorgonian fan – the first I’ve seen here – waves gently in the current.
This is the Rowley Shoals and, unless you are a dive aficionado, you’ll probably never have heard of it. Three teardrop-shaped coral atolls – Clerke, Imperieuse and Mermaid – soar more than 400 metres from the ocean floor on the outer tip of the Australian continental shelf, 260 kilometres north-west of Broome. The lip of each reef encloses a massive 80-square-kilometre lagoon where the water is a balmy 26ºC and the underwater visibility is a dazzling 25 to 50 metres. Such pristine conditions create a huge variety of marine life – about 230 types of coral and 700 species of fish in all. The reefs are also among just a few in the world washed by five-metre tides, which rise and fall in six hours. All that flowing seawater brings with it massive amounts of nutrients for corals to feed on, so they grow larger than elsewhere. The fish are similarly bigger and bolder.
It is November and the water is like glass. I am one of just 14 divers and snorkellers, plus the crew, and we have the place to ourselves. It may be a bit of a rock’n’roll 15-hour overnight boat trip to the Rowley Shoals from Broome, but for those who savour pristine underwater adventures and a delicious sense of space, it is well worth the journey.
Only a handful of operators visit each year and only during the Doldrums, the calm before the wet season, when there are no prevailing trade winds and the water is swimming-pool calm. There is never more than one boat here at a time.
I have chosen a five-day adventure on MV Great Escape, a 26-metre luxury motor catamaran with three tenders (small boats) on board, giving guests loads of adventure choices. Owned by Broome locals Trippy and Jezza Tucker, it is used for a number of cruises along the Kimberley coast, but the Rowley Shoals adventure is the crew favourite.
“You can swim, snorkel, dive, fish, beachcomb and you are the only people in the middle of nowhere,” says crew member Taylor Merrutia. “It’s like being on holiday – even for us.”
The catamaran has seven staterooms with en suites, plus a spacious lounge and dining room stocked with reference books to help you identify all the colourful species you discover below. Wandjina art decorates the walls. There’s a spa on the front deck, a rooftop heli pad for sunset viewing and stargazing, and an airy back area where most meals are enjoyed. Luckily there are plenty of them, since all the activity grows appetites to gargantuan proportions. Young Welsh chef Will Bacon serves up pancakes, poached eggs and crispy bacon for breakfast, chicken caesar salad and seafood marinara pasta for lunch, sunset appetisers like curried won tons, and dinners of Thai duck salad and pistachio-crusted lamb, finished off with coffee crème caramel and pavlovas for dessert. All the guests can bring their own drinks on board at no extra charge.
As the most serious dive boat to access the Rowley Shoals, Great Escape offers four dives a day, sometimes starting as early as 6.30am. For those who are game, there’s often also the option of heading back into the water after dark. Snorkellers have a dedicated tender and snorkel master to look after their needs. But the two big highlights here are the drift snorkels and wall dives.
On the outgoing tide, all 14 of us jump out of the tenders, are captured by the current and swept along the coral channels viewing the thriving life below. We zip past a kaleidoscope of parrot fish at various stages of their sex change from female to male (the males are the prettiest in various iridescent shades of turquoise and mauve). We also see them doing their day job, rasping algae from coral with their ‘beaks’. Dozens of giant clams litter the sandy floor, beckoning to us with their gaudy lips. The palest of pink fish, with big bedroom eyes, swim right up to our masks and tag along for the ride. The only hardcore folk are the green turtles, all nobbly and gnarly, and always just out of reach in the current ahead. At the end of each drift snorkel, we hop in the tenders as eager as kids at a theme park to get on the next ride.
With panoramic coral gardens harboured within each lagoon, the snorkellers continue on other surface adventures, while the divers get excited about some of the best wall dives on the planet.
