Finding Amos: A venture into the past
TONY AMOS

Some readers have told me they like my recent "road trip" stories, so today, and for the foreseeable future, you'll get installments of a trip I call "Finding Amos".

Now before you say "Oh, no!" other than any perceived double entendres, the Amos in the title probably has no familial connection to the one writing this. I'll explain: A generation ago, my wife Lynn's younger brother, Winston Cabrall, took his wife Mary and 6-year-old daughter Lisa from the cozy island of Bermuda to the vast outback of Australia to start a new life. After living in Gold Coast cities, then moving out to towns, they finally found the settlement of Cooktown far north in the State of Queensland. They homesteaded and invested in a few acres in the even more remote land called "Amos". Yes, that's right, Amos. There is Amos Mountain and Amos Bay 12 arduous miles from Cooktown. Winston was going to build a house and become self-sustaining in the tropical rainforest of that exotic land. Mary and Lisa stayed in Cooktown while Winston spent days toiling in what they simply called "Amos".

Cooktown was named after Captain Cook, who, in 1770, was shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef and rebuilt his ship Endeavor. All the nearby places are named after members of Cook's crew, so I was told, and perhaps a distant relative of mine was a sailor aboard the Endeavor, but for me, my quest was to find the Cabralls. First I had to "Find Amos."

Bye bye moon Tony Amos, director of the Animal Rehabilition Keep (ARK) at The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute, caught these photos of a lunar eclipse on Tuesday, Aug. 28. The photo at left was taken at 4:28 a.m. as clouds began to roll in. The other, just before totality, was taken at 4:44 a.m. It shows the rich reddish coloration typical of a lunar eclipse. Amos calls the second photo 'grainy and a little wobbly with a fivesecond exposure.'

It was January 1977, and I had finished a research cruise in the Antarctic on the U.S. Coast Guard Icebreaker Northwind. I debarked in the Port City of Lyttleton on the South Island of New Zealand, and was staying with Walter and Wendy Gallagher, former New Jersey friends. I had moved to Texas only a few months before. Those were days when communication was not as easy and as global as it is now; a trans-oceanic telephone call was still an adventure. Much of what you'll read was written at that time, so as I write it here I'll jog my own memory of this adventure. It was in the form of a 20-page letter to the various families. Starting today, you get

Finding Amos, Page 1, Jan 23, 1977, Lyttleton, New Zealand.

I have just come back from a week in Australia (which, unfortunately, was all I could manage because of schedules of military flights back to the U.S.). I thought that the best way I could tell you about the Cabralls at Amos Bay would be to describe my journey there and back.

I left Christchurch, New Zealand, and flew to Brisbane, Queensland, which took about three hours. This was on Air New Zealand. Then I had to change planes (and airports) and flew north on Ansett Airlines to Cairns, stopping at Townsville on the way. Queensland is a large state---it is 1375 miles from Brisbane to Cairns and there is still another 600 miles from there to the tip of Cape York.

When I arrived in Cairns and picked up a 4-wheel drive vehicle for the journey to Amos, it was late on Saturday afternoon, and I decided to wait until Monday to buy some supplies (I had all Antarctic clothing and there in Cairns it was 88 F with 90 percent humidity!). Cairns airport was very small, and it seemed like the whole of the town turned out to see the plane arrive - including a large group of Aborigines -- with their incredibly expressive faces -- and some of the old men had shocks of pure white curly hair contrasting with their dark skins.

I stayed in quite a modern hotel that had in its dining room a unique fan to keep the air circulating -- a series of large baffles covering the entire ceiling were moved back and forward by a long shaft that was operated by a motor hidden in the wall, thus wafting the air in the room very efficiently and very pleasantly.

While I was in Cairns, I took a boat ride out to Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef, about 15 miles offshore. Green Island is a tiny island completely covered with dense rain forest and famous for its coral reef "gardens" where I saw the most incredible array of corals, brightly colored fish, anemones, crown of thorns starfish, great clams, etc., also many sea birds on its beaches. On Monday afternoon after I had bought a raincoat, insect repellent, sneakers to replace my Antarctic boots, scissors to cut off a pair of jeans to make shorts, I set off in my Toyota along the Captain Cook.

This highway is about 40 miles north along the coast to Port Douglas, and it is paved. From Port Douglas I had to go back inland to Mossman, where I had lunch in a typical Aussie hotel - dozens of people just sitting under the verandah on the sidewalk -- many Aborigines -- while inside at the several bars there were rugged looking men drinking their stubbies, pots or jugs of beer while slowly rotating ceiling fans did nothing to relieve the heat of the day. A few miles outside of Mossman a fork in the road with a. sign "Cooktown 274 KM" (171miles) was where the unpaved road and my adventure really began. Next week, Page 2, Finding Cooktown.

(Note: lest you think I'm being politically incorrect with references to the aboriginal peoples of Australia and attitudes some Aussies had towards them that will be revealed later; this story is virtually unedited from the original written 30 years ago and is dated by the feelings of those times).

Tony Amos is a research fellow at The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute.