Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-One - The Great Barrier Reef, March 1997

Soon we were in the Sandy Straits, between Fraser Island and the mainland, a route that saved some miles but was a mess of sand bars and tidal currents. Our second day in the straits, working our way toward an anchorage, we went aground on a sand bar. The tide was going out, so we sat there, heeling more and more as the tide receded. Finally, the water came up and little by little we straightened up until we were floating free again. Easy stuff, just sand, and this time we didn't try to power off and end up with more silt in the seawater pump. That night we sheltered in a little anchorage in the mangroves, but I didn't go ashore because there were loads of mosquitoes and nothing much to see on shore besides a lot of trees.

The next morning we moved farther north to anchor off a lovely holiday spot called Kingfisher Resort. I was starting to get a scratchy throat and feared I had the flu. All I wanted was a place to anchor where I could spend the next 10 days feeling sorry for myself, while the flu did its thing. As we were circling the anchorage, I glanced under the dodger where I had left a pair of shoes and saw something moving. Oh my God, it was a snake! I let out a shriek that brought Dave running from the bow where he had been getting ready to drop anchor. I pointed "There's a snake in my shoe! Do something, kill it, do something, do something!" I was practically dancing in fright, whereas Dave was looking at it in that peculiar male way that denotes interest but not fear. What is it with men and reptiles? I have been terrified of snakes, ever since my dear sister threw a garden snake at me when I was 3, and it wrapped itself around my neck. I have a hard time even looking at them in books.

Dave was still trying to figure out what kind of snake it was and said, "What do you want me to do?" So I shrieked again, in case he hadn't quite understood my earlier orders, "Do something, kill it, kill it." Dave took the unoccupied shoe and hit the snake on the head with it. The poor little guy looked stunned for a moment, and Dave took that opportunity to empty the snake-filled shoe over the side, and the last we saw of him, he was groggily swimming away. I am sure he got into our dinghy at the mangrove-lined anchorage and then, while we weren't looking, climbed up the dinghy painter to make himself at home on our deck and in my shoe.

With that crisis over (remember, Australia has loads of poisonous things and that could have been one of them), we anchored and I collapsed on the settee to let the virus take its toll. I only had enough strength to order Dave around in a weak voice and accept the delicious meals he prepared for his "honey." It took almost three weeks before I felt strong enough for us to leave and continue heading through the straits back to open water.