At Clerke Wall I marvel at staghorn coral and weave among huge hump-headed Maori wrasse. On the Jimmy Goes to China site (so named because if you don’t get off the drift you may just end up in the Orient) there’s an entire colony of multicoloured gorgonian fans and a speckled cuttlefish changing its spots to blend in with new surroundings. The highlights of the Mermaid Wall dive are neon-bright nudibranchs and garden eels tucked among a jungle of corals, both soft and hard. At the Cod Hole I meet Agro, the grey-spotted potato cod, who takes such a liking to my pink mask he follows me around like an oversized underwater puppy.
While the drama is all below the surface at the Rowley Shoals, it is blissfully serene above. We toast our good fortune with sunset drinks on a sliver of blinding white sand that has been tantalising us for days. Bedwell Islet is our very own desert island, and we raise our glasses to this glorious watery wilderness as the sun’s golden orb melts into the sea and the inky sky above is pricked with stars.
“We call it catching up here. Not fishing!” says Trevor, grinning. I’m standing on the bow of the MV Nomad holding a three-metre-long rope with a hook at one end and what looks like a spoon while bobbing on top of the Arafura Sea, off the far north coast of Australia’s Northern Territory. I have no idea what to expect.
“Here they come,” Trevor warns. “Make sure you pull them in quick. The sharks are bloody fast up here.” I look across at my brother, who’s clutching his rope somewhat competitively, but now looks equally uneasy. In an explosive splash, his line pulls taut as a Spanish mackerel the length of a surfboard breaks the water and takes his lure. There’s no fishing rod or reel here. It is hand over hand as fast as you can – if you aren’t fast enough, as my brother soon finds out, you pull up half a fish, the other half taken by an opportunistic and rather hungry bronze whaler shark.
Within an hour of casting our spoon lures we’ve reeled in four and a half enormous Spanish mackerel, blistered both hands and screamed like little kids as we pulled our catch from the jaws of Jaws himself. We try some reef fishing and my brother snags a fish that is the size of a couch and fights with the resistance of one, too. I hook a coral trout that swims into the mouth of a shark and snaps my line. I’m out of breath from both exertion and laughter. All the while Trevor smiles broadly, almost with pride, as he fillets the mackerel. The sun is high and bright and the sky a deep endless blue. It is almost the perfect fishing trip until Trevor offers us a beer. Perfection.
We are on a “bro-cation” at Banubanu Wilderness Retreat, a dream made true by Trevor Hosie and his wife Helen. Tucked into the dunes of Bremer Island, about three hours by boat from Nhulunbuy, on northeast Arnhem Land’s Gove Peninsula, Banubanu looks as though Robinson Crusoe himself built it out of the driftwood, flotsam and jetsam washed up on the surrounding beaches. There’s a dugout canoe in the Driftwood Cafe – the central meeting and dining point – that’s made its way from Papua New Guinea, and a life ring from the Avona Jakarta hanging on the wall. God knows what happened to the Avona Jakarta, or her crew for that matter. Given the appetite of the bronze whalers we’ve encountered, I doubt many of her men would have made it this far had she gone down. Old fishing nets, giant turtle skulls and coloured buoys complete the picture.
There are wooden walkways through the sand leading to the accommodation: a series of cabins and tents almost buried in the dunes behind the Driftwood Cafe, all with luxury bedding and bathrooms. Trevor has also built the ultimate beach shack here, its sundowner deck looking over the northern beach. It is his crowning glory and where we sit après catching, cold beer in hand, watching a golden Northern Territory sunset over the far rocky point after which Banubanu was named.
Trevor’s dream began decades earlier while he was surveying the area for a previous job. Bremer Island, in particular, stayed with him. Ironically, Trevor was part of the team that classified the island a protected area and, as such, it remained isolated until 2003 when he returned to build Banubanu. Lak Lak, the local Yolngu landowner, remembered Trevor from his surveying days and granted him permission to build. In return, Trevor employs local youths and pays a royalty to the community. The arrangement gives guests a unique opportunity to meet the Yolngu people and gain an understanding of how they live. Unfortunately we don’t get a chance to meet Lak Lak, but we’re told she is a regular visitor.
