Among the cane

Once upon a time there was a player named Fred (though we change the names to protect the innocent)
Now Fred was a reliable player who always played within the rules, and he didn’t see why others shouldn’t too. Nothing wrong with that of course. He had been playing Keith quite uneventfully, when Keith started to become increasingly erratic. Transmission times were blowing out, postmarks bore little relation to the game score, there were periodic unexplained silences. Fred put up with this for a while, then complained to me as Tournament Secretary. I contacted Keith, and the reply was unusual, to say the least.
“Most of the year I live in Brisbane (the capital of Queensland), but when sugar cane season comes, I head north and do a spot of cane cutting. I am on a station about 100 km from Mossman (really wild North Queensland country). The cane season is also the wet season, the rain never stops and the roads are impassable. Even the air strip is under water. There are only two ways out, the motor bike and the horse. I crashed the bike and broke my leg, so I make my moves as soon as I can, but they have to wait until someone takes the mail through on the horse. I have no idea exactly when it gets dropped into a post box. I love playing, but the mail has a few problems at present.”
When the response was forwarded to Fred, he pondered and replied : “I withdraw my complaint. He can’t be cheating ... no one could make that excuse up !”