Scaling Townsville’s craggy Castle Hill on which is painted a stick figure with a halo ( above ) representing the gentleman crook, Simon Templar, alias The Saint, almost brought this sinner face to face with St Peter at the Pearly Gates. In the old Imperial measurement, the peak is nearly 1000 feet high and dominates the attractive North Queensland city. The views from it out to the Coral Sea , Magnetic and Palm isles , The Strand are magnificent . Day and night it is climbed , driven and pedalled up by a horde of locals, interstate and overseas visitors , adventurers , camera enthusiasts, decaying individuals who should know better, the latter category one in which I have membership.
One way to conquer the peak is via what is known locally as “the goat track,” which requires no explanation. My athletic daughter , Lizbeth, often climbs Castle Hill before she goes to work , setting out from home before sunrise for the base camp for the trek . I was induced one Saturday to join her , a friend , Barbara , also a regular climber , and a great granddaughter , Lacey, “nearly five and a half”, a veteran mountain climber. Because it was exceptionally cold there as in Darwin, I wore jeans and a jumper , not only to keep warm but as protection against mossies and dengue. Barbara , in whose comfortable car we travelled, was similarly covered , and elected to walk up the easier sealed road because of a hip or knee condition , while the rest of us hit the goat track.
After admiring the views as the sun peeked through early in the ascent , I soon noticed that the thigh muscles were tightening up. Then it dawned on me that I was going to be physically tested. Daughter and the hopping, skipping and rock–wallaby like GGD left me for –not dead- but pretty close. My thoughtful daughter returned and said there was a rest station, a deck with a seat a short distance ahead where I could sit and drink from my water bottle.
Resting, I glanced down the track and could see an army of enthusiastic climbers , some solo, heading up my way. Spurred on, I resumed the upward grind, pausing frequently to sit on an uncomfortable rock, hug a tree , the sweat saturating my clothing. A woman clad only in shorts and a T-shirt , carrying a water bottle, seeing my stressed state , thought she was being kind and helpful when she said I had passed the half way mark ( groan ) ; she soon disappeared as if snatched by a Yeti. I stepped aside for three men coming through at speed , the last one in the group, lightly clad, the eldest ,sweat pouring down his face, looked at me adorning a tree and commented , with some amazement, that I was heavily dressed. Was that the Angel of Death , an elephant , a snake , a turtle and a few political stickers on a watertank ( below) beside the track or was I beginning to hallucinate ?
Ringing wet with perspiration , I set out to follow them and on entering a ramp everything began to swim before my eyes, I became light headed and things went black. Clutching a rail , I hung there like a clump of rainforest flora, green about the gills . This, I thought, could literally be the end of life’s mysterious trail for me. After a while, I tottered back to the parking area , sat down and drank some more water. Waiting for me at the summit , my daughter and lively GGD wondered why I had not joined them. Lacey, incredibly smart and agile for her age , suggested I may had died .
No. I recovered; we returned via the road, although we did take a side track at one stage. On the way down I took photos of the saint figure first said to have been painted as a prank by a James Cook University Arts/Law student,Shane Flynn, in the l960s . Subsequently erased, it was replaced and is now a well known piece of graffiti art, a tourist attraction.
After the arduous climb, we headed to The Strand , on the waterfront, which was in a festive mood due to the annual walking competition, and had breakfast , Lacey going for pancakes. Unfortunately, oxygen was not on the menu , so I had settle for the big breakfast and a mug of latte with four sugars . When I went to the James Cook University Special Collections and told the librarian that I had scaled Castle Hill via the goat track , she said people had been known to drop dead there . I thank the patron saint of mountain climbers that I had not expired on that expedition .
The saints seemed to be watching over me in Townsville as there was a fete at St Matthew’s Anglican Church, Rising Sun, where I bought numerous books , including the biography THE SAINT AND LESLIE CHARTERIS ( above ), examined a display of Townsville serpents and succumbed to the temptation of a Devonshire tea .While munching on a tasty date scone, I read the names of dear departed parishioners on a memorial wall, one now said to be DANCING IN HEAVEN. My sainted aunt would not have agreed to such carrying on in Paradise.
Then Australia’s own Saint Mary MacKillop ( above ) beamed down on me and held a FUNDAY at which more secondhand books were for sale. I was blessed by picking up the memoirs of a neglected living ALP saint , Barry Jones. While taking photographs of the interesting architecture in Townsville , I came across a residence on The Strand with the surprising name , ST. OLAVE'S . Olaf was once King of Norway and became the patron saint of that country. What is more, he helped Aethelred the Unready beat back the Danes when they invaded England . How the saint's name came to be displayed on a prime piece of real estate in Townsville is a clerical mystery. ---- (By Peter Simon).