Trevor and Helen’s respect and affection for her is obvious. There are quite strict rules regarding the environment, and alcohol can only be preordered and brought in with guests.
We spend a morning circumnavigating the island in Trevor’s beaten-up old Toyota. It doesn’t take long, yet around each bend is a breathtaking view of another isolated beach just begging for a set of footprints. Trevor takes us inland to some crab holes, but we pass on trying to catch their inhabitants when he mentions the area also “has a few crocs”. As beautiful as it is in this part of the world, it is important not to forget just how wild it is too.
And that is what makes Banubanu so special. There’s no TV or phone coverage (unless you climb the highest dune and get lucky), so you find yourself immersed in the nature surrounding you. Trevor talks us through the bird life and I imagine twitchers fumbling with their binoculars in excitement. We’re lucky enough to spot some sea eagles darting in the distance. Turtle watching here is world class with new nests appearing weekly during the nesting season, and while they are off-limits to guests, the locals can track down larger turtles for an up-close and environmentally friendly experience.
The easy option for Trevor and Helen would have been to set up a simple campsite and let guests look after themselves, but the beauty of Banubanu is that they haven’t. Helen tells us they have tried to make everything they can control five star. The food she prepares is exquisite. On our first evening we start with sashimi from a fish Trevor filleted on the boat that afternoon. Dessert is a Heston Blumenthal-inspired pop rock pudding. The Driftwood Cafe, lit by candles and catching the sea breeze, is the ideal location. The food, the bedding and the service are on par with a top-priced resort. The beach, the sunset and especially the fishing are even better.
But for me, it is the escape that is the allure of Banubanu. After only a couple of days I feel like a genuine castaway, as though I’ve been washed up on the beach clutching the Avona Jakarta life ring. Three days feels like three weeks. The rest of the world is so far away it is forgotten. Large beach resorts try hard to replicate the “shipwreck experience” travellers seek. Banubanu doesn’t have to try. It is the real deal, garnished with luxury. We have a perfect half-moon beach to ourselves and time is told by the sun’s position in the sky. On our our final evening it puts on another spectacular closing number. My brother and I toast the moon and gaze up as the stars come out. From this vantage point Banubanu is far more than five stars.
Tell people you’re heading to the Northern Territory to kayak down a river and they’re only going to say one thing. Come on, no one in their right mind kayaks down a river in the Northern Territory – particularly if the river’s full of crocodiles. So I say it again and again and again: “They’re not stupid. No one’s going to let me paddle down a river with crocodiles in it.”
Turns out I was wrong. They are going to make me paddle down a river with crocodiles in it. Saltwater crocodiles. The kind that grow bigger than, well, a kayak. I discover this about 300 metres above the river on my incoming helicopter ride. That’s the Katherine River below me. When it’s done funnelling its way through nine famous gorges, which we’ve just flown over, it winds its way slowly downstream across the red dust and clay of the Australian outback, south-west of the township of Katherine.
“How come there are no saltwater crocs where we’re going?” I ask the helicopter pilot, waiting for a logical explanation. I’m sitting right beside him in his Robinson 44, so while his voice comes to me as a noise through my headset, his eyes stare right at me. “What do ya mean?” he asks.
“I just would’ve figured that a river so far north in the Northern Territory would have saltwater crocs in it.” I’m still looking at him. “There are saltwater crocs where you’re going, mate,” he says slowly, like he’s not sure whether I’m messing with him or just thick. “About a week ago, they pulled a four-metre saltie from a croc trap right where you’ll end up.” He continues on his merry way. “See there,” he’s pointing at a riverbed. “My neighbour’s dog was taken there by a saltie two weeks back. She reckons there wasn’t even a yelp. One minute it was there, next it was gone.”
But this far from the coast, the Katherine’s full of fresh water: “Doesn’t matter. They don’t mind the fresh water,” he says. But why on earth would an adventure company take people paddling above saltwater crocodiles? “It’s an adventure company, isn’t it?” he says with a chuckle. “Anyway, they should know how to avoid them.”
