(Image source: http://www.smh.com.au)
The Great Barrier Reef: a Snorkeler's Paradise, a tourist's Mecca, and a city brimming with thousands of species
As Bryson was making his way north to Cooktown, he and his friend Allen stop to spend a day in a town along the shore of the Great Barrier Reef. After already having a close encounter with a Portuguese Man of War, Bryson was likely expecting this popular destination to be a bit safer and more absent of the array of deadly species that call Australia home. However, this section brought several surprises that obviously came as a shock to Bryson and surprised me, as the reader, no less.
Shortly after Bryson arrived in Cooktown, there was a torrential downpour that flooded the streets and made the water in the bay extremely rough. Despite the horrible and potentially dangerous weather conditions, Bryson was told that most people with tickets to see the Great Barrier Reef do so regardless of the rain or the rough waves. Fortunately, by the time Bryson and his friend made the trip out to sea, the rain had stopped; however, the improved weather certainly did not eliminate the danger from the trip.
On the bus trip to the reef, the driver was giving a run down of marine stingers, "with vivid descriptions of people who had failed to their cost to heed the warning signs" (213). As if this wasn't enough to scare everyone on the bus, Bryson also mentions several other harmful creatures that exist there, including reef sharks, boxfish, scorpion fish, stinging corals, sea snakes, or "the fat and infamous grouper, a nine-hundred pound monster that occasionally, through a combination of testiness and stupidity, chomps off a swimmer's arm, then remembers that it doesn't like the taste of human flesh" (213). Throughout the entire book, it is made very clear that Australians are accustomed to occasional shark attacks, so it obviously came as a shock to me when I heard that despite the presence of sharks living at the reef, tourists still swim in the deep channel waters regardless.
As if this weren't already enough, Bryson tells the story of a couple who went out on a boat to the reef with a group of tourists, decided to go for a swim, and realized soon after that the boat had left without them. No one realized they were missing until two days later, by which time it is believed that they were eaten by sharks. Although many cases of deaths at sea remain subtle stories in Australia, this one somehow caused a bit more commotion. When Bryson asked one of the locals what she thought about the story, she replied, "They always blow these things out of proportion down south" (219).
Although I never really thought of the Great Barrier Reef as much of a danger zone prior to this section of the book, Bryson's account of his trip there has convinced me that it can actually be, and has been, a perilous destination.
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