''IT'S not your typical tropical paradise,'' the only person I knew who had ever been to Thursday Island, Australia's northern-most point, told me.
That wouldn't have been so bad, but the check-in attendant who took my bags for the flight from Sydney was more specific: ''What are you going to that place for?'' she asked. ''There's nothing there! Just four pubs and a meat pie shop. You can't even goswimming. All you can do is drink.'' So it was with a certain amount of resignation that I buckled myself in for the more than 3,000 kilometre haul to the farthest tip of Cape York.
But despite all the warnings, I wasn't entirely discouraged. I've always found that Australia becomes wilder, friendlier and generally more frontier-like the further north you go, in classic Croc Dundee style.
And Thursday Island can't have been too bad: Somerset Maugham spent several weeks there in the early part of this century, and wrote his classic short story Rain from one of its pubs.
Admittedly, it was a long way to go to find out: four hours by air just from Sydney to Cairns, then another two hours in a 24-passenger twin-prop.
Cape York unfurled endlessly below, looking surprisingly dry and barren after the lush rainforest-covered hills around Cairns. Finally we landed, at tiny Horn Island (the only sizeable airstrip around there) and hung around in the steaming heat for a tiny ferry to take us over to Thursday.