At this point in the conversation we spot a man in a kayak below us, waiting beside a tear-shaped sandbank in the river. The pilot banks hard left so that I temporarily lose my stomach as we come in low and fast and turn full-circle back at him.
My feet sink ankle-deep into coarse orange sand as I meet the bloke I pray knows where every last crocodile is on this stretch of the Katherine. The river’s a pretty sort of soft blue. It’s still enough, too, to create a mirror on the surface reflecting the lush trees that line both banks and look so out of place among the dusty plains we’ve just flown across. On a hot day like this one, it looks like the kind of river you’d leap right into if you didn’t know better.
“I wouldn’t,” guide Matt Leigh says casually. Leigh’s not the type to lecture or waste much breath on talking, but it’ll be these two words that guide me through the coming days – if Leigh says he wouldn’t, I don’t.
“There could be salties here,” he says, glancing around. “You never can tell. You’re better off soaking than swimming round here. Don’t swim where you can’t see the drop-off. You’d be right 99 times out of 100, but I take more than a hundred people here every year.”
Before I even so much as dip a paddle in the Katherine, I fire every croc question I’ve ever thought of, and then some, at Leigh. From that round of interrogation, let’s dispel a few myths about saltwater crocs before we go further – it’s only fair and, believe me, it helps.
They’re not always the killers we regard them as. An average saltie eats once a month, so they’re hardly out trawling for fresh meat like a lion, which eats as often as it can. And at five metres long, our kayaks are at least a metre longer than the crocs around here, so rather than seeing us as easy, squishy prey in plastic take-out trays, we’re simply the dominant species – they’ll hide until we pass by. Allegedly. Where there’s a greater chance of lurking crocs – in the deeper, darker sections of the Katherine – we’ll paddle in group formation.
But the crocs that inhabit this part of the river aren’t generally aggressive anyway – that’s why they’re here. They’re the non-dominant males who elected against fighting for women and food. Instead they tossed their towels into the ring and swam upriver to enjoy the quiet life, far from the testosterone of the coastal estuaries. There’s plenty more Leigh can tell you too, but it’s this image – of a river full of shy, retiring crocs seeking a bit of peace – that gives me the greatest comfort. So much so I’m finally able to concentrate on what’s all around me, rather than just under me.
Paperbarks grow right out over the water offering shade from the fierce afternoon sun. Blue-winged kookaburras – the kind that doesn’t laugh – fly between them as I pass by. Higher on the banks where gums grow, whistling kites and white-bellied sea eagles fly. Above them – high in the thermals – wedge-tailed eagles and black-breasted buzzards, so big they block out the sun when they pass in front of it, patrol the ground for food.
The river flows steadily so I ride the current downstream. Each bend brings with it a completely different scene – around some corners the river looks wide and peaceful; past others it narrows into tight, fast- moving avenues racing through smoothed-out sandstone, where I have to carefully negotiate my passage. When the sun starts to lose its sting, Leigh leads us to a sandbank near a knee-deep section of the river. “This’ll be camp,” he says simply. “Shallow water should keep the crocs away.” I stop to soak in the slow-moving water. By the time I dry off, Leigh has a fire going, and a pewter mug of whiskey with ice cubes is waiting on the camp table. All around ghost gums and river reds are lit up gold by the last rays of afternoon sunlight, while agile wallabies spy us through the trees, wondering about their funny-looking new neighbours.
Leigh cooks roast beef and vegetables in an old black pot on the fire and, when we’re done, I pick out a soft spot – still warm from the sun – on the rolling dunes. From my swag beneath the moonless sky, I watch stars shoot one by one across the infinite black, while listening to the steady hoot-hoot of southern boobooks and tawny frogmouths.
