Free Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means by Charley Boorman

me, ‘but you can’t really use the beach. You can’t swim because there are box jellyfish and sharks, of course, and then there are the salties - crocs who like to bask on the sand.’
    We spent a very relaxing evening eating a barbecue with them and John explained more about the running of the mine. His role was in community relations, so he dealt with the traditional owners. Weipa was a good, if quiet, place to live, but it was isolated. For four months of the year it rained and the only way in or out was to fly. But there was plenty of outdoor stuff to do - fishing, hunting and camping - and he and his family loved it.
     
     
    In the morning we went back to the airfield, where Graeme had the plane ready. Having completed his work in Weipa, he was heading to Bamaga to look at some more boats. Sam and Robin were already there, having flown up from Cairns in order to try to sort out what was going to happen when we got to Papua New Guinea. Together again, the four of us would take a small boat, what they call a tinny, to Thursday Island across the Torres Strait.
    It’s funny. For years now I’ve had this thing about flying, this romantic notion that I can get my pilot’s licence and fly off wherever I want. The reality, however, is that I get airsick. Even yesterday in the twin-engine Beechcraft, it only had to be a little bumpy and I started to feel nauseous.
    It’s just one of those things, I suppose, and it’s the same with boats. I get sick on small boats. Actually I’m crap around boats altogether. Whenever I go near a boat something goes wrong. I call it the Charley Factor. In Vietnam we were on a speedboat that conked out between two massive rocks and I thought we were going to drown. Then there was an abortive sea crossing from Nikoi Island to Borneo, where an hour into the voyage the Pinisi started taking on water. Then there was an overloaded ferry when we island-hopped through Indonesia on the last trip that listed so badly I thought it might capsize at any time. Not to mention a three-and-a-half-day crossing to Darwin that took six and a half days because the sea was so rough. I should avoid boats, I really should. It’s a bit like KTMs - I seem to put the hex on them.
    Graeme dropped us off at the airfield in Bamaga where we had arranged to hook up with a young guy called Brett, who worked on Horn Island teaching youngsters how to drive the small tinnies, and his mate Jeff, who lived in Bamaga. Tinnies were the traditional method of getting around up here, and Brett had borrowed one to ferry us on the next leg of our journey, first to Horn Island and then on to Thursday Island. But, of course, the boat was playing up - on the way over they had had a bit of engine trouble and while Brett came to pick us up, another mate was trying to fix it.
    The boat wasn’t big enough to take all of us so Brett suggested he make two trips. It was only twenty minutes from Seisa Beach, where it was moored, to Horn Island and back. Now the boat was working again, we agreed that Robin and Sam would go first.
    It was a beautiful day and while we waited for Brett to return, I went for a paddle in a warm sea. Winter at the top of the Cape, I could get used to it. Brett’s friend Jeff - a cool, very tall and laid-back guy with chipped front teeth and a thick, gold band in his ear - had hung around with Claudio and me to wait for the boat. As the sun got hotter we sat under a shelter made out of palm leaves where it was more comfortable.
    We waited and we waited. A twenty-minute round trip, Brett had said, but an hour and twenty minutes later there was still no sign of him. Jeff tried to get hold of him on his mobile phone but could not get a connection.
    ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘He really ought to be back by now.’
    ‘What could’ve happened?’ I asked him.
    ‘I don’t know.’ He was gazing out to sea. ‘Brett reckoned it was pretty choppy coming over this morning, but look at her now. She looks as flat as,