At dawn, Leigh kicks the fire back to life and cooks up a feed of bacon and eggs he frames not so neatly inside charcoaled pieces of toast. Then it’s back to the water. Over the next couple of days, the surroundings change by the second, as overhanging trees and green foliage give way to the kind of dusty setting you’d expect in this part of the country. Then we paddle around a corner and it changes all over again. Underneath me in the clear, warm water black bream, mullet, catfish, barramundi, snap turtles and metre-long whip rays dart about. Sometimes I float over tiny freshwater crocodiles hiding beside sunken logs – in the height of winter it’s not unusual to see 60 in a day. Above me in the trees, I see branches, tree trunks and other debris hanging precariously, swept there by summer floods when the river rises up to 20 metres. Around one corner I almost paddle into a decaying wallaby washed downstream. I hope its stench hasn’t attracted salties.
The more I paddle – or sometimes just drift with the flow, stopping to stretch my legs as Leigh boils billy tea along the river bank – the more I feel like I’m floating through some sort of real-life Hans Heysen landscape of Australiana, travelling back a century or more into a country I figured disappeared with the rise of modernity.
Out here, I can’t post a single shot on Instagram or Facebook, instead relying on my own eyes – rather than a hundred likes – to legitimise the beauty of all I see. There are no humans here either. Often we paddle for hours without speaking a single word. It’s like I can hear the outback slowly breathing in and out around me, keeping time with the wallabies that bounce along the sandbanks and the cooling nor’-wester that huffs and puffs through the paperbarks.
When the tour’s almost done, I spot a clunky, silver-looking contraption on the far bank. It’s only now I remember that a four-metre croc was pulled from here a fortnight ago – from that very croc trap. Rolling down the Katherine with the breeze at my back and the paperbarks forming a cathedral above me to guide me home, I’d forgotten about the man-eating creatures below. But as I squeeze my way slowly and silently through the only lush parts in one of the world’s most rugged landscapes, I’m mesmerised by all I see, smell and hear around me. In this blissful state of being, I feel like throwing myself into the river one last time before I leave her for the big smoke. “I wouldn’t,” Leigh says. I don’t.
Hobart’s ominous ceiling of cloud spits us out on the tarmac and we’re soon absorbed into a landscape as dramatic as it is gloomy. Rolling fields and mountains give way to a sky of endless grey. It’s a landscape of contrasts that serves as the perfect backdrop for the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), an institution dedicated to life’s extremes – birth, sex and death. And that’s why we’re here: to revel in MONA’s Dark Mofo festival and get in touch with our hedonistic, pagan sides. Or, put simply, to check out some seriously weird art and music while enjoying Tasmania’s culinary spoils.
The program for the festival is unlike any I’ve ever seen. Museum creator and introverted gambling prodigy David Walsh and his minions do a damn fine job of sourcing some of the most left-of-centre exhibitions and acts. It adds great mystery and intrigue to the whole adventure, as there’s little preconception when walking into one of the numerous venues scattered across Hobart. From giant melting ice-blocks and transvestite Beat poets to Australian exploitation film screenings, Dark Mofo’s line-up is irreverent and unpredictable.
First up, and a mandatory highlight of the Mofo experience, is a visit to MONA itself. Clinging to a small point overlooking the Derwent River at Berriedale, about 20 minutes’ drive north of Hobart, the monolithic museum looks more like a Bond villain’s lair than an art gallery. Rumour has it the building will eventually crumble into the river as the land below it erodes. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
You can’t describe MONA in a nutshell. Safe to say, there’s nothing like it on Earth. Or in the earth, for that matter. The museum is built into the ground and you can either take a lift or a steep winding staircase into its bowels – I use that word for good reason. One of the museum’s more notorious exhibitions is a contraption designed to replicate the human digestive process. It’s all very scientific, of course, but a poo machine nonetheless. And, yes, it stinks.
Our schedule allows only a couple of hours in the museum, but you could easily spend longer. It’s incredible, weird, shocking, ridiculous and even has an onsite craft brewery and winery. I can highly recommend both, especially after watching a robot take a crap.
The rest of our Dark Mofo jaunt is split between day and night. The days are spent traipsing around Hobart and surrounds, taking in the festival’s bizarre and disparate offerings. These range from a screening of the classic Ozploitation flick Wake in Fright and a disturbing performance from legendary gothic Greek singer Diamanda Galás, to a musical stage adaptation of Snowtown, the film about the infamous ‘bodies in barrels’ murders. It is hands down the strangest theatrical experience of my life, and I’d wager a barrel of hard cash it’d be one of yours too.
Murderous musicals and wailing Greeks aside, Mofo really gets going after the sun goes down. The biting cold winds pick up and now is the time to ignite your smouldering inner fire with some tasty food and drink. The Winter Feast, a huge wharf on Hobart’s waterfront filled with food stalls by some of the country’s leading chefs, is an ideal start. But get there early as the event unexpectedly drew more than 45,000 hungry punters over the course of the festival in 2014.
Bellies full, we take refuge inside the New Sydney Hotel, a pub to end all pubs. This Hobart institution is a must-visit. The giant blazing fireplace toasts our backs as we peruse the drinks list. But it’s the hand-pumped beer tap that snags our attention. The brew on offer is rotated regularly, offering up a bevy of either unheard of or unpronounceable small-batch beers such as the Aurora Borealis, a 16 per cent beast that dares you to mumble its name after a couple of pints. We knock back a few and proceed to Dark Faux Mo, the festival’s official afterparty.
We roll into the Odeon Theatre, a longstanding Hobart icon and this year’s party venue. Divided between the main theatre, a mezzanine space and a small shed around the back, the festivities offer something for every taste. Headlining the main stage on the final night of the festival is Seattle drone metal band Sunn O))). The entire theatre is drenched in smoke and strobe lights and through the flashing sickly sweet fog comes the most diabolical noise. The smoke begins to clear, revealing a monstrous stack of speakers and the origin of this deafening auditory barrage. I manage about 15 minutes before retreating to the bar.
A few more Moo Brews and I’m upstairs, soaked in sweat and beer, dancing (some would argue having a fit) to Aussie synth-funk outfit Total Giovanni. The band finishes on a high and I slip out into the chill. The pathway between the main theatre and the back shed is crammed. I shoulder my way through the crowd of freaks and geeks and into the brothel-red lit back room. I arm myself with another Moo and take stock. The room is absolutely pumping. In the back corner a bluegrass band works revellers into a frenzy, while in the centre a skinny, bearded dancer a leather S&M get-up is gyrating on a stripper’s pole. At this point any lingering inhibitions evaporate.
I’m not sure what time we finish up, but on the walk home, in between bites of a pie, I try to piece together what this whole thing has been about. I’m still unsure whether the winter solstice/pagan-ritual theme ties each moment and experience together, but there’s something undeniably powerful happening in Tasmania thanks to MONA. Travelling to an island at the end of the Earth in winter and completely immersing yourself in art, performance, gastronomy and partying is truly unique. In a bloated festival landscape such as Australia’s, MONA’s Dark Mofo stands tall among the crowd. And I can tell you, I’ll be back.
It’s 3am on game day and Katie Ryan can forget about getting any more sleep. A player raps on her door with a problem that’s now her problem. He has been up vomiting and can’t keep water down. Minutes later there’s a second knock on the door. Another player has woken, this time with a throbbing pain in his hand after his fingernail was trodden on during the previous day’s match.
“The players got very little sleep that night before having to get up and prepare for another two games, and I decided it was just easier to stay up, make an early coffee and get some paperwork done,” Ryan says. “It was going to be a long, long day – it would be 22 hours before I got a chance to get to sleep again.”
Welcome to life on the road as team physio of the Australian Men’s Rugby Sevens. In some respects, Ryan is living every girl’s dream – travelling the world with a muscular bunch of uber-athletic blokes, always on stand-by should one of them need a rubdown. But Ryan isn’t a girl, she’s a professional sports physiotherapist and mother of three, who’s second family just happens to wear green and gold and takes her to places most nine-to-fivers could barely imagine. This year the circuit includes Las Vegas, Dubai, Wellington, the Gold Coast, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Glasgow, London and Port Elizabeth in South Africa – all with two gear bags, a treatment table and 30 kilograms of sports tape in tow.
“Apart from the travel I’m just really lucky that I get to look after these absolutely professional athletes; they train super hard and, yes, there are pinch me moments when I’m doing a treatment session looking out over Dubai, or having a treatment session watching the whales swim up the coast at the Gold Coast, or treating a player looking over Wellington. They’ve just been amazing times.”
When we meet trackside at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, Ryan, 44, has her hands full. The player who was up vomiting is being assessed for IV fluids – he’s come off the field severely dehydrated and has shed three kilograms. There are other wounds and injuries to tend to and once they’ve been dealt with, a quandary: where can two women meet in such a blokey environment? “How about I come to you?” I propose. The suggestion is met with the following text: “Where I am now in the change rooms faces the communal team shower – you would blush.”
Ryan is used to the nudity, blood, sweat and grit that comes with looking after a professional sports team – it’s part of her job description and, as the only woman on the squad, she carries out her role with dignity and respect. It’s a courtesy that is reciprocated among the players and team managers, who don’t mind giving Ryan a gentle ribbing when they see her talking to a journalist – it’s all part of the camaraderie. Humour is important when you live out of each other’s pockets on tour.
Ryan always snags the biggest hotel room during tournaments, but it’s not really her own. As the primary person responsible for player welfare (team doctors don’t come on tour), she’s on call 24/7. In Vegas her day starts early with the players filing into her room to ‘check-in’, a game-day ritual where they are weighed, have their physical stats recorded and any issues addressed. Next it’s off to the pool for ‘activation’ to start preparing for the day’s matches (often there are two games, each consisting of seven-minute halves with a two-minute half-time). Ryan will spend up to an hour strapping and prepping the players. Soon they are warming up against the dramatic backdrop of the arid Nevada mountains, then it’s show time.
“We go out on the field and the strength conditioner and myself have to run water during the match. Because it’s so intense you’ve just got a short time to get on and off. I almost got tackled by a Scottish player today, so it’s fast and furious and then it’s back off to manage any injuries.”
After the game there is more strapping, ice, hydration and perhaps some manual therapy as Ryan and the team assess whether some players can “back up” for another match. Fourteen minutes of competition might sound lightweight but the sport is punishing; these are colossal, super-fit athletes who charge the field with lightning speed and brute force. Peripheral injuries to ankles, knees, joints and backs are common, as are contact- related wounds and soft-tissue damage, such as strained calves and hamstrings. Hydration and nutrition are perpetual challenges, particularly on long-haul flights when you are dealing with bear-like men crammed into chicken-class seats.
“We know anecdotally that long periods of travel on planes affects athletes – it’s a real concern for player welfare,” Ryan says. “This can be the effects of sitting in air-conditioning for anything from three to 22 hours, sitting next to people who are unwell and picking up an illness, losing weight from eating small, irregular meals that are not optimal for athletes, and the effect of jamming six-foot, five-inch, 100-kilogram players in economy seating for long periods – expecting them to be able to have any sort of quality sleep sitting upright.”
Ryan – who graduated as a physiotherapist in 1993, becoming a sports physio in 2000 – spent two decades working with rugby union clubs before joining the Rugby Sevens full-time in 2014 when the program centralised in Sydney. Between running two physio practices with her husband – former Australian Wallaby’s physiotherapist Andrew Ryan – and raising three children under the age of 11, Ryan has little chance to sit still. And her job comes with sacrifices: in Vegas she misses two of her children’s birthdays, and Mother’s Day is spent on tour in Scotland.
“Missing two birthdays was a little bit devastating,” she says. “I guess the biggest thing being a mother is that there’s just no way I’d have this opportunity normally with three kids at home if I didn’t have a great team at home as well – my husband, mother, aunts, uncles – everyone pitching in to enable me to be able do this.”
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